U.S. Policy Towards Iraq: Unraveling the Web of People, Think Tanks, Etc

When the United States began transporting troops to the Persian Gulf in the fall of 2002 it was evident that the war against Iraq was underway. This paper was begun in an attempt to answer the question: How did the war against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda become the war to depose Saddam Hussein?

The effort to understand this change in U.S. policy led to a picture of a relatively small group of persons associated with certain think tanks and other organizations achieving disproportionate influence over the policy formulation process. The activities of fourteen organizations were coordinated by individuals who comprised a web of interlocking memberships. Many of these individuals were on record calling for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein as far back as 1998, in a letter to President Clinton. This was well before the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center and before George W. Bush became President.

The main contribution of this paper is the attempt to quantify the inter-linked nature of the 14 organizations by cross-tabulating individuals with memberships in two or more of them. Examples: Richard Perle was associated with 10 of the 14, Jeane Kirkpatrick with 7, James Woolsey with 6, John Bolton with 4. Altogether 223 links were found between the 14 groups, where a link is defined as the association of a single individual with two organizations. Although over 650 individuals associated with the 14 organizations included in the study were analyzed, just 9 individuals formed 121 of the inter-group links, accounting for over half of the total. This concentration of the inter-group linkages suggests that a small number of individuals could effectively influence and coordinate the foreign policy impact of these organizations.

http://www.opednews.com/toenjessummary.htm

Thanks for the very scholarly post.

I think there has been a sense, in this board especially, that there were linkages which could only be explained in terms of so-called conspiracy theories. The work shows very clearly that this is not, in fact, a conspiracy but a well orchestrated syndicate of special interests who have either been given policy-making authority, or that authority has been abdicated to them. Such is the drawback to CEO style government.

Interesting. Long, but I'm getting sucked in.

This article and report is outstanding.

cause this is good

Thanx, GBnC.