| Author | Message | | Guest | |  | | Guest | | Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2002 10:42 am Post subject: The Men From JINSA and CSP |
| --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Men From JINSA and CSP
by JASON VEST
[from the September 2, 2002 issue]
Almost thirty years ago, a prominent group of neoconservative hawks found an effective vehicle for advocating their views via the Committee on the Present Danger, a group that fervently believed the United States was a hair away from being militarily surpassed by the Soviet Union, and whose raison d'être was strident advocacy of bigger military budgets, near-fanatical opposition to any form of arms control and zealous championing of a Likudnik Israel. Considered a marginal group in its nascent days during the Carter Administration, with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 CPD went from the margins to the center of power.
Just as the right-wing defense intellectuals made CPD a cornerstone of a shadow defense establishment during the Carter Administration, so, too, did the right during the Clinton years, in part through two organizations: the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and the Center for Security Policy (CSP). And just as was the case two decades ago, dozens of their members have ascended to powerful government posts, where their advocacy in support of the same agenda continues, abetted by the out-of-government adjuncts from which they came. Industrious and persistent, they've managed to weave a number of issues--support for national missile defense, opposition to arms control treaties, championing of wasteful weapons systems, arms aid to Turkey and American unilateralism in general--into a hard line, with support for the Israeli right at its core.
On no issue is the JINSA/CSP hard line more evident than in its relentless campaign for war--not just with Iraq, but "total war," as Michael Ledeen, one of the most influential JINSAns in Washington, put it last year. For this crew, "regime change" by any means necessary in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority is an urgent imperative. Anyone who dissents--be it Colin Powell's State Department, the CIA or career military officers--is committing heresy against articles of faith that effectively hold there is no difference between US and Israeli national security interests, and that the only way to assure continued safety and prosperity for both countries is through hegemony in the Middle East--a hegemony achieved with the traditional cold war recipe of feints, force, clientism and covert action.
For example, the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board--chaired by JINSA/CSP adviser and former Reagan Administration Defense Department official Richard Perle, and stacked with advisers from both groups--recently made news by listening to a briefing that cast Saudi Arabia as an enemy to be brought to heel through a number of potential mechanisms, many of which mirror JINSA's recommendations, and which reflect the JINSA/CSP crowd's preoccupation with Egypt. (The final slide of the Defense Policy Board presentation proposed that "Grand Strategy for the Middle East" should concentrate on "Iraq as the tactical pivot, Saudi Arabia as the strategic pivot [and] Egypt as the prize.") Ledeen has been leading the charge for regime change in Iran, while old comrades like Andrew Marshall and Harold Rhode in the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment actively tinker with ways to re-engineer both the Iranian and Saudi governments. JINSA is also cheering the US military on as it tries to secure basing rights in the strategic Red Sea country of Eritrea, happily failing to mention that the once-promising secular regime of President Isaiais Afewerki continues to slide into the kind of repressive authoritarianism practiced by the "axis of evil" and its adjuncts.
Indeed, there are some in military and intelligence circles who have taken to using "axis of evil" in reference to JINSA and CSP, along with venerable repositories of hawkish thinking like the American Enterprise Institute and the Hudson Institute, as well as defense contractors, conservative foundations and public relations entities underwritten by far-right American Zionists (all of which help to underwrite JINSA and CSP). It's a milieu where ideology and money seamlessly blend: "Whenever you see someone identified in print or on TV as being with the Center for Security Policy or JINSA championing a position on the grounds of ideology or principle--which they are unquestionably doing with conviction--you are, nonetheless, not informed that they're also providing a sort of cover for other ideologues who just happen to stand to profit from hewing to the Likudnik and Pax Americana lines," says a veteran intelligence officer. He notes that while the United States has begun a phaseout of civilian aid to Israel that will end by 2007, government policy is to increase military aid by half the amount of civilian aid that's cut each year--which is not only a boon to both the US and Israeli weapons industries but is also crucial to realizing the far right's vision for missile defense and the Middle East.
Founded in 1976 by neoconservatives concerned that the United States might not be able to provide Israel with adequate military supplies in the event of another Arab-Israeli war, over the past twenty-five years JINSA has gone from a loose-knit proto-group to a $1.4-million-a-year operation with a formidable array of Washington power players on its rolls. Until the beginning of the current Bush Administration, JINSA's board of advisers included such heavy hitters as Dick Cheney, John Bolton (now Under Secretary of State for Arms Control) and Douglas Feith, the third-highest-ranking executive in the Pentagon. Both Perle and former Director of Central Intelligence James Woolsey, two of the loudest voices in the attack-Iraq chorus, are still on the board, as are such Reagan-era relics as Jeane Kirkpatrick, Eugene Rostow and Ledeen--Oliver North's Iran/contra liaison with the Israelis.
According to its website, JINSA exists to "educate the American public about the importance of an effective US defense capability so that our vital interests as Americans can be safeguarded" and to "inform the American defense and foreign affairs community about the important role Israel can and does play in bolstering democratic interests in the Mediterranean and the Middle East." In practice, this translates into its members producing a steady stream of op-eds and reports that have been good indicators of what the Pentagon's civilian leadership is thinking.
