That's an interesting question. Probably yes -- assuming someone else with connections in the U.S. government had undertaken the 1996 effort with the Netanyahu government in israel.
You're whole argument is based on the assumption that some report related to Jews is the founding and source document of our military involvement with Iraq. Consider whether you have been misled by people with a jew-baiting agenda.
Any way Clinton did try to create the environment to support an invasion. His initiative failed. And he didn't have the gumption of 9/11 to spice up the motivation to finish Gulf War I.
How did Clinton try to "create the environment" to support an invasion? And are you saying that the Bush administration has used 9/11 as an excuse to invade Iraq?
ILA, approaches to France and Russia due to their security council veto, Clinton's ridiculous road trip to campuses with Cohen and Albright to test the waters of public support - it's all there. It didn't start with naming some Israeli. It started in 1990.
As for Bush, kind of. The "excuse" is misleading. There were many "reasons", all of them valid or not, primarily we were already their, protecting Kurd automomy, enforcing sanctions and no-fly zones and such.
There were only three outcomes. We could pull out. Result - Kurdish genocide and loss of respect. We could maintain "containment" ie the food for oil regime, sanctions, suffereing of the Iraqi people with no end in sight. Or we could finish the war. 9/11 focused people and gave the fire in the belly to finish off our responsibility. In short-we were already there. What to do?
Let's get a few facts clear here:
1. In 1996, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith co-authored a report for the Netanyahu government in which they identified a "regime change" in Iraq as something that was in the best interests of Israel (no mention of the United States).
2. Israel had no intention of doing this on their own. In fact, Israel was thoroughly incapable of doing such a thing.
3. Perle name shows up less than 18 months later as a signatory on that 1998 letter to Bill Clinton, urging the U.S. to take an aggressive stand against Iraq and move toward a "regime change" in Baghdad.
I don't think there has been any "misleading" going on here at all. This chain of events makes it perfectly reasonable to question Richard Perle's motives.