Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board Meeting of September 19-20, 2001
The lines were already drawn, and this meeting set the course for the Iraq invasion. Powell was excluded while Chalabi was invited to speak. The neocon members of the group wrote a letter, published on Sept. 20 in the Washington Times under the name of PNAC. Perle, the chairman of this board, signed the letter.

The PNAC Letter to Bush Sept. 20, Washington Times
Drafted by a sub-group of the Defense-Policy-Board meeting of Sept. 19-20. Bin Laden was then known to be responsible and Chalabi admitted there was as yet no evidence linking Iraq to 9/11. Powell was excluded, so the letter takes great pains to make it seem that he agrees.

The authors appear to have little interest in bin Laden but are afraid of appearing to have an agenda unrelated to the present crisis. So bin Laden is mentioned first, but given only two sentences—65 words, compared with 154 for Iraq and 127 for Hezbollah, Israel’s nemesis.

Aside from the two sentences on Osama, the letter is unified by its focus on enemies of Israel: Iraq, Hezbollah, Syria, Iran and the Palestinian Authority, while it ignores entirely the two states most likely to supply bin Laden with nuclear weapons, North Korea and Pakistan.

There is nothing wrong with concern about Israel’s enemies, but nine days after 9/11 the U.S. Defense Policy Board should have been focusing on the threat to the U.S. homeland. U.S. Intelligence had already learned of two Pakistani nuclear nuclear scientists meeting with bin Laden, and the anthrax attacks were not far off.

What were they thinking to give Hezbollah double the attention of bin Laden? They were thinking of their long-standing goal to remove Saddam and of 9/11 only as pretext.