Israel Warned US Not to Invade Iraq after 9/11
WASHINGTON - Israeli officials warned the George W. Bush administration that an invasion of Iraq would be destabilising to the region and urged the United States to instead target Iran as the primary enemy, according to former administration official Lawrence Wilkerson.
Wilkerson, then a member of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff and later chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell, recalled in an interview with IPS that the Israelis reacted immediately to indications that the Bush administration was thinking of war against Iraq. After the Israeli government picked up the first signs of that intention, Wilkerson says, “The Israelis were telling us Iraq is not the enemy — Iran is the enemy.”
Wilkerson describes the Israeli message to the Bush administration in early 2002 as being, “If you are going to destabilise the balance of power, do it against the main enemy.”
The warning against an invasion of Iraq was “pervasive” in Israeli communications with the administration, Wilkerson recalls. It was conveyed to the administration by a wide range of Israeli sources, including political figures, intelligence and private citizens.
Wilkerson notes that the main point of their communications was not that the United States should immediately attack Iran, but that “it should not be distracted by Iraq and Saddam Hussein” from a focus on the threat from Iran.
The Israeli advice against using military force against Iraq was apparently triggered by reports reaching Israeli officials in December 2001 that the Bush administration was beginning serious planning for an attack on Iraq. Journalist Bob Woodward revealed in “Plan of Attack” that on Dec. 1, 2001, Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld had ordered the Central Command chief Gen. Tommy Franks to come up with the first formal briefing on a new war plan for Iraq on Dec. 4. That started a period of intense discussions of war planning between Rumsfeld and Franks.
Soon after Israeli officials got wind of that planning, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon asked for a meeting with Bush primarily to discuss U.S. intentions to invade Iraq. In the weeks preceding Sharon’s meeting with Bush on Feb. 7, 2002, a procession of Israeli officials conveyed the message to the Bush administration that Iran represented a greater threat, according to a Washington Post report on the eve of the meeting.
Israeli Defence Minister Fouad Ben-Eliezer, who was visiting Washington with Sharon, revealed the essence of the strategic differences between Tel Aviv and Washington over military force. He was quoted by the Post as saying, “Today, everybody is busy with Iraq. Iraq is a problem…But you should understand, if you ask me, today Iran is more dangerous than Iraq.”
Sharon never revealed publicly what he said to Bush in the Feb. 7 meeting. But Yossi Alpher, a former adviser to Prime Minister Ehud Barak, wrote in an article in the Forward last January that Sharon advised Bush not to occupy Iraq, according to a knowledgeable source. Alpher wrote that Sharon also assured Bush that Israel would not “push one way or another” regarding his plan to take down Saddam Hussein.
Alpher noted that Washington did not want public support by Israel and in fact requested that Israel refrain from openly supporting the invasion in order to avoid an automatic negative reaction from Iraq’s Arab neighbours.
After that meeting, the Sharon government generally remained silent on the issue of an invasion of Iraq. A notable exception, however, was a statement on Aug. 16, 2002 by Ranaan Gissin, an aide to Sharon. Ranaan declared, “Any postponement of an attack on Iraq at this stage will serve no purpose. It will only give [Hussein] more of an opportunity to accelerate his programme of weapons of mass destruction.”
As late as October 2002, however, there were still signs of continuing Israeli grumbling about the Bush administration’s obsession with taking over Iraq. Both the Israeli Defence Forces’ chief of staff and its chief of military intelligence made public statements that month implicitly dismissing the Bush administration’s position that Saddam Hussein’s alleged quest for nuclear weapons made him the main threat. Both officials suggested that Israel’s military advantage over Iraq had continued to increase over the decade since the Gulf War as Iraq had grown weaker.
The Israeli chief of military intelligence, Maj. Gen. Aharon Farkash, said Iraq had not deployed any missiles that could strike Israel directly and challenged the Bush administration’s argument that Iraq could obtain nuclear weapons within a relatively short time. He gave an interview to Israeli television in which he said army intelligence had concluded that Iraq could not have nuclear weapons in less than four years. He insisted that Iran was as much of a nuclear threat as Iraq.
Israeli strategists generally believed that taking down the Hussein regime could further upset an Iran-Iraq power balance that had already tilted in favour of Iran after the U.S. defeat of Hussein’s army in the 1991 Gulf War. By 1996, however, neoconservatives with ties to the Likud Party were beginning to argue for a more aggressive joint U.S.-Israeli strategy aimed at a “rollback” of all of Israel’s enemies in the region, including Iran, but beginning by taking down Hussein and putting a pro-Israeli regime in power there.
That was the thrust of the 1996 report of a task force led by Richard Perle for the right-wing Israeli think tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies and aimed at the Likud Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
But most strategists in the Israeli government and the Likud Party — including Sharon himself — did not share that viewpoint. Despite agreement between neoconservatives and Israeli officials on many issues, the dominant Israeli strategic judgment on the issue of invading Iraq diverged from that of U.S. neoconservatives because of differing political-military interests.
Israel was more concerned with the relative military threat posed by Iran and Iraq, whereas neoconservatives in the Bush administration were focused on regime change in Iraq as a low-cost way of leveraging more ambitious changes in the region. From the neoconservative perspective, the very military weakness of Hussein’s Iraq made it the logical target for the use of U.S. military power.
Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. His latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam“, was published in June 2005.
Copyright © 2007 IPS-Inter Press Service
This appears to shoot holes in the theory that Israel was the dominant force behind the illegal invasion of Iraq. However, if the invasion and successful establishment of US bases in Iraq would have been the cakewalk the neocons expected then they would have been in an ideal position to invade Iran. So maybe the invasion of Iran was the ultimate goal and Iraq was just a stepping stone. Of course, the bounty of oil is not to be ignored. Oh, what a tangled web we weave……
A total bag of crap. Israel wanted Saddam bad. Now that the angry redneck cannon fodder are (finally) starting to question how we got over there, we are going to here more of this kind of b.s. Wait and see.
As I read the headline, I thought wow Israel is the voice of reason in the Mideast? Oh, never mind. They wanted us to attack Iran instead! I guess W. was not up for a real fight, just a little war to knock down the hapless Iraqi defenses. Fool can’t even win a shadow boxing fight!
Zionist counter-spin !
I have always had a problem with the Israel government being credible. Now that the war is going from bad to worse Israel weighs in and says “we told you so”.
Why are we supporting Israel again?
This article is very misleading. The major “pro-Israel” organizations and politicians in the US were avid supporters of the Iraq invasion. Netanyahu went before the Senate For Relations Committee and did a major push for the invasion. Sharon did not advocate restraint or reconsideration. He just said “Go on to Iran the day after you finish with Iraq.”
Just google Sharon and Iraq.
The rats who advocated the invasion continue to jump ship and deny they were ever part of the campaign.
