Israel must stay the hell out of U.S. debate on Iraq
By Bradley Burston
Ehud Olmert suffers from a learning disability found at times among people who know themselves to be brilliant:
They fail to learn the first thing.
Take the debate within the United States over the war in Iraq.
The first thing for an Israeli prime minister to know about the debate is this: Stay the hell out of it.
The second thing might well be: If you're thinking about addressing the American Jewish community on an issue of intense sensitivity, take a long second look before you say the first thing that comes to mind.
But Olmert, being Olmert, couldn't resist. And as a chaser, he chose the worst possible venue, the closely scrutinized national convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) pro-Israel lobby, to declare that an early U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq would destabilize the entire Middle East.
"Those who are concerned for Israel's security, for the security of the Gulf States and for the stability of the entire Middle east should recognize the need for American success in Iraq and responsible exit," Olmert announced, via video link.
"Any outcome that will not help America's strength and would, in the eyes of the people in the region, undercut America's ability to deal effectively with the threat posed by the Iranian regime will be very negative," he added.
Perhaps the first thing that Olmert should have considered was this: A recent Gallup poll showed that Jewish Americans are the most strongly opposed to the war of all U.S. religious groups.
In fact, opinion polls have shown that a majority of Jews has opposed the war since 2003. Even Jewish Republicans, who support Bush on other issues have shown themselves opposed to the Iraq campaign.
The second thing for Olmert to have considered is the extent to which Jewish neo-cons and Israel have been blamed for the decision to enter the war.
So, not one to quit when he's behind, Olmert trudged on. Only U.S. President George W. Bush and the United States can effectively confront Iran's attempt to boost its nuclear capacity, Olmert announced, his message served with a soupcon of understated Zionist-spiced emotional blackmail.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/836953.html-MORE-
<snip>
The OSP was an open and largely unfiltered conduit to the White House not only for the Iraqi opposition. It also forged close ties to a parallel, ad hoc intelligence operation inside Ariel Sharon's office in Israel specifically to bypass Mossad and provide the Bush administration with more alarmist reports on Saddam's Iraq than Mossad was prepared to authorise.
"None of the Israelis who came were cleared into the Pentagon through normal channels," said one source familiar with the visits. Instead, they were waved in on Mr Feith's authority without having to fill in the usual forms.
The exchange of information continued a long-standing relationship Mr Feith and other Washington neo-conservatives had with Israel's Likud party.
In 1996, he and Richard Perle - now an influential Pentagon figure - served as advisers to the then Likud leader, Binyamin Netanyahu. In a policy paper they wrote, entitled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, the two advisers said that Saddam would have to be destroyed, and Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iran would have to be overthrown or destabilised, for Israel to be truly safe.
The Israeli influence was revealed most clearly by a story floated by unnamed senior US officials in the American press, suggesting the reason that no banned weapons had been found in Iraq was that they had been smuggled into Syria. Intelligence sources say that the story came from the office of the Israeli prime minister.
The OSP absorbed this heady brew of raw intelligence, rumour and plain disinformation and made it a "product", a prodigious stream of reports with a guaranteed readership in the White House. The primary customers were Mr Cheney, Mr Libby and their closest ideological ally on the national security council, Stephen Hadley, Condoleezza Rice's deputy.
In turn, they leaked some of the claims to the press, and used others as a stick with which to beat the CIA and the state department analysts, demanding they investigate the OSP leads.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,4714031-103681,00.html-MORE-
<snip>
(This is Pat Buchanan, and I dislike the man intensely. But he's not always wrong.)
Cui Bono? For whose benefit these endless wars in a region that holds nothing vital to America save oil, which the Arabs must sell us to survive? Who would benefit from a war of civilizations between the West and Islam?
Answer: one nation, one leader, one party. Israel, Sharon, Likud.
Indeed, Sharon has been everywhere the echo of his acolytes in America. In February 2003, Sharon told a delegation of Congressmen that, after Saddam’s regime is destroyed, it is of “vital importance” that the United States disarm Iran, Syria, and Libya.
“We have a great interest in shaping the Middle East the day after” the war on Iraq, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told the Conference of Major American Jewish Organizations. After U.S. troops enter Baghdad, the United States must generate “political, economic, diplomatic pressure” on Tehran, Mofaz admonished the American Jews.
Are the neoconservatives concerned about a war on Iraq bringing down friendly Arab governments? Not at all. They would welcome it.
“Mubarak is no great shakes,” says Richard Perle of the President of Egypt. “Surely we can do better than Mubarak.” Asked about the possibility that a war on Iraq—which he predicted would be a “cakewalk”—might upend governments in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, former UN ambassador Ken Adelman told Joshua Micah Marshall of Washington Monthly, “All the better if you ask me.”
On July 10, 2002, Perle invited a former aide to Lyndon LaRouche named Laurent Murawiec to address the Defense Policy Board. In a briefing that startled Henry Kissinger, Murawiec named Saudi Arabia as “the kernel of evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent” of the United States.
Washington should give Riyadh an ultimatum, he said. Either you Saudis “prosecute or isolate those involved in the terror chain, including the Saudi intelligence services,” and end all propaganda against Israel, or we invade your country, seize your oil fields, and occupy Mecca.
In closing his PowerPoint presentation, Murawiec offered a “Grand Strategy for the Middle East.” “Iraq is the tactical pivot, Saudi Arabia the strategic pivot, Egypt the prize.” Leaked reports of Murawiec’s briefing did not indicate if anyone raised the question of how the Islamic world might respond to U.S. troops tramping around the grounds of the Great Mosque.
