War Without End

Alpha

http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_7104.shtml

Brahimi versus Chalabi: The daggers are drawn
By Patrick Seale
May 1, 2004, 13:25

Of all the vicious battles being fought in Iraq, the one between Lakhdar
Brahimi and Ahmed Chalabi could be decisive for the future of the country.
The two men are deadly enemies, but theirs is not only a trial of strength
between individuals. Powerful forces are ranged behind them and it would be rash, in today's highly fluid military and political situation, to hazard a
guess as to who will emerge the victor.

Chalabi wants to rule Iraq after the transfer of sovereignty at the end of
June. Brahimi is determined to prevent him from doing so. A former Algerian
foreign minister and United Nations trouble-shooter in Afghanistan, Brahimi
is the man of the hour.

The United States and Britain are relying on him to find a way out of the
catastrophic mess in which they find themselves in Iraq. He has been given
the task of proposing how and by whom Iraq will be governed in the
transition period between June 30, when the US is due to transfer
sovereignty to the Iraqis, and nation-wide elections scheduled for January
2005.

Chalabi has had a very different career. A former banker and convicted
fraudster, he is the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, INC, a body of
exiles which lobbied vigorously in Washington for the overthrow of Saddam
Hussain.

Chalabi and the INC are believed to have fed the American intelligence
community with false and fabricated information on Iraq's alleged weapons of
mass destruction. They are said to be on the Pentagon payroll to the tune of
$340,000 a month.

Today, Chalabi is a prominent member of the American-appointed Iraq
Governing Council in Baghdad. He has placed several of his relatives and
friends in the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Commerce, the Central
Bank and other key posts.

He also pressed for the dissolution of the Iraqi army and is directing
Iraq's "de-Baathification" programme - the purging of party members from
government jobs and public life.

Arab nationalism

The battle between them is therefore a struggle between two coalitions. On
one side are those, like Brahimi himself, who want the UN to oversee a
genuine transfer of sovereignty to a representative Iraqi government, and
who want the final outcome to be acceptable to Iraqi national aspirations,
as well as to Arab nationalist sentiment.

On the other side, are American "neo-conservative" hawks and "friends of
Israel", who backed Chalabi long before the war. Their dream is to turn Iraq
into a US client state, the catalyst for "democratic" - in other words,
pro-Western and pro-Israeli - change throughout the Middle East.

Their aim is, and always has been, the protection and promotion of American
and Israeli strategic interests in the region.

The Chalabi camp is spoiling for a fight, but its weakness lies in the fact
that, in Washington, opinion is beginning to turn against the "neo-cons",
who are held responsible for the manipulation of intelligence and the
geo-political fantasies which drew the US into the Iraqi quagmire.

Chalabi has also lost the confidence of Paul Bremer, the US "viceroy" in
Baghdad, who is said to believe that he was misled by Chalabi over the need
to dissolve the Iraqi army and sack all Baathists from government posts.
These decisions have proved to be disastrous mistakes: they crippled state
institutions, threw hundreds of thousands out of work, and swelled the ranks
of the resistance.

Bremer has partially reversed this policy in recent weeks by recruiting
former Iraqi officers into the "new Iraqi army", and calling back low-level
Baathists into government service, including some 10,000 school teachers.

Perhaps seeing it as a threat to his own prospects, Chalabi has strongly
criticised this retreat from de-Baathification. "This is like allowing Nazis
into the German government immediately after World War II," he said.

Bremer will be gone by July 1, but Chalabi will still have his hands on
several levers of power - that is, if Brahimi does not manage to exclude him
from the next phase of the Iraqi political process.

Chalabi has mounted a campaign against Brahimi, accusing him of being a
Sunni Muslim with no contacts or support in the all-important Shiite
community. In turn, Israel and its American supporters have attacked Brahimi
for remarks this week on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

In a radio interview in Paris (where he had come to preside over his
daughter's engagement to Prince Ali, half brother of Jordan's King Abdallah)
Brahimi said: "There is no doubt that the great poison in the region is this
Israeli policy of domination and the suffering imposed on the Palestinians,
as well as the perception of the body of the population in the region, and
beyond, of the injustice of this policy and the equally unjust support of
the US for this policy."

He added: "The policy of very violent, strictly held security and total
repression, and also this determination to occupy more and more Palestinian
territory, does not aid the situation in the region."

When a journalist asked him whether he really believed Israeli policy was
"the great poison in the region", Brahimi replied: "It is not an opinion.
It's a fact!"

William Safire, the pro-Israeli New York Times columnist, at once accused
Brahimi of seeking to "gain quick local support by denouncing Israel". He
was guilty of "anti-western Arab demagoguery", Safire declared. His UN
mission in Iraq had got off to "a troubling start".

Difficult choice

The paradox is that the US needs Brahimi and supports his mission, but it is
by no means ready to give up its supreme authority in Iraq. US forces are
likely to remain in Iraq, and in ultimate charge of security, for the
foreseeable future. CENTCOM commander General John Abizaid has even said
that he might request an increase beyond the 135,000 troops now in Iraq.

The American press has speculated that 50,000 more troops may be needed to
stabilise the situation, and perhaps even more.

John Negroponte, the future US ambassador in Baghdad, told the Senate
foreign relations committee at his confirmation hearing this week that a UN
role in Iraq would "not come at the expense of the US influence or
interests". The State Department's Mark Grossman explained that Iraq would
enjoy only "limited sovereignty" after June 30.

Brahimi is well aware of these constraints: the US is not going to allow
itself to be driven out of Iraq. In spite of all the bloody setbacks, it has
not given up hope of winning.

That is why Brahimi is seeking only a short-term, targeted mandate of which
the principal tasks will be to replace the Iraq Governing Council with a
caretaker government of "honest, technically qualified and respected
people"; and to summon a large national conference, modelled on
Afghanistan's loya jirga, of at least 1,000 members representing all Iraqi
political forces including the resistance.

Emerging from this body, a consultative assembly would oversee the caretaker
government's preparations for the January 2005 general elections.

Bloody confrontations

Brahimi briefed the Security Council of his proposals last Tuesday but
warned the US that bloody confrontations at Fallujah and Najaf, including
the use of tank fire against mosque minarets, could derail the plan and have
"dramatic and long-term consequences".

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has yet to approve Brahimi's proposals. It
is an extremely difficult decision. Annan wants to preserve the UN's role as
the prime instrument of the will of the international community. He clearly
welcomes the fact that the US is now seeking UN help after having derided
it.

But he must also protect the UN's credibility and has no wish to be seen as
a US puppet. Annan's caution may have been reinforced by the failure of his
plan for Cyprus re-unification, by the devastating attack on UN headquarters
in Baghdad some months ago, and by alleged scandals in the oil-for-food
programme, some said to involve people close to the Annan's own office.
Annan cannot afford to fail again.

Meanwhile Chalabi and Brahimi are locked in battle. Chalabi must surely be
hoping that Brahimi will stumble and that his own time will come.

Patrick Seale is a commentator and author of several books on Middle East
affairs. He can be contacted at: pseale@gulfnews.com

http://gulfnews.com/Articles/Opinion2.asp?ArticleID=119640

Alpha · Posted: Wed May 05, 2004 6:09 pm Post subject: Israel is the Problem

See how the the JINSA/PNAC Neocons Richard Perle ( http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/02/12/Counterpunch_1.html ) and Douglas Feith (and fellow Jewish Zionist extremist David Wurmser who is now working for JINSA/PNAC associate Dick Cheney) wanted a Hashemite ruler to govern Iraq (hardly democracy!) as mentioned in the 'A Clean Break' document which is embedded as a link in the following URL:

Israel is the Problem:

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j100603.html

NO WIN WAR:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/05/04/no-win-war.php

Frank Gaffney: Feith’s Fight (Damage Control for the neocons):

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/04/30/frank-gaffney-feith-s-fight-damage-control-as-neocons-bleed.php

Chalabi was used by the JINSA/PNAC Neocon Zionist extremists (most of whom are Jewish as you can see some of them at www.nowarforisrael.com -be sure to read the 'War Conceived in Israel' article which is linked under the map of 'greater Israel' by scrolling down to it on the left side there and at www.nogw.com/waforisrael.html as well) to get their long desired invasion of Iraq going for Israel (and Halliburton and Bechtel). Keep in mind that Cheney is/was associated with JINSA/PNAC and was the CEO of Halliburton as well... Schultz is a friend of the neocon cabal and was all for the war in Iraq as well (Schultz is also associated with Bechtel):

Wednesday, May 05, 2004

Suddenly, right out of the blue, after months of being the golden boy of the Pentagon and the neocons to lead Iraq, the disgusting American press is reporting that Chalabi is now out of favor and has in fact been suspected of passing on sensitive information to the Iranians. We're hearing about what a crook (http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3068557/ ) he really is, and how he knew about the bombing of the Jordanian embassy in advance but gave no warning. What a rotter! What happened to change his fortunes so quickly? We all know that the disgusting American press only reports what they are told to report, so why the sudden interest in dissing Mr. Chalabi? From Newsweek (my emphasis - reading this whole article is like trying to decipher something out of Pravda in the 1970's: what the hell is a 'U.S. official familiar with information presented to policymakers'?):
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4881157/
"NEWSWEEK has learned that top Bush administration officials
have been briefed on intelligence indicating that Chalabi and some of his top aides have supplied Iran with 'sensitive' information on the American occupation in Iraq. U.S. officials say that electronic intercepts of discussions between Iranian leaders indicate that Chalabi and his entourage told Iranian contacts about American political plans in Iraq. There are also indications that Chalabi has provided details of U.S. security operations. According to one U.S. government source, some of the information Chalabi turned over to Iran could 'get people killed.'"

