Dear Mr. President: we are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War. In your upcoming State of the Union Address, you have an opportunity to chart a clear and determined course for meeting this threat. We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world. That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power.

So begins a letter from Project for a New American Century to Bill Clinton, dated January 1998. It's worth going back to this now we're into year six of the Iraq war. The one lesson I learned from the whole saga was this: there's no need for conspiracies. You can publish your intentions on a website, say the opposite in public, and no-one will care. Truth won't out.

In the run-up to the war, Blair and Bush repeatedly claimed that regime change was not the aim, and that - even right up until the last moment - Hussein had it within his power to stop the war. That's what I found most terrifying - listening to Blair parrot Bush, when I could go to a public website and read, plain as day, the neocons' policy for regime change and the reasons for it. Written by the neocons themselves. They haven't even got the shame to take it down. First, let's look at a few of the letter signatories who did well for themselves under Bush -

• Donald Rumsfeld - ended up secretary of defence
• Richard Perle - chairman of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee leading up to and during the war; the committee 'helps the pentagon to formulate policy'
• Paul Wolfowitz - deputy secretary of defence, and chief neocon lunatic
• John Bolton - 'Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security' and, later, UN ambassador

That'll probably do. Now some more from that letter:

It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil will all be put at hazard. As you have rightly declared, Mr. President, the security of the world in the first part of the 21st century will be determined largely by how we handle this threat.

Note: PNAC were not in government. They had no direct access to intelligence. Their main concern here is the strategic risks from uncertainty. They then hammer the point in a few more times:

The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.

We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts. Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater. We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.

We urge you to act decisively. If you act now to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. or its allies, you will be acting in the most fundamental national security interests of the country. If we accept a course of weakness and drift, we put our interests and our future at risk.

Their follow-up letter to Newt Gingrich gets to the nub of it, though. If nothing is done -

- we will have suffered an incalculable blow to American leadership and credibility; we will have sustained a significant defeat in our worldwide efforts to limit the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Other nations seeking to arm themselves with such weapons will have learned that the U.S. lacks the resolve to resist their efforts.

They reiterate:

U.S. policy should have as its explicit goal removing Saddam Hussein's regime from power and establishing a peaceful and democratic Iraq in its place.

American leadership and credibility: that's the key, I think. PNAC's members believed America needed to waggle its willy about a bit, in order to remind the world just how big it was. Other countries might start to think they could push the US around. This was reflected in some of the wonderfully 'boy's toy's', yet properly scary, documents coming out of the Defense Department during Rumsfeld's reign: full spectrum dominance; the James Bond villain phrase 'control of the new international commons of space and cyberspace' - a 21st century military techno-miasma that would forever keep all potential power rivals in their place. Rebuilding America's Defenses (PDF) was the template for this, containing the now-famous 'pearl harbour' line that got conspiracies nuts so excited. A shame - because the document's real revelation is the insight it gives into the neocon mind, a far more scary place than any conspiratorial cabal. At least they have the decency to be honestly scurrilous. Examples:

Today, the United States has an unprecedented strategic opportunity. It faces no immediate great-power challenge; it is blessed with wealthy, powerful and democratic allies in every part of the world; it is in the midst of the longest economic expansion in its history; and its political and economic principles are almost universally embraced. At no time in history has the international security order been as conducive to American interests and ideals. The challenge for the coming century is to
preserve and enhance this 'American peace.'

The post-Cold War world will not remain a relatively peaceful place if we continue to neglect foreign and defense matters. But serious attention, careful thought, and the willingness to devote adequate resources to maintaining America’s military strength can make the world safer and American strategic interests more secure now and in the future.

Along with all the full spectrum stuff, this would include being able to 'fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars'.

That's the great irony: past lessons of empire over-reach seemed to pass the PNACs by entirely. But these were ideologues, and they had the classic ideological mindset: total belief in the indivisible unity of US and world interests, where American power and global 'moxy and freem' were one and the same, and a fascistic commitment to making a world in their image. Their actual achievement was exactly the opposite: exactly the kind of castrated US they hoped to rescue. They broke America. If the past is anything to go by, it'll be the perfect moment over the next decade or so for China to get its hegemonic thing on.

But back to PNAC. A bunch of people who ended up running the Bush administration wrote a letter saying they wanted US policy to be 'removing Saddam Hussein's regime from power and establishing a peaceful and democratic Iraq in its place'. They get into power, and they do it. Sorry - they do the first part. But they tell everyone that wasn't their aim, they did it reluctantly, and Hussein could have saved himself at any time by complying with inspectors. That isn't true. It's... I don't know how to say this... they... wrote it down. Their plan. On a website. Am I missing something here?

I don't think I am. That's why I say conspiracies are dead. People in power don't need them. They can say what they like, and change what they say over and over, and it won't matter. There's no power to remove them for telling incredibly enormous whoppers. They can sail along happily between the armchair-outraged like myself and the vast majority of people who think 'politicians always lie, so what's the big deal?' Conspiracy nuts carry on fucking about in their various fantasy worlds, sacrificing the importance of the real lies for their stoned paranoid Hollywood versions of reality. Gordon Brown says there'll be an inquiry when the troops come home; the troops sit in their base while Basra goes to war, doing nothing.

In the meantime, A US Iraq War veteran tell us about his 'choking hand' (a tattoo on his right wrist of the Arabic words for 'fuck you'), and that a 'fire-free zone' in Abu Graib led to 800 deaths, but no-one seemed to find any actual fighters among the dead - just men, women and children. And predator drones get busy in Pakistan before the new administration can call a halt. I guess there's plenty of reasons to carry on being angry. But I'm really not sure what to do in a world where PNAC can put its letters on the internet for all to see.