David Wurmser

David Wurmser is a neocon ideologue who advises Dick Cheney on the Middle East. He replaced Eric Edelman as Principal Deputy Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs in the Office of Vice President in September 2003. He previously served as special assistant to John Bolton at the State Department and was a former research fellow on the Middle East at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). His Israeli-born wife Meyrav Wurmser is the co-founder of MEMRI.

Iraq War

In 1996 he co-authored a policy paper for Israel's Likud party urging it to withdraw from the Oslo peace process. The report, titled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm", was published by the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies. It advised the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "to work closely with Turkey and Jordan to contain, destabilize, and roll-back" regional threats, help overthrow Saddam Hussein, and strike "Syrian military targets in Lebanon" and possibly in Syria proper. Other contributors to the report included Richard Perle and Douglas Feith.^[1] Wurmser's 19998 book Tyranny's Ally subsequently served as the blue print for the invasion and occupation of Iraq.^[2]

Allegations of Espionage

Along with Harold Rhode, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, Wurmser was questioned by FBI's counterintelligence investigators about their involvement in passing classified information to the Israel lobby group AIPAC.[3]

Syria in the Crosshairs

In 2000, Wurmser helped draft a document entitled "Ending Syria’s Occupation of Lebanon: the US Role?", which called for a confrontation with the regime in Damascus. The document said that Syria was developing "weapons of mass destruction".^[4]

Target Iran

David Wurmser is part the entrenched group of neocons operating out of the Office of the Vice President who have been leading the charge against Iran. In June 2007 reports of hawkish statements from the VP's office drew sharp rebuke from the head of the IAEA. It was subsequently revealed that the statements were made by Wurmser, who seeks to enlist outside pressure to persuade Bush to use the military option against Iran.^[5]

Affiliations

• American Enterprise Institute
• Institute for Advanced Strategic & Political Studies (Jerusalem) - Director of Research in Strategy and Politics Program (1996)
• Middle East Forum - Member, Lebanon Study Group
• United States Committee for a Free Lebanon
• United States Institute of Peace - Project Officer (1988-94)
• Washington Institute for Near East Policy - Director of Institutional Grants (1994-96)^[6]

References

• Right Web profile of David Wurmser
• ^ Brian Whittaker, US thinktanks give lessons in foreign policy, The Guardian, August 19, 2002
• ^ A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, (Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies 1996)
• ^ Jonathan Cutler, Beyond Incompetence: Washington's War in Iraq, ZNet, April 30, 2006
• ^ Bill Van Auken, The assassination of Rafiq Hariri: who benefited?, World Socialist Web Site, February 17, 2005
• ^ Helene Cooper, Rice denies U.S. is split on dealing with Iran, International Herald Tribune, 1 June 2007
• Toby Harnden, US 'must break Iran and Syria regimes', Daily Telegraph, 5 October 2007