JINSA relishes denouncing virtually any type of contact between the US government and Syria and finding new ways to demonize the Palestinians. To give but one example (and one that kills two birds with one stone): According to JINSA, not only is Yasir Arafat in control of all violence in the occupied territories, but he orchestrates the violence solely "to protect Saddam.... Saddam is at the moment Arafat's only real financial supporter.... [Arafat] has no incentive to stop the violence against Israel and allow the West to turn its attention to his mentor and paymaster." And if there's a way to advance other aspects of the far-right agenda by intertwining them with Israeli interests, JINSA doesn't hesitate there, either. A recent report contends that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge must be tapped because "the Arab oil-producing states" are countries "with interests inimical to ours," but Israel "stand[s] with us when we need [Israel]," and a US policy of tapping oil under ANWR will "limit [the Arabs'] ability to do damage to either of us."
The bulk of JINSA's modest annual budget is spent on taking a bevy of retired US generals and admirals to Israel, where JINSA facilitates meetings between Israeli officials and the still-influential US flag officers, who, upon their return to the States, happily write op-eds and sign letters and advertisements championing the Likudnik line. (Sowing seeds for the future, JINSA also takes US service academy cadets to Israel each summer and sponsors a lecture series at the Army, Navy and Air Force academies.) In one such statement, issued soon after the outbreak of the latest intifada, twenty-six JINSAns of retired flag rank, including many from the advisory board, struck a moralizing tone, characterizing Palestinian violence as a "perversion of military ethics" and holding that "America's role as facilitator in this process should never yield to America's responsibility as a friend to Israel," as "friends don't leave friends on the battlefield."
However high-minded this might sound, the postservice associations of the letter's signatories--which are almost always left off the organization's website and communiqués--ought to require that the phrase be amended to say "friends don't leave friends on the battlefield, especially when there's business to be done and bucks to be made." Almost every retired officer who sits on JINSA's board of advisers or has participated in its Israel trips or signed a JINSA letter works or has worked with military contractors who do business with the Pentagon and Israel. While some keep a low profile as self-employed "consultants" and avoid mention of their clients, others are less shy about their associations, including with the private mercenary firm Military Professional Resources International, weapons broker and military consultancy Cypress International and SY Technology, whose main clients include the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency, which oversees several ongoing joint projects with Israel.
The behemoths of military contracting are also well represented in JINSA's ranks. For example, JINSA advisory board members Adm. Leon Edney, Adm. David Jeremiah and Lieut. Gen. Charles May, all retired, have served Northrop Grumman or its subsidiaries as either consultants or board members. Northrop Grumman has built ships for the Israeli Navy and sold F-16 avionics and E-2C Hawkeye planes to the Israeli Air Force (as well as the Longbow radar system to the Israeli army for use in its attack helicopters). It also works with Tamam, a subsidiary of Israeli Aircraft Industries, to produce an unmanned aerial vehicle. Lockheed Martin has sold more than $2 billion worth of F-16s to Israel since 1999, as well as flight simulators, multiple-launch rocket systems and Seahawk heavyweight torpedoes. At one time or another, General May, retired Lieut. Gen. Paul Cerjan and retired Adm. Carlisle Trost have labored in LockMart's vineyards. Trost has also sat on the board of General Dynamics, whose Gulfstream subsidiary has a $206 million contract to supply planes to Israel to be used for "special electronics missions."
By far the most profitably diversified of the JINSAns is retired Adm. David Jeremiah. President and partner of Technology Strategies & Alliances Corporation (described as a "strategic advisory firm and investment banking firm engaged primarily in the aerospace, defense, telecommunications and electronics industries"), Jeremiah also sits on the boards of Northrop Grumman's Litton subsidiary and of defense giant Alliant Techsystems, which--in partnership with Israel's TAAS--does a brisk business in rubber bullets. And he has a seat on the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, chaired by Perle.
About the only major defense contractor without a presence on JINSA's advisory board is Boeing, which has had a relationship with Israeli Aircraft Industries for thirty years. (Boeing also sells F-15s to Israel and, in partnership with Lockheed Martin, Apache attack helicopters, a ubiquitous weapon in the occupied territories.) But take a look at JINSA's kindred spirit in things pro-Likud and pro-Star Wars, the Center for Security Policy, and there on its national security advisory council are Stanley Ebner, a former Boeing executive; Andrew Ellis, vice president for government relations; and Carl Smith, a former staff director of the Senate Armed Services Committee who, as a lawyer in private practice, has counted Boeing among his clients. "JINSA and CSP," says a veteran Pentagon analyst, "may as well be one and the same."
Not a hard sell: There's always been considerable overlap beween the JINSA and CSP rosters--JINSA advisers Jeane Kirkpatrick, Richard Perle and Phyllis Kaminsky also serve on CSP's advisory council; current JINSA advisory board chairman David Steinmann sits on CSP's board of directors; and before returning to the Pentagon Douglas Feith served as the board's chair. At this writing, twenty-two CSP advisers--including additional Reagan-era remnants like Elliott Abrams, Ken deGraffenreid, Paula Dobriansky, Sven Kraemer, Robert Joseph, Robert Andrews and J.D. Crouch--have reoccupied key positions in the national security establishment, as have other true believers of more recent vintage.
