Dissident Veteran For Peace

The diagram below was created circa 2002 and is the product of someone decrying the alleged efforts of "Establishment Left's alternative media gatekeepers / censors" to silence 9/11 conspiracy theorists/analysts.


I have looked at the evidence put forth to support the claim that the Twin Towers were brought down by controlled demolition. My conclusion is that this theory is unsupported by the evidence. That is, I think the evidence supports the claim that the Twin Towers (and WTC 7) collapsed as a result of the fires caused by airplanes crashing into the Twin Towers.  Frankly, I often wonder if the controlled demolition claims weren't concocted as a form of, what was later termed by Cass Sunstein, "cognitive infiltration" to discredit more reasonable scrutiny of the official 9/11 conspiracy narrative.

There is much in the story of 9/11 that has been hidden or distorted. At the most basic level, Americans have been fed a misleading narrative that the 9/11 perpetrators were driven by a blind Islamic-inspired hatred of America and its freedoms. In my view, it is more accurate to see the perpetrators' particularized interpretation of Islam, Salafi jihadism, as an organizing ideology used to help mobilize people to fight in response to grievances over US wars and other actions in support of the repressive Jewish state and repressive Arab regimes. Moreover, I find it interesting that, apparently, no US official was ever held accountable for the glaring intelligence and defense failures leading up to and on 9/11.

I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the "Gatekeepers" diagram but I can vouch for the curious, overzealous "conspiracy theory" bashing that prevails in certain Left circles. Noam Chomsky would be a good example of this. It is, for instance, accurately asserted that he "uses an institutional analysis as opposed to conspiracy theory to reach his conclusions."

Arguably, "institutional analysis" and "conspiracy analysis" are far from mutually exclusive and the existence of proven conspiracies concocted by high US government officials, e.g. Watergate, Iran-Contra, COINTELPRO, Operation Northwoods, etc., is well-established. Readers interested in this subject are advised to read Lance deHaven-Smith's Conspiracy Theory in America (Austin: Univ. of Texas Pr., 2013).

Another thing I can vouch for is the linkage in the diagram between uber-activist and self-described "socialist" Leslie Cagan and the CIA. The CIA was/is closely tied to the Ford Foundation (FF) and has long maintained a coterie of well-connected elite movers and shakers in its leadership. For example, its current president, Darren Walker, among other things, "was vice president at the Rockefeller Foundation" and "had a decade-long career in international law and finance at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton and UBS" and "is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations."

The Rockefeller Foundation and the CFR are both enmeshed in the Deep State (see also here). Walker's old law firm had its own ties to the intelligence community with one of its attorneys serving as General Counsel for the Security Affairs Support Association. The firm was disciplined in 2007 for misconduct in a major Congolese corruption case. UBS is a notorious Swiss bank and these institutions have long had a reputation for serving "as sanctuaries for the wealth of dictators and despots, mobsters and arms dealers, corrupt officials and tax cheats of all kinds".

The FF was a major donor to Astraea during the period when Cagan claimed to be on the Astraea board of directors (I have not been able to verify her Astraea board service). For example, Astraea's 2007 annual report touts a $3.5 million grant "over 3 years from the Ford Foundation". Leslie Cagan did serve on the board of Pacifica, which received its "first major foundation grant" in 1951 from the Ford Foundation. In sum, there is enough evidence in support of the relationships alleged in the diagram to give it careful consideration.

As an aside, in a 2003 fluff piece on Cagan in the NY Times Chris Hedges wrote:

LESLIE CAGAN is willing to count many things. She will count the billions the United States will spend if it goes to war in Iraq. She will count the dead. She will count the oil companies that line up for the spoils. She will count the nations that turn their backs on this country in anger. And she will, on Feb. 15, count the demonstrators who are to gather in Manhattan and three dozen cities around the globe to rally to stop the war. She will count all this. She is counting now.

Two things Cagan (and Hedges) apparently weren't counting were the number of highly placed Zionist neo-conservatives pushing for the war and the number of Zionist shills (such as Cagan) in the peace movement pushing the bogus "war for oil" narrative and ensuring little attention was drawn to the primary driver—support for Israel.

Labels: 9/11, Cagan, Chris Hedges, conspiracy, critical thinking, Ford Foundation, Iraq, Islam, Israel, media, Neoconservatives, Zionism

Japan's Kyodo News is reporting that the Japanese government is casting doubt on U.S. claims that Iran was behind an attack last Thursday on the Kokuka Courageous, a Japanese-owned ship, near the Straits of Hormuz. I could not find the story on the Kyodo site but UPI and Japan Today are both running it.

UPI reports:

Japan is asking for more evidence from the United States Iran was responsible for attacks against two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman ...

The request for proof comes after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Tehran is responsible for the attacks that forced the crew of the ships to be rescued and their cargoes unloaded.

The statements from Pompeo are "not convincing," a Japanese government source said Sunday, according to Kyodo News.

Japan Today reports:

A source close to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said, "These are not definite proof that it's Iran."

"Even if it's the United States that makes the assertion, we cannot simply say we believe it," he said.

If having expertise sophisticated enough to conduct the attack could be a reason to conclude that the attacker was Iran, "That would apply to the United States and Israel as well," said a source at the Foreign Ministry.

Curiously, UPI omitted the reference to the U.S. and Israel as having the capability to carry about the attack. Moreover, at this time it appears that UPI is the only American outlet to carry the story about high-level Japanese doubts.

Meanwhile, concerning the Norwegian-owned tanker Front Altair, Norway Today notes: "No country has supported the allegations of the Trump administration, except the British government." The U.S.-based News from Norway cites "a senior researcher at the Norwegian Institute of Foreign Affairs" writing: "[Kjetil] Selvik also points, however, to Iran's arch-enemy, Saudi Arabia, which is closedly [sic] allied with Trump."

I've seen the U.S. government's supposed video evidence of Iranian involvement in the attacks. It appears to be drone footage. To call it inconclusive would be an understatement.

Even a stopped clock is correct twice-a-day, it is said. IMO, Ben Garrison epitomizes this adage—he misses the mark more often than not but when you're right, you're right. And Garrison's cartoon below is pretty close to the mark. However, Garrison features an atomic symbol on a mullah's head dress and he writes: "They [Iran] continue to work on nuclear weapons. Forget about nuclear power—they have plenty of oil for their electricity."

Garrison apparently doesn't know, believe, or care that last week the IAEA issued ("derestricted") a report indicating that Iran was still in compliance with the flawed JCPOA—meaning it is not now (if, indeed, it ever was) developing nuclear weapons—even though the U.S. has walked away from the agreement. Meanwhile, Israel, which "is not a party to any of the major treaties governing WMD nonproliferation, including the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), and the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC)", has 80-90 undeclared nuclear warheads, according to the SIPRI Yearbook 2019.

Garrison also apparently doesn't understand that oil and gas are Iran's major export commodities, i.e. the key source of foreign revenues used to buy goods and services Iran does not produce domestically. It makes sense that Iran, like other oil export dependent countries, would a consider a nuclear powered electricity generating capacity if, on balance, it increased net export revenues.

