# Pentagon Office of Special Plans (OSP): What's the Deal?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [July 22, 2003, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084 "2003-07-22T03:25:20Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)
#### Post date: [July 24, 2003, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/21 "2003-07-24T17:51:17Z")
> [@](#):
>
> [**Wolfowitz Concedes Iraq Errors**](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37468-2003Jul23.html)
>
> _By Peter Slevin and Dana Priest
> Washington Post Staff Writers
> Thursday, July 24, 2003; Page A01_
>
> The deputy secretary of defense said yesterday that some key assumptions underlying the U.S. occupation of Iraq were wrong, tacitly acknowledging the judgment of current and former U.S. officials critical of the occupation planning.
>
> His acknowledgment that some assumptions were wrong faintly echoed one of the primary complaints registered by many current and former U.S. officials since before the occupation began. The reconstruction effort, they said, was also undermined by unresolved logistical problems and secretive decision-making by the Defense Department civilians who led the planning.
>
> Before the invasion, for example, U.S. intelligence agencies were persistent and unified in warning the Defense Department that Iraqis would resort to “armed opposition” after the war was over. The Army’s chief of staff warned that a larger stability force would be needed.
>
> Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his team disagreed, confident that Iraqi military and police units would help secure a welcoming nation.
>
> The State Department and other agencies spent many months and millions of dollars drafting strategies on issues ranging from a postwar legal code to oil policy. But after President Bush granted authority over reconstruction to the Pentagon, the Defense Department all but ignored State and its working groups.
>
> Similarly, the intelligence agencies, especially the CIA, were “utterly consistent in arguing that reconstruction rather than war would be the most problematic segment of overthrowing Saddam,” a senior administration official said. In classified written and oral reports, the official continued, the intelligence community warned the administration “early and often” about obstacles U.S. authorities were likely to face.
>
> In particular, the agencies repeatedly predicted that Hussein loyalists might try to sabotage U.S. postwar efforts by destroying critical economic targets, the official said. One analysis warned that Iraqis “would probably resort to obstruction, resistance and armed opposition if they perceived attempts to keep them dependent on the United States and the West.”
>
> Those concerns, however, were secondary among the principal architects of the Iraq policy, who were concentrated in the Defense Department, the White House and Vice President Cheney’s office.
>
> No issue was more contentious than the shape of Iraq’s future governing structure. Central to this issue was the role of exile [Ahmed Chalabi](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&postid=3326581#post3326581), the London-based head of the Iraqi National Congress who was reviled by the State Department and CIA as much as he was revered by senior Defense Department officials and some in the White House.
It goes on and on, more like that- agencies other than the OSP saying, “Well, we tried to tell you.”
---
### Author:  [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)
#### Post date: [July 24, 2003, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/22 "2003-07-24T22:35:33Z")
Here’s some rebuttal:
> [@](#):
>
> _[foxnews.com](http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,88571,00.html)_
> **Pentagon Official Denies Manipulating Evidence Against Iraq**
> _Wednesday, June 04, 2003_
>
> Pentagon officials went on the offensive Wednesday against allegations that they manipulated intelligence on Iraq’s weapons programs and links to terrorism in order to build a case for war.
>
> Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, said news reports in recent months have inaccurately portrayed the role of a small group of analysts he assembled in October 2001. They did not, as some reported, seek out evidence to support going to war, he said.
>
> “This suggestion that we said to them, ‘This is what we’re looking for, go find it,’ is precisely the inaccuracy that we are here to rebut,” Feith told reporters.
>
> The analysts’ mission was to review existing intelligence on terrorist groups in pursuit of fresh insights to help the Pentagon craft a strategy for fighting a global war on terrorism, Feith said.
>
> **Feith said they used the term “special plans” for Luti’s office because, "at the time, calling it Iraq Planning Office might have undercut our diplomatic efforts with regard to Iraq in the U.N. and elsewhere."**
>
> [They thought about calling it that, I guess]
>
> Although the group produced a report citing links between the Iraqi government and Usama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network, this was “incidental” to its main effort, Feith said.