While CSP boasts an impressive advisory list of hawkish luminaries, its star is Frank Gaffney, its founder, president and CEO. A protégé of Perle going back to their days as staffers for the late Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson (a k a the Senator from Boeing, and the Senate's most zealous champion of Israel in his day), Gaffney later joined Perle at the Pentagon, only to be shown the door by Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci in 1987, not long after Perle left. Gaffney then reconstituted the latest incarnation of the Committee on the Present Danger. Beyond compiling an A-list of influential conservative hawks, Gaffney has been prolific over the past fifteen years, churning out a constant stream of reports (as well as regular columns for the Washington Times) making the case that the gravest threats to US national security are China, Iraq, still-undeveloped ballistic missiles launched by rogue states, and the passage of or adherence to virtually any form of arms control treaty.
Gaffney and CSP's prescriptions for national security have been fairly simple: Gut all arms control treaties, push ahead with weapons systems virtually everyone agrees should be killed (such as the V-22 Osprey), give no quarter to the Palestinians and, most important, go full steam ahead on just about every national missile defense program. (CSP was heavily represented on the late-1990s Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, which was instrumental in keeping the program alive during the Clinton years.)
Looking at the center's affiliates, it's not hard to see why: Not only are makers of the Osprey (Boeing) well represented on the CSP's board of advisers but so too is Lockheed Martin (by vice president for space and strategic missiles Charles Kupperman and director of defense systems Douglas Graham). Former TRW executive Amoretta Hoeber is also a CSP adviser, as is former Congressman and Raytheon lobbyist Robert Livingston. Ball Aerospace & Technologies--a major manufacturer of NASA and Pentagon satellites--is represented by former Navy Secretary John Lehman, while missile-defense computer systems maker Hewlett-Packard is represented by George Keyworth, who is on its board of directors. And the Congressional Missile Defense Caucus and Osprey (or "tilt rotor") caucus are represented by Representative Curt Weldon and Senator Jon Kyl.
CSP was instrumental in developing the arguments against the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Largely ignored or derided at the time, a 1995 CSP memo co-written by Douglas Feith holding that the United States should withdraw from the ABM treaty has essentially become policy, as have other CSP reports opposing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention and the International Criminal Court. But perhaps the most insightful window on the JINSA/CSP policy worldview comes in the form of a paper Perle and Feith collaborated on in 1996 with six others under the auspices of the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies. Essentially an advice letter to ascendant Israeli politician Benjamin Netanyahu, "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm" makes for insightful reading as a kind of US-Israeli neoconservative manifesto.
The paper's first prescription was for an Israeli rightward economic shift, with tax cuts and a selloff of public lands and enterprises--moves that would also engender support from a "broad bipartisan spectrum of key pro-Israeli Congressional leaders." But beyond economics, the paper essentially reads like a blueprint for a mini-cold war in the Middle East, advocating the use of proxy armies for regime changes, destabilization and containment. Indeed, it even goes so far as to articulate a way to advance right-wing Zionism by melding it with missile-defense advocacy. "Mr. Netanyahu can highlight his desire to cooperate more closely with the United States on anti-missile defense in order to remove the threat of blackmail which even a weak and distant army can pose to either state," it reads. "Not only would such cooperation on missile defense counter a tangible physical threat to Israel's survival, but it would broaden Israel's base of support among many in the United States Congress who may know little about Israel, but care very much about missile defense"--something that has the added benefit of being "helpful in the effort to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem."
Recent months in Washington have shown just how influential the notions propagated by JINSA and CSP are--and how disturbingly zealous their advocates are. In early March Feith vainly attempted to get the CIA to keep former intelligence officers Milt Bearden and Frank Anderson from accepting an invitation to an Afghanistan-related meeting with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld at the Pentagon--not because of what the two might say about Afghanistan, according to sources familiar with the incident, but likely out of fear that Anderson, a veteran Arabist and former chief of the CIA's Near East division, would proffer his views on Iraq (opposed to invading) and Israel-Palestine (a fan of neither Arafat nor Sharon). In late June, after United Press International reported on a US Muslim civil liberties group's lambasting of Gaffney for his attacks on the American Muslim Council, Gaffney, according to a fellow traveler, "went berserk," launching a stream of invective about the UPI scribe who reported the item.
It's incidents like this, say knowledgeable observers and participants, that highlight an interesting dynamic among right-wing hawks at the moment. Though the general agenda put forth by JINSA and CSP continues to be reflected in councils of war, even some of the hawks (including Rumsfeld deputy Paul Wolfowitz) are growing increasingly leery of Israel's settlements policy and Gaffney's relentless support for it. Indeed, his personal stock in Bush Administration circles is low. "Gaffney has worn out his welcome by being an overbearing gadfly rather than a serious contributor to policy," says a senior Pentagon political official. Since earlier this year, White House political adviser Karl Rove has been casting about for someone to start a new, more mainstream defense group that would counter the influence of CSP. According to those who have communicated with Rove on the matter, his quiet efforts are in response to complaints from many conservative activists who feel let down by Gaffney, or feel he's too hard on President Bush. "A lot of us have taken [Gaffney] at face value over the years," one influential conservative says. "Yet we now know he's pushed for some of the most flawed missile defense and conventional systems. He considered Cuba a 'classic asymmetric threat' but not Al Qaeda. And since 9/11, he's been less concerned with the threat to America than to Israel."