The U.S. developed its nuclear power industry despite having an abundant supply of coal for electrical generation. Personally, I think nuclear fission is a Pandora's box that should never have been opened but I can understand the short-sighted appeal of nuclear power generation even if it has never lived up to its promise in terms of costs, non-proliferation, and safety.

Labels: Ben Garrison, Iran, Israel, Japan, Neoconservatives, Norway, nuclear weapons, United States, War

Fair Game is about the bogus intelligence used to justify the US' 2003 invasion of Iraq and, more specifically, the exposure of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Unfortunately, the film soft pedals the crucial role of the Israel-firsters in the drive to illegally invade Iraq. In any case, this film still tells an important story.


In late 2018, Fair Game director Liman released a director's cut of the film. This coincided with President Trump's decision earlier in the year to pardon I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff and a protege of Paul Wolfowitz. Libby is a key figure in the film. He was convicted in 2007 of obstruction of justice, perjury, and making false statements in the Plame Affair.

See also (in chronological order):

• "Playing skittles with Saddam" in The Guardian
• "The Scooter Libby-Marc Rich Connection" on The Unz Review
• "The 'JINSA Crowd' and the Iraq War" on the Dissident Veteran for Peace blog
• "Scooter Libby Love Letters: Washington elite petition judge on behalf of convicted Cheney aide" on The Smoking Gun
• Fair Game reviewed by Roger Ebert
• Fair Game reviewed in The Guardian
• "Scooter Libby & Paul Wolfowitz to Teach Iraq 'Decision-Making' " in The American Conservative
• "Why Ariel Sharon Thanked Scooter Libby" in Mosaic
• "The Pardon of Marc Rich" in CounterPunch  
• "When Trump Makes Your Largely Forgotten Movie Urgent Again" in The Atlantic
• "Former CIA Spy Valerie Plame: Trump Is 'Dangerous For Our National Security' " on The Daily Beast
• "Director Doug Liman Believes 'Fair Game' is More Relevant Than Ever" on FilmSchoolRejects

Labels: Bush, film & television, Iraq, Israel Lobby, Neoconservatives, Trump, Valerie Plame, video

Shock and Awe is way, way overdue and suffers a bit from a lack of focus and poor pacing. Nevertheless it is an important film and well worth watching. It's also a timely reminder of three important points: 1) For the most part, the mainstream media has been peddling fake news for a long time; 2) The Democrats and Republicans are the two wings of the one War Party; and 3) Israel's partisans exert a malign and dominant influence on US politics and America's Near East policy.


See also:

• Archive of Knight-Ridder's (McClatchy) Iraq war reporting
• "Going It Alone" from the American Journalism Review (AJR)
• "White Knights" from the AJR
• "Buying the War" on Bill Moyer's Journal
• "The Reporting Team That Got Iraq Right" from HuffPost
• Review of Shock and Awe on RogerEbert.com 

Labels: film & television, Iraq, Israel, Israel Lobby, media, Neoconservatives, video, War

Ignorance of French national character was for Scharnhorst the major reason for the Allied defeat [in the War of the First Coalition]. He found it inconceivable that the princes accepted without any verification the false reports of French opinion by the Émigrés ... "It seems at first sight incredible that such a great and important enterprise could be launched on the basis of such partisan witnesses as were the Émigrés."

Source: Charles E. White, The Enlightened Soldier: Scharnhorst and the Militarische Gesellschaft in Berlin, 1801-1805 (New York: Praeger, 1989), p. 61.

One wonders if Scharnhorst ever considered the possibility that "the princes" knew the reports of the Émigrés were bogus, it seems so. The case of Ahmed Chalabi and his sham Iraqi National Congress come to mind. Chalabi has been characterized as "the powerful source who ... succeeded in persuading the Pentagon that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that the Shiites would welcome the American forces with flowers and rice, and that in a twinkling the Iraqis would manage their country without Saddam and would free the U.S. armed forces from their commitment."

However, I think it would be far more accurate to characterize Chalabi as a willing partner in the deliberately trumped-up 2003 war for Israel. The neoconservatives leading the Pentagon in the Bush administration were not deceived by Chalabi and they needed no persuasion to invade Iraq, they needed plausible cover and that was what he provided.


The belief that in war forces must be kept together, that it is a principle of the art of war not to disperse, is therefore false. On the contrary, it is a general rule—but only to the skillful—to disperse with caution and to force the enemy to do likewise, and then to fall concentrated on a single part.

Source: Gerhard Johann David von Scharnhorst, "Ueber die Schlacht bei Marnego," Proceedings, 1:54-55 as quoted in White, op. cit., p. 71.

See also: "Wrong Tzu"

Labels: Europe, history, Iraq, military, Neoconservatives, quotations, Scharnhorst, War

In 2004, concerning the neoconservatives who agressively shill for Israel and pushed for the illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq on false pretenses, Adbusters magazine asked "Why won't anyone say they are Jewish?. I recently learned of one prominent Jew who did—well, sort of.

In 2005, Murray Friednman's The Neoconservative Revolution: Jewish Intellectuals and the Shaping of Public Policy (Cambridge UP) was published. According to Friedman, the book was, in actuality, "an examination of American Jewish conservatism" (p. 10; see also p. 1). Friedman was an historian and founding director of the Feinstein Center for American Jewish History at Temple University.

See also: "The Machiavelian Threefold Game of the Neoconservatives" by Laurent Guyénoton on voltairenet.org

Labels: Jews, Neoconservatives, War, Zionism

So why did we invade Iraq? I believe it was the triumph of the so-called neoconservative ideology, as well as Bush administration arrogance and incompetence that took America into this war of choice. This ideology presented a myopic vision of a democratic Middle East that would inject a large permanent American force presence in the region to act as the guarantor of a regional realignment. They believed that by taking the relatively easy step of toppling Saddam, they could begin to realize this vision through the use of America's unequaled military power, thereby establishing America's preeminence in the Middle East and bolstering the defense of Israel.

Source: Chuck Hagel. America: Our Next Chapter. (New York: HarperCollins, 2008) p. 50. At the time the book was published Hagel, a Republican, was the senior US Senator from Nebraska. He is the current US Secretary of Defense. Even though it was widely known at the time that the neocons were leading the US into another war for Israel, Hagel still voted for the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002.

See also:

• "The Men From JINSA and CSP" in The Nation
• "Clean Break or Dirty War? Israel's Foreign Policy Directive to the United States", an IRmep Policy Brief. 
• "The 'JINSA Crowd' and the Iraq War"
• "The Israel Lobby and the US War Against Iraq"

Labels: Chuck Hagel, Iraq, Israel Lobby, Neoconservatives, quotations, War, Zionism

Click on each of the two images below for a larger, clearer image.

See also: "They are Jewish"

Labels: Jews, Neoconservatives, War

For at least the second time, former Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu spells it out:

The Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv on Wednesday [4/16/08] reported that Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu told an audience at Bar Ilan university that the September 11, 2001 terror attacks had been beneficial for Israel.

"We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq," Ma'ariv quoted the former prime minister as saying. He reportedly added that these events "swung American public opinion in our favor."

Netanyahu reportedly made the comments during a conference at Bar-Ilan University on the division of Jerusalem as part of a peace deal with the Palestinians.

