The following is the result of research done on the internet, reading
periodicals and books, viewing C-SPAN etc. which began one year prior to the
invasion of Iraq. In doing the research it
became apparently clear that a group of individuals within and outside of the
U.S. government were influencing the direction of our foreign policy not to our
benefit but for the benefit of a foreign country. Some allegedly profited from the war. Many of these individuals had
dual
loyalties, one to the U.S.(weak) and the other to a
foreign nation (strong).
The irony of it all is that these
individuals have not been brought to account for their complicity in taking us
to war. Instead, they have either resigned from their government positions (Douglas
Feith , Richard
Perle) or been appointed to a new job such as the head of the World
Bank(Paul
Wolfowitz). Some have taken on a low profile while others, now
that the U.S. pre-emptive invasion of Iraq has met with insurmountable
obstacles, are still appearing on TV
talk shows, C-SPAN, writing Op-Ed pieces etc. trying to justify
their positions on the invasion of Iraq and casting
the blame for the failure on our military leaders. They cannot save
their discredited and bloodstained ideology; they can only try saving certain
individuals(Lewis
Scooter Libby) from spending a good deal of time behind
bars where they belong. If they succeed then justice will not have been
served.
As one radio talk show host stated that these neocons should be held liable for their mistakes similar to a surgeon who recommends an operation and due to his incompetence makes a mistake and the patient either dies or is crippled for life. These neocons should be tried for dereliction of duty, malfeasance in office and manslaughter in the second degree .
Read the following and decide for yourself if what I have found does or does not support my thesis.The
genesis of the war on Iraq
Or
How the
neocons hijacked the “war on terror”
Last
update 10 / 30 / 07
“a passionate attachment of
one nation for another produces a variety of
evils”
George
Washington
The war against Iraq has polarized Americans before the first shot was
fired. And as the war was brought home with nonstop frontline images, the lines
between pro- and anti-war have solidified, especially as U.S. and coalition
forces began to take casualties in the “post war insurrection”.
Polls show the
sharpest dividing line between those who support U.S. policy in Iraq and those
who oppose it is between Republicans and Democrats. The war in Iraq has
divided America like nothing since Vietnam, and that the hate we once
reserved for terrorists we are now spewing at one
another.
We have spent a
fortune attacking a country that had done us no harm, killing tens of
thousands of its people and giving the United States a black eye as an aggressor
that starts wars on the basis of lies and disinformation. Two years (3/20/2003) after the invasion of Iraq, discontent with
America and its policies has intensified rather than
diminished.
In an article in USA
Today James Webb, a
Marine platoon and company commander in Vietnam whom Ronald Reagan named as his
secretary of the Navy wrote
–“ Bush arguably has committed the greatest strategic blunder in modern
memory. To put it bluntly, he attacked the wrong target. While he boasts of
removing Saddam Hussein from power, he did far more than that. He decapitated
the government of a country that was not directly threatening the United States
and, in so doing, bogged down a huge percentage of our military in a region that
never has known peace.”
And with criticism mounting as the conflict became
more bloody, President Bush has found himself defending, time and again, on how the
war on terror led to Baghdad.
The question is often raised as to-
Q: What role should U.S.
citizens play?
A: It's really essential
that Americans take an
interest in learning about how this war began. That's really their
citizenship duty; otherwise they may see their sons and daughters coming home in
pine boxes. At the end of the day, though, it's the November elections that will
determine the course of the war.
Hopefully those of you who
take the time to read this web page will gain some insight as to who, what and
why led this nation to war.
In tracing
the roots of America's war in Iraq
I decided to do some research on the Internet to try to learn
the truth as to why and how president Bush and his administration arrived at
making the decision to invade Iraq. I focused on a very influential group of
individuals who were brought in to the administration by V.P. Dick Cheney who
are often referred to as neoconservatives
or “neocons”. They said that the invasion would be a “cakewalk”
and the Iraqis would
greet our troops with flowers. How could such a small group of individuals
wield so much power in influencing U.S. foreign policy? Individuals, many of
whom, had as one of
their prime reasons for the invasion, which was to protect the ally
Israel, and not because Iraq was a threat to the U.S.
18. The
wars’ aftermath. Civil War or Civil Society?
19. Neocon
whitewash?
20. The Generals
Speak Out
21. Where Is the
Exit Strategy?
22. The truth is
finally being told. (Reporters with gullions!)
23. The "Israel Lobby" and its influence on U.S. foreign
policy vis-à-vis Israel
24. Post-war
Iraq.
25. Postscript
.
26. The Real Iraq We Knew
.
27. Last Goodbye: US Soldiers from Iraq War
.
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/tonkin-g.htm
http://www.luminet.net/~tgort/tonkin.htm
http://www.fair.org/media-beat/940727.html
The 1991
Gulf war
U.S. Ambassador to Iraq April
Glaspie’s response to Saddam Hussein
It is
possible to ague, however (and many have done so), that Glaspie's statements
that "We have no opinion on your Arab - Arab conflicts" and that "the Kuwait
issue is not associated with America" were interpreted by Saddam as giving tacit
approval of his annexation of Kuwait. Since it is not now possible to know what
was in Saddam's mind, this matter cannot be resolved. Saddam was a dictator who
had never visited a western country, and who lived a in a world where disputes
were routinely resolved by force. It is therefore quite possible that he wrongly
interpreted Glaspie's remarks.
It seems unlikely that
Saddam would have invaded Kuwait had he been given an explicit warning that such
an invasion would be met with force by the United States, but Glaspie can only
be criticised for not giving such a warning if it can be established that she
knew that Saddam was planning an invasion. There is nothing in the transcripts
to suggest this.
The most that can be
argued is that, given the Iraqi troop build-up in the Kuwait border area, she
should have been instructed by the State Department to give Saddam an explicit
warning. Glaspie later testified that she had given Saddam such a
warning, but no mention of this appears in the published transcripts. This is
hardly surprising since these transcripts were released to further Iraq's ends.
Edward Mortimer wrote
in the New York Review of Books in September 1991: "It seems [likely]
that Saddam Hussein went ahead with the invasion because he believed the US
would not react with anything more than verbal condemnation. That was an
inference he could well have drawn from his meeting with US Ambassador April
Glaspie on July 25, and from statements by State Department officials in
Washington at the same time publicly disavowing any US security commitments to
Kuwait."
Iraq,
Iran, and September 11: A Chronology
by Jacob G.
Hornberger, December 19,
2002
Glaspie had given Saddam
a green light
The Iraqi Government still insists that April Glaspie met with Saddam Hussein in 1990 before his invasion of Kuwait. Glaspie "...was informed of Iraq's plans and gave her de facto approval." America and April Glaspie flatly deny this accusation: "Obviously, I didn't think, and nobody else did, that the Iraqis were going to take all of Kuwait. -- Former Ambassador April Glaspie, in response to accusations that the U.S. invited Saddam Hussein to take Kuwait" 4
In a May 27, 1999 Christian Science Monitor article, Carleton Cole writes, "...from a translation of Iraq's transcript of the meeting, released that September, press and pundits concluded that Ms. Glaspie had (in effect) given Saddam a green light to invade."
"We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts," the transcript reports Glaspie saying, "...such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary [of State James] Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction...that Kuwait is not associated with America."
U.S. Ambassador Glaspie - We have no opinion on your Arab - Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary (of State James) Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960's, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America. (Saddam smiles)
On August 2, 1990 four days later, Saddam's massed troops invade and occupy Kuwait. _____
http://www..whatreallyhappened.com/ARTICLE5/april.html
In war, some facts
less factual
Some US assertions from the last war on Iraq still appear dubious.
| Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
September 06,
2002
More recently, in the fall of
1990, members of Congress and the American public were swayed by the tearful
testimony of a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, known only as
Nayirah.
In the girl's testimony
before a congressional caucus, well-documented in MacArthur's book "Second
Front" and elsewhere, she described how, as a volunteer in a Kuwait maternity
ward, she had seen Iraqi troops storm her hospital, steal the incubators, and
leave 312 babies "on the cold floor to die."
Seven US Senators later
referred to the story during debate; the motion for war passed by just five
votes In
the weeks after Nayirah spoke, President Bush senior invoked the incident five
times, saying that such "ghastly atrocities" were like "Hitler
revisited."
But just weeks before the US
bombing campaign began in January, a few press reports began to raise questions
about the validity of the incubator tale.
Later, it was learned that
Nayirah was in fact the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington and had
no connection to the Kuwait hospital.
She had been coached – along
with the handful of others who would "corroborate" the story – by senior
executives of Hill and Knowlton in Washington, the biggest global PR firm at the
time, which had a contract worth more than $10 million with the Kuwaitis to make
the case for war.
"We didn't know it wasn't
true at the time," Brent Scowcroft, Bush's national security adviser, said of
the incubator story in a 1995 interview with the London-based Guardian
newspaper. He acknowledged "it was useful in mobilizing public
opinion."
How the public relations industry sold
the Gulf War to the U.S. -- The mother of all
clients
US Congressman Jimmy Hayes of Louisiana -- a conservative Democrat who supported the Gulf War -- later estimated that the government of Kuwait funded as many as 20 PR, law and lobby firms in its campaign to mobilize US opinion and force against Hussein.4 Participating firms included the Rendon Group, which received a retainer of $100,000 per month for media work, and Neill & Co., which received $50,000 per month for lobbying Congress.
Hill & Knowlton (H&K), then the world's
largest PR firm, served as mastermind for the Kuwaiti campaign. It's activities
alone would have constituted the largest foreign-funded campaign ever aimed at
manipulating American public opinion. By law, the Foreign Agents Registration
Act should have exposed this propaganda campaign to the American people, but the
Justice Department chose not to enforce it. Nine days after Saddam's army
marched into Kuwait, the Emir's government agreed to fund a contract under which
Hill & Knowlton would represent "Citizens for a Free Kuwait" (CFK) a classic
PR front group designed to hide the real role of the Kuwaiti government and its
collusion with the Bush administration. Over the next six months, the Kuwaiti
government channeled $11.9 million dollars to Citizens for a Free Kuwait, whose
only other funding totalled $17,862 from 78 individuals. Virtually all of CFK's
budget -- $10.8 million -- went to Hill & Knowlton in the form of
fees.6
The War on Iraq
2003
A New Gulf of Tonkin
Resolution
The Demon
War
http://www.counterpunch.org/tristam1016.html
October 16,
2002
It's been about 40 years since a president's speeches didn't sound like infomercials. So George W. Bush's prime time sales pitch last week on slapping a "New Ownership" sign on Iraq was not surprising for sweating the manipulative bullets of sales pitches -- exaggerations, inflated sincerity, half-truths, outright lies. This isn't a Bush family specialty. Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson were terrific salesmen, each more or less made for television's blind spot for hucksters. But for sheer breadth of deception and implications to thousands of human lives, the Bush performance for a resolution authorizing Gulf War II can only be compared with Johnson's fabrication 38 years ago that uselessly condemned 57,000 Americans and more than a million Vietnamese -- the Gulf of Tonkin resolution.
The Iraq war resolution Congress approved with a mob-like majority last week is the Tonkin of our day.Like Bush with Iraq today, Johnson back then didn't have the facts to back up his demand for war on North Vietnam. So he invented them.
We are now faced with another administration urging another congressional resolution that will be used to authorize war. There will be many opportunities for "interpreting" alleged violations of agreements concerning disarmament inspections. And there will be many ways for the Bush administration to exaggerate, dramatize and publicize what may or may not be attempts to conceal weapons of mass destruction.
http://www.bsos.umd.edu/pgsd/people/staffpubs/Gar-Tonkin.htm
Former
Pentagon insider: 'When we lie about stuff,' people
perish
A former Pentagon insider
talks about Iraq propaganda
http://www.freelancestar.com/News/FLS/2004/042004/04092004/1324501
“But then the Sept. 11 attacks
occurred, and certain people saw a chance to turn a crisis into an opportunity.
Specifically, neoconservative ideologues inside the administration--Vice
President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of
Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and others--could taste their dream of invading Iraq,
but the existing intelligence didn't lend much support for a Mesopotamian
adventure.
Enter the Pentagon's Office of
Special Plans. Conceived by Wolfowitz, the office grew out of the Near East
South Asia directorate's Iraq desk and was officially launched in the summer of
2002--just as the administration was readying its big sales pitch for
war.”
This
guy is a modern-day Hitler
The following is
an excerpt from Norman Solomon's new book, War
Made Easy: How
Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, just published by John Wiley
& Sons.
Iraq II: The Comparison Fits Like an Old Shoe
When
the second Bush administration returned Saddam Hussein to the center stage of
U.S. foreign policy, it was time to reprise countless stories about his
evilness, while again eliding the cozy relationship that Hussein had long
enjoyed with Washington. (When I accompanied former U.N. assistant
secretary-general Denis Halliday to a private meeting in Baghdad with Iraqi
deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz in late January 2003, Aziz glanced at the
latest Time magazine, which Halliday had just given to him. Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld was on the cover. "Rumsfeld has become quite a warmonger," Aziz
said. "He did not seem so when he came and visited us in the 1980s.") The Iraqi
dictator had not ordered an attack on another country since 1990, and his
military capabilities had obviously diminished -- but comparing him to Hitler
fit like an old shoe.
One
of many politicians eager to keep putting it on was "moderate Republican"
Christopher Shays, who repeatedly invoked memories of the Third Reich to justify
an invasion of Iraq. Days before Congress passed the war resolution in October
2002, Shays went on MSNBC and used the Hitler analogy as part of a slick
repertoire about Saddam.
After
more than two decades of representing a San Francisco area district in Congress,
Tom Lantos was the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations
Committee by the time an invasion of Iraq was on the near horizon. He was not to
be outdone at conflating Baathist Iraq with the Third Reich, as though Saddam's
forces were somehow comparable to Germany's Wehrmacht. In early October 2002,
Lantos pulled out all the stops on Capitol Hill as he proclaimed: "Had Hitler's
regime been taken out in a timely fashion, the 51 million innocent people who
lost their lives during the Second World War would have been able to finish
their normal life cycles. Mr. Chairman, if we appease Saddam Hussein, we will
stand humiliated before both humanity and history."
Events and people leading up to the invasion of Iraq 2003
(Iraq responsible for 9/11? Weapons of mass destruction. Neocons)
The real issue is how this administration manipulated the intelligence to make a case for war against Iraq and sold it to an ignorant public with the acquiescence of Congress. Senator Robert Byrd in his Senate remarks of Feb. 12, 2003 said
"To contemplate war is
to think about the most horrible of human experiences. On this February
day, as this nation stands at the brink of battle, every American on some level
must be contemplating the horrors of war.
Yet, this Chamber is, for the most
part, silent -- ominously, dreadfully silent. There is no debate, no
discussion, no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this
particular war. There is nothing."
Iraq was not
responsible for 9/11. There were a number of individuals who would lead you to
believe that it was, such as Laurie
Mylroie, William Kristol and the rest of the so called
neoconservatives who were advising the president. These individuals set the
stage for invading Iraq by writing books and op ed pieces in newspapers, making
presentations on the subject at seminars sponsored by think tanks such as the
American Enterprise Institute.
As a C-SPAN junkie I
remember when Mylroie appeared on C-SPAN's Book Notes to talk about her book
Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against America, a
book published by AEI in 2000. At the time I did not give it much thought
but individuals such as Peter
Bergen who referred to her as the neocons favorite conspiracy theorist
was able to piece things together. Bergen wrote-
"Historians will be debating that question for years, but an important part of the reason has to do with someone the average American may well have never heard of: Laurie Mylroie. Mylroie has an impressive array of credentials that certify her as an expert on the Middle East, national security, and, above all, Iraq. She has held faculty positions at Harvard and the U.S. Naval War College and worked at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, as well as serving as an advisor on Iraq to the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign. During the 1980s, Mylroie was an apologist for Saddam's regime, but reversed her position upon his invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and, with the zeal of the academic spurned, became rabidly anti-Saddam. In the run up to the first Gulf War, Mylroie with New York Times reporter Judith Miller wrote Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf, a well-reviewed bestseller translated into more than a dozen languages.
Until this point, there was nothing controversial about Mylroie's career. This would change with the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, the first act of international terrorism within the United States, which would launch Mylroie on a quixotic quest to prove that Saddam's regime was the most important source of terrorism directed against this country. She laid out her case in Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against America, a book published by AEI in 2000 which makes it clear that Mylroie and the neocon hawks worked hand in glove to push her theory that Iraq was behind the '93 Trade Center bombing. Its acknowledgements fulsomely thanked John Bolton and the staff of AEI for their assistance, while Richard Perle glowingly blurbed the book as "splendid and wholly convincing." I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, now Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, is thanked for his "generous and timely assistance." And it appears that Paul Wolfowitz himself was instrumental in the genesis of Study of Revenge: His then-wife is credited with having "fundamentally shaped the book," while of Wolfowitz, she says: "At critical times, he provided crucial support for a project that is inherently difficult." Wolfowitz having read the book became convinced that Saddam and Iraq were responsible for 9/11 and made the invasion his top priority.
Her book was followed by books by William Kristol and Robert Kagan. In the book Present Dangers Kristol and Kagan's basic argument is that the US needs to exercise world domination, here spun as "benevolent global hegemony" and that there are a number of external obstacles which stand in the way and must be dealt with. These are Iraq, Iran, North Korea, China, the Middle East peace process and an independent Europe.
The one distasteful aspect of the book is the attempt to wrap the entire endeavor in the cloak of "American morality", understood as protecting citizen's liberties. This is breathtaking stuff from accomplices in the most extensive attempt to incinerate the Constitution in recent history.
In the book The
War over Iraq
Kristol and Lawrence Kaplan, a senior editor at the New Republic,
cogently make the case for a U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Kristol is also Chairman of the Project for the New American Century, a non-profit think-tank established in 1997.
In it's Statement of Principles the PNAC raises the question "Does the United States have the resolve to shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests?" I'm of the opinion that in Kristol's mind he substitutes the word Israel for American.
One of the four consequences listed
in the S of P is " we need to strengthen our ties to democratic
allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our
interests and values". Again substitute Israel for democratic
allies and Iraq, Iran, Syria for regimes.
Another book is The
Threatening Storm by Kenneth Pollack. Pollack's chapter in which he justifies a U.S.
invasion of Iraq is highly flawed, for a very important reason. Having stated
convincingly why continued sanctions, and even strong inspections, would not be
enough to topple Saddam, and having made the case that he must be toppled before
he can truly menace the world, Pollack concludes that no course remained but a
U.S. invasion.
Philip Zelikow is of the type of whom it is customarily said: "He has impeccable establishment credentials". He served as executive director of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. Between 2001 and 2003 he served on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), which reports directly to the president. Before his appointment to PFIAB he was part of the Bush transition team in January 2001. And in 1995 he co-authored a book with Condoleezza Rice.
It's recently been revealed that in 2002 he publicly stated that a prime motive for the upcoming invasion of Iraq was to eliminate a threat to Israel.
style="COLOR: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.0pt">"It's the threat against Israel". These were the words of Philip Zelikow given in 2002 when he was asked why the U.S. was planning on attacking Iraq. Zelikow suggested that one of the prime reasons for the invasion was to protect the ally Israel, and not because Iraq was a threat to the U.S.
There have been a number of
individuals who have sounded the alarm about the neocon cabal
that is influencing US foreign policy namely Robert
Novak, Pat Buchanan , Gen.
Anthony Zinni and former Illinois Congressman
Paul Findley unfortunately they are accused of being anti
Semitic due to their criticism of Israel policies in the Middle East and US
support of Israel.
In his article
“Have the Neocons Killed a Presidency?” Pat Buchanan writes the
following-
“Yet, the president has a grave problem, and it is this: Burrowed inside his foreign policy team are men guilty of exactly what Gore accuses Bush of, men who did exploit our fears to stampede us into a war they had plotted for years. Consider:
– In 1996, in a strategy paper
“A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” was
crafted for Israel's
Bibi Netanyahu. Richard Perle,
Douglas Feith and David Wurmser urged him to "focus on removing Saddam
Hussein from power" as an "Israeli strategic objective." Perle,
Feith,
Wurmser
were all on Bush's foreign policy team on 9-11.
– In 1998, eight members of Bush's future team, including Perle, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, wrote Clinton urging upon him a strategy that "should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein.
On Jan. 1, 2001, nine months before 9-11, Wurmser
called for U.S.-Israeli attacks "to broaden the (Middle East) conflict
to strike fatally ... the regimes of Damascus, Baghdad, Tripoli, Teheran and
Gaza ... to establish the recognition that fighting with either the United
States or Israel is suicidal." "Crises can be opportunities," added
Wurmser.”Moreover, the majority of
those in and out of government who were Middle East experts had grave concerns
about the wisdom of invading Iraq and serious doubts about claims that Saddam's
regime posed an urgent threat to American security. What, then, gave
neoconservatives like Wolfowitz
and Perle such abiding faith in their own positions?