Gaffney's operation has always been a small one, about $1 million annually--funded largely by a series of grants from the conservative Olin, Bradley and various Scaife foundations, as well as some defense contractor money--but he's recently been able to underwrite a TV and print ad campaign holding that the Palestinians should be Enemy Number One in the War on Terror, still obsessed with the destruction of Israel. It's here that one sees the influence not of defense contractor money but of far-right Zionist dollars, including some from Irving Moskowitz, the California bingo magnate. A donor to both CSP and JINSA (as well as a JINSA director), Moskowitz not only sends millions of dollars a year to far-right Israeli settler groups like Ateret Cohanim but he has also funded the construction of settlements, having bought land for development in key Arab areas around Jerusalem. Moskowitz ponied up the money that enabled the 1996 reopening of a tunnel under the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, which resulted in seventy deaths due to rioting.
Also financing Gaffney's efforts is New York investment banker Lawrence Kadish. A valued and valuable patron of both the Republican National Committee and George W. Bush, Kadish helps underwrite CSP as well as Americans for Victory Over Terrorism, an offshoot of conservative activist William Bennett's Empower America, on which he and Gaffney serve as "senior advisers" in the service of identifying "external" and "internal" post-9/11 threats to America. (The "internal" threats, as articulated by AVOT, include former President Jimmy Carter, Harper's editor Lewis Lapham and Representative Maxine Waters.) Another of Gaffney's backers is Poju Zabludowicz, heir to a formidable diversified international empire that includes arms manufacturer Soltam--which once employed Perle--and benefactor of the recently established Britain Israel Communication and Research Centre, a London-based group that appears to equate reportage or commentary uncomplimentary to Zionism with anti-Semitism.
While a small but growing number of conservatives are voicing concerns about various aspects of foreign and defense policy--ranging from fear of overreach to lack of Congressional debate--the hawks seem to be ruling the roost. Beginning in October, hard-line American Enterprise Institute scholar Michael Rubin (to Rubin, outgoing UN human rights chief Mary Robinson is an abettor of terrorism) arrives at the Pentagon to take over the Defense Department's Iran-Iraq account, adding another voice to the Pentagon section of Ledeen's "total war" chorus. Colin Powell's State Department continues to take a beating from outside and inside--including Bolton and his special assistant David Wurmser. (An AEI scholar and far-right Zionist who's married to Meyrav Wurmser of the Middle East Media Research Institute--recently the subject of a critical investigation by London Guardian Middle East editor Brian Whitaker--Wurmser played a key role in crafting the "Arafat must go" policy that many career specialists see as a problematic sop to Ariel Sharon.)
As for Rumsfeld, based on comments made at a Pentagon "town hall" meeting on August 6, there seems to be little doubt as to whose comments are resonating most with him--and not just on missile defense and overseas adventures: After fielding a question about Israeli-Palestinian issues, he repeatedly referred to the "so-called occupied territories" and casually characterized the Israeli policy of building Jewish-only enclaves on Palestinian land as "mak[ing] some settlement in various parts of the so-called occupied area," with which Israel can do whatever it wants, as it has "won" all its wars with various Arab entities--essentially an echo of JINSA's stated position that "there is no Israeli occupation." Ominously, Rumsfeld's riff gave a ranking Administration official something of a chill: "I realized at that point," he said, "that on settlements--where there are cleavages on the right--Wolfowitz may be to the left of Rumsfeld." | | | | Guest | | Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2002 10:46 am Post subject: zionist chickenhawks reshape mid east along us-israeli lines |
| Posted: Mon Sep 16, 2002 9:46 am Post subject: zionist chickenhawks reshape mid east along us-israeli lines
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=332011
PLAYING SKITTLES WITH SADDAM
The gameplan among Washington's hawks has long been to reshape the
Middle East along US-Israeli lines, writes Brian Whitaker
-- The Guardian (Britain) -- Tuesday, September 3, 2002
http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,785394,00.html
In a televised speech last week, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt
predicted devastating consequences for the Middle East if Iraq is attacked.
"We fear a state of disorder and chaos may prevail in the region," he
said. Mr Mubarak is an old-fashioned kind of Arab leader and, in the
brave new post-September-11 world, he doesn't quite get the point.
What on earth did he expect the Pentagon's hawks to do when they heard
his words of warning? Throw up their hands in dismay? - "Gee, thanks,
Hosni. We never thought of that. Better call the whole thing off right away."
They are probably still splitting their sides with laughter in the
Pentagon. But Mr Mubarak and the hawks do agree on one thing: war with
Iraq could spell disaster for several regimes in the Middle East. Mr
Mubarak believes that would be bad. The hawks, though, believe it would
be good.
For the hawks, disorder and chaos sweeping through the region would not
be an unfortunate side-effect of war with Iraq, but a sign that
everything is going according to plan.
In their eyes, Iraq is just the starting point - or, as a recent
presentation at the Pentagon put it, "the tactical pivot" - for
re-moulding the Middle East on Israeli-American lines.
This reverses the usual approach in international relations where
stability is seen as the key to peace, and whether or not you like your
neighbours, you have to find ways of living with them. No, say the
hawks. If you don't like the neighbours, get rid of them.
