Newt Gingrich, the former Republican Speaker of the House, told students and faculty at the University of South Dakota Monday that the United States should pull out of Iraq and leave a small force there, just as it did post-war in Korea and Germany. "It was an enormous mistake for us to try to occupy that country after June of 2003," Gingrich said during a question-and-answer session at the school. "We have to pull back, and we have to recognize it."

Newt was a hawk on Iraq.

Another tactic Secretary Rumsfeld used to circumvent the established professional intelligence apparatus of the executive branch was his reliance on the Defense Policy Board..The DPB was chaired by Richard Perle, a hawk on Iraq and former member of the Reagan administration. In Perle's judgement, the CIA's judgments about Iraq "isn't worth the paper it is written on." The Board also contained other high visibility hawks on Iraq, such as James Woolsey and Newt Gingrich, as well as a range of other former defense officials not necessarily committed to war with Iraq.

Here's more:

With the election of George W. Bush, Newt Gingrich was tapped to serve on the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, a much maligned think tank for the Defense Department that is dominated by neoconservatives and has been criticized because of the perceived conflicts of interests of its members, many of whom have strong ties to defense contractors that could benefit from sensitive information gleaned at policy board meetings. Gingrich is one of only eight Hoover fellows with seats on the 31-member board.

Newt joined the group on 8/16/2001. He was a member until 1/10/2006.

Newt was a supporter of the War in Iraq from the get-go after 9/11.

On Sept. 19 and 20, the Defense Policy Board, a prestigious bipartisan board of national security experts that advises the Pentagon, met for 19 hours to discuss the ramifications of the attacks of Sept. 11. The members of the group agreed on the need to turn to Iraq as soon as the initial phase of the war against Afghanistan and Mr. bin Laden and his organization is over, people familiar with the meetings said. Both Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Mr. Wolfowitz took part in the meetings for part of both days.

....''If we don't use this as the moment to replace Saddam after we replace the Taliban, we are setting the stage for disaster,'' Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House and a member of the group, said in an interview.

Here's Newt last month speaking about Iran:

Some Republicans, though, say a military attack may be required if only to set back Iran's nuclear program a few years.

"Every year that we wait, the risk increases," said former House speaker Newt Gingrich, a member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board. "I would hope that the administration would decide to do something decisive. . . . We have the military power in the region if we need it. It's a question of whether we have the will."