David Wurmser

David Wurmser, a neo-conservative, who was a "special assistant" to John R. Bolton at the State Department[1] and a research fellow on the Middle East at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) has been moved (in early September 2003) to the office of the Vice President Dick Cheney and I. Lewis Libby, replacing in this job, Eric Edelman.

Wurmser has long called for the United States and Israel to work together to roll back the Ba'ath-led government in Syria. For the latter part of the 1990s, he wrote frequently to support a joint U.S.-Israeli effort to undermine then-President Hafez Assad in hopes of destroying Ba'athist rule and hastening the creation of a new order in the Levant to be dominated by "tribal, familial and clan unions under limited governments".

• Indeed, it was precisely because of the strategic importance of the Levant that Wurmser advocated overthrowing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in favor of an Iraqi National Congress (INC) closely tied to the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan.
• "Whoever inherits Iraq dominates the entire Levant strategically," he wrote in one 1996 paper for the Jerusalem-based Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS). [2]and[3]

Wurmser has written extensively (books and articles) on the Middle East. His credits include: Wall Street Journal, Wall Street Journal Europe, Washington Times, Weekly Standard, New Republic, SAIS Review, Middle East Quarterly, Perspectives on Political Science, Strategic Review, Jobs & Capital, and The World and I.

He was director of Research in Strategy and Politics Program at the Institute for Advanced Strategic & Political Studies (96), director of Institutional Grants at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (94-96), and project officer at the United States Institute of Peace (88-94).

David Wurmser is married to Israeli born Meyrav Wurmser who, as head of Middle East studies at the neo-conservative Hudson Institute, was the main author of a 1996 report by a task force convened by the IASPS and headed by Perle, called the 'Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000'.

• The paper, called A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, was directed to incoming Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
• It featured a series of recommendations designed to end the process of Israel trading land for peace by transforming the balance of power in the Middle East in favor of an axis consisting of Israel, Turkey and Jordan.
• To do so, it called for ousting Saddam Hussein and installing a Hashemite leader in Baghdad. From that point, the strategy would be largely focused on Syria and, at the least, to reducing its influence in Lebanon.

... Among other steps, the report called for Israeli sponsorship of attacks on Syrian territory by "Israeli proxy forces" based in Lebanon and "striking Syrian military targets in Lebanon, and should that prove insufficient, striking at select targets in Syria proper". [4]and[5]

Wurmser is a close friend and political ally at the AEI with Richard N. Perle. Perle wrote the introduction to Wurmser's book "Tyranny's Ally: America's Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein." [6]

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Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest, in their January 26, 2004, Mother Jones' article "The Lie Factory", write:

"Just after September 11, 2001, Douglas Feith and Harold Rhode recruited David Wurmser, the director of Middle East studies for AEI, to serve as a Pentagon consultant.

"Wurmser would be the founding participant of the unnamed, secret intelligence unit at the Pentagon, set up in Feith's office, which would be the nucleus of the Defense Department's Iraq disinformation campaign that was established within weeks of the attacks in New York and Washington. While the CIA and other intelligence agencies concentrated on Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda as the culprit in the 9/11 attacks, Paul D. Wolfowitz and Feith obsessively focused on Iraq. It was a theory that was discredited, even ridiculed, among intelligence professionals. ...In short, Wurmser, backed by Feith and Rhode, set out to prove what didn't exist."

"In an administration devoted to the notion of 'Feith-based intelligence,' Wurmser was ideal. For years, he'd been a shrill ideologue, part of the minority crusade during the 1990s that was beating the drums for war against Iraq. Along with Perle and Feith, in 1996 Wurmser and his wife, Meyrav, wrote a provocative strategy paper for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu called 'A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.' It called on Israel to work with Jordan and Turkey to 'contain, destabilize and roll back' various states in the region, overthrow Saddam Hussein in Iraq, press Jordan to restore a scion of the Hashemite dynasty to the Iraqi throne, and, above all, launch military assaults against Lebanon and Syria as a 'prelude to a redrawing of the map of the Middle East which would threaten Syria's territorial integrity.'

"In 1997, Wurmser wrote a column in the Wall Street Journal called 'Iraq Needs a Revolution' and the next year co-signed a letter with Perle calling for all-out U.S. support of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an exile group led by Ahmad Chalabi, in promoting an insurgency in Iraq. At AEI, Wurmser wrote 'Tyranny's Ally: America's Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein', essentially a book-length version of 'A Clean Break' that proposed an alliance between Jordan and the INC to redraw the map of the Middle East. Among the mentors cited by Wurmser in the book: Chalabi, Perle, and Feith."

