President Bush, responding in Columbus, Ohio, to questions Kerry has raised about his motivation in going to war against Iraq. Bush said his decision to strike there was a profoundly difficult and personal one. "Committing troops into harm's way is the most difficult decision a president can make," Bush told an audience of nearly 1,000. "That decision must always be last resort. That decision must be done when our vital interests are at stake, but after we've tried everything else. There must be a compelling national need to put our troops into harm's way. I felt that."
That "compelling national need" to go to war is a neoconservative view on foreign policy. A Washington-based organization known as the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), funded by three foundations closely tied to Persian Gulf oil and weapons and defense industries, drafted the war plan for U.S. global domination through military power.
In a report just before the 2000 election The PNAC spells out their plan.
On page 51: The process of transformation, the plan said, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event like a new Pearl Harbor.
The PNAC is part of the New Citizenship Project, whose chairman is also William Kristol, and is described as a non-profit, educational organization whose goal is to promote American global leadership. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Jeb Bush, and Paul Wolfowitz signed a Statement of Principles of the PNAC on June 3, 1997, along with many of the other current members of Bush's war cabinet. Wolfowitz was one of the directors of PNAC until he joined the Bush administration.
