| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Oct 07, 2004 9:41 am Post subject: U.S. Report Finds No Evidence of Iraq WMD |
| U.S. Report Finds No Evidence of Iraq WMD (of course not as the Zionist neoconservatives simply used WMD as a pretext to launch their war for Israel agenda as conveyed by James Bamford in his 'A Pretext for War' book):
http://www.nowarforisrael.com
http://www.nogw.com/warforisrael.html
3 minutes ago
By JOHN J. LUMPKIN, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s weapons of mass destruction programs had deteriorated into only hopes and dreams by the time of the U.S.-led invasion last year, a decline wrought by the first Gulf War (news - web sites) and years of international sanctions, the chief U.S. weapons hunter found.
And what ambitions Saddam harbored for such weapons were secondary to his goal of evading those sanctions, and he wanted them primarily not to attack the United States or to provide them to terrorists, but to oppose his older enemies, Iran and Israel.
The report of weapons hunter Charles Duelfer was presented Wednesday to senators and the public in the midst of a fierce presidential election campaign in which Iraq (news - web sites) and the war of terror have become the overriding issues.
The report chronicles the decay of Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs after its defeat in the 1991 Gulf War. By the late 1990s, only its long-range missile efforts continued in defiance of the United Nations (news - web sites); even then, Iraq's ballistic and cruise missile designs had not proceeded far past the drawing board. Saddam's other plans would have to wait until he was free of the sanctions and free of international attention.
President Bush (news - web sites)'s spokesman said the report justified the decision to go to war. Campaigning in Pennsylvania, Bush defended the decision to invade.
"There was a risk, a real risk, that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons or materials or information to terrorist networks," the president said in a speech in Wilkes Barre, Pa. "In the world after Sept. 11, that was a risk we could not afford to take."
A spokesman for his opponent, Democrat John Kerry (news - web sites), said the report "underscores the incompetence of George Bush (news - web sites)'s Iraq policy."
"George Bush refuses to come clean about the ways he misled our country into war," Kerry spokesman David Wade added.
"In short, we invaded a country, thousands of people have died, and Iraq never posed a grave or growing danger," said Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va.
Duelfer's Iraq Survey Group drew on interviews with senior Iraqi officials, 40 million pages of documents and classified intelligence to conclude that Iraq destroyed its undeclared chemical and biological stockpiles under pressure of U.N. sanctions by 1992 and never resumed production.
The U.S.-led invasion pushed one of Iraq's leaders into seeking chemical weapons to defend the country. But it doesn't appear that Saddam's son Odai located any.
Iraq ultimately abandoned its biological weapons programs in 1995, largely out of fear they would be discovered and tougher enforcement imposed.
"Indeed, from the mid-1990s, despite evidence of continuing interest in nuclear and chemical weapons, there appears to be a complete absence of discussion or even interest in BW at the presidential level," according to a summary of Duelfer's 1,000-page report.
And Iraq also abandoned its nuclear program after the war, and there was no evidence it tried to reconstitute it.
Saddam's intentions to restart his weapons programs were never formalized.
"The former regime had no formal written strategy or plan for the revival of WMD after sanctions," the summary says. "Neither was there an identifiable group of WMD policymakers or planners separate from Saddam. Instead his lieutenants understood WMD revival was his goal from their long association with Saddam and his infrequent, but firm, verbal comments and directions to them."
Duelfer's findings contradict most of the assertions by the Bush administration and the U.S. intelligence community about Iraq's threat in 2002 and early 2003. The White House had argued that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons stockpiles and production lines and had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program.
The United States led an invasion into Iraq in March 2003, taking the capital, Baghdad, within weeks. Since then, the United States and its allies have fought a dangerous insurgency of Iraqis as well as Islamic extremists who have come to Iraq to kill Americans.
Some 1,196 coalition personnel have been killed since the start of the war. Of those, 1,060 are American, 67 British and 69 are from other coalition countries. Unknown numbers of Iraqis have also died on both sides of the conflict.
Before the war, Saddam's chief success was in manipulating a U.N. oil for food program that began in 1996 to avoid the sanctions' effects for a few years, acquiring billions of dollars to import goods such as parts for missile systems. Duelfer also in the report accused the former head of the U.N. oil-for-food program of accepting bribes in the form of vouchers for Iraqi oil sales from Saddam's government.
