Free Republic

U.S. Advisor Says Iraq Peace Offer Was a Trap(2003-11-09) WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A last minute peace deal offered by a top Iraqi official in the run up to the war that toppled Saddam Hussein was a trap designed to discredit U.S. policy, an advisor to the Pentagon said on Sunday.Richard Perle, former chairman of the Defense Policy Advisory Board who had met with a Lebanese businessman who conveyed the Iraqi offer meant to prevent an invasion, said the offer had not been credible.Perle told ABC television's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos" that the offer by former chief of intelligence, Gen....

By JAMES RISEN WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 — As American soldiers massed on the Iraqi border in March and diplomats argued about war, an influential adviser to the Pentagon received a secret message from a Lebanese-American businessman: Saddam Hussein wanted to make a deal. Iraqi officials, including the chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, had told the businessman that they wanted Washington to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction, and they offered to allow American troops and experts to conduct an independent search. They also offered to hand over a man accused of being involved in the...

BERLIN, Nov 4 (AFP) - Senior US defence adviser Richard Perle urged Germany Tuesday to stop following France on the international political stage and said that the Franco-German relationship is harming ties with the United States. "The idea that Germany must submit to French ideas has to be looked at," Perle told about 200 defence experts gathered in Berlin for a two-day security conference. Perle said the depth of the Franco-German partnership was, at times, further damaging the European Union's already strained relations with Washington. "There is such a strong tendency for France and Germany on every occasion to express...

Richard Perle: The Making of a NeoconservativeBen Wattenberg: Hello. Richard Perle, the infamous and famous Richard Perle, thank you for joining us on Think Tank.Richard Perle: It’s a pleasure to be with you Ben.Ben Wattenberg: Well, why don’t we pick up the Perle story at that swimming pool. Whose swimming pool was it and what were you doing there?Richard Perle: It was Albert Wohlstetter’s swimming pool in the Hollywood Hills. Albert’s daughter, Joan, was a classmate at Hollywood High School. We sat next to each other in Spanish class. She passed, I didn’t, but she invited me over for a...

Continuing its long tradition of welcoming talented immigrants, National Review has just landed my brilliant compatriot, Mark Steyn. He will be replacing me as the author of the backpage column in the dead-tree edition. I wish I could say he has some big shoes to fill--the truth of the matter is that shoving his feet into my footware will require him to pinch his toes. I'm going to continue blogging in this space, but otherwise will be taking a bit of a rest, pending the publication in January of the book Richard Perle & I have co-authored, AN END TO...

NewsMax Wires Monday, Oct. 20, 2003 Bush Pentagon adviser Richard Perle says that unless China and other countries help the U.S. embargo North Korea, military force remains the only other option available. Interviewed from Israel, Perle offered his analysis of the growing North Korean threat to Fox News’ Cal Thomas this weekend. Perle warned that that North Korea is a “serious problem” as the regime moves toward building a nuclear arsenal. He said with such an arsenal he had no doubt the cash-strapped communist regime would sell nuclear weapons to other rogue states or terrorist groups, which in turn would...

Richard Perle:"If I were an Israeli I would resent people calling on ther Israelis to risk their lives so that they can live in place rather than other place." "The Saudis have the money to buy a bomb and I think it’s only a matter of time.""The State Department doesn’t see the big picture and it never will.""I’m very dubious about punishing hapless civilians in socities where somebedy else is making the decisions." Photo: Isaac Harari MICHAEL OREN and BRET STEPHENS:-------------------------------------------------------------------------- Perle's horizonsMeet Richard PerleConsider an astonishing fact: Richard Perle has never met Ariel Sharon.It is the second day of the Jerusalem Summit, and Perle is to be awarded a prize in memory of Henry "Scoop‘ Jackson, the late Democratic US Senator...

Pentagon adviser Richard Perle said Tuesday that the recent Israeli attack on an alleged training camp for Palestinian militants in Syria was long overdue and that he would not rule out U.S. military action against the Arab state. Perle, a close adviser to U.S. President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, spoke at a Jerusalem conference of conservatives from the United States and Israel. "President Bush transformed the American approach to terrorism on Sept. 11, 2001, when he said he will not distinguish between terrorists and the states who harbor them," Perle said. "I was happy to see...

Every Tuesday morning during the Iraq war Washington's opinion-makers and journalists knew there was only one place to be: at the "black-coffee briefings" held at the American Enterprise Institute, a fortress-like building on M and 17th streets, opposite the main offices of the National Geographic magazine. Technically, AEI is a thinktank. More than that, though, it is the headquarters of the intellectual movement known as neoconservatism. Its staff includes famous names such as Richard Perle, Irving Kristol and Newt Gingrich. The magazine Weekly Standard, the neocon bible, is published at the same address. Black coffee was not strictly compulsory at...

Washington, September 23, 2003 - Amidst high level negotiations in New York at United Nations this week on whether to give more authority to international community in Iraq at the expense of US led coalition, Richard Perle, an influential Pentagon advisor said it would be a 'great mistake' to send additional troops and 'internationalize the future of Iraq'. Asked about the prospects of Turkish troops to Iraq at a conference on Turkey at conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington, Mr. Perle replied, 'The administration would welcome some outside help, probably as a symbol of international collaboration in this enterprise....