–
Another person is revisionist historian Stephen Sniegoski. This is what he says about Laurie Mylroie and the Iraq war-
"The real threat, Wolfowitz insisted, was state-sponsored terrorism orchestrated by Saddam. In the meeting, says Richard A. Clarke, Wolfowitz cited the writings of Laurie Mylroie, a controversial academic who had written a book advancing an elaborate conspiracy theory that Saddam was behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
The Mylroie reference is very interesting. Mylroie is a neocon, and other neocons have picked up and trumpeted her Iraq-involvement thesis. While Saddam was still in power she claimed that al Qaeda was a front for Iraqi intelligence. And she emphasized Saddam's purported weapons of mass destruction. Her book was originally published by the American Enterprise Institute, a leading neocon think tank. Regan Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, released the book in paperback. HarperCollins is owned by pro-neocon/pro-Zionist Rupert Murdoch, who also owns the Fox News Channel, which, in turn, booked Mylroie as an Iraq expert during the build-up to the war. Fox News was the leading media cheerleader for the war, and Mylroie's commentary served the same war-propaganda purposes as Ahmed Chalabi's bogus intelligence.” (See "Osama, Saddam, and the Bombs" by David Plotz, Slate, September 28, 2001.)
"The Republican attack machine is
trying to paint Clarke as some kind of partisan Democrat — an unlikely
characterization of a 30-year career in government at the highest levels,
starting out in the Reagan administration. What we are witnessing here is yet
the latest episode in an extraordinary series of whistle-blowing accounts by
government insiders: Ambassador Joe
Wilson, Lt. Col. Karen
Kwiatkowski, and now Clarke, all patriotic
Americans pointing to a dangerous vulnerability."
During the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq
Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a hearing hosted by the House Committee on
Government Reform on 12 September
2002. C-SPAN televised his remarks. He spoke about Conflict
with Iraq - An Israeli Perspective. This was another example of
Israel’s complicity in support of the U.S. Iraq invasion.
The following is an excerpt from his talk.
“History’s judgment should inform our own judgment today.
Did Israel launch that preemptive strike because Saddam had committed a
specific act of terror against us? Did we coordinate our actions with the
international community? Did we condition that operation on the approval of the
United Nations?
No, Israel acted because we understood that a nuclear-armed Sadaam would place
our very survival at risk. Today, the United States must destroy that same
regime because a nuclear-armed Sadaam will place the security of our entire
world at risk.”
Rumsfeld and
Wolfowitz's war on Iraq began before 1998 - now it's
official.
http://wwwonlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=1499
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz undertook a full-fledged lobbying campaign in 1998 to get former President Bill Clinton to start a war with Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein's regime. They claimed that the country posed a threat to the United States, according to documents obtained from a former Clinton aide.
This new information begs the question: what is really driving the Bush Administration's desire to start a war with Iraq if two of Bush's future top defence officials were already planting the seeds for an attack five years ago?
In 1998, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were working in the private sector. Both were involved with the right-wing think tank Project for a New American Century, which was established in 1997 by William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, to promote global leadership and dictate American foreign policy.
While Clinton was dealing with the worldwide threat from al Qa'ida and Osama Bin Laden, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz wrote to Clinton urging him to use military force against Iraq and remove Hussein from power because the country posed a threat to the United States due to its alleged ability to develop weapons of mass destruction. The Jan 26, 1998 letter sent to Clinton from the Project for the New American Century said a war with Iraq should be initiated even if the United States could not muster support from its allies in the United Nations. Kristol also signed the letter.
"We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War. In your upcoming State of the Union Address, you have an opportunity to chart a clear and determined course for meeting this threat. We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world. That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power."
"We urge you to turn your Administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts. Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater. We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council."
Because the letters were written in 1998 it proves that this war was planned well before 9-11 and casts further doubt on the claims that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9-11 terrorist attacks.
Bush
Advisers Planned Iraq War Since 1990s
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100102_bush_advisors.html
The George W. Bush
Administration's intentions of removing Saddam Hussein from power are not a
recent development by any stretch of the imagination. Top White House officials
affiliated with conservative think tanks and past administrations have been
developing strategies for removing the Iraqi leader since the
1990s.
The president's
real goal in Iraq
Among the architects of this
would-be American Empire are a group of brilliant and powerful people who now
hold key positions in the Bush administration: They envision the creation and
enforcement of what they call a worldwide "Pax
Americana," or American peace. But so far, the American people have not
appreciated the true extent of that ambition.
How We Got Into
This Imperial Pickle: A PNAC Primer
The
"outsiders" from PNAC were now powerful "insiders,"
placed in important positions from which they could exert maximum pressure on
U.S. policy: Cheney is Vice President, Rumsfeld is Defense Secretary, Wolfowitz
is Deputy Defense Secretary, I. Lewis Libby is Cheney's Chief of Staff,
Elliot Abrams is in charge of Middle East policy at the National Security
Council, Dov Zakheim is comptroller for the Defense Department, John Bolton is
Undersecretary of State, Richard Perle is chair of the Defense Policy advisory
board at the Pentagon, former CIA director James Woolsey is on that panel as
well, etc. etc. (PNAC's chairman, Bill Kristol, is the editor of Rupert
Murdoch's The Weekly Standard.) In short, PNAC had a lock on military
policy-creation in the Bush Administration.
Beyond
Osama: The Pentagon’s Battle With Powell Heats Up
Saddam in the
Crosshairs
by Jason
Vest
November 21 - 27,
2001
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0147/vest.php
WASHINGTON, D.C.—The simmering conflict within the Bush administration over how to prosecute the next phase of the "war on terrorism" suddenly flared up last week as the Taliban fled Kabul. "Where to go next and how big it should be is what's being argued right now—and Baghdad is what's being debated at the moment," said a senior Pentagon official. "This is both an internal discussion at the Pentagon, and one between departments. Our policy guys are thinking Iraq.
By Zbigniew
Brzezinski
Matters have not been helped by the evident, if
unstated, endorsement by President Bush of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's
notions of how to deal with both the Palestinians and the region as a whole
The European press has commented more widely than the U.S. press on the
striking similarity between current U.S. policies in the Middle East and the
recommendations prepared in 1996 by several American admirers of Israel's Likud
Party for the then-prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu.
That these admirers are now occupying positions of influence in the administration is seen as the reason the United States is so eager to wage war against Iraq, so willing to accept the scuttling of the Oslo peace process between Israel and the Palestinians and so abrupt in rejecting European urgings for joint U.S.-European initiatives to promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
THE NEW PENTAGON
PAPERS
Will Americans hold U.S. policymakers
accountable?
Karen Kwiatkowski –
A high-ranking military officer reveals how Defense Department extremists suppressed information and twisted the truth to drive the country to war.
In the spring of 2002, I was a cynical but willing staff officer, almost two years into my three-year tour at the office of the secretary of defense, undersecretary for policy, sub-Saharan Africa. In April, a call for volunteers went out for the Near East South Asia directorate (NESA). None materialized By May, the call transmogrified into a posthaste demand for any staff officer, and I was "volunteered" to enter what would be a well-appointed den of iniquity
The education I would receive there was like an M. Night Shyamalan movie -- intense, fascinating and frightening. While the people were very much alive, I saw a dead philosophy -- Cold War anti- communism and neo-imperialism -- walking the corridors of the Pentagon. It wore the clothing of counterterrorism and spoke the language of a holy war between good and evil. The evil was recognized by the leadership to be resident mainly in the Middle East and articulated by Islamic clerics and radicals. But there were other enemies within, anyone who dared voice any skepticism about their grand plans, including Secretary of State Colin Powell and Gen. Anthony Zinni.
From May 2002 until February 2003, I observed firsthand the formation of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans and watched the latter stages of the neoconservative capture of the policy-intelligence nexus in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. This seizure of the reins of U.S. Middle East policy was directly visible to many of us working in the Near East South Asia policy office, and yet there seemed to be little any of us could do about it.
I saw a narrow and deeply flawed policy favored by some executive appointees in the Pentagon used to manipulate and pressurize the traditional relationship between policymakers in the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies.
I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the executive office of the president.
While this commandeering of a narrow segment of both intelligence production and American foreign policy matched closely with the well-published desires of the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party, many of us in the Pentagon, conservatives and liberals alike, felt that this agenda, whatever its flaws or merits, had never been openly presented to the American people. Instead, the public story line was a fear-peddling and confusing set of messages, designed to take Congress and the country into a war of executive choice, a war based on false pretenses, and a war one year later Americans do not really understand. That is why I have gone public with my account.
The
following report is worthwhile reading since it offers another point of view
about our invasion of Iraq from an Indian perspective. Note month and
year.
Behind the Invasion
of Iraq
The Real Reasons for the US
Invasion of Iraq—and Beyond
Nos. 33 & 34, December 2002
The United States’ current strategic agenda is of staggering proportions. It is not secret: rather, it is being discussed openly in the American press and academia; various documents reflecting it, official and semi-official, are in circulation; and the US is implementing that agenda at breakneck speed. By the time this article is published, the US will have begun its bombing and invasion of Iraq, the second third world country to be attacked in less than two years.
Given the massive imbalance of forces, the immediate military success of the current US mission is not in doubt. But its medium and long term prospects hinge not only on the US’s unrivalled military strength, but on three other factors: the US’s own underlying economic condition, which is weakening; the position of other imperialist powers, which is tenuously balanced and may turn into active opposition; and the stance of the world’s people — growing conscious opposition in the advanced world and, crucially, popular explosions and resistance battles in the targeted third world.
The Issue of
Weapons
of Mass Destruction
Weapons of Mass Destruction in the
Middle East (Iraq was not
alone)
http://cns.miis.edu/research/wmdme/
Israel’s
Dimona nuclear facility
. Israel started the construction work at the Dimona site sometimes in early 1958, but it took the United States intelligence community almost three long years to "discover" the site for what it was, namely, a nuclear site under construction.
Vanunu spent 18 years in an Israeli prison—11 and a half of them in solitary confinement—for providing evidence of Israel’s nuclear arsenal to a British newspaper in 1986. “I acted on behalf of all citizens and all of humanity,” said Vanunu.
In October 1986, Vanunu, a nuclear technician who had worked at the Dimona Nuclear Power Plant in the Negev Desert for 10 years, traveled to London and gave photographic evidence to The Sunday Times that Israel was secretly developing nuclear weapons. Two months earlier he had converted to Christianity while traveling in Australia.
Iraq and Weapons of Mass
Destruction
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB80/
Subsequent to George W. Bush's assumption of the presidency in January 2001, the U.S. made it clear that it would not accept what had become the status quo with respect to Iraq - a country ruled by Saddam Hussein and free to attempt to reconstitute its assorted weapons of mass destruction programs. As part of their campaign against the status quo, which included the clear threat of the eventual use of military force against the Iraqi regime, the U.S. and Britain published documents and provided briefings detailing their conclusions concerning Iraq's WMD programs and its attempts to deceive other nations about those programs.
Where
really are the weapons of mass destruction?
http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/2/10/195028.shtml
WMDs were weapons
of mass deception that became the pretext for the grand design. As was a much
ballyhooed, and later discredited, park bench meeting in Prague between an Iraqi
intelligence agent and Mohamed Atta, the September 11, 2001, Saudi kamikaze
The amateur strategists in the neo-con camp
knew a lot more about Israel and its need for peace than they did about
the law of unintended consequences, writ large in Iraq, and in the Arab world
beyond.
President Bush's
Statements On Iraq's Weapons Of Mass Destruction
http://writ.news..findlaw.com/dean/20030606.html
Readers may not recall
exactly what President Bush said about weapons of mass destruction; I certainly
didn't. Thus, I have compiled these statements below. In reviewing them, I saw
that he had, indeed, been as explicit and declarative as I had recalled.
Bush's statements, in
chronological order, were:
"Right now, Iraq is
expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of
biological weapons."
United Nations
Address
September 12, 2002
"Iraq has stockpiled
biological and chemical weapons, and is rebuilding the facilities used to make
more of those weapons."
"We have sources
that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to
use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not
have."
Radio Address
October 5,
2002
"The Iraqi regime .
. . possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking
nuclear weapons."
"We know that the
regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas,
sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas."
"We've also
discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and
unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological
weapons across broad areas. We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using
these UAVS for missions targeting the United States."
"The evidence
indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam
Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he
calls his "nuclear mujahideen" - his nuclear holy warriors. Satellite
photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been
part of its nuclear program in the past. Iraq has attempted to purchase
high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges,
which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons."
Cincinnati, Ohio
Speech
October 7, 2002
"Our intelligence
officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as
500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent."
State of the Union
Address
January 28, 2003
"Intelligence
gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime
continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever
devised."
Address to the Nation
March
17, 2003
US news media admits
promoting lies about Iraq's WMD
Two of
America's most respected newspapers have admitted that their editors knowingly
"resisted" publishing information that challenged the official excuse for
invading Iraq.
There was no evidence to support the allies' claims that
Iraq possessed stockpiles of WMD. Meanwhile, there was ample evidence to prove
that the politicians were lying, and clear ulterior motives to explain why. The
Washington Post concedes: "We should have warned readers we had information that
the basis for this was shakier". The New York Times confess that their coverage
"was not as rigorous as it should have been".
How the
'Washington Post' Promoted a War
Editors now admit its news
coverage during the run-up to the attack on Iraq was terribly one-sided. But the
editorial page was even worse.
By Greg
Mitchell
By the paper's own admission, in the months before the war, it ran more than 140 stories on its front
page promoting the war, while contrary information "got lost," as one Post staffer told Howard Kurtz.
Paul
Wolfowitz: Not just any optimist
Nov. 17, 2002
Trudy Rubin writes the Worldview column for the Philadelphia Inquirer
This week I had the chance to sit down with someone who's an optimist about Iraq.
Not just any optimist. I refer to Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, the administration's most persistent advocate of ousting Saddam Hussein.
Wolfowitz' worldview helps clarify the thinking behind the administration's obsession with the Iraqi leader. (At this delicate moment in the Iraq saga, with the administration currently committed to U.N. arms inspections rather than military action, much of our conversation was on deep background.)
Yes, the administration worries about Saddam's biological and chemical weapons, the possibility he may get nukes, and the chance he might pass them off to terrorists. But the goal of changing the Iraqi regime is part of a much larger project - and I don't mean grabbing oil or protecting Israel.
The creation of a new Iraq is central to the administration's vision of the role America should play in the post-9/11 world.
Back in 1992, then-Undersecretary of Defense Wolfowitz (who served under
Reagan and Bush père) supervised the draft of an ambitious new defense
doctrine. It proposed that the United States should prevent the rise of any new
superpower that could rival U.S. primacy around the world. The United States
would convince would-be competitors that its dominance was so beneficial it
wasn't worth challenging.
When news of the doctrine leaked to the press, it was watered down. But its essence has become the core of the Bush administration's new national security doctrine. And Wolfowitz is the administration's pre-eminent intellectual.
Where does Iraq fit into the doctrine? Post 9/11, the challenge to U.S. supremacy comes not so much from states as from international terrorists - and states who aid them. The biggest threat originates in Muslim countries, including the Mideast.
A U.S. triumph in Iraq would send a dramatic message. "If we can defeat a terrorist regime in Iraq, it will be a defeat for terrorists globally," Wolfowitz said in a speech on Oct. 16. Moreover, "[Saddam's] demise will open opportunities for governments and institutions to emerge in the Muslim world that are respectful of fundamental human dignity and freedom...."
In other words, Iraq not only could become a democracy but could be the launch pad for transforming the entire Mideast.
Only an a utopian dreamer could put forward such a vision.
Wolfowitz has little patience with arguments that war with Iraq could encourage Muslim jihadists. Not for him the worry that Arab satellite television will inflame the masses with endless scenes of dead Iraqi civilians and Palestinians suffering under Israeli curfew. He has repeatedly waved aside fears that Saddam's fall from power will cause instability in the region.
Part of his confidence stems from the belief that TV cameras will show Iraqis dancing in the streets of Baghdad on The Day After, as Afghans did in Kabul
"It is entirely possible that in Iraq, you have the most pro-American
population that can be found anywhere in the Arab world," Wolfowitz told me, for
quotation.
Iraqi opposition activists say U.S. troops may indeed be welcomed right after they enter Iraqi cities (provided a war is short and Iraqi civilian casualties aren't large). But they also say that old suspicions and resentments linger - at past American betrayals of Kurds and Shiites, and sanctions - and that the warmth may fade quickly if the troops stay very long.
And then there is the danger that Iraqis will collapse into struggles among tribes, ethnic groups and religious confessions over who gets what share of power and oil. Wolfowitz doubts the likelihood of such chaos. But, he says, "If there is a real fear about what happens after Saddam goes, you would want the American army there when he goes."
The problem here is that the burdens for resolving the chaos would then fall on the shoulders of U.S. forces. If you take over a country, you own it, unless you can hand off to locals pretty fast.
To be fair, administration officials, with some key exceptions, seem aware of
the danger of long-term occupation. They are familiar with the warnings of the
noted Mideast scholar Bernard Lewis, who cautions that Israelis were welcomed at
first by local Lebanese Shiites in South Lebanon. The Shiites were happy to see
the departure of the Palestine Liberation Organization. But Israeli troops
stayed on for years and soon were viewed as occupiers. They were bloodied by
guerrilla attacks and ultimately pulled out.
Wolfowitz doesn't advocate the Japan model of U.S. occupation (as some administration officials have done). In Japan, a six-year U.S. presence and the proconsulship of General MacArthur created a democracy in a non-European nation after World War II. This definitely wouldn't work in Iraq.
Yet how else can one envision the establishment of democracy in a country that has known only autocracy and brutal dictatorship?
"If you're looking for a historical analogy," the soft-spoken, professorial
Pentagon official suggested, "it's probably closer to post-liberation France
[after World War II]."
That one threw me for a bit, but I think I get it. Led by Gen. Charles de Gaulle, the Free French were looked down on when they were based in London, but the general became a hero-leader when the war was over. The Wall Street Journal suggested a parallel this week between de Gaulle and the exiled Iraqi opposition leader Ahmed Chalabi, of the Iraqi National Congress.
The parallel is pretty dicey. De Gaulle was a charismatic general directing organized resistance on the ground. He came home after five years of exile to a mono-ethnic France untroubled by interfering neighbors. Germany was prostrate, the United States was the overlord of Europe. France, a European nation with (admittedly spotty) experience of democracy, didn't need U.S. tutelage.
No Iraqi exile has anything like de Gaulle's legitimacy at home. Certainly not Chalabi, for all his capabilities. Once in Baghdad, U.S. officials would have to mediate among Kurds, Shiites, Sunnis, Turkmen, Assyrians, secularists, Islamists, tribal leaders, leftover Baath party officials, and Iraq's anxious neighbors who will want to intervene.
At best, we will be the long-term referee behind the scenes, blamed for
what goes wrong, suspected of myriad conspiracies against Iraqis and their
oil. Better than Saddam, no doubt. But a democracy - before, at best,
another two decades - is unlikely.
Call me a pessimist. But if the rosy view of Iraq's potential as role model for the region is driving a desire for an early war, it is very misguided. If we have to go after Saddam's weapons, let's do it with eyes wide open.
Otherwise we may wind up like Israel in Lebanon.
The above column by Trudy Rubin was very prophetic indeed. In my search
for a balanced view of the Iraq war Rubin by far has been the most accurate of
all the reporters writing for major newspapers.
Willful
Blindness: The Bush Administration and Iraq
By
Trudy Rubin, Worldview Columnist for The Philadelphia
Inquirer
This
collection of Trudy
Rubin's columns on Iraq covers the period from July 2002 through June 2004.
Read back as her columns predicted with uncanny accuracy before the war what
would happen in Iraq if the Bush administration failed to plan for the real Iraq
as opposed to the Iraq of its imagination. Rubin's predictions were on the mark.
As the situation developed, she outlined steps that might ameliorate the
situation. Few have been taken. In the conclusion, Rubin looks at what must be
done to prevent Iraq from deteriorating into a terrorist haven and to enable the
United States to drawn down its troops.
This
book draws on the author's extensive knowledge of the Middle East based on
thirty years of covering the region, including six years stationed in
Jerusalem and Beirut as a foreign correspondent. Rubin has written continuously
on Iraq for the last two years and taken three lengthy trips to Iraq since the
fall of Baghdad. She has extensive contacts with members of the new Iraqi
government, Iraqi clerics and a broad range of ordinary Iraqis. Whether
familiar with Rubin's columns or not, this book is an excellent way to revisit
the events surrounding the Iraq war and to understand what our nation must do to
call the endeavor a success.