The hawks claim that President Bush has already accepted their plan and
made destabilisation of "despotic regimes" a central goal of his foreign
policy. They cite passages from his recent speeches as proof of this,
though whether Mr Bush really knows what he has accepted is unclear. The
"skittles theory"
of the Middle East - that one ball aimed at Iraq can knock down several
regimes - has been around for some time on the wilder fringes of
politics but has come to the fore in the United States on the back of
the "war against terrorism".
Its roots can be traced, at least in part, to a paper published in 1996
by an Israeli thinktank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and
Political Studies. Entitled "A clean break: a new strategy for securing
the realm", it was intended as a political blueprint for the incoming
government of Binyamin Netanyahu. As the title indicates, it advised the
right-wing Mr
Netanyahu to make a complete break with the past by adopting a strategy
"based on an entirely new intellectual foundation, one that restores
strategic initiative and provides the nation the room to engage every
possible energy on rebuilding Zionism ..."
Among other things, it suggested that the recently-signed Oslo accords
might be dispensed with - "Israel has no obligations under the Oslo
agreements if the PLO does not fulfil its obligations" - and that
"alternatives to [Yasser] Arafat's base of power" could be cultivated.
"Jordan has ideas on this," it added.
It also urged Israel to abandon any thought of trading land for peace
with the Arabs, which it described as "cultural, economic, political,
diplomatic, and military retreat".
"Our claim to the land - to which we have clung for hope for 2,000 years
- is legitimate and noble," it continued. "Only the unconditional
acceptance by Arabs of our rights, especially in their territorial
dimension, 'peace for peace', is a solid basis for the future."
The paper set out a plan by which Israel would "shape its strategic
environment", beginning with the removal of Saddam Hussein and the
installation of a Hashemite monarchy in Baghdad.
With Saddam out of the way and Iraq thus brought under Jordanian
Hashemite influence, Jordan and Turkey would form an axis along with
Israel to weaken and "roll back" Syria. Jordan, it suggested, could also
sort out Lebanon by "weaning" the Shia Muslim population away from Syria
and Iran, and re-establishing their former ties with the Shia in the new
Hashemite kingdom of Iraq. "Israel will not only contain its foes; it
will transcend them", the paper concluded.
To succeed, the paper stressed, Israel would have to win broad American
support for these new policies - and it advised Mr Netanyahu to
formulate them "in language familiar to the Americans by tapping into
themes of American administrations during the cold war which apply well
to Israel".
At first glance, there's not much to distinguish the 1996 "Clean Break"
paper from the outpourings of other right-wing and ultra-Zionist
thinktanks ... except for the names of its authors.
The leader of the "prominent opinion makers" who wrote it was Richard
Perle - now chairman of the Defence Policy Board at the Pentagon.
Also among the eight-person team was Douglas Feith, a neo-conservative
lawyer, who now holds one of the top four posts at the Pentagon as
under-secretary of policy.
Mr Feith has objected to most of the peace deals made by Israel over the
years, and views the Middle East in the same good-versus-evil terms that
he previously viewed the cold war. He regarded the Oslo peace process as
nothing more than a unilateral withdrawal which "raises life-and-death
issues for the Jewish state".
Two other opinion-makers in the team were David Wurmser and his wife,
Meyrav (see US thinktanks give lessons in foreign policy, August 19).
Mrs Wurmser was co-founder of Memri, a Washington-based charity that
distributes articles translated from Arabic newspapers portraying Arabs
in a bad light. After working with Mr Perle at the American Enterprise
Institute, David Wurmser is now at the State Department, as a special
assistant to John Bolton, the under-secretary for arms control and
international security.
A fifth member of the team was James Colbert, of the Washington-based
Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (Jinsa) - a bastion of
neo-conservative hawkery whose advisory board was previously graced by
Dick Cheney (now US vice-president), John Bolton and Douglas Feith.
One of Jinsa's stated aims is "to inform the American defence and
foreign affairs community about the important role Israel can and does
play in bolstering democratic interests in the Mediterranean and the
Middle East". In practice, a lot of its effort goes into sending retired
American military brass on jaunts to Israel - after which many of them
write suitably hawkish newspaper articles or letters to the editor.
Jinsa's activities are examined in detail by Jason Vest in the September
2 issue of The Nation. The article notes some interesting business
relationships between retired US military officers on Jinsa's board and
American companies supplying weapons to Israel.
With several of the "Clean Break" paper's authors now holding key
positions in Washington, the plan for Israel to "transcend" its foes by
reshaping the Middle East looks a good deal more achievable today than
it did in 1996. Americans may even be persuaded to give up their lives
to achieve it.
The six-year-old plan for Israel's "strategic environment" remains more
or less intact, though two extra skittles - Saudi Arabia and Iran - have
joined Iraq, Syria and Lebanon on the hit list.
Whatever members of the Iraqi opposition may think, the plan to replace
Saddam Hussein with a Hashemite monarch - descendants of the Prophet
Muhammad who rule Jordan - is also very much alive. Evidence of this was
strengthened by the surprise arrival of Prince Hassan, former heir to
the Jordanian throne, at a meeting of exiled Iraqi officers in London
last July.
The task of promoting Prince Hassan as Iraq's future king has fallen to
Michael Rubin, who currently works at the American Enterprise Institute
but will shortly take up a new job at the Pentagon, dealing with
post-Saddam Iraq.