>
> “The main thing that the team produced was, it helped educate a lot of people about the fact that there was more cooperation and interconnections among these terrorist organizations and state sponsors – across ideological lines – than many people had appreciated before,” he added.
>
> He denied that this effort reflected dissatisfaction among Pentagon officials with the analytical work of the CIA. He said he found it “almost comical” that people saw the group as a politically inspired path around the CIA in pursuit of evidence supporting preconceived nations about Iraq.
There, you see? The OSP said, “No we didn’t.”
I guess that settles it.
Sorry to have troubled you.
---
### Author:  [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2003, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/23 "2003-07-25T17:38:53Z")
Here’s a bit from the ultra-liberal [WorldNetDaily](http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=33705)
> [@](#):
>
> Miller is the New York Times reporter who broke, with another reporter, the blockbuster story last September that Hussein was trying to import aluminum tubing to restart a nuclear weapons program. The claim, which she attributed to unnamed Bush administration “hard-liners” and Iraqi defectors, was touted by Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice the day it appeared.
>
> But it’s now under serious dispute.
>
> Miller, who is close to Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith, another noted neocon, also broke the now widely discredited story that two trailers found in Iraq were disguised mobile bioweapons labs.
>
> It was recently revealed that the source of several of Miller’s Iraq stories was [Ahmed Chalabi](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&postid=3326581#post3326581) – an Iraqi defector favored by the administration to replace Hussein, and one with whom Miller has had a 10-year relationship.
>
> U.S. intelligence officials tell WorldNetDaily the vast majority of the information [Chalabi](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&postid=3326581#post3326581) has provided on Hussein’s regime has proved to be unreliable or false. The CIA and FBI no longer rely on him as a source, they say.
>
> However, officials say he remained a key source of intelligence for a temporary shop Feith and others set up at the Pentagon before the war called the Office of Special Plans. They say [Chalabi](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&postid=3326581#post3326581)’s information made it to the White House through that special office.
---
### Author:  [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2003, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/24 "2003-07-25T19:18:20Z")
The Guardian has also given the story a shot:
[The spies who pushed for war](http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,999669,00.html)
> [@](#):
>
> The ideologically driven network functioned like a shadow government, much of it off the official payroll and beyond congressional oversight. But it proved powerful enough to prevail in a struggle with the State Department and the CIA by establishing a justification for war.
> …
> In the days after September 11, Mr Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, mounted an attempt to include Iraq in the war against terror. When the established agencies came up with nothing concrete to link Iraq and al-Qaida, the OSP was given the task of looking more carefully.
> …
> “Most of the people they had in that office were off the books, on personal services contracts. At one time, there were over 100 of them,” said an intelligence source. The contracts allow a department to hire individuals, without specifying a job description.
> …
> “They surveyed data and picked out what they liked,” said Gregory Thielmann, a senior official in the state department’s intelligence bureau until his retirement in September. "The whole thing was bizarre.
I guess this situation is a bit like that with “weapons of mass destruction” - No one cares :rolleyes:
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### Author:  [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2003, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/25 "2003-07-25T19:36:13Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by SimonX \*
> \*\*Here’s a bit from the ultra-liberal [WorldNetDaily](http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=33705) \*\*
I assume you were being sarcastic. This is a very conservative source, and Paul Sperry is a conservative reporter.
---
### Author:  [@Sofa\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofa_King)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2003, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/26 "2003-07-25T19:54:01Z")
**SimonX** , I want to thank you for almost singlehandedly keeping an eye out on this story.
But honestly, I don’t really know what to say at this point.
I will say this: I’m scared. If we have a government that’s this willing to ground itself in something other than reality, what’s keeping them from taking it farther _even if_ the people try to send these fools packing next November?
Seriously: who can stop them now if they do not wish to be stopped?
---
### Author:  [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2003, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/27 "2003-07-25T20:12:20Z")
I’m surprised that no one here is gainsaying any of this.