On 9/12/01, the New York Times reported:

Asked tonight what the attack meant for relations between the United States and Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister, replied, "It's very good." Then he edited himself: "Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy." He predicted that the attack would "strengthen the bond between our two peoples, because we've experienced terror over so many decades, but the United States has now experienced a massive hemorrhaging of terror.''

on 9/20/01, Netanyahu told a US House Committee:

We have received a wake up call from hell. Now the question is simple: Do we rally to defeat this evil, while there is still time, or do we press a collective snooze button and go back to business as usual?

The time for action is now.

And he was already starting to wag the American dog to attack Iraq and Iran:

... Nor can we completely dismiss the possibility that a militant regime, like its terrorist proxies, will commit collective suicide for the sake of its fanatical ideology.

In this case, we might face not thousands of dead, but hundreds of thousands and possibly millions. This is why the US must do everything in its power to prevent regimes like Iran and Iraq from developing nuclear weapons, and disarm them of their weapons of mass destruction.

Of course, war on Iraq and Iran was on Netanyahu's wish list long before 9/11.

Labels: Iran, Iraq, Israel, Neoconservatives, Zionism

I was watching the documentary film The Camden 28 last night. When they flashed a sound bite from Lyndon Johnson I was reminded of the ongoing Israeli and American propaganda campaign against Iran and especially the most recent episode where large, modern, heavily armed American warships go half-way around the world, steam in or near Iranian territorial waters, and then complain because Iranian speedboats are "threatening" them.

Here's part of what Johnson said to the American people following the now-debunked Gulf of Tonkin incident:

Aggression by terror against the peaceful villages of South Vietnam has now been joined by open aggression on the high seas against the United States of America.

Of course, the Gulf of Tonkin incident came to mind right away when I first heard about the recent incident with Iran last week but the similarity of rhetoric is what caught me when I heard the Johnson quote last night. Consider, for example, this excerpt from a January 8, 2008, report by Agence France Press:

US President George W. Bush on Tuesday blamed Tehran for a "provocative" weekend face-off between US and Iranian ships as he prepared to take his warning that "Iran is a threat" to the Middle East.

"We viewed it as a provocative act. It is a dangerous situation and they should not have done it, pure and simple," Bush declared in his first public remarks on Sunday's incident in the Strait of Hormuz.

Shortly after he spoke, the Pentagon released a video and audio tape that appeared to confirm its charge that Iranian speedboats swarmed three US warships in the Strait and radioed a threat to blow them up.

"My message today to the Iranians is, they shouldn't have done what they did," he added. "I don't know what their thinking was, but I'm telling you what I think it was, I think it was a provocative act."

Here's part of the story as reported on the same day on the ABC News web site:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iranian boats aggressively approached three U.S. Naval ships in the Strait of Hormuz, a main shipping route for Gulf oil, at the weekend and threatened that the ships would explode, U.S. officials said on Monday.

Iran dismissed U.S. concerns about the incident, saying it was a routine contact. But the Pentagon termed the Iranian actions "careless, reckless and potentially hostile" and said Tehran should provide an explanation.

"This is a very volatile area and the risk of an incident escalating is real," U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said. "It is a reminder that there is a very unpredictable government in Tehran."

Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff, the commander of the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, which is based in the Gulf, said five Iranian fast boats moved aggressively toward the U.S. ships in international waters and their actions were "unduly provocative." ...

The incident was the latest sign of tension between Washington and Tehran, at odds over a range of issues from Iran's nuclear program to U.S. allegations of Iranian support for terrorism and interference in Iraq.

Of course, like the charges that Iran is a threat to the US, key parts of the incident are distortions or fabrications. As the Inter Press Service reports in a story entitled " How the Pentagon Planted a False Hormuz Story":

WASHINGTON, Jan 15 (IPS) - Senior Pentagon officials, evidently reflecting a broader administration policy decision, used an off-the-record Pentagon briefing to turn the Jan. 6 U.S.-Iranian incident in the Strait of Hormuz into a sensational story demonstrating Iran's military aggressiveness, a reconstruction of the events following the incident shows.

The initial press stories on the incident, all of which can be traced to a briefing by deputy assistant secretary of defence for public affairs in charge of media operations Bryan Whitman, contained similar information that has since been repudiated by the Navy itself.

Then the Navy disseminated a short video into which was spliced the audio of a phone call warning that U.S. warships would "explode" in "a few seconds". Although it was ostensibly a Navy production, IPS has learned that the ultimate decision on its content was made by top officials of the Defence Department.

The Bush administration concocted or hyped a threat where no real threat existed. Who ever heard of such a thing? No matter, millions of American sheeple won't care, won't know, or, more likely, both. If they report it at all, the mainstream media will not give the hoax revelation anywhere near as much attention and prominence as the initial story garnered and the Bush administration and the Israel Lobby will continue to make hay with it. As the Associated Press reports today: "The push to contain Iran has been given new urgency by an incident in the Persian Gulf this month in which U.S. warships were harassed by the Iranian naval speedboats in the Strait of Hormuz."

And, writing for World Politics Review, Zionist Frida Ghitis observes:

Just when it looked like Israel was about to fail in its efforts to convince the world about the dangers posed by Iran, the Iranian regime itself stepped in to help Israel make its case.

When Iranian speedboats began harassing U.S. Navy ships in the Strait of Hormuz, it became clear that, with or without nuclear weapons, Iran can cause extraordinary pain to the entire world, sending oil prices sky high and leaving the planet's biggest oil producers unable to move their crude. That reminder from the busy sea lanes of the Persian Gulf could not have come at a more opportune time. (emphasis added)

Also, coming at a very opportune time is a New York Times article hyping the supposed threat posed by speedboats. "Iran Encounter Grimly Echoes ’02 War Game" by Tom Shanker opens with:

There is a reason American military officers express grim concern over the tactics used by Iranian sailors last weekend: a classified, $250 million war game in which small, agile speedboats swarmed a naval convoy to inflict devastating damage on more powerful warships.

In the days since the encounter with five Iranian patrol boats in the Strait of Hormuz, American officers have acknowledged that they have been studying anew the lessons from a startling simulation conducted in August 2002. In that war game, the Blue Team navy, representing the United States, lost 16 major warships — an aircraft carrier, cruisers and amphibious vessels — when they were sunk to the bottom of the Persian Gulf in an attack that included swarming tactics by enemy speedboats.

If the war game is "classified" then that means the results have been leaked, undoubtedly with Bush adminstration connivance. And you have to get more than halfway into the article to learn that "The Blue Team defenses also faced cruise missiles fired simultaneously from land and from warplanes, as well as the swarm of speedboats firing heavy machine guns and rockets." Thanks New York Times for helping the Pentagon salvage a story that was fast going down the toilet by raising the specter of a swarm of boats firing rockets and backed by aircraft and cruise missiles where before only five Iranian speedboats existed.

See also:

• "CIA, Iran & the Gulf of Tonkin" by Ray McGovern on Consortiumnews.com
• "Iran showdown has echoes of faked Tonkin attack" by Nick Juliano on therawstory
• "Is Iran Trying to Start a War with the United States?" (satire) by Andisheh Nouaree, Free Times of Columbia, SC

Labels: Iran, Neoconservatives, War, Zionism

The video clip below is just three months old and comes originally from Israeli state television via Mosaic (the interview on that site starts at 21:12). In it the powerful neocon and editor of Commentary Norman Podhoretz advocates and predicts a US attack on Iran before Bush leaves office.