"Once the oil for food program began, it provided all kind of levers for him (Saddam) to manipulate his way out of sanctions," Duelfer told Congress on Wednesday.
He said he believed sanctions against Saddam — even though they appeared to work in part — were unsustainable long term.
Duelfer's Iraq Survey Group had more than 1,000 intelligence, military and support officials working for it at any one time. They were frequently hampered by the dangerous conditions of postwar Iraq. | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Oct 07, 2004 7:39 pm Post subject: Sharon's expulsion plans on track/Creveld on expulsions (200 |
| From: "Ronald" <rbleier@igc.org>
To: "rbleier" <rbleier@igc.org>
Subject: Sharon's expulsion plans on track/Creveld on expulsions (2002)
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 2004 15:10:34 -0400
Now that Sharon's latest offensive in northern Gaza has extended into its second week without any abatement, with already 85 Palestinians killed, half of whom are women and children, it's useful to look at the larger picture of Israel's strategic goal of expelling the bulk of the 3.5 million Palestinians in the occupied territories, the logical outcome of the Zionist project.
Since the Iraq war has thus far not provided an adequate screen to implement mass expulsions as Sharon might have hoped, he has embarked on a slower alternate route. This involves making everyday life for the Palestinian people as difficult as possible, weakening their defenses by killing as many leaders and activists as possible, through massive land and water confiscations especially through the construction of the Wall, interfering with UNWRA aid, making commerce and everyday travel as difficult as possible and on and on. Future offensives by the US and/or Israel against Iran or Syria will very likely work to forward Sharon's plans for the Palestinians.
Note that the latest Gaza offensive has been undertaken in the course of a heated US election campaign where the major party candidates (and most of the third party candidates as well) cannot bring themselves to suggest anything remotely resembling criticism of Israeli policy.
The following article by analyst Martin van Creveld, written less than a year before the 2003 Iraq war reminds us of the means and the outcome that Sharon is relentlessly pursuing and that the US is supporting. (Creveld's article was cited by Shraga Elam in an article on Israel's role in the Iraq war in Between the Lines for Feb 2003.)
-- Ronald Bleier
Sharon's plan is to drive Palestinians across the Jordan
(Filed: 28/04/2002)
by Martin Van Creveld
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/04/28/wpal28.xml
THE leading Israeli historian Martin van Creveld predicts that a US attack on Iraq or a terrorist strike at home could trigger a massive mobilisation to clear the occupied territories of their two million Arabs
Two years ago, less than eight per cent of those who took part in a Gallup poll among Jewish Israelis said they were in favour of what is euphemistically called "transfer" - that is, the expulsion of perhaps two million Palestinians across the River Jordan. This month that figure reached 44 per cent.
Ariel Sharon
Earlier this year, when a journalist asked Ariel Sharon whether he favoured such a move, the Israeli prime minister said he did not think in such terms. A glance at his memoirs, however, shows that he has not always been so fastidious.
In September 1970 King Hussein of Jordan fell on the Palestinians in his kingdom, killing perhaps 5,000 to 10,000. The then Gen Sharon, serving as Commanding Officer, Southern Front, argued that Israel's policy of helping the king was a mistake; instead it should have tried to topple the Hashemite regime.
He has often said since that Jordan, which, according to him, has a Palestinian majority even now, is the Palestinian state. The inference - that the Palestinians should go there - is clear.
During its 1948 War of Independence, Israel drove 650,000 Palestinians from their homes into neighbouring countries. If it were to try something similar today, the outcome could well be a regional war. More and more people in Jerusalem believe that such is Mr Sharon's objective.
It might explain why Mr Sharon, famous for his ability to plan ahead, appears not to have a plan. In fact, he has always harboured a very clear plan - nothing less than to rid Israel of the Palestinians.
Few people, least of all me, want the following events to happen. But such a scenario could easily come about. Mr Sharon would have to wait for a suitable opportunity - such as an American offensive against Iraq, which some Israelis think is going to take place in early summer.
Mr Sharon himself told Colin Powell, the secretary of state, that America should not allow the situation in Israel to delay the operation.
