Ex-Bush speechwriter: I was to provide a justification for war

In late December 2001, chief presidential speechwriter Mike Gerson "was parcelling out the components of the forthcoming State of the Union speech. His request to me," recalls David Frum in his new book The White House in The Right Time: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush, "could not have been simpler: I was to provide a justification for a war."

And so was born the phrase "the axis of evil."

In September, 2000, Dick Cheney, now vice-president, along with his current chief of staff Lewis Libby, and Donald Rumsfeld, now Secretary of Defense, along with his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, laid out a plan to create a new American century, in which the United States would be supreme in the world, the first truly global empire.

The plan adumbrated regime change in Iraq, that is, the installation of a US puppet regime in Baghdad.

The events of 9/11 were pressed into service to provide the trigger.

Within hours of hijacked jets careening into the World Trade Centre and Pentagon, Rumsfeld was ordering his staff to find something that could be used to pin the blame on Iraq.