What these neoconservatives seek is to conscript American blood to make the world safe for Israel. They want the peace of the sword imposed on Islam and American soldiers to die if necessary to impose it.
Washington Times editor at large Arnaud de Borchgrave calls this the “Bush-Sharon Doctrine.” “Washington’s ‘Likudniks,’” he writes, “have been in charge of U.S. policy in the Middle East since Bush was sworn into office.”
The neocons seek American empire, and Sharonites seek hegemony over the Middle East. The two agendas coincide precisely. And though neocons insist that it was Sept. 11 that made the case for war on Iraq and militant Islam, the origins of their war plans go back far before.
http://www.amconmag.com/03_24_03/cover.html-MORE-
Israel says US will attack Iraq in May
Front page /
Israeli defence experts predict that the United States will launch an attack on Iraq in May, after US President Gorge Bush branded Iraq, Iran and North Korea an axis of evil.
The military experts, quoted by the Yediot Aharonot newspaper, say the Pentagon has received permission to start preparations for an offensive against Iraq as the second phase of Washington's global war on terror after Afghanistan.
The Israelis say the Americans have already started mustering the necessary troops and were coordinating with the Iraqi opposition.
The paper says Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer will ask the US administration to coordinate its offensive with the Israeli leadership.
-That's all folks-
Bombing Iraq to Protect Israel
by James J. David
U.S. President George W. Bush last month accused Baghdad, along with Iran and North Korea, of making up an "axis of evil" bent on backing international terrorism and developing weapons of mass destruction. It seems that Senator Joseph Lieberman has convinced the President that Bagdad is a threat to the United States and launching a military attack seems to be the only alternative. Other close advisors such as Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and the Defense Chairman of the Advisory Board, Richard Perle, are also calling for the bombing of Iraq as the only sure method of destroying this threat.
When Joseph Lieberman says that it's necessary to attack Iraq because Iraq is a threat to the United States, does he really think that smart Americans believe this? Does he really think that Iraq would attack the United States? Senator Lieberman must take you and me for a fool. Let me tell you why this is utter nonsense. No one can launch an intercontinental ballistic missile without the United States instantly knowing its exact location. Therefore, any small country that launches a missile in our direction will know that it is committing national suicide. The warheads on just one of our submarines could cause these small countries literally to cease to exist. How long did it take the United States to defeat Iraq in the Gulf War? The last time I looked it was 38 seconds, and that was with conventional warfare, not nuclear, which the United States has more of than all nations combined times 1000.
If Iraq hit the United States with one or two missles, despite the loss of life, would strategically be nothing more than a pinprick. It would be like poking a sleeping bear. All you would do is make the bear mad. Therefore, it is extremely unlikely that Iraq or Iran, or for that matter North Korea would trade national suicide for inflicting minimal damage on the United States. And building a force of ICBMs large enough to be real threat is beyond the economic capabilities of those three countries.
So why did Senator Joseph Lieberman convince President Bush to focus on Iraq as a threat? I'll tell you why. It's not the United States that Senator Lieberman is concerned about. We know that Iraq is not a threat to the United States. Iraq is a threat to Israel. Senator Lieberman and other pro-Israelis in Washington don't want anyone else in the Middle East to own Nuclear weapons except Israel. It's Israel, not the United States, that Lieberman is concerned about. And he is willing to risk American lives and American money to insure that Israel is the super power in the Middle East. Isn't it odd that while Lieberman is pushing for a bombing of Iraq, it's the Israelis who are inflicting most of the casualties in Middle East with its current bombing campaign. In just the last 2 days the Israelis have killed 29 Palestinians, and most of them are innocent civilians including children. Iraq hasn't killed anyone since the Gulf War, and that's been 11 years ago. In just the last 17 months the Israelis have killed over 900 Palestinians and have demolished more than 300 homes causing more than 1500 children to become homeless. And the Israelis have been doing this with F-16 fighter jets, M1A1 Abram tanks, 155mm howitzers, Chaparral and Sidewinder missiles, and Apache and Cobra attack helicopters all supplied by the good 'ole United States.
http://www.mediamonitors.net/jamesjdavid8.html-MORE-
Israel's pipe dream: getting oil from Iraq
By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN
Published August 15, 2004
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There's an old joke Israelis like to tell on themselves: Their ancestors followed Moses around for 40 years and he led them to the only place in the Middle East without any oil.
More than three millennia later, Israel's energy outlook has barely improved. Although it is in a region awash with oil, the Jewish state must import most of its supplies from Russia because Arab oil producers refuse to deal with it.
Assuring Israel of an adequate oil supply has long been a goal not just of Israel itself, but also of pro-Israel factions in the United States. Thus emerged a controversial plan that is still kicking around even though its chief booster, Ahmad Chalabi, could soon be behind bars.
Once the Pentagon's choice to lead the "new" Iraq, Chalabi promised to reopen an old British-built pipeline from Kirkuk in northern Iraq to the Israeli port of Haifa. The plan impressed Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and other conservatives influencing Bush administration policy toward Iraq in the lead-up to last year's war.
The idea also drew enthusiastic response from Israel.
"The pipeline would be a dream," Yosef Paritzky, Israel's minister of infrastructures, said as reported by Salon.com. "We'd have an additional source of supply, and could even export some of the crude through Haifa. But we'd need a treaty with Iraq . . . to build the pipeline."
Once Chalabi assumed a position of influence in the new Iraqi government, Israel would get its treaty, the neoconservatives were assured. The pipeline was by no means the only reason for going to war, but it could well have been one reason.
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/08/15/Columns/Israel_s_pipe_dream__.shtml-More-
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