http://www.newsmax.com/showinsidecover.shtml?a=2002/10/7/92650
NewsMax.com, Monday, Oct. 7, 2002 9:28 a.m. EDT

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd was on the hot seat Monday morning for a paragraph buried deep in her Sunday column where she seemed to blame "influential Jewish conservatives" for persuading President Bush to go to war in Iraq.

"Influential Jewish conservatives inside and outside the administration have been fierce in supporting a war on Saddam, thinking it could help Israel by scrambling the Middle East map and encouraging democracy," contended the Irish Catholic liberal.

Dowd's suggestion that Jews in the Bush administration were putting Israel's interests over the U.S.'s raised eyebrows on the "Imus in the Morning" program.

Asked about the Times columnist's "influential Jewish conservatives" reference, Newsweek's Howard Fineman, a Dowd soulmate, insisted, "Maureen Dowd doesn't have an anti-Semitic bone in her body."

But moments later, when NBC Pentagon reporter Jim Miklaszewski was asked to explain what he thought Dowd meant by the remark, he said she was talking about a "what many would call a cabal within the administration."

IMUS: Who are these Jews 'Mo' Dowd's referring to as influencing Bush on the war? Wolfowitz? Richard Perle? Who?

MIKLASZEWSKI: Well, certainly there's that - what many would call a cabal within the administration - of not only those who are very much in favor of going into Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein a la an invasion - and one of the strongest voices within the administration, of course, is Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. (End of Excerpt)

In the next breath, however, Miklaszewski suggested that it was wrong to single out Bush administration Jews for supporting that war, reminding Imus, "But, you know, Secretary Rumsfeld is clearly part of that crowd too, as is Vice President Dick Cheney."

"Bush is waging terrorism"
Filmmaker Michael Moore - Mirror, London, Mar 24, 2003, p. 12