"Putting Wurmser in charge of the unit meant that it was being run by a pro-Iraq-war ideologue who'd spent years calling for a pre-emptive invasion of Baghdad and who was clearly predisposed to find what he wanted to see. Adding another layer of dubious quality to the endeavor was the man partnered with Wurmser, F. Michael Maloof."

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Affiliations

• Fellow, American Enterprise Institute (current)
• "Golden Circle" Member, United States Committee for a Free Lebanon (USCFL)[7]
• Research Fellow, American Institute for Public Policy Research (AIPPR), December 20, 2000[8]
• Director of Research in Strategy and Politics Program, Institute for Advanced Strategic & Political Studies (Jerusalem) (1996)[9]
• Director of Institutional Grants, Washington Institute for Near East Policy (1994-96)[10]
• Project Officer, United States Institute of Peace (1988-94)[11]

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The following comes from Campus Watch: "Perspective: Who funds whom?" by Jill Junnola (Energy Compass, October 4, 2002):

"A book written in 1999 by David Wurmser, now special assistant to John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control--the man responsible for labeling Syria, Libya, and Cuba as a secondary 'axis of evil' earlier this year--appears to lay out the rationale for war on Iraq, as well as the pressing need to reassert US influence in the Middle East.

"In Tyranny's Ally: America's Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein, Wurmser--whose previous homes have included the AEI and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, founded in part with money from the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), which describes itself as 'America's pro-Israel lobby'--wrote: 'Recognizing that sanctions cannot be permanently imposed on Iraq and lacking a plan to overthrow Saddam's regime, many of our Middle Eastern allies and other, global powers have determined that Saddam will eventually prevail in this conflict. Consequently they have reversed their policy, seeking now to nurture ties with Baghdad.'

"In other words, if Saddam stays, the Middle East will tilt toward him, and away from the US. For the neocons, with their strong ties to Israel, that is not a good thing. Neither would it be good for the US arms industry, nor for the oil or chemical companies that in some cases help fund the neocons."

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The following is from an undated article :U.S. Arms Control Hypocrisy is the Real Threat to Security" by Ira Chernus, Professor of Religious Studies, University of Colorado at Boulder:

"John Bolton was in Israel last week doing his job, fighting the spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Bolton is the U.S. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control.... Bolton also stopped off to see Israel's Foreign Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Perhaps Bolton took along his special advisor, David Wurmser. It would have been a nice reunion, since Wurmser was once an advisor to Netanyahu. In 1996, Wurmser co-authored a report for Netanyahu: 'A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.' The chief author, Richard Perle, and another co-author, Douglas Feith, are now high-ranking Pentagon officials.

"In that report, Perle, Wurmser and company laid out a truly messianic vision. Israel can gain political control of the entire Middle East, they said. The key is to contain 'and perhaps roll back' Syria, by surrounding it with an Israeli-led alliance including Turkey, Jordan, and Iraq. How to get Iraq into the alliance? Simple. Use 'the principle of preemption,' get rid of Saddam Hussein, and put a Hashemite king (from the family that rules Jordan) on the throne in Baghdad. Meanwhile, Israel would also use Iraq's Shiites to weaken the power of Iran."

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Other Related SourceWatch Resources

• Eleana Benador
• funders
• Michael Rubin
• think tank

External links

Articles / Publications by David Wurmser

• Middle East Forum articles.
• American Enterprise Institute publications.

Other Links

• Seth Gitell, Free Iraqi Resistance Calling on Jewry For Support in Quest to Depose Saddam. Allies of Chalabi Meet Ambassador Gold, Warn of White House Folly, Forward, July 31, 1998: "An adviser to INC chairman Ahmad Chalabi, Francis Brooke, and a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, David Wurmser, met with Israel's permanent representative to the United Nations, Dore Gold, last Friday to begin the process of getting Israel to back the" Iraqi National Congress (INC).

• America Attacked: The Middle East. With David Wurmser, Director of Middle East studies for the American Enterprise Institute, Live Online Interview with The Washington Post, September 24, 2001.

• http://www.pbs.org/arguing/nyintellectuals_krystol.html