More to the point: What is their position on the continued occupation of Palestine, criminal strangulation of Gaza and ongoing threats to attack Iran?
They are just using mind tricks to help support an invasion of Iran.
“Oh… We should’ve invaded IRan instead of Iraq… We better invade Iran now to make us look like we did the right thing..”
Derb.be..derb..be…derb…be…derb…
We will be seeing more of this propaganda to help sway public opinion into invading Iran.
Why is this coming out NOW? Could it perhaps have something to do with the appearance of the Walt and Mearsheimer book which posits Israel as a significant influence on BushCo’s determination to do Iraq? And isn’t it convenient that Sharon isn’t around to confirm or refute the story?
Oh yeah, now that Iraq is dispenced with they will claim the US really has to go after Iran.
Yeah, I believe this constant moving of the goal post. Just like all the babble that US policy of special nation support and funding of Israel–despite the gross, immoral violation of Palestinian humanity has nothing to do with “terrorism”.
Yeah, I believe this revision. not.
I think this article is misleading. Netanyahu, the head snake of the terrorist regime, was in front of congress almost immediately after 9/11 goading the Israel ass-kissing congress to attack Iraq.
The usual pathetic damge control groveling.
Ya think articles such as these will disappear into the black hole?:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,940250,00.html
“No, don’t attack those people that had nothing to do with 9/11, please attack these people that had nothing to do with 9/11.”
What???
I well recall numerous articles back then about Israel claiming it had intelligence proving Iraq’s threat as a soon-to-be nuclear power.
Why on earth is Israel running American foreign policy in this “war on terror” that Israel fuels night and day!!!
Been there…done that…
http://www.counterpunch.org/wmd05292003.html
Thank you, Vern, for that link to the Guardian. “This is NOT about oil!!” (Oh, really?)
undoubtedly some people in israel were telling us not to attack iraq. big deal. plenty of people were saying that in the US, the UK, russia, france, etc., etc., among the “experts,” much less the millions of the general populace.
why draw attention to it now?
why couple it w/the iran issue?
I think this is an feeble attempt by the Israelis to distance themselves from the Iraq quagmire.
I can’t believe the American Israeli Public Affairs Committeee and its associated organization - the American Eentrprise Institute ( they share the same building)- were beating the drums of war for Iraq against Israeli wishes.
If you believe this article, you may even believe that Israel never attacked the USS Liberty. It was just collateral damage. (We will never know because all inquiries are somehow derailed)
I could be wrong.
This is full of all the usual BS. It is ridiculous to think we go to war over anything other than ourselves and the countries’ economy. The first thing we secured in Iraq was the oil drilling sites, and the only thing we’ve guarded since, and it is the only thing that is even half-working today in Iraq.
I think Israel has a certain amount of influence in US policies but not much really at the end of the day, so to speak. We went into Iraq to secure those huge oil reserves and the related economic concerns that go with it, period. Saddam wasn’t going to sell any of it to US companies and he was going to sell it for Euro’s instead of us dollars.
Iran is making things hard for us in Iraq, so…..
Most americans couldn’t point to Israel on a map, and US politicians know this. But everyone in the US buys a lot of gasoline and other fuels, and US politicians definitely know this too.
The dog is now claiming it didn’t wag it’s tail; that the cat made him do it and should have eaten the budgie instead of eating the snake and the snake claims it was the budgies fault all along for letting the feathers get up his ass…………..
Larry Wilkerson is neither Israeli nor Jewish. So why does Gareth Porter’s above perspective, based upon testimony, by Wilkerson and other sources, motivate such doubt about Israeli admonitions before the Iraq debacle?
On the other hand, if so-called progressives are more comfortable with blaming Israel for the idiocy of George Bush and his band of neo-cons, so be it. It won’t be the first or last time Israel and Jews are blamed for others’ stupidity and adventures gone to hell. However, such distortions were normally the province of the right-wing and fascists throughout the world.
And if the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty during the Six Day War in 1967 must be presumed to be a deliberate act, perhaps U.S. attacks on British and Canadian troops in Iraq and Afghanistan were deliberate as well. Pure rubbish and worse.
Missing from the fiction of Israeli planes deliberately attacking the USS Liberty is motive.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/liberty.html
http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-usn/usnsh-l/agtr5.htm
After Bush attacks Iran, watch Israel claim “we warned you not to attack Iran, we pleaded with you, now look at the mess you caused. We always favored sanctions, isolation and diplomacy, not war with Iran”.
In the future, things could get very ugly for Israel and the Jews. I despise both anti-Semites and Zionists.
The current alliance between Jewish and Christian Zionists is a marriage of convenience that may not prove sustainable in the long-run. The Christians could easily turn on the Jews or vice versa, all Jews, claiming they were mislead into war, especially if the Jews don’t accept Jesus.
Friendly relations between Jews and the non-Jewish people they lived among have historically almost always proved to be short-lived. Hopefully this doesn’t happen again, but the Israel lobby sure isn’t helping.
simonhhh LOL great way of putting it! My sides hurt from reading that.
Zoya I totally agree this is all about damage control now that Walt and Mersheimer have their book out. My copy was shipped by amazon yesterday so I cannot wait to read it any day now when it arrives.
those Israelis always looking out for the bagman.
Obviously the neocons like Perle, Nethanyahu, Kristol, Wolfowitz, Ledeen, Wurmser, Feith, Safire, Krauthammer, Judith Miller, Friedman,Abrams, Scooter Libby, Liebermaan, Sandy Berger, Indyk, Ross, et. al not only made the Sunday rounds Meet the Press and Face the Nation but appeared on such shows as Oprah and PBS to voice their opposition to the cakewalk in Iraq.
Some observers even reported that there were mass demonstrations not only in New York City in the neighborhood of Wall Street but also in parts of Israel itself against the projected Coalition of the Willing’s tatics of “shock and awe”.
The revelation that Israel warned the US Not to invade Iraq is further justification, given the mess GWB has made of things in Baghdada, that the prayers of Podhoretz, and the two Liebermans, the one from Tel Aviv and the one from Connecticut that he now nuke Tehran which would prove that their initial warnings were right in looking out for the moneyman’s interests.
By the way Haaretz published the same as the Guardian article about the Mosul to Haifa pipeline. Just google mosul to haifa pipeline and a ton of links come up. What if the wars are about oil but not necessarily for the US but for the Israelis to control. Thats one hell of a valuable resource to control. I’m sure they’d love to get a hold of Iranian oil too!
U.S. checking possibility of pumping oil from northern Iraq to Haifa, via Jordan
By Amiram Cohen
The United States has asked Israel to check the possibility of pumping oil from Iraq to the oil refineries in Haifa. The request came in a telegram last week from a senior Pentagon official to a top Foreign Ministry official in Jerusalem.