Wow! By 'top Bush administration officials' they are of course referring to the neocons, who again are up to their old Office-of-Special-Plans tricks of using mangled intelligence for their own political purposes (although the Official Story is completely the opposite, that these stories are being planted by CIA and State Department officials who have always hated Chalabi and are trying to force Bush to get rid of him: see what I mean about Pravda?). And why are the neocons mad at Chalabi? L. Marc Zell, Feith's former law partner, and foaming-at-the-mouth Zionist, said: "Ahmed Chalabi is a treacherous, spineless turncoat. He had one set of friends before he was in power, and now he's got another."
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/05/04/chalabi/index_np.html
and: "He said he would end Iraq's boycott of trade with Israel, and would allow Israeli companies to do business there. He said [the new Iraqi government] would agree to rebuild the pipeline from Mosul [in the northern Iraqi oil fields] to Haifa [the Israeli port, and the location of a major refinery]."

Bingo! Chalabi is getting the traitor treatment from the disgusting American press because he is reneging on his promises to the neocons to sell out Iraq to the Zionists (the rest of the Salon article contains amazingly explicit references to Zionist plans for Iraq, writing which until recently would have been labeled 'anti-Semitic conspiracy theory'). The press treatment is a shot across the bow to make him toe the Israeli line. If he survives in power, or in fact isn't killed, watch for him to sell out Iraq to Zionist interests as quickly and thoroughly as possible (Ledeen
http://www.nationalreview.com/ledeen/ledeen200404290937.asp
and Frum http://www.nationalreview.com/frum/diary050404.asp#031154 are still supporting him, so we can be sure the ultra-
Zionist fix is in). He sold what soul he had to the Devil, and the Devil is collecting. When will Americans finally wake up and see who hijacked their government?

http://xymphora.blogspot.com/

Forwarded:

Professor Ferguson,

I had mentioned Professor Kevin MacDonald's excellent 'Thinking about Neoconservatism' article during your 'In Depth' presentation ( http://www.booktv.org/feature/index.asp?segid=4485&schedID=267 ) on C-SPAN 2 yesterday as your response was disingenuous. Especially when you mentioned that Israel was a 'democracy' and that the neoconservatives are in desire of establishing 'democracy' in Iraq (and beyond). Israel is hardly a democracy in the way it brutally oppresses the Palestinian people as many think that Israel is a Jewish (Apartheid-like) South Africa. Access Professor MacDonald's 'Thinking about Neoconservatism' article via the embedded link at the following URL:

http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/offsite_snieg_raimondo.htm

Neoconservatives Hardly for 'Democracy' in the Middle East:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/05/03/standard-bearer-of-democracy-becomes-great-satan.php

Israeli Uri Averny on the Neoconservatives:

http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery04102003.html

In addition, you mentioned that the Rothchild family had no connection to the Zionist hijacking of Yukos in Russia (as your saying such is in direct contrast to what is mentioned in the 'Countdown to Armageddon' article - by By M. Raphael Johnson - which can by located by scrolling down to it at the following URL):

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/articles/2003/11/18/us-air-force-lt-colonel-speaks-out-against-bush-neocons.php

Additional material on Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/articles/2003/11/18/us-air-force-lt-colonel-speaks-out-against-bush-neocons.php

'War Conceived in Israel':

http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/snieg_conc1.htm

Whose War?:

A neoconservative clique seeks to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America’s interest.

by Patrick J. Buchanan

http://www.amconmag.com/03_24_03/cover.html

War for Israel?:

http://www.leftcurve.org/LC28WebPages/WarForIsrael.html

Even the executive director of the 9/11 Commission mentioned that the Iraq war was for Israel:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/04/03/head-of-sept-11-commission-said-iraq-war-for-israel.php

Frank Gaffney: Feith’s Fight (Damage Control for the neocons):

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/04/30/frank-gaffney-feith-s-fight-damage-control-as-neocons-bleed.php

Cheney is also associated with JINSA (Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs)/PNAC (Project for the New American Century) which pushed for war in Iraq for Israel for a long time before 9/11:

http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles114.htm

Here is the 'Men from JINSA and CSP' article (from 'The Nation') that Fisk mentions in the above article:

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020902&s=vest

PNAC mentioned here:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/12/31/bush-planned-iraq-regime-change-before-becoming-president.php

http://www.sundayherald.com/27735

http://www.sundayherald.com/37707

Israeli Mossad and 9/11:

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/spyring.html

Israeli Businesses Invade Iraq:

http://www.peopleforchange.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=10048

Alpha

Subj: Salon: How Ahmed Chalabi conned the neocons
Date: 5/5/04 10:30:43 AM Pacific Daylight Time
From: rbleier@igc.org
To: rbleier@igc.org
Sent from the Internet (Details)

In this indispensable long article on Chalabi, we find that his promises to bring Iraq close to Israel were simply cons to get the necons on board. --RB

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.salon.com

To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser

Iran's President Mohammad Khatami, left, greets Ahmad Chalabi in Tehran in December 2003.

How Ahmed Chalabi conned the neocons
The hawks who launched the Iraq war believed the deal-making exile when he promised to build a secular democracy with close ties to Israel. Now the Israel deal is dead, he's cozying up to Iran -- and his patrons look like they're on the way out. A Salon exclusive.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By John Dizard

May 4, 2004 | When the definitive history of the current Iraq war is finally written, wealthy exile Ahmed Chalabi will be among those judged most responsible for the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein. More than a decade ago Chalabi teamed up with American neoconservatives to sell the war as the cornerstone of an energetic new policy to bring democracy to the Middle East -- and after 9/11, as the crucial antidote to global terrorism. It was Chalabi who provided crucial intelligence on Iraqi weaponry to justify the invasion, almost all of which turned out to be false, and laid out a rosy scenario about the country's readiness for an American strike against Saddam that led the nation's leaders to predict -- and apparently even believe -- that they would be greeted as liberators. Chalabi also promised his neoconservative patrons that as leader of Iraq he would make peace with Israel, an issue of vital importance to them. A year ago, Chalabi was riding high, after Saddam Hussein fell with even less trouble than expected.

Now his power is slipping away, and some of his old neoconservative allies -- whose own political survival is looking increasingly shaky as the U.S. occupation turns nightmarish -- are beginning to turn on him. The U.S. reversed its policy of excluding former Baathists from the Iraqi army -- a policy devised by Chalabi -- and Marine commanders even empowered former Republican Guard officers to run the pacification of Fallujah. Last week United Nations envoy Lakhdar Brahimi delivered a devastating blow to Chalabi's future leadership hopes, recommending that the Iraqi Governing Council, of which he is finance chair, be accorded no governance role after the June 30 transition to sovereignty. Meanwhile, administration neoconservatives, once united behind Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress he founded, are now split, as new doubts about his long-stated commitment to a secular Iraqi democracy with ties to Israel, and fears that he is cozying up to his Shiite co-religionists in Iran, begin to emerge. At least one key Pentagon neocon is said to be on his way out, a casualty of the battle over Chalabi and the increasing chaos in Iraq, and others could follow.

"Ahmed Chalabi is a treacherous, spineless turncoat," says L. Marc Zell, a former law partner of Douglas Feith, now the undersecretary of defense for policy, and a former friend and supporter of Chalabi and his aspirations to lead Iraq. "He had one set of friends before he was in power, and now he's got another." While Zell's disaffection with Chalabi has been a long time in the making, his remarks to Salon represent his first public break with the would-be Iraqi leader, and are likely to ripple throughout Washington in the days to come.

Zell, a Jerusalem attorney, continues to be a partner in the firm that Feith left in 2001 to take the Pentagon job. He also helped Ahmed Chalabi's nephew Salem set up a new law office in Baghdad in late 2003. Chalabi met with Zell and other neoconservatives many times from the mid-1990s on in London, Turkey, and the U.S. Zell outlines what Chalabi was promising the neocons before the Iraq war: "He said he would end Iraq's boycott of trade with Israel, and would allow Israeli companies to do business there. He said [the new Iraqi government] would agree to rebuild the pipeline from Mosul [in the northern Iraqi oil fields] to Haifa [the Israeli port, and the location of a major refinery]." But Chalabi, Zell says, has delivered on none of them. The bitter ex-Chalabi backer believes his former friend's moves were a deliberate bait and switch designed to win support for his designs to return to Iraq and run the country.

Chalabi's ties to Iran -- Israel's most dangerous enemy -- have also alarmed both his allies and his enemies in the Bush administration. Those ties were highlighted on Monday, when Newsweek reported that "U.S. officials say that electronic intercepts of discussions between Iranian leaders indicate that Chalabi and his entourage told Iranian contacts about American political plans in Iraq." According to one government source, some of the information he gave Iran "could get people killed." A Chalabi aide denied the allegation. According to Newsweek, the State Department and the CIA -- Chalabi's longtime enemies -- were behind the leak: "the State Department and the CIA are using the intelligence about his Iran ties to persuade the president to cut him loose once and for all."

