Background Info on Scooter Libby

[dooner]

Chief of Staff to Vice President Dick Cheney
Project for the New American Century: Founding member
Northrop Grumman: Former adviserI.

Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Dick Cheney's chief of staff, is a member of the clique of neocons who were pushing for preemptive defense policies and war in Iraq long before the election of George W. Bush and the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

In 1992, while he was working under then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, Libby co-wrote with Paul Wolfowitz a policy guidance aimed at formulating a post-Cold war defense posture. Upset by President H.W. Bush's decision to leave Saddam Hussein's regime in place after the 1991 Gulf War, Libby and Wolfowitz argued in a draft version of the Defense Policy Guidance that the U.S. should actively deter nations from "aspiring to a larger regional or global role," use pre-emptive force to prevent countries from developing weapons of mass destruction, and act alone if necessary. Although the draft guidance was quashed soon after it was leaked to the New York Times, many of its ideas--in particular, the doctrine of pre-emption--later found their way into President George W. Bush's national security strategy. The document also seems to have served as a template for the founding statement of principles of the Project for a New American Century, which was signed by a who's who list of hawks and neocons who now serve in the current administration, including Cheney, Libby, Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Elliott Abrams, Peter Rodman and Zalmay Khalilzad. (9)

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