| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Apr 24, 2004 8:01 am Post subject: [Fwd: Lebanon rejects U.S. protest over activities of milit |
| Subj: [Fwd: Lebanon rejects U.S. protest over activities of militants]
Date: 4/23/04 11:04:53 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: jblankfort@earthlink.net
Sent from the Internet (Details)
The current US administration appears to be openly carrying on Israel's war on the
Palestinians to a greater extent than any previous administration, which is saying
something. It can be anticipated that every move in this direction by Bush and his
cronies will be supported by Kerry and the Democratic hierarchy.
Jeff Blankfort wrote:
> w w w . h a a r e t z d a i l y . c o m
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Last update - 00:01 24/04/2004
> Lebanon rejects U.S. protest over activities of militants
> By The Associated Press
>
> Lebanon on Friday rejected U.S. protests over the activities of militant
> Palestinian leaders that Washington labels as terrorists, saying the
> guerrillas will continue to conduct political and media work in the
> country as long as Arab lands are occupied by Israel.
>
> U.S. Ambassador Vincent Battle reportedly complained to Lebanese Foreign
> Minister Jean Obeid on Wednesday "regarding the presence, activities and
> movements" of militant Palestinian leaders in Lebanon, a Lebanese
> official said.
>
> Battle did not take reporters' questions following the meeting and the
> U.S. Embassy in Lebanon said Friday it had no comment on the subject.
>
> Obeid, according to the Lebanese official who spoke on condition of
> anonymity, told Battle during their meeting Wednesday that the presence
> of these groups in Lebanon was related to the Arab-Israeli conflict and
> would continue as long as Israel occupied Arab lands.
>
> Under U.S. pressure, Syria last year closed the offices of Palestinian
> militants it has sheltered for years. But since then, the militants have
> crossed freely into neighboring Lebanon, where Damascus maintains
> thousands of troops and wields great influence.
>
> Since May, officials of the Damascus-based groups - including Islamic
> Jihad and Hamas, which have staged suicide bombings against Israeli
> civilians - have traveled to Lebanon to appear on Arab satellite
> television stations and give other interviews and take part in rallies
> and commemorations. Only this week, Hamas political bureau head Khaled
> Mashal appeared on BBC Television's Hardtalk with Tim Sebastian, from
> Beirut.
>
> Such activities ceased entirely in Syria for a while, but restrictions
> seem to have eased since Israel's recent assassinations of Hamas leader
> Abdel Aziz Rantisi, and Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the group's spiritual
> leader.
>
> Mashal's speeches, for one, have become more regular.
>
> Israel said earlier this week that Mashaal could also be targeted by
> Israel. "The minute we have the operational opportunity we will do
> this," Cabinet minister Gideon Ezra said Sunday, the day after Rantisi
> was killed.
>
> The Israeli threat drew a warning from Lebanon's president, Emile
> Lahoud.
>
> "Israel should know that any aggression against anyone and for any
> reason on Lebanese territory will be considered a dangerous violation"
> of Lebanese sovereignty. Israel will be responsible for the
> repercussions of such an attack, he said in a statement Thursday.
>
> Lahoud did not elaborate.
>
> Syria and Lebanon insist the Palestinian militant groups are not
> terrorists but fighters resisting Israeli occupation of their homeland.
> Washington considers the groups terrorists.
>
> In December, U.S. President George W. Bush approved the Syria
> Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act, which accuses
> Syria, among other things, of hosting militant Palestinian groups and
> seeking biological and chemical weapons. Syria denies the charges.
>
> Although Lebanon has allowed the militants to conduct a political and
> media campaign from the country, Beirut has refused to let Palestinian
> guerrillas stage attacks against Israel from southern Lebanon. Such
> attacks in the past invited two Israeli invasions, in 1978 and 1982,
> with devastating consequences.
>
> The only group active in southern Lebanon is Hezbollah, whose guerrillas
> have attacked and kidnapped Israeli soldiers as well as retaliated for
> Israeli strikes since the withdrawal of Israel Defense Forces troops
> from southern Lebanon in 2000.
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> /hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=419474 | |  | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2004 6:44 pm Post subject: Bush: Iraq "Democracy" to Change the World |
| Subj: Bush: Iraq "Democracy" to Change the World
Date: 4/25/04 2:41:11 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: hectorpv@comcast.net
To: hectorpv@comcast.net
Sent from the Internet (Details)
Friends,
Bush: Iraq "Democracy" to Change the World
Semi-retarded Dubya (and I reluctantly add the "semi") now believes the war in Iraq is for democracy, which somehow will manage to change the entire world for the better. "’It's [democracy] what will change the world -- help change the world,’ he [Bush] said at a Washington gathering of the Newspaper Association of America, the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the Associated Press. ‘And you either believe people can self-govern, or not.’" Well, obviously we all believe folks can "self-govern" but it doesn’t seem like there’s much "self-governing" going on in occupied Iraq today, just as there wasn’t much "self-governing" in Nazi-occupied Europe, 1940-1945, nor under European and Soviet imperialism.
Dubya has undoubtedly just picked up a new buzzword but doesn’t quite have the mental capability to see how the US occupation conflicts with self-government—and the apparent fact that America is hated throughout the Middle East. A more intelligent person would at least attempt a convoluted lie. And how democracy would "help change the world" is unfathomable.
But then Dubya’s muddled mind connects Sharon’s takeover of the West Bank with "freedom."
Dubya yammered:
"’In my judgment, the whole world should have said, ‘Thank you, Ariel,' Mr. Bush said. ‘Now we have a chance to begin the construction of a peaceful Palestinian state.
‘Yet there was kind of silence, wasn't there? Because the responsibility is hard,’ he added. ‘It's hard to be responsible for promoting freedom and peace when you're used to something else.’"
How legitimating Israeli (i.e., Jewish) control of land that legally belongs to Palestinians, and concomitantly shunting aside the Palestinians to waterless Bantustans, is hard to connect with "freedom." But Bush doesn’t understand the obvious contradictions.
Moreover, Bush doesn’t even seem to realize how such talk enrages the Arab world—the people that the US is supposedly trying to win over for democracy.
The second article, by a Hiwa Osman, presents what the US—or at least international elites—considers to be "democracy." (Hiwa Osman is an Iraqi Kurd working for the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting, which is financed by George Soros.). Its beginning sentences say it all: "Whatever final form the Iraqi new government takes after June 30, the officials selected should be democratically minded and secular. They also should hold a commitment to a strategic partnership with the United States, not the country's autocratic neighbors."
In short, the "democracy" to be established in Iraq will reflect what the US wants—at least, the neocon vision—and will not really represent the will of the Iraqi people. In short, outsiders know what is best for the Iraqi people, and will impose it on them in the name of "democracy." The Iraqi people will not have national self-determination, much less democracy.
Bush has adopted the neocon line about democracy but doesn’t understand what democracy means. But certainly the neocons don’t believe in spreading democracy, as democracy is generally understood--that is self-government, majority rule. The evidence would seem to be overwhelming. Obviously, the neocons don't believe in democracy for the Palestinians. And in regard to "regime change" in the Middle East, they have in the past advocated the restoration of monarchies in Iraq (Hashemite) and Iran (Pahlavi). The neocons' mentor Leo Straus taught rule by an elite, who would maintain its control by deceiving the masses. The neocons had nothing but condemnation for the European democracies--especially France--who opposed the war on Iraq. And they thought nothing of the bullying and bribing of governments to support the "coalition of the willing" against the will of their own peoples. And those government leaders who went against the will of their people by supporting the war were praised for their "leadership." Regarding Iraq, the neocons argue that the US must teach the Iraqis "democracy"--by censorship and mandatory re-education-- before they would be allowed to govern themselves. Majority rule right now, the neocons contend, would be "undemocratic."
We might also recall Paul Wolfowitz's criticism of the Turkish military for allowing an anti-war vote in its parliament. And now the new Spanish government is condemned for saying it will fulfill its election pledge to remove Spanish troops from Iraq.
Richard Perle and his co-author David Frum, in their new book _An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror," emphasize that democracy would not allow "pro-terrorist" groups to gain power. As they write: "‘In the Middle East, democratization does not mean calling immediate elections and then living with whatever happens next.’"
Since elections in any Islamic country would always mean the possible empowerment of Islamic radicals, it would seem that Perle and Frum basically would prohibit democracy in the Middle East.
In short, the neocons advocate abridging majority rule and freedom of speech to achieve "democracy." The way the Bush administration achieved public support for the war by fraudulent scare tactics would not seem to be very democratic, either. In the end, it appears that the neocon version of "democracy" is simply a means to advance the interests of Israel. But I don’t think simple-minded George Bush has the ability to grasp any of this. And a large number of Americans are unable to grasp this, too. But the fact that Dubya and many Americans can’t see reality does not in the least change what that reality is. And it would appear that significant numbers of the Iraqi people are not going to passively allow themselves to be ruled by American- controlled "democracy."
______________________________
http://www.washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20040422-122247-1376r
The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com
Democracy 'necessary' in Iraq
By Bill Sammon
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published April 22, 2004
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
President Bush yesterday said democracy in Iraq is an imperative, not an option, as Sen. John Kerry has asserted, and that the world should thank Israel for swapping land with Palestinians.
Without mentioning Mr. Kerry by name, the president made clear that he disagreed with the Massachusetts Democrat's remark last week that the goal in Iraq is stability, not democracy.
