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FOR EIGHT years George W. Bush pulled the levers of government—sometimes frantically—never realizing that they were disconnected from the machinery and the exertion was largely futile. As a result, the foreign and security policies declared by the president in speeches, in public and private meetings, in backgrounders and memoranda often had little or no effect on the activities of the sprawling bureaucracies charged with carrying out the president’s policies. They didn’t need his directives: they had their own.Again and again the president declared “unacceptable” activities that his administration went on to accept: North Korean nuclear weapons; North Korean missile tests;...

Influential former Pentagon official Richard Perle has been exploring going into the oil business in Iraq and Kazakhstan, according to people with knowledge of the matter and documents outlining possible deals. Mr. Perle, one of a group of security experts who began pushing the case for toppling Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein about a decade ago, has been discussing a possible deal with officials of northern Iraq's Kurdistan regional government, including its Washington envoy, according to these people and the documents. It would involve a tract called K18, near the Kurdish city of Erbil, according to documents describing the plan. A...

Richard Perle is again propping up regime-toppling Mideast dissidents who lack credibility. ON A COLD MORNING last winter, I arrived at the home of Richard Perle outside Washington for a scheduled interview. I was about 10 minutes early, so I chose to shiver a bit on the front porch. Perle, the point man for the neoconservatives' drive for regime change throughout the Middle East, had agreed to spend time me with for a book I was writing about his life and times. Just then, the front door opened and out stepped Perle and a robust young man who was obviously...

George Tenet sets the stage in his memoir by recalling a conversation he claims to have had with me on Sept. 12, 2001: "As I walked beneath the awning that leads to the West Wing[, I] saw Richard Perle exiting the building just as I was about to enter. . . . Perle turned to me and said, 'Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday. They bear responsibility.' I looked back at Perle and thought: Who has [he] been meeting with in the White House so early in the morning on today of all days?" But I...

Feb. 18, 2004. 01:00 AM DANNY JOHNSTON/AP U.S. President George W. Bush is applauded by the army and National Guard troops during a speech at Fort Polk, La., yesterday in which he defended the U.S. war in Iraq. Fort Polk is home to more than 6,300 troops who are in Iraq. `Heads should roll' over IraqAdviser wants U.S. intelligence chiefs to quit Cites faulty conclusions on Saddam's weapons ERIC ROSENBERGSPECIAL TO THE STAR WASHINGTON—Richard Perle, a chief proponent of last year's U.S. invasion of Iraq, yesterday called for the chiefs of the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Defence Intelligence...

One of the biggest names of the conference never even uttered a word. Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer is the military intelligence operative who recently went public with a controversial claim that a year before September 11, his top-secret task force "Able Danger" was able to identify the man who later turned out to be the lead hijacker as being connected to al Qaeda. Shaffer is a veteran of top-secret operations against terrorists, including some in Afghanistan, and several of his DIA colleagues have come out publicly to confirm that they remember Mohamed Atta being identified in 2000 as part of...

Reprinted from NewsMax.com Perle: Bush Failed by his Own People Dave Eberhart, NewsMax.com Monday, Feb. 26, 2007 Richard Perle tells NewsMax that key members of the Bush administration have failed the president – and Perle names names. In a wide-ranging interview, the former assistant Secretary of Defense under President Reagan and chairman of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee from 2001 to 2003 under President Bush calls former Secretary of State Colin Powell a "disaster" and says current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice "was in way over her head from the beginning."

Vanity Fair has come out with its usual election eve hit job. This time it selectively quotes leading neocons on their views respecting the war, editing their lengthy remarks to suggest dissatisfaction with the Administration and the war. Michael Rubin has already responded, ss has David Frum. I read Richard Perle’s comments as an attack on the perfidy of some in the Administration, a topic I have written about more than once. Richard Perle was traveling, and I was only just able to reach him to clarify his views, as I was certain the article was a total misrepresentation of...

It's blocked, but here is the URL - http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/12/neocons200612

Conservative national security allies of President Bush are in revolt against Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, saying that she is incompetent and has reversed the administration’s national security and foreign policy agenda. The conservatives, who include Newt Gingrich, Richard Perle and leading current and former members of the Pentagon and National Security Council, have urged the president to transfer Miss Rice out of the State Department and to an advisory role. They said Miss Rice, stemming from her lack of understanding of the Middle East, has misled the president on Iran and the Arab-Israeli conflict. "The president has yet to...