An uprising in Jordan, followed by the collapse of King Abdullah's regime, would also present such an opportunity - as would a spectacular act of terrorism inside Israel that killed hundreds.
Should such circumstances arise, then Israel would mobilise with lightning speed - even now, much of its male population is on standby.
First, the country's three ultra-modern submarines would take up firing positions out at sea. Borders would be closed, a news blackout imposed, and all foreign journalists rounded up and confined to a hotel as guests of the Government.
A force of 12 divisions, 11 of them armoured, plus various territorial units suitable for occupation duties, would be deployed: five against Egypt, three against Syria, and one opposite Lebanon. This would leave three to face east as well as enough forces to put a tank inside every Arab-Israeli village just in case their populations get any funny ideas.
The expulsion of the Palestinians would require only a few brigades. They would not drag people out of their houses but use heavy artillery to drive them out; the damage caused to Jenin would look like a pinprick in comparison.
Any outside intervention would be held off by the Israeli air force. In 1982, the last time it engaged in large-scale operations, it destroyed 19 Syrian anti-aircraft batteries and shot down 100 Syrian aircraft against the loss of one.
Its advantage is much greater now than it was then and would present an awesome threat to any Syrian armoured attack on the Golan Heights.
As for the Egyptians, they are separated from Israel by 150 miles or so of open desert. Judging by what happened in 1967, should they try to cross it they would be destroyed.
The Jordanian and Lebanese armed forces are too small to count and Iraq is in no position to intervene, given that it has not recovered its pre-1991 strength and is being held down by the Americans. Saddam Hussein may launch some of the 30 to 40 missiles he probably has.
The damage they can do, however, is limited. Should Saddam be mad enough to resort to weapons of mass destruction, then Israel's response would be so "awesome and terrible" (as Yitzhak Shamir, the former prime minister, once said) as to defy the imagination.
Some believe that the international community will not permit such an ethnic cleansing. I would not count on it. If Mr Sharon decides to go ahead, the only country that can stop him is the United States.
The US, however, regards itself as being at war with parts of the Muslim world that have supported Osama bin Laden. America will not necessarily object to that world being taught a lesson - particularly if it could be as swift and brutal as the 1967 campaign; and also particularly if it does not disrupt the flow of oil for too long.
Israeli military experts estimate that such a war could be over in just eight days. If the Arab states do not intervene, it will end with the Palestinians expelled and Jordan in ruins.
If they do intervene, the result will be the same, with the main Arab armies destroyed. Israel would, of course, take some casualties, especially in the north, where its population would come under fire from Hizbollah.
However, their number would be limited and Israel would stand triumphant, as it did in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973. Are you listening Mr Arafat?
Prof van Creveld is author of The Sword and the Olive; a Critical History of the Israel Defence Force (New York, 1998). He lives in Jerusalem
27 April 2002: Plotter of Saddam's fall pleads case in US
8 February 2002: Sharon promises to help Bush if he attacks Saddam
Middle East Factfile
Research materials on refugees issues - Palestinian Refugee Research
Israel's War of Independence - Machal
Patterns of Palestinian exodus - Birzeit University
Historical myths - Electronic Intifada | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Oct 08, 2004 7:05 am Post subject: Israeli AIPAC Spy Scandal - Update |
| Upcoming from MER:
The Secrets of U.S.-imposed Debt Relief for Iraq
Israeli AIPAC Spy Scandal - Update
MIDDLEEAST.ORG - MER - Washington - 7 October: It was just a month ago that the latest Washington spy scandal involving the very heart of the Israeli-Jewish Lobby had everyone buzzing. Then it faded from view as the corporate media moved on, as CBS News which originally broke the story found itself under assault, and as the election campaign and debates took center stage. Interesting, not one question from the PBS moderators about Israeli spying, nor even about the U.S. veto of the Security Council resolution condemning Israel, nor the International Court of Justice decision doing the same. Here's an update -- however inadequate -- from yesterday's L.A.Times. Though the real heart of the story should be AIPAC and the influence, tactics, and status of the Israeli-Jewish lobby; instead they focus on just the individual and not as they should on the large group of support persons and organizations. This should especially include, of course, the current cabal of largely Jewish neocons in top positions...including the one who hired Larry Franklin (Douglas Feith), and the ones who hired him (Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle).