Asked by a newspaper executive who cited Mr. Kerry's remark whether democracy in Iraq is an option or an imperative, the president replied: "It's necessary."
"It's what will change the world -- help change the world," he said at a Washington gathering of the Newspaper Association of America, the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the Associated Press. "And you either believe people can self-govern, or not."
Similarly, he said, people can disagree over whether "democracy is possible in that part of the world."
"And I think it is."
Last week, Mr. Kerry said the United States should not wait until democracy takes hold in Iraq to withdraw military forces.
"With respect to getting our troops out, the measure is the stability of Iraq," he said. He added that democracy "shouldn't be the measure of when you leave."
"I have always said from Day One that the goal here," he added, "is a stable Iraq, not whether or not that's a full democracy."
The president, in a wide-ranging speech that was followed by a question-and-answer session, issued his strongest endorsement yet of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to annex portions of the West Bank from the Palestinians. In return, Mr. Sharon pledged last week to withdraw Jewish settlements from other portions of the West Bank and all of the Gaza Strip.
"In my judgment, the whole world should have said, 'Thank you, Ariel,' " Mr. Bush said. "Now we have a chance to begin the construction of a peaceful Palestinian state.
"Yet there was kind of silence, wasn't there? Because the responsibility is hard," he added. "It's hard to be responsible for promoting freedom and peace when you're used to something else."
It was a reference to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, whose support for terrorism has prompted Mr. Sharon to disengage from efforts to negotiate a final peace agreement with the Palestinians. Both he and Mr. Bush are pushing for the emergence of new Palestinian leadership.
"The Palestinian leadership has failed the people year after year after year," he said. "And now is the time for the world to step up and take advantage of this opportunity and help to build a Palestinian state that's committed to the principles of individual rights, and rule of law."
The president was occasionally jocular with the newspaper executives, at one point addressing those at the head table as "members of the Politburo." The editors and publishers chuckled at this reference to the chief political and executive committee of the Communist Party.
At another point, Mr. Bush spoke approvingly of being compared to an Old West gunslinger. The comparison had been suggested by Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
Turning serious, Mr. Bush fielded a question about a poll showing that two-thirds of Americans say the United States will be struck by terrorists again.
"Well, I can understand why they think they're going to get hit again," he said. "They saw what happened in Madrid. This is a hard country to defend."
"Our intelligence is good. It's just never perfect, is the problem," he added.
The president also disclosed that China initially was reluctant to participate in multilateral talks with North Korea, where dictator Kim Jong-il has developed nuclear weapons.
"The only way to convince Kim Jong-il to disarm is to get China very much involved in the process," Mr. Bush said. "It wasn't easy work because the Chinese felt it was the U.S. responsibility, and they really didn't want to have equity in the process."
But he added: "When Jiang Zemin came to Crawford, he was quick to stand up and say, 'We don't want any nuclear weapons in the Korean Peninsula.' "
The president also expressed concern about China's impact on the economy of the United States and the rest of the world.
"The problem we have in the world, by the way, today is that China is cranking up their economy," he said. "Steel prices are high, energy prices are high, because demand in China is really high. And that's what we're faced with.
"We're faced with a world economy that's beginning to recover, with supplies getting tight," he added. "And without an energy plan, without additional supply, it's going to make us hard to stay competitive, as well as prosperous, in the long run."
Still, the president cited various statistics that show a booming American economy.
"It's amazing that we're growing in spite of the fact that we've been through a recession, a war, an emergency and corporate scandals -- which speaks to the resiliency of the American people and the strength of the entrepreneurial spirit," he said.
________________________________________________
http://www.washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20040420-084528-1991r
The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com
Like a good neighbor
By Hiwa Osman
Published April 21, 2004
Whatever final form the Iraqi new government takes after June 30, the officials selected should be democratically minded and secular. They also should hold a commitment to a strategic partnership with the United States, not the country's autocratic neighbors.
The U.N. special envoy, Lakhdar Ibrahimi, will soon propose more concrete ideas about the caretaker government that will take the country through its transitional period.
Regardless of the final proposals, the government put in place must be populated by individuals who are independent of regional interests and who have a commitment to a strategic U.S. partnership. Otherwise, Iraq will not be able to stand on its feet to eliminate the destructive intents of terrorists, nor be able keep at bay the meddling neighbors who fear a successful and democratic Iraq.
Any government that comes to power will stand a much better chance of establishing credibility than the current Governing Council (GC).
Destructive voices that contest the legitimacy of the current GC have either been anti-American by dint of politico-religious extremism or by ties to the former regime, or they have been encouraged by neighboring countries. The great moderate middle has been at least willing to give the GC the benefit of the doubt. The same will apply to the caretaker government.
These destructive voices will be silenced if the United Nations chooses the new government. It will go down better with the people than exclusively U.S. appointments. Few will be able to claim that it is another group of lackeys hand-picked by the "occupier."
The new government will have much more policy-making and budgetary powers than the current GC. Hence, it will impact the daily lives of more Iraqis and it will be forced to be in closer touch with the needs of the people. The caretakers will therefore automatically be more popular simply because they will be the ones delivering the goods, not the "occupation forces."
All the more reason why these appointees need to be clean, honest, secular and have the best interests of Iraq at heart.
Current extremist groups or proxies of neighboring countries will diminish in popularity if the caretaker government is powerful enough, has strong international backing and is able to improve, with U.S. help, the security situation.
While coalition control of security might be excusable today, the U.S. military will need to step back after June 30 so the Arab regimes and their satellite channels will have less reason to claim that "occupation continues."
A strategic alliance with the United States will be a key to the success of the new Iraqi setup and in the creation of a healthy democratic framework. Iraqis cannot afford to settle for "compromise" figures. Theocracy is theocracy, and democracy is democracy, and there can be no middle ground between the two. Any compromise will undermine the entire process.
The buzz in Baghdad today is that Iran is in closed-door negotiations with the United States over the first Shia prime minister for Iraq. Any appointee with a track record of loyalty to Tehran or any other regional capital will carry the seeds for disaster. No matter what the United States offers, loyalty ultimately will remain with Iran. Partnership with the United States will be short term and tactical, not strategic.
No Iraqi wants to look back at this period and say that the United States rid Iraq of Saddam and handed the country over to an Iranian-made government.
To Iraqi moderates, liberals and democrats, a successful Iraq is one that is strong and enjoys a strategic partnership with the United States.
Some might say that cleansing Iraq of its neighbors' political interests will amount to nothing short of another handpicked pro-American government. But Iraqis will see it differently. A casual survey of the autocracies and theocracies in the Middle East will convince any thinking Iraqi that their only way forward is to ally themselves with a country that wants to see a democratic success story in Iraq.
The past 10 months have illustrated all too clearly that neighboring capitals can jeopardize the Iraqi political process through their proxies inside and outside the GC. Turkish hands are visible in Kirkuk's ethnic tensions; Syria's hands are all over the Sunni Triangle; Iranian hands are manipulating the Shia religious movements and figures.
Iraq cannot survive this overwhelming interference. The only way to avoid continued meddling is through brave Iraqi pioneers who are willing to stand up for a strong strategic partnership with the United States in building a truly democratic Iraq.
Hiwa Osman is a Baghdad-based journalist. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2004 7:05 pm Post subject: : Woodward: Cheney's Unwavering Desire for War |
| Subj: Woodward: Cheney's Unwavering Desire for War
Date: 4/24/04 7:32:12 AM Pacific Daylight Time
From: hectorpv@comcast.net
To: hectorpv@comcast.net
Friends,
Woodward: Cheney’s Unwavering Desire for War
Woodward in _Plan of Attack_ points out it was Cheney who was the central Bush administration figure pushing for war on Iraq. Of course, Cheney did not come up with the war on Iraq idea by himself. Cheney has been intimately tied to the neoconservative elite. Prior to becoming VP, Cheney was a member of the board of advisors of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and was a founding member of the neocon Project for a New American Century (PNAC), whose chairman is arch-neocon Bill Kristol, editor of _The Weekly Standard_ . PNAC gave birth to "The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq," headed by Ahmed Chalabi. Th at committee was first staffed entirely by PNAC members. [http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Project_for_the_New_American_Century] [http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1665.htm]
PNAC is based in the same building as the neocon American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC. Cheney’s wife Lynne is a prestigious member of the American Enterprise Institute.
Cheney would play a major role in staffing the Bush administration. And as James Mann points out in his _The Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet_: "The selection of Cheney was of surpassing importance for the future direction of foreign policy. It went further than any other single decision Bush made toward determining the nature and the policies of the administration he would head.""(pp. 252-53) Of course, when Bush picked Cheney there was no evidence that Bush wanted someone who could lead the US into war on Iraq. Cheney set this agenda, relying on his neocon coterie to bring it off.
The following excerpt from Woodward’s book begins with Cheney praising one of neocon Ken Adelman’s pro-war propaganda pieces and inviting him to dinner with neocons Scooter Libby (Libby is currently Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to the Vice President) and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. (Adelman was U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations during the Ronald Reagan administration as well as serving as Reagan's director of arms control.) Both Libby and Wolfowitz have played major roles in pushing for war on Iraq.
And Cheney’s neocon-supported wife Lynn is an active participant in the conversation. Hey, it’s part of the cabal. Cheney and the neocons.
And what are they talking about. They are in ecstasy about the start of the war on Iraq. "Let's talk about this Gulf war. It's so wonderful to celebrate," as Adelman puts it.
