A key element of Perle's regime-changing plan is that it will be a tidy little war, since Hussein's empire is "a house of cards," as Perle recently told a PBS interviewer. He contends that an Iraq invasion could replicate the Afghanistan war; U.S. special operations units would assist rebels inside Iraq much the way the U.S. helped the Northern Alliance topple the Taliban.

"The Iraqi opposition is kind of like an MRE [meal ready to eat, or U.S. Army field ration]," Perle once told U.S. News & World Report. "The ingredients are there and you just have to add water, in this case U.S. support." (Eagleburger recently quipped about Perle's band of much-touted anti-Saddam rebels, "I think there are at least six of them.")

Two weeks ago Marine Corps Gen. James L. Jones called the idea of simply transferring the Northern Alliance blueprint to Iraq "foolish." And Baker wrote in the New York Times that regime-changing in Iraq would have to look an awful lot like the Gulf War, using hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops. Baker didn't mention Perle by name, but the target of this jibe seemed obvious: "Anyone who thinks we can effect regime change in Iraq with anything less than this is simply not realistic. It cannot be done on the cheap."

For years, though, Perle has argued it could be done on the cheap. How many American troops would it take to unseat Saddam? Before Sept. 11, Perle's answer was, in effect, zero. Appearing on ABC in 1998, Perle insisted all America had to do was supply "skillful" air power to protect anti-Saddam forces who, embraced by the Iraqi people and aided by military defectors, could topple him on their own.

That same year he told a reporter that removing Saddam "is not something we should attempt to do with U.S. military force. It is something the Iraqis should do for themselves."

And testifying before Congress in 2000, Perle insisted, "We need not send substantial ground forces into Iraq when patriotic Iraqis are willing to fight to liberate their country, although measured numbers of Special Forces should not be ruled out."

Even though militarily Iraq remains essentially unchanged in 2002, Perle now says tens of thousands of American troops will be needed for the regime change. In a plan of attack leaked to the New York Times last month, unidentified sources said the so-called "inside out attack" would feature American troops swooping down in central Iraq, neutralizing Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, and then attacking outward and conquering the entire country.

About 80,000 troops were needed for the "inside out attack," the Times reported. And according to a United Press International report, the plan was devised in part by Perle.

Eighty-thousand troops? This spring Perle told the Nation's David Corn only 40,000 troops were needed. Yet by comparison, in 1989 the U.S. sent 24,000 troops into Panama City, Panama, to change the regime of Gen. Manuel Noriega. That messy mission took 14 days, even though the U.S. used military bases in Panama, a country of just 2.3 million people at the time of the U.S. invasion. Today, Iraq boasts more than 20 million people and a standing army of 400,000, and the U.S. not only doesn't have bases inside the country, but it has yet to secure the use of any in nearby countries. (In 1991, Bush Sr. was able to use Saudi Arabia.)

There are other similar gaps in Perle's logic. Trying to allay fears of protracted warfare in an Aug. 6, London Daily Telegraph Op-Ed, Perle in one breath dismissed "the competence, morale and ultimate loyalty of [Saddam's] army" as being "a third of what it was in 1991, and it is the same third, 11 years closer to obsolescence." Yet just two paragraphs later, trying to gin up urgency, Perle compared Hussein with Hitler at the height of the Third Reich's mighty military buildup.

The other lingering question about the pending war is what the internal Iraqi reaction to an armed invasion will be. Perle insists that once anti-Saddam forces make their presence felt, Iraqis will welcome the cause and help drive Hussein from power themselves.

Yet nearly a decade ago, as U.S. troops stood poised to battle Iraqi troops in the Gulf War, Perle also predicted that Saddam would be driven from power by his own people and he turned out to be dead wrong.

Interviewed in January 1991 for a television program called "American Interests," Perle told host Morton Kondracke, "There'll be a new leadership in Iraq, I think almost independent of what happens in the next several days. Saddam Hussein promised his people victory, he promised them glory. He's obviously not going to deliver either, and I doubt that they'll keep him in power. So there'll be a new regime in Iraq."

Perle has been wrong about Saddam plenty of times in the past. Days after the USS Cole was bombed by al-Qaida forces in 2000, killing 17 U.S. sailors, Perle, conceding that he had no evidence to support the idea, told the Jerusalem Post that perhaps the Iraqi leader was behind the terrorist attack. (Perle serves on the newspaper's board of directors.)

Likewise, in a 1998 London Sunday Times Op-Ed, Perle complained that the Clinton administration did not vigorously investigate the bombing at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 Americans in 1996. Why? Because, according to Perle, the evidence might have implicated Saddam. Perle also backs up the conspiracy theory advanced by author Laurie Mylroie that Saddam was behind the World Trade Center bombing of 1993 as well. To date, American investigators have not found any evidence that connects him to any of the three terrorist attacks.

Meanwhile, Perle was virtually mum about the threat posed by Osama bin Laden in those years. Despite his many public pleas to overthrow Saddam Hussein, Perle rarely mentioned bin Laden or al-Qaida, according to a Nexis database search covering the last 10 years.

"You will detect little concern about bin Laden before 9/11," says Pike. "The rollback crowd has now wrapped itself in the bloody flag and basically exploited Sept. 11 to advance a lifelong agenda and vision of America's role in the world. Sept. 11 presented a unique historical opportunity to enact that plan, because the subtext of this entire Iraq debate is, 'What is the hurry?' The hurry is, it's much easier to continue fighting a global war than to start one. If America's at peace, an unprovoked attack against the Butcher of Baghdad would be a tough sell."

And even after bin Laden was connected not only with 9/11 but with a string of well-documented terror attacks against America in previous years, Perle told MSNBC's Chris Matthews that Saddam should still be considered more dangerous to America because of what he may one day do.

Of course, Perle's many war plans fall apart under the weight of their inconsistencies. He's never adequately answered the question, for instance, as to what would keep Saddam Hussein, a "psychopathic" madman with weapons of mass destruction, from using those weapons if American troops and Iraqi rebels were storming Baghdad. Perle merely insists the Iraqi strongman wouldn't be able to find a single person in his entire army to carry out such an order -- amazing sang froid from someone who's normally so nervous about Saddam's strength.

And yet Pike thinks Perle is right about one thing: It may well be possible for U.S. forces to overthrow him and keep American causalities limited to the hundreds.

"That's what concerns me," he says. "Because then Perle and his crowd will say, 'That didn't hurt so much, let's blow up Iran and North Korea and Saudi Arabia.' And we'll spend the rest of the decade blowing up countries on a preemptive basis to make us safe."

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