In A Time to Lead: For Duty, Honor and Country, Gen. Wesley Clark , remembers two visits to the Pentagon: the first one, two weeks after 9/11, yielded a bit of gossip from one of his fellow generals, who told him that the invasion of Iraq had already “basically” been decided on. The second visit, six weeks later, revealed more shocking news from the same source. Clark asked if the Iraq invasion plan was still on, and the answer he got was chilling:

“‘Oh, it’s worse than that,’ he said, holding up a memo on his desk. ‘Here’s the paper from the Office of the Secretary of Defense [then Donald Rumsfeld] outlining the strategy. We’re going to take out seven countries in five years.’ And he named them, starting with Iraq and Syria and ending with Iran.”

Clark doesn’t name the other four countries: any guesses?