Now it is crucial to see who Cheney is in cahoots with here and throughout Wooward’s book.. It is always the neocons. Some people, fearful of the obvious Jewish connection, want to believe that Cheney reflects the thinking of other groups--oilmen, war profiteers, elder Bush cronies--whom one is allowed to detest. But there is no evidence that Cheney ever consorts with these people. In fact Cheney sees the opposition to the war coming from the oilmen/elder Bush contingent. They were the enemy. Woodward writes: "Here was Scowcroft, the pillar of establishment foreign policy, vocally on the other side, widely seen as a surrogate for the president's father. There had been James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state, insisting on a larger coalition of nations. And Lawrence Eagleburger, Baker's successor in the last half year of the first Bush administration, on television all the time saying war was justified only if there was evidence that Hussein was about to attack us." As much as the war critics want to imagine that the war was provoked by oil and the hateful Bushites—the obviously preferred enemies--the fact of the matter is that this is totally untrue.
Cheney wanted the Bush administration to focus on attacking Iraq from its very beginning. And Woodward illustrates how Cheney especially made rescue efforts when a peace scare emerged. There appeared to be a danger in August 2002, when Powell persuaded Bush to go the UN route to bring back the weapons inspectors, which Cheney feared would be a diversion from war. Moreover, at the same time Scowcroft, Baker, and Eableburger, the pillars of the Republican foreign policy establishment, were expressing their opposition to the move to war.
Cheney gave a super hard-line address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Nashville, which became a media splash. Woodward observes: "’Cheney Says Peril of a Nuclear Iraq Justifies Attack,’ read the headline in the New York Times on Aug. 27. Powell was dumbfounded. The vice president had delivered a hard-line address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Nashville and basically called weapons inspections futile."
.Woodward adds that "These remarks, just short of a declaration of war, were widely interpreted as administration policy. Powell was astonished. It was a preemptive attack on what the president had agreed to 10 days earlier. Cheney's speech blew it all up."
Still, Woodward emphasizes that Cheney was not able to alter Bush’s acceptance of the UN approach. In short, Bush does not automatically accept the neocon agenda, the neocons have to use their influence in key positions to move Bush toward their agenda.. Powell was able to put up limited opposition.
Powell and Cheney were always at loggerheads. Woodward writes: "Powell detected a kind of fever in Cheney. He was not the steady, unemotional rock that he had witnessed a dozen years earlier during the run-up to the Gulf War. The vice president was beyond hell-bent for action against Hussein. It was as if nothing else existed."
"Powell thought that Cheney had the fever. The vice president and Wolfowitz kept looking for the connection between Hussein and Sept. 11. It was a separate little government that was out there -- Wolfowitz, Libby, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith and Feith's ‘Gestapo office,’ as Powell privately called it."
What Powell called "Feith’s ‘Gestapo office’" was the Office of Special Plans under neocon Abram Shulsky which provided the phony WMD propaganda that came from Chalabi and Israeli intelligence, which influenced Bush, the American people, and even, to some extent, the CIA. [http://www.twf.org/News/Y2003/0722-Spies.html]
Woodward continues: "He saw in Cheney a sad transformation. The cool operator from the first Gulf War just would not let go. Cheney now had an unhealthy fixation. Nearly every conversation or reference came back to al Qaeda and trying to nail the connection with Iraq. He would often have an obscure piece of intelligence. Powell thought that Cheney took intelligence and converted uncertainty and ambiguity into fact."
But, of course, Cheney’s emphasis on making war on Iraq was not some peculiar obsession of his, but rather reflected the agenda of the neocons, with whom he had long been closely associated. In short, Cheney took the lead in pushing the neocon agenda, but he was hardly a lone figure. He had helped to fill the Bush administration with numerous neocons who were essential to the success of this venture.
I heard Chris Matthews on TV claim that Woodward shows that Bush ultimately made the decision for war. And I think it is true that Bush is not coerced by Cheney to do anything against his will and that he really believes in what he does. But what does this mean? Where does Bush get his information? He admittedly doesn’t read or even follow the news on TV. He seems like a complete simpleton in his views of the Middle East. In fact, during the 2000 campaign he admitted that he knew little about foreign policy. The neocons were his most numerous advisors—controlling the Defense Department, the VP office, and looming large in the National Security Council staff. The only real resistance came from the State Department. Moreover, the neocons were feeding Bush with the bogus intelligence. Furthermore, neocons Richard Perle and Wolfowitz had been Bush’s advisors during the 2000 campaign. In short, the weight of information provided to Bush naturally moved him in the pro-war direction—it was understandable that a man who knew nothing else would adopt the neocon line. (Although a curious individual might grasp the neocons’ biases.) Added to this was the fact that the pro-war policy seemed to have political support and Bush could bask in the praise of his supporters for his firm "leadership." As I wrote in an earlier message, I think that even if Bush loses the upcoming election, he can be made to feel good as a martyr for the cause of righteousness by his war party supporters.
__________________________________________
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25550-2004Apr19.html
washingtonpost.com
Cheney Was Unwavering in Desire to Go to War
Tension Between Vice President and Powell Grew Deeper as Both Tried to Guide Bush's Decision
By Bob Woodward
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 20, 2004; Page A01
This is the third of five articles adapted from "Plan of Attack," a book by Bob Woodward that is a behind-the-scenes account of how and why President Bush decided to go to war against Iraq. Simon & Schuster. © 2004.
On April 10, 2003, Ken Adelman, a Reagan administration official and supporter of the Iraq war, published an op-ed article in The Washington Post headlined, " 'Cakewalk' Revisited," more or less gloating over what appeared to be the quick victory there, and reminding readers that 14 months earlier he had written that war would be a "cakewalk." He chastised those who had predicted disaster. "Taking first prize among the many frightful forecasters" was Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser in the first Bush administration. Adelman wrote that his own confidence came from having worked for Donald H. Rumsfeld three times and "from knowing Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz for so many years."
Vice President Cheney phoned Adelman, who was in Paris with his wife, Carol. What a clever column, the vice president said. You really demolished them. He said he and his wife, Lynne, were having a small private dinner Sunday night, April 13, to talk and celebrate. The only other guests would be his chief adviser, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and Wolfowitz, now deputy secretary of defense. Adelman realized it was Cheney's way of saying thank you, and he and his wife came back from Paris a day early to attend the dinner.
When Adelman walked into the vice president's residence that Sunday night, he was so happy he broke into tears. He hugged Cheney for the first time in the 30 years he had known him. There had been reports in recent days of mass graves and abundant, graphic evidence of torture by Saddam Hussein's government, so there was a feeling that they had been part of a greater good, liberating 25 million people.
"We're all together. There should be no protocol; let's just talk," Cheney said when they sat down to dinner.
Wolfowitz embarked on a long review of the 1991 Persian Gulf War and what a mistake it had been to allow the Iraqis to fly helicopters after the armistice. Hussein had used them to put down uprisings.
Cheney said he had not realized then what a trauma that time had been for the Iraqis, particularly the Shiites, who felt the United States had abandoned them. He said that experience had made the Iraqis worry that war this time would not end Hussein's rule.
"Hold it! Hold it!" Adelman interjected. "Let's talk about this Gulf war. It's so wonderful to celebrate." He said he was just an outside adviser, someone who turned up the pressure in the public forum. "It's so easy for me to write an article saying, 'Do this.' It's much tougher for Paul to advocate it. Paul and Scooter, you give advice inside and the president listens. Dick, your advice is the most important, the Cadillac. It's much more serious for you to advocate it. But in the end, all of what we said was still only advice. The president is the one who had to decide. I have been blown away by how determined he is." The war has been awesome, Adelman said. "So I just want to make a toast, without getting too cheesy. To the president of the United States."
They all raised their glasses. Hear! Hear!
Adelman said he had worried to death that there would be no war as time went on and support seemed to wane.
After Sept. 11, 2001, Cheney said, the president understood what had to be done. He had to do Afghanistan first, sequence the attacks, but after Afghanistan -- "soon thereafter" -- the president knew he had to do Iraq. Cheney said he was confident after Sept. 11 that it would come out okay.
Adelman said it was still a gutsy move. When John F. Kennedy was elected by the narrowest of margins, Adelman said, he told everyone in his administration that the big agenda items such as civil rights would have to wait for a second term. Certainly it was the opposite for Bush.
Yes, Cheney said. And it began the first minutes of the presidency, when Bush said they were going to go full steam ahead. There is such a tendency, Cheney said, to hold back when there is a close election, to do what the New York Times and other pundits suggest and predict. "This guy was just totally different," Cheney said. "He just decided here's what I want to do, and I'm going to do it. He's very directed. He's very focused."
"I want you three guys to shut up," Lynne Cheney said, pointing at Cheney, Wolfowitz and Adelman. "Let's hear what Scooter thinks."
Libby, smiling, just said he thought what had happened was "wonderful."
It was a pretty amazing accomplishment, they all agreed, particularly given the opposition to war. Here was Scowcroft, the pillar of establishment foreign policy, vocally on the other side, widely seen as a surrogate for the president's father. There had been James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state, insisting on a larger coalition of nations. And Lawrence Eagleburger, Baker's successor in the last half year of the first Bush administration, on television all the time saying war was justified only if there was evidence that Hussein was about to attack us. Eagleburger had accused Cheney of "chest thumping."
They turned to the current secretary of state, Colin L. Powell, and there were chuckles around the table.
