Wednesday, January 9th, 2008
Flashback
What Wolfowitz Really Said by William Kristol
As for Tanenhaus’s suggestion that Wolfowitz somehow fessed up that the war had a hidden, “unnoticed but huge” agenda–rationalizing a pre-planned troop withdrawal from Saudi Arabia–we refer you, again, to the actual interview. In an earlier section of the conversation, concerning the current, postwar situation in the Middle East, Wolfowitz explained that the United States needs to get post-Saddam Iraq “right,” and that we also need “to get some progress on the Israeli-Palestinian issue,” which now looks more promising. Then Wolfowitz said this:
There are a lot of things that are different now, and one that has gone by almost unnoticed–but it’s huge–is that by complete mutual agreement between the U.S. and the Saudi government we can now remove almost all of our forces from Saudi Arabia. Their presence there over the last 12 years has been a source of enormous difficulty for a friendly government. . . . I think just lifting that burden from the Saudis is itself going to open the door to other positive things.
Tags: weeklystandard.com, Wolfowitz, William Kristol, Iraq, Saudi Arabia
