During the '90s, Perle's advocacy of launching a preemptive strike against a country like Iraq, based on what Iraq might do to the U.S., rather than what it had done, was relegated to the fringes of foreign-policy debate. There, the hawkish think-tank fixture was limited to signing off on indignant open letters to President Clinton urging him to take action against Saddam Hussein.

Today, with fellow hawks (i.e. "the string of Perles") in high places throughout the Bush administration, and an unprecedented global war against terror underway, Perle has found his opening. All this despite the fact that no solid link between Saddam and Sept. 11 or the anthrax attacks was ever established. Nor have Perle and his allies been able to provide irrefutable evidence of Iraq's nuclear arsenal.

Critics charge the real objective of Perle and his colleagues is not merely regime-changing in Iraq, but the beginning of a far-reaching American military offensive. "What people are not adequately grasping here is that after Iraq they've got a long list of countries to blow up," says Pike. "Iraq is not the final chapter, it's the opening chapter."

In fact, Perle is a former Cold War warrior who subscribed to the rollback school of deterrence, which meant aggressively trying to roll back, or shrink, the Soviet Union's sphere of influence. Adopted by Ronald Reagan's White House, rollback was why the U.S. helped wage war in Nicaragua: to try to drive communist Sandinistas out. The countervailing strategy for the Soviet Union was containment, which aimed to simply limit its sphere. Pike says Perle and neo-cons have now applied rollback ideology to rogue nations who sponsor terror or possess weapons of mass destruction. But since such nations are not aligned under an umbrella such as communism, it means launching preemptive wars and knocking them off one by one.

Another clear goal of Perle's rollback strategy is to preserve the largest possible territory for the state of Israel. For decades he has been among Israel's strongest, most ardent right-wing allies in Washington.

In July, Perle made waves when he invited Laurent Murawiec, a former follower of political extremist Lyndon LaRouche, to brief the Defense Policy Board about Saudi Arabia. The emphasis of Murawiec's presentation was that the country should be counted among "our enemies," and that, if necessary, the U.S. should threaten Islam's two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina, which are located inside Saudi Arabia.

Embarrassed by the revelation of such fringe, anti-Arab theories being advocated inside the Pentagon, Rumsfeld declared Saudi Arabia a loyal ally, and said that the analyst's view was not U.S. policy. Perle claimed ignorance, insisting he didn't know what Murawiec was going to say.

"The presentation was ludicrous," complains Haddad at Georgetown, who says it nonetheless reflected Perle's bias. "There's not a single Muslim country he likes. All of Perle's arguments are about how to empower Israel, not America."

Perle has often made a habit of mixing his Israeli passions with domestic American politics, often consulting both governments and trying to marry up his hard-line objectives with both. For instance, writing in 1996, Perle emphasized that removing Saddam from power represented "an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right." Today, the Israeli government is alone in the world in publicly backing Bush's talk of war with Iraq.

In 2000, when Prime Minister Ehud Barak, PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and President Clinton were meeting at Camp David, Perle made news when he warned Barak not to let Vice President Al Gore become involved in the peace summit, for fear it would boost Gore's election prospects. He also told Barak to "walk away" from a peace plan if it left the thorny issue of a divided Jerusalem unresolved. Working as an advisor to candidate Bush, Perle warned Barak he would urge the Texas governor to condemn any peace plan that gave the PLO a foothold in Jerusalem. The Bush campaign quickly distanced itself from Perle's remarks.

Even the staunchly pro-Israel New York Post editorial page slapped Perle for his heavy-handed move: "Perle injected an improper note that can only be interpreted as politically motivated interference with the discharge of presidential responsibilities. It's one thing to advise Gov. Bush to oppose an unwise agreement -- it's quite another to press upon a foreign government in advance a negotiating strategy that itself plays into domestic U.S. politics."

While the topic of Israel remains on the periphery of the Iraq debate, there seems to be a growing fear, even within Republican Party and national-security circles, that Perle has won the upper hand in that debate. Republican politicians, statesmen and generals have in recent weeks stepped forward, hoping to plant a stop sign in front of the Defense Policy Board chair and his allies.

The turning point for some may have been the Aug. 16 article in the New York Times that quoted Perle as saying that Bush essentially had no choice now but to attack Iraq: "The failure to take on Saddam after what the president said would produce such a collapse of confidence in the president that it would set back the war on terrorism."

Two days later, Lawrence Eagleburger, who served briefly as secretary of state for President George Bush Sr., complained on national television that Perle was "devious." Hagel, of course, made his suggestion that Perle be sent to fight in Iraq. And conservative columnist George Will, noting the relatively simple scenario Perle routinely outlines for overthrowing Saddam, warned darkly: "If America goes to war on Perle's cheerful surmise, any surprises will not be pleasant ones."

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