But the neocons have bigger problems than Chalabi. As the intellectual architects of an "easy" war gone bad, they stand to pay the price. The first to go may be Zell's old partner Douglas Feith. Military sources say Feith will resign his Defense Department post by mid-May. His removal was reportedly a precondition imposed by Ambassador to the U.N. John Negroponte when he agreed to take over from Paul Bremer as the top U.S. official in Iraq. "Feith is on the way out," Iraqi defense minister (and Chalabi nephew) Ali Allawi says confidently, and other sources confirm it. Feith's boss, Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, may follow. Bush political mastermind Karl Rove is said to be determined that Wolfowitz move on before the November election, even if he comes back in a second Bush term. Sources say one of the positions being suggested is the director of Central Intelligence.

In part, the White House political crew is reacting to pressure from the uniformed military, which is becoming a quiet but effective enemy of the neocons. The White House seems to be performing triage to save the political capital of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, Iraq hawks who have close ties to the neocons. "Rumsfeld and Cheney stay," says an Army officer. "Powell has his guy Negroponte in there. But the neocons are losing power day by day."

Why did the neocons put such enormous faith in Ahmed Chalabi, an exile with a shady past and no standing with Iraqis? One word: Israel. They saw the invasion of Iraq as the precondition for a reorganization of the Middle East that would solve Israel's strategic problems, without the need for an accommodation with either the Palestinians or the existing Arab states. Chalabi assured them that the Iraqi democracy he would build would develop diplomatic and trade ties with Israel, and eschew Arab nationalism.

Now some influential allies believe those assurances were part of an elaborate con, and that Chalabi has betrayed his promises on Israel while cozying up to Iranian Shia leaders. Whether because of intentional deception or a realistic calculation of what the Iraqi people will accept, it's clear that Chalabi won't be delivering on his bright promises to ally a democratic Iraq with Israel. Had the neocons not been deluded by gross ignorance of the Arab world and blinded by wishful thinking, they would have realized that the chances that Chalabi or any other Iraqi leader could deliver on such promises were always remote. In fact, they need have looked no further than the Israeli media: A long piece in Israel's Jerusalem Report magazine published nine days before the war began last year featured Israelis who dismissed Chalabi's promises about Israel as a political ploy, "a means by which to appeal to the Jewish lobby and, in turn, the administration."

"Chalabi has no use for Israel. He knew all along that this was a nonstarter," says Robert Baer, a former CIA field officer who led covert U.S. operations inside Iraq in the mid-1990s aimed at toppling Saddam. "Chalabi knows exactly what Israel stands for in Iraq and in Iran, with or without Saddam. The idea of building the pipeline to Haifa, or rapprochement with Iran ... I'm sure he told [the neocons] these things could happen, that he played to their prejudices and said, 'This is the new Middle East,' but he didn't believe any of it. That's the way Chalabi operates."

"He was willing to ally with anyone to get where he is now, whether it was the neocons, the Israelis or the Iranians," adds Baer. "He wanted back into Iraq and nothing was going to stop him."

It could have been predicted that Chalabi would want to deal with Israel's enemies in Iran. He and his relatives have made that clear. As Iraq's defense minister, Ali Allawi, says, "We have a lot of problems in common with Iran. If we could involve them in a regional security agreement with us, that would be very fruitful." Still, Chalabi's visit to Iran last December and his repeated assertions that peace in Iraq requires peace with Iran first alarmed, then embittered, his old friends.

Chalabi's neoconservative friends, however, seem to have looked away from evidence that the businessman has always allied himself with whomever can help him the most. In the 1980s, Chalabi's scandal-plagued Petra Bank funneled money to Amal, a Shia militia allied with Iran in Lebanon. And according to a former CIA case officer who worked in Iraq, Chalabi had close ties to the Iranian regime when he was in Kurdish Northern Iraq in the mid-1990s trying to foment resistance to Saddam. He even dealt with Saddam himself when the price was right, and initiated a method to finance the dictator's trade with Jordan in the 1980s through his Petra Bank.

Chalabi's Arab admirers say they knew he'd never make good on his promises to ally with Israel. "I was worried that he was going to do business with the Zionists," confesses Moh'd Asad, the managing director of the Amman, Jordan-based International Investment Arabian Group, an industrial and agricultural exporter, who is one of Chalabi's Palestinian friends and business partners. "He told me not to worry, that he just needed the Jews in order to get what he wanted from Washington, and that he would turn on them after that."

Ahmed Chalabi refused to speak to Salon. He has denounced U.N. envoy Brahimi as an "Arab nationalist" and compared the U.S. decision to bring back some former Iraqi soldiers to "allowing Nazis into the German government immediately after World War II." Douglas Feith, Chalabi's longtime ally and sponsor, also declined a request for an interview. Nevertheless, the outline of the new conflict between the Shiite former exile and his erstwhile sponsors is clear, based on interviews with Iraqi officials, U.S. military personnel and intelligence officers, and politically connected Israelis.

The crux of the conflict is Iran, and whether the U.S. should try to make a deal with the Islamic Republic to enlist its support for peace in Iraq. Before and immediately after the war, the neoconservative position was that U.S. empowerment of the long-disenfranchised Shia community would make possible an Iraqi government that would make a "warm peace" with Israel. This in turn would pressure the rest of the Arab world to make a similar peace, without the need to concede land to the Palestinians.

This was, of course, a pipe dream: The Shia community in Iraq, like the Sunni community, is overwhelmingly anti-Israel, and the entire range of its leadership has close ties with Iran. Belatedly realizing that Chalabi's promise to build a secular, pro-Israel Shiite government is not going to come true, in the past couple of months the neocons in the Defense Department have tried to come up with a new plan. Feith, Wolfowitz and others are backing away from the Shia, due to their ties to Iran as well as Chalabi's deceptions. They are trying to cobble together a coalition of rehabilitated Sunni Muslim Iraqi Army officers and Kurdish leaders backed by their militias that would have Shia participation, but in a reduced role. For proponents of this strategy, the front-runner to be prime minister of the next version of the transitional government is Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, the founder and leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

This policy has very little support. It's opposed by those neocons who still back Ahmed Chalabi and his Shia allies -- including influential former Defense Policy Board chair Richard Perle, along with neocon intellectuals Michael Ledeen, Bernard Lewis and Barbara Lerner. Although they like Talabani, they oppose the tilt toward the Sunnis, and some are still adamant that Chalabi play a role. "He's effective in bringing groups of Iraqis together, something he's done for many years," Perle said on CNN on March 28. "He believes in democracy. I have complete confidence in him, and I hope the people of Iraq are wise enough to see his benefits."

The shift in strategy toward Talabani is also being dismissed, for different reasons, by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell, John Negroponte, the new ambassador to Iraq, and the uniformed military. They look at the Iraqi population statistics, which show a Shia majority; a map of the country, which shows a long, hard-to-defend border with Iran; and the U.S. military order of battle, which shows overstretched armed forces, and conclude there cannot be a stable Iraqi government that isn't led by the majority Shia.

Even the Kurds have their doubts about the new rise in their standing with the neocons. Richard Galustian, a British security contractor in Iraq who works closely with the Kurdish authorities, says, "The political elevation of the Kurds within Iraq will be very unpopular with other Iraqis, and will be treated with caution by the Kurdish leaders themselves. Many will be skeptical of the ability of the U.S. administration to sustain and remain consistent in any new relationships." If the Americans can turn on the Shia, the reasoning goes, why couldn't they later turn on the Kurds?

President Bush's ability to impose order on this mess is not obvious, and he doesn't have more than a couple of weeks to figure out a solution. With photographs of U.S. troops torturing and abusing Iraqi prisoners inflaming the Arab world, U.S. casualties soaring, the June 30 date to turn over sovereignty looming and no exit strategy in sight, Bush's Iraq adventure has turned into a deadly mess that seems certain to make the U.S. more at risk from terrorism, not less. Bush brought this trouble on himself by buying into the neocons' interpretation of the dynamics of the Middle East, and into Ahmed Chalabi's plans for Iraq -- maybe most disastrously by buying Chalabi's assurances that a secular government dominated by Israel-friendly Shia was possible. If Bush and the neocons wanted to know about Chalabi's real deal-making nature, the signs were there for them to read. But they didn't want to know.

Chalabi appears to have recognized that the neocons, while ruthless, realistic and effective in bureaucratic politics, were remarkably ignorant about the situation in Iraq, and willing to buy a fantasy of how the country's politics worked. So he sold it to them.

Ahmed Chalabi's family, Shia Muslims from Kut in southern Iraq, has a tradition of working with occupation governments, starting with the regime of the Ottoman Turks in 1638. Chalabi's father, Abdul Haydi Chalabi, was a member of the council of ministers of King Faisal II, whose short-lived Hashemite dynasty was installed by the British in 1921. He was also president of the Iraqi Senate created by the Hashemites.

The Hashemites are Sunni Muslim nobility, originally from a region in today's Saudi Arabia. While they lost their leading position in the Arabian peninsula to the Al Sa'ud family, they were successfully installed as monarchs in both Jordan and Iraq with British support. The Jordanian Hashemites found a base of support in the local Bedouin tribes, and retain power to this day. The Iraqi Hashemite branch, though, was strongly opposed by the local Shia Muslim ayatollahs from the beginning. So in 1922 the Iraqi Shia religious leaders in Najaf issued a fatwa, or decree, forbidding observant Shia from supporting the Hashemites. The Chalabi family wasn't deterred, though. They were among the few Shia to defy the fatwa and support the British-imposed dynasty. They were rewarded with royal patronage, and wound up controlling the flour milling industry in Baghdad and Basra. The fatwa was finally lifted in 1937, and by then the Chalabis had made a fortune.