Cheney and Wolfowitz remarked that Powell was someone who followed his poll ratings and bragged about his popularity. Several weeks earlier in a National Public Radio interview, Powell had said, "If you would consult any recent Gallup poll, the American people seem to be quite satisfied with the job I'm doing as secretary of state."
He sure likes to be popular, Cheney said.
Wolfowitz said that Powell did bring credibility and that his presentation to the United Nations on weapons of mass destruction intelligence had been important. As soon as Powell had understood what the president wanted, Wolfowitz said, he became a good, loyal member of the team.
Cheney shook his head, no. Powell was a problem. "Colin always had major reservations about what we were trying to do."
Cheney said he had just had lunch with the president. "Democracy in the Middle East is just a big deal for him. It's what's driving him."
"Let me ask," Adelman inquired, "before this turns into a love fest. I was just stunned that we have not found weapons of mass destruction." There were several hundred thousand troops and others combing the country.
"We'll find them," Wolfowitz said.
"It's only been four days, really," Cheney said. "We'll find them."
Immediate Focus on Iraq
In early January 2001, before Bush was inaugurated, Cheney passed a message to the outgoing secretary of defense, William S. Cohen, a moderate Republican who served in the Democratic Clinton administration.
"We really need to get the president-elect briefed up on some things," Cheney said, adding that he wanted a serious "discussion about Iraq and different options." The president-elect should not be given the routine, canned, round-the-world tour normally given incoming presidents. Topic A should be Iraq.
Cheney had been secretary of defense during George H.W. Bush's presidency, which included the Gulf War, and he harbored a deep sense of unfinished business about Iraq. In addition, Iraq was the only country the United States regularly, if intermittently, bombed these days.
The U.S. military had been engaged in a frustrating low-grade, undeclared war with Iraq since the Gulf War when Bush's father and a United Nations-backed coalition had ousted Hussein and his army from Kuwait after they had invaded that country. The United States enforced two designated no-fly zones, which meant the Iraqis could fly neither planes nor helicopters in these areas, which made up about 60 percent of the country. Cheney wanted to make sure Bush understood the military and other issues in this potential tinderbox.
On Jan. 10, a Wednesday morning 10 days before the inauguration, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Powell went to the Pentagon to meet with Cohen. Afterward, Bush and his team went downstairs to the Tank, the secure domain and meeting room for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Two generals briefed them on the state of the no-fly zone enforcement. No-fly zone enforcement was dangerous and expensive. Multimillion-dollar jets were put at risk bombing 57mm antiaircraft guns. Hussein had warehouses of them. As a matter of policy, was the Bush administration going to keep poking Hussein in the chest? Was there a national strategy behind this, or was it just a static tit for tat?
Lots of acronyms and program names were thrown around -- most of them familiar to Cheney, Rumsfeld and Powell, who had spent 35 years in the Army and been chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1989 to 1993. President-elect Bush asked some practical questions about how things worked, but he did not offer or hint at his desires.
The Joint Chiefs' staff had placed a peppermint at each place. Bush unwrapped his and popped it into his mouth. Later he eyed Cohen's mint and flashed a pantomime query, Do you want that? Cohen signaled no, so Bush reached over and took it. Near the end of the hour-and-a-quarter briefing, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Army Gen. Henry H. Shelton, noticed Bush eyeing his mint, so he passed it over.
Cheney listened, but he was tired and closed his eyes, conspicuously nodding off several times. Rumsfeld, who was sitting at a far end of the table, paid close attention, though he kept asking the briefers to please speak up or please speak louder. "We're off to a great start," one of the chiefs commented privately to a colleague after the session. "The vice president fell asleep, and the secretary of defense can't hear."
Given Cheney's background in national security going back to the Ford administration, his time on the House intelligence committee and as secretary of defense, the new president said that at the top of his list of things he wanted Cheney to do was intelligence.
In the first months of the new administration, Cheney made the rounds of the intelligence agencies -- the CIA; the National Security Agency, which intercepts communications; and the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency. He was determined to get up to speed on what had transpired in the eight years since he had left government. Bush also asked Cheney to study the nation's vulnerability to terrorism, primarily from biological and chemical threats. By the summer of 2001, Cheney had hired a retired admiral, Steve Abbott, to oversee a program for taking homeland defense more seriously.
With the president's full knowledge and encouragement, Cheney became the self-appointed examiner of worst-case scenarios. He would look at the darker side, the truly bad and terrifying scenarios. Because of his experience and temperament, it was the ideal assignment for Cheney. He felt the administration had to be prepared to think about the unthinkable. It was one way to be an effective second-in-command -- carve out a few matters, become the expert in them and then press the first-in-command to adopt your solutions.
Cheney thought that the Clinton administration had failed in its response to terrorist acts, going back to the World Trade Center bombing, in 1993, and that there had been a pattern of weak responses: no effective response to the 1996 bombing of Khobar Towers, the U.S. military installation in Saudi Arabia; not enough to the 1998 embassy bombings in East Africa; none to the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen.
After Sept. 11, it was clear to Cheney that the threat from terrorism had changed and grown enormously. So two matters would have to change. First, the standard of proof would have to be lowered -- irrefutable smoking-gun evidence would not have to be required for the United States to defend itself. Second, defense alone wasn't enough. They needed an offense.
The most serious threat now facing the United States was a nuclear weapon or a biological or chemical agent in the hands of a terrorist inside the country's borders. And everything, in his view, had to be done to stop it.
"The vice president, after 9/11, clearly saw Saddam Hussein as a threat to peace," Bush said in an interview last December. "And was unwavering in his view that Saddam was a real danger."
Powell Gets Bush's Ear
Colin Powell had always been just one level beneath Cheney in the pecking order. Over three decades he had worked his way up to become the top uniformed military man, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and had wound up reporting to Cheney, who had been an improbable pick as defense secretary for Bush's father when the nomination of Sen. John Tower (R-Tex.) was rejected by his Senate colleagues. Then as secretary of state, the senior Cabinet post, Powell was again outranked by Cheney, this time the unexpected pick as vice president. At National Security Council meetings, Cheney sat at Bush's right hand, Powell at his left.
Powell was often confounded by Cheney. Years earlier, writing his best-selling memoir, Powell kept trying to pin down the remoteness of the man and had drafted and redrafted the sections on Cheney, sending them off to his best friend, Richard L. Armitage, now deputy secretary of state. Not quite right, Armitage kept replying. Powell finally told Armitage he had found a way to be "relatively truthful but not harmful."
In the final version of "My American Journey," published in 1995, Powell wrote of Cheney, "He and I had never, in nearly four years, spent a single purely social hour together." He told of Cheney's last day as defense secretary, when he had gone to Cheney's suite of offices at the Pentagon and asked, "Where's the secretary?" Informed that Cheney had left hours ago, Powell wrote, "I was disappointed, even hurt, but not surprised. The lone cowboy had gone off into the sunset without even a last, 'So long.' "
Powell had different issues with Bush. They were uncomfortable with each other. A sense of competition hovered in the background of their relationship, a low-voltage pulse nearly always present. Powell had considered running for president in 1996. He had had stratospheric poll ratings as the country's most admired man. For personal reasons and after making a calculation that there were no guarantees in American politics, he had decided not to run. But he had been the man in the wings, the former general and war hero, a moderate voice who would not run in 2000 when George W. Bush did.
For the first 16 months of the administration, Powell had been "in the refrigerator," or worse, as he and Armitage called his frequent isolation. It gnawed at him when stories appeared in the media suggesting that he was going to resign, what he privately called the "Powell's-on-his-way-out-again mode." As planning for a war with Iraq became the focus of the war cabinet, Powell became more and more frustrated. Armitage had been pushing hard for Powell to request private time with the president to build a personal relationship -- and present his case.
He achieved a breakthrough of sorts on Aug. 5, 2002, when Bush invited Powell and Condoleezza Rice to the residence. The meeting expanded to include dinner in the family dining room and then continued in the president's office.
Powell's notes filled three or four pages. War could destabilize friendly governments in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, he said. It could divert energy from almost everything else, not just the war on terrorism, and dramatically affect the supply and price of oil. What of the image of an American general running an Arab country, a Gen. MacArthur in Baghdad? Powell asked. How long would it be? No one could know. How would success be defined? War would take down Hussein, and "you will become the government until you get a new government."
By the time they were in Bush's office, Powell was on a roll.
"You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people," he told the president. "You will own all their hopes, aspirations and problems. You'll own it all." Privately, Powell and Armitage called this the Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you own it.
"It's going to suck the oxygen out of everything," the secretary continued. So as not to sidestep the politics of it, he added, "This will become the first term." The clear implication was: Did the president want to be defined this way? Did he want to run for reelection on an Iraq war?
Powell thought he was scoring. Iraq has a history that is quite complex, he said. The Iraqis have never had a democracy. "So you need to understand that this is not going to be a walk in the woods."
The president listened and asked some questions but did not push back that much. Finally he looked at Powell. "What should I do? What else can I do?"
Powell realized he needed to offer a solution. "You can still make a pitch for a coalition or U.N. action to do what needs to be done," he said. The United Nations was only one way, but some way had to be found to recruit allies, to internationalize the problem.
Though the conversation was tense several times, Powell felt that he had left nothing unsaid. There were no histrionics. The president thanked him after two hours, an extraordinary amount of time for Powell without static from Cheney and Rumsfeld.