One of the curious aspects of this neo-conservative intrigue is that so
few people outside the United States and Israel take it seriously.
Perhaps, like President Mubarak, they can't imagine that anyone who
holds a powerful position in the United States could be quite so reckless.
But nobody can accuse the neo-conservatives of concealing their
intentions: they write about them constantly in American newspapers.
Just two weeks ago, an article in the Washington Times by Tom Neumann,
executive director of Jinsa, spelled out the plan in clear, cold terms:
"Jordan will likely survive the coming war with US assistance, so will
some of the sheikhdoms. The current Saudi regime will likely not.
"The Iran dissident movement would be helped enormously by the demise of
Saddam, and the Palestinians would have to know that the future lies
with the West. Syria's Ba'athist dictatorship will likely fall
unmourned, liberating Lebanon as well.
"Israel and Turkey, the only current democracies in the region, will
find themselves in a far better neighbourhood." Would anyone like to bet
on that?
--------------------------------------------------------
SAY NO TO BUSH: The World Must Stand by Iraq
By Siddharth Varadarajan -- Leader Article (Editorial)
The Times of India -- Thursday, September 12, 2002
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?artid=21892022&sType=1
Here’s a simple quiz to mark the anniversary of 9/11. (a) Who is
threatening to use aeroplanes to attack civilians and civilian
installations like water treatment plants and power stations? (b) Who is
refusing to rule out using nuclear weapons in his ‘holy war’? (c) Who is
using television for a messianic propaganda campaign justifying this
plan-ned terrorism? (d) Who is saying his fatwas count for more than
international law? The correct answer to all these questions is not
Osama bin Laden but George W Bush and the US
administration.
One year after terrorists killed more than 3,000 innocent people in New
York and Washington, the world is waiting nervously not for another
murderous strike by Al-Qaida but for the bombs the US plans to drop on
the equally innocent people of Iraq.
Regardless of the scripted dissension within, the Bush administration’s
drive to open the Iraqi front in what is wrongly called the ‘War on
Terrorism’ has crossed the point of no return. Massive US-UK air attacks
have already taken place at al-Nukhaib, al-Baghdadi and the ‘H-3’ air
defences in western Iraq. The war is already on.
And if you don’t believe the nukes threat, consider the August 27
interview given by the ranking US official on ‘arms control’, John
Bolton, to Fuji-TV. Question: Is it possible that nuclear weapons will
be used against Iraq? Bolton: Since there’s no decision on the use of
military force, there’s no decision on exactly how it would be carried
out.’’ Washington says the ‘crisis’ has been provoked by Saddam
Hussein’s failure to allow UN inspectors to certify Iraq has rid itself
of all proscribed weapons. ‘News’ is leaked to scare the world into
believing Iraq has nuclear arms. At the same time, Mr Bush openly talks
about ‘regime change’ as if it were the God-given right of the US to
decide how the Iraqi people are to be governed.
Even on the weapons issue, the dishonesty of the US stand is
self-evident. UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution 687 mandates Iraqi
disarmament, and for more than six years the UN Special Commission
(Unscom) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) visited
suspected weapons sites in Iraq to ensure compliance. On April 13, 1998,
the IAEA certified that Iraq had compiled a ‘‘full, final and complete’’
account of its previous nuclear projects and that there was no evidence
of any prohibited activity. In December 1998, Unscom volun-tarily pulled
out of Iraq on the eve of the US attack codenamed ‘Operation Desert
Fox’. In its last month of inspections, according to Unscom head Richard
Butler, the commission carried out as many as 427 inspections and
reported Iraqi non- cooperation in only five of these. The truth is the
US has never been interested in an objective, UN-run disarmament
programme for Iraq. Washington deliberately pushed the limits of Iraqi
tolerance by using Unscom inspections for espionage. Rolf Ekeus, a
former head of Unscom, told Swedish Radio in July 2002 that at times,
intrusive inspections were deliberately used by the US to create a
crisis that could possibly form the basis for military action. Scott
Ritter — a US marine who was part of Unscom and later admitted the CIA
used him to spy against Iraq — has written that Iraq no longer has
chemical and
biological weapons programmes. ‘‘In all of their inspections, the
(Unscom) monitors could find no meaningful evidence of Iraqi
circumvention of its commitment not to reconstitute its biological
weapons program’’, he wrote in Arms Control Today in June 2000.
Eleven years after Iraq was evicted from Kuwait, the country is subject
to the tightest regime of economic sanctions ever imposed on any
country. Despite the so-called ‘smart sanctions’ introduced by UNSC
resolution 1409 in May this year, Iraq’s capacity to provide clean
drinking water, electricity and sanitation is hampered by US objections
to machinery imports. If food imports and the public distribution system
are disrupted by a full-scale US attack, there will be a massive food
shortage in Iraq.
Every UN resolution mandating Iraqi compliance with disarmament also
explicitly states that Iraq’s sovereignty has to be respected. The US
flouted these resolutions to establish illegal ‘no-fly zones’ over Iraqi
airspace and has bombed the country hundreds of times in the past
dec-ade. In March this year, Iraq submitted a list of 19 questions to UN
secretary-general Kofi Annan. Among these were (i) Can the UN guarantee
the elimination of the two no-fly zones? (ii) How do you explain the
stance of a permanent member of the Security Council which openly calls
for the invasion of Iraq? Baghdad has yet to receive an answer.