Labels: Iran, Israel, Israel Lobby, Neoconservatives, War

It pays to read the Jewish press. Below are excerpts from "Book: Israel, Lobby Pushing Iran War" by Nathan Guttman, writing in the Jewish Daily Forward, December 29, 2006. This article has a very different spin from the interesting interview that Scott Ritter gave to Amy Goodman concerning his book Target Iran: The Truth About the White House's Plans for Regime Change in October, 2006. From the Forward:

A former United Nations weapons inspector and leading Iraq War opponent has written a new book alleging that Jerusalem is pushing the Bush administration into war with Iran, and accusing the pro-Israel lobby of dual loyalty and “outright espionage.”

In the new book, called “Target Iran,” Scott Ritter, who served as a senior U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998 and later became one of the war’s staunchest critics, argues that the United States is readying for military action against Iran, using its nuclear program as a pretext for pursuing regime change in Tehran.

“The Bush administration, with the able help of the Israeli government and the pro-Israel Lobby, has succeeded,” Ritter writes, “in exploiting the ignorance of the American people about nuclear technology and nuclear weapons so as to engender enough fear that the American public has more or less been pre-programmed to accept the notion of the need to militarily confront a nuclear armed Iran.”

Later in the book, Ritter adds: “Let there be no doubt: If there is an American war with Iran, it is a war that was made in Israel and nowhere else.”

Ritter’s book echoes recent high-profile attacks on the pro-Israel lobby by former President Jimmy Carter and by scholars Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer. Ritter, who recently returned from a weeklong speaking engagement on The Nation cruise, speaks of a “network of individuals” that pursues Israel’s interests in the United States. The former weapons inspector alleges that some of the pro-Israel lobby’s activities “can only be described as outright espionage and interference in domestic policies.” Ritter also accused the American Israel Public Affairs Committee of having an inherent dual loyalty. He called for the organization to be registered as a foreign agent. ...

In his book, Ritter also accuses the pro-Israel lobby of invoking the memory of the Holocaust and of crying antisemitism whenever Israel is accused of betraying America. “This is a sickening and deeply disturbing trend that must end,” Ritter writes. ...

Ritter argues that the Bush administration knows that inspections can solve the Iranian nuclear problem but, at the urging of Jerusalem and its American allies, is in reality pursuing a different goal: regime change in Tehran.

“Israel has, through a combination of ignorance, fear and paranoia, elevated Iran to a status that it finds unacceptable,” Ritter writes in his book. “Israel has engaged in policies that have further inflamed this situation. Israel displays arrogance and rigidity when it comes to developing any diplomatic solution to the Iranian issue.” ...

In early 2004, Ritter charged in an interview on the Web site Ynet, operated by the daily Yediot Aharonot, that Israeli intelligence had deliberately overstated what it knew to be a minimal threat from Iraq in an effort to push America and Britain to launch a war. Ritter’s accusations were roundly rejected across the Israeli political spectrum. Security officials interviewed by the Forward insisted that no branch of the military could or would deliberately skew the findings in that way, but they also said that Israeli intelligence tended to exaggerate threats because it was operating under flawed assumptions.

Now Ritter is arguing that a similar effort is under way to produce an attack against Iran.

Speaking to the Forward this week, Ritter stressed that he is not accusing all American Jews of having dual loyalty, saying that “at the end of the day, I would like to believe that most of American Jews will side with America.” ...

Concerning the role of Israeli intelligence in pushing for the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, Guttman writes above: "Ritter’s accusations were roundly rejected across the Israeli political spectrum." This is simply untrue.

In "Israel knew Iraq had no nuclear weapons," Laurie Copans writes:

Jerusalem - A government critic said on Tuesday that Israel was aware before the war against Iraq that Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction, but Israel did not inform the United States. ...

But lawmaker Yossi Sarid, a member of the Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, said on Tuesday that Israeli intelligence knew beforehand that Iraq had no weapons stockpiles and misled US President George Bush. ...

Last year Israel appointed a stern general, Amos Gilead, as its liaison with the population. Gilead filled the airwaves with dire warnings of possible chemical or biological attacks from Iraq.

Sarid, who represents the dovish opposition Meretz Party, said it was just a costly show - Israeli intelligence knew the threat was "very, very, very limited."

"It was known in Israel that the story that weapons of mass destruction could be activated in 45 minutes was an old wives' tale," said Sarid, regarding a claim leading up to the war.

"Israel didn't want to spoil President Bush's scenario, and it should have," Sarid said.

Israeli critics say the government of Sharon maintained the state of alert for its own political reasons, to help galvanise public opinion in favour of harsh steps against the Palestinians. ...

This explanation makes no sense. Israeli leaders have never been at a loss for excuses or public support to brutalize Palestinians. This is merely a smoke screen to obscure Israel's role in pushing for the American war on Iraq.

Then, there's this Associated Press article:

General: Israelis exaggerated Iraq threat

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli intelligence overplayed the threat posed by Iraq and reinforced the U.S. and British assessment that Saddam Hussein had large amounts of weapons of mass destruction, a retired Israeli general said Thursday.

The Israeli assessment may have been colored by politics, including a desire to see the Iraqi leader toppled, said Shlomo Brom, who was a senior Israeli military intelligence officer and is now a researcher with Israel's top strategic think tank. ...

In an article in Strategic Assessment, a publication of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, Brom said weapons of mass destruction probably would not be found in significant quantities in Iraq.

He said Israeli intelligence overplayed the potential danger before the war. ...

Brom told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday that "Israeli intelligence was a full partner with the United States and Britain in developing a false picture of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction capability." ...

Brom said the Israeli assessment may have been influenced by politics. "Israel has no reason to regret the outcome of the war in Iraq," he wrote, noting Saddam was an implacable enemy. ...

In the Strategic Assessment article Brom writes: "In the questioning of the picture painted by coalition intelligence, the third party in this intelligence failure, Israel, has remained in the shadows." Quite so.

In addition to the bogus Israeli intelligence, bogus American intelligence was cooked up by a cabal of Zionists in the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans. For more info on that group see:

• "Pentagon Office Home to Neo-Con Network" by Jim Lobe for the Inter Press Service
• "Special investigation: The spies who pushed for war" by Julian Borger in The Guardian (UK)
• "Decentralizing U.S. Intelligence: Office of Special Plans" by Tom Barry for the Interhemispheric Resource Center

Labels: hasbara, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Neoconservatives, Zionism

In July, I published a long post--Battle Over Bolton Could Be Decided by Jewish Support--about John Bolton's tenure as US Ambassador to the UN. Bolton's recess appointment will expire in December and despite earlier rejection Bush has renominated him.

Marc Perelman reports in the Jewish Forward that the "Jewish community" is determined to stand by their (and Bush's) man. Here are a couple of excerpts from the article:

Bush appointed Bolton, a leading neoconservative who failed to garner sufficient votes in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2005, during a congressional recess for one year. ...

The administration is now reportedly looking for ways to keep Bolton at the U.N. by circumventing the Senate.

