A clean break (IASP) The path to Iraq

[bonito]

The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS) is a Jerusalem-based think tank, with a Washington office, founded in 1984 by Robert Loewenberg. During the lead-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the little-known institute gained public attention thanks to a study it had put out in 1996, entitled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.” The paper's recommendations pressed Israel's then-incoming Likud government to scrap the peace process in favor of a hardline posture aimed at attacking states like Syria and Iraq. Because two of its contributors, Douglas Feith and Richard Perle, years later obtained high-level posts with the George W. Bush administration, commentators cited the paper's authorship as evidence that the Bush administration was full of hawkish Mideast experts who were determined to remake the region.

So sensitive was the administration to media reports connecting “A Clean Break” and Bush officials that in 2004, Feith, then serving in the Pentagon, responded to a Washington Post article about the paper by writing a letter to the editor in which he denied direct authorship. He wrote: “David Wurmser, as the group's rapporteur, drafted the report more, here http://rightweb.irc-online.org/rw/3508

[RaleighNCDUer]

1. Gee - I remember them telling us the peace talks failed

because of Arafat's intransigence.

Must have just imagined it.

[bonito]

2. I guess I should added more info

The entire article is very relevant as well as the author's recommendations.

Two years after the paper was published, conservative Republican policy advocates, in an open letter to President Bill Clinton, contended that “containment” of Iraq was a failure and that removing Saddam Hussein from power “now needs to become the aim of American diplomacy.” Among the 18 people who signed the letter were a number of future George W. Bush administration appointees, such as Feith, Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Armitage.