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:"Sir [[Christopher Meyer]], in an interview with the US public broadcasting system last night, said that the prime minister ([[Tony Blair]]), arriving in Washington the week after an inconclusive discussion between George Bush and his key advisers at Camp David, swung in behind the US secretary of state, [[Colin L. Powell]], who saw Afghanistan as the prime target."
The question, then, is this: Where did the Bush White House come by the idea that Iraq was "the" threat? Peter Bergen emphasizes that "the belief that [[Saddam posed an imminent threat]] to the United States amounted to a theological conviction within the administration, a conviction successfully sold to the American public," then pointed directly to [[Laurie Mylroie]] in his December 2003 ''Washington Monthly'' article [http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0312.bergen.html "Armchair Provocateur": Laurie Mylroie: The Neocons' favorite conspiracy theorist"].
:"She laid out her case in ''Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against America'', a book published by [the [[American Enterprise Institute]]] in 2000 which makes it clear that Mylroie and the [[neocon]] hawks worked hand in glove to push her theory that Iraq was behind the '93 Trade Center bombing. Its acknowledgements fulsomely thanked [[John R. Bolton]] and the staff of AEI for their assistance, while [[Richard Perle]] glowingly blurbed the book as 'splendid and wholly convincing.' [[Lewis I. Libby]], now Vice President [[Dick Cheney]]'s chief of staff, is thanked for his 'generous and timely assistance.' And it appears that Paul Wolfowitz himself was instrumental in the genesis of ''Study of Revenge'': His then-wife is credited with having 'fundamentally shaped the book,' while of Wolfowitz, she says: 'At critical times, he provided crucial support for a project that is inherently difficult.'
:"None of which," Bergan opines, "was out of the ordinary, except for this: Mylroie became enamored of her theory that Saddam was the mastermind of a vast anti-U.S. terrorist conspiracy in the face of virtually all evidence and expert opinion to the contrary. In what amounts to the discovery of a unified field theory of terrorism, Mylroie believes that Saddam was not only behind the '93 Trade Center attack, but also every anti-American terrorist incident of the past decade, from the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania to the leveling of the federal building in Oklahoma City to September 11 itself. She is, in short, a crackpot, which would not be significant if she were merely advising say, [[Lyndon LaRouche]]. But her neocon friends who went on to run the war in Iraq believed her theories, bringing her on as a consultant at the Pentagon, and they seem to continue to entertain her eccentric belief that Saddam is the fount of the entire shadow war against America."
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March 19, 2001: "The President intends to designate Richard A. Clarke to be Chair of the [[President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board]]. Clarke was recently named Special Advisor to the President for Cyber Space Security and was previously the National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and Counter-terrorism on the [[National Security Council]]. Clarke is a member of the Senior Executive Service, having begun his federal service in 1973. He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts Institute of Technology." [http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/10/20011019-9.html]
