January 26, 1998 PNAC Letter
http://www.theindyvoice.com/index.blog?entry_id=417960
This is a letter from the "The Project for the New American Century":
"January 26, 1998
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century#Position_on_Iraq
The Honorable William J. Clinton
President of the United States
Washington, DC
Dear Mr. President:
We are writing you because we are convinced that current
American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that
we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious
than any we have known since the end of the Cold War.
In your upcoming State of the Union Address, you have an
opportunity to chart a clear and determined course for
meeting this threat. We urge you to seize that opportunity,
and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the
interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around
the world. That strategy should aim, above all, at the
removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power. We stand
ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary
endeavor.
The policy of "containment" of Saddam Hussein has been
steadily eroding over the past several months. As recent
events have demonstrated, we can no longer depend on our
partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to uphold
the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades
UN inspections. Our ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein
is not producing weapons of mass destruction, therefore,
has substantially diminished. Even if full inspections
were eventually to resume, which now seems highly unlikely,
experience has shown that it is difficult if not impossible
to monitor Iraq's chemical and biological weapons production.
The lengthy period during which the inspectors will have
been unable to enter many Iraqi facilities has made it even
less likely that they will be able to uncover all of Saddam's
secrets. As a result, in the not-too-distant future we will
be unable to determine with any reasonable level of confidence
whether Iraq does or does not possess such weapons.
Such uncertainty will, by itself, have a seriously
destabilizing effect on the entire Middle East.
It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does
acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction,
as he is almost certain to do if we continue along
the present course, the safety of American troops in
the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and
the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of
the world's supply of oil will all be put at hazard.
As you have rightly declared, Mr. President, the security
of the world in the first part of the 21st century will be
determined largely by how we handle this threat.
Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy,
which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of
our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of
Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only
acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility
that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons
of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a
willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is
clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing
Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to
become the aim of American foreign policy.
We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your
Administration's attention to implementing a strategy for
removing Saddam's regime from power. This will require a
full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts.
Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties
in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of
failing to do so are far greater. We believe the U.S.
has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take
the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect
our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American
policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided
insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.
We urge you to act decisively. If you act now to end the
threat of weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. or
its allies, you will be acting in the most fundamental
national security interests of the country. If we accept a
course of weakness and drift, we put our interests
and our future at risk.
Sincerely,
Elliott Abrams (National Security Council, Elliot Abrams)
Richard L. Armitage (Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage)
William J. Bennett (speechwriter for George W. Bush, William J. Bennett)
Jeffrey Bergner (His lobbying firm, Bergner, Bockorny, Castagnetti,
Hawkins & Brain, represents a number of high profile firms, including
Bristol-Myers Squib, Boeing, Hewlett-Packard, Phillip Morris, Monsanto,
Lucent, and Dell, Jeffrey Bergner)
John Bolton (Under Secretary, Arms Control and International Security, John Bolton)
Paula Dobriansky (Under Secretary, Global Affairs, Paula Dobriansky)
Francis Fukuyama (professor of political economy at the Johns Hopkins
University School of Advanced International Studies, Francis Fukuyama)
Robert Kagan (co-founder of the Project for the New American Century, Robert Kagan)
Zalmay Khalilzad (special envoy to Afghanistan, advisor for the
Unocal Corporation, counsellor to United States Secretary of Defense
Donald H. Rumsfeld, senior United States State Department official
advising on the Soviet war in Afghanistan and the Iran-Iraq war, and
from 1991 to 1992, he was a senior Defense Department official for
policy planning, Zalmay Khalilzad)
William Kristol (advocate for Israel, political contributor to the
Fox News Channel, William Kristol)
Richard Perle (Advisory Board of the Jewish Institute for National
Security Affairs, former chairman of the Defense Policy Board, Richard Perle)
Peter W. Rodman (Assistant Secretary for International Security
Affairs in the Department of Defense, Peter W. Rodman)
Donald Rumsfeld (Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld)
William Schneider, Jr. (Chairman of the Defense Science Board, William Scheider Jr.)
Vin Weber (former U.S. Representative from Minnesota, Vin Weber)
Paul Wolfowitz (Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz)
R. James Woolsey (former director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, James Woolsey)
Robert B. Zoellick (member of President George Walker Bush's Cabinet, Robert B. Zoellick)
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