Debunking Bush's reason for war.

The 400-page report released on September 8 by the Senate Intelligence Committee has emphatically declared that there never was any connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. The Bush administration justified starting the March 2003 war against Iraq with strong protestations that the Iraq leader was in bed with the 9/11 terrorists. Over recent years, when the reputed direct links to Osama bin Laden couldn't be demonstrated, Mr. Bush continued to insist that connections did exist by claiming as recently as August 21 that Saddam "had relations with Zarqawi," the al-Qaeda official slain in a U.S.-led raid last June.

Pointedly countering the administration's repeated protestations, the committee cited a 2005 CIA assertion that Iraq's government "did not have a relationship, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates." Further citing the CIA report, the Senate document stated that "Saddam Hussein was distrustful of al-Qaeda and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from al-Qaeda to provide material or operational support."

Referring additionally to false information being given the administration by the exile group Iraqi National Congress (IRC), the report noted that IRC partisans wanted to give the Bush administration some reasons to attack Iraq; therefore, they reported that Saddam's government had nuclear, chemical, and biological weaponry. The Bush administration continued funding the IRC, despite being warned as far back as 2002 that the group's information was unreliable.

As more Americans conclude that the war was a mistake and should be ended, members of the Bush administration, including the president, have sought to shift the reason for the conflict. Original claims that Saddam was involved in the 9/11 attack, that he was working with bin Laden's al-Qaeda, and that he was planning to use weapons of mass destruction have all evaporated. Now the war is being fought, we are told, to wipe out terrorism. But the tactics being employed have resulted in increasing the number of terrorists, not only among massive numbers of Iraqis angry about the widespread destruction of their nation, but also among Muslims worldwide who view the American action as a war against their religion.

Lost in all the discussion about the lies and falsehoods used to justify this tragic war is the little-known determination of top Bush administration officials to attack Iraq before the 9/11 tragedy. After having served together in previous administrations, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and several other Bush administration appointees launched the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) in 1997. Its megalomaniacal purpose: create a worldwide American empire as part of our nation's "global responsibilities" and begin to "challenge regimes hostile to our interests." In January 1998, PNAC leaders formally urged President Clinton to attack Iraq. When he failed to do as they wanted, they sent letters in May 1998 to House and Senate leaders seeking the start of action against Saddam's regime. House and Senate leaders didn't follow PNAC directives either.

Once the 2000 election was settled and PNAC leaders Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and others were in the highest posts of government, PNAC issued Rebuilding America's Defenses, which called for deploying U.S. forces all over the globe whether they were wanted or not. Immediately after the 9/11 attack, President Bush released a document entitled National Security Strategy of the United States of America, a virtual rewrite of the PNAC's Rebuilding America's Defenses. Then a mere nine days after 9/11, PNAC leader William Kristol and 36 of the group's members cosigned a letter to Mr. Bush calling for an attack on Saddam's regime "even if evidence does not link Iraq" to the attack.

Paul O'Neill, who served the Bush administration as its first Secretary of the Treasury, stated in Ron Suskind's The Price of Loyalty that from the first day the Bush team took office in early 2001, "there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go." O'Neill added: "It was all about finding a way to do it. The president saying 'Go find me a way to do this.'" Seven months before the 9/11 attack, therefore, the war drums were beating in the White House. PNAC leaders were the drummers.

Early in 2003, before the March 19 commencement of the war, PNAC leader Kristol and coauthor Lawrence Kaplan issued a book-length document entitled The War Over Iraq: Saddam's Tyranny and America's Mission. It not only focused on their desire to attack Iraq, it also called for the United States to engage in other wars as a way to shape the world as the PNAC gurus would have it.

It's helpful that the Senate Intelligence Committee has published some definitive proof about the lies and falsehoods used to start this war. But the behind-the-scenes goals of the PNAC-led Bush administration need airing as well.