The opposing view, argued by Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and a number of influential Department of Defense policy makers such as Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, held that direct and unilateral action was both possible and justified and that America should embrace the opportunities for democracy and security offered by its position as sole remaining superpower.

It also contains the notion of military pre-eminence that was reflected in a Department of Defense paper of 1992, " Defense Policy Guidance ", prepared by two principal authors ( Paul Wolfowitz and I. Lewis Libby ) working under then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney.

In November 2001, he was one of the first politicians to call for an invasion of Iraq and held talks in Washington, DC, with senior US officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and Paul Wolfowitz.

" Donald Rumsfeld in his interview with Fox News on February 8, 2011 said that Wolfowitz was the first to bring up Iraq after the 9 / 11 attacks during a meeting at the presidential retreat at Camp David.

The second child of Jacob Wolfowitz ( 1910 – 1981 ) and Lillian Dundes, Paul Wolfowitz was born in Brooklyn, New York, into a Polish Jewish immigrant family, and grew up mainly in Ithaca, New York, where his father was a professor of statistical theory at Cornell University.

In August 1963, he and his mother participated in the civil-rights march on Washington organized by Martin Luther King, Jr. Wolfowitz was a member of the Quill and Dagger society.

In the summer of 1969, Wohlstetter arranged for his students Wolfowitz, Wilson, and Richard Perle to join the Committee to Maintain a Prudent Defense Policy which was set up by Cold War architects Paul Nitze and Dean Acheson.

From 1970 to 1972, Wolfowitz taught in the Department of Political Science at Yale University, where one of his students was I. Lewis " Scooter " Libby.

Based on the recommendation of Richard Perle, Pipes picked Wolfowitz for this committee, which was later called Team B.

Wolfowitz broke from this official line by denouncing Saddam Hussein of Iraq at a time when Donald Rumsfeld was offering the dictator support in his conflict with Iran.

'" Other areas where Wolfowitz disagreed with the administration was in his opposition to attempts to open up dialogue with the Palestine Liberation Organization ( PLO ) and to the sale of Airborne Warning and Control System ( AWACS ) aircraft to Saudi Arabia.

Mann stresses: " It was on China that Wolfowitz launched his boldest challenge to the established order.

" Instead, on June 25, 1982, George P. Shultz replaced Haig as U. S. Secretary of State, and Wolfowitz was promoted.

From 1986 to 1989, during the military-backed government of President Suharto, Wolfowitz was the U. S. Ambassador to the Republic of Indonesia.

According to Peter J. Boyer, Wolfowitz ’ s appointment to Indonesia was not an immediately obvious match.

But Wolfowitz ’ s tenure as Ambassador was a notable success, largely owing to the fact that, in essence, he went native.

" Dewi Fortuna Anwar, a foreign policy adviser to B J Habibie, Suharto's successor as head of state ( 1998 – 1999 ), stated " that Wolfowitz was a competent and popular envoy.

Officials involved in the AID program during Wolfowitz's tenure told The Washington Post that he " took a keen personal interest in development, including health care, agriculture and private sector expansion " and that " Wolfowitz canceled food assistance to the Indonesian government out of concern that Suharto's family, which had an ownership interest in the country's only flour mill, was indirectly benefiting.

Wolfowitz was present with Cheney, Colin Powell and others, on 27 February 1991 at the meeting with the President where it was decided that the troops should be demobilised.

On February 25, 1998, Wolfowitz testified before a congressional committee that he thought that " the best opportunity to overthrow Saddam was, unfortunately, lost in the month right after the war.

" Wolfowitz added that he was horrified in March as " Saddam Hussein flew helicopters that slaughtered the people in the south and in the north who were rising up against him, while American fighter pilots flew overhead, desperately eager to shoot down those helicopters, and not allowed to do so.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz ( left ) and Jones at press conference on Jones ' assumption of command of EUCOM.

In 1972, Wolfowitz earned a Ph. D. in political science from the University of Chicago, writing his doctoral dissertation on " nuclear proliferation in the Middle East ".

After the 2002 Bali bombing, on October 18, 2002, then Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz observed that " the reason the terrorists are successful in Indonesia is because the Suharto regime fell and the methods that were used to suppress them are gone.

" with Wolfowitz adding that Iraq was a " brittle, oppressive regime that might break easily — it was doable ," and, according to John Kampfner, " from that moment on, he and Wolfowitz used every available opportunity to press the case.

Ten months later, on January 15, 2003, with hostilities still continuing, Wolfowitz made a fifteen-hour visit to the Afghan capital, Kabul, and met with the new president Hamid Karzai.

Prior to the invasion, Wolfowitz actively championed it, as he later stated: " For reasons that have a lot to do with the U. S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason "

Two days after Shinseki testified, Wolfowitz said to the House Budget Committee on February 27, 2003: There has been a good deal of comment — some of it quite outlandish — about what our postwar requirements might be in Iraq.

Wolfowitz and his DOD staffers escaped unharmed and returned to the United States on October 28, 2003.

" Press conference at G8 Summit ( Paul Wolfowitz standing at rear on right )

In a debate on the proposed Governance and Anti-Corruption Strategy at the Bank's 2006 Annual Meetings, shareholders directed Wolfowitz to undertake extensive consultations and revise the strategy to show how objective measures of corruption would be incorporated into decisions and how the shareholders ' representatives on the Bank's Board would play a key role.

Sidney Blumenthal also reported on the letter Clare Wolfowitz wrote:

According to the London Sunday Times on March 20, 2005, despite their cultural differences, " Riza, an Arab feminist who confounds portrayals of Wolfowitz as a leader of a ' Zionist conspiracy ' of Jewish neoconservatives in Washington ... who works as the bank ’ s senior gender co-ordinator for the Middle East and north Africa ... not only shares Wolfowitz ’ s passion for spreading democracy in the Arab world, but is said to have reinforced his determination to remove Saddam Hussein ’ s oppressive regime.

Wolfowitz referred to the controversy concerning his relationship with Riza in a statement posted on the website of the World Bank at the time ( April 12, 2007 ).

Wolfowitz failed, on April 19, 2007, to attend a high-profile meeting and the controversy led to disruption at the World Bank when some employees wore blue ribbons " in a display of defiance against his leadership.

Other current board members include Kenneth Adelman, Farooq Kathwari, Azar Nafisi, Mark Palmer, P. J. O ' Rourke, and Lawrence Lessig, while past board-members have included Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Samuel Huntington, Mara Liasson, Otto Reich, Donald Rumsfeld, Whitney North Seymour, Paul Wolfowitz, Steve Forbes, and Bayard Rustin.

On April 11, 2007, Reuters and Al Kamen in The Washington Post, reported that Wolfowitz and the World Bank board had hired the Williams & Connolly law firm to oversee an investigation into the leaking of internal bank documents to Fox News.

World Bank Group's board of executive directors and staffers complained also that Wolfowitz was imposing Bush Administration policies to eliminate family planning from World Bank programs.

Wolfowitz appeared before the World Bank Group's board of executive directors to respond on May 15.

Adams speculated that " With Mr Wolfowitz so far refusing to step down, the board may need to take radical action to break the stalemate.

On May 17, 2007 the World Bank Group's board of Executive Directors announced that Paul Wolfowitz would resign as World Bank Group president at the end of June 2007.