Ahmed Chalabi was born in 1944. His family reached the peak of its wealth and influence during his childhood. In 1958, though, the Hashemite royals were slaughtered during a military coup d'état, and the Chalabis fled, first to Jordan, then to Britain. Chalabi reportedly still has a British passport.

The highly intelligent Chalabi enrolled at MIT at 16, where he earned a degree in mathematics. He then took a Ph.D. in math at the University of Chicago in 1969. (His thesis was "On the Jacobson Radical of a Group Algebra.") Despite these serious power-geek credentials, Chalabi has always been known as charming, worldly, and a skilled networker. While at Chicago, Chalabi met Albert Wohlstetter, an applied mathematician and one of the founders of the neoconservative movement. Wohlstetter introduced Chalabi to future movement leaders like Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz.

After earning his doctorate, Chalabi returned to the Middle East and became a math professor in Beirut. At the time Beirut was the peaceful financial center of the region, and in 1963 Chalabi's family had, along with some local partners, started Mebco, or the Middle East Banking Corp. It was run by Chalabi's brother Jawad. They had also established a Swiss financial company, Socofi, in 1954, as well as a Swiss subsidiary of MEBCO.

As Ahmed Chalabi has told the story, the Jordanian Hashemite crown prince, Hassan bin Talal, persuaded him to start the Petra Bank in Jordan in 1977. Chalabi's associates say the family had given the Jordanian Hashemites some of the assassinated Iraqi Hashemites' overseas assets after the 1958 coup, which no doubt helped smooth the way. The Chalabi family's other banking and financial companies provided further support.

Just after the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, Chalabi seems to have first established his ties with the Iranian Shia theocracy. The new Islamic Republic turned on the shah's former allies in Israel with a vengeance. The Iranian regime set up a substantial intelligence and political apparatus in Lebanon, among the oppressed local Shia.

One of the key Shia institutions in Lebanon was MEBCO in Beirut, which by the 1980s had become a banker for the Shia Amal militia. Amal and Hezbollah were the principal private armies in Lebanon tied to the regime in Iran. Chalabi was placing Petra depositors' money with MEBCO in those years; by the time Petra collapsed in 1989, bank auditors found, the equivalent of $41 million in transactions with MEBCO were on the books. "All the Lebanese banks were divided between political parties and factions," says Hassan Abdul Aziz, a former director at Petra Bank. "MEBCO bank was no different. All the Shia were close to Iran emotionally or otherwise." A former CIA case officer in Lebanon has a less sympathetic view. "This was basically funding a civil war, which meant murders, assassinations, and blowing up Israelis. MEBCO was putting their chips on every square." Iran and the Shite militias were not the only violent elements destabilizing Lebanon in the '70s and '80s, of course. The bloody Israeli invasions of Lebanon, along with later punitive expeditions, inflamed the Shia and other Lebanese.

But Lebanon was not the only venue for the Chalabi family's flexible and innovative approach to international finance. This may come as a surprise to some of Ahmed Chalabi's newer friends, but he helped finance Saddam Hussein's trade with Jordan during the 1980s. Specifically, Chalabi helped organize a special trading account for Iraq at the Jordanian central bank. Due to the problems created by the war with Iran, Saddam Hussein was unable to obtain credit on normal terms. The special account with the Jordanians allowed him to swap oil for necessary imports -- at least Saddam thought they were necessary -- without going through the international credit system. As Hassan Abdul Aziz explains, "Petra was the first to give letters of credit to Iraq, which they did for 23 months before Banco del Lavoro did in 1984. (The Banco del Lavoro scandal involved the provision of U.S. government commodities loans to buy arms for Saddam Hussein.) By 1986 Jordan had $1 billion in annual trade with Iraq this way, and Petra Bank had 50% of the market." It makes the neocons' insistence that Saddam was behind Petra's fall -- and Chalabi's conviction for embezzling and fraud -- even less credible.

After Petra was seized by the Jordanian authorities in August 1989, Chalabi fled Jordan in the trunk of Crown Prince Hassan's car. Chalabi and his family were still wealthy, despite the collapse of their banking empire, but his career in Middle East banking was over. He was now a double exile, from Jordan as well as Iraq, comfortably ensconced in London. Just a year after his fall, though, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. When the subsequent Gulf War weakened but did not topple Saddam, a new possibility beckoned: the return of the Chalabi family to power in Iraq.

Like many people in the Middle East, Ahmed Chalabi may have had the image of the CIA as an all-knowing organization of worldwide puppet masters. If so, he soon learned otherwise. But in the early 1990s the CIA looked like a good prospect to sponsor an anti-Saddam Iraqi exile movement. At the same time, though, Chalabi was also looking to the Islamic regime in Iran for help.

Chalabi and some fellow exiles founded the Iraqi National Congress in 1992. The INC was largely funded by the CIA, which provided part of its support through the Rendon Group, a Washington public relations company that also does international political work for the Department of Defense. The CIA's support for the INC paid for two radio stations, various propaganda operations, and training camps in northern Iraq for Iraqi army defectors. (Northern Iraq, controlled by various Kurdish factions and protected by U.S. air cover, was a safe haven for Iraqi dissidents along with U.S. and allied intelligence operators.)

While Chalabi was perfectly willing to take the CIA's money, he quickly learned that it had become an ineffectual, self-obsessed bureaucracy. "He had absolute, total disdain for D.C.," says one of his former case officers in northern Iraq. "He looked at the Agency, and Rendon, and they flashed incompetence."

The case officer doesn't know precisely when Chalabi developed a deep relationship with the Iranian clerical regime, but it was in place when Chalabi was in northern Iraq in the early '90s. As the case officer recounts it, "He was given safe houses and cars in northern Iraq, and was letting them be used by agents from the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security [Vevak], and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. At one point he tried to broker a meeting between the CIA and the Iranians."

The same officer says from time to time Chalabi would offer him "intelligence," which the officer would turn down. "I knew it wasn't any good, and he knew I knew. He took the refusal in good humor. We had a good relationship. I like him."

The CIA's relationship with Chalabi came to an end after a failed offensive in March 1995 against Saddam's forces by the small group of INC exiles and the militia of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. The CIA had withdrawn the support it had initially offered for the offensive, in what looks like a classic conflict between field officers and desk officers. Chalabi left northern Iraq the next month, and the CIA cut off its funding for the INC. It was at this time that Chalabi turned his attention to the American neoconservatives. The neocons were deeply disturbed by the Israeli government's "land for peace" negotiations with the Palestinians. The usefulness of the West Bank for "defense in depth" was less important than it would have been from the '40s to the '70s, given the increase in Israel's relative technological and military advantage over the Arabs. However, the idea of giving up what Israel's right-wing Likud leaders and some of the neocons themselves believed to be Israel's God-given lands on the West Bank of the Jordan River was anathema to them. The solution to Israel's strategic dilemma, in their view, was to somehow change the Arab governments.

The neoconservative strategy for Israel was laid out in a 1996 paper called "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," issued by the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies in Jerusalem (but written by Americans). The principal authors for the paper were Douglas Feith, then a lawyer with the Washington and Jerusalem firm of Feith and Zell, and Richard Perle, who until last year was the chairman of the Defense Policy Board, an advisory committee for Defense Secretary Rumsfeld

In the section on Iraq, and the necessity of removing Saddam Hussein, there was telltale "intelligence" from Chalabi and his old Jordanian Hashemite patron, Prince Hassan: "The predominantly Shi'a population of southern Lebanon has been tied for centuries to the Shi'a leadership in Najaf, Iraq, rather than Iran. Were the Hashemites to control Iraq, they could use their influence over Najaf to help Israel wean the south Lebanese Shi'a away from Hizbollah, Iran, and Syria. Shi'a retain strong ties to the Hashemites." Of course the Shia with "strong ties to the Hashemites" was the family of Ahmed Chalabi. Perle, Feith and other contributors to the "Clean Break" seemed not to recall the 15-year fatwa the clerics of Najaf proclaimed against the Iraqi Hashemites. Or the still more glaring fact, pointed out by Rashid Khalidi in his new book "Resurrecting Empire," that Shiites are loyal only to descendants of the prophet Muhammad's son-in-law, Ali, and reject all other lineages, including the Hashemites. As Khalidi caustically notes, "Perle and his colleagues were here proposing the complete restructuring of a region whose history and religion their suggestions reveal they know hardly anything about." In short, the Iraqi component of the neocons "new strategy" was based on an ignorant fantasy of prospective Shia support for ties with Israel.

For Ahmed Chalabi, the neoconservatives' support was the key to getting Washington on his side. And Chalabi's leadership, in turn, was key to the neocons' support for the INC. Perle and Feith, along with future Bush administration officials Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld, signed the February 1998 "open letter" to President Clinton, in which they listed nine policy steps that were in the "vital national interest" of the United States. The first of these was "Recognize a provisional government of Iraq based on the principles and leaders of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) that is representative of all the peoples of Iraq." In October 1998, under intense lobbying pressure from the neocons, Congress passed, and President Clinton signed, the "Iraqi Liberation Act," which provided money and U.S. legitimacy for Chalabi's INC, along with six other exile groups.