And then when
the WMD’s
were not found
the reason du jour to
invade became “Regime
Change”,”Freedom”,”Democracy”
Regime Change and
Introducing Democracy to Iraq
http://www.rense.com/general29/dbusw.htm
The neoconservatives around George
Bush are crazy. They actually believe the United States can run about the world,
overthrowing governments by force and establishing democracies in their
place.
The deceit
behind the Bush WMD "Investigation"
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5618.htm
Mr Bush is expected to announce within days the make-up of the panel to
investigate why intelligence on which he said his administration based its
claims about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction did not match what has been
found on the ground in Iraq. Brent Scowcroft, who served as National Security
Adviser in Mr Bush's father's administration, has been tipped to head the
inquiry.
Mr McGovern said that there was outrage among intelligence
professionals that they were being used as scapegoats. He said that intelligence
provided by the CIA and other intelligence agencies was used selectively by the
administration to support a political decision that it had already made to go to
war with Saddam.
"Especially earlier on, the intelligence they were
getting was accurate: [CIA director] George Tenet stood up to them. But after he
was told that Bush was going to war he caved in," Mr. McGovern said. "There is a
sense of outrage among analysts, at least the good ones. The good ones are
leaving. There are a lot of mid-level managers who are leaving."
What of the charge that It’s
About Oil?
Well…
maybe
War for
oil? The west had it’s eye on Iraqi oil for nearly a
century.
Great Power
Conflict over Iraqi Oil: the World War I Era
During World War I (1914-18), strategists for all the major powers increasingly perceived oil as a key military asset, due to the adoption of oil-powered naval ships, new horseless army vehicles such as trucks and tanks, and even military airplanes. Use of oil during the war increased so rapidly that a severe shortage developed in 1917-18.
The strategists also understood that oil would assume a rapidly-growing importance in the civilian economy, making it a vital element in national and imperial economic strength and a source of untold wealth to those who controlled it. Already in the United States, John D. Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil Company, was the world’s richest person.
The French government was not satisfied with its secondary role in world oil, fearing the might of the big British and US companies. In an effort to strengthen and “liberate” France, the government in Paris set up the Compagnie Francaise des Pétroles in 1924 to take up the French share in Mesopotamia – now a British colony(2) renamed Iraq
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/oil/2002/1000history.htm
Iraq has the world’s
second largest proven oil reserves. According to oil industry experts, new
exploration will probably raise Iraq’s reserves to 2-300 billion barrels of
high-grade crude, extraordinarily cheap to produce, leading to a gold-rush of
profits for international oil firms in the post-Saddam era. The four giant firms
located in the US and the UK have been keen to get back into Iraq, from which
they were excluded with the nationalization of 1972. They face companies from
France, Russia, China, Japan and elsewhere, who already have major concessions.
But in the post-war setting, with Washington running the show, the US-UK
companies expect eventually to overcome their rivals and gain the most lucrative
oil deals that will be worth hundreds of billions, even trillions of dollars in
profits in the coming decades.
Oil, Currency and the War
on Iraq
It will not come as news to anyone that the US
dominates the world economically and militarily. But the exact mechanisms by
which American hegemony has been established and maintained are perhaps less
well understood than they might be. One tool used to great effect has been the
dollar, but its efficacy has recently been under threat since Europe introduced
the euro.
Oil
from Iraq : An Israeli pipedream?
16 April
2003
Israel stands to benefit greatly
from the US led war on Iraq, primarily by getting rid of an implacable foe in
President Saddam Hussein and the threat from the weapons of mass destruction he
was alleged to possess. But it seems the Israelis have other things in mind
An intriguing pointer to one potentially significant benefit was a
report by Haaretz on 31 March that minister for national infrastructures Joseph
Paritzky was considering the possibility of reopening the long-defunct
oil pipeline from Mosul to the Mediterranean port of Haifa. With Israel lacking
energy resources of its own and depending on highly expensive oil from Russia,
reopening the pipeline would transform its economy.
Have 1,000 U.S.
Souls Died for Oil?
September
13, 2004
Ivan
Eland
The tragic milestone of 1,000 U.S. deaths in the Iraqi quagmire should cause introspection about why the United States really went to war and whether it has been worth it. While the Bush administration’s public justifications never really added up, evidence exists that there was a hidden agenda behind the invasion of Iraq: securing oil.
Speaking on "Oil, Power & Empire"
Iraq
and the U.S. Global Agenda
This unique volume compiles in one place a history of US
intervention against Iraq and the devastating consequences for the people and
the region. It shows the ways in which war today is a continuation of that
history, but also a radical leap to more direct military control in Iraq and
around the world. The “Bush Doctrine” is both built on our imperial history and
yet new and far more dangerous.
The Real Reasons for
the War With Iraq
Although completely unreported by the U.S. media and government, the answer
to the Iraq enigma is simple yet shocking -- it is in large part an oil
currency war. One of the core reasons for this upcoming war is this
administration's goal of preventing further Organization of the Petroleum
Exporting Countries (OPEC) momentum towards the euro as an oil transaction
currency standard. However, in order to pre-empt OPEC, they need to gain
geo-strategic control of Iraq along with its 2nd largest proven oil
reserves.
Iraq: The Last Republican
Hurrah
http://www.vdare.com/roberts/last_hurrah.htm
An invasion of Iraq is likely the most
thoughtless action in modern history. It has the support of only two overlapping
small groups: neoconservatives infused with the spirit of 18th century
French Jacobins who want to impose American “exceptionalism” on the rest of the
world, and foreign policy advisers who believe
that the primary aim of U.S. foreign policy is to make the Middle East safe for
Israel.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/2/3/170212.shtml
The Bush neocons tried to
connect Iraq
to the 9/11 terrorism in order to justify an attack but couldn't
get it done, however much they kept implying that Saddam was complicit. When
they failed, they moved on to the WMD
lies. Their strenuous searching for a justification for attacking Iraq
indicates that their fallacious WMD claims were not the result of error. In the
end they got exactly the results they wanted. The neocons promoted much
of the most extreme WMD propaganda through their Office of Special Plans and
their touting of the deceptive Ahmed Chalabi. In short, all of the "intelligence
errors" enabled the neocon war party to mount the attack on Iraq that
they had so ardently sought for so long."
Neoconservatives a.k.a.
neocons. Who are they? Their influence on U.S foreign
policy
The word neoconservative was a term that I was not
familiar with before delving into the issue of whether we were justified in
invading a sovereign country. The more I searched the more I became convinced
that many of these individuals by their actions appeared to show more allegiance
to a foreign country than they did to the U.S.A.
During the 2000 presidential election recount in
Florida one Democratic congressman seemed to monopolize the TV limelight. Robert Wexler
was on CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC 24/7 accusing the Republicans of manipulating and
stealing the election.
His opinion of
President Bush changed after 9/11 when he became a staunch supporter for
the invasion of Iraq. His turn about piqued my curiosity. Why would a died in
the wool Democrat be so supportive of the president’s foreign policy of
pre-emption? Was it because he was a Jewish/American who believed that invading
Iraq would eliminate a country which was more of a threat to Israel than to the
U.S.?
Wexler's
Travels
South Florida's bellicose congressman carves up the
Middle East
BY BOB
NORMAN
bob.norman@newtimesbpb.com
New Times
Broward-Palm Beach
http://www.newtimesbpb.com/issues/2002-10-24/news/norman.html
The Democrat, whose district spreads
from north Broward County to parts north of West Palm Beach, has been one of the
strongest supporters in Congress for military action in
Iraq.
To really understand Wexler's
motivations, though, you must know about Turkey's relationship with Israel. Any
friend of the Jewish state is a friend of the 41-year-old
Wexler's.
Because of its own interests in the
region, principally oil and Israel, America has helped foster the
Ankara-Jerusalem alliance. And, lest our politicians lose interest, Israel is
pushing its key supporters in Congress -- like Wexler -- to advocate for
Turkish interests in the United States. Wexler has performed dutifully in that
respect, sponsoring and cosponsoring numerous pro-Turkey bills. The American
Jewish establishment is also doing its part: Just this past December 18,
nine major Jewish groups -- including the American Jewish Congress, B'nai
B'rith International, and the Anti-Defamation League -- wrote President Bush
a letter asking that the administration provide Turkey "debt forgiveness, trade
concessions, and/or further International Monetary Fund relief." In July,
Congress authorized Bush to give the country $228 million in aid.
Money is one thing; propaganda is
another. In July, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, another devout
backer of Israel, traveled to Ankara and made this amazing declaration: "I think
a real test of whether a country is a democracy is how it treats its minorities.
And actually it's one of the things that impresses me about Turkish history, the
way Turkey treats its own minorities."
Here Wolfowitz proves he's
not willing to let the truth get in the way of a good war. He must be familiar
with Turkey's early-20th-century oppression of the Jews. And for the past 80
years, Turkey has repressed its 15 million Kurds in horrendous ways, not the
least of which has been to ban their language and culture. When Kurdish rebels
rose against the military in 1984, the Turks beat down the uprising during the
next 15 years, killing 30,000 Kurds, destroying more than 3,000 Kurdish
villages, and leaving 3 million Kurds homeless, according to generally accepted
figures.
Wexler, in his bullish bid to help Israel and the
West dominate the Middle East, seems oblivious to such realities. In May 2001,
when the congressman traveled to Turkey on a diplomatic mission, he had war on
his mind. "As Iraq's northern neighbor," he said, "there cannot be an
anti-Saddam Hussein strategy without the full involvement of Turkey."
In July, the House International Relations Subcommittee on Europe passed a Wexler-sponsored resolution to commend Turkey and Israel. Wexler hailed it in a press release, in which he called upon the Middle East "to follow the example set by these two nations in promoting democracy, peace, and tolerance."
Hawking for
Israel
South Florida reps push for war. But who are they
pushing for?
BY BOB
NORMAN
bob.norman@newtimesbpb.com
New Times
Broward-Palm Beach
http://www.newtimesbpb.com/issues/2002-09-26/news/norman.html
Wexler isn't a new convert to Bush -- he's just an
old loyalist to Israel, a country that, along with a powerful Washington, DC.,
lobbying group called the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), is
pushing the war on Iraq with a vengeance. In essence, the Israeli lobby is
urging big brother America to come out, flex its military muscles, and make the
Israel-American alliance the dominant power in the Middle East.
An orthodox Jew, Wexler has
always been a Zionist hard-liner and has received tens of thousands of dollars
in campaign contributions from pro-Israel interests during the past six years.
And he's picked up a big stick for the fight against Iraq. A member of the House
committee on international relations, lately he's been spending an inordinate
amount of time traveling around the country and the world promoting Israel and
the war on Hussein.
So last week, I asked Wexler
the obvious question: Who, as you prepare to send U.S. soldiers to war, are you
really representing: South Florida or Israel?
"Let's get this straight," he
answered. "I'm American. I'm 100 percent American. I bleed American. Am I proud
of my heritage? Yes. I support the state of Israel and wholeheartedly support an
unbreakable bond between the U.S. and Israel... but there is nothing about my
policy that is anything other than American. It is not driven by Israel. At this
point, it is supportive of President Bush."
I too believe in a strong alliance
between the United States and Israel, but I also believe that Israel's narrow
interests have far too much influence on our foreign policy. We need a balanced
approach in the Middle East. If America continues to tie itself almost solely to
the tiny Jewish state as it thrashes about in a sea of Muslim Arabs, we're
asking for long and widespread warfare in the region.
Unfortunately, Wexler and
several other Jewish Democrats in Congress, led by Connecticut's Sen. Joe
Lieberman and a gaggle of representatives from California and New York, are
spoiling for that fight. And because these same politicians can usually be
counted on to anchor the Democrats' opposition to Bush, they have helped to
destroy any hope of the party's reining in Dick Cheney's dogs of war. Of course,
a few Jewish members of Congress -- California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chiefly
-- have opposed the invasion.
Broward County's own Jewish Democrat
in Congress, Rep. Peter Deutsch, is another near-fanatical, pro-Israel
politician who expects to vote for military action in Iraq and has publicly
backed it. But he recently told me that Bush hasn't yet met his "three-pronged
test" for an invasion. Deutsch won't support war until the president has proven
that Saddam has nuclear weapons, expects to use them on the United States, and
is developing a delivery system to carry out such an attack.
No such proof has been disclosed,
but Deutsch says he fully expects it will be soon.
The Washington, D.C.-based Jews for
Peace in Palestine and Israel has put both Deutsch and Wexler in its
"Hall of Shame" for their pro-Israel voting records. Powerful lobbying
groups like the American Jewish Congress and AIPAC have "hijacked the agenda"
with millions of dollars in campaign contributions and powerful backers,
alleges JPPI founder Josh Ruebner, adding that politicians like Wexler are
"representing the government of Israel, absolutely. Most American Jewish
members of Congress are guilty of that."
And it's a dangerous policy,
according to Nidal Sakr, a Muslim political activist from Miami Beach. Wexler
and other liberal Jewish hawks are "clearly serving foreign interests rather
than the national interest they are supposed to be serving," says Sakr, who
runs a group called March for Justice. "The U.S.-Israeli relationship is the
largest threat to our national security and the safety of our citizens. Our
support for Israel and its crimes against Palestinians that have been denounced
again and again by the international community and the United Nations fuels the
anti-American sentiments and feelings of hatred that are being compounded around
the world."
BY BOB
NORMAN
bob.norman@newtimesbpb.com
New Times
Broward-Palm Beach
http://www.newtimesbpb.com/issues/2002-10-17/news/norman.html
The people don't want to attack Saddam, but our elected representatives sure do
The other two Democrats
from Broward and Palm Beach counties, Peter Deutsch and Robert Wexler,
didn't surprise anyone when they supported the Toxic Texan. Both are pro-Israeli
hard-liners and high-flying hawks when it comes to the Middle East (see "Hawking
for Israel," September 26). They weren't alone among Jewish House Democrats: a
whopping 17 of 24 jumped on the Bush-Cheney war machine.
Moran
Said Jews Are Pushing War
The Poisoning of
American Politics
Patrick
J. Buchanan
March 17
2003
Moran
Said Jews Are Pushing War," ran the headline on page one. "Apology denies
Anti-Semitism" ran the subhead on the story.
Even a
glance at that Washington Post, and one knew Jim Moran, bad boy Irish
congressman from Alexandria – who has had more than his share of brawls,
personal and political – had stepped into it, big time. But while the headline
was stark, what Moran said and the context in which he said it, seem far less
inflammatory.
Apparently, at an antiwar gathering of 120
folks at St. Anne's Episcopal Church on March 3, a woman arose, identified
herself as Jewish, and noted that while Christian churches opposed to war on
Iraq were represented there, her own faith was not.
Why?
Moran
picked up on that and responded, "If it were not for the strong support of the
Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this."
Now
about this comment, it is, first, wrong. We are going to war because Bush,
Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and Powell are convinced we must disarm Baghdad – and
regime change is the only way to effect it. Second, according to polls, the
Jewish community is only about as hawkish as the rest of the nation, with 59
percent supporting war.
But
how was Moran's statement "anti-Semitic"? According to my Webster's Seventh New
Collegiate Dictionary, an anti-Semite is "one who is hostile to or
discriminates against Jews." Moran says he answered as he did because the
lady identified herself as Jewish. Indeed, he went on to say to her, "The
leaders of the Jewish community are influential enough that they could change
the direction of where this is going, and I think they should."
An
exaggeration, sure. But where is the hatred or hostility toward the Jewish
people in Moran's statement? Seeking moral clarity, I waited for the Post's
exegesis of Moran's remarks.
It did
not disappoint. Rather than pour oil on troubled waters, the Post editorial
headline screamed, "Blaming the Jews."
Moran is
"unfit for office," ranted the Post, as he is "perpetuating a stereotype of Jews
as a unified bloc steering the world in its own interest and against everyone
else's." The Post then put Moran's moral atrocity into a larger historical
context:
"Over
the centuries anti-Semites have used this libel to distract attention from their
own failings and to instigate violence and discrimination against Jews. Mr.
Moran's comment will be used to concentrate the poison of anti-Semitism in many
parts of the world where it remains virulent and dangerous."
Oh,
come off it. What Moran said was wrong and insensitive – and he has apologized
repeatedly – but from reading the Post, one would think he was over at St
Anne's passing out the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" and recruiting for the
Black Hundreds.
As with
Trent Lott, it is pile-on time. Moran's own Democratic leaders, Rep. Nancy
Pelosi and Sen. Tom Daschle, denounced him. Six Democratic colleagues, all
Jewish, have urged his defeat. Six rabbis called for his resignation. Sophie
Hoffman, president of the Jewish Community Council of Washington, called his
words, "reprehensible and anti-Semitic." Rabbi Jack Moline of Alexandria accused
Moran of echoing "the most scandalous rhetoric of the last century."
Such
remarks about any minority group in America," roared Moline, "whether
African-Americans, Hispanics, Muslims or others, are beyond inappropriate in the
rhetoric of a member of Congress."
But
hold on. Would it really be outrageous to say that were it not for the Cuban
community in Miami, America would be easing the embargo on Cuba? Would it really
be anti-Christian to say that were it not for the Christian Right, the GOP would
have abandoned its pro-life and anti-cloning positions?
Is it
really outrageous, reprehensible and anti-Semitic to say that were it not for
the power and influence of the Israeli lobby and Jewish community, Israel would
never have gotten $100 billion in foreign aid in the last three decades?
The
United States is about to launch a pre-emptive war on a nation that has not
attacked us, in accord with a "doctrine" this president never declared while
campaigning. This war may lead to what its crazed enthusiasts are calling "World
War IV," the "war on militant Islam."
The American people have a right to know, before we are dragged into an Armageddon against Islam, who is pushing for this war and what their motives, open or hidden, may be. And it is not Jim Moran who is trying to stifle that debate It is a power elite who use smears like "anti-Semite" to censor and blacklist anyone who stumbles too close to the truths they seek to conceal.
Embattled Rep. James Moran is apologizing for claiming that the Jewish community was pushing the country into war. But the Virginia Democrat's apology failed to allay the increasing fears in some circles that Jews will be blamed for a war against Iraq.
Moran, a seven-term congressman representing a heavily Muslim and Arab-American district in Washington's northern Virginia suburbs, made his controversial remark March 3 during a speech in front of 120 people. He was condemned by the White House and several congressional Democratic leaders. Six area rabbis and a Washington Post columnist called on him to resign.
The controversy comes at a time when Jewish community leaders are increasingly alarmed by the willingness of mainstream media pundits to discuss the influence of Israel and American Jews on the White House's Iraq policy. In particular, pundits have highlighted the key role played by several Jewish hawks in the Bush administration, the lobbying activities of Jewish groups and the president's strong relationship with Prime Minister Sharon.
AIPAC, the most influential pro-Israel
group in Washington, lobbied last fall in favor of Bush's successful efforts to
obtain congressional authorization to use force against Iraq. Several other
Jewish organizations, responding to press queries at the time, expressed support
for the president's efforts to obtain a United Nations Security Council
resolution authorizing military action to disarm Iraq. Still, staffers in
several congressional offices told the Forward that they had not heard recently
from Jewish groups on Iraq.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/3/12/185353.shtml
Edward I. Koch
Wednesday, March 12,
2003
Yesterday, I
responded to an article in The Washington Post which reported that Congressman
James P. Moran, D-Va., had told his Virginia constituents he held the Jews
responsible for the impending war against Iraq. My letter to him and to
Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi follow. Anti-Semitism must be crushed
with all our energy and in the same way we seek to crush
racism.
Senator Hollings stands by
his column
Hollings, who retires in January
after 38 years in the Senate can tell it like it is without fear of being
intimidated by AIPAC and ADL.
“Led by Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Charles
Krauthammer, for years there has been a domino school of thought that the way to
guarantee Israel's security is to spread democracy in the area.
With Iraq no threat, why invade a sovereign country? The answer: President Bush's policy to secure Israel.”
“U.S. Sen. Fritz Hollings took
to the Senate floor Thursday to defend himself against charges he had written an
anti-Semitic newspaper column.
“I won’t apologize for this
column; I want them to apologize to me,” the Charleston Democrat said of his
critics. “Talking about ‘anti-Semitic.’
They’re not getting by with it.”
Hollings, who retires in January
after 38 years in the Senate, went on to blame President Bush for the war in
Iraq. He said U.S. policy in the Middle East had unfortunately put Israel in
“terrible jeopardy.”
The Anti-Defamation League, a
prominent Jewish civil rights group, had taken Hollings to task for writing that
Israel and President Bush’s desire to court Jewish voters were the reasons for
the war in Iraq.”
Gen.
