Signers of the influential PNAC letters included Republican politicians, like Gary Bauer and Rudy Boshwitz. Several are longtime Republican political operatives, like Vin Weber. According to the Bush 2004 campaign, Weber is now the "regional campaign chairman for the Plains states, including North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota and Iowa."

Some are connected to major contractors. Khalilzad is with the Rand Corporation; Thomas Donnelly is director of communications at Lockheed Martin; and R. James Woolsey is a vice president at Booz Allen & Hamilton. Booz Allen, a Halliburton subcontractor, receives hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracts, including noncompetitive-bid contracts. PNAC signer Zakheim, now leaving his position as Pentagon comptroller, is moving to Booz Allen.

GOING PUBLIC—Backed by well-funded think tanks, many of the people who signed the PNAC letters are linked to the publishing industry and the media. In a July 22, 2002, memorandum to "Opinion Leaders," the PNAC kicked off its campaign to drum up a war against Iraq by promoting an article titled "The Coming War with Saddam" in William Kristol's Weekly Standard magazine. Starting then, either the Weekly Standard or the PNAC, or a "freelancer" in league with them writing for major papers, ran articles for the next 16 weeks, pushing for war in Iraq.

Without the pretext of any new cataclysm in Iraq, the ground for war was prepared, and obviously in cooperation with the White House. On August 26, 2002 Vice President Cheney gave a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars arguing for "pre-emptive military action."

Also in August 2002, still without any new crisis in Iraq, the PNAC's members and other commentators, including the columnist and PNAC signer Charles Krauthammer, began producing a series of op-ed newspaper columns and television commentaries pushing for war, and hammering the idea with conviction.

They were reinforced by broadcasting hosts Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly and a stream of lesser-known talk-show hosts and op-ed writers, some supported by Rupert Murdoch, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who owns the right-wing Washington Times, and by the Clear Channel broadcasting empire, which also funded lavish pro-war displays. Much of this drum beating—with no new crisis in Iraq—took place in the weeks leading up to the 2002 Congressional elections. Thus a stream of writers and paid consultants, in league with factions compensating them in undisclosed ways, operated in concert with the Bush White House.

American history textbooks used to teach schoolchildren the evils of "yellow journalism," personified by William Randolph Hearst's campaign to urge the United States into the Spanish-American War of 1898. The Federal Communications Commission has not investigated this more recent paid and orchestrated campaign in the media, which helped push America to shed blood in the only unprovoked invasion of another country we have ever launched.

Nor has there been any Congressional investigation of links between these unofficial campaigners and entities like the Defense Policy Board, which advises the Department of Defense. The PNAC's Richard Perle recently resigned his position on the Defense Policy Board, following a conflict-of-interest controversy, but several other PNAC signers remain as board members.

Retired State Department official Carol Wilder recently pointed out in Oregon's League of Women Voters newsletter that the "National Security Strategy" presented to Congress by Bush in September 2002 is almost identical to PNAC policy proposals. As Wilder summarizes it, "chief tenets of the Strategy are that: 1. pre-emptieve war will be acceptable in dealing with enemies; 2. nuclear weapons can be used offensively in support of political and economic ends; and 3. international treaties and international opinion will be ignored whenever they are not seen to be in alignment with U.S. goals." She also points out that a similar policy statement, drafted back in 1992, caused a furor when it was leaked to major papers, although "it did not harm the long-term careers of the drafters. Today Paul Wolfowitz is the Deputy Defense Secretary, and Lewis Libby is Vice-President Cheney's Chief of Staff."

The connections between this loose syndication of think-tankers, lobbyists and political operatives and the Bush administration are close and numerous. In 1999, when then-Governor Bush was saying publicly that he intended to remain governor of Texas and not seek higher office, the Dallas Morning News reported an "unpublicized briefing" Bush received from members of his father's administration. The briefers included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Richard Perle, all founders of the Project for the New American Century; Richard Armitage, a frequent PNAC signatory; and Dov Zakheim.

The PNAC has not responded to questions about whether Iraq was discussed at that briefing. But the 20-20 vision of hindsight has now exposed the vacuity of Bush's false pretense that the war in Iraq was undertaken as a "last resort."