The Insiders and the Iraq War

by John F. McManus, Wisconsin

Insiders are the individuals within our nation who want the UN to be the seat of a world government. Most are members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the organization whose members have dominated every administration since the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Insiders recognize each other, promote each other, work closely with each other, and have the same goal - a UN-led world that they expect to run. If not stopped they will destroy the independence of the United States of America.

Richard Cheney should be looked upon as one of the top Insiders in the current Bush administration. He was brought into government by Donald Rumsfeld (then a CFR member) who served in several posts during the Nixon administration (1969-1974). As you may recall, Nixon resigned in 1974 and Gerald Ford took over as President. Rumsfeld became Ford’s Chief of Staff and he promptly chose Cheney as Deputy Chief of Staff. Soon, Rumsfeld moved on to become Secretary of Defense and Cheney (at the ripe old age of 34) became Ford’s Chief of Staff.

When Ford lost to Carter in 1976, Cheney went back to Wyoming where he became that state’s lone congressman. He accepted membership in the CFR in 1982, served for several years on its Board of Directors, and was named Secretary of Defense in the George Bush (the elder) administration (1989-1993). In that post, he helped to direct the first war against Iraq, the war Mr. Bush clearly stated was to reinvigorate the UN and build the new world order. It was UN resolutions, incidentally, that authorized only the removal of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, not the removal of Sddam from power. There was no authorization for moving on to Baghdad, capturing Saddam, effecting regime change, etc. Those who arrange such events evidently wanted a second war against Iraq.

A dozen years ago when he was Secretary of Defense in the elder Bush’s administration, Cheney directed Defense Department official Paul Wolfowitz to formulate future policy. Wolfowitz, another CFR stalwart, produced a plan to attack Iraq again and get rid of Saddam. But Cheney and Wolfowitz lost their government posts when Bill Clinton bested the elder Bush in the 1992 election. Cheney moved on to the American Enterprise Institute, a leading neoconservative organization, and then to the post of CEO at Haliburton Company in Texas. There’s a story there but we don’t have time for it.

In 1997, Cheney led a group of world planners in the formation of the Project For the New American Century (PNAC). Its Statement of Principles called for large increases in defense spending to enable the U.S. to “carry out our global responsibilities” and “to extend an international order.” John Quincy Adams said ‘”America goes not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” But current U.S. leaders believe they should do exactly that as part of our nation’s supposed “global responsibilities.”

Signers of the PNAC’s 1997 Statement of Principles included Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, a host of leading neoconservatives, and a few men the media keeps telling us are conservatives such as Dan Quayle, Gary Bauer, Jeb Bush, Steve Forbes, and William Bennett.

In January 1998, the PNAC sent a formal letter to President Clinton urging forcible removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Of particular interest, it stated that “the U.S. already has the authority under existing UN resolutions” to use our nation’s military to do the job. It even said that relying on unanimity within the UN was “misguided.” Cheney’s name didn’t appear on this letter but Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz signed it along with Insider luminaries Robert Zoellick, Richard Perle, John Bolton, Elliott Abrams, and Richard Armitage. These are the very individuals who fill many important posts in the current Bush administration.

The PNAC’s January 1998 letter sent to Mr. Clinton appeared five years before the recent war against Iraq. Bill Clinton never acted on its recommendations, probably because he was very busy fighting impeachment.

Three months after the letter to Clinton had been sent, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Condoleeza Rice and George Shultz formed what has been aptly termed “the Bush Brain Trust.” A training program for George W. Bush, it arranged for meetings, conference calls, faxes, and personal attention given to the prospective President. These individuals actually spent two-and-a-half years tutoring Mr. Bush to be President of the United States.

Once chosen to be the nominee, Mr. Bush asked Cheney to search for a running mate. As chance would have it, Cheney selected himself. Once in office, Mr. Bush appointed Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense and Rice as National Security advisor. Wolfowitz and a number of the others previously named have been given important posts in the current administration. And now, they have succeeded in conquering Iraq and getting rid of Saddam Hussein, just as their PNAC urged five years ago and Wolfowitz urged more than ten years ago. In the process, they have cemented in the public’s mind that the U.S. has “global responsibilities.”

The plans of the Project For the New American Century have been carried out exactly as laid out years before. Most Americans have been led to believe that the Bush administration formed a coalition with a few other nations and acted without the UN’s authority. The UN was painted as ineffective, unwilling, and unable. The French, Russians and Germans were castigated for blocking the UN’s ability to act. Nonsense such as renaming french fries and french dressing, and boycotting French wines became the essence of patriotism.

But on March 20, only a few hours after the attack on Iraq began, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, John Negroponte, delivered a formal letter to the Security Council citing by name a short list of the very UN resolutions that “authorized” the action. Negroponte then told the press that the Bush administration “was acting to enforce existing Security Council Resolutions vis-à-vis Iraq.” The recent war was a UN-authorized operation from the outset. And, as William Norman Grigg has so capably noted, “One seeks authority from a superior, not from an inferior.” Once again, the U.S. acknowledges that the UN is our nation’s superior.

The Insiders used America’s military to meet what they have labeled our nation’s “global responsibilities.” The planners at the Program For the New American Century have taken control. They accomplished additional beefing up of the “international order” by relying on UN authority to act. And now, we begin to hear calls for strengthening the power of the UN by removing the veto power possessed by our nation and four others.

The UN hasn’t been harmed; it has been strengthened. Our leaders are delivering our military and our entire nation to the world body. Getting the U.S. out of the UN has become even more imperative. And, in the process, Insider control of the Bush administration has to be exposed. There’s a lot of work to do.

* President of The John Birch Society, Woodland Hills, California, April 26, 2003

War in Iraq - The Victim Statistics:

Sources:DoD/MoD US/UK, dpa-Ticker, www.iraqbodycount.de