Zinni: 'They've Screwed UP
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/21/60minutes/main618896.shtml
Zinni
says he blames the Pentagon for what happened. “I blame the civilian
leadership of the Pentagon directly. Because if they were given the
responsibility, and if this was their war, and by everything that I understand,
they promoted it and pushed it - certain elements in there
certainly - even to the point of creating their own intelligence to match
their needs, then they should bear the responsibility,” he
says.
Zinni is
talking about a group of policymakers within the administration known as "the
neo-conservatives" who saw the invasion of Iraq as a way to stabilize American
interests in the region and strengthen the position of Israel. They include
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; Undersecretary of Defense Douglas
Feith; Former Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle; National
Security Council member Eliot Abrams; and Vice President Cheney's chief
of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
Zinni believes they are
political ideologues who have hijacked American policy in Iraq.
“I think
it's the worst kept secret in Washington. That everybody - everybody I talk to
in Washington has known and fully knows what their agenda was and what they were
trying to do,” says Zinni.
“And one
article, because I mentioned the neo-conservatives who describe
themselves as neo-conservatives, I was called anti-Semitic. I mean, you know, unbelievable that that's
the kind of personal attacks that are run when you criticize a strategy and
those who propose it. I certainly didn't criticize who they were. I certainly
don't know what their ethnic religious backgrounds are. And I'm not
interested.”
So what is the
story?
Magazine sparks outcry by 'outing' Jewish neo-cons
'Why won't anyone say they are Jewish?' article asks
By Scott Stinson
National Post
KALLE Lasn insists he is not anti-Semitic. The editor-in-chief of Adbusters says he knew an article that purports to "out" a large number of leading U.S. neo-conservatives as Jewish would be provocative, but he did not expect the "visceral" reaction that has seen the B.C.-based anti-consumerism magazine deluged with demands to cancel subscriptions.
"This has made me feel like I am the victim," Mr. Lasn said in an interview from his Fraser Valley home, adding he has never seen "this level of threatening phone calls, this level of swearing, this level of cancelled subscriptions" in his risk-taking company's 15-year history.
The flashpoint for the anger is an article Mr. Lasn wrote in the current issue of Adbusters. "Why Won't Anyone Say They Are Jewish?" posits that a disproportionate number of leading U.S. neoconservatives are Jewish, a fact Mr. Lasn says is relevant because "neo-cons seem to have a special affinity for Israel that influences their political thinking and consequently American foreign policy in the Middle East."
The implication is the United States is pro-Israel because many of Washington's policy-makers are Jewish. Readers and critics have taken particular umbrage at an accompanying list of what Adbusters calls "the 50 most influential neo-cons in the U.S.," such as Vice-President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz (left, with flag). Twenty-six, including Mr. Wolfowitz, have black dots next to their names to denote they are Jewish."It's an old tactic," said Ed Morgan, the Ontario chairman of the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC). "They were counting the number of Jews in the U.S. Communist party back in the '50s. But it's still startling to see a list and see an asterisk next to Jewish names. "Jewishness and a particular political position do not equate," Mr. Morgan said. "The point is to address issues of policy on their merits. Ethnicity is beside the point."
Frank Dimant, executive vice-president of B'nai Brith Canada, said Adbusters "must have been short of news to look at that kind of a thesis." He noted the administration of former president Bill Clinton had several Jews in positions of influence, yet that administration "bent over backwards" to appease Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Mr. Lasn, however, is unrepentant. The Adbusters Web site includes the original article, a selection of positive and negative responses from the public and a follow-up piece from the editor-in-chief that says if the list
"were a list of dentists or firefighters ... that would indeed be offensive",but because the neo-cons "are the most influencial [sic] political/intellectual force in the world right now" it is "necessary to put them under a microscope."
Expanding on that theme over the telephone, Mr. Lasn said the U.S. neo-cons "are the most powerful group of people in the world. They are intellectual thugs who have the power to start wars and stop wars. So because this group is so powerful, we decided it's OK to point out ... how it's 50% Jews."
Daniel Pipes, (right) director of the U.S. think-tank Middle East Forum, is on the Adbusters list, with an asterisk. He said the magazine's project is absurd "because of the implication that religion defines politics." "There are plenty of leading Jews against the war in Iraq. There are plenty who are neo-cons. It's no guide whatsoever to a person's political leanings."
He also said the list is inaccurate, both in identifying neo-conservatives and Jews. Lists that point out "dangerous" high-profile Jews are nothing new, Mr. Pipes said, adding he has found his name on many such compilations posted on the Internet. But it is unusual for a magazine with the profile of Adbusters, which boasts a circulation of 120,000 copies monthly -- two-thirds in the United States -- to undertake such an endeavour.
Mr. Dimant said he is particularly concerned that Adbusters purports to have
shed light on the "Jewishness" of its subjective list of influential Americans
-- a notion reminiscent of decades-old hatemongering theories about secret
Jewish cabals that control the media and world governments. "It's very hard to
run the world banking system and the foreign press from my little office in
Toronto," he said. Mr. Lasn dismisses such talk. "We are not going to censor
ourselves. We are not going to worry about people comparing it to unsavoury
things from the past. "Our goal was to launch a debate. We hope it gets even
bigger than it is now." Mr. Morgan said the CJC will have a formal response,
although, "we have not determined what course of action we're going to take"
*******************
Dennis
Prager
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=31576
Some Americans
apparently believe that we are going to war with Iraq "because of the Jews."
Having written a book explaining anti-Semitism (Why the Jews? The Reason for
Antisemitism, Simon & Schuster , all I can do is marvel at the
durability of anti-Semitism and the eternality of the charge that the Jews are
responsible for everything anti-Semites fear.
In all fairness,
individuals such as Prager should be concerned since-
US Jews Could Pay High
Price for Iraq War
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0316-07.htm
by Ira
Chernus
No one will ever know for
sure whether these neo-cons (notably Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and
Douglas Feith) really promoted war with Iraq primarily to help Israel. It is
not very likely, as Keller say. If a war in Iraq "goes bad," though, the truth
will not matter. Americans will look for scapegoats, and the organized Jewish
community may be near the head of the line.
It won't be just the
organizations who will be blamed; it will be "the Jews." That is certainly
unfair. The organizations and their leaders are more conservative than the
whole Jewish population, especially on Israel and the Middle East. While
nearly all the leaders support a war in Iraq, polls show that 40% or more of
U.S. Jews are hesitant, at best, about war. But the organizations and
leaders always claim to speak for all American Jews. Why shouldn't most American
non-Jews believe them and assume all Jews are to blame?
These Jewish groups and
leaders have struggled hard to gain their enormous influence on Middle East
policy. They
have largely achieved their aim. They, and the many Jews who do support them,
have had a free ride. They wield great clout without any noticeable increase
in anti-semitism. Here's the irony. If we have the war they want, and it "goes
bad," the Jewish community might pay a steep price in rising anti-semitism. Are
U.S. Jews really willing to take this risk?
Comment on
Ilana Mercer's 'Blame the Jews'
By Kevin MacDonald
There is nothing inherently
implausible about hypothesizing that minority activist movements like
neoconservatism would be willing to recruit some majority group members. It
makes excellent marketing sense to have at least some spokespeople who resemble
the target audience.
Mercer also argues that the elected
and senior appointed Bush administration officials, in the main not Jewish,
ought to be held responsible for the "administration's blunders." This is true,
but it does not in the least delegitimize consideration of what motivated the
administration's neoconservative members and friends – who generally are
Jewish.
Jewish
Organizations Worried About Backlash for Iraq War
By
Alan Cooperman
Buchanan denies that his views are
anti-Semitic and has not apologized for them. "We charge that a cabal of
polemicists and public officials seek to ensnare our country in a series of wars
that are not in America's interests. . . . What these neoconservatives seek is
to conscript American blood to make the world safe for Israel," Buchanan wrote in the
March 24 issue of the magazine he edits, the American Conservative.
An Open Letter to Paul
Wolfowitz
Do you know what they're
saying already? That the war in Iraq is being planned by a cabal of extremist
Jews. That it is the first part of a Zionist conspiracy to redraw the map of the
Middle East. That Israel stands to be the prime beneficiary of this war. And
it's not just the marginalized skinheads who are saying this either. It's also
mainstream folks who would swear up and down that they don't have an
anti-Semitic bone in their bodies.
Anti-Semite?
Are you an anti-Semite if you
criticize Israel or the U.S, policy towards Israel or point to the connection of
Jewish/American neocons with U.S. policy vis a vis Israel and their support of
the invasion of Iraq?
Let’s look at the example of former Illinois
Congressman Paul Findley who during the 1980’s began to doubt the wisdom of
United States policy in the Middle East. He tried to broker an agreement between
Yasser Arafat under which the PLO would live in peace with Israel. For his
attempts at seeking a peaceful settlement to the Palestinian/Israeli problem he
was branded a “practicing
anti-Semite”
AIPAC, the powerful Israeli lobby was
instrumental in Findley’s defeat in the next election. Findley dared to speak out
and he paid with his political future.
The
BOOK
They
Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's
Lobby
by Paul
Findley
Editorial
Reviews
The
Washington Post
"Straightforward and valid."
Book
Description
Exposes the degree to which
pro-Israeli groups are able to suppress free debate, compromise national
secrets, and shape American foreign policy. Findley focuses on individuals who
have stood up to the pro-Israeli forces and brings out their statements and
observations on the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy toward
Israel.
The Holocaust is being invoked to squelch
criticism of Israel and U.S. policy towards Israel. The leading Jewish/American neocons who
promoted the Iraq war will eventually find protection behind this façade (fence)
as conditions in Iraq deteriorate.
Read “The Holocaust Industry”
Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering
Professor Norman G. Finkelstein in an iconoclastic and controversial new study moves from an interrogation of the place the Holocaust has come to occupy in American culture to a disturbing examination of recent Holocaust compensation agreements. It was not until the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, when Israel's evident strength brought it into line with US foreign policy, that memory of the Holocaust began to acquire the exceptional prominence it enjoys today. Leaders of America's Jewish community were delighted that Israel was now deemed a major strategic asset and, Finkelstein contends, exploited the Holocaust to enhance this newfound status. Their subsequent interpretations of the tragedy are often at variance with actual historical events and are employed to deflect any criticism of Israel and its supporters.
http://www.counterpunch.org/finkelstein1.html
http://www.serendipity.li/more/finkel.html
http://www.rense.com/general8/intv.htm
Edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair
http://www.tidsskriftcentret.dk/index.php?id=357
Introduction
"How did a term, once used accurately to describe the most virulent evil, become a charge flung at the mildest critic of Israel, particularly concerning its atrocious treatment of Palestinians? Edited by Cockburn and St. Clair, the print and online journal Counterpunch has become a must read for hundreds of thousands a month who no longer believe anything they read in the mainstream press beyond the sports scores. And on the subject of Israel and Palestine, of the Israel lobby in the US, the current middle east crisis, and its ramifications at home and abroad, Counterpunch has been unrivalled. Herein you'll find 18 of the finest essays and articles (from 9 Jews and 9 Gentiles!). A lot of the names will be familiar - Edward Said, Robert Fisk, Norman Finkelstein, Lenni Brenner, Uri Avnery, plus the editors. Then, there's former CIA analysts Bill and Kathy Christison, the trenchant and witty philosopher Michael Neumann, seasoned Capitol Hill staffer George Sutherland, Will Yeoman's path-breaking essay on Israel and divestment, Shaheed Alam who became a target of the fanatical Daniel Pipes and Israeli journalist Yigal Bronner. Plus Kurt Nimmo, Bruce Jackson, Jeffrey Blankfort and more. This, the first in the new Counterpunch series from AK Press, is a timely anthology on how silence and complicity in crimes against a betrayed people has been enforced."
http://www.antiwar.com/hacohen/h092903.html
Ran
HaCohen
September
29, 2003
The eve of the Jewish New Year is an excellent
occasion for what Jewish tradition calls Kheshbon Nefesh, or
soul-searching on so-called "anti-semitism", which has now become the
single most important element of Jewish identity. Jews may believe in God or
not, eat pork or not, live in Israel or not, but they are all united by their
unlimited belief in anti-semitism.
The
rise of Jewish Anti-Semitism in Israel (I)
By Steven Plaut
September 13,
2004
One of the great ironies of Jewish history is that the
secular Zionism of the nineteenth century was formulated precisely for the
purpose of offering an alternative to the assimilationism and Jewish
"self-hatred" of the Diaspora.
Zionism
arose as a response to both assimilationism and anti-Semitism. Who then could
have dreamed that the fulfillment and realization of Zionism would be
accompanied by the emergence of the most malignant manifestations of Israeli
self-hatred and Jewish anti-Semitism, this in the state of Israel and the land
of Zion.
My
thesis
that the invasion of Iraq was supported, influenced and promoted by the neocons
who had the interests of Israel in mind should be looked at in the context of
the Palestinian / Israeli conflict and the role that Zionism and it’s adherents
have played in the years leading up to the founding of Israel and to the present
time.
(Unless the Israel / Palestinian conflict is
not resolved there will never be peace in the Middle East. With the death of Yasser Arafat, Pres.
Bush has a golden opportunity to play an important role in the
peace process.)
Since some of these neocons have Zionist
leanings it is important to learn something about Zionism in order to
understand what is happening in the Middle East and why we invaded Iraq. The
following links attempt to shed some light on the subject
Understanding the Israeli-Palestinian
Conflict
http://www.is-pal.net/zionism.htm
This site aims to provide authoritative information on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without polemics. On the theory that less is more, we've scoured the web and selected the best articles, maps and other materials. Links are organized by subject and annotated, so you can find what you need quickly.
Middle
East > Politics > Israeli-Palestinian
Conflict
Has Israel made an honest effort to seek peace with the Palestinians? The author of the following book lists the many obstacles that the Israeli government has placed in the way on the road to a peaceful settlement. Read the “Background” excerpts. By all means buy the book if you are seeking the truth and the other side of the story that the US media is afraid to tell.
Image
and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict
by Norman
G. Finkelstein
From: Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict
Background pp. xi – xii
“To resolve what was called the 'Jewish question' - i.e., the reciprocal challenges of
Gentile repulsion, or anti-Semitism, and Gentile attraction, or assimilation -
the Zionist movement sought in the late nineteenth century to create an
overwhelmingly, if not homogeneously, Jewish state in Palestine.! Once
the Zionist movement gained a foothold in Palestine through Great
Britain's issuance of the Balfour Declaration, the main obstacle to realizing
its goal was the indigenous Arab population. For, on the eve of
Zionist colonization, Palestine was overwhelmingly not Jewish but
Muslim and Christian Arab.
Across the mainstream Zionist spectrum, it was understood from the outset that Palestine's indigenous Arab population would not acquiesce in its dispossession. 'Contrary to the claim that is often made, Zionism was not blind to the presence of Arabs in Palestine', Zeev Sternhell observes. 'If Zionist intellectuals and leaders ignored the Arab dilemma, it was chiefly because they knew that this problem had no solution within the Zionist way of thinking. In general both sides understood each other well and knew that the implementation of Zionism could be only at the expense of the Palestinian Arabs.' Moshe Shertok (later Sharett) contemptuously dismissed the 'illusive hopes' of those who spoke about a "'mutual misunderstanding" between us and the Arabs, about "common interests" [and] about "the possibility of unity and peace between the two fraternal peoples.'" 'There is no example in history', David Ben-Gurion declared, succinctly framing the core problem, 'that a nation opens the gates of its country, not because of necessity but because the nation which wants to come in has explained its desire to it.”
'The tragedy of Zionism', Walter Laqueur wrote in his
standard history, 'was that it appeared on the international scene when there
were no longer empty spaces on the world map.' This is not quite right.
Rather it was no longer politically tenable to create such spaces:
extermination had ceased to be an option of conquest. Basically the
Zionist movement could choose between only two strategic options to
achieve its goal: what Benny Morris has labeled 'the way of South Africa' -
'the establishment of an
apartheid state, with a settler minority lording it over a large, exploited native majority' - or the 'the way of transfer'
- 'you could create
a homogenous Jewish state or at least a state with an
overwhelming Jewish majority by moving or transferring
all or most of the Arabs out.”
War and expulsion
(transfer)
http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/snieg_conc1.htm
Stephen Sniegoski
To understand why Israeli leaders would want a Middle East war, it is first necessary to take a brief look at the history of the Zionist movement and its goals. Despite public rhetoric to the contrary, the idea of expelling (or, in the accepted euphemism, "transferring") the indigenous Palestinian population was an integral part of the Zionist effort to found a Jewish national state in Palestine. Historian Tom Segev writes:
The idea of transfer had accompanied the Zionist movement from its very beginnings, first appearing in Theodore Herzl's diary. In practice, the Zionists began executing a mini-transfer from the time they began purchasing the land and evacuating the Arab tenants.... "Disappearing" the Arabs lay at the heart of the Zionist dream, and was also a necessary condition of its existence.... With few exceptions, none of the Zionists disputed the desirability of forced transfer — or its morality.
However, Segev continues, the Zionist leaders learned not to publicly proclaim their plan of mass expulsion because "this would cause the Zionists to lose the world's sympathy." [4]
The most monumental cover-up in media history may be the one I’m about to describe. In my entire experience with American journalism, I have never found anything as extreme, sustained, and omnipresent.
Three and a half years ago, when the current Palestinian uprising began, I started to look into Israel and Palestine. I had never paid much attention to this issue before and so – unlike many people – I knew I was completely uninformed about it. I had no idea that I was pulling a loose piece of thread that would steadily unravel, until nothing would ever be quite as it had been before.
When I listened to news reports on this issue, I noticed that I was hearing a great deal about Israelis and very little about Palestinians. I decided to go to the Internet to see what would turn up, and discovered international reports about Palestinian children being killed daily, often shot in the head, hundreds being injured, eyes being shot out. And yet little of all this was appearing in NPR reports, the New York Times, or the San Francisco Chronicle.
There was also little historic background and context in the stories, so this, too, I began to fill in for myself, reading what has turned into a multitude of books on the history and other aspects of the conflict. I attended presentations and read international reports.
The more I looked into all this, the more it seemed that I had stumbled onto a cover-up that quite possibly dwarfed anything I had seen before. My former husband had been one of the founders of the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR), an institution known for its powerful exposés. He and CIR have won numerous well-deserved awards from Project Censored from the very beginning of its creation. Nevertheless, the duration and violence of the injustice I was discovering, and the extent of its omission and misrepresentation – even in Project Censored itself, seemed unparalleled.
Robin Miller, a
freelance writer in New Orleans, writes with integrity, clarity and passion on
issues of social justice. Visit his web page to learn more about the
Palestinian-Israeli Conflict.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/3/5/201734.shtml
For many American Jews, anyone who writes disapprovingly of the policies of Ariel Sharon and of his Dionysian neo-conservative backers in Washington is evidence of "classic anti-Semitism." The mere reference to "neo-cons" is interpreted to mean an attack against a "Jewish cabal."
Zionism and Judaism – Let
Us (NETUREI KARTA) Define Our Terms
http://www.nkusa.org/AboutUs/Zionism/index.cfm
But first we must ask a simple question. Why has
the lie, which equates Judaism and Zionism, triumphed? Why, has what is so
demonstrably false, captured the citadels of Western public opinion? And, in the
end, what can we do about it? History is invariably written by those who emerge
victorious from its struggles. In the case of the Zionist/Palestinian struggle
of the past century this factor immediately places the Israeli state, its
propagandists and international apologists, in the ideological driver’s
seat.
Second, the suffering of the Jewish people in the Second World War
in Europe created extraordinary sympathy among the peoples of the earth and it
was this sincere and commendable sympathy that has been
incessantly
exploited by the Zionist propaganda machine since 1945.
Last, Zionist
propagandists are always given to bullying tactics and censorship. It is very
helpful in this regard to read former Congressman Findley’s book, They Dared
to Speak Out. It is the sorry record of the immense resources that the
Zionist lobby invested in destroying the careers of politicians all across the
United States who had voiced some qualms about this nation’s subservience to
Israel.
So, let’s explore some web
pages on the
topic of neocons so you can
decide if
the
evidence is anecdotal or is
it factual.
Harley Sorensen, Special to SF
Gate
September 13,
2004
We now know for certain that Saddam did not
have the weapons we used to go to war against Iraq.
And common sense tells that we didn't attack
Iraq because Saddam is a brutal dictator. He was a brutal dictator back in the
days when we played footsie with him as he fought Iran. (Do a Google image
search for Rumsfeld and Saddam, and you'll find pictures of Rummy and Saddam
shaking hands.)
Historically, the United States has always
been friendly with brutal dictators if it's to our financial advantage.
Currently, there are other dictators afoot; Saddam wasn't the only one.
And anyone who can read knows that Saddam had
nothing whatsoever to do with the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
So why did we go to war with Iraq?
The short answer is "oil." But that's not the
whole story.