However, while Chalabi had proven himself as a lobbyist, if not a guerrilla leader, he had a continuous uphill battle with U.S. intelligence agencies, diplomats and the military, who never liked the INC's loose ways with the facts and taxpayer money. This meant that Chalabi had to constantly reinforce his countervailing support from the neoconservatives -- at least until they took power in the Bush administration in 2001, and squashed all dissonant internal voices on Chalabi. That's when Chalabi and his allies stepped up their planning for an American overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Behind the scenes, Chalabi was also detailing for the neoconservatives and their Israeli allies in the Likud party how the INC would take care of Israel.

One of the key promises he made concerned the revival of the Iraq-Israel oil pipeline. The pipeline from the oilfields of Kirkuk and Mosul to Haifa had been built by the British in the late 1920s, and was one of the main targets of the Palestinian Arab revolt in 1936-38. The 8-inch line was finally cut after Israel's independence in 1948. The sections in Arab territory have mostly rusted away or been carted off for scrap. The Israeli section is used as an irrigation pipe. The fully surveyed right of way, though, remains. It could handle a modern, 42-inch pipe, sufficient to supply the Haifa refinery.

With Chalabi's encouragement, the Israeli Ministry of National Infrastructure, which is responsible for oil pipelines, dusted off and updated plans for a new pipeline from Iraq. "The pipeline would be a dream," says Joseph Paritzky, the minister of national infrastructures. "We'd have an additional source of supply, and could even export some of the crude through Haifa. If we could build it, a pipeline would give us stable transport prices. Compare that to tankers; this year their price has almost tripled. We could also avoid problems such as strikes in our ports, which I've had to deal with. But we'd need a treaty with Iraq, and a treaty with Jordan to build the pipeline."

With Chalabi in power in Iraq, either in front or behind the scenes, L. Marc Zell confirms, the neocons were told there would be such a treaty with Iraq. "He promised that. He promised a lot of things."

Just after the U.S. takeover of Iraq, but before the establishment of the Governing Council of which Chalabi would be finance chair, Paritzky was lobbied by INC representatives in a meeting at the Dead Sea Marriott Hotel resort in Jordan. "We had a chitchat about it with the Iraqis, and with the Jordanians. But we couldn't go to the market and raise funds based on chitchat. We would have needed more to go on." Nevertheless, shortly afterward, on April 9, 2003, Paritzky announced a new technical appraisal of the pipeline.

The neocons in the Defense Department, such as Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, were more optimistic about the pipeline project than Paritzky, who knew too much about the Middle East to be easily enthused by Chalabi's promises. The DOD neocons sent a telegram directly to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, violating protocol in bypassing the State Department, expressing interest and support for the pipeline project. The State Department had been told by the Jordanians that there would be no pipeline unless the Israelis reached a settlement with the Palestinians. The neocons didn't want to hear that. "If the government agreed to a pipeline without a Palestinian settlement," says a Jordanian official, "the monarchy would fall."

In the meantime, having used the neocons to get himself on the Governing Council, Chalabi appointed friends and relatives to key positions in the government. His nephew Salem (Sam) Chalabi, a lawyer, did much of the drafting of the interim constitution. Another nephew, Ali Allawi, was made minister of trade, with responsibility over foreign trade and investment in Iraq (he was later also named defense minister). Other Chalabi nominees went into the Central Bank, the Finance Ministry and the Oil Ministry.

But Chalabi had his eye on the bigger picture. The wealthy exile had visited Tehran before the war, in August 2002 and January 2003. On those trips he met with senior Iranian officials, and with Mohammed Bakr Al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the main Shia opposition group. The neoconservatives chose to overlook these visits to a member of the "Axis of Evil." It could be argued that there was no other way to liaise with Iraqi Shia leaders.

Then in December 2003, Chalabi went to Tehran to meet with Hasan Rohani, the head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council. At that meeting, Chalabi said, "The role of the Islamic Republic of Iran in supporting and guiding the opposition in their struggles against Saddam's regime in the past, and its assistance toward the establishment of security and stability in Iraq at present, are regarded highly by the people of Iraq."

U.S. intelligence agencies, along with leading neocons, began to look again at just who Chalabi's real friends might be, especially since Iranian intelligence agents from his old friends at Vevak were known to be active in Iraq. Also, the Israelis began to notice that Chalabi's old promises had been forgotten.

"I just got the bid papers for a $145 million highway project that were put out by the Iraqis, and they had the Israeli boycott language in them," an Israeli in Baghdad told me in March. "Chalabi promised the boycott would be over."

Ali Allawi, the Chalabi nephew in charge of the Ministry of Trade, and now also the minister of defense, calls trade with Israel "a non-starter. We aren't plugged into that network, and as far as I'm concerned they sell things we don't need. As for the boycott. I don't care. What's the matter with it? The U.S. boycotts Cuba, and nobody says anything about it.

"Our future is more to the east, with Iran, and to the south, with the Gulf states. Iran has natural geographic ties to Iraq. I'm not interested in what those neoconservatives at the (Coalition Provisional Authority) have to say about Iran. We don't have sufficient port capacity, for example. We should use the Iranian ports and roads. Iraq should have fundamental economic and trade relations with Iran, and Turkey, as long as they reciprocate, and I think they will." He dismissed the Mosul-Haifa pipeline with a wave of his hand.

Nabil Al Moussa, the deputy minister of planning for the Oil Ministry, confirmed Allawi's position. Asked whether the ministry had any plans for rebuilding the pipeline to Israel, his previous professional courtesy went out the window. "Absolutely not, and never! Don't ever ask us if we will sell oil to Israel, because we never will!"

Told of Allawi's and Al Moussa's reaction, Joseph Paritzky was philosophical, and a little contemptuous of his would-be neocon benefactors. "How naive can these Americans be? What, they thought they had a deal? Didn't they notice they were in the Middle East?" A neocon's reaction to Paritzky was characteristic: "He's a populist asshole who should have kept his mouth shut." But Paritzky obviously understood Middle Eastern politics far better than the neocons.

While the neocons felt they could ignore negative reports on Chalabi from the CIA, the State Department and other bureaucratic enemies, they have a harder time dismissing what comrades like Marc Zell have to say. Nevertheless, for the time being, many are sticking to the Bush strategy of staying on message and never admitting to mistakes. For example, last week, Michael Ledeen, a leading neocon at the American Enterprise Institute, complained in the National Review Online about "the cascade of anti-Chalabi leaks from his many mortal enemies at the Department of State and the Central Intelligence Agency." Changing the message is painful. As one neocon says: "The worst part of all this [Chalabi's betrayal] is that it will be embarrassing to my friends in the Pentagon."

Defense minister Allawi doubts that the neocons will be able to prevail in their plan to replace Shia dominance in the new Iraq with the Sunni-Kurdish coalition. "This is the last stand of the neocons, I think. The U.S. does have a new policy, which is to find a way to leave. That plan isn't the way to do it. I hear Condi Rice's office opposes the idea, and so does Ambassador Negroponte."

"We really don't have any choice," says a former intelligence officer and West Pointer in Iraq. "We have to make a deal, though we probably don't have to deal with Iran directly. We can make it through the Shia clergy in Iraq."

Allawi dismisses Feith and the neocons and what he calls "their grandiose schemes," but adds, "The neocons still have some influence, partly because they have good ties with the Kurds. And Sharon is still the 840-pound gorilla for U.S. policy."

Clearly the neocons are now in the process of retreating and regrouping. The consensus they'd forged among themselves on Iraq policy has dissolved. The massive plans for the democratization of the Middle East are heading for the recycling bin. Meanwhile, Chalabi's hopes for playing a leadership role in Iraq appear to be gone, although the crafty businessman's ability to resurrect himself from the dead should not be underestimated. It should also be noted that Chalabi family members continue to wield power in Iraq, and will likely continue to. For example, defense minister Allawi insists that he is not "in my uncle's entourage. Instead I travel alongside him." The remark can be interpreted to mean that he doesn't take orders from his uncle, and yet they are still close. Allawi has had a rather more conventional business career than that of his uncle, which has helped his political position in Iraq. While an early investor in Petra Bank, he soon parted company with his uncle and the other partners. He went on to become a successful and respectable portfolio manager in London before returning to Iraq last year.

In the end, despite the neocons' best hopes, Iran has emerged as crucial to the administration's desire for a political settlement in Iraq. Governments in the neighboring countries have taken notice of the neocons' big blunder. "The Iranians have proven to be absolutely brilliant in all of this," says a well-connected Jordanian. "They're showing that they're going to be the ones to win this one, and they'll do it with American money and lives."

For his part, Allawi praises what he sees as the U.S. military's new realism about the need for what he calls "a cold peace" with Iran. "There is no way to have stability in Iraq without Iran," he insists. "The U.S. military has been very correct in its contact with Iran at the border, and has never violated the unwritten agreement."

The neocons' Iraq triumph of last year has turned to ashes. Their Likud allies in Israel are bitterly split over Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plans for the settlements in the territories. They have a coldly hostile Iraqi government coming in the near future. The clerical regime they loathe in Iran has dramatically improved its strategic position. Some of them must be rueing the day they met Ahmed Chalabi, who told them the fairy tales they wanted to hear.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

About the writer
John Dizard is a columnist for the Financial Times.

