The neo-conservative ideas about Iraq began to come together around the time that PNAC was formed, in spring 1997. Although the group's overriding goal was expanding the U.S. military and American influence around the globe, the group placed a strong early emphasis on Iraq. In addition to Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, early backers of the group included Jeb Bush, the president's brother; Richard Armitage, now deputy secretary of state; Robert Zoellick, now U.S. trade commissioner; I. Lewis Libby, now Cheney's top aide; and Zalmay Khalilzad, now America's special envoy to Afghanistan. A frustrated [U. of Penn. poli sci prof] sees the war plan as the triumph of a simple ideology over the messy realities of global politics. "This is not a war on fanatics," he said. "This is a war of fanatics - our fanatics." --William Bunch, 01.27.03

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: Some of [the present attitudes of France and Germany], however, I think is the product of some of the rather demagogic, almost warmongering statements that were coming out of the administration periodically. The president made a very good speech to the U.N. on September 12. But some of his off-the-cuff remarks may go over well in the United States, but they seem to convince the Europeans that he's really eager for war and that he doesn't give a damn about anybody else. And I think that fed into the equation and created a sense of resentment and maybe even conviction that the whole U.N. business is a charade, that we are seeking an excuse, almost at all costs, to go to war. Now this may not be justified on their part, but we have to take it into account. --Lehrer News Hour, 01.26.03

"US military strategists have announced a plan to pummel the Iraqi capital with as many as 800 cruise missiles in the space of two days. If George W. Bush gets the war he wants, Baghdad could become the 21st Century's Guernica. On April 26, 1937, 25 Nazi bombers dropped 100,000 pounds of bombs and incendiaries on the peaceful Basque village. Seventy percent of the town was destroyed and 1,500 people, a third of the population, were killed.

"The Pentagon now predicts that its Baghdad blitzkrieg could approximate the devastation of a nuclear explosion. "The sheer size of this has never been... contemplated before," one Pentagon strategist boasted to CBS News. "There will not be a safe place in Baghdad," a city of 5 million people. The Pentagon dubbed its cold-blooded attack plan "Shock and Awe" – a bizarre conjunction of trauma and admiration. Shock and awe were the very emotions that Americans experienced on Sept. 11, 2001. Now, like the 9/11 terrorists, Bush and Co. are planning a similar act of almost unparalleled ferocity – a devastating premeditated attack on a civilian urban population....

"But destroying Baghdad will not uncover hidden chemical, biological or nuclear weapons (if, in fact, any exist). Destroying Baghdad will not capture, topple or kill Saddam Hussein. Shock and Awe's expressed goal is simple: to destroy the Iraqi people "physically, emotionally and psychologically." Ironically, this was also the goal of the Nazi strategists who destroyed Guernica. The town had no strategic value as a military target, but – like Baghdad – it was a cultural and religious center. Guernica was devastated to terrorize the population and break the spirit of the Basque resistance....

"The destruction of Baghdad seems designed to underscore Bush's belligerent warning to the rest of the world: "You're either with us or you're against us." Washington's new National Security Strategy describes an America dominating the world militarily, politically and economically. In a report published a month before the US presidential elections, the conservative Project for the New American Century insisted on instituting a "global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests." This ringing endorsement of hyper-imperialism was co-[sponsored] by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis Libby and Jeb Bush...." --Gar Smith, "Shock and Awe": Guernica Revisited, 01.27.03. See also "Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance," 1996 and "800 missiles to hit Iraq in first 48 hours," 01.26.2003

While Bush has really been on Saddam's case since he arrived back in D.C. in September, he'd been having a half million barrels of Iraqi oil shipped to the U.S. each day. Then we lost 1.5 million barrels of oil per day due to the oil strike in Venezuela. Bush picked up some of the slack in December by halting deposits into our national strategic reserve of 700 million barrels, with the possibility of drawing some out to cover another portion of the loss. Apart from the long-term plan of gaining political control ("hegemony," in weasel-speak) over the Middle East and protecting Israel, Bush's reason for attacking Iraq is to get its oil, as we have indicated all along. As a Condi biz buddy, Chevron chief exec Ken Deer, said five years ago, "Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas - reserves I'd love Chevron to have access to." Of course, since oil's not the reason Bush is giving to our citizens or to the U.N. for an Iraq attack, it would not have been a good idea to have much public discussion of a U.S. oil shortage at the time he was threating to invade the second most oil-rich country in the world. That would have been too obvious, right? So Bush made sure he covered the severity of the loss of Venezuelan oil by getting an extra half-million barrels of oil per day from...you're not going to believe this...IRAQ. Read the full story here. --Politex, 01.27.03

Bush War is our last resort.
Reporter What's your next to last resort?
Bush Well, uh, war.
Reporter And the second resort?
Bush War, actually.
Reporter Resort number 395?
Bush That'd be war.
Reporter Dare I guess your first resort?
Bush You got it.
--Ben Sargent, with Politex, 01.26.03