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The Prime Minister’s Office, which views the pipeline to Haifa as a “bonus” the U.S. could give to Israel in return for its unequivocal support for the American-led campaign in Iraq, had asked the Americans for the official telegram.
The new pipeline would take oil from the Kirkuk area, where some 40 percent of Iraqi oil is produced, and transport it via Mosul, and then across Jordan to Israel. The U.S. telegram included a request for a cost estimate for repairing the Mosul-Haifa pipeline that was in use prior to 1948. During the War of Independence, the Iraqis stopped the flow of oil to Haifa and the pipeline fell into disrepair over the years.
The National Infrastructure Ministry has recently conducted research indicating that construction of a 42-inch diameter pipeline between Kirkuk and Haifa would cost about $400,000 per kilometer. The old Mosul-Haifa pipeline was only 8 inches in diameter.
National Infrastructure Minister Yosef Paritzky said yesterday that the port of Haifa is an attractive destination for Iraqi oil and that he plans to discuss this matter with the U.S. secretary of energy during his planned visit to Washington next month. Paritzky added that the plan depends on Jordan’s consent and that Jordan would receive a transit fee for allowing the oil to piped through its territory. The minister noted, however, that “due to pan-Arab concerns, it will be hard for the Jordanians to agree to the flow of Iraqi oil via Jordan and Israel.”
Sources in Jerusalem confirmed yesterday that the Americans are looking into the possibility of laying a new pipeline via Jordan and Israel. (There is also a pipeline running via Syria that has not been used in some three decades.)
Iraqi oil is now being transported via Turkey to a small Mediterranean port near the Syrian border. The transit fee collected by Turkey is an important source of revenue for the country. This line has been damaged by sabotage twice in recent weeks and is presently out of service.
In response to rumors about the possible Kirkuk-Mosul-Haifa pipeline, Turkey has warned Israel that it would regard this development as a serious blow to Turkish-Israeli relations.
Sources in Jerusalem suggest that the American hints about the alternative pipeline are part of an attempt to apply pressure on Turkey.
Iraq is one of the world’s largest oil producers, with the potential of reaching about 2.5 million barrels a day. Oil exports were halted after the Gulf War in 1991 and then were allowed again on a limited basis (1.5 million barrels per day) to finance the import of food and medicines. Iraq is currently exporting several hundred thousand barrels of oil per day.
During his visit to Washington in about two weeks, Paritzky also plans to discuss the possibility of U.S. and international assistance for joint Israeli-Palestinian projects in the areas of energy and infrastructure, natural gas, desalination and electricity.
This is not about Iraq. The fact a “former” administration official is coming forward means that he has been told to “reveal” this information. While it may be true, it is merely an attempt to put focus on Iran as the largest problem in the Middle East.
The Bush Administration has been attempting to convince enough people that Iran poses an eminent threat to the U.S. and Israel for the past two to three years. Expect the rhetoric about Iran to increase exponentially in the run up to the 2008 elections.
In fact, given that Bush can declare a national emergency and suspend elections, we can also expect some form of “attack” on our sovereignty by next summer.
Even liberal jews here fund the Likudniks. I guess you can’t blame them for feeling that way, but we sure can blame them for a big part of the mess we’re in!
If this is true what about the dozens of Israeli lackey neocons who worked with Cheney and Bush to launch the invasion and keep us there. Something smells here. Israel is much too successful at influencing US Mideast policy to have been ineffective in preventing the Iraq adventure.
What’s a budgie?
Oh no no–Israel did not deliberately attack the Liberty after several fly bys on a clear day. Anybody could have mistaken an electronics ship with tons of dishes and antenna on it for a wooden horse carrier.
So instead of being cunningly traitorous–their pilots were just incredibly stupid.
I wonder who created the yellow cake news !!!!
Three religions with common roots but different goals.
A notable exception, however, was a statement on Aug. 16, 2002 by Ranaan Gissin, an aide to Sharon. Ranaan declared, “Any postponement of an attack on Iraq at this stage will serve no purpose. It will only give [Hussein] more of an opportunity to accelerate his programme of weapons of mass destruction.”
obviously israel could not publicly say it was for attacking iraq. and so there had to be lots of quotes even saying the opposite, that they were against the war.
you only have to look at what people like lieberman of ct want to know what israel wants. lieberman wanted iraq to be attacked. he also wants iran and syria to be attacked now.
since aipac/israel get what they want i guess we will have to attack iran and syria also
Harper’s Magazine
“The Republican Party is in desperate straits. How else to explain that Rudy Giuliani–a former mayor with no foreign policy experience–is the Republican front-runner, largely based on his supposed foreign policy expertise?”
So opens an amusing critique penned by conservative writer Doug Bandow about Giuliani’s recent essay in Foreign Affairs.
In that essay, Giuliani stated that the next U.S. president “will face three key foreign policy challenges. First and foremost will be to set a course for victory in the terrorists’ war on global order.” It seems that Democrats, and many Republicans besides Giuliani, just don’t understand what needs to be done to confront the terrorist threat. The essay is filled with simplistic, idiotic arguments, and Bandow does a good job of demolishing them.
Let’s take just one of Giuliani’s insights—“For 15 years, the de facto policy of both Republicans and Democrats has been to ask the U.S. military to do increasingly more with increasingly less. The idea of a post-Cold War ‘peace dividend’ was a serious mistake—the product of wishful thinking and the opposite of true realism.”
Bandow’s rejoinder:
In an essay filled with silly nonsense, this statement stands out as being uniquely stupid. Between 1980 and 2000 the Soviet Union disintegrated, the Warsaw Pact disbanded, Maoism disappeared from China, the former Soviet republics and Eastern European satellites gravitated towards America and Europe, and Vietnam opened to the West. As a result, the United States found itself allied with every major industrialized state as well as many former communist countries while, as Colin Powell famously put it, America’s enemies were down to Cuba and North Korea. In this new world, Giuliani believes that the U.S. shouldn’t have reduced military spending even a little?
It’s easy to see where Giuliani gets his ideas on foreign policy, given the team of foreign policy advisors he announced last month Norman Podhoretz’s name attracted the most attention when the list was announced, and with good reason –take a look at this video (posted by Andrew Sullivan), for example, in which Podhoretz portrays a military attack on Iran as not only the best option but the only option.
There are a number of other notable hardliners advising Giuliani. Charles Hill of the Hoover Institution, the campaign’s chief advisor, joined a number of leading neo-conservatives in signing a September 20, 2001 letter to President Bush that said that even if Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, “any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove [him] from power in Iraq. Failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism.”