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Alpha · Posted: Thu May 06, 2004 5:19 am Post subject: US Iran Policy

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=5325

ZNet | Iraq
US Iran Policy
by Sasan Fayazmanesh and Foaad Khosmood; ZNet Iran Watch; April 14, 2004

ZNet IranWatch will be presenting some interviews on US Iran policy in the coming weeks. This interview with Sasan Fayazmanesh, an economist at California State University, is the first of a series.
Foaad Khosmood: Since 2001 there have been mixed signals coming out of Washington regarding Iran. Undersecretary of State for non-proliferation, John Bolton, has suggested possible military action on several occasions, while deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage has taken much criticism for calling Iran a “democracy.” How can the current US policy toward Iran be described? What are the aims and reasoning behind this policy? How has this policy changed from what it was under the Clinton administration?
Sasan Fayazmanesh: This is an important question that requires some historical backtracking. So, if you don’t mind, I’ll answer your question at length.
The contradictory policy of the US toward Iran, or what you refer to as “mixed signals,” has a long history that starts well before 2001. I have analyzed the history of this policy, from its inception in 1979 to the end of the Clinton Administration, in my essay “The Politics of the US Economic Sanctions against Iran” (The Review of Radical Political Economy, Volume 35, Number 3, 2003). As I have argued in that essay, the incoherent and inconsistent policy of the US toward Iran, especially the sanctions policy, and particularly during the Clinton Administration, can be explained by the pull and push of two forces for and against economic sanctions.
The first force, pushing for sanctions against Iran, was Israel and its many lobbies in the US, such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its affiliate “think tank,” The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. This force has been basically formulating and implementing much of the US foreign policy toward Iran, particularly the sanctions policy. For example, the first head of the Washington Institute, Martin Indyk—who was at one point the press advisor to Issak Shamir and subsequently went on to occupy powerful positions in the Clinton Administration, including the director for Middle East matters at the National Security Council and the US Ambassador to Israel—initially formulated three reasons for continued US sanctions: 1) Iran’s support for “international terrorism,” which means support for all organizations that are hostile to the Israeli occupation and answer violence with violence, namely, HAMAS and the Islamic Jihad in the Palestinian Territories and Hizballah in Lebanon; 2) opposition to the “peace process” in the Middle East, which, of course, Israel has now opposed itself; and 3) pursuit of “weapons of mass destruction,” which could mean anything, including missiles. These accusations form the backbone of the US foreign policy to this day. The second force, opposing the numerous US sanctions, consisted of the US corporations and their lobbies, particularly those associated with the oil and agricultural industries. These corporations, which, as a result of numerous sanctions had been cut off from lucrative deals with Iran, used their own lobbies, think tanks, and allies in the US government to combat the passage of more stringent sanctions against Iran. In 1997, for example, the US corporations set up a front called “USA*ENGAGE.” According to the website of the organization, this was a “coalition representing American business and agriculture” and having “670 members including 40 National and State Associations and organizations from major sectors of the US economy.” The organization’s list of members was a basic “who is who” of the US corporations, including, among others, the giant oil, agricultural, and aerospace companies. The stated chief objective of the organization was to open “a serious, bipartisan dialogue with the Congress, the executive branch and with governors, mayors and other local authorities about the limited effectiveness of these unilateral measures, their cost to the US economy, and about the importance of engagement” with countries such as Iran. Even though the US corporations made some headway in changing the US policy toward Iran in the second half of the Clinton Administration, their action was not sufficient to nullify the power of the Israeli lobby. As a result, the US foreign policy toward Iran in the last few years of the previous Administration became an incoherent and inconsistent policy, pushed by the Israelis toward confrontation with Iran and pulled by the corporation toward rapprochement with Iran. All this, of course, changed with the arrival of the new administration.
Fkh: Does this contradictory policy, which you say was mostly tilted toward Israel, explain the inability of the oil companies to export the Central Asian oil though Iran?
SF: Yes. After the breakdown of the Soviet Union, the oil companies were engaged in a feeding frenzy to export oil from the former Central Asian Republics, particularly from Azerbaijan’s Baku region. The least costly method of exporting oil from this region would naturally have involved Iran. The oil companies could have either transported oil using a pipeline passing through Iran or simply swapped the oil with Iran. Yet, the numerous US sanctions against Iran, particularly in 1995, prevented the oil companies from adopting either of the two options. As a result, the oil companies were forced to accept the much more complicated and costly way of transporting oil to Turkey’s Mediterranean Port of Ceyhan. This was, of course, one reason why the oil companies and their lobbyists fought tooth and nail to remove the sanctions.
FKh: Let us get back to what was being said earlier. How did the US foreign policy toward Iran change after the arrival of the Bush Administration?
SF: When President Bush “won” the election, the US corporations appeared to be joyous, since three of the top members of the Administration—President Bush himself, Vice President Cheney, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice—had all been affiliated with the oil industry. But these affiliations, as well as other aspects of a tentative cabinet makeup, worried the Israelis. The Jerusalem Post, for example, wrote that some “Jewish leaders are worried that many of Bush's father's advisers [Baker, Scowcroft, and Powell], who were not particularly warm toward Israel, will wield extraordinary influence in the administration, while the leaders themselves—many of them accustomed to having Clinton's ear—are worried about losing their own clout” (December 8, 2000). In particular, the paper criticized Powell, because “Powell originally opposed the Gulf War, to the dismay of Israel and the pro-Israel community.” The Jerusalem Post then enumerated friends of Israel in the top echelon of the new Administration. It made references to Wolfowitz and Perle by writing: “Both Perle and Wolfowitz have been especially outspoken critics of Clinton's policy toward Iraq and the peace process. . .
Both Perle and Wolfowitz are the type of candidates the pro-Israel lobby is pushing.” Let me point out that both Wolfowitz and Perle are on the Board of Advisors of the AIPAC affiliated think tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Perle is also on the advisory board of The Jewish Institute For National Security Affairs (JINSA). Subsequently, in an article entitled “All the president's Middle East men” (1/19/2001), Jerusalem Post prophetically wrote about the Middle East foreign policy makers: “What you will have are two institutions grappling for control of policy.” It then stated that it “is no secret in Washington—or anywhere else for that matter—that the policies will be determined less by Bush himself and more by his inner circle of advisers.” And, once again, after enumerating how many people Israel has in the new Administration, it wrote: “Paul Wolfowitz . . . The Jewish and pro-Israel communities are jumping for joy. . . He has been one of the loudest proponents of a tough policy toward Iraq focused on finding a way to bring down Saddam Hussein's regime.” You can see how informed, insightful and prophetic Jerusalem Post articles were. They pointed out precisely what the so-called neocons, such as Wolofowitz and Perle, were planning to do with regard to Iraq. They also pointed out the divisions between these neocons and others in the Administration, such as Powell. Let me give you one example of this division. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the US State Department, led by Powell, and the Iranian government, led by President Khatami, made some overtures to improve relations between the two countries. Israel was clearly upset by this development and, with the help of the neocons in the Administration, it quickly put an end to any rapprochement between US and Iran. Now I can answer your original question concerning the different attitudes of John Bolton, the Undersecretary of State and the Administration's senior non-proliferation official, and Richard Armitage, the Deputy Secretary of State, toward Iran. Armitage is a close associate of Powell. Bolton, on the other hand, is a well-known neoconservative. He has served on the board of advisers of JINSA and is also a former senior vice president of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), another neoconservative think tank. As such, Bolton shares the neoconservative agenda. For example, while in Israel in February 2003, Bolton stated that he had "no doubt America will attack Iraq and that it will be necessary to deal with threats from Syria, Iran and North Korea afterward" (St. Petersburg Times, February 19, 2003). This must have been music to the ears of the Israeli officials. In an article in The Jerusalem Post (1/4/2002), Netanyahu wrote: “American power topples the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and the al-Qaida network there crumbles on its own. The United States must now act similarly against the other terror regimes–Iran, Iraq, Arafat's dictatorship, Syria, and a few others. Some of these regimes will have to be toppled, some of them punished and deterred.” Similarly, in an interview with Ariel Sharon, The Times of London (2/5/2002) wrote that according to Sharon, “Iran is the center of ‘world terror,’ and as soon as an Iraq conflict is concluded, [Sharon] will push for Iran to be at the top of the ‘to do list’ . . . He sees Iran as ‘behind terror all around the world’ and a direct threat to Israel.” So the neocons, such as Bolton and Wolfowitz, are merely trying to take care of Sharon’s “to do list.” This agenda, however, is not exactly shared by all the members of the Administration. The result is a new set of incoherent and inconsistent policies that you referred to earlier as “mixed signals” to Iran.
FKh: So are you saying that the accusation that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons has to do with the Israeli agenda of destroying their enemies one after another? Is it not the case that, as the Bush Administration contends, Iran must be pursuing atomic weapons because, as a major energy producer, it has no need for nuclear energy?
SF: I have made this quite clear in a number of essays, especially in my CounterPunch articles “The Weapon of Choice” and “The Saga of Iran's Alleged WMD.” The latter essay, in particular, which simply quotes news reports between July and December of 2003, chronicles how the holy alliance, US-Israel (USrael), is trying to use the issue of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to bring about a “regime change in Iran.” I refer your readers to these articles for details. But let me give a short answer to your question.
As I pointed out earlier, USrael has been using the accusation of Iran developing WMD for a long time to overthrow the Iranian government. The accusation has become more intense in the past few years as the neocons have taken over the US Middle East policy. Richard Perle, for example, was quoted as saying that “the best way to deal with the Iranian nuclear program would be to ‘liberate the Iranian people’” (Reuters, June 16, 2003). Similarly, John Bolton, in his position as the Administration's senior non-proliferation official, has certainly tried his best to “deal” with the “enemies of Israel” by incessantly accusing Iran of developing WMD. The Israelis, of course, have been repeating the same charge. For example, Silvan Shalom, the Israeli Foreign Minister, said in an interview with the Russian daily Izvestia that “Iran will possess weapons of mass destruction at the end of 2005 or early in 2006” (Agence France Presse, June 5, 2003). The USraeli accusation is, of course, quite hypocritical. Both countries have nuclear weapons. Both are engaged in research and development in the area of nuclear weapons technology. Both are ready to use nuclear weapons if necessary. The US, according to the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, ElBaradei, is in violation of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (Reuters, August 27, 2003). Israel has never signed such a treaty. Moreover, US and her allies helped the Shah of Iran with its nuclear research and development in the mid 1960s. Ultimately, in the mid 1970s the Shah began building a nuclear reactor in Bushehr. In this effort, the Shah not only had the blessing of US and her allies, but was actually helped and encouraged by them. So the argument that Iran must be pursuing atomic weapons because it has no need for nuclear energy does not make any sense. Why didn’t USrael raise this issue when their ally, the Shah of Iran, was in power? Why is it being raised now?
FKh: The term “Axis of Evil” was uttered frequently by the administration during most of 2002 beginning with the State of the Union speech. What do you make of the term ? Was the expression part of the neoconservative policy? Where does it stand today?
SF: David Frum, a former speech writer for President Bush and a neoconservative colleague of Richard Perle, took credit for coining the phrase “axis of evil” and including it in President Bush’s 2002 State of the Union message. Frum, who currently writes for the neo-fascistic National Review Online, which supports everything Israel does, is one of those fellows that The Jerusalem Post declared to be Israel’s own. The paper also noted that “David Frum [is] Bush's economic speech writer; and arguably the most influential of them all” (January 18, 2002). The expression “axis of evil” was part of the neoconservative agenda of making the world safe for Israel. But given that the war in Iraq has turned out to be a fiasco for the US, the expression has lost its luster and significance.
FKh: Do you see any US military action against Iran in the foreseeable future? If not, what will be the US policy?
SF: Although the Israeli government had Iran at the very top of the US “to do list” even before the US invasion of Iraq, the neocons did not appear to have thought that an all out attack on Iran was militarily feasible or prudent. This is even more so today, given the fact that the US is now stuck in Iraq in one of its most perilous military adventures since the Vietnam War. The neocons—who, in their push for the war, have put the economic future of this country in danger, brought it to the verge of military disaster and caused a great deal of political turmoil already—will not be able, at least in the foreseeable future, to repeat such adventures. This, of course, does not mean that Iran is safe. The US government has not ruled out surgical strikes against some of Iran’s nuclear facilities. Indeed, Israel has repeatedly threatened Iran with such strikes and, with the help of the neocons, is using every opportunity to push the US government in that direction.(1) But, for the time being, the immediate strategy is for the US to pass a resolution in the UN that would declare Iran in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This might then start a scenario similar to that in Iraq in the early 1990s, namely, the imposition of UN economic sanctions against Iran. We will just have to wait and see how successful the current USraeli campaign is in pressuring the International Atomic Energy Agency to report Iran to the UN for violating NPT.
FOOTNOTE (1): As this interview is being conducted, AIPAC is waging a campaign to blame Iran for the US military and political failures in Iraq. It writes on its website: “Sheik al-Sadr is reportedly being supported by Iran and its terror surrogate Hizballah, who are supplying money, spiritual support and possibly weapons, The Washington Times reported.” The Washington Times is, of course, one of the many mouthpieces of the neocons.
Sasan Fayazmanesh is a professor of Economics at California State University, Fresno.
Foaad Khosmood is the Editor of ZNet's Iranwatch.