“The Jewish community remains supportive and would want to see [Bolton] stay,” said Malcolm Hoenlein, vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. “He has been an effective advocate, and he is appreciated by the diplomatic corps.”

At the same time, Hoenlein said, he was not aware of any recent effort by Jewish organizations to press administration and Congress on the issue. Several major Jewish groups had expressed their support, in public and in private, when Bolton’s appointment became a political battle in Washington in early 2005. None of these groups has issued statements on the issue in recent weeks.

"The administration and the Congress know where the community stands," Hoenlein said. "But this is not in our hands, obviously." Bolton is viewed as a strong supporter of Israel, and exercised the American veto last week on a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. While American support for Israel at the U.N. is unlikely to change with a new ambassador and a Democratic Congress, Bolton had cultivated especially close personal bonds over the years with all major Jewish groups. They have hailed him for his role in convincing U.N. members in 1991 to repel [sic] the infamous "Zionism equals racism" resolution, for his outspoken criticism of the U.N.’s failures to enact more reforms, and for his support for regime change in Iraq and a tough line on Iran’s nuclear ambitions. He also has been a fairly active voice for international efforts to stop the mass killings in Darfur. ...

It is important to note that Bolton's opposition from Congress stems not primarily, if at all, from his ardent support for Israel but from his personal combativeness and general hostility to international institutions and law.

See also: Bolton's Proudest Moment: Breaking the UN's Anti-Zionist Resolution by Gary Leupp

Labels: Israel Lobby, John Bolton, Neoconservatives, Zionism

Many readers of this blog will know about the Israeli connection to the US war in Iraq and Zionist agitation for a US attack on Iran. Early this morning, I heard a BBC interview with Seymour Hersh answering criticism of his recent article in the New Yorker. In the interview, Hersh stated that the CIA had found no "conclusive evidence" of a clandestine Iranian nuclear weapons program but that the Bush administration is relying upon Israeli 'intelligence' that there is such a program. However, the White House refuses to make the Israeli 'intelligence' available to the CIA. This smacks of the buildup to the Iraq war where the White House created special units--with strong Israeli connections--to cook up 'intelligence' to support the adminstration's determination to go to war.

In the New Yorker article Hersh writes that post-election (emphasis in bold added):

The White House's concern was not that the Democrats would cut off funds for the war in Iraq but that future legislation would prohibit it from financing operations targeted at overthrowing or destabilizing the Iranian government, to keep it from getting the bomb. "They're afraid that Congress is going to vote a binding resolution to stop a hit on Iran, à la Nicaragua in the Contra war," a former senior intelligence official told me.

Concerning the Vice President, Hersh writes:

Cheney is emphatic about Iraq. In late October, he told Time, "I know what the President thinks," about Iraq. "I know what I think. And we’re not looking for an exit strategy. We're looking for victory." He is equally clear that the Administration would, if necessary, use force against Iran. "The United States is keeping all options on the table in addressing the irresponsible conduct of the regime," he told an Israeli lobbying group early this year. "And we join other nations in sending that regime a clear message: we will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon."

Hersh also writes:

In the past six months, Israel and the United States have also been working together in support of a Kurdish resistance group known as the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan. The group has been conducting clandestine cross-border forays into Iran, I was told by a government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon civilian leadership, as "part of an effort to explore alternative means of applying pressure on Iran." (The Pentagon has established covert relationships with Kurdish, Azeri, and Baluchi tribesmen, and has encouraged their efforts to undermine the regime's authority in northern and southeastern Iran.) The government consultant said that Israel is giving the Kurdish group "equipment and training." The group has also been given "a list of targets inside Iran of interest to the U.S." (An Israeli government spokesman denied that Israel was involved.)

Hersh also reveals how Zionist fifth columnists in the US are stoking the fires for war against Iran:

In the current issue of Foreign Policy, Joshua Muravchik, a prominent neoconservative, argued that the Administration had little choice. "Make no mistake: President Bush will need to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities before leaving office," he wrote. The President would be bitterly criticized for a preëmptive attack on Iran, Muravchik said, and so neoconservatives "need to pave the way intellectually now and be prepared to defend the action when it comes."

The main Middle East expert on the Vice-President's staff is David Wurmser, a neoconservative who was a strident advocate for the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Like many in Washington, Wurmser "believes that, so far, there’s been no price tag on Iran for its nuclear efforts and for its continuing agitation and intervention inside Iraq," the consultant said. But, unlike those in the Administration who are calling for limited strikes, Wurmser and others in Cheney's office "want to end the regime," the consultant said. "They argue that there can be no settlement of the Iraq war without regime change in Iran."

In closing, here are a couple of more revealing excerpts from the Hersh article that shed light on the Zionist motives behind moves against Iran (emphasis in bold added):

Earlier this year, the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert created a task force to coördinate all the available intelligence on Iran. The task force, which is led by Major General Eliezer Shkedi, the head of the Israeli Air Force, reports directly to the Prime Minister. In late October, Olmert appointed Ephraim Sneh, a Labor Party member of the Knesset, to serve as Deputy Defense Minister. Sneh, who served previously in that position under Ehud Barak, has for years insisted that action be taken to prevent Iran from getting the bomb. In an interview this month with the Jerusalem Post, Sneh expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of diplomacy or international sanctions in curbing Iran:

The danger isn't as much Ahmadinejad's deciding to launch an attack but Israel's living under a dark cloud of fear from a leader committed to its destruction. . . . Most Israelis would prefer not to live here; most Jews would prefer not to come here with families, and Israelis who can live abroad will . . . I am afraid Ahmadinejad will be able to kill the Zionist dream without pushing a button. That's why we must prevent this regime from obtaining nuclear capability at all costs.

... A senior European diplomat agreed: "For Israel, it is a question of life or death. The United States does not want to go into Iran, but, if Israel feels more and more cornered, there may be no other choice."

See also:

• Olmert's drums of war in Ha'aretz (11/19/2006)
• 9/11 Commission Chairmen Admit Whitewashing the Cause of the Attacks
• The "JINSA Crowd" and the Iraq War
• Israel pushes U.S. on Iran nuke solution

Labels: Iran, Iraq, Israel, Israel Lobby, Neoconservatives, nuclear weapons

I first got wind of this latest episode of the building neocon backlash while reading "Neo-Con Nadir?" by Jim Lobe. I thought the Haig quote that the "Iraq war had been 'driven by the so-called neo-cons that hijacked my party...' " would be featured more prominently in the mainstream media but it's not. Below is a portion of the text from a "rush transcript" of the 10/22/2006 episode of CNN Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer (my emphasis appears in bold). Note that Brzezinski agrees with Haig.

[Zbigniew] BRZEZINSKI [former National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter]: Look, most of the Iraqis who are fighting against us and most of the Iraqis who are fighting with each other are not members of Al Qaida.

The ones who are fighting against us mostly don't like us being there because, after all, we are seen by them as legacies of the age of colonialism, as foreigners.

And a lot of Iraqis are fighting against each other for sectarian, religious reasons. We have actually destabilized, broken up Iraq. And we have created the mess in which we find ourselves now entangled.