During a March 2003 debate at Yale, shortly before the Iraq war began, Hill said: “The U.S. has the power to do this operation swiftly, and it will be a war that will not do great damage to Iraq, to its installations, to its infrastructure, or to its people.” He downplayed obstacles and suggestions that the financial cost of the war might be huge, saying the long-terms benefits of an invasion would be huge, and would include “the restoration of American credibility and decisiveness. We’ll see an Iraq that is freed from oppression. This situation will also do a lot to transform the Israeli-Palestinian situation.” (This is the tip of the iceberg. Do a Google search on Hill and Iraq and you’ll find a trove of false prophecies.)
There’s also Martin Kramer, who spent 25 years at Tel Aviv University and whose Middle East policy can basically be summarized as “What’s Good for Israel,” and former Senator Robert Kasten of Wisconsin, whose career was best known for his loopy attacks on the United Nations and for being arrested for drunk driving after running a red light and driving down the wrong side of the road.
I asked Augustus Richard Norton of Boston University, an expert adviser to the Iraq Study Group, for his take on Giuliani’s crew. He dubbed the group “AIPAC’s Dream Team.”
“What I find fascinating,” he said, “is how skewed this team seems to be in terms of the regional focus. Most of the members are well known as Israel advocates. There is no real expertise on Africa, Asia, Latin America, or much of Europe.”
•••••
Add another neoconservative adviser on the Middle East to an already impressive roster –Daniel Pipes signed on with Rudy Giuliani’s campaign today. I’d heard Pipes was advising Giuliani and asked him about it yesterday. He told me by e-mail that he had “close relations with several people in the campaign,” but said that he did not have “official connection to it.” He e-mailed back just now to say that, as of today, he has officially signed up with the campaign.
I think it’s fair to say that Pipes is even further out ideologically than Norman Podhoretz, another Giuliani adviser. Readers unfamiliar with Pipes can check out his profile at Wikipedia. For a representative sampling of his work, consider a 2006 article he wrote in the Jerusalem Post (not available online):
Iraq’s plight is neither a coalition responsibility nor a particular danger to the West. Fixing Iraq is neither the coalition’s responsibility, nor its burden. When Sunni terrorists target Shi’ites and vice versa, non-Muslims are less likely to be hurt. Civil war in Iraq, in short, would be a humanitarian tragedy, but not a strategic one.
¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤
© 2007 Ken Silverstein
Neocons plan Islamo-Fascism Awareness Weak on US Campuses I am going to puke!!!!!!!!!!!! We Americans need to declare a stop neocon fascists year on campuses!
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/index.php?id=P1907
October 22-26, I am declaring Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week,” declared David Horowitz Tuesday in a friendly interview on FrontpageMag.com, one of Horowitz’s many front groups. “I will hold demonstrations and protests, teach-ins and sit-ins on more than 100 college campuses. Our theme will be the Oppression of Women in Islam and the threat posed by the Islamic crusade against the West.”
Horowitz, who, along with Frank Gaffney, James Woolsey, and Rick Santorum has played a truly vanguard role in the “Islamo-Fascism” movement, apparently has few doubts about his impact. “During the week of October 22-26, 2007, the nation will be rocked by the biggest conservative campus protest ever – Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, a wake-up call for Americans on 200 university and college campuses.” The event will confront the two “Big Lies of the political left:” that “George Bush created the war on terror and that Global Warming is a greater danger to Americans than the terrorist threat.” In fact, according to Horowitz, Islamo-fascism constitutes “the greatest danger Americans have ever confronted.”
Horowitz, president of the David Horowitz Freedom Center (previously the Center for the Study of Popular Culture) editor-in-chief of FrontPageMag.com, and founder of Students for Academic Freedom, is, of course, a former leading New Leftist who has found fame and fortune – he made $352,647 in 2005, according to tax records – on the extreme right and has done particularly well since 9/11 when he got in on the “Islamo-fascist” ground floor.
“Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week,” according to Horowitz will be a “national effort …to rally American students to defend their country” and will feature “memorial services for the victims of Islamic terror both in America and around the globe” (the guide suggests putting up crosses to commemorate victims presumably regardless of their religion); sit-ins (Horowitz suggests the office of the Women’s Studies Department or the campus Women’s Centers “to protest their silence about the oppression of women in Islam”) teach-ins on ‘’The Oppression of Women in Islam;” “a student petition denouncing Islamo-Fascist violence against women, gays, Christians, Jews and non-religious people” (and press releases at the ready if Muslim student groups, campus administrators, or student government officers fail to sign); and prominent speakers, such as the American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI) Ayan Hirsi Ali, columnist Mark Steyn, Frank Gaffney, Daniel Pipes, Rick Santorum, as well as Horowitz himself.
In addition, participants will distribute pamphlets on Islamo-Fascism, including “The Islamic Mein Kampf,” “Why Israel is the Victim,” “Jimmy Carter’s War Against the Jews,” “And What Every American Needs to Know About Jihad.” Films to be shown include “Suicide Killers,” “Obsession” (about which my colleague, Khody Akhavi, wrote earlier this year), or “Islam: What the West Needs to Know.” For the films, Horowitz advises campus organizers to invite a “local radio host or other local figure to introduce the film and possibly moderate a discussion on it afterwards.” Organizers are encouraged to request funding from the student government. If is not forthcoming, according to the Guide, “it will prove the hypocrisy of your university’s claim to be committed to intellectual diversity and academic freedom.” Other possible funders and sponsors include Young Americans Foundation, the Leadership Institute, the campus College Republican club and Hillel,
The program clearly models itself after strategies employed by left-wing radicals in the 1960s and 1970s but is careful to protect the campus rules and local laws that Horowitz’s ideological enemies on the left would blatantly disregard. Organizers of the sit-ins are explicitly warned not to obstruct university operations or violate university rules. As my colleague, Eli Clifton noted, it combines some of the hardware of the 1960s student movement with the software of Horowitz’s hard-right – dare one say it? Islamophobic — ideology.
According to tax records obtained through the Foundation Center, Horowitz has been the beneficiary in recent years of a number of far-right foundations, including the Allegheny ($575,000 since 2001), Carthage ($125,000) and Sarah Scaife Foundations ($800,000) – all three are part of Richard Scaife’s empire and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation (nearly $1.3 million). The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation ($475,000) also contributed nearly $500,000 to Horowitz’s enterprises over the same period.
Israel said don’t invade Iraq….but go ahead and invade Iran???? These are our friends? I wonder if anyone of consequence said “don’t invade anyone”? Armed conflict is the ultimate extension of politics. That is the last resort when all diplomacy ends…Not the first resort. It seems that the neocons and by and large the Israelis seem to favor armed conflict. Perhaps we need to find other friends…
It would have been way more honest to make that headline read: Israel Advises Bush to Invade Iran
“The Israelis were telling us Iraq is not the enemy — Iran is the enemy”
Darn ! We better bomb the hell out of Iran before Israel really gets upset. These idiots just dont get it … mixing up their ‘q’ with ‘n’. We should just vote the Dems into power … at least they can spell correctly.