Alpha

http://www.forward.com/main/article.php?ref=staff200405051137

Thursday, May 6, 2004
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Chalabi Lashes Back at Critics As Furor Over Iran Ties Grows
By Forward Staff
May 7, 2004

Faced with a storm of attacks and uncertainty over its future role in Iraq, the Iraqi National Congress and its controversial leader Ahmed Chalabi are lashing back at their critics in America.

Chalabi's exile group-turned-political party issued a statement Monday denouncing what it described as "a CIA-orchestrated smear campaign," after Newsweek published allegations that the group had provided sensitive information to Iran that may endanger the lives of U.S. troops in Iraq. In addition to its escalating feud with the CIA and increasing claims that it fed false information about weapons of mass destruction in order to bolster the case for war, the INC has locked horns with the American-led administration in Iraq and U.N. officials in recent weeks.

In a sign that the group might be losing support among its neo-conservative advocates, Jerusalem-based attorney Marc Zell branded Chalabi a "treacherous, spineless turncoat," according to a piece written for the online publication Salon by Financial Times columnist John Dizard.

Zell, a former law partner of Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, told Salon that the Chalabi had failed to deliver on prewar promises that he would end Iraq's trade boycott with Israel, allow Israeli companies to do business in Iraq and advocate the rebuilding of a pipeline from Mosul in northern Iraq to Haifa.

Several other leading neo-conservatives, including Richard Perle, have maintained their support for Chalabi, a Shiite who was successful in cultivating support among Jewish hawks during the 1990s. But Zell's outburst could signal that the rapprochement between Chalabi and his more radical Shiite fellows in Iraq and in neighboring Iran is likely to unsettle many neo-conservatives, especially since most refuse any dialogue with Tehran. Chalabi's group, meanwhile, is vigorously defending its push for stronger ties with Iran.

Entifadh Qanbar, an INC spokesman, told the Forward that the group enjoyed a "strong relationship with Iran" alongside its "strategic relationship with the United States," adding that this was also the case of other parties in the Iraqi governing council, the 25-member body appointed by the United State to severe as a transitional governing power until sovereignty is handed over to Iraq on June 30.

The INC has operated an office in Tehran for years and Chalabi visited Iran twice before the war and again in December, meeting with senior government officials.

Qanbar insisted that Iran has been a "very good neighbor" in recent months, providing emergency gasoline and propane gas and opening its ports to Iraqi exports and imports.

In addition, the INC spokesman claimed, Iran was been helping to secure its border with Iraq by preventing terrorists from entering the country, contrary to claims made in recent months by the Bush administration.

Qanbar also defended the Iraqi governing council's role in the unfolding U.N. oil-for-food scandal. The council was recently found to be in possession of documents allegedly showing that the Hussein regime had used oil vouchers as a form of bribery to bypass U.N. sanctions and gain influence abroad, particularly with the U.N.'s oil-for-food chief. The council has refused to hand the documents over to the U.N. and its investigative commission, headed by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker.

Qanbar denied charges voiced in New York and elsewhere that his party, which controls the governing council's finance committee, was responsible for the decision to withhold the documents or that the move was linked to the INC's mounting disagreements with American and U.N. officials over Iraq's future.

Qanbar said the governing council is conducting its own inquiry and had ordered an audit conducted by KPMG and the British law firm Freshfields.

In recent congressional testimony and interviews, Claude Hankes-Drielsma, a financial adviser to the Iraq Governing Council with close links to the INC, accused the top American administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, of obstructing the inquiry into the U.N. oil-for-food program.

American officials in Iraq were quoted as saying they wanted to review the selection of KPMG and Freshfields to ensure the inquiry was immune from political pressure.

Observers said the tensions over the U.N. probe were part of a larger conflict pitting Chalabi against Bremer and the U.N. special envoy to Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi.

Brahimi, with the support of the Bush administration, recently proposed dissolving the governing council and replacing it with a temporary government of technocrats after the June 30 handover. Moreover, diplomats said Brahimi dislikes Chalabi, who, in turn, has branded Brahimi an "Arab nationalist."

Bremer has also recently reversed a policy strongly supported by the INC of excluding senior members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party from key positions. Chalabi blasted the shift, claiming it was akin to bringing back the Nazis into government just after World War II.

At a hearing last week of the House International Affairs committee on the oil-for-food issue, three lawmakers — Democrats Tom Lantos of California and Gary Ackerman of New York and Republican Ileana Ross-Lehtinen of Florida — expressed concerns that some of the charges against the U.N. were politically motivated.

The congressional criticism comes as Chalabi and the INC are already under fire for allegedly providing false intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The INC produced several defectors who gave information about WMDs that has proven to be false, intelligence sources and congressional reports have said.

This only deepened the INC's antagonism toward the CIA, a rift that dates back to the late 1990s following failed coup attempts against Saddam.

"The CIA has launched a campaign against us because they want to shift the blame for their failure in Iraq," Qanbar said, noting that the CIA had the means to vet the defectors and check the information they provided.

In addition, the INC has been at loggerheads with the State Department after officials there voiced misgivings about INC handling of American funding. The INC reportedly receives $340,000 monthly from the American government.

