The Role of Neoconservatives - and Israel's Right Wing - in the War in Iraq

By Allan C. Brownfeld

newsblaze.com/story/20100113095712zzzz.nb/topstory.html

For many Americans, the reasons for the U.S. attack on Iraq in 2003 remains
a mystery. The reasons the Bush administration gave for going to war - that
Iraq had ties with al Qaeda, that it possessed weapons of mass destruction,
and that, somehow, it was involved in the terrorist attacks of 9/ll - have
all been proven false. It is, some argue, as if after the Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor, we declared war on Mexico.

However, a group of men and women in and out of government proposed war with
Iraq even before 9/ll. These were the neoconservatives - including such
leading Bush administration officials as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle,
Douglas Feith, and L. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. What motivated these advocates
of war with a country that never attacked the U.S. and posed little threat
is the subject of an important new book, The Transparent Cabal: The
Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of
Israel (home.comcast.net/~transparentcabal) (Enigma Editions) by
Stephen J. Sniegoski, Ph.D.

Dr. Sniegoski's focus on the neoconservative involvement in American foreign
policy antedates the 9/ll terrorist attacks. His first major work on the
subject, The War on Iraq: Conceived in Israel
(www.thornwalker.com/ditch/conc_toc.htm) was published February l0,
2003 - more than a month before the American attack on Iraq.

The new book examines the close relationship of the American
neoconservatives and the Israeli Likudnik right, and its role as a
fundamental driver of the Bush administration's militant Middle East policy.
Sniegoski states, "This orientation is at the root of the explanation for
why our policy does not seem to address or correspond with the genuine
security needs of the U.S.... Ideology and personal ties have blinded them
to what most others clearly see was the foreign policy reality."

While U.S. policy traditionally stressed stability in the Middle East,
"[T]he neocons called for destabilizing existing regimes.... Likudnik
strategy saw the benefit of regional destabilization for its own sake -
creating as it would an environment of weak, disunified states or statelets
involved in internal and external conflicts that could easily be dominated
by Israel.... Thus, unlike a true 'cabal,' characterized by secrecy, the
neoconservatives' was a 'transparent cabal' - oxymoronic as that term might
be."

Continue at:
newsblaze.com/story/20100113095712zzzz.nb/topstory.html

Brownfeld's review can also be found at:
www.fgfbooks.com/AllanBrownfeld/2010/Brownfeld100112.html

Transparent Cabal Website:
home.comcast.net/~transparentcabal/

Amazon listing of The Transparent Cabal:
tiny.cc/zNV06