---
### Author:  [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2003, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/28 "2003-07-25T20:31:53Z")
**december** ,
Have you heard about the new Sperry book coming out?
[_link_](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=200212)
---
### Author:  [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2003, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/29 "2003-07-25T22:14:05Z")
I’m a little hazy on this, and would appreciate a clarification: I do recall Rummy expressing his dissatisfaction with CIA intelligence, that is, its failure to find what everybody already knew was true. He went on to state, IIRC, that he would form a _seperate_ intelligence group within the Pentagon to find what the CIA had failed to find.
Is this the same group, or different? The reporting seems to suggest that it was extant for quite some time before Rummy said this. So was there another _ad hoc_ intelligence posse sent out to lynch some facts? If OSP had Rummy’s confidence, and it certainly seems that it should, why would he assign another group more or less “in parallel”?
I note this: I think Rummy believed what he said, I believe he was sincere when he said that the facts of the matter were crystal clear to him, and for some reason, the CIA couldn’t recognize the glaringly obvious.
Now this assessment of sincerity comes at a cost: now, I must believe that the issue was settled for quite some time, at least in Rummy’s mind. Most important to note: when faced with a lack of confirmation from the CIA to affirm his strongly held opinion, he did _not alter his opinion_. He did not even, apparently, seriously question his position. Rather than change his opinion in the face of conflicting information, he sought to change the information.
This is reflective of a mind-set I would much prefer did not prevail amongst the people who command the most potentially destructive military force in human history. (You may regard this as calm understatement, since shreiking and tearing your hair is impossible to contain within a smilie.)
And this Chalabi guy seems to be everywhere in this shitstorm, like a smiling malignant Zellig. Lord, I beseech Thee, please don’t let it turn out that these guys are so blitheringly chucklewitted as to take as Gospel intelligence from the guy who wants to take Saddams job. And if it must be, Lord, could you send me some kind of sign as to whether to laugh or cry?
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### Author:  [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2003, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/30 "2003-07-25T22:23:49Z")
AFAICT, there’s just the one ad hoc intel agency- the OSP. I could be very wrong though.
I’d heard of “an agency”, just as you had. Only the other day did I learn that it had a name.
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### Author:  [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2003, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/31 "2003-07-25T22:31:47Z")
Maybe its only a quibble, but its annoying me, (which is the trouble with quibbles…)
Correct where wrong, but it appears that the OSP was formed much earlier than my reference, and I distinctly recall Rummy saying he _was forming_ such a group. Not that he was referring the matter to some already extant group.
And is there a list of members?
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### Author:  [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2003, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/32 "2003-07-25T22:42:30Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Pentagon Office of Special Plans (OSP) set up shortly after September 11, 2001, under the direction of under secretaries of defense Douglas Feith and William Luti and led by Abram Shulsky.
This is from the [AsiaTimes](http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EG12Ak01.html) article. I’ve heard that the number of members staed any where from five to hundreds. Membership migt be a vague term in this instance.
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### Author:  [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2003, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/33 "2003-07-25T23:05:02Z")
[http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4123.htm](http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4123.htm)
“In a rare Pentagon briefing recently, Office of Special Plans co-director Douglas Feith, said the committee was not an “intelligence project,” but rather an group of 18 people that looked at intelligence information from a different point of view…”
So, according to its leader, 18 is the number.
"In the months leading up to the war in Iraq, Rumsfeld became increasingly frustrated that the CIA could not find any evidence of Iraq’s chemical, biological and nuclear weapons program, evidence that would have helped the White House build a solid case for war in Iraq.
In an article in the New York Times last October, the paper reported that Rumsfeld had ordered the Office of Special Plans to “to search for information on Iraq’s hostile intentions or links to terrorists” that might have been overlooked by the CIA"
[snip]
“The Special Plans committee disbanded in March after the start of the war in Iraq.”
