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Behind the War Lobby

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JONATHAN GRANOFF
Director of the Global Security Institute, Granoff said today: “Richard Perle’s recent statements that the U.S. is determined to go to war regardless of Iraqi compliance with the weapons inspectors subverts the international system as well as the Constitution.” The Mirror in London reported on Nov. 20 that Richard Perle, head of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Review Board, in a meeting with British members of parliament, “admitted the U.S. would attack Iraq even if UN inspectors fail to find weapons.” The article quoted a British member of parliament: “This makes a mockery of the whole process and exposes America’s real determination to bomb Iraq.” Granoff added: “Perle’s remarks contradict Bush’s and Powell’s statements on what triggers war.”
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JASON VEST
Vest is author of the Nation magazine article “The Men from JINSA and CSP” about the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and the Center for Security Policy.
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WILLIAM HARTUNG
MICHELLE CIARROCCA
Hartung is a senior research fellow at the World Policy Institute at the New School; Ciarrocca is a research associate with the group. They co-authored a report on U.S. military spending and security assistance since 9/11. Hartung said today: “The Bush administration’s strategy of ‘preemptive war’ in Iraq is the brainchild of a small circle of conservative think tanks and weapons lobbying groups like the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), whose members have been pressing this approach for over a decade. In the run-up to the 2000 presidential election, PNAC published a report on ‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses’ which has served as a blueprint for the Bush/Rumsfeld Pentagon’s military strategy, up to and including the coining of terms such as ‘regime change.’ PNAC’s founding document — a unilateralist call for a return to the ‘peace through strength’ policies of the early Reagan years — was signed by Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and numerous others who have gone on to become major players in the Bush national security team. Like the Coalition for the Liberation of Iraq, a newly formed group of current and former Washington insiders designed to promote the Bush administration’s policy in Iraq, PNAC draws its support from a tightly-knit network of conservative ideologues, right-wing foundations, and major defense contractors. Bruce P. Jackson, a former vice president at Lockheed Martin who is a board member and a founding signatory of the Project for a New American Century’s mission statement, serves as the chairman of the Coalition to Liberate Iraq. In adopting the strategy promoted by this conservative network, the Bush administration has successfully pressed for more than $150 billion in new military spending and arms export subsidies since September 11, 2001, much of which is going to major weapons makers like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167