James Woolsey, influential neocon and Iraq War booster, dies at 84

James Woolsey, influential neocon and Iraq War booster, dies at 84 R. James “Jim” Woolsey, a major Iraq and GWOT promoter (militarist-monitor.org › james woolsey) and neoconservative Democrat, passed away Tuesday at 84.Woolsey served briefly as CIA director but rose to much greater prominence as a consistent promoter on television and in the Wall Street Journal’s op-ed pages (wsj.com › SB1003364670962645800) of both the Iraq War and the broader Global War on Terror, which he sometimes referred to as “World War IV.” (cnn.com › sprj.irq.woolsey.world) Indeed, immediately after the 9/11 attacks, Woolsey was ubiquitous (lobelog.com › and then there was woolsey) in arguing that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein not only was linked to al-Qaeda but may very well have approved or helped plan the plot himself.After being forced out of his CIA director role by President Bill Clinton in 1994, Woolsey moved increasingly to the right, as noted in a generally respectful obituary (nytimes.com › james woolsey dead) published by the New York Times Wednesday, joining with the Washington-based Likudist neoconservatives led by the “Dark Prince” himself, Richard Perle (ebay.com) of the American Enterprise Institute (militarist-monitor.org › american enterprise institute) (AEI).Woolsey, an engaging if rather glib speaker who never seemed to run out of words, became a key part of what George Mason University anthropologist Janine Wedel identified (amazon.com › B003STCNSW) as the “Neocon Core” in the years running up to and following the Iraq War and the GWOT. That included the promotion of confrontation with Syria and Iran as well as other states deemed hostile to Israel, and, hence, in their view, to the United States, as well.That 11-member core, according to Wedel, included men who would hold key posts under President George W. Bush, among them Bush’s future deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz (militarist-monitor.org › paul wolfowitz); his undersecretary of defense, Douglas Feith (militarist-monitor.org › douglas feith); his director for Near East policy on the National Security Council, Elliott Abrams (militarist-monitor.org › elliott abrams); and Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff and national security adviser, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby (militarist-monitor.org › lewis libby).All of these men served on a variety of overlapping boards of major Washington-based organizations and think tanks that aligned themselves with Israel’s right-wing Likud Party. Together, these groups acted as a remarkably effective media echo chamber after 9/11 and in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, particularly in spreading mis- or disinformation about Saddam’s alleged development of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction programs and ties to al-Qaeda.In addition to Perle and the rest of AEI’s foreign policy wing staff, they included groups such as the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (militarist-monitor.org) (recently renamed the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, or JINSA); the Center for Security Policy (militarist-monitor.org › center for security policy) (CSP); the more moderate Washington Institute for Near East Policy (militarist-monitor.org › washington institute for near east policy) (WINEP), a spin-off of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee; and the Project for the New American Century (militarist-monitor.org › project for the new american century) (PNAC), a letterhead organization that promoted U.S. global hegemony and regime change in Middle Eastern countries considered hostile to Israel.Woolsey was involved in nearly a