And a familiar name yet again, like a turd in the punch bowl bobbing to the surface:
"The committee’s job, according to published reports, was to gather intelligence information on the Iraqi threat that the CIA and FBI could not uncover and present it to the White House to build a case for war in Iraq. The committee relied heavily on information provided by Iraqi defector Ahmad Chalabi , who has provided the White House with reams of intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs that has been disputed. Chalabi heads the Iraqi National Congress, a group of Iraqi exiles who have pushed for regime change in Iraq. "
Jeez, what is that _stench!_
---
### Author:  [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2003, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/34 "2003-07-25T23:19:38Z")
Ahh, they’ve been disbanded. No wonder that Feith mentioned the possibility of naming the the group the “Iraq Planning Office.”
The war was made. Mission accomplished.
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### Author:  [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2003, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/35 "2003-07-26T21:10:19Z")
> [@](#):
>
> **[CIA probe finds secret Pentagon group manipulated intelligence on Iraqi threat](http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/072503Leopold/072503leopold.html)**
> _By Jason Leopold
> Online Journal Assistant Editor_
>
> A half-dozen former CIA agents investigating prewar intelligence have found that a secret Pentagon committee, set up by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in October 2001, manipulated reams of intelligence information prepared by the spy agency on the so-called Iraqi threat and then delivered it to top White House officials who used it to win support for a war in Iraq.
>
> The former CIA agents were asked to examine prewar intelligence last year by Rumsfeld and CIA Director George Tenet. The former agents will present a final report on their findings to the Pentagon, the CIA and possibly Congress later this year.
I’m not familiar w/ this site nor Mr. leopold. However, he says that there is a possibility that the conclusions of the ex-CIA agents might present their findings to Congress. If they do, I’ll bet and hope that enough of the relevant info will get out.
Of course, Chalabi is mentioned yet again.
Apparently, the deal went down like this:
Neo-con hawks create a plan to invade Iraq sometime prior to 1998.
Neo-con hawks come to power in GWB’s admin.
9/11 tragedy occurs.
Rumsfeld calls for aides to find a link between Iraq and 9/11.
Wesley Clark gets phone calls from White house asking him to link Iraq to 9/11 when he is interviewed about 9/11.
October 2001, the Office of Special Plans is formed.
March 2003 US invades Iraq. OSP is disbanded.
It certainly seems that the OSP was involved in propagating the not-lies thet the Bush admin used to sell the war to the US.
Anyone care to contest this analysis?
---
### Author:  [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2003, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/36 "2003-08-08T02:24:39Z")
From inside the belly of the beast:
> [@](#):
>
> [**Ex-insider blows whistle on Pentagon ‘intelligence’**](http://www.dailystar.com.lb/07_08_03/art22.asp)
>
> “What I saw was aberrant, pervasive and contrary to good order and discipline,” she [Pentagon Middle East specialist, Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who worked in the office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith] wrote. “If one is seeking the answers to why peculiar bits of ‘intelligence’ found sanctity in a presidential speech, or why the post-Saddam (Hussein) occupation (in Iraq) has been distinguished by confusion and false steps, one need look no further than the process inside the office of the secretary of defense.’’
>
> [She charged that] …operations she witnessed during her tenure in Feith’s office, and particularly those of an ad hoc group known as the **Office of Special Plans (OSP)**, constituted “a subversion of constitutional limits on executive power and a co-optation through deceit of a large segment of the Congress.’’
>
> [Kwiatkowski charged that]…the same operation that allegedly cooked the intelligence also was responsible for the administration’s failure to anticipate the problems that now dog the US occupation in Iraq…
>
> “That office was charged with collecting, vetting, disseminating intelligence completely outside the normal intelligence apparatus,” David Obey, a senior Democrat in the House of Representatives, said last month. “In fact, it appears that the information collected by this office was in some instances not even shared with the established intelligence agencies and in numerous instances was passed on to the National Security Council and the president without having been vetted with anyone other than (the secretary of defense).’’
>
> While only a dozen people officially worked in the office at its largest, scores of “consultants,’’ were brought in on contract, many of them closely identified with the neo-conservative and pro-Likud views held by the Pentagon leadership.