A Strong Assertion From Cheney
Cheney saw he was rapidly losing ground. Talk of the United Nations, diplomacy and now patience was wrong in his view. Nothing could more effectively slow down the march to war -- a war he deemed necessary. It was the only way. His former colleagues from the Ford and the first Bush administrations were weighing in with a blizzard of commentary -- Scowcroft with his cautionary antiwar message, former secretary of state Baker, who urged that unilateral action be avoided. Former secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger, dean of realpolitik foreign policy, had on Aug. 12, 2002, published a long, somewhat convoluted piece in The Washington Post supporting Bush for forcing the issue of Hussein to a head, but warning about the importance of building support from the public and the world.
The New York Times had made the Scowcroft and Kissinger positions the lead article on its front page on Aug. 16: "Top Republicans Break with Bush on Iraq Strategy." It was a misinterpretation of Kissinger's remarks, which more or less backed Bush. The Times eventually ran a correction, but Cheney and his deputy, Scooter Libby, found the article extremely aggravating. The correction would never catch up with the front-page headline, and Scowcroft's dissent was indisputable and more potent. It looked as if the march to war was put off.
Cheney decided that everyone was offering an opinion except the administration. There was no stated administration position and he wanted to put one out, make a big speech if necessary. It was highly unusual for the vice president to speak on such a major issue before the president, who was going to address the United Nations on Iraq on Sept. 12. But Cheney couldn't wait. Nature and Washington policy debates abhor a vacuum. He was not going to cede the field to Scowcroft, Baker, a misinterpreted Kissinger -- or Powell. He spoke privately with the president, who gave his approval without reviewing the details of what Cheney might say.
At an NSC meeting, Cheney said to the president, "Well, I'm going to give that speech."
"Don't get me in trouble," Bush half joked.
Trouble is what Cheney had in mind.
"Cheney Says Peril of a Nuclear Iraq Justifies Attack," read the headline in the New York Times on Aug. 27. Powell was dumbfounded. The vice president had delivered a hard-line address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Nashville and basically called weapons inspections futile. "A return of inspectors would provide no assurance whatsoever of his compliance with U.N. resolutions," Cheney had said of Hussein. "On the contrary, there is a great danger that it would provide false comfort that Saddam was somehow 'back in the box.' "
The vice president also issued his own personal National Intelligence Estimate of Hussein: "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction [and] there is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us." Ten days earlier, the president himself had said only that Hussein "desires" these weapons. Neither Bush nor the CIA had made any assertion comparable to Cheney's.
Cheney also said that these weapons in the hands of a "murderous dictator" are "as great a threat as can be imagined. The risks of inaction are far greater than the risk of action."
These remarks, just short of a declaration of war, were widely interpreted as administration policy. Powell was astonished. It was a preemptive attack on what the president had agreed to 10 days earlier. Cheney's speech blew it all up. Now Powell felt boxed in. To add to his problem, the BBC started releasing excerpts of an interview Powell had given before Cheney's speech, asserting, "The president has been clear that he believes weapons inspectors should return."
Stories began appearing saying that Powell was contradicting Cheney. He was accused of disloyalty, and he counted seven editorials calling for his resignation or implying he should quit. How can I be disloyal, he wondered, when I'm giving the president's stated position?
Adelman thought Bush was really delaying too long in deposing Hussein. Two days after Cheney's speech, he weighed in with a blistering op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal. Hussein was a bigger threat than al Qaeda, he wrote, because he had a country, billions in oil revenue, an army and "scores of scientific laboratories and myriad manufacturing plants cranking out weapons of mass destruction."
The problem could not be solved with new U.N. inspections, Adelman wrote. "Every day Mr. Bush holds off liberating Iraq is another day endangering America. Posing as a 'patient man,' he risks a catastrophic attack. Should that attack occur and be traced back to an Iraqi WMD facility, this president would be relegated to the ash heap of history."
It was strong stuff. Cheney did not communicate directly with Adelman on such matters, but he passed word to a mutual friend, who called Adelman right after his article appeared to report the vice president's reaction. "Ken has been extremely helpful in all this," the friend quoted Cheney as saying, "and I really appreciate what he has done and it's been great."
A day later, Aug. 29, Cheney spoke to the Veterans of the Korean War in San Antonio. It was the same speech with significant differences. He dropped his assertion that weapons inspections might provide "false comfort" and watered down his criticism, saying that "inspections are not an end in themselves."
Instead of asserting as he had in the first version of the speech that, "We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons," he said simply that Hussein was pursuing "an aggressive nuclear weapons program." Some other language was moderated, by eliminating a "very," for example, and about eight paragraphs were removed from the speech.
Cheney and Powell at Odds
On the evening of Sept. 6, the national security principals met at Camp David without Bush to go over the U.N. issues before Saturday morning's scheduled NSC meeting with the president and afternoon summit with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Cheney continued to argue that to ask for a new resolution would put them back in the hopeless soup of U.N. process. All Bush needed to say in his speech was that Hussein was bad -- a willful, serial violator of U.N. resolutions -- and that the president reserved the right to act unilaterally.
But that would not be asking for U.N. support, Powell replied. The United Nations would not just roll over, declare Hussein evil and authorize war. That approach was not salable. The president had decided to give the United Nations a chance, and the only practical way to do that was to seek a new resolution.
Powell detected a kind of fever in Cheney. He was not the steady, unemotional rock that he had witnessed a dozen years earlier during the run-up to the Gulf War. The vice president was beyond hell-bent for action against Hussein. It was as if nothing else existed. Powell attempted to summarize the consequences of unilateral action, an argument he felt he had down pretty well. He added a new dimension, saying that the international reaction would be so negative that he would have to close U.S. embassies around the world if we went to war alone.
That is not the issue, Cheney said. Hussein and the clear threat are the issue.
Maybe it would not turn out as the vice president thinks, Powell said. War could trigger all kinds of unanticipated and unintended consequences -- some that none of them, he included, had imagined.
Not the issue, Cheney said.
The conversation exploded into a tough debate between the two men, who danced on the edge of civility but did not depart from the formal deference they generally showed each other. It was sharp and biting, however, and they both knew how to score debating points as they pulled apart the last fraying threads of what had connected them for so many years. Powell appeared to harbor a deep-seated anger even though he was getting his way this time.
On Saturday morning, Sept. 7, Bush met with the NSC and the argument was joined again. Powell said that if for no other reason than U.S. credibility, they needed to offer a plan to begin inspections again as part of any reengagement with the United Nations on Iraq. Procedurally, the only way to do this was to seek new resolutions.
Cheney then listed all the reasons inspections could mire them in a tar pit. First, the inspectors would not be Americans, but lawyers and experts from around the world who were less concerned about, and less skeptical of, Hussein. Second, these inspectors, like those in the past, would be more inclined to accept what they were told by Iraqi authorities, less likely to challenge, more likely to be fooled. The end result, Cheney said, would be deliberations or reports that would be inconclusive. So inspections would make getting to a decision to actually take out Hussein much more difficult.
Swayed by Blair's plea later that day that for his political viability he had to be able to show he had tried the United Nations, Bush decided this time in Powell's favor.
Cheney Stands His Ground
On Jan. 31, 2003, Blair again prevailed on Bush to go to the United Nations, again over Cheney's objections. This time the president asked Powell to make the case against Hussein. As Powell was preparing his speech, he received a call from Cheney.
Colin, the vice president said, look carefully at the terrorism case that Scooter prepared. Give it a good look.
Sure, Dick, Powell said. He generally used the vice president's first name when they were alone. Cheney was not ordering him or trying to direct him. It was just a request to take a serious look.
Powell looked at it. Four meetings between Sept. 11 pilot Mohamed Atta with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague -- meetings that had been alleged but never proved to have taken place. That was worse than ridiculous. Powell pitched it.
Powell thought that Cheney had the fever. The vice president and Wolfowitz kept looking for the connection between Hussein and Sept. 11. It was a separate little government that was out there -- Wolfowitz, Libby, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith and Feith's "Gestapo office," as Powell privately called it. He saw in Cheney a sad transformation. The cool operator from the first Gulf War just would not let go. Cheney now had an unhealthy fixation. Nearly every conversation or reference came back to al Qaeda and trying to nail the connection with Iraq. He would often have an obscure piece of intelligence. Powell thought that Cheney took intelligence and converted uncertainty and ambiguity into fact.
It was about the worst charge that Powell could make about the vice president. But there it was. Cheney would take an intercept and say it shows something was happening. No, no, no, Powell or another would say, it shows that somebody talked to somebody else who said something might be happening. A conversation would suggest something might be happening, and Cheney would convert that into a "We know." Well, Powell concluded, we didn't know. No one knew.
Strained Relations
After major combat operations ended in Iraq in May 2003, Powell spent the next months more often than not on the defensive. To those who thought he should have been a more forceful advocate against war, he replied that he had taken his best shot. He had not misled anyone, he told associates. He had argued successfully in August and September 2002 that the president should adopt two tracks -- plan for war and conduct diplomacy through the United Nations. The president could travel those two tracks only so long before he would reach a fork in the road, and one fork was war.
"He's the president," Powell told associates, "and he decided and, therefore, it was my obligation to go down the other fork with him."
As the war planning had progressed over the nearly 16 months, Powell had felt that the easier the war looked, the less Rumsfeld, the Pentagon and Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks had worried about the aftermath. They seemed to think that Iraq was a crystal goblet and that all they had to do was tap it and it would crack. It had turned out to be a beer mug instead. Now they owned the beer mug.