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran knows what he wants: nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them; suppression of freedom at home and the spread of terrorism abroad; and the "shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems." President Bush, too, knows what he wants: an irreversible end to Iran's nuclear weapons program, the "expansion of freedom in all the world" and victory in the war on terrorism. The State Department and its European counterparts know what they want: negotiations. For more than five years, the administration has dithered. Bush gave soaring speeches, the Iranians...

Thursday July 17, 2003 The Guardian As the CIA director, George Tenet, arrived at the Senate yesterday to give secret testimony on the Niger uranium affair, it was becoming increasingly clear in Washington that the scandal was only a small, well-documented symptom of a complete breakdown in US intelligence that helped steer America into war. It represents the Bush administration's second catastrophic intelligence failure. But the CIA and FBI's inability to prevent the September 11 attacks was largely due to internal institutional weaknesses. This time the implications are far more damaging for the White House, which stands accused of politicising...

WASHINGTON: Soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, a two-man intelligence team set up shop at the Pentagon, searching for evidence of links between terrorist groups and host countries. The men, Michael Maloof and David Wurmser, culled classified material, much of it uncorroborated data from the CIA. "We discovered tons of raw intelligence," said Maloof. "We were stunned that we couldn't find any mention of it in the CIA's finished reports." They recorded and annotated their evidence on butcher paper hung like a mural around their small office. By the end of 2001, they had constructed a startling new picture of...

In the morning of March 11, 2004, Susan Lindauer woke to find five F.B.I. agents at her front door. After reading her her rights, the agents took Lindauer from her home in Takoma Park, Md., to the F.B.I. field office in Baltimore, where she was charged with having acted as an unregistered agent of Saddam Hussein's Iraqi government and otherwise having elevated the interests of a foreign country above her allegiance to the United States. ''The only visible sign of stress is that I'm chain-smoking,'' she said when I met with her recently. Forty-one and free on bail, she wore...

``We set out to establish a democracy, but we're slowly realizing we will have some form of Islamic republic,'' said another US official familiar with policymaking from the beginning.

Four Broad Lessons from Iraq Print Mail By Richard Perle Posted: Thursday, April 7, 2005 TESTIMONY House Committee on Armed Services (Washington) Publication Date: April 6, 2005 Mr. Chairman, As always, I appreciate this opportunity to share with the Committee some ideas and observations about the situation in Iraq and, more specifically, some of the lessons we should take away from our experience there. Within the Department of Defense, and among its many advisors and consultants there have already been several important "lessons learned" assessments. These cover everything from the effectiveness of specific weapons systems, procedures, organizations and training to...

Until recently, Nancy Soderberg was just another blissfully forgotten face of the Clinton administration.... But she gained some notoriety this month during an appearance on "The Daily Show," in which host Jon Stewart was half-marveling, half-despairing at the turn of events in the Middle East after the Iraq elections, which seemed to vindicate President Bush.... Soderberg: "Well, there's still Iran and North Korea don't forget..." Begin with the simplest errors of fact.... [W]hen Ms. Soderberg snickers about how candidate Bush struggled through a foreign-policy pop quiz in 2000, one is compelled to snicker back. Next ... errors of analysis. "It...

Juan Cole has, don seatbelts please, written the phrase "positive development" (ya gotta scroll to the bottom to spot this rarest of birds). Matthew Yglesias is wondering why, er, conservatives aren't more excited about Egypt. There's always something to complain about with regard to those dastardly Bushies, isn't there? They're not, you know, happy enough about what Bush has wrought in Egypt (though doubtless John 'palsy walsy with Hosni' Kerry must be duly gratified, eh?) That said Matt, to his real credit, is calling developments underway in Egypt a real positive and at least a partial, if mid-stream, vindication of...

PORTLAND, Ore. - Howard Dean, the newly minted leader of the Democratic Party, and former Pentagon adviser Richard Perle made clear their opposing views on the war in Iraq during a debate marred by a protester who tossed a shoe at Perle.

I would love to see the FULL debate (not clips) of mad-Dean vs Perle. Does anyone have a link to see the ENTIRE debate? Thanks. "Reject Socialism, Vote Republican!”

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP)-Howard Dean, the newly minted leader of the Democratic Party, and former Pentagon advisor Richard Perle made clear their opposing views on the war in Iraq during a debate marred by a protester who tossed a shoe at Perle.Perle had just started his comments Thursday when a protester threw a shoe at him before being dragged away, screaming, "Liar! Liar!"