THE NATION
Policy Analyst Is Said to Have Rejected Plea Deal
Larry Franklin, who is accused of passing secrets
on Iran, also has replaced his attorney.
By Richard B. Schmitt
Los Angeles Times - October 6, 2004 WASHINGTON — A Pentagon analyst being investigated for allegedly helping pass secrets to Israel has stopped cooperating with authorities and retained a new lawyer to fight possible espionage charges, sources familiar with the case said Tuesday.
The analyst, Larry Franklin, has been a key witness in a continuing FBI investigation looking into whether classified intelligence was passed to Israel by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, an influential Washington lobbying firm.
Franklin has been accused of passing the contents of a classified document about U.S. policy on Iran to two AIPAC officials, who in turn may have given the information to Israeli officials in Washington, sources have said.
Federal prosecutors had proposed an agreement under which Franklin would plead guilty to some of the charges. Such agreements usually are done in exchange for leniency and are accompanied by a pledge of cooperation.
But sources said Franklin had rejected a proposed deal because he believed the terms were too onerous. He recently replaced his court-appointed lawyer. "It looks like there is going to be a battle," a source familiar with the case said.
FBI officials have not yet sought charges against Franklin or anyone else in the case, although the breakdown of plea negotiations would appear to raise the odds that he could be charged soon.
The scope of the investigation is believed to encompass a top diplomat at the Israeli Embassy in Washington; two high-ranking analysts at AIPAC; and the Pentagon office in which Franklin works as an Iran analyst, which is headed by Defense Undersecretary Douglas J. Feith.
The case has attracted widespread attention because it spotlights U.S. relations with a longtime ally and raises questions about whether those relations have become too close in recent years. Israel has become acutely sensitive to the growing nuclear capabilities of Iran, which it considers to be its most worrisome and deadly foe.
Both the Israeli government and AIPAC have denied that they engaged in any wrongdoing or were given unauthorized access to secrets.
A spokesman for Paul McNulty, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, whose office has been assigned the case, declined to comment.
A prominent Washington defense lawyer, Plato Cacheris, confirmed this week that he recently had been retained by Franklin.
"We consider him a loyal American who did not engage in any espionage activities," said Cacheris, the first person representing Franklin to speak on his behalf since the investigation surfaced a month ago. "Any charge of espionage will be met with fierce resistance."
Cacheris has represented a number of accused turncoats, including CIA operative Aldrich H. Ames, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1994 after confessing to years of spying for the Soviet Union. Cacheris also represented former FBI counterintelligence agent Robert P. Hanssen, also convicted of passing secrets to the Soviets, who received a life sentence in 2002.
Cacheris' other clients have included former Clinton White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky and Nixon administration Atty. Gen. John Mitchell.
Some U.S. officials familiar with the investigation have said there was little hard evidence that Franklin intended to commit espionage and no hint that he was paid for any role he might have played.
U.S. officials believe there is more evidence that Franklin — described by colleagues and friends as diligent and thoughtful yet periodically unreliable and disorganized — might have handed over information without understanding the gravity of his actions.
During two decades at the Pentagon spent tracking threats, he was considered a journeyman analyst and an absent-minded professor who often could be found in his office buried behind huge stacks of documents.
The classified information he is suspected of sharing includes the contents of a draft version of a national security presidential directive, or NSPD, on Iran. The draft advocated measures the United States could take to help destabilize the regime in Tehran, a subject of intense interest to the Israelis.
But officials also have said that the draft, which originated at the Pentagon's Near East and South Asian Affairs office, where Franklin worked, contained little in the way of sensitive secrets that had not been reported by the media already. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Oct 10, 2004 12:27 am Post subject: Sidelined (Zionist) neo-cons stoke future fires |
| http://www.atimes.com
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FJ09Ak01.html
Middle East
Sidelined (Zionist) neo-cons stoke future fires
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Sidelined by their failed predictions for Iraq and US President George W Bush's efforts to reassure voters he is not a warmonger, prominent neo-conservatives and their Christian Right allies are nonetheless trying hard to prepare the ground for future US adventures in the Middle East.