BLITZER: And many military commanders in Iraq themselves acknowledge that the great threat to the U.S. is not necessarily from the Al Qaida operatives but from the sectarian violence, the Shia and the Sunni who hate each other and who are killing each other and, as a result, are killing American troops.

AL HAIG, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: Well, first, I think that this is a conflict that's essentially political. It's not just purely military. It's political and religious and ideological. And it was driven by the so-called neocons that hijacked my party, the Republican Party, before this administration...

BLITZER: Name names, Mr. Secretary. Who are you talking about?

HAIG: Well, I'm talking about...

BLITZER: Because a lot of our viewers hear the word "neocon" and they don't know what you're talking about.

HAIG: Well, they're a group of people who are ex-Democrats. Many of them hovered around the Seattle Conservative Democrats some years ago, who...

BLITZER: Who specifically are you referring to?

HAIG: I'm talking about Wolfowitz. I'm talking about Richard Perle. I'm talking about some newly-made ones. I'm talking about the former editor of the Wall Street Journal.[Max Boot?]

These people are very, very deeply embedded in Yale and certain intellectual circles. And for years, they've been against NATO...

BLITZER: But did they hijack the strategy, the policy, from the president of the United States, the vice president of the United States?

HAIG: Yes.

BLITZER: The secretary of state, the secretary of defense?

HAIG: Well, no, not the secretary of state, but he sat there and had to be a passenger on a train that he wasn't driving?

BLITZER: Was Rumsfeld a neocon?

HAIG: I wouldn't say he was. I wouldn't say...

BLITZER: But was he in charge of the military strategy?

HAIG: No, no. The outcome of the strategy was to create democracy with a bayonet.

BLITZER: Is Cheney a neocon?

HAIG: I think so.

BLITZER: So he's part of that neocon conspiracy, or cabal, or whatever?

HAIG: Those around him were, if he wasn't.

BLITZER: And they could basically influence the president and dictate to the president what to do, in terms of going to war against Saddam Hussein?

HAIG: Well, I'm not here to talk about that. There were a lot of influences on the president, but he's the president, and he's responsible.

BLITZER: So what do you think of this argument?

Because you hear it all the time, Dr. Brzezinski, that there were these group of of neoconservatives in there, like Paul Wolfowitz, who has the deputy secretary of defense; Richard Perle, who wasn't even in the government but he was an outside adviser, who were effectively shaping U.S. strategy.

Do you buy that?

BRZEZINSKI: I buy a great deal of that. I think Al Haig is absolutely right.

We had, at the top a president, who was essentially uninformed about foreign policy, and then top policy-makers like Rumsfeld and, of course, Cheney who are, kind of, traditional, quote, end quote, "realists," hard nosed types.

But the guys who provided the strategy and made the argument that we have to go into Iraq, that we have to link the war on terror with an attack on Iraq, were the guys that Al Haig is talking about.

They provided strategy. They provided the argument that we would be greeted as liberators, that this would be a cake walk. And they have devastated American national interests as a consequence.

See also:

• The Israel Lobby and the US War Against Iraq
• The "JINSA Crowd" and the Iraq War

Labels: conspiracy, Iraq, Israel Lobby, Neoconservatives, United States, Zbigniew Brzezinski

Concerning "Bayard Rustin--Giant with Feet of Clay," a reader asks, "It seems to me, pretty obvious in fact, that the likelihood exists that Rustin worked with the support of the US government. Have you come across any documents that highlighted or suggested this?"

The short answer is no. The long answer is there seems little room for doubt that, in his later life, through his direct and indirect connections with Freedom House, the AFL-CIO, A. Philip Randolph Institute, Committee on the Present Danger, League for Industrial Democracy, Coalition for a Democratic Majority, etc. that Rustin was definitely a beneficiary of CIA and other gov't. support and funding. I haven't come across any particularly relevant documents on this topic but then again I haven't really looked for any. In any case, have a look at rightweb.irc-online.org. Rustin's name pops up there a lot of times in association with prominent neocons and known CIA front groups. The statement below makes a lot of sense when considered in this light.

Ronald Reagan's Statement on the Death of Bayard Rustin

August 25, 1987

We mourn the loss of Bayard Rustin, a great leader in the struggle for civil rights in the United States and for human rights throughout the world. He will be sorely missed by all those who shared his commitment to the twin causes of peace and freedom.

As few men have, Mr. Rustin understood that the struggle for the two is inseparable; either we achieve them both or neither. Mr. Rustin held to this belief all his adult life. This took great physical, intellectual, and, most of all, moral courage. He was denounced by former friends, because he never gave up his conviction that minorities in America could and would succeed based on their individual merit. But Mr. Rustin never gave an inch. Though a pacifist, he was a fighter to the finish. That is why over the course of his life he won the undying love of all who cherish freedom.

Labels: Bayard Rustin, Neoconservatives, repression, Ronald Reagan, United States

It pays to read the Israeli and American Jewish press, which is usually far more informative about Zionist activities than the mainstream American press. For instance, at the end of a recent blog post by Ha'aretz's Chief U.S. Correspondent, Shmuel Rosner, we find this telling statement:

... Israel has ceased its efforts at psychological warfare aimed at arousing Western public opinion and governments to action via implied threats of an Israeli attack [against Iran].

As was obvious to many, scare-mongering and saber-rattling against Iran--"psychological warfare"--is orchestrated by Israel in cooperation with the Zionist fifth column here in the United States. These people don't have dual loyalties--they are loyal to Israel. Any appearance of loyalty to the US is just that--appearance--and merely a matter of expediency.

George Bush carried out the mission with gusto and actually had to be told to chill out lest the American masses should snap out of the stupor and figure out that US foreign policy has been hijacked by Zionists. A May 12, 2006, headline in the Forward read "Groups to Bush: Drop Iran-Israel Linkage." Ori Nir reported:

WASHINGTON — Jewish community leaders have urged the White House to refrain from publicly pledging to defend Israel against possible Iranian hostilities, senior Jewish activists told the Forward.

Messages were passed to the White House through several channels, Jewish activists said. And it seems to have worked: Speaking before the annual conference of the American Jewish Committee in Washington last week — his most recent address before a Jewish audience — President Bush talked about America's commitment to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and about his administration's commitment to Israeli security, but he did not link the two, as he has several times in recent months.

"We are basically telling the president: We appreciate it, we welcome it. But, hey, because there is this debate on Iraq, where people are trying to put the blame on us, maybe you shouldn't say it that often or that loud," said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. "Within the Jewish community there is a real sense of 'thank you but no thank you.'"

Communal leaders say that although they deeply appreciate the president's repeated promises to come to Israel's defense, public declarations to that effect do more harm than good. Such statements, they say, create an impression that the United States is considering a military option against Iran for the sake of Israel — and could lead to American Jews being blamed for any negative consequences of an American strike against Iran.

Jewish activists are concerned that "there would be [a scenario] just like with Iraq: the idea that somehow the Jewish community and the neoconservatives have dragged the United States into a conflict with Iran," said Martin Raffel, associate executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, a policy coordinating organization that brings together 13 national Jewish agencies and 123 local Jewish communities. "And if things go badly and our people are killed, then who is to blame?" ...