PORTLAND, Ore. - Howard Dean, the newly minted leader of the Democratic Party, and top Pentagon adviser Richard Perle made clear their opposing views on the war in Iraq during a debate marred by a protester who tossed a shoe at Perle. Perle had just started his comments Thursday when a protester threw a shoe at him before being dragged away, screaming, "Liar! Liar!" Perle, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's top policy adviser, was a key architect of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and Dean is among the war's most prominent opponents.

Since midsummer, the Senate Intelligence Committee has been attempting to solve the biggest mystery of the Iraq war: the disparity between the Bush Administration’s prewar assessment of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and what has actually been discovered. The committee is concentrating on the last ten years’ worth of reports by the C.I.A. Preliminary findings, one intelligence official told me, are disquieting. “The intelligence community made all kinds of errors and handled things sloppily,” he said. The problems range from a lack of quality control to different agencies’ reporting contradictory assessments at the same time. One finding, the official went...

Bobby Muller on their also, says we lost this war and so did Joe Wilson!

US troops in Iraq have captured two former Iraqi army generals in the town of Falluja, US officials have said. Military sources said the pair are believed to have financed and organised anti-coalition fighters in the area, west of Baghdad. The Pentagon, meanwhile, has announced plans to send thousands of additional troops to Iraq early next year. But, defence officials said the number of US troops currently serving in Iraq could be reduced by next May. Falluja raided Military officials said the generals were captured by paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division in an early morning raid in Falluja, about...

RARELY HAVE THE HOLDERS of any set of political views and policy preferences been so thoroughly caricatured as the "neoconservatives" of the Bush years. To critics, this group of policymakers (preeminently, in the Defense Department and the Office of the Vice President), along with their allies on the outside (preeminently, in the pages of THE WEEKLY STANDARD), is responsible for a kind of hijacking of U.S. foreign policy in the wake of 9/11. Intoxicated by American power and blinded by a utopian vision, the neoconservatives (in the critics' telling) set the country on a disastrous and unnecessary attempt to remake...

FBI counterintelligence investigators have in recent weeks questioned current and former U.S. officials about whether a small group of Iran specialists at the Pentagon and in Vice President Cheney's office may have been involved in passing classified information to an Iraqi politician or a U.S. lobbying group allied with Israel, according to sources familiar with or involved in the case. In their interviews, the FBI agents have also named two Israeli diplomats stationed in Washington and asked whether they would be willing recipients of sensitive intelligence, the sources added. The investigators have asked questions about personnel in the office of...

Through schemes large and small, top executives fleeced the company that owns the Chicago Sun-Times, pocketing more than $400 million, or 95 percent of the profits over seven years, according to a report made public Tuesday. The company, Hollinger International, sits at the center of a heated battle between controlling shareholder Conrad Black and the board of directors -- in particular, a "special committee" of directors investigating Black. The 513-page report, filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago on Monday, represents the findings of an adviser hired by the committee to probe Black's dealings. The adviser, former U.S. Securities and...

NEW YORK - Conrad Black, the former CEO of Hollinger International Inc., conspired with associates to systematically loot the newspaper publishing company of more than $400 million -- nearly all of its profits from 1997 through 2003, an internal investigation found. The report, which was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (news - web sites) on Tuesday, was prepared by a special committee of Hollinger's board which was formed last year to examine concerns from shareholders about payments made to Black and others. Black has since been forced out as CEO and chairman of Hollinger International, the parent company...

On the dust jacket of his book, Richard Perle appends a Washington Post depiction of himself as the “intellectual guru of the hard-line neoconservative movement in foreign policy.” The guru’s reputation, however, does not survive a reading. Indeed, on putting down Perle’s new book the thought recurs: the neoconservative moment may be over. For they are not only losing their hold on power, they are losing their grip on reality. An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror opens on a note of hysteria. In the War on Terror, writes Perle, “There is no middle way for...

The Brains Behind Bush's War WASHINGTON, Jan. 31 — Any history of the Bush administration's march toward war with Iraq will have to take account of long years of determined advocacy by a circle of defense policy intellectuals whose view that Saddam Hussein can no longer be tolerated or contained is now ascendant. Like the national security experts who were the intellectual architects of the Vietnam War, men like McGeorge Bundy, Walt W. Rostow and others branded "The Best and the Brightest" in David Halberstam's ironic phrase, these theorists seem certain to be remembered, for better or worse, among the...

AHMAD Chalabi, the politician once groomed by Washington to lead Iraq, and his nephew Salem were holding talks with the Baghdad government yesterday to try to arrange their safe return after a judge ordered their arrest. The two men, at present out of Iraq, have dismissed the arrest warrants issued at the weekend as part of a political smear campaign. "I can easily prove that these charges are untrue and I intend to defend myself and clear my name," Ahmad Chalabi told reporters in Teheran. There are fears that the pair could be killed if they are jailed with former...