Briefly, we went to war with Iraq because an
influential group of conservatives (now known as "neo-cons") convinced
President George W. Bush that it was in America's best interests to conquer Iraq
as a first step toward dominating the oil-producing nations in the Middle East
and eventually the world.
Not insignificantly, these same neo-cons
wanted to eliminate Iraq as a threat to their darling ally, Israel. Their
plan is laid out in detail on the Web at newamericancentury.org.
So we invaded Iraq not to save ourselves from
weapons of mass destruction, not to rid the world of a brutal dictator and not
to avenge the murders of Sept. 11. We invaded Iraq because Bush and his pals
think America should rule the world.
That's why we can't win. The rest of the
world isn't going to let us win. The rest of the world might admire us, but they
do not want to be dominated by us.
And that's why we should get out of Iraq
today. Not tomorrow, not next week, not a year from now, but today.
Try as we may, we are not going to turn Iraq
into a model democracy. The Sunnis don't want democracy. The Shiites don't
want a democracy. The Kurds don't want a democracy.
The Saudis do not want a new democracy as a
neighbor. Nor do the Kuwaitis. Nor do the Syrians. None of the countries in that
region with despotic rulers want us to succeed. And don't think for a moment
they're above slipping terrorists into Iraq to kill Americans.
The plan to conquer Iraq was half-baked from
the start. Our troops were not properly trained or equipped to do the job given
them. (Sent to the desert in jungle fatigues? Not given body armor? Completely
untrained in handling prisoners?)
There was no "exit plan" because we never
intended to exit. The plan was, and is, to build military bases in Iraq and stay
there forever as cock of the walk in the Middle East.
Many of our European friends, who have a
sense of history, knew better than to get involved in such a fool's mission
Bush may be the idealist other people think
he is, but his grandiose plan for controlling the world has at least one fatal
flaw: it depends, childlike, on the good will of all involved.
Yet, not even the U.S., the alleged "good
guy" in this mess, has demonstrated purity. Our leaders see Iraq as a place to
make money. So Bush & Co. have set up their friends to cash in on the
rebuilding of Iraq, a job that should be done (for pay) by the people who built
it in the first place: Iraqis.
We can't win in Iraq. Hardly anybody wants us
to. The longer we stay there, the more Iraqi children end up maimed or dead, the
more of our young men and women die.
Clearly, our government lied to us, and to
the world, to get us into this war. That alone should tell us it's wrong.
Neocon's 7-Year March to
Iraq
Nine Most
Effective Neocons in Starting War:
Cheney -Vice
President
Rumsfeld, Sect.
Defense
Woffowitz-Under
Rumsfeld
Feith-Under
Wolfowitz
Perle-Defense
Policy Board
Libby-Cheney’s
chief of staff
Wurmser
Cheney’s Mideast Advisor
Abrams-Security
Council, Mideast
Podhoretz-President’s
Medal of Freedom
Phase 1: The Focus on
Israel
In early 1996 at IASPS, a
“Jerusalem-based think tank with an office in Washington.” Wurmser, Feith, Perle and others wrote a report for the new Israeli prime
minister, calling the removal of Saddam from power "an important Israeli
strategic objective." Perle flew to Israel and presented the report to
Netanyahu.
December, 1996. In Commentary Magazine, Podhoretz explained that Iraq was a threat to Israel because of
its Scud
missiles--this thinking seems to be the origin of the WMD
rationale. Wurmser, however, wrote a report saying the danger of Iraq
was that it was “crumbling” and was likely to be taken over by Syria or Iran, so
pre-em-tive action was needed.
Phase 2: Joining Forces—PNAC is
Born
June 1997. PNAC, the
neocon think tank that lobbied hardest for the war was founded by Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz,
Libby, Abrams, and Podhoretz, among others.
January 1998. PNAC’s
first public statement, an open letter to Clinton (from
Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz,
Abrams, Perle, etc.) urged necessary
“military steps”... “for removing Saddam's regime from power” to protect, our
troops, Israel, and moderate Arab states from the “possibility” of Saddam
acquiring the capability to deliver possible WMD. In May it wrote a similar
letter to Senator Lott.
Phase 3: Theory, Planning and
Positioning
March 1999.
Wurmser publishes his book on Iraqi regime change
"Iraq's strategic importance to the US derives from a source beyond the
pernicious, extortionist character of Saddam's regime. Iraq occupies some of the
most strategically blessed and resource-laden territory of the middle east. ...
Iraq also has large, proven oil reserves, water, ..." Wurmser also notes that
Iraq threatens its neighbors, but in so saying, mentions only
Israel.
January, 2001. Writing for OurJerusalem.com, Wurmser argues "Instead, Israel and the United States should
... strike fatally, not merely disarm, the centers of radicalism in the
region—the regimes of Damascus, Baghdad, Tripoli, Tehran, and
Gaza. That would [prove] fighting with either the U.S. or
Israel is suicidal."
Cheney fights for and gets Rumsfeld, the rest of the neocon team follows.
May
2001. Reuel Gerecht, the Director of the Middle East Initiative, at PNAC,
publishes “Liberate
Iraq” in the neocon magazine “The Weekly Standard.” He says
Chalabi is more informed than the CIA, and Bush is retreating, and lays out a
strategy for war quite similar to the one eventually
followed.
Phase 4:
9/11 and the Team Swings into
Action
September 19, 2001.
Rumsfeld calls a 19-hour meeting of Defense Policy
Board (Perl,
Wolfowitz, Feith, Chalabi, etc.). A
letter is written, but published by PNAC in Washington Times (Sept. 20). It contains only two
sentences on Bin Laden and Afghanistan, but large paragraphs on (1) Iraq (with
Iran and Syria) and (2) Hezbollah as well as a paragraph on Israel and
Palestine. One week after 9/11, the neocons focused almost entirely on Iraq and
threats to Israel, did not mention Al Qaeda, and used Osama only as a stepping
stone to their real goal–Iraq.
May 2003. Wolfowitz says “The truth is that 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.” Then four days later, "The war in Iraq was impressively quick and
successful."
more neocon background:
PNAC - Project for the New American Century. Neocon foreign and defense policy think tank. Includes: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Libby, Abrams, and Podhoretz.
JINSA- The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs is committed to explaining the link between US. national security and Israel’s security. Served on Advisory Board: Cheney (1994), Wolfowitz, Feith, Perle.
Rumsfeld- Cheney’s pick for Secretary of Defense
Wolfowitz- Earliest critique of Bush I's decision to leave Saddam in Power. Time magazine's "godfather" of the 2nd Iraq war. Served under Cheney in first Iraq war.
Wurmser- Cheney’s Middle East advisor
Feith- Undersecretary of Defense (to Wolfowitz) for policy
Perle- Rumsfeld’s pick for chairman of Defense Policy Board. Forced to step down as chairman, but still on the Board.
Libby- Cheney’s Chief of Staff. Wrote controversial “Defense Planning Guidance” with Wolfowitz in 1992 for Cheney. Wolfowitz and Libby were upset that Bush 1 did not remove Saddam.
Abrams- Top Mideast advisor on the National Security Council. Author of Faith or Fear: How Jews Can Survive in a Christian America. Son-in-law of Podhoretz. Pled guilty to making false statements to Congress.
Podhoretz- Now retired editor of Commentary, the magazine of the American Jewish Committee. Received Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004, Current focus is the war on terrorism. Calling it world war four, he predicts it will last for generations.
This is not
a complete list of neocons who have played a key role in starting the Iraq war,
but these may be the nine most important players.
"NEOCONSERVATIVES"
- WHAT AND WHO THEY ARE
They are
specifically represented by Richard Perle, Bill Kristol &
Richard Brooks (WEEKLY STANDARD), Paul Wolfowitz, Fred Barnes, Morton
Kondracke, Charles Krauthammer, Frank Gaffney (former aid to Richard
Perle and WASHINGTON TIMES columnist), Robert Kagan
(Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), columnist Cal Thomas, a
dispensationalist, and others.
Most
neoconservative defence intellectuals
have their roots on the left, not
the right
The
weird men behind George W Bush's war
[Neocons] are products of the largely Jewish-American Trotskyist movement of the 1930s and 1940s, which morphed into anti-communist liberalism between the 1950s and 1970s and finally into a kind of militaristic and imperial right with no precedents in American culture or political history. Their admiration for the Israeli Likud party's tactics, including preventive warfare such Israel's 1981 raid on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor, is mixed with odd bursts of ideological enthusiasm for "democracy" They call their revolutionary ideology "Wilsonianism" (after President Woodrow Wilson), but it is really Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution mingled with the far-right Likud strain of Zionism. Genuine American Wilsonians believe in self-determination for people such as the Palestinians.
Serving Two Flags:
Neocons, Israel and the Bush Administration
http://www.wrmea.com/archives/May_2004/0405020.html
By Stephen
Green
Since
9/11, a small group of “neoconservatives” in the administration have
effectively gutted—they would say reformed—traditional American foreign and
security policy. Features of the new Bush doctrine include the pre-emptive use
of unilateral force, and the undermining of the United Nations and the principle
instruments and institutions of international law...all in the cause of fighting
terrorism and promoting homeland security.
Some skeptics, noting the
neo-cons’ past academic and professional associations, writings and
public utterances, have suggested that their underlying agenda is the alignment
of U.S. foreign and security policies with those of Ariel Sharon and the Israeli
right wing. The administration’s new hard line on the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict certainly suggests that, as perhaps does the destruction, with U.S
soldiers and funds, of the military capacity of Iraq, and the current
belligerent neocon campaign against the other two countries which
constitute a remaining counterforce to Israeli military hegemony in the
region—Iran and Syria.
The
Principals: Perle, Wolfowitz and Feith
One
might wonder how, with security histories like these, Messrs. Bryen and Ledeen
have managed to get second and third chances to return to government in highly
classified positions.
The explanation is that they,
along with other like-minded neoconservatives, have in the current Bush
administration friends in very high places. In particular, Bryen and Ledeen have
repeatedly been boosted into defense/security posts by former Defense Policy
Council member and chairman Richard Perle (who recently quietly resigned his
position), Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and Under Secretary of
Defense for Policy Douglas Feith.
As previously mentioned, in 1981
Perle, as DOD assistant secretary for international security policy (ISP), hired
Bryen as his deputy. That same year, Wolfowitz, then head of the State
Department Policy Planning Staff, hired Ledeen as a special adviser. In 2001
Douglas Feith, as DOD Under Secretary for Policy, hired or approved the hiring
of Ledeen as a consultant for the Office of Special Plans.
Pro-Israel
Lobby Has Strong Voice
By: Thomas B.
Edsall
It's worse
than you thought: pro-Israel influence on US policy
In 2003, the
organization reported spending $1.28 million on lobbying.
The Bush Administration's
Dual Loyalties
http://www.counterpunch.org/christison1213.html
by
KATHLEEN and BILL CHRISTISON
former CIA
political analysts
"Dual loyalties" has always been one of those red flags posted around the subject of Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict, something that induces horrified gasps and rapid heartbeats because of its implication of Jewish disloyalty to the United States and the common assumption that anyone who would speak such a canard is ipso facto an anti-Semite. (We have a Jewish friend who is not bothered by the term in the least, who believes that U.S. and Israeli interests should be identical and sees it as perfectly natural for American Jews to feel as much loyalty to Israel as they do to the United States. But this is clearly not the usual reaction when the subject of dual loyalties arises.)
CYA –
Foxman using the “AS” words to hide behind when the issue of
“Dual Loyalties” is brought up.
Dual-loyalty bias worries US Jews
Some Jewish officials are more concerned about the US authorities' apparent interest in snaring two America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) staffers in an alleged spy scandal than with the future of AIPAC or their own efforts in Capitol Hill.
"There are a lot of questions to ask: Why all this energy, all this effort?" said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), relating to the disclosures that Pentagon analyst Lawrence Franklin allegedly shared top secret intelligence information with two high-level AIPAC staffers. "It's a very broad investigation in terms of the persons interviewed. Why engage in a sting vis- -vis Jewish institutions? There are a lot of questions unanswered."
Foxman suggested that the FBI's interest in AIPAC may point to underlying bias, and a suspicion among US authorities that Jews in America are more loyal to Israel than to the US. That is especially troubling to the ADL, because the dual-loyalty charge carries with it anti-Semitic overtones for many American Jews.
"One out of three
Americans believes that American Jews are more loyal to Israel than the United
States. That's a classic anti-Semitic
attitude," Foxman said. "Washington is not immune."
Indeed, Foxman and Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations suggested, this might factor into decisions to reject US Jews for foreign-service jobs – something American Jews have complained about for some time.
Hoenlein said he gets complaints all the time from Jews claiming they've been denied access to security-sensitive posts because they are Jewish.
"There have been reports of people being denied security clearance again, and whether it's related to this or not we can't tell," Hoenlein said.
FBI spokeswoman Debbie Weierman said the bureau had no comment.
When AIPAC brought 5,000 supporters to its annual policy conference in Washington three weeks ago, the organization sought to demonstrate publicly that its work would not be hampered by the controversy surrounding the two ex-AIPAC officials caught up in a spy scandal.
And to all outward appearances, it seemed that the group was not suffering much fallout from the disclosure that Franklin allegedly handed over intelligence information to AIPAC research director Steven Rosen and Iran analyst Keith Weissman.
AIPAC moved quickly to fire the two, paid for lawyers to defend them against any possible espionage charges and announced to conference delegates that, in the words of executive director Howard Kohr, "Your presence here today sends a message to every adversary of Israel, AIPAC and the Jewish community that we are here and here to stay."
But behind this veneer of strength, officials at Jewish groups that work with Capitol Hill say they are monitoring closely a situation that could change if Rosen and Weissman are indicted. There is some concern that if they are criminally charged, a high-profile espionage trial, similar to the Johnathan Pollard case, could stoke fears among some in America, including US officials, that American Jews are more loyal to Israel than to the US.
"Things did not turn out exactly as predicted," said Neil Goldstein, executive director of the American Jewish Congress. "They said there is nothing to it; it'll all go away. Clearly, they've taken actions now that belie that, and clearly there are things that are still going on."
"What can I tell you? It has us all nervous," said David Zweibel, executive vice president for government and public affairs at Agudath Israel of America.
"It is in general a time of some nervousness about our relationships on Capitol Hill and, more generally, in federal Washington," Zweibel said. Nevertheless, he allowed, "There has not yet been any tangible sign of pulling back or reluctance or anything in terms of ongoing relationships."
For now, Jewish organizational officials insist that AIPAC's troubles have not really affected them or their work.
"We have not been impacted, to the best of our knowledge," said Foxman. "Nothing has changed vis- -vis Congress. We meet on many issues, including the Middle East."
Hoenlein echoed that sentiment. "Operationally, I would say that it has not impacted in any way that we can discern," he said. "I think the community should stand by AIPAC and Rosen and Weissman, who have served the community and made great contributions."
Even if the two are indicted – which some news reports based on anonymous sources have suggested is imminent – that should not change anything, he said.
"Indictments are not convictions," Hoenlein said. "From what we know, it would be very hard to convict somebody for what has been said so far."
Underlying Jewish groups' continued support for AIPAC is the conviction many share that Rosen and Weissman were set up in an FBI sting operation that hinged upon the cooperation of a Pentagon analyst who already was in trouble with the law for disclosing top secret information related to America's national defense.
The analyst, Franklin, was arrested in May, posted bond and had a preliminary hearing in his case on Thursday.
He is charged with leaking top secret information to two men – said to be the AIPAC staffers – at an Arlington, Virginia restaurant on June 26, 2003, as well as with breaking FBI rules on the handling of classified documents. The information Franklin allegedly shared with the AIPAC staffers – who are not mentioned by name in any of the indictments against Franklin – related to potential attacks on US and Israeli agents in Iraq by Iranian-backed forces.
While Franklin, a 25-year veteran of the Department of Defense, seems to have broken the law by disclosing classified information that could be used "to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation," it is not at all clear that Rosen and Weissman broke any laws by receiving it.
Even though they reportedly relayed that information to an Israeli Embassy official – so far, the most damning piece of information against them – they also notified the White House and reportedly have said that they were unaware the information was classified.
AIPAC officials say they have been reassured that the organization is not being investigated.
"It's been told consistently it's not a target of this," said Nathan Lewin, the Washington lawyer AIPAC hired to deal with the case. "Whatever the government does with regard to this investigation, it is not directed at AIPAC."
************
The Neocons in Power
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16378
By Elizabeth
Drew
The word "neoconservative" originally referred to former liberals and leftists who were dismayed by the countercultural movements of the 1960s and the Great Society, and adopted conservative views, for example, against government welfare programs, and in favor of interventionist foreign policies. A group of today's "neocons" now hold key positions in the Pentagon and in the White House and they even have a mole in the State Department.
It is really a conflict between the neoconservatives, who are largely responsible for getting us into the war against Iraq, and those they disparagingly call the "realists," who tend to be more cautious about the United States' efforts to remake the Middle East into a democratic region.
*********
In the context of
the United States, it refers to a right-wing movement of
former political leftists. As Michael Lind has observed,
"Most neoconservative defense intellectuals have their roots on the left, not
the right. They are products of the influential Jewish-American sector of the
Trotskyist movement of the 1930s and 1940s, which morphed into anti-communist
liberalism between the 1950s and 1970s and finally into a kind of militaristic
and imperial right with no precedents in American culture or political
history.
http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Neo-conservative
Jun 19th 2003
From The Economist print edition
http://www.economist.com/world/na/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1859009
A
strange waltz involving George Bush, ancient Greece and a dead German
thinker
FROM the moment George Bush moved into the White House, the search has been on for the man (or woman) who is pulling his strings. Is the puppeteer Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld? Karl Rove or Condoleezza Rice? Big Oil or old-time religion? Each has had their spell in the spotlight. But now all are forgotten in the fuss about the most surprising suspect of all: Leo Strauss, a political philosopher who died in 1973 and wrote such page-turners as “Xenophon's Socratic Discourse”.
Leo Strauss' Philosophy of
Deception
By Jim Lobe,
AlterNet. Posted May 19, 2003.
Many neoconservatives like
Paul Wolfowitz are disciples of a philosopher who believed that the elite should
use deception, religious fervor and perpetual war to control the ignorant
masses.
What would you do if you wanted to topple Saddam Hussein, but your intelligence agencies couldn't find the evidence to justify a war?
A follower of Leo Strauss may just hire the "right" kind of men to get the job done -- people with the intellect, acuity, and, if necessary, the political commitment, polemical skills, and, above all, the imagination to find the evidence that career intelligence officers could not detect.
The "right" man for Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, suggests Seymour Hersh in his recent New Yorker article entitled 'Selective Intelligence,' was Abram Shulsky, director of the Office of Special Plans (OSP) -- an agency created specifically to find the evidence of WMDs and/or links with Al Qaeda, piece it together, and clinch the case for the invasion of Iraq.
Leo Strauss,
Conservative Mastermind
By Robert
Locke
FrontPageMagazinecom | May 31,
2002
IN CONTEMPORARY American intellectual life, there is only one school of conservative intellectuals that has taken root in academia as a movement. They are the Straussians, followers of the late Leo Strauss (1899-1973). The hostile New Republic referred to Straussians as "one of the top ten gangs of the millennium." Strauss is an ambiguous, sometimes even troubling, figure, but he is essential to the conservative revival of our time and he offers the intellectual depth we are so desperately in need of.
Pentagon’s
Office of Special Plans
http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/6-19-03/discussion.cgi.55.html
SELECTIVE INTELLIGENCE
They call themselves, self-mockingly, the Cabal—a
small cluster of policy advisers and analysts now based in the Pentagon’s
Office of Special Plans. In the past year, according to former and present
Bush Administration officials, their operation, which was conceived by Paul
Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, has brought about a crucial change
of direction in the American intelligence community. These advisers and
analysts, who began their work in the days after September 11, 2001, have
produced a skein of intelligence reviews that have helped to shape public
opinion and American policy toward Iraq.
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/gbase/Currents/Content?oid=oid:49247
Neocons' plans for global domination top the annual list of stories ignored or downplayed by the mainstream media.
The neoconservative blueprint for U.S. military domination is hardly a secret. A group called the Project for a New American Century--a think tank founded by hawks who now hold prominent jobs in the White House--released a version of it three years ago
None of the major news media in this country have reported on this document or on the fact that Bush is so closely following its script.
Iraq War Hawks Have
Plans to Reshape Entire Mideast
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0910-01.htm
While many of the
hawks are under the wing of Wolfowitz, several conservatives hold
influential positions in Cheney's office and in the State Department. During the
Clinton administration, many of them served with far-right, defense-oriented
think tanks such as the Center for Security Policy and the Jewish Institute for
National Security Affairs.