Dcbeltway,
Keep up the great work exposing these sunsabitches!
Israel clearly did promote the Iraq war.
Now they seek to capitalize on the ignorant majority by chanting, “Oh, poor Israel. First the holocaust and now this Iraq war we never wanted. The least you can do is throw a few hundred billion at us and then attack Iran to help turn the tide.”
“Soon after Israeli officials got wind of that planning, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon asked for a meeting with Bush ….”
and HOW exactly? Just the regular, wholseome, manly sort of spying that one friendly nation carries out upon the other or perhaps maybe something to do with the number of dual US / Israeli citizenship holders who are in the Whitehouse in the United States.
How can a dual citizen serve the political interests of a single country…? Perhaps the answer is that they can, but just not the one to whose government they were elected or appointed.
The oil in Iraq is a higher grade of oil and there is much more oil than in Iran.
We had no viable land base area to attack Iran.
Iran is much larger, had many more troops, better anti-ship missils, it’s more mountainous. Too difficult to invade Iran with Rummy’s smaller design army. The costs would not equal the gains.
There were no Iranians involved with 9-11
Osama bin Ladin was not in Iran.
Bush didn’t know where Iran was.
Add all of that up and it’s Iraq. Israel agrees and the fun begins. Now of couse, Israel sees the error of it all. So,___ NUKE Iran. __ Of course, like we told you in 2003.
Whether Israel wanted the Us to attack anyone else or lnot, AIPAC and other Zionist politicasl extremists (please notice I am neither accusing those who practice Judiaism as their religion nor those of Jewish ethnic descent)have way too much influence on American policy iin the Middle East.
it is astoundig to me that there is more opposition to Zionist extremism openly expressed in Israel than is allowed by Jewish critics in the US. If you don’t believe me ask either Normasn Finkelstein or Noam Chomsky. Both are scholars with impecable credentials and both are constantly harassed by the likes of Alan Dershowitz and other AIPAC attack dogs.
NY Times March 14, 2007 Hillary Clinton:
She said in the interview that there were “remaining vital national security interests in Iraq” that would require a continuing deployment of American troops.
The United States’ security would be undermined if parts of Iraq turned into a failed state “that serves as a petri dish for insurgents and Al Qaeda,” she said. “It is right in the heart of the oil region,” she said. “It is directly in opposition to our interests, to the interests of regimes, to Israel’s interests.”
“…to Israel’s interests”
Who here says it has nothing to do with Israel?
NOT invading & occupying countries Israel opposes equals anti-semitism.
Jeremi Suri’s new book on Henry Kissinger highlights the primary role that the Nazi project played in his, and consequently the US’s, policies. For Kissinger, all conflicts are binary repetitions of the European Jews’ experience: European diplomacy failed & Jews didn’t fight to save themselves & would’ve received no help if they had; therefore, any non-belligerent diplomacy is equivalent to appeasement. All opponents of the US are Nazis by definition, and all US interest is defined by whether or not Israel’s military & political status is enhanced.
The fear, then, of being victimized legitimizes victimization of any other state & any other people; in order to vindicate itself from a standing allegation of anti-semitism, the American political class has to subsidize all actions which, in a Zizekian twist, seem to substantiate the very thesis of true anti-semitism, that “Jews are in control.”
The paranoid obliges others to mistrust him in the very way which substantiates his delusions; fear of a new Hitler, of new Nazis, produces political responses which feed the delusion that anti-semitism is on the rise.
So both true anti-semites and zionists alike benefit, to the detriment of any kind of political discourse which would demote Nazism from its position as “the” form of fascism; which allows the current form of fascism to function freely.
And thus the risk of resent emerges…when the wars drain the treasury and the young die, for what? And the WASP ruling class oil men are looking to point the finger–Who will be the potential scapegoat as a consequence of eventual blowback? Blame it all on the Jews. That is why suppression of the truth, constant damage control, charges of antisemitism, exploitation of Jewish nationalism and fear of victimization is necessary, but oh so potentially risky.
Repeating the same historical pattern? A dangerous reckoning.
Wise up.
Posters here should be aware of the fact that Gareth Porter and Lawrence Wilkerson have been among the best informed, objective and reliable critics of US neocon foreign policy all along. This is not to suggest that they are 100% correct in everything they say, but they should NOT be passed off as couple of misguided MSM kooks.
Pardon me but its the Iraqis, Palestinians, Lebanese (possibly Syrians too) and Iranians who are or will be skewered by the bombs and rockets here. So do explain to me who are the real victims here of the political extremists?
True WmC, though I wonder about this:
Finally, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson Chief of Staff for former foreign secretary Colin Powell explains which role the Jewish lobby has played for the invasion of Iraq, AIPAC, the American Congress, the White House and even Israel, and how they have ended up in a mutually suffocating embrace.
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson:
‘We can not get out of there, even if we wanted to.. You cannot just say: Israel you are on your own.’
http://www.balder.org/judea/The-Israel-Lobby-Exposed-Eye-Opening-Dutch-TV-Production-April.php
THE MAIN ENEMY? That would be the US GOVERNMENT! They’ve got the biggest stockpile of WMD, they’ve invaded countries in violation of the Geneva Conventions, they are fascists pillaging the world for oil resources and trying to keep tottering financial markets from collapsing by continually launching wars.
MAIN ENEMY INDEED!
It seems there is much confusion about Jewish, Israeli, or Zionist. I hope this provides some insight. for the full speech go to:
www.nkusa.org/AboutUs/Zionism/index.cfm
The following is the text of a talk delivered by Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss at the United Association for Studies and Research Studies (UASR), publishers of the Middle East Affairs Journal. The lecture was part of a round table discussion, held on March 14 2002 and hosted by MEAJ editor-in-chief, Dr. Ahmed Yousef.
My task today is to speak about Judaism and Zionism. Given the current assumptions of the mass media that seems to be a redundant title. Aren’t the two one and the same? Isn’t Judaism Zionism? Aren’t Jews by definition Zionists? This is an impression which is, as I hope will become absolutely clear by the end of this talk, totally false. It is, however, an impression that is today quite widespread, both among non – Jews as well as misinformed Jews.
The correction of the historical record in the case of any falsification is beneficial, for, as is well known, the “seal of the Creator is truth.” In the case of Zionism it is not merely an academic error. It is one that has caused much death and destruction in the past and will only continue to do so in the future, G-d forbid, if it is left uncorrected. In fact, it is my hope and prayer that today’s talk will be the first step of a process which may yet lead to a just solution to the Middle East’s agony or, at least, a
significant easing of its people’s suffering.
Triumph of Falsity
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.