On June 9, 2006, in "Bush Overture To Iran Splits Israel, Neocons--Olmert Asks Groups To Keep Low Profile" Ori Nir reported:

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration's offer to open direct talks with Iran and reward Tehran if it stops enriching uranium is exposing a policy rift between neoconservatives on one hand, and the Israeli government and Jewish organizations on the other.

Neoconservative analysts are blasting the administration, saying that holding talks with the Islamic regime would serve only to embolden it and undermine the anti-fundamentalist opposition in Iran. They argue that America's ultimate goal should be to change Tehran's theocratic regime. ...

The split appears to fly in the face of recent high-profile efforts to paint the pro-Israel lobby as a seamless network dominated by Jewish organizations and neoconservatives coordinating their activities with the Israeli government. Most notably, such a view was advanced by two highly respected academics — John Mearsheimer, a top international relations theorist based at the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt, former academic dean of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government — in a research paper released in March. [Contra Nir, Mearsheimer and Walt write: "We use 'the Lobby' as a convenient shorthand term for the loose coalition of individuals and organizations who actively work to shape U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction. Our use of this term is not meant to suggest that the Lobby is a unified movement with a central leadership, or that individuals within it do not disagree on certain issues."--VFPD] The Walt-Mearsheimer paper has triggered an escalating debate on the influence of Israel and Jewish organizations that has spilled over onto the opinion pages of major publications, including The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Recently, with such scrutiny mounting, Israeli leaders asked American Jewish organizations to lower their profile on the Iran issue, the Forward has learned.

In one notable example, a delegation of leaders from the American Jewish Congress met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert shortly before returning to the United States. When asked how he thinks Jewish groups should pursue the Iran issue, Olmert reportedly implied that he would prefer a low profile, according to one source familiar with the proceedings. [emphasis added] ...

Israel's support for Rice and Olmert's request for Jewish groups to take a lower profile are being well received by many Jewish groups. Already, some Jewish groups had been asking the White House to stop suggesting that American efforts to block Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons are motivated primarily by a desire to protect Israel. ...

Nir misstates the case when he writes: "The split appears to fly in the face of recent high-profile efforts to paint the pro-Israel lobby as a seamless network dominated by Jewish organizations and neoconservatives coordinating their activities with the Israeli government." I know of no one who claims the Israel Lobby is a "seamless network"--it would be more vulnerable and easy to expose if it were. Nevertheless, it is not inconceivable that some small part of this "split" is actually a sham contrived in response to the unwelcome attention generated by Mearsheimer and Walt. In any case, it is clear that there is no real difference within Zionist ranks over hostility to Iran--that is a given--the differences arise over what type of attack to mount against Iran, when, and how.

See also: The Israel Lobby and the US War Against Iraq

Labels: Iran, Israel, Neoconservatives, War, Zionism

The excerpts below are taken from pages 30-35 of an 83-page working paper entitled "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" and published by Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in March 2006. Its authors are Professor John J. Mearsheimer, Department of Political Science, University of Chicago and Dean Stephen M. Walt, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. The full text, including numerous endnotes omitted here, is available here. An edited and reworked version of the paper was published in the London Review of Books Vol. 28, No. 6 (March 23, 2006), and is available here

Israel and the Iraq War

Pressure from Israel and the [Israel—VFPD] Lobby was not the only factor behind the U.S. decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was a critical element. Some Americans believe that this was a "war for oil," but there is hardly any direct evidence to support this claim. Instead, the war was motivated in good part by a desire to make Israel more secure. According to Philip Zelikow, a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (2001-2003), executive director of the 9/11 Commission, and now Counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the "real threat" from Iraq was not a threat to the United States. The "unstated threat" was the "threat against Israel," Zelikow told a University of Virginia audience in September 2002, noting further that "the American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell."

On August 16, 2002, eleven days before Vice President Cheney kicked off the campaign for war with a hardline speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Washington Post reported that "Israel is urging U.S. officials not to delay a military strike against Iraq's Saddam Hussein." By this point, according to Sharon, strategic coordination between Israel and the U.S. had reached "unprecedented dimensions," and Israeli intelligence officials had given Washington a variety of alarming reports about Iraq's WMD programs. As one retired Israeli general later put it, "Israeli intelligence was a full partner to the picture presented by American and British intelligence regarding Iraq’s non-conventional capabilities."

Israeli leaders were deeply distressed when President Bush decided to seek U.N. Security Council authorization for war in September, and even more worried when Saddam agreed to let U.N. inspectors back into Iraq, because these developments seemed to reduce the likelihood of war. Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told reporters in September 2002 that "the campaign against Saddam Hussein is a must. Inspections and inspectors are good for decent people, but dishonest people can overcome easily inspections and inspectors."

... Or as Ha’aretz reported in February 2003: "The [Israeli] military and political leadership yearns for war in Iraq." But as [former Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu suggests, the desire for war was not confined to Israel's leaders. Apart from Kuwait, which Saddam conquered in 1990, Israel was the only country in the world where both the politicians and the public enthusiastically favored war. As journalist Gideon Levy observed at the time, "Israel is the only country in the West whose leaders support the war unreservedly and where no alternative opinion is voiced." In fact, Israelis were so gung-ho for war that their allies in America told them to damp down their hawkish rhetoric, lest it look like the war was for Israel.

The Lobby and the Iraq War

Within the United States, the main driving force behind the Iraq war was a small band of neoconservatives, many with close ties to Israel's Likud Party. In addition, key leaders of the Lobby's major organizations lent their voices to the campaign for war. According to the Forward, "As President Bush attempted to sell the ... war in Iraq, America's most important Jewish organizations rallied as one to his defense. In statement after statement community leaders stressed the need to rid the world of Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction." The editorial goes on to say that "concern for Israel's safety rightfully factored into the deliberations of the main Jewish groups."

Although neoconservatives and other Lobby leaders were eager to invade Iraq, the broader American Jewish community was not. In fact, Samuel Freedman reported just after the war started that "a compilation of nationwide opinion polls by the Pew Research Center shows that Jews are less supportive of the Iraq war than the population at large, 52% to 62%." [The possibility that many respondents simply lied and that Jewish support for the war was much higher than the polls indicated should not be discounted. Above, the authors note, "Israelis were so gung-ho for war that their allies in America told them to damp down their hawkish rhetoric, lest it look like the war was for Israel." It is more than conceivable that American Jewish supporters of Israel consciously manipulated perception of their support, too.—VFPD] Thus, it would be wrong to blame the war in Iraq on "Jewish influence." Rather, the war was due in large part to the Lobby’s influence, especially the neoconservatives within it.

The neoconservatives were already determined to topple Saddam before Bush became President. They caused a stir in early 1998 by publishing two open letters to President Clinton calling for Saddam's removal from power. The signatories, many of whom had close ties to pro-Israel groups like JINSA or WINEP, and whose ranks included Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, Bernard Lewis, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, had little trouble convincing the Clinton Administration to adopt the general goal of ousting Saddam. ... As important as the neoconservatives were for making the Iraq war happen, they needed help to achieve their aim.

That help arrived with 9/11. Specifically, the events of that fateful day led Bush and Cheney to reverse course and become strong proponents of a preventive war to topple Saddam. Neoconservatives in the Lobby—most notably Scooter Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, and Princeton historian Bernard Lewis—played especially critical roles in persuading the President and Vice-President to favor war. ...