Conservatives'
Uncivil War Over Iraq
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16764-2003Mar23?language=printer
Frum "repeatedly refers to his own Jewishness. It is hard to recall any previous presidential aide so engrossed with his own ethnic roots. Frum is more uncompromising in support of Israel than any other issue, raising the inescapable question of whether this was the real reason he entered the White House."
Invading Iraq: Converging
u.s. and Israeli Agendas
http://desip.igc.org/ConvergingAgendas.html
Key people in Bush administration are on record
as strong supporters of Israel and of regime change in Iraq, among them: Vice
President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary
of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Doug
Feith, Under Secretary, Arms Control and International Security, John R.
Bolton, senior director on Middle Eastern affairs on the National Security
Council, Eliot Abrams.
OUR HIJACKED FOREIGN
POLICY
Neoconservatives take
Washington – Baghdad is next
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j032502.html
"Like Bob Hope and
Bing Crosby, a pair of rightist factions in the Bush administration are hoping
to take the United States on the road to Baghdad. Unlike the beloved Hope-Crosby
'road' pictures, however, the adventure in Iraq is not going to be
funny."
Were Neo-Conservatives’
1998 Memos a Blueprint for Iraq War?
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45/220.html
Years before George W. Bush entered the White
administration of House, and years before the Sept. 11 attacks set the President
George W. direction of his presidency, a group of influential Bush.
neo-conservatives hatched a plan to get Saddam Hussein out of power.
The group, the Project for the New American
Century, or PNAC, was founded in 1997. Among its supporters were three
Republican former officials who were sitting out the Democratic presidency of
Bill Clinton: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz.
In open letters to Clinton and GOP congressional
leaders the next year, the group called for the removal of Saddam Hussein’s
regime from power and a shift toward a more assertive U.S. policy in the Middle
East, including the use of force if necessary to unseat Saddam.
And in a report just before the 2000 election that would bring Bush to power, the group predicted that the shift would come about slowly, unless there were some catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor.
Americas
Neoconservatives
Neoconservatives are
former liberals (which explains the "neo" prefix) who advocate an aggressive
unilateralist vision of U.S. global supremacy, which includes a close strategic
alliance with Israel. Let's start with one of the founding fathers of the
extended neocon clan: Irving Kristol. His extensive resume includes waging
culture wars for the CIA against the Soviet Union in the early years of the Cold
War and calling for an American "imperial" role during the Vietnam War. Papa
Kristol, who has been credited with defining the major themes of neoconservative
thought, is married to Gertrude Himmelfarb, a neoconservative powerhouse on her
own. Her studies of the Victorian era in Britain helped inspire the men who sold
Bush on the idea of "compassionate conservatism."
Inter Press Neo - Con
Archives
The overall IPS
mission
Its main
objective shall be to contribute to development by promoting free communication and
a professional flow of information to reinforce technical and economic
co-operation among developing countries.
http://tomweston.net/neocom.htm
Contrary to appearances, the
neoconservatives do not represent a political movement, but a small, exclusive
club with incestuous familial and personal connections.
What do William Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Elliot Abrams, and Robert Kagan have in common? Yes, they are all die-hard hawks who have gained control of U.S. foreign policy since the 9/11 attacks. But they are also part of one big neoconservative family -- an extended clan of spouses, children, and friends who have known each other for generations.
http://www.csmonitor.com/specials/neocon/index.html
The U.S. Media…… Objective
or Subjective in reporting the news?
The complicity of the media in supporting the neocon Iraq agenda can be understood in light of it’s support of Israel in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict in the Middle East.
As can be seen from this list of lists, the entire anti-Israel
contingent of the punditocracy does not add up to a single George Will or
William Safire, much less a Wall Street Journal or US News. It remains to be seen whether
unqualified support for all of Israel's actions is really in that tortured
nation's best interest in the long run.
Sometimes the bravest and most valuable advice a trusted friend can give
is: "STOP."
The Neocon line
up
The following names were entered in a GOOGLE search using key words “name – neocon – Iraq – war” or “name-neo conservative”
You will soon notice a pattern of association of these Jewish Americans with neocon thought ie; invading Iraq and support of Israel. Granted, that some of the Google search links are of a questionable source but select those that are not considered extremist.
Click on the names
Jeffrey Bergner Eliot Cohen Midge Decter Aaron Friedberg
Jeffrey Gedmin Reuel Marc Gerecht Eli S. Jacobs Donald Kagan Robert Kagan Frederick Kagan Charles Krauthammer Martin Peretz Norman Podhoretz Randy Scheunemann Gary Schmitt William Schneider, Jr. Richard H. Shultz Henry Sokolski Stephen J. Solarz Leon Wieseltier Thomas L. Friedman David Frum Daniel Pipes Bernard Lewis
Phillip Zelikow Kenneth Adelman Elie Wiesel Judith Miller A number of Washington think tanks and organizations have been complicit in following an agenda in their support of invading Iraq.
Top
Neoconservative Think Tanks http://www.csmonitor.com/specials/neocon/spheresInfluence.html Jewish Institute for National
Security Affairs (JINSA), http://www.jinsa.org/home/homehtml JINSA
has a Two-Fold Mandate: 1. To educate the American
public about the importance of an effective U.S. defense capability so that our
vital interests as Americans can be safeguarded; and 2. To inform the American
defense and foreign affairs community about the important role Israel can and
does play in bolstering democratic interests in the Mediterranean and the Middle
East.
http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=JINSA JINSA Advisory Board Note the number of ex US military
brass Lt. Gen. Anthony
Burshnick, USAF (Ret.) http://www.jinsa.org/about/adboard/adboard.html?documentid=712 General James B. Davis, USAF
(ret.) http://www.jinsa.org/about/adboard/adboard.html?documentid=1344 Adm. Jerome
Johnson, USN (Ret.) http://www.jinsa.org/about/adboard/adboard.html?documentid=728 LTG
Paul G. Cerjan, USA (Ret) http://www.jinsa.org/about/adboard/adboard.html?documentid=2047 David P. Steinmann,
Chairman http://www.jinsa..org/about/adboard/adboard.html More on JINSA
(Disinfopedia) http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientprofile.php?recipientID=19 http://www.aei.org/scholars/filter.all/scholar_byname.asp Washington Institute for Near East
Policy http://www.washingtoninstituteorg/ http://www.fpif.org/papers/02right/box1_body.html http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm The Middle East Media Research Institute
(MEMRI) http://www.memri.org/aboutus.html Although MEMRI's
viewpoint is pro-Israel, it is not the case that it contains no criticism of
Israel or is monolithically anti-Arab. A very
influential organization with the
Center for Security Policy is the Center's National
Security Advisory Council, whose members hold senior positions with the Bush
administration. Google Search Results Keywords"Center For Security Policy" Herman Kahn (1922 - 1983) was founder of the Hudson
Institute. Neo-Con
Invasion Not only at Commentary and
The Public Interest, but also at National Review, The American
Spectator, The Weekly Standard, The New Republic
and
the Wall Street Journal editorial pages, as well as at the Heritage
Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, and other leading conservative
think-tanks, neo-conservative influence became routine. Neo-conservatives also began taking over the
tax-exempt foundations that had provided funding for most of the conservative
organizations. These foundations, smaller than the Establishment liberal giants
like the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, had been established by wealthy
conservative families to serve philanthropic goals. But in the 1980s
neo-conservatives succeeded in taking over many of their administrative
functions, using their positions to re-direct the funds which the foundations
dispensed - turning off the spigot to conservative groups they deemed not
"credible" and turning it on for those they favored. Pro
Israel lobby that has an inordinate amount of
influence on U.S. foreign policy vis a vis the Palestinian / Israeli
crisis.
President
Speaks to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee AIPAC May 18,
2004 AIPAC is doing important work I
hope you know that. In Washington and beyond, AIPAC is calling attention to the
great security challenges of our time. You're educating Congress and the
American people on the growing dangers of proliferation. You've spoken out on
the threat posed by Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons. You've always understood
and warned against the evil ambition of terrorism and their networks. In a
dangerous new
century, your work is more vital than ever. More
often than not, the politician who tried to face down the American Israel Public
Action Committee came out the worse for it. Speaking
Out Blow to
Pro-Israel Lobby in U.S. by Paul
Findley http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/0397/9703016.htm By anyone’s standard, AIPAC
is one of the most powerful and intimidating lobbies in Washington and certainly
the most influential in foreign policy. In practical terms, it exists for one
purpose: to assure the enactment of legislation favorable to Israel. To that
end, it helps elect supporters of Israel and defeat its critics. It is as
thoroughly political as Congress itself.
Pro-Israel PAC
Contributions to 2006 Congressional
Candidates http://www.wrmea.com/archives/May-June_2006/0605031.html Iraq a historical
perspective The question has been asked why did the
president’s advisors fail to consult with historians who specialized in Arabic
studies to learn about the history of the region before making the decision to
invade. What is troubling is that Britain had suffered a defeat in Iraq after
world war one trying to bring peace to the region. One would only have to GOOGLE key words to learn about Iraq such as was done below. Those who do not learn from history are
doomed to repeat it. http://hnn.us/articles/990.html My son will be twelve on September 27. If he had
been born in 1964, the year of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, he would have
turned eighteen in 1970, the height of US troop strength. My son, unlike the son
of George I, would have been drafted to fight in a war that most recognize as
illegitimate. Americans who fought bravely and died in the rice patties of
Southeast Asia were betrayed by the President, the Congress and the People of
the United States in 1964. All three had a patriotic duty to question the lies
of the day, but they sat by and did nothing. I hope that Americans learn their history. I do
not want my son to die in an unjust quagmire without end. From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia..org/wiki/History_of_Iraq Iraq: a
century of war and rebellion http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Senate/7672/iraqhtml Since the state of Iraq was created early this
century, the working class in the area have suffered brutal exploitation and
repression at the hands of the rival ruling class groups competing for power. As
if dealing with these home grown gangsters wasn't enough, they have also faced
the bullets and bombs of the global capitalist powers (especially Britain and
America) seeking to control the oil wealth of this part of the world. Meanwhile opposition political
organizations such as the Iraqi Communist Party and the Kurdish Democratic Party
have consistently made deals with both Iraqi regimes and the global powers at
the expense of those who they claimed to be leading in resistance to the state.
Despite all this, the working class has shown itself a force to be reckoned
with, toppling governments and sabotaging war efforts. This brief chronology
charts some of the key moments in a century of war and rebellion. The Great Iraqi
Revolution 1920 http://www.onwarcom/aced/data/india/iraq1920.htm Local outbreaks against British rule
had occurred even before the news reached Iraq that the country had been given
only mandate status. Upon the death of an important Shia mujtahid
(religious scholar) in early May 1920, Sunni and Shia ulama temporarily put
aside their differences as the memorial services metamorphosed into
political rallies. Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting, began later in that
month; once again, through nationalistic poetry and oratory, religious leaders
exhorted the people to throw off the bonds of imperialism. Violent
demonstrations and strikes followed the British arrest of several
leaders. Britain
Tried First. Iraq Was No Picnic Then. http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/history/2003/0720britain.htm The public, the distinguished military
analyst wrote from Baghdad, had been led "into a trap from which it will be hard
to escape with dignity and honor." "They have been tricked into it by a
steady withholding of information," he said. "The Baghdad communiqués are
belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been
told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows."
He added: "We are today not far from a
disaster." Sound familiar? That was T. E. Lawrence — Lawrence of Arabia —
writing in The Sunday Times of London on Aug. 22, 1920, about the British
occupation of what was then called Mesopotamia. And he knew. For it was
Lieutenant Colonel Lawrence and the intrepid British adventuress Gertrude Bell
who, more than anyone else, were responsible for the creation of what was to
become Iraq. A fine mess they made of it, too. Iraqi Whispers Mull
Repeat of 1920s Revolt déjà vu
all over again Published on Tuesday, January 27,
2004 http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0127-08.htm BAGHDAD, Iraq - Whispers of
"revolution" are growing louder in Baghdad this month at teahouses, public
protests and tribal meetings as Iraqis point to the past as an omen for the
future. Iraqis remember 1920 as one of the
most glorious moments in modern history, one followed by nearly eight decades of
tumult. The bloody rebellion against British rule that year is memorialized in
schoolbooks, monuments and mass-produced tapestries that hang in living rooms.
http://www.geocities.com/iraqinfo/index.html?page=/iraqinfo/sum/hist/history.html The territory of
modern Iraq is roughly equivalent to that of ancient Mesopotamia, which fostered
a succession of early civilizations. The history of Mesopotamia
began with the civilization of the Sumerians,
who emigrated from the highlands of Iran and northern Anatolia in about 3000 BC.
Two kingdoms, Sumer and Akkade, combined in about 2350 BC to form one nation
under King
Sargon of Agade. In about 2000 BC the Amorites
assumed control. Their king, Hammurabi,
made Babylon a famous city (see Babylonia),
though he is best known for his code of
laws. After his death came invasions by the Hittites and
then by the Kassites,
who formed the Kingdom of Assyria about 1350 BC. The Kassites originally had
their capital at Ashur, but they moved it in 720 BC to Nineveh, opposite the
modern city of Mosul. The present state of
Iraq was founded by Great Britain in 1920, on land of great historical
antiquity, then known as Mesopotamia. The country lay between two rivers, the
Tigris and the Euphrates - and was the birthplace of the ancient civilisations
of Sumeria, Babylon and Nineveh. Saudi Arabia – Ally, Friend
or Foe? Briefing Depicted Saudis as
Enemies Ultimatum Urged To Pentagon
Board A briefing given last month to a top Pentagon
advisory board described Saudi Arabia as an enemy of the United States, and
recommended that U.S. officials give it an ultimatum to stop backing terrorism
or face seizure of its oil fields and its financial assets invested in the
United States. http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/08/19/time.secret/ Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld's private conference room, a group called the Defense Policy
Board heard an outside expert, armed only with a computerized PowerPoint
briefing, denounce the Saudis for being "active at every level of the terror
chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot soldier, from ideologist
to cheerleader." The
PowerPoint That Rocked the Pentagon http://www.msnbc.com/avantgo/839269.htm Did Saudi Princess
Give Money to 9/11 Hijackers?
http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/1/19/195041.shtml Since 1979, the
Wahhabi establishment has spent an estimated $70 billion on Islamist missionary
work, ranging from the funding of some 10,000 madrassas in Pakistan to the
construction of thousands of mosques and seminaries and community centers all
over the Muslim and Western worlds. Jihad, or holy war, against
Western heathens was the fundamentalist creed. Israel – Ally, Friend or
Foe? A Revisionist Historian’s Thesis The war on Iraq: Conceived
in Israel http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/conc_toc.htm In the following essay The author attempts to flesh out that thesis and show
the link between the war position of the neoconservatives and the long-time
strategy of the Israeli Right, if not of the Israeli mainstream itself. In
brief, the idea of a Middle East war has been bandied about in Israel for many
years as a means of enhancing Israeli security, which revolves around an
ultimate solution to the Palestinian problem. Five Israelis were seen
filming as jet liners ploughed
into the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001 ... http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1102-07.htm THERE
was ruin and terror in
Manhattan, but, over the Hudson River in New Jersey, a handful of men were
dancing. As the World Trade Centre burned and crumpled, the five men celebrated
and filmed the worst atrocity ever committed on American soil as it played out
before their eyes. http://whatreallyhappened.com/spyring.html Prior to 9/11, the FBI had discovered the
presence of a massive spy ring inside the United States run by the government of
Israel. This seems a harsh gratitude from a nation which obtains 10% of its
annual budget from the American taxpayer, $3+ billion a year. Over the years,
American taxpayers have been required to send Israel more than four times what
the US spent to go to the moon. Were Israelis Detained on Sept. 11
Spies? Millions saw the
horrific images of the World Trade Center attacks, and those who saw them won't
forget them. But a New Jersey homemaker saw something that morning that prompted
an investigation into five young Israelis and their possible connection to
Israeli intelligence. Israel Is Spying
In And On The U.S.? Part 1 BRIT HUME, HOST: It has been
more than 16 years since a civilian working for the Navy was charged with
passing secrets to Israel. Jonathan Pollard pled guilty to conspiracy to commit
espionage and is serving a life sentence. At first, Israeli leaders claimed
Pollard was part of a rogue operation, but later took responsibility for his
work. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7545.htm
Israel Is Spying
In And On The U.S.? Part 2 Tonight, in the second of four
reports on spying by Israelis in the U.S., we learn about an Israeli-based
private communications company, for whom a half-dozen of those 60 detained
suspects worked. American investigators fear information generated by this firm
may have fallen into the wrong hands and had the effect of impeded the Sept 11
terror inquiry. Here's Carl Cameron's second report. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7544.htm
Israel Is Spying
In And On The U.S.? Part 3 BRIT HUME, HOST: Last time we reported on an Israeli-based company called
Amdocs Ltd. that generates the computerized records and billing data for nearly
every phone call made in America. As Carl Cameron reported, U.S. investigators
digging into the 9/11 terrorist attacks fear that suspects may have been tipped
off to what they were doing by information leaking out of Amdocs. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6480.htm
Israel Is Spying
In And On The U.S.? Part 4 Carl Cameron has reported on a longstanding government espionage
investigation. Federal officials this year have arrested or detained nearly 200
Israeli citizens suspected of belonging to an "organized intelligence-gathering
operation." The Bush administration has deported most of those arrested after
Sept. 11, although some are in custody under the new anti-terrorism
law. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5133.htm After years of denials, Israel finally admitted
Pollard, a U.S. Navy civilian analyst, was not a "rogue agent," as it originally
claimed, but a spy for Israeli intelligence. Pollard caused enormous damage to U.S. national
security. He gave Israel top-secret U.S. military intelligence and diplomatic
codes; names of nearly 100 U.S. agents in the Mideast, who were then "turned" by
Israel; NSA code-breaking techniques and targets; intercepts of foreign
communications; and U.S. war-fighting plans for the Mideast. According to CIA sources, Pollard provided
Israeli intelligence with names of important American agents inside the former
Soviet Union and Russia who had supplied
information on East Bloc weapons and war plans. How the agents' names were
linked to the secrets they supplied - a major breach of basic intelligence
security - remains a mystery. Juan Cole J. Cole is
Professor of History at the University of Michigan Lawrence
Franklin espionage scandal Important new details of the
U.S.-Israeli espionage
case involving Larry Franklin, the alleged Pentagon spy, two officials of the
American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, and an intelligence official at the
Embassy of Israel emerged last week. Two AIPAC officials—who have left the
organization—were indicted along with Franklin on charges of "communicat[ing]
national defense information to persons not entitled to receive it." In plain
English, if not legal-speak, that means spying. But as the full text of the
indictment makes clear, the conspiracy involved not just Franklin and the AIPAC
officials, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, but at least several other Pentagon
officials who played intermediary roles, at least two other Israeli officials,
and one official at a "Washington, D.C. think tank." It's an old-fashioned spy
story involving the passing of secret documents, hush-hush meetings and outright
espionage, along with good-old-boy networking. By
SAM HUSSEINI [This survey of
Israeli spying on the US was compiled in 1997.] The Washington Post reported in a front-page
story on May 7th, 1997 that US intelligence had intercepted a conversation in
which two Israeli officials had discussed the possibility of getting a
confidential letter that then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher had written
to Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat. One of the Israelis had commented that they
may get the letter from "Mega"-- apparently a codename for an Israeli agent
within the US government. "They Always Get What They
Want" Sometimes the act is simple theft. One
official says, "Israelis were caught in the Pentagon with unauthorized
documents, sometimes scooping up the contents of 'in boxes' on desk tops." He
recalls that because of such activity a number of Israeli officials were told to
leave the country, No formal charges of espionage have ever been filed, and
Israel covered each such exit with an excuse such as family illness or some
other personal reason: "Our government never made a public issue of it." He
adds, "There is a much higher level of espionage by Israel against our
government than has ever been publicly admitted," The official recalls one day receiving a list
of military equipment Israel wanted to purchase, Noting that "the Pentagon is
Israel's 'stop- and-shop,'" he took it for granted that the Israelis had
obtained clearances. So he followed usual procedure by circulating it to various
Pentagon offices for routine review and evaluation: One office instantly
returned the list to me with a note: 'One of these items is so highly classified
you have no right to know that it even exists.' I was instructed to destroy all
copies of the request and all references to the particular code numbers. I
didn't know what it was. It was some kind of electronic jamming equipment, top
secret. Somehow the Israelis knew about it and acquired its precise
specifications, cost and top secret code number. This meant they had penetrated
our research and development labs, our most sensitive
facilities. A Rogue Agent Exposes
the Mossad's Secret Agenda Chapter 27 tells about the propaganda campaign against Saddam
Hussein (p.247). Iraq targeted Iranian cities using information from American
satellites. Pages 250-1 tell how a reporter (who knew too much) was lured into a
fatal mission. Then there is the planted story of Iraq's "weapons of mass
destruction". Page 259 tells of the safest sanctuary around - an airport!
