Richard Perle gone from Defense Policy Board

Richard Perle has resigned his position on the Defense Policy Board that he once headed, which ends his formal role as an official adviser to the Pentagon.

There were a number of reasons why the hawkish neoconservative whose admirers nicknamed him "the Prince of Darkness" might have felt pressured to resign. Nick Confessore at the American Prospect's Weblog TAPPED, which has been on Perle's case for a long time, lists a number of them: You Won't Have Richard Perle To Kick Around Any More 02/26/04.

A couple of my favorites (Confessore ironically frames them as questions):

Your paid speaking gig at a fundraiser linked to Mujahedin-e Khalq, an Iranian rebel group officially listed by the State Department as a terrorist organization? ...

Your decision to invite Laurent Murawiec, a former disciple of Lyndon LaRouche who favors seizing Saudi Arabia's oil fields, to address the Defense Policy Board?

And he links to this earlier TAPPED post from 2002: There He Goes Again 11/21/02.

Last month, Richard Perle, chairman of a Pentagon civilian advisory board, told Gerhard Schroeder, chancellor of Germany, that Schroeder should resign his position for opposing war in Iraq. Now, according to the London Mirror, Perle is telling the British parliament that the U.S. will invade Iraq even if weapons inspectors give Saddam Hussein a "clean bill of health." What's funny is that this is what liberals who oppose the war -- and who have read Jay Bookman's excellent article on Perle & Co.'s vision for American hegemony -- have suspected all along. What is this man doing talking to British MPs?