Visiting Iraq in the fall of 2003, Powell saw the mass graves and heard the testimony of witnesses to the torture and oppression. He was delighted that Hussein and his whole rotten government were gone. It was the saving grace. Certainly the decision to go to war was not 100 percent wrong. History, after all, had not yet determined whether it was right or wrong.
Cheney continued to be Powell's bête noire. At meetings of the principals, in Powell's view, Cheney improved on his technique of not betraying his position by insisting he either didn't have one, or could change his mind in 30 minutes. Powell finally decoded the technique. He concluded that he had to listen carefully because Cheney's disavowals generally turned out to be positions about which Cheney was not going to change his mind.
Relations became so strained that Powell and Cheney could not, and did not, have a sit-down lunch or any discussion about their differences. Never.
Powell thought that now that Bush and the administration had to live with the consequences of their Iraq decisions, they were becoming dangerously protective of those decisions. There was no one in the White House who could break through to insist on a realistic reassessment. There was no Karen Hughes who could go to Bush and say, "Pay attention, you're in trouble." Powell believed it was the hardest of all tasks to go back to fundamentals and question one's own judgment, and there was no sign it was going to happen. So he soldiered on once again against the current.
Cheney in Charge?
At the beginning of 2004, Cheney was confident that the Iraq war would be seen as a history-shaping event. He was unrepentant about his analysis of terrorism and his assertions about Hussein. The great threat to the nation was al Qaeda armed -- not just with box cutters and airline tickets, but with a nuke in the middle of an American city. The administration had been accused of not having connected the dots before Sept. 11. How could it afford to ignore the dots after Sept. 11? It was just that simple.
Cheney believed that given the intelligence reporting about Iraq-al Qaeda links over so many years and the intelligence evidence on weapons of mass destruction, no one in his right mind sitting in Bush's position as president could have ignored it.
There was so much focus on the aftermath and criticism of the postwar planning. Cheney thought it wouldn't matter in the end. It would be noise to history as long as they were successful in what they were trying to do. Outcomes mattered. He thought history would treat Bush very well, though he acknowledged that the jury was still out.
Nearly all presidents have had to deal with vice presidents with real or imagined political futures. Even Bush senior, the super-loyal vice president, broke publicly with President Ronald Reagan several times when he deemed it politically necessary, such as when the Reagan administration was negotiating with Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega and Bush had distanced himself from dealings with the unsavory strongman. But Cheney had made it clear he did not aspire to the presidency.
On a few occasions, political adviser Karl Rove and the president had discussed the news stories that Cheney was the one pulling the strings and running things behind the scenes. Some of the White House communications people worried about this. Bush laughed. Both of them had seen how deferential Cheney was. "Yes, Mr. President," or "No, Mr. President." It was no different when the president and Cheney were alone.
When the president wasn't around, Cheney often referred to him as "The Man," saying, "The Man wants this." Or, "The Man thinks this." Cheney was a forceful, persistent advocate, but the president decided. The clearest evidence of that was Cheney's strenuous objection to going to the United Nations to seek new weapons inspection resolutions. The president had gone against his advice. Cheney had saluted.
Rove argued that the politics of the Cheney-is-in-charge thesis worked in their favor. First, anyone who believed that was long lost to them anyway. Second, Rove wanted them to keep talking about it, throw the campaign into that briar patch. He believed the ordinary person wouldn't buy it. Here 67 percent were saying Bush was a strong leader and that included a third of the people who disapproved of his performance in office. A strong leader would not kowtow to his vice president, and Bush did not look meek in public.
Mark Malseed contributed to this report. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri May 21, 2004 9:08 pm Post subject: [Fwd: Interview w/ Mahatir Mohammmed] |
| Subj: [Fwd: Interview w/ Mahatir Mohammmed]
Date: 5/21/04 12:55:56 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: jblankfort@earthlink.net
Sent from the Internet (Details)
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Interview w/ Mahatir
Date: Fri, 21 May 2004 13:18:49 -0700
From: "Jeffrey St. Clair"
To: CP <counterpunch-general@counterpunch.org>
Excerpts of interview with former Prime Minister of Malaysia Tun Dr
Mahathir Mohamad with Guy Sharett of Channel 10 TV Israel,
April 6, 2004.
Q: UNTIL now, you have never really spoken to the Israeli media, so
why did you say yes this time?
A: I have met Israeli journalists at Press conferences, but this time
I feel I must explain myself to the world and to the Israelis because
I have been misinterpreted, labelled as anti-Jew, anti-Israel, etc.
So I saw this interview as an opportunity to make some corrections.
Q: You are the leader of a Southeast Asian country where there are
hardly any Jews. There used to be a Jewish community in Penang but
not anymore. Why are you so interested in Jewish people?
A: We are not really interested in Jewish people. We are interested
in the fate of the Palestinians, and the loss of their country. They
have been expelled from their own country and to us, this is not a
religious issue between Jews and Muslims; it is a territorial issue.
You have taken somebody else's land and they want to have it back. In
the process, they have lost (more land) each time because Israel has
the backing of Europe and America.
Q: Who was the first Jew you met?
A: A fellow student who was with me in Singapore, Yahya Cohen. I have
met many others: Lord (Arnold) Weinstock, the English Jew, the former
head (managing director) of a big company there (GEC). I know quite a
lot of Jews and am friends with many of them.
Q: Did some of them tell you off after your remarks about the Jews?
What was their reaction?
A: On the contrary, they defended my stand and said I was not anti-
Jew. That is why the reaction of the Jewish community, including
members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords, was mild
compared to the reaction of the Jewish community elsewhere.
Q: For Islamic countries, is the negation of Jews a unifying factor?
It seems the OIC (Organisation of the Islamic Conference) deals more
with Israel and Jews than with human rights in Syria, in Egypt,
freedom of the Press, etc. Does the Jewish conspiracy provide instant
answers for anything that goes wrong in the Muslim world?
A: No, it does not provide instant answers. Of course, we are
concerned about human rights everywhere but by comparison, the fate
of the Palestinians at the hands of Israel is something we consider
so severe and serious that we have to look into this. We are not as
serious about Syria, about so-called Press freedom, because we don't
believe there is any Press freedom at all. But we are concerned about
the fate of the Palestinians, the Chechens and other Muslim
communities.
Q: Do you understand why Israel arrests militants of Hamas before
they launch terror attacks?
A: Yes, if you know something is about to happen and you have to take
action, you have the right to do so, to detain them. We do the same
thing here as it is provided for by the law.
Q: You condemned before the Palestinian suicide bombers and you were
condemned after that.
A: I do not think it solves any problem. It is a question of revenge,
because you kill my people I will kill your people and because your
people are killed, you kill my people. And it keeps on like that and
I told them at the OIC conference that it does not solve any problem
or achieve any objective. It is far better for them to sit down and
think. And there I made the comparison with 2,000 years of Jewish
history in Europe, where you were massacred but you did not react in
kind. Instead you worked out a way of overcoming that. It has taken
you time but apparently you have succeeded.
Q: You acknowledge what happened in the holocaust during the Second
World War but still the (movie) Schindler's List was not allowed to
be shown here in Malaysia.
A: Because it is biased. It shows only one side of the story. I don't
believe that what Hitler did was right at all. We condemn it. I used
to feel very strongly about what happened to the Jews in the past but
you cannot use that as an excuse to attack other people or to kill
other people, or that people should not criticise Israel simply
because of the Holocaust.
Q: What is your definition of Jews?
A: When we talk about the Jews, principally we mean those who are
very supportive of Israeli intransigence. We know there are Jews
living in Muslim countries. Even in Iran they still have Jews and
these people do not, outwardly at least, support the activities, the
atrocities mounted by the Israelis. There used to be a division
between Zionists and Jews and we still believe the division is
pertinent. There are Jews who are ultra-nationalistic and think only
of the interest of Israel, but there are other Jews in England and in
other countries who are very rational.
Q: Why are you actually talking about Jews and not condemning Israel
as a State?
A: We have condemned Israel as a State but the fact remains that
there are many Jews living in America who are supportive of Israel
irrespective of what it does.
Q: Is there such a thing as a Jewish conspiracy?
A: Well, we would not blame everything that goes wrong with the
Muslim world on the Jews, but there are some, not very many of them,
who apparently have a way of directing the very small number of
Jewish people in a way that has given them tremendous influence over
the world.
Q: In Malaysia, race issues are considered very sensitive. You have
the Malays, Chinese and Indians and you need to maintain the social
harmony you talk about often. Don't you think that by singling out
one group like the Jews and speaking about them, saying, for example,
that they are "so arrogant they defy the whole world", you hurt the
social harmony of the world?
A: They were not like that before. Jews used to live in Muslim
countries. Historically, whenever there were pogroms in Europe, the
Jews preferred to migrate to Muslim countries. That is why in Morocco
there were a million Jews at one time and (also) in many other parts
which were ruled by the Turkish Ottomans, for example. So I am not
condemning all Jews all the time, but at present what you are doing
is something we cannot just not link with being Jewish. That is why
we single out (the Jews) at this moment, but it does not apply to
every Jew.
Q: To those Jews offended by your remarks, would you like to
apologise or to clarify or to say anything to them directly?
A: I say what I feel should be said, and I have said the same thing
about Muslims. But in my speech at the OIC, the Jews preferred not to
notice at all that I condemned terrorism, that I told the Muslims to
stop it. That is totally ignored. The only focus was on what I said
about the Jews indirectly controlling the world.