Of course, anti - Zionist Jews of all political and religious orientations have long experienced the lash of the Zionist movement. In 1924, a scholarly Dutch Jew, Dr. Jacob Israel de Hahn, who functioned as a secretary of Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld (1849 - 1932 ) Chief Rabbi of Palestine, (may their memories be blessed) was murdered as he returned from evening prayers outside Shaarui Zedek hospital in Jerusalem. His crime was that he had been involved in discussions with Arab leaders that offered an alternative to Zionist hegemony. His murderers were members of the Haganah, a Zionist, so - called “defense organization.” In fact, Dr. de Hahn may well be described as the first victim of Zionist violence
in the Holy Land.
Yet, outside of a limited circle of anti - Zionist Jews, this cowardly and cold blooded murder is completely unknown.
Equally unknown to the general public was the ease with which Zionists turned on their fellow Jews, as in the sinking of Jewish refugee ships calculated to elicit world sympathy such as the S.S. Patria in 1940 and the
S. S. Struma in 1941 which cost the lives of 276 innocent Jews in the case of the former and 769 in the case of the latter.
More is known about pre - state terror campaigns against Arab and British innocents. Clearly, this was a movement that found human life cheap and public criticism intolerable.
Fortunately, though, Zionism is missing the most potent weapon in any ideology’s arsenal. It doesn’t have the truth on its side.
Thus, we find that, today, despite the power of the Zionist lobby and the subservience, until recently, of most politicians, media outlets and educational settings here in America, to its dictates, the historical blackout is coming to an end.
More and more people are questioning the Zionist version of history. At the United Nations and throughout Europe the questions have already been raised and largely answered. The answers are a variety of criticisms of the Israeli state. Some of these center on Israel’s practices. Others point to its underlying philosophy.
And this:
And that brings us back to Feith. Douglas Feith was the Asssistant Secretary of Defense for International Policy, reporting to Wolfowitz. Before joining the administration, Feith was a primary author of a strategy paper for Israel’s Likud Party, called “Securing The Realm,” which argued that regime change in Iraq was a major strategic priority for Israeli security. Once in the Pentagon, Feith oversaw the secret intelligence fabrication shop called the Office of Special Plans. Wilkerson yesterday revealed two things about Feith.
First, Wilkerson believes that Feith placed Likud’s interests above America’s during his service at the Pentagon. I expect Michael Isikoff to get the whole story out, but this well-placed insider’s perception that Feith was not placing America’s interests first is a major statement.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/01/12/colonel_wilkersons_way.php
Looks like the right thing to do is to do the right thing.
And to make it up the AIPAC/AEI, Zionists neocons/chickenhawks for not following Israel’s warnings not to invade Iraq but rather to invade or nuke Iran.
Its time to do what the Israelis initially told the US to do. Nuke Iran back to pre Garden of Eden days.
Israel, having denied a right of a palestenian to exist have got no right to say anything. we are all fooled around by us and their allies .every concietious human being should stand vehemently agaist the anti- people policy of the states . we have duty toward the opressed, and lets not boil it down to relious conflict. shame of us that . please world wake up for the dead , lets not have any more atrocities.
Its high time we label the neocons/likudnicks/AEI/AIPAC/Feith, Perle, Horowitz, Cheney etc. as the real extremists and threats to world peace. I’m so sick of them I am seriously considering leaving this country if people don’t rise up against them.
Send these people to Gitmo for crimes against the peace crimes against humanity!
I think this part of the speech above is particularly important because it is so prophetic:
Rabbinic Opposition
These early Zionists were immediately opposed by the Rabbinic Leadership of that era.
The opposition was based on four assumptions.
1) The very concept of Zionism was a refutation of the traditional Torah belief in exile as punishment and redemption and as dependant on penitence and Divine intervention.
2) The Zionists were overwhelmingly irreligious. There claim to represent the Jewish people before the world was preposterous. How can those who
reject Judaism be Jewish leaders? Their natural instincts were to uproot Torah and its observance.
3) Zionism was woefully unconcerned about non – Jews in general and
the Palestinian people already living in the land. Its heavy - handed policies were sure to cause much pain and suffering and lead world Jewry into needless conflict with the nations of the world.
4) Zionism would cause Jews to be less than loyal to the governments under whose auspices they lived in exile. This might weaken Jewish patriotism and exacerbate Jewish – Gentile conflicts.
Throughout the world Zionists were a minority.
Even those Jews who had lost touch with Torah tradition were able to see that Zionism was a recipe for disaster.
———————————————————————
For complete disclosure I feel it particularly important to disclose I am what is considered by many a WASP (white anglo-saxon protestant). After research & study of many topics relating to methods applied toward world domination by this violent terrorist sub-set of the Jewish experience, and just being a decent caring human being, I can do nothing other than to declare myself an anti-Zionist. Strong evidence points toward the fact many wars, false flag operations, and likely even the destruction of the WTC & events on 911 were Zionist inspired & implemented. Thier motto is, “By means of deception we will wage war”. I guess I just don’t like being manipulated; then again only fools would admit they do.
What a shame. God is so proud of us so He sent us to this world, but unfortunately, we saw money and other worldly things and we think everything belongs to us. Go to the below website and see how the two World Wars were started and be happy. God bless you all…..ameen
http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/israel/freedman.htm
Israel advised against the US sale of planes to Saudi Arabia back in the 80’s and yet the sale went through. Israel advised against the US supplying Saddam with weapons in the 80’s and yet those sales went through. All you out there waiting to read your new book about how Israel is responsible for all of the US’s woes just buy the Protocols; it’s been said, done that, been there.
Of course there are Jews and Israelis that are short-sighted and supported this war. As there are Jews and Israelis that were opposed for ideological and strategical purposes. I just wait for the day when all you haters out there start advocating for the Kurds.
Kwais do explain to me who are the haters? And lets not forget they are also denying the Armenian Holocaust over at the ADL.
AN OPEN LETTER FROM CAIR TO THE ADL
Mr. Glen S. Lewy, National Chair
Mr. Abraham H. Foxman, National Director
Anti-Defamation League
605 Third Avenue
New York , NY 10158-3560
Dear Mr. Lewy and Mr. Foxman:
On August 14 and 21, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) issued press releases that repeat its past defamatory assertions about the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), smearing the good name of an organization with a proud history of standing for justice and mutual understanding.
It is unfortunate that the ADL would employ rhetorical tactics that are used routinely by anti-Semites. These tactics raise questions about the sincerity of the ADL’s stated mission to “secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike.”
How can the ADL ensure fair treatment of fellow Americans if it demonizes and smears one of the leading Muslim organizations advocating for equal rights in our society? How can the ADL assure justice when it attempts to muzzle the First Amendment rights of American Muslims by smearing them for simply seeking to ensure that a leading Muslim charity receives a fair trial?