Echoing increasingly threatening noises from the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon about preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, neo-cons are calling for Washington to undertake covert action, at the very least, to oust what some of them call the "terror masters" in Tehran as part of a more general "World War IV" against alleged Arab and Islamic extremism. (The Cold War is widely considered as World War III.)
Some neo-cons are even complaining that if Bush had been serious about the "war on terrorism", he should have taken on Iran after Afghanistan, rather than Iraq.
"Had we seen the war for what it was, we would not have started with Iraq, but with Iran, the mother of modern Islamic terrorism, the creator of Hezbollah, the ally of al-Qaeda, the sponsor of [Abu Musab al-]Zarqawi, the longtime sponsor of Fatah and the backbone of Hamas," wrote part-time Pentagon consultant Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) this week.
His article also reprised an argument he first made three years ago - that the Iranian people were already rising up against the mullahs and needed only a little nudge from Washington to succeed.
Neo-conservatives are also busy stoking tensions with Syria, even amid indications that Washington and Damascus are feeling their way toward some kind of "modus vivendi" that may even include joint military patrols along the latter's porous border with Iraq.
Last week they heard from a Syrian exile, Farid Ghadry, who apparently aspires to become the Ahmed Chalabi - the neo-con boosted leader of the exiled Iraqi National Congress whose standing in Washington plummeted after it was alleged he passed secrets to Iran - of his homeland.
In addition to lobbying for the pending Syria Liberation Act, which would commit the US government to "regime change" in Damascus, Ghadry charged that the government of President Bashir Assad was building "a new colony of terrorism" for youths in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley.
The neo-conservatives, who led the charge to war in Iraq, have steadily lost influence over US policy in Baghdad since a year ago, when US troops found themselves welcomed by a serious and growing insurgency rather than the flowers and sweets the neo-cons had predicted.
At the same time, Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, was reported to have told unhappy war hawks in the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney's office, the two neo-con strongholds, that Bush's re-election prospects would be greatly enhanced if there was "no war in '04".
Led by arch-realists Secretary of State Colin Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage, the State Department gradually wrested control over policy towards Syria and Iran. With US troops bogged down next door, a policy of confrontation, as advocated by neo-cons, not only risked another war, the realists argued, but could also invite more damaging efforts by both Damascus and Tehran to destabilize Iraq.
Wary engagement with both countries has thus become official policy. The recent visit by a high-level US delegation to Damascus and the invitation of European and Arab allies and Iraq's neighbors to attend a US-sponsored meeting on Iraq in Tehran later this fall mark hard-fought advances in the State Department's agenda.
But while the neo-cons may be down, they are by no means out. As more than one foreign-policy analyst has noted, no neo-con within the administration has resigned or been fired, despite their responsibility for the Iraqi quagmire and public calls by even some senior Republican lawmakers and retired military officers that they be ousted.
Some analysts have argued the neo-cons remain in place only because their departure now would amount to an admission by the administration - and thus Bush himself - that serious mistakes had been made. In this view, Bush would purge them in a second term, as he continued along the State Department's "realist" line.
But a growing number of observers, particularly in the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), are coming to the conclusion that the neo-cons may actually enjoy greater influence if Bush wins re-election.
In just the past few days, for example, an article, The State Department's Extreme Makeover, published by online magazine Slate and attributed to an "anonymous" veteran foreign service officer, made precisely this argument.
It is in this context that neo-cons' recent efforts to focus their fire on Syria and Iran, in particular, should be seen.
Ghadry spoke at an all-day symposium co-sponsored by the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), a predominantly neo-conservative lobby group set up in August, and by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a group created two days after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the US, whose views largely mirror those of Israel's ruling Likud Party.
On FDD's board of advisers are prominent neo-cons and Iraq war boosters, including former Defense Policy Board chairman and Ledeen's sidekick at AEI, Richard Perle; AEI fellow Jeane Kirkpatrick; and former CIA director James Woolsey, who also co-chairs the CPD.
Joining them are Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, whose own Project for the New American Century first named Iran and Syria - as well as Iraq and the Palestinian Authority - as targets of the "war on terrorism", in an open letter published just 10 days after September 11.