Q: Did you meet the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and could you
tell us about the letters he wrote you?
A: Yes I met Rabin when I was in Paris. We wrote to each other. I
have written to other Jewish Prime Ministers as well. I thought Rabin
was sincere in his desire to put an end to the Israeli-Palestine
conflict. But unfortunately he was assassinated.
You know when Rabin was in power we actually brought Jewish children
to Malaysia to show them that Muslims were not bad people. Of course
their encounters with Palestinians had given them the wrong
impression but they came here and mixed with our children (and) they
found us normal. I also allowed the Israeli cricket team to play here
at the risk of being condemned, but I thought it was a move to show
that when you do something positive, we should show our appreciation
in a very tangible way.
Q: Why are there Israeli embassies in Amman and Cairo, two countries
that were at war with Israel and now have a peace treaty, but there
is no Israeli representative in KL?
A: Well there is no Israeli diplomatic representation in many Muslim
countries. At the moment, Muslims generally feel that they cannot
have diplomatic relations with Israel because what is happening there
is affecting us.
Q: Malaysia does not have diplomatic relations (with Israel) but
according to the Ministry of Trade and Commerce of Israel, in 2003,
trade between the two countries amounted to US$300 million. Isn't
this a contradiction?
A: No, we do not trade directly with Israel. We export a lot of our
products to Singapore, then Singapore sells those products to other
countries. This also happened when we banned Malaysian exports to
South Africa during the apartheid period, but when we export to
Singapore or Rotterdam they then re-export to other countries. That
is beyond our control. But in our figures on trade, there is not a
single dollar that we trade with Israel.
Q: Isn't that turning a blind eye?
A: We have no means of knowing where the final destination is.
Q: If a Malaysian businessman would like to export things to Israel
can he do that directly?
A: At the moment, no.
Q: What is the regulation?
A: The regulation is that we have no diplomatic relations. We
consider Israel an unfriendly country and we do not do business with
Israel.
Q: Do you have any recommendations for Israel and Palestine to end
the conflict?
A: I think it is time Israel and Palestine recognise that this is not
a religious conflict. It is not a conflict between Muslims and Jews
or followers of Judaism. It is a territorial problem. Palestine had
lots of Arabs living there together with Jews when the Europeans
decided together with the Zionists to create the state of Israel.
You created the state of Israel, you expelled the Palestinians, you
took their land, their farms, their houses. Now, what they want to do
is to get back what they owned before.
It is like any other country. If you say Texas should be excised from
America and given to the American Indians as settlement, I am quite
sure America is going to fight and it is the same in Malaysia.
You try to take any of our land we will fight, and the same with the
Palestinians. They want back their land.
Q: What do you think of the fence being built by Israel?
A: Well, it is fine if you want to build a fence but build it in your
territory. We have a fence built between Malaysia and Thailand to
stop smuggling. It is built in Malaysia. You can walk outside the
fence and still be in Malaysia because we purposely built it within
our country to protect us from smugglers. So your fence should be in
bona fide Israeli territory.
Q: What do you think of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin's assassination?
A: I think it is an act of terror because you are killing a man who
was sick and incapable of defending himself. Now if we go around
fighting a war and killing sick people I think we would have
descended to a very low level indeed.
Q: Israel says that this sick man actually sent suicide bombers to
attack civilians in Israel.
A: Yes, true. But one can (also) say that when President Bush allows
rockets to be fired at Baghdad killing innocent people, then, Iraqis
can kill Bush because they are killing somebody who sent rockets at
them.
Q: Are you in touch with Arafat these days?
A: I can contact him if I want to. I telephone him sometimes but we
don't talk to each other that often. He has visited Malaysia. I have
discussed the problem with him and I think he is in a very desperate
situation now.
Q: Will you travel to Israel and to the Palestinian Authority to
advocate peace and to see the conflict with your own eyes?
A: If it is going to yield positive results, yes. But if it is merely
propaganda to show my interest, no.
Q: Do you think Malaysia has a role to play in propagating peace in
the Middle East?
A: Yes, we have a role, that is why we held a conference here on
terrorism, on defining terrorism. I am afraid our definition was not
acceptable to the Palestinians and to a lot of other people.
But we want to be very clear about this: When we fight against
terrorism we want to know who the terrorists are. We show a great
interest in this because it affects us now. There are now Malaysians
who have been motivated to overthrow the Government by force of arms.
Q: What is your message to Israelis?
A: We wish the Israeli people and the Jewish people peace, hopefully
in their lifetime. But to have peace they should also look at other
people's problems, not just their own. And I hope there will be
charity in the hearts of the Israeli people to resolve this without
resorting to outterrorising the terrorists.
Q: Do you see Malaysia and Israel having diplomatic relations in the
future? If so, what could be potential fields of cooperation?
A: It is not impossible. I think if you resolve your problem with the
Palestinians and people's emotions cool down, it is possible for
diplomatic relations to be established. Malaysia is a trading nation,
our trade is twice our Gross Domestic Product.
We are always looking for markets and Israel has lots of technology
we hope to be able to share. | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri May 21, 2004 11:29 pm Post subject: J.Raimondo: Hollings is right: It's all about Israel |
| Subj: J.Raimondo: Hollings is right: It's all about Israel
Date: 5/21/04 4:21:54 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: rbleier@igc.org
To: rbleier@igc.org
Sent from the Internet (Details)
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=2621
(Note: Visit the website for links in the text to related articles.)
May 21, 2004
Senator Hollings Is Right
It's all about Israel
by Justin Raimondo
Isn't it funny how politicians have to wait until just before going into retirement to say what they really think about Israel and its influence over Washington policymakers?
Congressman Lee Hamilton (D-Illinois), formerly the senior Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, waited until after announcing his departure from Congress to attend a symposium on the Middle East where he noted that his congressional colleagues are "not even-handed" when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict "for political reasons." Rep. Hamilton went on to say:
"Israeli leaders understand our system very, very well [and] because they understand our system they can exploit it."
Rep. Sonny Callahan (R-Alabama) earned the ire of Tel Aviv's lobby by opposing "emergency aid" to Israel. In a speech on the House floor, a clearly angered Callahan lashed out at the Amen Corner:
"I am going to offer amendments as we go through the bill to strike all of the aid to Israel that was included here without any request from Israel, without any request from the administration, without any requests from anybody. But someone within this beltway decided since we were going to have a supplemental bill, they were going to get some pork in it for Israel."
Please note that Callahan did this only after announcing his retirement plans. Now Senator Ernest Hollings, whose legendary disdain for political correctness has gotten him in trouble before, has joined the ranks of the belatedly honest, and said what a few others – such as Michael Kinsley, Pat Buchanan, and myself – have said all along. In an op-ed piece first published in the Charleston Post and Courier, the senator, having just announced his retirement, took up the question of why are we in Iraq, and came up with this answer:
"Now everyone knows what was not the cause. Even President Bush acknowledges that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. Listing the 45 countries where al-Qaida was operating on September 11 (70 cells in the U.S.), the State Department did not list Iraq. Richard Clarke, in Against All Enemies, tells how the United States had not received any threat of terrorism for 10 years from Saddam at the time of our invasion. … Of course there were no weapons of mass destruction. Israel's intelligence, Mossad, knows what's going on in Iraq. They are the best. They have to know. Israel's survival depends on knowing. Israel long since would have taken us to the weapons of mass destruction if there were any or if they had been removed. With Iraq no threat, why invade a sovereign country? The answer: President Bush's policy to secure Israel."
Hollings goes on to identify "a domino school of thought that the way to guarantee Israel's security is to spread democracy in the area," naming deputy Defense Secretary and chickenhawk-in-chief Paul Wolfowitz, neoconservative hardliner and Francophile Richard Perle, and former psychiatrist and deranged warmonger Charles Krauthammer. He furthermore goes on to savage George W. Bush, whose sole thought since taking office, according to Hollings, has been reelection, with a radical tilt toward Israel by U.S. policymakers a key part of the game plan:
"Spreading democracy in the Mideast to secure Israel would take the Jewish vote from the Democrats. You don't come to town and announce your Israel policy is to invade Iraq. But George W. Bush, as stated by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and others, started laying the groundwork to invade Iraq days after inauguration. And, without any Iraq connection to 9/11, within weeks he had the Pentagon outlining a plan to invade Iraq. He was determined."
Hollings has been roundly denounced and his remarks attributed to "anti-Semitism" by Israel's amen corner in the U.S. But there is nothing secret about the open effort by the Republican party to capture the Jewish vote. The whole idea of politics, after all, is mobilizing various interest groups around a particular candidate and building a majority coalition. Pandering to ethnic blocs is a grand American political tradition: it comes with being a nation of immigrants, which is something we're all supposed to glory in. Every ethnic group of any numerical significance is pandered to, in some way, and politicians are always making ethnic-based appeals. The Republican party's outreach to the Hispanic community is pursued to the point where our President often bursts into long stretches of Spanish (perhaps because it makes him sound less inarticulate, at least to those who have no idea what he's saying). Why shouldn't he reach out to Jewish voters, too?
By calling attention to the obvious, Senator Hollings stands condemned as an "anti-Semite."