Your August 21, 2007, press release stated: “If CAIR truly repudiates acts of terror and murder, we would welcome a simple declaratory statement that no cause, no matter how just it may be, justifies the use of suicide killers, rockets or other means to target civilians.”
Long before your demands for such a statement, CAIR had acted numerous times out of the convictions of our faith to condemn terrorism. Our condemnations against terrorism pre-date September 11, 2001.
A little research would have revealed a CAIR-coordinated 2005 fatwa, or Islamic juristic opinion, that states in part: “All acts of terrorism targeting civilians are haram (forbidden) in Islam. It is haram for a Muslim to cooperate with any individual or group that is involved in any act of terrorism or violence. It is the civic and religious duty of Muslims to cooperate with law enforcement authorities to protect the lives of all civilians.”
Also, our 2004 ” Not in the Name of Islam” online petition states: “No injustice done to Muslims can ever justify the massacre of innocent people, and no act of terror will ever serve the cause of Islam.”
We have consistently and persistently distanced Islam and American Muslims from terrorism and religious extremism. But the ADL has chosen to ignore all of our previous statements, choosing instead to make spurious claims about our motives and intent.
The ADL has profound misconceptions about CAIR. This is not surprising, given that ADL leaders have not met any of our national officers, nor have they had any interaction with our many local offices.
Contrary to the ADL’s false assertions, CAIR is a mainstream American Muslim institution made up of ordinary people who serve our nation each day with distinction and pride.
Among our diverse leadership you will find doctors, engineers, teachers, businesspeople, homemakers, and public officials. Among our staff, you will find many whose families have called America home for generations. CAIR is rooted in the American experience of pluralism and is respected by the American Muslim community.
We ask that you visit our national office or a CAIR chapter, or spend time with us at any one of our many public events. Interact in a positive way with our officers, volunteers and supporters, and then judge what CAIR is all about. Use facts, not the propaganda or guilt by association that is so prevalent on the numerous Islamophobic websites that are anathema to our civilized society.
Read on our website a document titled “Demystifying the Urban Legends About CAIR” ( http://www.cair.com/urbanlegends.pdf) to find our answers to the many myths propagated by Muslim-bashers, many of whom profit from their insidious propaganda.
The ADL’s press releases make a preposterous assertion that CAIR “can never be fully accepted in the Jewish community.” CAIR is proud of its work and associations with many in the Jewish community and with many American Jewish organizations.
After speaking at a CAIR dinner, Shalom Center Director Rabbi Arthur Waskow (described by the Jewish Forward as one of the fifty most influential American Jews today) wrote: “Far from showing irreparable conflict between the Jewish community and CAIR, in fact the dinner showed that a seriously peace-committed part of the Jewish community can work with a seriously peace-committed part of the Muslim community, despite the existence of some violence-supportive people in both communities. That is the truthful and the important story.”
Rabbi Jeff Sultar of Mishkan Shalom in Pennsylvania said: “We are inspired by the interfaith work that CAIR does, which serves to make all communities of faith stronger, and helps to address a serious gap in the understanding of Islam in the United States . As co-descendants of the legacy of Abraham, we fully support CAIR in its efforts to bring our shared values to the wider community… CAIR is doing the same kind of civil rights work and public education that Jewish communities had to do in the United States when the first wave of immigrants faced ignorance, intolerance and discrimination, and so we understand and support their efforts.”
In the past, the ADL has been chastised by a federal judge for unfairly accusing others of anti-Semitism and settled a lawsuit for spying on Arab-Americans.
These are serious indiscretions on the part of the ADL. But that is not all; we have several other concerns and questions about the ADL, which we hope you will take the time to answer, much the same way we responded to your questions:
1. Ayaan Hirsi Ali has made polemical attacks against the teachings of Islam and the noble personality of Prophet Muhammad. Her writings and views reflect extreme ignorance about Islam, which is quite natural given her lack of scholarship about the faith. What was the motive behind and purpose of the ADL hosting such a personality?
2. Has the ADL ever issued a statement criticizing illegal settlement activities by Israel or condemning the results of Israel’s brutal occupation policies so well documented in President Carter’s book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid”?
3. Why did the ADL not criticize Israel ’s deliberate destruction of the civilian infrastructure in Lebanon or the killing of hundreds of Lebanese civilians using American weapons paid for with American taxpayer dollars?
4. Why, unlike CAIR, did the ADL not call for a cease-fire in Lebanon that would have prevented death and destruction on both sides?
If the ADL stops promoting noted Islamophobes and affirms the right of Americans to criticize the policies of any foreign country, including but not limited to Israel, without being demonized, then CAIR will welcome any opportunity to enter into dialogue. Such a move would allow us to explore ways in which we can work together to end discrimination and secure justice for all Americans.
The holy months of Ramadan and Tishrei will once again coincide this year. Let us use the holiness of these sacred months to enter into dialogue intended to raise Jewish and Muslim voices in America for the cause of peace and justice in the Middle East for all people of the region.
We await your response.
Sincerely,
Parvez Ahmed, Ph.D.
Chairman
Nihad Awad
Executive Director
So much for the “Protocols”. How about a little recent history reminder?
The possibility of an American attack on Iraq puts Israel in a tricky P.R. dilemma. From an Israeli perspective, it is hard to conceive of a more desirable move. It would rid the country of one of its worst enemies, Saddam Hussein, and uproot a strong pillar of Arab nationalism and rejectionism. On the other hand, it is in Israel’s interests not to appear as a warmonger, and to avoid any impression that the U.S. is going to war on Israel’s behalf. A visible Israeli dimension would make it hard for the Bush administration to recruit support in the Arab world, especially given the current Palestinian-Israeli conflict, now two years old. Moreover, in a worst-case scenario, Israel would not want to take the blame for an American failure.
Israeli leaders have largely been cautious in their approach to Iraq. In recent years their attention has focused on Iran as Israel’s main long-range threat, leaving Saddam for the Americans and the U.N. to deal with. This policy, embraced by successive governments from both ends of the political spectrum, had the virtue of allowing Washington to disconnect the Iraqi theater from the Israeli-Arab context, thus giving the Americans a freer hand in the region.
But as the war drums started beating in Washington last month, and the local papers filled up with stories on dreadful Iraqi biological attacks and a possible Israeli nuclear response, the Israeli leadership changed its tone. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and foreign minister Shimon Peres appealed to the Bush administration “not to delay” its action in Iraq. Two weeks ago, Sharon told visiting Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., and U.S. ambassador Daniel Kurtzer that any delay would not make it easier to act in the future. Peres appeared on CNN and said that “the question is not whether to act, but when, and any postponement increases the risks and the possibility for an Iraqi arming.” The message was sufficiently similar to Sharon’s to suggest prior coordination between Peres and the prime minister. However, when their remarks were published, Sharon and Peres backed off, repeatedly denying having urged the Americans to attack. Peres even ordered the foreign ministry to lower its profile on Iraq, and avoid the issue altogether.