The world has a right to demand that Iraq comply with its disarmament
obligations but it must not legitimise US contempt for international
law. Iraq has said it will allow UN weapons inspectors back provided
they do not indulge in espionage and work according to a time-bound
plan, and also provided there is synchronicity between the degree of
Iraqi compliance and the phased elimination of sanctions. This is a
reasonable proposal. The US, for its own domestic economic and political
reasons, wants to press-gang the world into war. The UN must not allow
its mandate of ensuring peace and security to be subverted by
Washington. Under no circumstances must it be pushed into providing a
‘multilateral’ cover for US aggression.
-------------------------------------------------------------
for additional material on zionist leaders pushing us to invade iraq, please access the following message board
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/08/16/zionist-leaders-wanting-to-attack-iraq-for-israel.php | | | | Guest | | Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2002 10:56 am Post subject: more on jinsa |
| Posted: Mon Sep 16, 2002 9:46 am Post subject: zionist chickenhawks reshape mid east along us-israeli lines
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=332011
PLAYING SKITTLES WITH SADDAM
The gameplan among Washington's hawks has long been to reshape the
Middle East along US-Israeli lines, writes Brian Whitaker
-- The Guardian (Britain) -- Tuesday, September 3, 2002
http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,785394,00.html
In a televised speech last week, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt
predicted devastating consequences for the Middle East if Iraq is attacked.
"We fear a state of disorder and chaos may prevail in the region," he
said. Mr Mubarak is an old-fashioned kind of Arab leader and, in the
brave new post-September-11 world, he doesn't quite get the point.
What on earth did he expect the Pentagon's hawks to do when they heard
his words of warning? Throw up their hands in dismay? - "Gee, thanks,
Hosni. We never thought of that. Better call the whole thing off right away."
They are probably still splitting their sides with laughter in the
Pentagon. But Mr Mubarak and the hawks do agree on one thing: war with
Iraq could spell disaster for several regimes in the Middle East. Mr
Mubarak believes that would be bad. The hawks, though, believe it would
be good.
For the hawks, disorder and chaos sweeping through the region would not
be an unfortunate side-effect of war with Iraq, but a sign that
everything is going according to plan.
In their eyes, Iraq is just the starting point - or, as a recent
presentation at the Pentagon put it, "the tactical pivot" - for
re-moulding the Middle East on Israeli-American lines.
This reverses the usual approach in international relations where
stability is seen as the key to peace, and whether or not you like your
neighbours, you have to find ways of living with them. No, say the
hawks. If you don't like the neighbours, get rid of them.
The hawks claim that President Bush has already accepted their plan and
made destabilisation of "despotic regimes" a central goal of his foreign
policy. They cite passages from his recent speeches as proof of this,
though whether Mr Bush really knows what he has accepted is unclear. The
"skittles theory"
of the Middle East - that one ball aimed at Iraq can knock down several
regimes - has been around for some time on the wilder fringes of
politics but has come to the fore in the United States on the back of
the "war against terrorism".
Its roots can be traced, at least in part, to a paper published in 1996
by an Israeli thinktank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and
Political Studies. Entitled "A clean break: a new strategy for securing
the realm", it was intended as a political blueprint for the incoming
government of Binyamin Netanyahu. As the title indicates, it advised the
right-wing Mr
Netanyahu to make a complete break with the past by adopting a strategy
"based on an entirely new intellectual foundation, one that restores
strategic initiative and provides the nation the room to engage every
possible energy on rebuilding Zionism ..."
Among other things, it suggested that the recently-signed Oslo accords
might be dispensed with - "Israel has no obligations under the Oslo
agreements if the PLO does not fulfil its obligations" - and that
"alternatives to [Yasser] Arafat's base of power" could be cultivated.
"Jordan has ideas on this," it added.
It also urged Israel to abandon any thought of trading land for peace
with the Arabs, which it described as "cultural, economic, political,
diplomatic, and military retreat".
"Our claim to the land - to which we have clung for hope for 2,000 years
- is legitimate and noble," it continued. "Only the unconditional
acceptance by Arabs of our rights, especially in their territorial
dimension, 'peace for peace', is a solid basis for the future."
The paper set out a plan by which Israel would "shape its strategic
environment", beginning with the removal of Saddam Hussein and the
installation of a Hashemite monarchy in Baghdad.
With Saddam out of the way and Iraq thus brought under Jordanian
Hashemite influence, Jordan and Turkey would form an axis along with
Israel to weaken and "roll back" Syria. Jordan, it suggested, could also
sort out Lebanon by "weaning" the Shia Muslim population away from Syria
and Iran, and re-establishing their former ties with the Shia in the new
Hashemite kingdom of Iraq. "Israel will not only contain its foes; it
will transcend them", the paper concluded.
To succeed, the paper stressed, Israel would have to win broad American
support for these new policies - and it advised Mr Netanyahu to
formulate them "in language familiar to the Americans by tapping into
themes of American administrations during the cold war which apply well
to Israel".
At first glance, there's not much to distinguish the 1996 "Clean Break"
paper from the outpourings of other right-wing and ultra-Zionist
thinktanks ... except for the names of its authors.
