Neo-conservative “Cabal” & US/Iraq

” ...[T]he war is not developing in response to a demand. It is not a demand-side war; it is a supply-side war. What do I mean by that, a supply-side war? Well, we’ve got to go back to this cabal of neo-conservative warriors that we know about who’ve been around, were around for a decade before 9/11 and who were fully committed then, as they are now, to an American military enforced new order in the Middle East with pretensions and fantasies of democratization of the region of an American rule, domination of the oil wealth there, establishment of large, semi-permanent military bases in the heart of the region and the elimination of all pressures on Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza.

This fantasy, this vision of a small cabal required then as it does now a war to overthrow Saddam and to gain control of Iraq and the oilfields and the geopolitical assets it represents. To rebuild Iraq is emblematic of the sheer greatness and overwhelming power and responsibility of the United States in the post-Cold War world as the irrefutable sign of the possibility and rewards of grand-scale unilateralism.

This has been their fantasy of a small group for a long time ... The question was where could the political capital for the war come from and the answer came on 9/11. It unleashed a Mississippi river of fear in the United States...

[In Afghanistan] [w]e got [a war] that was too fast and it gave the whip end to the cabal.

So that’s where the political supply came from. Suddenly we had a president rocketing in the polls ... Suddenly the political capital for such a grand enterprise is available and in such quantities that the absence of rational arguments on behalf of the war could be rendered irrelevant. Faced with a prospect of the window of fear vanishing, that is the American people have other things on its mind, including its pocketbook, this window of fear is not forever. It’s why this part of the government was intent on having those pictures of the World Trade Center blowing up shown time and time again for months. Faced with the prospect of the window of fear vanishing and the supply of support for the fantasized war drying up, the cabal -- Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Fife, Perle, et cetera -- has moved full bore towards their objective, not because of the demand but because the political supply is currently available but not for long.

I could actually use what Frank suggested when he talked about how you solve a crime. Think about motive, means and opportunity. The crime here is a criminal war. The motive I’ve already shown you in the minds of the cabal. The means, vast American military predominance. The opportunity, the sudden appearance of a supply of political capital unavailable before. This argument explains the rush to war as a political victory of a preexisting cabal and its use of the 9/11 aftermath to suppress bureaucratic intelligence and military opposition to its fantasy. This also explains the moronic nature of most arguments offered by administration spokesmen, including a contradictory character...”