During Clinton's adminstration, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Pearle, Rumsfeld - all the name you know and admire, formed the Project for a New American Century.

You can read their detailed plan to preserve the "pax americana" as they called it.

You can read about how they advocated the need for a "transformational laboratory" and then you'll understand why we're fighting in Iraq the way we are/were - few troops, rapid advance, etc...-

You can read how 9/11 was used to get the project going once they were in power again - they were waiting for it - "Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor." (page 51)

You can see how everybody's role was planned out 8 years before Bush took office - the details ensuring the American world-wide hegemony.

They've taken down a lot of their document recently, but the document below is the detailed plan they devised and published just before assuming power.

• PNAC - where it all began