Chapter 30 tells of President George Bush's visit to the Madrid peace talks, and
the failed assassination attempt. Chapter 31 explains Robert Maxwell's
partnership with the Mossad, and why he had to be silenced. It was not that he
knew too much, but that he began to talk too much under pressure of bankruptcy.
Chapter 31 ends the book with his tour of Europe to promote his first novel A
problem occurred in Belgium; Victor knew of the corruption of the Belgian police
force. Victor then realized that his connection in the Mossad was no longer
reliable (p.290). CYA Spy-scandal lobby blitz
-AIPAC secures wide backing after secrets charges
This post has been removed from "The Hill" web page.
Lobbyists for an influential pro-Israel group launched into
congressional overdrive when trails of a Pentagon spy scandal led to their
Washington office. Charging
anti-Semitism, lawmaker calls for new head of AIPAC spy
probe Guess
who? A
US lawmaker demanded that the FBI official heading a Pentagon spy probe be
replaced, alleging the agent has "a record of unfairly targeting
Jews." Congressman
Robert Wexler made the charge in a letter to US President George W. Bush,
calling for a probe into alleged anti-Semitic acts by David Szady, a senior FBI
counterintelligence official leading the bureau's investigation of alleged
espionage by the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
"I urge you to investigate Mr. Szady's purported anti-Semitic
record ... and examine whether or not he should be leading this case," the
letter released by the Florida Democrat's office.
The USS Liberty, with 294 men aboard, arrived near the Gaza Strip in the
Eastern Mediterranean at 9:00 on the morning of June 8, 1967. This was the
fourth day of the Arab-Israeli war later to be known as "The Six Day War." http://home.cfl.rr.com/gidusko/liberty/ http://ussliberty.org/schneider.txt Refusal to Investigate Israel’s 1967 Attack on Attack on the
Liberty: Lifting the “Fog of War” http://www.wrmea.com/archives/June_2004/0406026.html The bare bones are these: The
intelligence ship Liberty, AGTR-5, on June 8, 1967 was describing a slow,
dogleg pattern a little less than 13 miles off the Egyptian coast in the Eastern
Mediterranean. Without warning, rocket-firing Israeli jets, followed after an
interval by torpedo boats, pummeled her to near-death; 821 separate holes would
later be counted in the scorched superstructure. An Israeli torpedo blew a
40-foot hole in the Liberty’s hull, devastating the cryptological spaces
below decks and killing 25 U.S. National Security Agency technicians. The spy
ship’s defensive armament comprised a mere four machine guns. These had been
judged adequate, insofar as she was a noncombatant in international waters. The
Israeli attack continued for an hour and a quarter. When the smoke cleared, 34
Americans were dead, another 172 lay wounded. The story of the intelligence
ship in a sense resembles the Liberty herself: both refuse to go down.
The heartbreaking saga is kept afloat by mutually antagonistic partisans—I dub
them the “deliberates” and the “accidentalists.” Trying to win the
war for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people let alone the Muslim nations
will be very difficult when they are exposed to web pages such as the one below.
The Internet and satellite TV have made it easy for the pro Muslim media to
spread their propaganda message. This is another problem that our chicken
hawks did not take into account when they made the decision to invade Iraq.
Warning: Graphic images of war. http://english.aljazeera.net/HomePage Aljazeera has come a
long way since it was launched in November 1996. Today the channel
that sent shockwaves through the whole Arab world from its very first day
on air has become a global name which people, governments, and decision-makers
cannot afford to ignore. http://electronicintifada.net/new.shtml The Electronic
Intifada (EI), found at electronicIntifada.net, publishes news,
commentary, analysis, and reference materials about the Israeli-Palestinian
Conflict from a Palestinian perspective. EI is the leading Palestinian portal
for information about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its depiction in the
media. by Joel
Beinin http://www.mediamonitors.net/joelbeinin1.html “Why do they hate us?” several
reporters asked me in the days following the horrifying, criminal attacks on the
World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. In fact, they — the great majority of Arabs
and Muslims — do not hate us, the American people. Americans who travel to the
Arab or Muslim world are usually welcomed and treated with great generosity
However, many Arabs and Muslims who
would never condone or commit acts of terror such as those perpetrated on Sept.
11 have become increasingly angered by the foreign policy of the United States
government and its impact on the Middle East. The criminal and fanatic fringe of
political Islam — elements like Osama Ben Laden and Al Qaeda organization — has
emerged from this broader anger, which has been brewing for many years. Yet
because most Americans know so little about the Middle East, they do not know
why our government's policies are so disliked. The longest standing grievance is
the Arab-Israeli conflict. This has been exacerbated by Israel's
disproportionate use of force in attempting to suppress the Palestinian uprising
over the last year, which has been extensively broadcast on Arab television
Mubarak:
Arabs Hate U.S. More Than Ever http://news.myway.com/top/article/id/239663|top|04-20-2004::09:25|reuters.html Apr 20,
9:00 AM (ET) Mubarak, who visited the United
States last week, told French newspaper Le Monde that Washington's actions had
caused despair, frustration and a sense of injustice in the Arab world.
"Today there is hatred of the
Americans like never before in the region," he said in an interview given during
a stay in France, where he met President Jacques Chirac
Monday. He blamed the hostility partly on
U.S. support for Israel, which assassinated Hamas leader Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi
in a missile strike in the Gaza Strip Saturday weeks after killing his
predecessor, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. "At the start some considered the
Americans were helping them. There was no hatred of the Americans. After what
has happened in Iraq, there is unprecedented hatred and the Americans know it,"
Mubarak said. An
Issue Too Hot for Fahrenheit? By Ciro Scotti DOUBLE
STANDARD. As already observed, the man has a zinging wit. And
mostly he's right about the media drinking the Administration Kool-Aid on Iraq
and being afraid to ask the tough questions. Many in the media were shameful
weenies on Iraq, and maybe we do have tunnel vision about the electorate.
( Could it be that Rahm Emmanuel, former Clinton adviser,
current congressman from Illinois, staunch supporter of Israel, has a brother, Ari Emmanuel, who just
happens to be Michael Moore's agent.) Why Iraqis Rebel Another neocon who was a proponent of invading
Iraq is Daniel Pipes. Read his comments as to why the Iraqi people are against
the “liberators”. Why didn’t Pipes with his vast knowledge of Muslim history pose these same arguments
in opposing the invasion. “Iraqis do not feel
they must accept guidance from the occupation forces. Rather, they immediately
showed a determination to shape their country’s future.” “As a predominantly
Muslim people, Iraqis share in the powerful Muslim reluctance to being ruled by
non-Muslims. This reluctance results from the very nature of Islam, the most
public and political of religions.” “This explains why one finds a consistently strong
resistance to rule by non-Muslims through fourteen centuries of Muslim history.
Europeans recognized this resistance and in their post-crusades global expansion
stayed largely away from majority-Muslim territories, knowing these would
awesomely resist their control.” “This history suggests that the coalition’s grand
aspirations for Iraq will not succeed. However constructive its intentions to
build democracy, the coalition cannot win the confidence of Muslim Iraq nor win
acceptance as its overlord. Even spending US$18 billion in one year on economic
development does not improve matters.” “I therefore counsel the occupying forces quickly
to leave Iraqi cities and then, when feasible, to leave Iraq as a
whole.” The wars’
aftermath. Civil War or Civil
Society? What went
wrong. The testimony of Drs.
Toby
Dodge and Juan
Cole Committee
on Foreign Relations April 20, 2004 “The biggest US
failure in Iraq to date lay in American inability to understand the workings of
Iraqi society.” “The United States made a key strategic error in
declining to post enough US troops to Iraq in the post-war period to establish
good security. A country the size of Iraq probably required 400,000
to 500,000 troops to keep it orderly in the wake of the collapse of the
state.” The Generals Speak
Out Gen. Joseph P. Hoar
(USMC-ret.), a four-star general, was Commander in Chief, U.S. Central Command
(1991-94), commanding the U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf after the 1991 war. He
also served in the Vietnam War, as a battalion and brigade advisor with the
Vietnamese Marines. He was interviewed by Jeffrey Steinberg on May 6,
2004. EIR: I was at an event, where both Gen.
[Anthony] Zinni [USMC-ret.] and Chas Freeman, former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi
Arabia, spoke, and this was about eight months before the outbreak of fighting,
in March 2003, and they both basically thought that the real troubles would
begin after the "hot phase" of combat, when American forces would be there as an
occupying force. And they rejected the neo-con and Cheney thesis, that
this would be a cakewalk and we'd be greeted as
liberators. What was your sense of the
neo-con vision of what was going to happen in Iraq? Hoar: Well I think that there were two
problems: The first one was that they created a set of circumstances that didn't
exist on the ground, and they were aided and abetted in this process by Ahmed
Chalabi, who, to this day, is still on the U.S. government payroll. And Chalabi
is a fraud. He was in the early 1990s, when I first came across him. Tony Zinni
has spoken out against him, and got in a lot of trouble with [Sen.] Trent Lott
[R-Miss.], for fighting to prevent the Congress from giving Chalabi's Iraqi
Congress $94 million a few years ago. Chalabi very quickly
realized that the neo-cons wanted to hear certain things, and he obliged
them, by giving them information, including planting erroneous intelligence All
of the stories, from dancing in the streets, to the locations of weapons of mass
destruction, were all fabrications. And the people in the government bought into
this, and there's some evidence that they even cooked the books, with respect to
intelligence information, so that they could cherry-pick unrefined information
that had come to the United States, through intelligence sources, in order to
make the case. EIR: How significant a linkage do you
see, between the Israel/Palestine situation, and the challenges on the
ground in Iraq, and throughout the whole region? Hoar: There's enormous
significance. And there are many people in government and elsewhere in the
United States that have attempted to decouple the inter-connectedness of these
two issues. They are connected, because 1.2 billion Muslims—worldwide,
but largely spread out between the Philippines and all the way across South Asia
and North Africa to Morocco—believe that the United States has unjustly taken
the part of Israel, in the Palestine/Israel confrontation. Many of our
activities in the region, including the invasion of Iraq, are connected to
our support for Israel. And so, when the President
stands with Mr. Sharon, and makes statements that are patently not in congruence
with the work of the Quartet and the Road Map that had been put together by the
Quartet—namely, the United States, the EU, Russia, and Kofi Annan, UN Secretary
General—that that is immediately read as another example of how the United
States unjustly supports Israel. And in fact, the timing of it could not
have been worse, given the internal unrest that exists right now in Iraq, and
then, on top of that, the events of this maltreatment of Iraqi
prisoners. So, I think that the
neo-conservatives had their day, by selling to the President the need
for invasion of Iraq. I think it's now time for a clean sweep—and it
has been for some time, in my judgment—to get rid of these people. And,
to see if we can put together a more coherent policy than has existed for the
last couple years. Gen. Zinni: 'They've Screwed
Up' (CBS) Retired General Anthony Zinni is
one of the most respected and outspoken military leaders of the past two
decades. Zinni spent more than 40
years serving his country as a warrior and diplomat, rising from a young
lieutenant in Vietnam to four-star general with a reputation for candor.
“There has been poor
strategic thinking in this,” says Zinni. “There has been poor operational
planning and execution on the ground. And to think that we are going to ‘stay
the course,’ the course is headed over Niagara Falls. I think it's time to
change course a little bit, or at least hold somebody responsible for putting
you on this course. Because it's been a failure.” Who specifically is he
talking about? Zinni believes they are
political ideologues who have hijacked American policy in Iraq.
“I think it's the worst
kept secret in Washington. That everybody - everybody I talk to in Washington
has known and fully knows what their agenda was and what they were trying to
do,” says Zinni. Adds Zinni: “I know
what strategy they promoted. And openly. And for a number of years. And what
they have convinced the president and the secretary to do. And I don't
believe there is any serious political leader, military leader, diplomat in
Washington that doesn't know where it came from.” Zinni, who now teaches
international relations at the College of William and Mary, says he
feels a responsibility to speak out, just as former Marine Corps Commandant
David Shoup voiced early concerns about the Vietnam war nearly 40 years ago
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Breaking
ranks with the White House and his Republican leaders in Congress, Rep. Doug
Bereuter of Nebraska has said in a letter to constituents the U.S. military
action in Iraq was a mistake. The Iraq war was a "costly mess"
with no quick way out, wrote Bereuter, vice chairman
of the House Intelligence Committee and a senior member of the House
International Relations Committee. "I've reached the conclusion,
retrospectively, now that the inadequate intelligence and faulty conclusions are
being revealed, that all things being considered, it was a mistake to launch
that military action especially without a broad and engaged international
coalition," he said in the letter dated Aug. 6. Republican leaders in Congress
have supported President Bush's decision to invade Iraq on grounds that it had
weapons of mass destruction that posed a danger to the United States. No
stockpiles of such weapons have been found. But Bereuter, who has resigned
his seat in the House of Representatives to become president of the Asia
Foundation, expressed dismay over the decision to go to war.
"The cost in casualties is
already large and growing, and the immediate and long-term financial costs
are incredible," he wrote, reflecting on his 2002 vote in favor of a
resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq. "Our country's reputation
around the world has never been lower and our alliances are weakened," he
added. "Now we are immersed in a
dangerous, costly mess and there is no easy and quick way to end our
responsibilities in Iraq without creating bigger future problems in the region
and, in general, in the Muslim world." The White House had no comment
on the letter. In detailing "the
conservative crack-up" over the Iraq war, E. J. Dionne
writes: "The isolationist conservatives
around Pat Buchanan cannot understand why we went to war in the first place –
and they opposed it from the beginning. These conservatives speak explicitly
about the 'costs of empire,' much as the left does. They argue that globalism is
really 'globaloney' and that being an empire is incompatible with being a
republic." Actually, that's not true. We
"isolationists" – conservatives and libertarians alike – understand all too well
why we went to war. As Pat
Buchanan put it in the run-up to the invasion: "We charge that a cabal of
polemicists and public officials seek to ensnare our country in a series of wars
that are not in America's interests. We charge them with colluding with Israel
to ignite those wars and destroy the Oslo Accords. We charge them with
deliberately damaging U.S. relations with every state in the Arab world that
defies Israel or supports the Palestinian people's right to a homeland of their
own. We charge that they have alienated friends and allies all over the Islamic
and Western world through their arrogance, hubris, and
bellicosity. "… They charge us with anti-Semitism
– i.e., a hatred of Jews for their faith, heritage, or ancestry. False. The
truth is, those hurling these charges harbor a 'passionate attachment' to a
nation not our own that causes them to subordinate the interests of their own
country and to act on an assumption that, somehow, what's good for Israel is
good for America." Buchanan named names, tracing the
development of the "what's good for Israel is good for America" doctrine to the
influential sect known as neoconservatives:
ex-leftists who defected from the Democratic party in the 1960s and 1970s over
the Vietnam War, and wormed their way into top GOP policymaking circles,
eventually winding up in charge of George W. Bush's foreign
policy. Does Mr. Bush ever wonder if the neocons duped
him and hijacked his foreign policy? Some Middle East experts think some of
the neocons painted a rosy picture for the president of Arab states
blossoming with democracy when they really knew this could not be accomplished
so easily; they may have cynically suspected that it was far more likely that
the Middle East would fall into chaos and end up back in its pre-Ottoman Empire
state, Balkanized into a tapestry of rival fiefs — based on tribal and ethnic
identities, with no central government — so busy fighting each other that they
would be no threat to us, or Israel. The administration is worried now about Jordan
and Saudi Arabia in the face of roiling radicalism. Some veterans of Bush 41 think that the
neocons packaged their "inverted Trotskyism," as the writer John Judis
dubbed their rabid desire to export their "idealistic concept of
internationalism," so that it appealed to Bush 43's born-again sense of divine
mission and to the desire of Mr. Bush, Rummy and Mr. Cheney to achieve
immortality by transforming the Middle East and the military. Post Iraq
war “Those who
have hoped that a U.S. military victory in Iraq would somehow bring about a more
peaceful world are in for a rude awakening. The final resolution of this war and
the U.S. occupation of Iraq will likely not be the end, rather, only the prelude
to a succession of future crises: in Kashmir, Syria, North Korea, and Iran. This
article will focus primarily on the latter case.”
The ominous backlash of an attack against
Iran When
U.S. President George W. Bush first identified the two Middle East members of
his "axis of evil," Iran clearly ranked as a far more formidable adversary than
Saddam Hussein's Iraq. But
Bush went after the easier target instead. "Did we invade the wrong country?"
now asks leading American commentator Charles Krauthammer, speaking for many
neoconservative hawks as the U.S. refocuses on Iran. From their
standpoint, it must surely look as if they did. For the neocons,
overthrowing Saddam was to have been nothing if not regional in purpose, the
opening phase of a grand design to "transform"' the entire Middle East. But such
are the region's cross-border dynamics that success was never going to be
assured even in one country unless it embraced others too.
Is
Israel planning to attack Iran? Martin
van Creveld
IHT JERUSALEM
Ariel Sharon may be on the warpath again and the target is Iran. In the
past, the Israeli prime minister has focused attention on Iran by claiming that
it presents the greatest threat to Israel. More than once, defense officials in
Jerusalem have said that Israel might attack Iran's nuclear facilities. In
response, Iran's defense minister, Ali Shamkhani, warned that should Israel do
so, his country would wipe out Israel. The only country whose reaction
to such a strike would carry great weight with Israel is the United States.
Because Iran is suspected of supporting at least some of the insurgents in Iraq,
many U.S officials might privately welcome an Israeli strike on Iran, just as
they welcomed Israel's destruction in 1981 of the nuclear reactor that Saddam
Hussein was building near Baghdad. With the United States now in the midst of a
hotly disputed election campaign, if Sharon wanted to act, the time to do so
would be between now and November. by Carl Osgood The entire so-called "War on
Terrorism," with its associated wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is, as EIR
has shown, the product of a deliberate policy of perpetual war. That policy,
formulated by a gang of neo-cons in the Bush Administration, is intended to take
the world back to the condition it was in, prior to the 1648 Treaty of
Westphalia, which brought to an end nearly 150 years of destructive, bloody,
religious warfare in Europe. The present policy was elaborated in
the now-infamous "Clean
Break" document in 1996 written under the auspices of a
Jerusalem-Washington think tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Policy
Studies (IASPS), for the just-elected Jabotinskyite, Benjamin
Netanyahu, as prime minister of Israel. That document, authored by
former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle and a team of fellow
neo-cons, called for: 1) the destruction of Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian
Authority, blaming them for every act of Palestinian terrorism, including the
attacks from Hamas; 2) inducing the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein in
Iraq; 3) launching war against Syria after Saddam is overthown; 4) parlaying the
overthrow of the regimes in Syria and Iraq into the "democratization" of the
entire Muslim world, including further military actions against Iran, Saudi
Arabia, and even Egypt. In addition to Perle, the authors of "Clean Break"
included Douglas Feith, now Undersecretary of Defense for Policy; David Wurmser,
now an official in the office of Vice President Cheney; Wurmser's wife, Meyrav,
of the Hudson Institute; Charles Fairbanks, Jr., and others. It is no secret that the "Clean
Break" document is the strategic doctrine of both the Bush 43 regime in the
United States, and the Israeli government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Both
have pursued it with glee, especially since the Sept. 11, 2001, irregular
warfare attacks on New York and Washington. Since the Iraq invasion alone, in
March 2003, Sharon has managed to completely sabotage the tepid U.S. effort at
finding a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, to the point
where he is now openly threatening to assassinate Arafat (as he already has done
with numerous leaders of Hamas). On the other side of the Atlantic,
the U.S. has stepped up its diplomatic warfare against both Syria and Iran, with
the passage and implementation of the Syria Accountability Act and the campaign
against Iran's nuclear program. A pre-emptive strike on Iran, either by the U.S.
or Israel, cannot be ruled out at this point, nor can an Israeli attack on
Syria. That danger was underscored on Sept. 20 by reports that the U.S. was
preparing to transfer 5,000 air-dropped bombs to Israel, under its military aid
program. Included among the 5,000 bombs are: five-hundred 2,000-pound BLU-109s,
designed to penetrate more than six feet of reinforced concrete, obviously ideal
for attacking reactor containment buildings, and other nuclear
facilities. Nor have the neo-cons ignored Saudi
Arabia, as shown by a Sept. 9 forum on that country at the Hudson Institute,
home of Meyrav Wurmser. A panel that included British Arab Bureau agent Prof.
