Let the Marketing Begin!

In fact, "it is the link with Cheney that is the strongest, leading to the widespread view that the organization is in effect his own creature", as, in September 2007, "it emerged that Cheney had asked a number of right-wing think tanks to start building the case for war against Iran."[4]

Freedom's Watch has been described by critics as a front group for White House policy and a "neo-conservative 'slush fund' supporting the views of Vice President Dick Cheney",[4][5] "came out of" a December 2006 "event"[6] at the American Enterprise Institute when retired Gen. Jack Keane and AEI scholar Frederick W. Kagan "talk[ed] about the need for a troop increase in Iraq, "a plan adopted by" President George W. Bush in January 2007.[7]

Freedom's Watch, the "$200 million mouthpiece for military action",[8] was "hatched" in March 2007[7] at the "winter meeting" of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) in Manalapan, Fla., where keynote speaker Vice President Dick Cheney[7][9] "accused the Democrat-led House of Representatives of not supporting troops in Iraq and of sending a message to terrorists that America will retreat in the face danger."[10][11] The RJC was described in 2005 as "a big money pro-Israel lobby group[12] linking Jewish-American neoconservatives to the Christian Right and Israel's Likud government."[13][7][14]

Freedom's Watch "denies coordinating its activities with the White House", Don Van Natta Jr. wrote September 30, 2007, in the New York Times, although "many donors and organizers, including Ari Fleischer, the former White House press secretary, are well-connected" to the Bush administration.[7] It should also be noted that in November 1998 the Republican Jewish Coalition took then-Texas Governor George W. Bush on his first tour of Israel, with "the 43rd president [emerging] as one of the most pro-Israel figures in American political history."[13][15][16][17]