Appearing on PBS’s Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg on November 14, 2002, Defense Policy Board Adviser Richard Perle said that “Iraq represented perhaps the best hope for the democratic experiment in an Arab country. ‘I think there is a potential civic culture in Arab countries that can lead to democratic institutions,’ he said, ‘and I think Iraq is probably the best place to put that proposition to the test because it’s a sophisticated educated population that has suffered horribly under totalitarian rule, and there’s a yearning for freedom that, you know, I think we find everywhere in the world but especially in subject populations.’ ”
– Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, America Alone, Page 148