Bush planned Iraq 'regime change' before becoming President

The Sunday Herald is reporting today that,

A secret blueprint for US global domination reveals that President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure 'regime change' even before he took power in January 2001.

The blueprint, uncovered by the Sunday Herald, for the creation of a 'global Pax Americana' was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice- president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), George W Bush's younger brother Jeb and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, was written in September 2000 by the neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says: 'The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.'

This is not really a revelation, although it sheds light on an issue that needs to be highlighted and actively discussed before anyone –- the UN, the British, your Aunt Tilly, etc. –- signs off on an attack: the preoccupation with the “threat” that Iraq poses is a smokescreen. In reality, this impending attack has little to do with UN “violations,” weapons of mass destruction, or any other red herring that’s being draped before the public to scare people into complicity. Attacking Iraq is being contemplated in order to gain a stronger hand in Middle Eastern affairs, as well as more control over the region’s oil reserves. It is, as this report from the Sunday Herald stresses, all about military and economic dominance – not to make the world safer for you, your friends, neighbors, loved ones, etc.

Nobody can deny that an attack was actively planned and predicted well before 9/11. As I’ve noted before, STRATFOR was reporting in August 2001 that “a future blow to the Iraqi military-industrial complex is a prerequisite to achieving Washington's ultimate objective in the Middle East: having a more flexible foreign policy no longer preoccupied almost solely with Saddam. Washington wants a more regional approach to stability, enlisting the aid of its Gulf allies while scaling back its overseas military commitments and increasing oil production.” DEBKAfile was also predicting on several occasions that an attack on Iraq would begin by the end of Summer 2001, or early Fall 2001.

Then 9/11 came. Rather than forcing a re-evaluation of policy, the tragedy was exploited to provide a rationalization for invasion. As CBS News has recently reported, this was an issue that came to the table only five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon. Since then, there’s been an active effort to link Iraq to 9/11, in some way - hell, any way - in order to mask, and therefore disavow, the imperial aims of our desired policy.