Alpha · Posted: Thu May 06, 2004 9:03 am Post subject: NEOCONSERVATIVES ARE UN-AMERICAN

http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts44.html

Alpha · Posted: Thu May 06, 2004 9:48 am Post subject: OUR 'FRIEND' ISRAEL

From AxisofLogic.com

Palestine
Is America a Servant to the Will of Israel?
By Genevieve Cora Fraser
May 3, 2004, 18:58

The myth of America as an honest broker in the supposed Palestinian-Israeli peace process has been completely shattered. Not only is the Untied States the financial backer of Israel's brutal oppression of Palestinians, to the tune of $14 to $15 billion per year, the United States no longer recognizes anyone but Israel as a partner to the charade. The absurdity of this position may boggle the mind, but clearly reflects the thinking of George Bush as dictated to him by the Prime Minister of Israel Ariel Sharon.

Annette Grossbongardt writing for Der Spiegel and the New York Times draws the curtain back to reveal behind-the-scenes machinations on the summit meeting in support of Israel’s proposed Gaza withdrawal in exchange for expansion of the West Bank settlements, where the international law guaranteeing the Right of Return of Palestinian refugees was majestically waived along with recognition of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. “ Sharon also pressured Bush - by threatening to cancel his trip to Washington at the last minute certain that the wording of Bush's guarantee would correspond exactly to what he wanted,” Grossbongardt explained.

The Arab world has reacted to the latest developments by declaring the Bush/Sharon pact a new Balfour Declaration -- a reference to the British promise in 1917 to allow a Jewish homeland in Palestine . According to a Reuters report, “The declaration, written by then British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour, lingers in the memory of Arabs and Muslims as a symbol of colonial powers giving away another people's land.”

The administration’s position could not be clearer, especially in light of American support of Israel ’s assassination of Hamas leader Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi days later, plus the Iraq quagmire orchestrated by pro-Israeli neo-cons associated with the Shock and Awe terror tactics of the Project for a New American Century. The US Middle East policy is of Israel , by Israel and for Israel . (Add $87 billion to $14 billion. That equals over $100 billion in support of Israel in the past year.) Is Israel ’s goal to bankrupt America financially, morally, and in our international standing in the world, or are the results a mere by-product of that support?

The Palestinian-Israeli Peace Process has appeared on the surface to have as its end goal peace between Israel and Palestine , and many sincere efforts were wasted on behalf of this end. However, Israel ’s hidden agenda has now come to its logical fruition. The “Peace Process” beginning in 1969 with the Rogers Plan, and then with the Kissinger initiatives, from Camp David to Oslo to the Road Map has been used as a de facto control mechanism to the Palestinian resistance movement and their Right of Return guaranteed under international law.

Throughout the years of the alleged peace process, Israeli expansion, ethnic cleansing and brutal military incursions into Palestine have continued unabated and provoked the 1st and 2nd Intifadas.

Since the passage of United Nations Resolution 194 (III) of December 11, 1948 Israel has thumped its nose at the guaranteed repatriation or compensation for Palestinian refugees. Now President Bush joins Israel in complete disregard for their tragic plight with the cavalier suggestion that millions of refugees will have to find homes in a new Palestinian state, rather than reclaiming land in what is now Israel . But where are they to go? Currently Palestinians have access to barely 8% of historic Palestine and that figure declines each day Israel annexes additional land for the Apartheid Wall, further expansions of the illegal, quasi-military settlements and Israeli-only roads leading to and from these outposts.

According to UNRWA statistics from 2000 there are 3.7 million Palestinian refugees with 1.6 million in Jordon; 824,622 in Gaza ; 583,009 in the West Bank ; 383,199 in Syria and 376, 472 in Lebanon .

The Palestinian refugee population is the largest in the world.

Dispossessed in 1948 by Zionist forces of their land, homes and material property, including personal bank accounts, these assets were subsequently used to create the state of Israel , while Palestinians were forced into tent cities living in humiliated circumstances under squalid conditions. By the 1950s “temporary” housing and infrastructure was provided by the UN, but following the 1967Arab-Israeli war which resulted in the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza thousands more were forced into the camps.

Today the refugee camps in occupied Palestine are continuously under attack by IDF troops with assault rifles, tanks, bulldozers, helicopter gunships and fighter jets, courtesy of US taxpayers. Tent cities are reemerging as homes are bulldozed and sewer and water infrastructure destroyed by repeated Israeli military incursions. Access to food, water, medical attention and schools are frequently blocked by the Israelis. Conditions in the Lebanese camps are said by some to be even worse, barely able to sustain the lives of those living among the rubble of ruins the Lebanese government refuses to allow be rebuilt. But most tragic of all, Palestinian refugees living in camps outside of Palestine have no legal rights whatsoever except one, the Right of Return. To proclaim this right null and void is unconscionable. It is also without legal merit, even if you are the great and mighty president of the United States .

Of course Israel detests the United Nations and UNRWA, which was established in part to clean-up messes Israel leaves behind. Zionist websites complain that the UN persecutes Israel by passing resolution after resolution condemning its activities, resolutions which the Unites States is quick to veto on Israel ’s behalf. Language which sets Israel ’s teeth on edge includes statements by the United Nations Reaffirming the fundamental principle of the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force.

Time after time Israel is reminded of “the applicability of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949 , to the occupied Palestinian and other Arab territories, including Jerusalem . Israel is particularly irked that the United Nations has ruled that Israel's record and actions establish conclusively that it is not a peace-loving Member State and that it has not carried out its obligations under the Charter of the United Nations, Noting further that Israel has refused, in violation of Article 25 of the Charter, to accept and carry out the numerous relevant decisions of the Security Council. (Resolution 273) Under the stewardship of Texan George Bush, the United States now prides itself in emulating Israel with violations of international law and divinely inspired right to preemptive strikes evocative of the lawlessness of the Wild West rather than a civilized society which presumes leadership of the free world.

Writing on behalf of the UK Telegraph, Sean Rayment notes that American military tactics in Iraq are seen as heavy-handed and disproportionate and are condemned by many senior British commanders. One senior Army officer told The Telegraph that America's aggressive methods were causing friction among allied commanders and that there was a growing sense of unease and frustration’ among the British high command, Rayment reports. The officer, who agreed to the interview on the condition of anonymity, said that part of the problem was that American troops viewed Iraqis as untermenschen - the Nazi expression for sub-humans.

Truth, War and Consequences, a PBS Frontline special, shows American soldiers thrown into an urban environment where civilians are often perceived as military threats. One sequence shows protesting Iraqis and a large painted sign, in fractured English that read All Donne. Go home. Poorly trained American soldiers are shown interacting with Iraqis, bullying them and quarreling with them, and then as an act of punishment, riddling their car with bullets and then driving back and forth over their car with a tank and destroying it, while the sound track captures the laughter of American soldiers. Other footage reveals automobiles riddled with gun fire after turning onto a street where American troops were engaged in a raid, killing a man in one car, and a family in another car, and pedestrian walking down the street was also gunned down.

And as Iraqis take to the streets to protest against the brutal US occupation, they also shout protest at becoming another Palestine .

Perhaps the ferocity of their resistance is in part fueled by Palestine ’s bitter lesson. Iraqi citizens are also well aware of the American-Israeli alliance and are deeply concerned that Israeli companies may be investing in Iraq . Meanwhile the differences between the behavior of American and Israeli troops have become indistinguishable even to Israelis.

Aljazeera.net reports, Some Israeli commentators have highlighted the striking similarity between what the Americans are doing in Falluja, Baquba, and Ramadi on the one hand and what the Israeli occupation army has been doing in Rafah, Khan Yunis and Jenin.

"When I turn to Aljazeera, I need a few minutes to realize that this is Iraq not Palestine ," said Uri Avnery, a veteran Israeli journalist and commentator. Reports are surfacing that the Israelis are training US troops in Jenin-style urban warfare.

Israel ’s treatment of the Palestinians since 1948 has also been to regard them as "untermenschen" sub-humans and never more so than today. In January 2001 Ha'aretz published an article by Amir Oren, At the Gates of Yassergrad which cites an Israeli officer's statement that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) studies the 1943 military tactics of the Nazi SS against the Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto, for application against the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza .

Even without the Ha'aretz article, casual observation of the incarceration of the 3.5 million men, women and children of Palestine in concentration camp conditions within the confines of the Apartheid wall, electrified razor wire fence, Israeli-only roads, and nearly 900 checkpoints and roadblocks is a tip-off that something is up. When you add in the destruction of a million olive and fruit trees, farmlands, livestock and beehives, enforced starvation (bombing of the UN food warehouse and refusal to allow in food aid) and dehydration (reservoirs, wells and roof top water tanks destroyed by the IDF), curfews that spread into weeks and sometimes a month or more, plus 24/7 IDF assaults on civilians whose defense is the use of rocks, confiscated rifles and homemade bombs, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand why the term Zio-Nazi is common graffiti at certain protest sites.

Perhaps I’m naïve or have misinterpreted Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s intent but I thought the American sacrifice of a half a million dead and nearly 700,000 wounded from World War II was so the world would be safe from Nazism and other brands of fascist oppression. Why am I getting the impression that America is now marching to the tune of an emerging 4th Reich (complete with Patriot Acts I and possibly II) which is somehow bizarrely orchestrated by people who were victimized by the 3rd Reich? But to be fair, many in the Jewish community throughout the world also believe that something is rotten in the state of Israel/America and are joining forces with the Pro-Peace Pro-Palestine Anti-Zionist movement in a desperate attempt to set things right.

About the Author
Genevieve Cora Fraser is a poet, playwright and journalist as well as an environmental and human rights activist.

http://www.ramallahonline.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1886&mode=&order=0&thold=0

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Brahimi versus Chalabi: The daggers are drawn