I'll tell you what else is obvious: the benefits accrued to Israel on account of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. The annexation of significant portions of the West Bank, and now the attack on Gaza, have both received what amounts to the imprimatur of an American President. While Israeli "advisors" teach their American pupils the basics of running an occupation, the next target on Ariel Sharon's wish list, Syria, is hit with sanctions, and accusations that Damascus is aiding the Iraqi insurgency.
Hollings is absolutely on the mark about the real reasons for this war, even if his speculation about a GOP effort to go after the Jewish vote misses the real point. What Bush is after isn't primarily the Jewish voter, but holding onto and expanding the much larger "born again" Christian fundamentalist bloc, a significant proportion of which is fanatically devoted to Israel – even over and above American interests – for wacky theological reasons. When Hollings called Prime Minister Sharon "the Bull Connor of Israel," it wasn't the Jewish vote Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) was after when he demanded that Hollings apologize. South Carolina is Pat Robertson country, where the dispensationalist Christian heresy has deep roots – and even deeper political implications when it comes to this administration's foreign policy.
"Certainly, discussing and questioning policy is the right and duty of all responsible leaders. But when the debate veers into anti-Jewish stereotyping, it is tantamount to scapegoating and an appeal to ethnic hatred," says Abraham H. Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League.
But why shouldn't America's satellites avidly seek to manipulate and even control the Imperial Hegemon? After all, we hold their fate in our hands. That's what being an Empire is all about. Without American military and economic support, Israel could not and would not exist: one false move on the part of Washington, and the Jewish state would flounder and fall on the rocks of demographic reality and rising Arab nationalism.
Special interest groups of all ethnic and religious persuasions do their best to decisively influence U.S. foreign policy: why should Jews (and their "born again" Christian allies) be any different?
"This is reminiscent," raves Foxman, "of age-old, anti-Semitic canards about a Jewish conspiracy to control and manipulate government." If one so much as looks cross-eyed at Ariel Sharon, Abe Foxman is reminded of Kristallnacht, but the point is that, if I were Foxman I wouldn't pull this "age-old canard" business too often. Instead of fighting anti-Semitism, Foxman's weird insistence on re-imagining half-forgotten anti-Jewish caricatures can only encourage it. But, then again, if anti-Semitism went out of business, so would Foxman's organization. It's funny how that works….
Jonah Goldberg, who is obviously engaged in some kind of contest with Foxman to see who can do the best Al Sharpton imitation, notes the names Wolfowitz, Perle, and Krauthammer, and whines:
"Funny how the only names are Jewish. What? Jeanne Kirkpatrick doesn't count? Jack Kemp? Bill Bennett? I wonder why."
Perhaps because Kirkpatrick is a figure from another era, and only played a supporting role in the propaganda campaign that lied us into war. Jack Kemp was never a major figure, and his views on Iraq seem decidedly ambivalent, at best. As for Blackjack Bill, his reputation would certainly not have encouraged Americans to take his advice and gamble on committing our troops to a risky occupation, and so, understandably, he didn't take center stage in the prewar debate.
Wolfowitz, on the other hand, is not only a high government official but also the intellectual author of this administration's policy of preemptive global hegemony. As Richard Clarke and Bob Woodward reveal, the Deputy Secretary of Defense was the earliest and most persistent advocate of war with Iraq: Wolfowitz wanted to take Baghdad before bothering with Kabul.
As for the legendary Richard Perle, the neocon "Prince of Darkness," his style – and the numerous scandals in which he's been embroiled, all of them very high profile and exceptionally smarmy – ensures his prominence. A spotlight seems to follow him about, like a shadow.
Is it really necessary to point out the reasons for Krauthammer's prominence? Surely his was one of the loudest and most militant voices raised in support of this war, and certainly his position on the op-ed page of the Washington Post automatically lends his words a certain weight. In concert with Bill Safire and David Brooks over at the New York Times, Krauthammer constitutes a crucially important link in the neocon Iron Triangle of the American punditocracy.
If all these names are Jewish, then so what? Just as many Jews, if not more, figure prominently in the antiwar camp. Goldberg, being a clever chap, realizes this, and so falls back on trying to switch the blame from the War Party to the Bushies:
"Fritz Hollings is defending himself saying that he can provide quotes from Jews in America and Israel to support his position. I'm sure he can to some extent. But so what? His charge isn't that Jews support democracy in the Middle East to secure Israel's security (and because they support democracy). His charge is that Bush went to war to placate those Jews. The quotes he needs to prove his point aren't from Jews in Tel Aviv, they're from White House officials in Washington."
If the idea is to prove Washington's willingness to go along with Ariel Sharon in spite of American interests, how about quotes from the President of the United States and U.S. government officials in response to Israel's outright annexation of parts of the West Bank, and the IDF's current rampage through Gaza? Having endorsed the Israeli Lebensraum (marketed to world opinion as a "withdrawal," albeit a partial one), our President couldn't bring himself to condemn an Israeli attack on a peaceful Palestinian demonstration that killed 10 children and wounded 50, aside from urging "restraint." Bush has consistently referred to Israel's "right of self-defense" to excuse each and every bloody incursion into Palestinian territory, no matter how brutal – and no matter how much it ratcheted up tensions between the American army of occupation and its sullen Iraqi charges.
As Israel rampages through the Holy Land with unholy determination to dominate and drive out any who stand in her way, and the promise of a pipeline from Iraq's oil fields in Mosul to Haifa comes closer to reality, the key question, qui bono? – who benefits? – demands an answer. Last year, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, now Finance Minister, told a group of British investors:
"It won't be long when you will see Iraqi oil flowing to Haifa. It is just a matter of time until the pipeline is reconstituted and Iraqi oil will flow to the Mediterranean."
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, now a partner in Cannistraro Associates, writes in the current issue of The American Conservative that "There are rumors that the deservedly moribund pipeline project to send Iraqi oil to Haifa may again be on the table."
But the oil is just the gravy on the meatloaf, or perhaps the dessert that comes after the main course, which is Israel's improved geopolitical position as a result of the Iraq war. Syria is outflanked, and now under U.S. sanctions, while the rest of the Arab world is psychologically demoralized, politically destabilized, and militarily defeated. Bush and Sharon – or, from the Arab viewpoint, Sharon and Bush – are masters of all they survey. Arab democrats, secular nationalists, and moderates in the region are more isolated, and even more powerless, than ever: only Osama bin Laden's followers are overjoyed to see that their leader's warning of an invasion of "Crusaders and Zionists" has proved prescient.
What irks American patriots, not a few conservatives among them, is that Sharon and the Israelis have shown no restraint: they are utterly heedless of the effect of their policies on the ground in Iraq. We undertook a vast project of social and political engineering in Iraq largely on Israel's behalf, only to see that they don't feel the least bit obligated to spare us the consequences of their actions. Surely such ingratitude contributes to rising resentment against the catalytic role of Israel's supporters – both in and out of government – in dragging us into Iraq.
Senator Hollings is right: this war was, and still is, all about protecting Israel's security and plans for expansion – at our expense. Not surprisingly, the catcalls are coming from the same people who say any reference to "neoconservatives" – up until recently a word that had entered the American political lexicon (sometime in the 1970s) without a hint of ethnic overtones – is really a "code word" for Jews. What they hope to accomplish is to close down all debate on a question the War Party would just as soon not see raised. But that question – why are we in Iraq? – is one that urgently requires explaining. Jonah Goldberg may persist in applying rules of political correctness that he would never otherwise invoke, but I would urge critics of Israel to take some solace in the words of John Derbyshire, Goldberg's colleague at National Review, who invokes what he calls:
"Derbyshire's First Law": Anything – anything whatsoever – that a Gentile says about Jews or Israel will be taken as rabidly antisemitic by somebody, somewhere." | | | | Cowboy | | Posted: Sat May 22, 2004 12:06 am Post subject: |
| You like Hollings?? Then you should understand that Hollings, who voted for the Senate resolution approving military action in Iraq, is actually on record for achieving security for Israel and the overthrow of Saddam.
Excerpt from "First Things First" By U.S. Senator Ernest F. Hollings
Originally published in the Charleston Post and Courier, August 30, 2002
We have problems:
1. The Muslim extremists' attack on 9/11 starting the Terrorism War.
2. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
3. The Saudi Arabian and other Muslim support of terrorists.
4. At the same time, the need for Muslim support in the Terrorism War.
5. Iraq.
For the moment, the Iraq problem is easily solved. Our friend Israel, with its Mossad Intelligence, knows the Iraqi threat - nuclear, chemical, or biological. In 1981, they didn't wait for the nuclear plant to be completed in Baghdad. They knocked it out and today stand ready to knock out such a threat again. We can depend on Israel for this. But Israel must depend on America to get it out of its present fix. Prime Minister Sharon's approach to peace - bulldozing homes, sending in gun ships, and re-occupying Palestinian territories - is creating more terrorists than are being eliminated. We must put first things first. Secure Israel and deal later with Saddam.
...
Whining, "they hate us," we refuse to discuss or recognize the Palestinian cause. The cause must be confronted. "You can't kill an idea with a sword." The Terrorism War won't be won militarily. Our foreign policy must not be left to the extremes, Sharon and Arafat. Five years from now, ten years from now, fifty years from now there will be an Israel and there will be a Palestine. The only course is for the Israelis and the Palestinians to learn to live together. For this to occur, President Bush must personally meet with the Middle East leaders and work out a realistic step-by-step institution for the security of Israel and the State of Palestine. Only after that can America get the support we need around the globe for the Terrorism War and the overthrow of Saddam. | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