One of the ideological architects of the Iraq war has criticized the U.S.-led occupation of the country as "a grave error." Richard Perle, until recently a powerful adviser to U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, described U.S. policy in post-war Iraq as a failure. "I would be the first to acknowledge we allowed the liberation (of Iraq) to subside into an occupation. And I think that was a grave error, and in some ways a continuing error," said Perle, former chair of the influential Defence Policy Board, which advises the Pentagon. With violent resistance to the U.S.-led occupation showing no signs...

An End to Evil Perle, Richard, Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute Mr. Perle talks about the book he co-authored with David Frum, An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror, published by Random House. Mr. Perle says the book provides a blueprint for winning the war on terror. The recommendations are divided into four major sections: what must be done domestically to improve safety and security; what must be done abroad, in order to take the war to America’s enemies; what must change in the realm of thought and ideas; and how U.S. institutions must be reformed...

U.S. didn't interview tipster on mobile labs Friday, March 05, 2004 By Walter Pincus, The Washington Post WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration's prewar assertion that Saddam Hussein had a fleet of mobile labs that could produce bioweapons rested largely on information from an Iraqi defector working with another government who was never interviewed by U.S. intelligence officers, according to current and former senior intelligence officials and congressional experts who have studied classified documents. In his presentation before the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell said "firsthand descriptions" of the mobile bioweapons fleet had come...

Perle Resigns Controversial Figure Quits Advisory Panel Post W A S H I N G T O N, Feb. 25— A controversial associate of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has resigned from his seat on a key Pentagon advisory panel, ABCNEWS has learned. Richard Perle, a lightning rod for critics of the Bush administration's national security policies, informed Rumsfeld more than two weeks ago he was quitting the Defense Policy Board. He confirmed the decision in a letter to the defense chief last Wednesday. "We are now approaching a long presidential election campaign, in the course of which issues on which...

The following is Part I in whole. Follow the links to read Part II. The Neocon War on Peace and Freedom, Part 1by James Bovard, April 2004 (Posted February 18, 2004) Part 1 | Part 2 The main problem with Bush’s war on terrorism is that he has not attacked enough foreign regimes and not sufficiently trampled the privacy of the American people. Such is the thesis of David Frum, former speechwriter for President Bush, and Richard Perle, currently on the Pentagon’s Defense Advisory Board, co-authors of the new book The End of Evil: How to Win the War on...

Chalabi stands by faulty intelligence that toppled Saddam's regime An Iraqi leader accused of feeding faulty pre-war intelligence to Washington said yesterday his information about Saddam Hussein's weapons, even if discredited, had achieved the aim of persuading America to topple the dictator. Ahmad Chalabi and his London-based exile group, the Iraqi National Congress, for years provided a conduit for Iraqi defectors who were debriefed by US intelligence agents. But many American officials now blame Mr Chalabi for providing intelligence that turned out to be false or wild exaggerations about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Mr Chalabi, by far the most...

London Times February 19, 2004 New inquiry examines Hollinger bonus plan From Abigail Rayner in New York RICHARD PERLE, the former US Assistant Defence Secretary and Hollinger International board member, is under investigation for allegedly failing to disclose bonuses worth about $3 million (£1.6 million) which he received for running an investment scheme, The Times has learnt. Mr Perle, a vocal supporter of President Bush, was awarded the money as a reward for investing Hollinger shareholder funds in a series of separate businesses. Mr Perle also held a stake in some of those businesses. While the scheme put Hollinger International...

March 1, 2004 issue Copyright © 2004 The American ConservativeNo End to WarThe Frum-Perle prescription would ensnare America in endless conflict. By Patrick J. BuchananOn the **** jacket of his book, Richard Perle appends a Washington Post depiction of himself as the “intellectual guru of the hard-line neoconservative movement in foreign policy.”The guru’s reputation, however, does not survive a reading. Indeed, on putting down Perle’s new book the thought recurs: the neoconservative moment may be over. For they are not only losing their hold on power, they are losing their grip on reality.An End to Evil: How to Win the...

Violence breeds violence -- but so can nonviolence. This is often forgotten in the debate over terrorism, as illustrated in some reviews of the new book by David Frum and Richard Perle, An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror. Perle and Frum lay out a bold plan to defend America. But more important than their specific proposals, they provide insight into how our leaders are confronting -- or not confronting -- the war on terrorism. As a forensic psychologist, what I found most worthwhile about the book was this unapologetic attitude toward terrorists and terrorism. I...