The manuscript of the book I'm co-authoring with Richard Perle is now at the publisher--the kids are back at school--the vacation (such as it was!) is over. Now back to work. It's been a news-rich summer, and there's a lot to catch up on. Where to start? How about with Tucker Carlson's new book about his adventures in cable news, Politicians, Partisans, and Parasites. A galley showed up in my in-box earlier this summer, as I was racing to finish my book, and in moments of exhaustion or frustration I'd read snatches of it for amusement and relaxation. And is...

PARIS (AFP) Aug 28, 2003 Top Pentagon adviser Richard Perle admitted Thursday that the United States had made a key blunder in its planning ahead of launching its military campaign in Iraq -- the failure to forge close ties with the Iraqi opposition. Two more US soldiers were killed, and five wounded, in Iraq the previous day as the US military administration struggles to bring the country under control months after declaring the war over. The US administration has stepped up its efforts to defend its "noble cause" in Iraq this week after the death toll among US troops since...

PARIS (Reuters) - Richard Perle, a leading Pentagon (news - web sites) adviser and architect of the U.S. war to topple Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), said the United States had made mistakes in Iraq (news - web sites) and that power should be handed over to the Iraqis as fast as possible. In an interview with the Le Figaro daily newspaper to be published Thursday, Perle defended the U.S.-led war in Iraq and restated his belief that France had been wrong to lead international opposition to the conflict. "Of course, we haven't done everything right," said Perle, according...

My, my, my, the great Iraqi Gold Rush is on, and who should be there at the front of the line, right along with Halliburton and Bechtel, but our old friends at WorldCom -- perpetrator of the largest accounting fraud in American history. WorldCom, shortly to become MCI, has been given a contract worth $45 million in the short term to build a wireless phone network in Iraq. I learned via The Associated Press that Washington Technology, a trade newspaper that follows computing-related sales to the U.S. government, "found WorldCom jumped to eighth among all federal technology contractors in 2002,...

WASHINGTON, June 11 (Reuters) - The United States should be ready to smash North Korea's Yongbyon reactor if necessary to keep Pyongyang from trafficking in nuclear weapons, an influential member of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's advisory panel said on Wednesday. "Whether we can effectively mobilize a coalition -- including China, Russia, the South Koreans, the Japanese, ourselves -- and so isolate them that they will abandon this program, that remains to be seen," said Richard Perle, an architect of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. "That's certainly the preferable way to deal with it," he added in a speech to an...

The road map, the internationally sponsored Mideast peace plan supported by the United States, may not endure unless the Palestinians scrap their “culture of death” and stop demonizing Israel, neo-conservative American foreign affairs analyst Richard Perle said here last week. “If this doesn’t happen, we may end up with an agreement that doesn’t last,” he told an Israel Bonds/ UJA Federation luncheon meeting at the Sheraton Centre Hotel. Perle, who served as U.S. assistant secretary of defence during the Reagan administration, warned that the prospect of “stable peace” will be stifled unless the Palestinian Authority ceases its Jihadist incitement against...

Seymour Hersh Vs. Richard Perle Rael Jean Isaac At the end of March, Richard Perle resigned as chairman of the Defense Policy Board, forced out of the leadership role (he remained a member) by a firestorm of publicity concerning supposed ethics violations launched by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in a March 17 New Yorker article and expanded in the New York Times. For Hersh, Perle is a perfect target, embodying attitudes Hersh finds most detestable -- friendship for Israel and belief that the United States is a force for good in the world. On CNN, Richard Perle called Hersh "the...

<p>Strategy guru Albert Wohlstetter spent decades arguing for military flexibility and precision targeting. But have his Washington disciples learned his real lessons?</p> <p>IN 1959, RICHARD PERLE was just another California high-school kid struggling to pass Spanish. But even then, the future Pentagon adviser and TV pundit was gripped by subjects far weightier than the next sock hop. Albert Wohlstetter, a classmate's father, had written an article in Foreign Affairs entitled ''The Delicate Balance of Terror,'' and Perle found it riveting. When they met poolside at the Wohlstetter family home in the Hollywood Hills, Perle says he was dazzled by the older man's ''uncontrollably analytical'' mind. ''Maybe if I hadn't been seduced by the discussion about strategic policy, I might have passed Spanish,'' he says.</p>

Perle steps in it again Where, oh, where has Richard Perle put his big, bad, libel stick? In the middle of March, Perle informed the New York Sun of his intention to sue Seymour Hersh for libel over Hersh's March 17 New Yorker feature, which explored the conflicts of interest posed by Perle's business dealings and his chairmanship of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board.Now, as we reach Week 9 of the Richard Perle Libel Watch, it's more evident than ever that Perle was just trash-talking. To begin with, the Hersh piece contained no libel. Yes, the scrutiny may have...

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Pentagon adviser Richard Perle briefed an investment seminar on ways to profit from conflicts in Iraq and North Korea just weeks after he received a top-secret government briefing on the crises in the two countries, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday. Perle, who until March was chairman of the Defense Policy Board, a group of outside advisers to the Pentagon, also serves on the board of several defense contractors. The revelation raises concerns about conflicts of interest. The Times reported that Perle attended a Defense Intelligence Agency briefing in February and three weeks later participated in...