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2002/08/28/iraq/index.html
There you go. All the rest is revisionism in the quest for damage control because things have gone from bad to worse.
So the Israelis are sending out more mixed messages…which they did quite publicly in the lead-up to the invasion. The invasion was decided at least six months earlier by the War Parties. Its called ‘plausible deniability’ just in case things go wrong…for the rubes from Texas and their Dispensationalist buddies.
What went really wrong is the Israeli advice that Iraqi Arabs can fight let alone sustain an armed resistance was based on grotesque Israeli racism. Bush’s biggest mistake is he believed the racist line about Iraqis - the cakewalk and roses pitch and their ‘expertise’ on the ‘Arab Mind’.
Wilkerson and company have cut a deal with elements in the Israeli-US Middle East policy structure who want to blame it all on the dumb Gentiles from Texas and a few nut case neo-cons, like Perle, who will either retire to their ranches in Texas or villas in Provence and cut more deals.
All you have to do is read the PNAC paper:
http://www.iasps.org/strat1.htm
By the way the letter to Clinton has all those familiar names!
January 26, 1998
The Honorable William J. Clinton
President of the United States
Washington, DC
Dear Mr. President:
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 stand
ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor.
The policy of “containment” of Saddam Hussein has been steadily eroding over
the past several months. As recent events have demonstrated, we can no
longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to uphold the
sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections. Our
ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not producing weapons of mass
destruction, therefore, has substantially diminished. Even if full inspections
were eventually to resume, which now seems highly unlikely, experience has
shown that it is difficult if not impossible to monitor Iraq’s chemical and biological
weapons production. The lengthy period during which the inspectors will have
been unable to enter many Iraqi facilities has made it even less likely that they
will be able to uncover all of Saddam’s secrets. As a result, in the
not-too-distant future we will be unable to determine with any reasonable level of
confidence whether Iraq does or does not possess such weapons.
Such uncertainty will, by itself, have a seriously destabilizing effect on the entire
Middle East. It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the
capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if
we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the
region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a
significant portion of the world’s supply of oil will all be put at hazard. As you
have rightly declared, Mr. President, the security of the world in the first part of
the 21st century will be determined largely by how we handle this threat.
Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its
success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the
cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only
acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to
use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this
means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing.
In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from
Letter to President Clinton on Iraq http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm
2 of 2 10/9/2005 10:54 PM
power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.
We urge you to articulate this aim, and 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.
We urge you to act decisively. If you act now to end the threat of weapons of
mass destruction against the U.S. or its allies, you will be acting in the most
fundamental national security interests of the country. If we accept a course of
weakness and drift, we put our interests and our future at risk.
Sincerely,
Elliott Abrams Richard L. Armitage William J. Bennett
Jeffrey Bergner John Bolton Paula Dobriansky
Francis Fukuyama Robert Kagan Zalmay Khalilzad
William Kristol Richard Perle Peter W. Rodman
Donald Rumsfeld William Schneider, Jr. Vin Weber
Paul Wolfowitz R. James Woolsey Robert B. Zoellick
Some of this stuff the Israeli government comes up with is really hard to swallow in light of our ongoing foreign aid to the country.
Since the attack on Iraq, Israel has enjoyed an orgy of violence with its neighbors and against its Palestinian citizens. Immediately after both 9/11 and the start of Iraqi Freedom, an opportunistic Israel hit the throttle on its violent ambitions in the region.
I mean, this stuff is really disgusting. Israel was the only immediate beneficiary of the war in Iraq. Now that it appears that Iran is the long-term beneficiary at the expense of Israel, we see this hypocritical and self-serving pablum from the Israeli government.
mirf59
Absolutely, I agree. The Israelis are preparing for the ‘regime change’ in the US (just changing the curtains) and the continuation of the murderous Mid East policy. Look at how many ‘dems’ and anti-war libs are making nice with the Israeli ‘realists’ contrated with the US Neo-Con ‘nuts’: Ray McGovern, Col Wilkerson, Gareth Porter, Sy Hersh…Greg Palast, even Joseph Wilson. The realistic Israeli officials all tried to warn us that this would not be ‘good for Israel’. Why didn’t we listen? What fools? Bring on the Dems!
This is what you call a thoroughly successful operation with ‘plausible deniability’: Iraq no longer exists.
Is this disinformation? Isn’t it odd that Scott Ritter’s book is selling out of the shelves and Mersheimer and Walt’s book comes out this week and both talk about Israel’s influence. Isn’t it odd that AIPAC pressed hard for the invasion of Iraq — so much so that one Congressman, Jim Moran, got into trouble for mentioning it? It is interesting that all of this information was word of mouth, and that the opposition is just being talked about NOW. I don’t believe it.
Re ADL’s (Abe’s Defamation League’s) challenge to CAIR: no cause justifies the use of American-supplied F-16s, Apache helicopters, and rockets to murder Palestinian civilians.
PaulMagillSmith
“…Last, Zionist propagandists are always given to bullying tactics and censorship…”
“…Fortunately, though, Zionism is missing the most potent weapon in any ideology’s arsenal. It doesn’t have the truth on its side…”
My experience PaulMagillSmith is actually the opposite. I’m a Zionist. I have always strongly supported free speech, and free information.
On many occasions I confronted anti-Israeli propagandists who use half truth and even blunt lies to promote their hate agenda. Sometimes when it happened I was threatened by huge law sue, just because I was trying to expose their lies by publishing publicly known data and doing comparisons.
So you see, reality shows that anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist hate promoters are against freedom of speech, against free expressions and free data.
RE: IMMEDIATE BENEFICIARIES OF THE IRAQ INVASION
mirf59 August 30th, 2007 12:55 pm
“Israel was the only immediate beneficiary of the war in Iraq.”
Israel’s exploitation of the Iraq invasion to increase its brutal military oppression of Palestinians is disgusting, as you write.
But they were not the only “immediate beneficiary” of the invasion: CheneyBushCo’s post-Afghanistan plummeting poll numbers were spiked by the hysterical pre-invasion and invasion mood; CheneyBushCo’s military contractors were handed billions w/little oversight; and, at the same time, both left wing and congressional opposition to ongoing right wing domestic legislation was weakened.
mirf59 August 30th, 2007 12:55 pm
“Israel was the only immediate beneficiary of the war in Iraq.”
The war in Iraq cased oil price to appreciate from $10 - $15 / barrel during Clinton, to $70 today.
The immediate beneficiary were countries that exported oil such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Canada, Russia.
The countries that suffered from the war were countries that rely on oil import, such as USA, Japan and Israel.