It is chilling to read this statement from January 1998, for it makes exactly the argument, in regard to Iraq, that was pushed by Bush and his media supporters in 2003. It seems clear that Bush came into office in January 2001 with the intention stated in the letter.

THE CAST HE CHOSE—Among the 18 signers to this pro-Iraq-war letter were nine people who Bush promptly appointed to federal positions. A signer and a PNAC founder, Donald Rumsfeld, was named Bush's Secretary of Defense on December 11, 2000, before the inauguration. Vice President Cheney was also a PNAC founder.

Throughout the months leading up to September 11, 2001, Bush consistently chose PNAC networkers, focused on Iraq, over nonpartisan security experts for top security positions.

Bush announced the appointment of PNAC signer Robert B. Zoellick as the U.S. Trade Representativethe president's principal trade adviser—on January 11, 2001. Paul D. Wolfowitz was named Deputy Secretary of Defense on February 5. Richard L. Armitage was appointed Deputy Secretary of State on February 12. Dov S. Zakheim became Comptroller at the Defense Department on February 12. And John R. Bolton was picked as Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security Affairs at the State Department on February 21. PNAC people, all.

Dov Zakheim, the Pentagon Comptroller, is responsible for overseeing contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq. Zakheim recently defended Halliburton's handling of its Iraq contracts in testimony before a Congressional panel. His sympathetic testimony is posted on Halliburton's website, www.halliburton.com.

Within a month of assuming the presidency, Bush thus gave control of pertinent positions in the executive branch to hawks with the none-too-subtle agenda of invading Iraq. Former White House terrorism adviser Richard Clarke testified before the 9/11 Commission that the Bush II administration came into office wanting to pick up where the Bush I White House left off. Clarke was attacked at the 9/11 hearing by Commissioner John F. Lehman, also a PNAC signer.

In February 2001, the New Republic mentioned that "Vice President Dick Cheney has quietly been stocking the Defense Department with outspoken interventionists. . . . Cheney has effectively created his own foreign policy apparatus, installing his protégés (and, in the case of Donald Rumsfeld, his mentor) at the Defense Department and the White House." It noted that "many of Cheney's protégés are known for their willingness to use military force." The New York Times ran only a three-line note on Bush appointees who supported invading Iraq.

THEY KEPT COMING—By the end of May 2001, PNAC members also held sensitive positions in the State Department's global affairs division and the Pentagon's Office of International Security Policy. PNAC signatory Peter W. Rodman was appointed to the International Security Affairs office in the Defense Department. Rodman, an assistant to Henry Kissinger in the Nixon and Ford administrations, worked in the State Department and the National Security Council (NSC) in the Reagan and first Bush administrations, and was more recently the director of National Security Programs at the Nixon Center, a conservative think tank.

The National Security Council was similarly politicized. Bush appointed the PNAC signer Dr. Zalmay Khalilzad to the National Security Council on May 23, and signer Elliott Abrams to the NSC on June 25. Khalilzad worked at the Pentagon under former President Bush and went to the Rand Corporation, a major military contractor, in the 1990s. Born in Afghanistan, he was also a consultant to U.S. oil company Unocal, which attempted for several years to launch a giant pipeline deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Khalilzad is now the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. Abrams is the NSC representative for Middle Eastern Affairs.

Other signers of Project for the New American Century's letters and statements have been appointed to federal positions. Thus a tax-exempt organization connected to previous G.O.P. administrations, to military contractors and to foreign countries has continued a 10-year project to get the U.S. into war with Iraq.

Following the January 1998 letter to Clinton, PNAC sent a letter on May 29, 1998, to G.O.P. Congressional leaders Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi and former Representative Newt Gringrich of Georgia, again asserting an unspecified danger from "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq.

AFTER 9/11—On September 20, 2001, days after the 9/11 attacks, PNAC sent this message to the White House in a letter again boosting war against Iraq, regardless of justification:

"It may be that the Iraqi government provided assistance in some form to the recent attack on the United States. But even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq."

The 41 signers of this September 2001 letter did not include the original PNAC signatories already in government. Seth Cropsey, who signed the letter, was later named Director of the International Broadcasting Bureau, which runs the Voice of America. Cropsey, who also worked in the Reagan and former Bush administrations, went to Washington think tanks in the 1990s and directed governmental affairs at the large Washington lobbying firm of Greenberg Traurig.