>
> …OSP was given complete access to reams of raw intelligence produced by the US intelligence community and became the preferred stop for defectors handled by the Iraqi National Congress (INC), led by [Ahmed Chalabi](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&postid=3326581#post3326581).
>
> Chalabi and the INC were considered by the official intelligence agencies, including the State Department’s Intelligence and Research Bureau, the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency to be untrustworthy, but it was they who persuaded the Defense Department and Vice-President Dick Cheney that US troops would be greeted by Iraqis as liberators and that an easy transition to a democratic rule was assured once Saddam Hussein was ousted.
>
> [The]…exclusion of professional and independent opinions both within the Pentagon and across government agencies, according to Kwiatkowski, resulted in “groupthink,” a technical term defined as “reasoning or decision-making by a group, often characterized by uncritical acceptance of conformity to prevailing points of view.”
---
### Author:  [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2003, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/37 "2003-08-08T02:40:02Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*\*[Career officer does eye-opening stint inside Pentagon\*\*](http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjournal/6424570.htm)
>
> _By Karen Kwiatkowski, a recently retired Air Force Lieutenant colonel_
>
> After eight years of Bill Clinton, many military officers breathed a sigh of relief when George W. Bush was named president. I was in that plurality.
>
> I observed the environment in which decisions about post-war Iraq were made.
>
> Those observations changed everything.
>
> I can identify three prevailing themes.
>
> • Functional isolation of the professional corps. Civil service and active-duty military professionals assigned to the USDP/NESA and SP were noticeably uninvolved in key areas of interest to Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith, Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld. These included Israel, Iraq and to a lesser extent, Saudi Arabia.
>
> • Cross-agency cliques: Much has been written about the role of the founding members of the Project for a New American Century, the Center for Security Policy and the American Enterprise Institute and their new positions in the Bush administration. Certainly, appointees sharing particular viewpoints are expected to congregate, and an overwhelming number of these appointees having such organizational ties is neither conspiratorial nor unusual. What is unusual is the way this network operates solely with its membership across the various agencies – in particular the State Department, the National Security Council and the Office of the Vice President.
>
> • Groupthink. Defined as `reasoning or decision-making by a group, often characterized by uncritical acceptance or conformity to prevailing points of view,'' groupthink was, and probably remains, the predominant characteristic of Pentagon Middle East policy development. The result of groupthink is the elevation of opinion into a kind of accepted `fact,’’ and uncritical acceptance of extremely narrow and isolated points of view.
>
> [My _(Kwiatowski’s)_ response to a] February Secretary of State cable answering a long list of questions from a Middle Eastern country regarding U.S. planning for the aftermath in Iraq. The answers had been heavily crafted by the Pentagon, and to me, they were remarkably inadequate, given the late stage of the game. I suggested to my boss that if this was as good as it got, some folks on the Pentagon’s E-ring may be sitting beside Hussein in the war crimes tribunals.
>
> …the Pentagon [has not] been forced to account for the odd set of circumstances that placed us as a long-term occupying force in the world’s nastiest rat’s nest, without a nation-building plan, without significant international support and without an exit plan.
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### Author:  [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2003, 5:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/38 "2003-08-08T05:55:30Z")
Unless this can be reduced to a ten-secound sound bite, the American public probably won’t go for it. Too busy watching the Kobe Bryant trial, don’chaknow…
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### Author:  [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2003, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/39 "2003-08-08T06:09:10Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by elucidator \*
> **Rather than change his opinion in the face of conflicting information, he sought to change the information.**
Lysenko, reincarnated.
---
### Author:  [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2003, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/40 "2003-08-08T18:44:52Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*\*[Pro-Likud network walks through Washington’s corridors of power\*\*](http://www.dailystar.com.lb/08_08_03/art19.asp)
>
> An ad hoc office under US Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith appears to have acted as the key base for an informal network of mostly pro-Likud political appointees that circumvented normal inter-agency channels to lead the push for war against Iraq.
[Fixed coding for link and edited down quoted material for copyright reasons. – MEB]
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