The leader of the "prominent opinion makers" who wrote it was Richard
Perle - now chairman of the Defence Policy Board at the Pentagon.
Also among the eight-person team was Douglas Feith, a neo-conservative
lawyer, who now holds one of the top four posts at the Pentagon as
under-secretary of policy.
Mr Feith has objected to most of the peace deals made by Israel over the
years, and views the Middle East in the same good-versus-evil terms that
he previously viewed the cold war. He regarded the Oslo peace process as
nothing more than a unilateral withdrawal which "raises life-and-death
issues for the Jewish state".
Two other opinion-makers in the team were David Wurmser and his wife,
Meyrav (see US thinktanks give lessons in foreign policy, August 19).
Mrs Wurmser was co-founder of Memri, a Washington-based charity that
distributes articles translated from Arabic newspapers portraying Arabs
in a bad light. After working with Mr Perle at the American Enterprise
Institute, David Wurmser is now at the State Department, as a special
assistant to John Bolton, the under-secretary for arms control and
international security.
A fifth member of the team was James Colbert, of the Washington-based
Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (Jinsa) - a bastion of
neo-conservative hawkery whose advisory board was previously graced by
Dick Cheney (now US vice-president), John Bolton and Douglas Feith.
One of Jinsa's stated aims is "to inform the American defence and
foreign affairs community about the important role Israel can and does
play in bolstering democratic interests in the Mediterranean and the
Middle East". In practice, a lot of its effort goes into sending retired
American military brass on jaunts to Israel - after which many of them
write suitably hawkish newspaper articles or letters to the editor.
Jinsa's activities are examined in detail by Jason Vest in the September
2 issue of The Nation. The article notes some interesting business
relationships between retired US military officers on Jinsa's board and
American companies supplying weapons to Israel.
With several of the "Clean Break" paper's authors now holding key
positions in Washington, the plan for Israel to "transcend" its foes by
reshaping the Middle East looks a good deal more achievable today than
it did in 1996. Americans may even be persuaded to give up their lives
to achieve it.
The six-year-old plan for Israel's "strategic environment" remains more
or less intact, though two extra skittles - Saudi Arabia and Iran - have
joined Iraq, Syria and Lebanon on the hit list.
Whatever members of the Iraqi opposition may think, the plan to replace
Saddam Hussein with a Hashemite monarch - descendants of the Prophet
Muhammad who rule Jordan - is also very much alive. Evidence of this was
strengthened by the surprise arrival of Prince Hassan, former heir to
the Jordanian throne, at a meeting of exiled Iraqi officers in London
last July.
The task of promoting Prince Hassan as Iraq's future king has fallen to
Michael Rubin, who currently works at the American Enterprise Institute
but will shortly take up a new job at the Pentagon, dealing with
post-Saddam Iraq.
One of the curious aspects of this neo-conservative intrigue is that so
few people outside the United States and Israel take it seriously.
Perhaps, like President Mubarak, they can't imagine that anyone who
holds a powerful position in the United States could be quite so reckless.
But nobody can accuse the neo-conservatives of concealing their
intentions: they write about them constantly in American newspapers.
Just two weeks ago, an article in the Washington Times by Tom Neumann,
executive director of Jinsa, spelled out the plan in clear, cold terms:
"Jordan will likely survive the coming war with US assistance, so will
some of the sheikhdoms. The current Saudi regime will likely not.
"The Iran dissident movement would be helped enormously by the demise of
Saddam, and the Palestinians would have to know that the future lies
with the West. Syria's Ba'athist dictatorship will likely fall
unmourned, liberating Lebanon as well.
"Israel and Turkey, the only current democracies in the region, will
find themselves in a far better neighbourhood." Would anyone like to bet
on that?
-------------------------------------------------------- | | | | Guest | | | | Guest | | | | Guest | | | | smsawalha@aol.com | | Posted: Sat Sep 28, 2002 1:55 am Post subject: Zionism conspiracy |
| | The article is very illuminating and should be given wide distribution to expose the danger of the zionist to the whole world. The US will be the prize for them becasue throusgh the US military power they will conquer the whole world. The zionist aim was always to seek world domination not only the middle east. They are now enlisting the US power and its naive politicians in doing their dirty work. The 1996 plan is coming into play now ans its planner are now in power in the right places in the Bush administration. For the sake of the world they have to be exposed before it is too late. I believe that the final battle will be between Israel and the US. The US will wake up and shed the zionist control and be free but that will be the end for all of us. | | | | Guest | | Posted: Sun Sep 29, 2002 11:24 pm Post subject: September 2 2002 issue |
|  where is all your information coming from you can not make accusations like that just form reading a magazine i suggest you have some more proof before you start spurting off at the mouth | | | | mkbarntx | | Posted: Mon Sep 30, 2002 6:50 pm Post subject: I support the zionist and Iseral |
| I support Iseral and their right to live.I have no idea why there are so many fools like Saddam and his followers,but they can just go you know where. I am a CHRISTIAN and Iserali's are my brothers and sisters and I will defend them always at any cost.  It's the people that are like Saddam and the idots out there that don't deserve to be heard by the world. I am a Zionist and proud of it THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I am half Jewish myself and I love Iseral. SO GET A LIFE. :D | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