Bernard Lewis, argued that the U.S. has to cut all ties with Saudi Arabia,
including cutting off oil imports. National Review editor David
Pryce-Jones, who, like Lewis is British, complained that "stability means the
continuation of tyranny," and said that the only way to destroy tyranny is
"through force of arms." Pryce-Jones praised the U.S. intervention in Iraq as
the way to the future, and warned, "If we're not prepared to consider the
occupation of Saudi Arabia or war on Iran, all of our good intentions [sic!] may
pave the road to Hell." These perpetual wars are not to be
limited to Southwest Asia, either. They are to be spread to North Korea, and
China, and perhaps even to Russia. As EIR reported last week ("Neo-Cons
Knee Deep in Caucasus Provocations," by Jeffrey Steinberg), former Carter
National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski is involved up to his ears in the
ongoing provocations against Russia. Membership in Brzezinski's American Committee for
Peace in Chechnya includes many of the neo-con leading lights behind
Cheney's perpetual war policy: Perle and Fairbanks, as well as Michael Ledeen
and Joshua Muravchik of the American Enterprise Institute, Frank Gaffney of the
Center for Security Policy, and William Kristol, among many others. In a Sept.
20 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, in which he compared Russian
President Vladimir Putin to Mussolini, Brzezinski issued a veiled warning that
Russia must get out of the Caucasus and that the U.S. must help secure Russia's
neighbors in order for "democracy to thrive" in Russia. How did he
come to the attention of the U.S. government officials? Background Tinker, Banker,
NeoCon, Spy The Chalabi
Lobby In Washington, Team Chalabi is led by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul
Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, the neoconservative strategist who heads the
Pentagon's Defense Policy Board. Chalabi's partisans run the gamut from far
right to extremely far right, with key supporters in most of the Pentagon's
Middle-East policy offices -- such as Peter Rodman, Douglas Feith, David
Wurmser and Michael Rubin. Also included are key staffers in Vice President
Dick Cheney's office, not to mention Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and
former CIA Director Jim Woolsey. The Washington partisans who want to install
Chalabi in Arab Iraq are also those associated with the staunchest backers of
Israel, particularly those aligned with the hard-right faction of Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon and former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Chalabi's
cheerleaders include the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP)
and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).
"Chalabi is the one that we know the best," says Shoshana Bryen, director
of special projects for JINSA, where Chalabi has been a frequent guest at
board meetings, symposia and other events since 1997. "He could be Iraq's
national leader," says Patrick Clawson, deputy director of WINEP, whose board of
advisers includes pro-Israeli luminaries such as Perle, Wolfowitz and Martin
Peretz of The New Republic. What makes
Chalabi so attractive to the Washington war party? Most importantly, he's a
co-thinker: a mathematician trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
and the University of Chicago and a banker (who years ago hit it off with
Albert Wohlstetter, the theorist who was a godfather of the
neoconservative movement), a fellow mathematician and a University of Chicago
strategist. In 1985, Wohlstetter (who died in 1997) introduced Chalabi to
Perle, then the undersecretary of defense for international-security
policy under President Reagan and one of Wohlstetter's leading acolytes. The two
have been close ever since. In early October, Perle and Chalabi shared a podium
at an American Enterprise Institute conference called "The Day After: Planning
for a Post-Saddam Iraq," which was held, appropriately enough, in AEI's
12th-floor Wohlstetter Conference Center. "The Iraqi National Congress has
been the philosophical voice of free Iraq for a dozen years," Perle told
me. by JANE
MAYER Ahmad
Chalabi pushed a tainted case for war. Can he survive the
occupation? Issue of
2004-06-07 For years, he had been America’s staunchest Iraqi ally, and
he had helped the Bush Administration make its case against Saddam, in part by
disseminating the notion that the Baathist regime had maintained stockpiles of
biological and chemical weapons, and was poised to become a nuclear power.
Although Chalabi developed enemies at the C.I.A. who disputed his intelligence
data and questioned his ethics, he forged a close bond with Vice-President Dick
Cheney and many of the top civilians at the Pentagon, such as Deputy
Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Under-Secretary of Defense Douglas
Feith, and Under-Secretary of Defense William J. Luti.
Yet now that the occupation of Iraq appeared to be headed toward disaster, he
said, many in the Administration had united in making him the scapegoat. How Ahmed Chalabi Conned
the Neocons By John Dizard May 4, 2004 Why did the neocons put such enormous faith in Ahmed Chalabi, an exile
with a shady past and no standing with Iraqis? One word: Israel. They saw
the invasion of Iraq as the precondition for a reorganization of the Middle
East that would solve Israel's strategic problems, without the need for an
accommodation with either the Palestinians or the existing Arab states.
Chalabi assured them that the Iraqi democracy he would build would develop
diplomatic and trade ties with Israel, and eschew Arab nationalism. Neocons Forced to Face
Reality July 26, 2004 by Christopher Preble and Justin
Logan As American operations in
Iraq continue to lose support from both the American and Iraqi people, the
neoconservatives who engineered the war are on the defensive.
There is a pervasive fear among neoconservatives in Washington of the resurgence
of realism: a foreign policy that emphasizes the defense of vital national
security interests and rejects values-based foreign
interventions. Realists acknowledge that
other states can help us in the war on terrorism. But we hardly consider
international support a panacea. After 9/11, virtually the entire world saw its
interests converge into a united front against the type of terrorist attack
suffered by the U.S. If European opposition to the war in Iraq had obstructed
the pursuit of vital U.S. interests, realists would not have hesitated in
proceeding without their support. The problem is that invading and occupying
Iraq was never in America's interest. And why should we squander near-total
international support for the war on terrorism absent a vital need?
Neoconservatives, by
contrast, seem to revel in alienating historical allies. It is worth noting that
even after all of the invective slung across the Atlantic, France still
maintains troops in Afghanistan that are hunting for Osama bin Laden.
Donnelly and Serchuk claim
that the proper strategy would "leverage [U.S.] hegemony in favor of the forces
of political and economic liberalism in the greater Middle East." Who are these
forces? Ahmed Chalabi, the man who promised an oil pipeline to Haifa and
who now is alleged by the U.S. government to have betrayed U.S. interests to
Iran? The real forces of political and economic liberalism in Iraq unfortunately
lack the power and popular support to remake the country. The development of
liberal society requires more than a few good men and institutions with familiar
names, and even these cannot succeed when implanted by
force. KEY FINDINGS A Failed 'Transition'
is the most comprehensive accounting of the mounting costs of the Iraq war on
the United States, Iraq, and the world. Among its major findings are stark
figures about the escalation of costs in these most recent three months of
"transition" to Iraqi rule, a period that the Bush administration claimed would
be characterized by falling human and economic costs. 1. U.S. Military
Casualties Have Been Highest During the "Transition": U.S. military
casualties (wounded and killed) stand at a monthly average of 747 since the
so-called "transition" to Iraqi rule on June 28, 2004. This contrasts with a
monthly average of 482 U.S. military casualties during the invasion (March
20-May 1, 2003) and a monthly average of 415 during the occupation (May 2,
2003-June 28, 2004). 2. Non-Iraqi Contractor
Deaths Have Also Been Highest During the "Transition": There has also been a
huge increase in the average monthly deaths of U.S. and other non-Iraqi
contractors since the "transition." On average, 17.5 contractors have died each
month since the June 28 "transition," versus 7.6 contractor deaths per month
during the previous 14 months of occupation. 3. Estimated Strength of
Iraqi Resistance Skyrockets: Because the U.S. military occupation remains in
place, the "transition" has failed to win Iraqi support or diminish Iraqi
resistance to the occupation. According to Pentagon estimates, the number of
Iraqi resistance fighters has quadrupled between November of 2003 and early
September 2004, from 5,000 to 20,000. The Deputy Commander of Coalition forces
in Iraq, British Major General Andrew Graham, indicated to Time magazine in
early September that he thinks the 20,000 estimate is too low; he estimates
Iraqi resistance strength at 40,000-50,000. This rise is even starker when
juxtaposed to Brookings Institution estimates that an additional 24,000 Iraqi
resistance fighters have been detained or killed between May 2003 and August
2004. 4. U.S.- led Coalition
Shrinks Further After "Transition": The number of countries identified as
members of the Coalition backing the U.S.-led war started with 30 on March 18,
2003, then grew in the early months of the war. Since then, eight countries have
withdrawn their troops and Costa Rica has demanded to be taken off the coalition
list. At the war's start, coalition countries represented 19.1 percent of the
world's population; today, the remaining countries with forces in Iraq represent
only 13.6 percent of the world's population.
*********************************************** Take note as these neocons begin to appear on
TV (Richard Perle’s one hour interview on C-SPAN 05/09/04 followed by Robert Kagan, Ken
Adelman and Laurie
Mylroie three weeks later) and
write op-ed pieces trying to explain away their participation in the decision
making process and their influence in the media etc. in leading the U.S. to
war. Comments made by the neocons
now that they were wrong in
sending our men and women to
war. a.k.a C.Y.A. By Frederick W.
Kagan All these failures flowed from a greater failure
of understanding. This administration came to office with a belief that war is
all about destroying targets, that ground forces are unnecessary and that
technology is supreme. Much to our sorrow, we have experienced the fact that
none of those beliefs are true. Wars of regime change cannot be fought mainly
with missiles. Ground forces that can interact with people, perform police
functions and maintain order must be present in large numbers during and after
hostilities. Excessive haste in withdrawing the inadequate numbers of troops the
United States sent to Iraq has only exacerbated these problems. The people to blame for Sept. 11 are Osama bin
Laden and al Qaeda. The people to blame for our failures since then are
Donald Rumsfeld and the Bush administration -- as well as the many
critics who have urged even greater defense reductions and those who seek to
score cheap political points rather than addressing the real issues. Note: Not one mention of the names of neocons who
were the primary movers and shakers for the war. http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/977ovnnr.asp From the April 26, 2004 issue: Resolve alone won't bring
success. We need a military and political strategy that maximizes our odds of
winning in Iraq. Unfortunately, resolve alone won't bring success. Neither will well-delivered
statements by the president. The problem in Iraq is not poor public relations,
or a lack of will. Rather, it is the failure of policymakers at the highest
levels to fashion a military and political strategy that maximizes the odds of
success. That is what has been missing ever since Saddam's statue fell a little
over a year ago. The mere fact that violence has increased recently in Iraq is not by itself
grounds for criticizing the administration's handling of the war. No sensible
person believed that the effort to build a democratic Iraq would be without cost
and dangers. No reasonable person expected administration officials and military
commanders, either in Washington or in Baghdad, to be able to exercise unerring
mastery over an inherently complex and always explosive situation. Nor is the news from Iraq all bad. Several weeks ago we argued optimistically
(perhaps too optimistically) that things were looking better, and we still
believe there is much in Iraq to be gratified by: continued peaceful cooperation
among Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish leaders, despite many disagreements; an economy
that seems to be improving; the fact that a large majority of Iraqis, as
documented in polls, say their future is promising, reject political violence,
and support an ongoing American presence. And much of Iraq remains, at the
moment, relatively peaceful. All this is important progress. Yet this progress can be undone. And while we certainly do not hold the
administration responsible for everything that has gone wrong in Iraq, it is
clear that there have been failures in planning and in execution, failures that
have been evident for most of the last year. Serious errors have been made--and
made, above all, by Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon. The recent violence in Iraq has
confirmed that the level of American military forces has been too low to
accomplish the president's mission ever since the invasion phase of the war
ended last April. On Thursday, the secretary of defense announced a three-month extension in
tours of duty for about 20,000 troops in Iraq. This did not increase the number
of troops on the ground, but it did undo a planned drawdown in military strength
from 135,000 to 115,000, thereby maintaining current combat strength. But
leaving 20,000 troops in Iraq for an additional three months will almost
certainly not be enough. Close observers of the conflict in Iraq, civilian and
military alike (military, of course, speaking off the record), say that at least
two additional divisions--at least 30,000 extra troops--are needed in Iraq just
to deal with the current crisis. Even more troops may well be needed to fully
pacify the country. And it would be useful to have as many of those troops as
possible there sooner rather than later. By William Kristol (Another example of Neocon
Chutzpa) "As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They're not the Army
you might want or wish to have at a later time." -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in a town hall meeting with soldiers at
Camp Buehring in Kuwait, Dec. 8. Actually, we have a pretty terrific Army. It's performed a lot better in this
war than the secretary of defense has. President Bush has nonetheless decided to
stick for now with the defense secretary we have, perhaps because he doesn't
want to make a change until after the Jan. 30 Iraqi elections. But surely Don
Rumsfeld is not the defense secretary Bush should want to have for the remainder
of his second term. Contrast the magnificent performance of our soldiers with the arrogant
buck-passing of Rumsfeld. Begin with the rest of his answer to Spec. Thomas
Wilson of the Tennessee Army National Guard: "Since the Iraq conflict began, the Army has been pressing ahead to produce
the armor necessary at a rate that they believe -- it's a greatly expanded rate
from what existed previously, but a rate that they believe is the rate that is
all that can be accomplished at this moment. I can assure you that General
Schoomaker and the leadership in the Army and certainly General Whitcomb are
sensitive to the fact that not every vehicle has the degree of armor that would
be desirFrom
Wikipedia
The Project for the New
American Century
Signatories of 1997 Statement of
PrinciplesThe
Project for the New American Century
Center
for Security Policy
Hudson Institute
by Samuel
FrancisAugust 5, 1996
PAUL FINDLEY AND AIPAC
2005-2006
Cycle2004 Top Ten
Career Recipients of Pro-Israel PAC Funds
Pro-Israel PAC Contributions
to 2004 Congressional Candidates
New Poll Shows
American Suspicious of AIPAC Status
A
new Council for the National Interest/Zogby poll commissioned after the
publication of reports that AIPAC was being investigated for espionage shows that Americans of all
backgrounds and ages strongly believe it acts as a foreign agent for the Israeli
government and should be registered as a foreign agent and lose its tax exempt
status.
The poll found 61% "strongly or somewhat agree" that AIPAC should
be asked to register as a foreign agent and lose its tax exempt status, while
only 12% strongly or somewhat disagree that it should. 27% were unsure on the
issue.
A majority of people within almost every subgroup agrees. This
includes 77% of 18-29-year-olds, 72% of Hispanics, and approximately two-thirds
of independent voters, 50-64-year-olds, residents of the West region, Catholics,
single adults, parents of children under 17, and men.
15% of Jewish
Americans "strongly agreed" and 15% "strongly disagreed" with the statement that
AIPAC should register as an agent of a foreign government and thereby lose its
tax exempt status. However, 60% were unsure. Three times as many "Born Again
Christians" agreed with the results than disagreed, with almost one-third
unsure. These are the traditional pro-Israel bases of the Republican
Party.History of
Iraq
An ancient
civilization
The LaRouchie defector who's
advising the defense establishment on Saudi Arabia.By STEPHEN J. SNIEGOSKI
Now Fox News has learned some U.S. investigators believe that
there are Israelis again very much engaged in spying in and on the U.S., who may
have known things they didn't tell us before September 11. Fox News
correspondent Carl Cameron has details in the first of a four-part
series. Pentagon/Israel
Spying Case Expands: Fomenting a War on Iran
Sunday,
August 29, 2004
Here is my take
on the Lawrence
Franklin espionage scandal in the Pentagon.
It is an
echo of the one-two punch secretly planned by the pro-Likud faction in the
Department of Defense. First, Iraq would be taken out by the United States,
and then Iran. David Wurmser, a key member of the group, also wanted
Syria included. These pro-Likud intellectuals concluded that 9/11 would give
them carte blanche to use the Pentagon as Israel's Gurkha regiment, fighting
elective wars on behalf of Tel Aviv (not wars that really needed to be fought,
but wars that the Likud coalition thought it would be nice to see fought so as
to increase Israel's ability to annex land and act aggressively, especially if
someone else's boys did the dying).A Long History
Israeli Espionage Against
the US
by Victor
Ostrovsky
Soon after media outlets
reported on the scandal late last month, American Israel Public Affairs
Committee (AIPAC) lobbyists and their political liaisons across the country
asked Democratic and Republican lawmakers to issue public statements in support
of America’s premier pro-Israel group.
The USS Liberty
ATTACK ON THE USS LIBERTY
They do not want this matter investigated. They called me an
USS Liberty a “No-Brainer”:One Legislator’s StoryBy David C.
Walsh
Arab propaganda
PARIS (Reuters) - Arabs in the
Middle East hate the United States more than ever following the invasion of Iraq
and Israel's assassination of two Hamas leaders, Egyptian President Hosni
Mubarak said in comments published Tuesday.
At a Massachusetts political rally, Michael Moore
leveled some well-deserved zingers at the media, while ducking a key
question
But Moore has a double standard about being duped about weapons of mass
destruction. He defends John Kerry's vote to invade Iraq because the Democratic
about-to-be-nominee like so many other Americans believed in the
Commander-in-Chief. The press doesn't get that same pathetic pass.
And
despite Moore's brilliant use of humor and pathos to deliver a political
broadside, Fahrenheit is seriously flawed. A critic as tough as Michael
Moore could make the case that the great auteur has foisted on the country an
argument against U.S. involvement in Iraq that avoids the central reason behind
the invasion. Talk about being chicken-hearted and missing the big story.
The film goes on about filial revenge and oil, but it never ventures
onto really touchy turf -- namely the role of fiercely
pro-Israel neocon hawks in convincing Bush to go to war. The
elephantine Mr. Moore conveniently fails to mention that other pachyderm in the
Democratic room. Why didn't Fahrenheit go there, Mr. Moore?
By Daniel Pipes
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 13,
2004Committee’s hearings
on
“The Iraq
Transition: Civil War or Civil Society?”
“The
second problem hampering the occupation is the CPA’s
continuing lack of expert knowledge about the country they are trying to
control.
Within
the CPA’s headquarters there are very few experts on Iraqi society, politics or
economy.”
“In the
run up to war Army
Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki in a
Senate hearing called for ‘hundreds of thousands’ of troops to guarantee order.”
Toby
Dodge
The Neo-Cons Have Had Their
Day;
Now It's Time for a Clean Sweep' GEN. JOSEPH P.
HOAR
From 1997 to 2000, he was commander-in-chief of the
United States Central Command, in charge of all American troops in the Middle
East. That was the same job held by Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf before him, and Gen.
Tommy Franks after.
Following his retirement from the Marine Corps, the Bush administration
thought so highly of Zinni that it appointed him to one of its highest
diplomatic posts -- special envoy to the Middle East.
But Zinni broke ranks
with the administration over the war in Iraq, and now, in his harshest criticism
yet, he says senior officials at the Pentagon are guilty of dereliction of duty
-- and that the time has come for heads to roll.
“Well, it starts with at the top. If you're the secretary
of defense and you're responsible for that. If you're responsible for that
planning and that execution on the ground. If you've assumed responsibility for
the other elements, non-military, non-security, political, economic, social and
everything else, then you bear responsibility,” says Zinni. “Certainly those in
your ranks that foisted this strategy on us that is flawed. Certainly they ought
to be gone and replaced.”
Zinni is talking about a group of policymakers
within the administration known as "the neo-conservatives" who
saw the invasion of Iraq as a way to stabilize American interests in the region
and strengthen the position of Israel. They include Deputy
Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; Undersecretary of Defense Douglas
Feith; Former Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle; National Security
Council member Eliot Abrams; and Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis
"Scooter" Libby.
“And one article, because I mentioned the
neo-conservatives who describe themselves as
neo-conservatives, I was called anti-Semitic.
I mean, you know, unbelievable that that's the kind of personal attacks that are
run when you criticize a strategy and those who propose it. I certainly didn't
criticize who they were. I certainly don't know what their ethnic religious
backgrounds are. And I'm not interested.”
Zinni said he believed
their strategy was to change the Middle East and bring it into the 21st
century.
“It is part of your duty. Look, there
is one statement that bothers me more than anything else. And that's the idea
that when the troops are in combat, everybody has to shut up. Imagine if we put
troops in combat with a faulty rifle, and that rifle was malfunctioning, and
troops were dying as a result,” says Zinni. September 7, 2003
By David Hirst
Special to The Daily
Star
Monday, September 13,
2004
Scott Ritter on attacking Iran
Scott Ritter on the Iran Issue Part 1
Scott Ritter on the Iran Issue Part 2 Q & A
Friday, August 20, 2004In Iraq:
The Neo-Con
Perpetual War Policy
Ahmed Chalabi's
long and winding road from (and to?) Baghdad
Almost to a man, Washington's hawks lavishly praise
Chalabi. "He's a rare find," says Max Singer, a trustee and co-founder of
the Hudson Institute. "He's deep in the Arab world and at the same time
he is fundamentally a man of the West." THE
MANIPULATOR
Posted 2004-05-29A FAILED "TRANSITION": THE
MOUNTING COSTS OF THE IRAQ WAR
http://www.ips-dc.org/iraq/failedtransition/
Sunday, April 18, 2004; Page B07
by Robert Kagan and William Kristol
04/26/2004, Volume 009, Issue 31
Wednesday, December 15,
2004; Page A33