“A tight-knit group of Pentagon officials and defense experts outside government is working to mobilize support for a military operation to oust President Saddam Hussein of Iraq as the next phase of the war against terrorism, senior [Bush] administration officials and defense experts said. The group, which some in the State Department and on Capitol Hill refer to as the ‘Wolfowitz cabal,’ after Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz, is laying the groundwork for a strategy that envisions the use of air support and the occupation of southern Iraq with American ground troops to install a Iraqi opposition group based in London at the helm of a new government, the officials and experts said.”
– Elaine Sciolino and Patrick E. Tyler, “Some Pentagon Officials and Advisers Seek to Oust Iraq’s Leader in War’s Next Phase,” The New York Times, Oct. 12, 2001