Editor's note: Pesident Bush called the days leading up to the Easter weekend "a tough week" in Iraq. It was also a tough week for him at home, and the following weeks have gotten tougher. An April poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that support among Democrats for bringing our troops home from Iraq had risen to 57 percent, and that even Republican support for a pullout increased from 14 percent in late December to 25 percent in April.

The chaos in Iraq and the continuing televised hearings of the commission investigating the 9/11 attacks—dubbed by some here a "Condipalooza" after the lengthy appearance of Condoleezza Rice, the president's National Security Advisor—have swerved some media and public attention away from why we are at war in Iraq.

But the Washington warriors behind the scenesa right-wing cadre that four years ago began urging the president, then Bill Clinton, to attack Iraq are being outed by a few diligent journalists. One of them is our occasional contributor Margie Burns, a columnist and a professor at the University of Maryland's Baltimore campus, where she teaches English literature. She not only connects some dots, she herewith connects the war- mongering dolts.

ince 1992 the biggest booster of war with Iraq has been a Washington-based right-wing network called the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). Pushing a position its members adopted under the first President Bush, PNAC wrote a "Letter to President Clinton on Iraq" on January 26, 1998, insisting that he remove Saddam Hussein from power. You can see it at www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm.

The Project for the New American Century is a group of hard-liners, mostly not from military backgrounds. Since 1997 they have promoted an extremely hawkish American foreign policy and annual increases in military spending.

Its website says: "The Project for the New American Century is a non-profit, educational organization whose goal is to promote American global leadership. The Project is an initiative of the New Citizenship Project . . . ; the New Citizenship Project's chairman is William Kristol and its president is Gary Schmitt."

William Kristol is the conservative editor of the Rupert Murdoch-owned Weekly Standard and appears as a weekly commentator on Murdoch's Fox News. Kristol's PNAC biography states: "Before starting the Weekly Standard in 1995, Mr. Kristol led the Project for the Republican Future, where he helped shape the strategy that produced the 1994 Republican congressional victory. Prior to that, Mr. Kristol served as chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle during the Bush Administration and to Secretary of Education William Bennett under President Reagan."

The other founder, Gary Schmitt, was a G.O.P. Congressional staffer in the early 1980s, worked in the Reagan administration and has held consulting positions at conservative think tanks.

The 1998 letter to Clinton supported one goalousting Saddam Hussein: "We urge you to . . . enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world," it read. "That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power. We stand ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor."

Asserting the now-familiar vaguery of "weapons of mass destruction," the letter continued with the idea that removing Saddam was "the aim" of American foreign policy, to be pursued at all costs:

"We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power," PNAC counseled. It said that this would require a major undertaking of "diplomatic, political and military efforts." Grave danger loomed if nothing was done. "We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing U.N. resolutions to take the necessary steps," the letter continued, "including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf."

The letter also mentioned "the world's supply of oil." The Project for the New American Century did not respond to requests for comment.