Charity Event May Have Terrorist Link Pentagon Adviser Who Spoke at Function Thought Money Was for Quake Victims By Glenn Kessler Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, January 29, 2004; Page A08 Pentagon adviser Richard N. Perle, a strong advocate of war against Iraq, spoke last weekend at a charity event that U.S. officials say may have had ties to an alleged terrorist group seeking to topple the Iranian government and backed by Saddam Hussein. The event, attended by more than 3,000 people Saturday at the Washington Convention Center, generated enough concerns within the administration that officials debated whether they had...

Front Page The following are excerpts from the recently released book An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror by hardcore US neo-conservatives Richard Perle and David Frum. Perle is the well-connected former chairman of the US Defense Policy Board, while Frum is a former White House speechwriter. These excerpts deal specifically with Asia. Given Perle's very close relationships with senior hawks in the administration of President George W Bush, these positions probably quite accurately reflect what Vice President Dick Cheney and Pentagon civilians are arguing at the highest levels in the administration. North Korea The South...

Anyone up for a discussion on the conservative philospher's influence on the administration?

Boeing's Pentagon link in limelight By Joshua Chaffin in Washington Published: December 7 2003 21:58 | Last Updated: December 7 2003 21:58 Boeing has formed ties with half a dozen members of the Defence Policy Board, an influential civilian group that advises the Pentagon. The relationships range from Boeing's hiring board members as paid consultants to pouring tens of millions of dollars into their investment funds. Such moves highlight the aerospace company's efforts to become entrenched in Washington's defence establishment as its emphasis has shifted in recent years from commercial aviation to military contracting. They have come to light amid...

Perle lobbied for Boeing's tanker bid By Joshua Chaffin in Washington and Stephanie Kirchgaessner in New York Published: December 5 2003 0:50 | Last Updated: December 5 2003 0:50 Richard Perle, a prominent Pentagon adviser, lobbied on behalf of Boeing's bid for a controversial $18bn government contract a year after the aerospace company made a $20m investment in the venture capital fund he runs. Mr Perle, a former Reagan-era assistant defence secretary, is considered one of the most influential civilian members of Washington's defence establishment. He was appointed in 2001 by Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary, to chair the Defence Policy...

Pentagon bankers may bail out Black 'Ex-Presidents Club' ready to throw lifeline to embattled Telegraph owner Jamie Doward and Jessica Hodgson Sunday November 23, 2003 The Observer A powerful banking group with close links to the Pentagon, which has also invested money on behalf of the Bin Laden family, is in talks to bail out beleaguered Daily Telegraph owner Conrad Black. The revelation suggests that Britain's bestselling broadsheet - coveted by rival newspaper barons because of its political influence - may not go under the hammer after all, as Lord Black tries to quell a shareholder rebellion in the face...

War critics astonished as US hawk admits invasion was illegal Oliver Burkeman and Julian Borger in Washington Thursday November 20, 2003 The Guardian International lawyers and anti-war campaigners reacted with astonishment yesterday after the influential Pentagon hawk Richard Perle conceded that the invasion of Iraq had been illegal. In a startling break with the official White House and Downing Street lines, Mr Perle told an audience in London: "I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing." President George Bush has consistently argued that the war was legal either because of existing UN...

<p>Harvard historian Richard Pipes shaped the Reagan administration's aggressive approach to the Soviet Union. His support for confrontation over containment prefigured the Bush foreign policy of today.</p> <p>OVER THE PAST TWO YEARS, the Bush administration has inspired one of the more stimulating scavenger hunts in recent memory -- the search for the Ur-theorist of its bold foreign policy initiatives. With each new turn another name has emerged. "Regime change" gave us the political philosopher Leo Strauss. The "shock and awe" campaign brought forth the Cold War calculations of military strategist Albert Wohlstetter. Hints of follow-up aggression against Syria and North Korea had some consulting Trotsky's writings on "permanent revolution."</p>

Nov. 7 — By Joseph Logan BEIRUT (Reuters) - Iraqi intelligence officials seeking a last-minute deal with Washington to avert war appeared to have the backing of Saddam Hussein, a Lebanese businessman who relayed the offer to U.S. officials said on Friday. Imad Hage, who told U.S. officials of proposals to let Washington scour Iraq for weapons of mass destruction and hand over an al Qaeda figure, said the Iraqis were rattled by the threat of war and apparently chose him for his Pentagon contacts. "I had had no prior dealings with him," Hage told Reuters of a meeting in...