Cheney's hands all over this Iraq mess

As early as 1992, neo-conservatives in the administration of George H. W. Bush, under the direction of Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, lobbied for regime change in Iraq as part of a grandiose vision for American supremacy and Israel's security in the Middle East for the next century.

During the Clinton presidency, the neo-cons continued with their goal, and in 1998, they twice lobbied him to defeat Saddam Hussein. Vice President Dick Cheney was the main proponent of a war with Iraq during two presidencies and had a personal acrimonious relationship with Hussein involving Halliburton, his energy company.

The Central Intelligence Agency found no evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, chemical weapons or biological weapons, or had participated in the terrorist attack against the United States.

The men who hijacked the airplanes came from Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The Times newspaper of London printed the Downing Street documents, which asserted that Cheney, George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz ignored CIA intelligence reports to justify their wish to invade Iraq.

The documents reveal a meeting on July 23, 2002, attended by Prime Minister Tony Blair and another in March 2002, where U.S. Ambassador Christopher Meyer and Wolfowitz discussed the overthrow of Hussein.

The reason for invading Iraq was to install a democratic government that would transform the balance of power in the Middle East and assure Israel's security. The road to Jerusalem was through Baghdad.

Richard F. Nelson

Aurora