A key part of this campaign [to win support for invading Iraq—VFPD] was the manipulation of intelligence information, so as to make Saddam look like an imminent threat. For example, Libby visited the CIA several times to pressure analysts to find evidence that would make the case for war, and he helped prepare a detailed briefing on the Iraq threat in early 2003 that was pushed on Colin Powell, then preparing his infamous briefing to the U.N. Security Council on the Iraqi threat. According to Bob Woodward, Powell "was appalled at what he considered overreaching and hyperbole. Libby was drawing only the worst conclusions from fragments and silky threads." Although Powell discarded Libby’s most outrageous claims, his U.N. presentation was still riddled with errors, as Powell now acknowledges.

The campaign to manipulate intelligence also involved two organizations that were created after 9/11 and reported directly to Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith. The Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group was tasked to find links between al Qaeda and Iraq that the intelligence community supposedly missed. Its two key members were Wurmser, a hard core neoconservative, and Michael Maloof, a Lebanese-American who had close ties with Perle. The Office of Special Plans was tasked with finding evidence that could be used to sell war with Iraq. It was headed by Abram Shulsky, a neoconservative with longstanding ties to Wolfowitz, and its ranks included recruits from pro-Israel think tanks.

Like virtually all the neoconservatives, Feith is deeply committed to Israel. He also has long-standing ties to the Likud Party. ... Wolfowitz is equally committed to Israel. The Forward once described him as "the most hawkishly pro-Israel voice in the Administration," and selected him in 2002 as the first among fifty notables who "have consciously pursued Jewish activism." ...

Finally, a brief word is in order about the neoconservatives' prewar support of Ahmed Chalabi, the unscrupulous Iraqi exile who headed the Iraqi National Congress (INC). They embraced Chalabi because he had worked to establish close ties with Jewish-American groups and had pledged to foster good relations with Israel once he gained power. This was precisely what pro-Israel proponents of regime change wanted to hear, so they backed Chalabi in return. Journalist Matthew Berger laid out the essence of the bargain in the Jewish Journal: "The INC saw improved relations as a way to tap Jewish influence in Washington and Jerusalem and to drum up increased support for its cause. For their part, the Jewish groups saw an opportunity to pave the way for better relations between Israel and Iraq, if and when the INC is involved in replacing Saddam Hussein’s regime."

Given the neoconservatives' devotion to Israel, their obsession with Iraq, and their influence in the Bush Administration, it is not surprising that many Americans suspected that the war was designed to further Israeli interests. For example, Barry Jacobs of the American Jewish Committee acknowledged in March 2005 that the belief that Israel and the neoconservatives conspired to get the United States into a war in Iraq was "pervasive" in the U.S. intelligence community. Yet few people would say so publicly, and most that did—including Senator Ernest Hollings (D-SC) and Representative James Moran (D-VA)—were condemned for raising the issue. Michael Kinsley put the point well in late 2002, when he wrote that "the lack of public discussion about the role of Israel ... is the proverbial elephant in the room: Everybody sees it, no one mentions it." The reason for this reluctance, he observed, was fear of being labeled an anti-Semite. Even so, there is little doubt that Israel and the Lobby were key factors in shaping the decision for war. Without the Lobby's efforts, the United States would have been far less likely to have gone to war in March 2003.

Dreams of Regional Transformation

The Iraq war was not supposed to be a costly quagmire. Rather, it was intended as the first step in a larger plan to reorder the Middle East. This ambitious strategy was a dramatic departure from previous U.S. policy, and the Lobby and Israel were critical driving forces behind this shift. This point was made clearly after the Iraq war began in a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal. The headline says it all: "President's Dream: Changing Not Just Regime but a Region: A Pro-U.S., Democratic Area is a Goal that Has Israeli and Neo Conservative Roots."

See also:

• 9/11 Commission Chairmen Admit Whitewashing the Cause of the Attacks
• The "JINSA Crowd" and the Iraq War
• "The Men From JINSA and CSP" by Jason West in The Nation

Labels: 9/11, Bush, Clintons, Iraq, Israel, Neoconservatives, War, Zionism

According to two recent reviews of former Secretary of State Colin Powell's new biography, Powell points the finger at pro-Israel hawks in the Defense Department as responsible for the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Below is an excerpt from an October 9, 2006, Los Angeles Times review by columnist Tim Rutten* of Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell by Karen DeYoung.

There is one bit of malice at work in the Powell-DeYoung version of these now familiar events that should not pass unremarked upon. According to the author, the then-secretary went out of his way to identify the pro-war neoconservatives as affiliates of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a think-tank with decidedly hard-line views on Israel's security. "Powell referred to Rumsfeld's team as the 'JINSA crowd.' " Later in "Soldier," readers are told that the neoconservatives in the Defense Department — nearly all of them Jews — supported war against Iraq as the first step to replacing Arab despots with democratic governments that would sever their ties to the Palestinians, thereby enhancing Israel's security. In explaining why he did not resign over his profound differences with the White House, Powell cited the example of Gen. George C. Marshall, who refused to quit as secretary of State even though he opposed President Truman's recognition of Israel as a quest for "Jewish votes."

Whatever his bitterness over his mistreatment, Powell knows that these old and wholly unmeritorious allegations of dual loyalty are a slander. He knows better and so does DeYoung. Their presence in this book is another blot on his record.

See also: "Bushies 'used' Colin, wife sez" in the New York Daily News; "Why won't anyone say they are Jewish?" (first appeared in Adbusters) and The Israel Lobby and the US War Against Iraq.

Note
* Consider the source. On February 4, 2006, in an LA Times article entitled "Drawn into a religious conflict," Tim Rutten wrote: "The West's current struggle with a murderous global Sunni Muslim insurgency and the threat of a nuclear-armed theocracy in Iran makes it clear that it's no longer possible to overlook the culture of intolerance, hatred and xenophobia that permeates the Islamic world."

In "Lebanon photos: Take a closer look," published August 12, 2006, Rutten wrote:

What the major news organizations ought to be doing is to make their own analysis of the images coming out of Lebanon and if, as seems more than likely, they find widespread malfeasance, some hard questions need to be asked about why it occurred. Some of it may stem from the urge every photographer feels to make a photo perfect. Some of it probably flows from a simple economic imperative — a freelancer who produces dramatic images gets picked up more and paid more. Moreover, the obscenely anti-Israeli tenor of most of the European and world press means there's an eager market for pictures of dead Lebanese babies.

It's worth noting in this context that there is no similar flow of propagandistic images coming from the Israeli side of the border. That's because one side — the democratically elected government of Israel — views death as a tragedy and the other — the Iranian financed terrorist organization Hezbollah — sees it as an opportunity. In this case, turning their own dead children into material creates an opportunity to cloud the fact that every Lebanese casualty, tragic as he or she is, was killed or injured as an unavoidable consequence of Israel's pursuit of terrorists who use their own people as human shields. Every Israeli civilian killed or injured was the victim of a terrorist attack intended to harm civilians. That alone ought to wash away any blood-stained suggestion of moral equivalency.

Labels: hasbara, Iraq, Israel Lobby, Lebanon, Neoconservatives, Zionism