The conference was addressed briefly by telephone by former secretary of state George Shultz, the group's new co-chair, while Woolsey announced that former Czech Republic president Vaclav Havel and former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar had agreed to head an international chapter.
Keynoters for the symposium, titled "World War IV: Why We're Fighting, Whom We're Fighting, How We're Fighting", included Woolsey, who has long spoken of the fight against "Islamo-fascism" - defined as including "the mullahs of Iran", the Ba'athist parties of Iraq and Syria, and "the Wahhabis", of which the al-Qaeda terrorist group is a part - as the equivalent of a world war.
On hand was Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, whose participation appeared not only to provide an official sanction of the radical agenda, but also to confirm that the neo-con faction within the Bush administration is alive, kicking and unashamed despite the quagmire in Iraq.
Neo-conservative godfather Norman Podhoretz, who has also used "World War IV" as his favored description for the challenges Washington faces in the Near East, in particular, made a rare public appearance.
He called Israeli tactics in the occupied territories a "model for how to fight this kind of war", and asserted that "Iran is unquestionably on the agenda" of a second Bush administration.
"I have no doubt that we're going to have to do it and do it fast," he declared, noting there were "many different instrumentalities" at Washington's disposal for dealing with the mullahs and their nuclear program.
Podhoretz, whose son-in-law Elliott Abrams is the Middle East director on the National Security Council staff, also offered a sweeping vision of what the region might look like when the US triumphed.
Stressing the long-held Likud view that the nations of the region were artificial creations forged out of the defeated Ottoman Empire, he suggested, 'What was done in the aftermath of World War I can be undone in World War IV."
Two days later, the FDD helped convene the Middle Eastern American Convention for Freedom and Democracy to elaborate a foreign policy towards the region by several dozen mostly sectarian groups, including the American Coptic Association, the American Maronite Union, the Southern Sudanese Voice for Freedom, the Assyrian American National Federation, the Chaldean National Congress, the American Middle East Christian Association, Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa and the Washington Kurdish Institute.
(Inter Press Service) | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Oct 10, 2004 8:52 pm Post subject: Fwd: NY Times: Israeli nerves frayed by Iran |
| From: "ravenhawk
Subject: Fwd: NY Times: Israeli nerves frayed by Iran
It sure looks like the Israeli's have racheted Iran up
to their number one target in the Middle East, and have
sic'd their attack dog, America on it, I am sorry to have
to say and convey.
Mik
--- In eFreePalestine@yahoogroups.com, Sherri Muzher
<shehrezadm@y...> wrote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/weekinreview/10erla.html?
hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=login&adxnnlx=1097413492-
ch1F7ekdtOC7MwnwfrKBww&pagewanted=print&position=
---------------------------------
October 10, 2004Israel Trades One Nightmare for AnotherBy STEVEN
ERLANGER
ERUSALEM — One of the major winners of America's war on terrorism
has been nuclear-bound, terrorism-supporting Iran, and it is giving
the Israelis nightmares.
Israelis have been targets of terrorists since long before American
cities were struck three years ago - a fact driven home last week by
bombings that killed dozens of vacationing Israelis at three resorts
in Egypt. But the nightmares about Iran are of another dimension.
Iran - large, ambitious and run by radical clerics committed to the
destruction of the Jewish state - is seen by Israelis as the most
obvious and urgent threat today to Israel's very existence.
The overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan eliminated one of Iran's
main fundamentalist rivals to its east, while the overthrow of
Saddam Hussein to its west eliminated Iran's main military rival in
the Persian Gulf. Not only is Mr. Hussein gone, but much of Iraq is
in disorder, presenting opportunities for Iran to meddle in Iraq's
heavily Shiite south, even to create a kind of Iranistan there.
So the Israelis who plan for this country's security confront a
paradox: While they are relieved that the American invasion of Iraq
removed a sworn enemy, they are increasingly nervous about the
opportunities that the same invasion has opened for another. And
they see the Middle East moving from conventional military rivalries
to far more dangerous nuclear rivalries.
That is why Israeli officials have been threatening for months to
take "the necessary steps,'' as Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz puts
it, to prevent Iran, his birthplace, from developing nuclear weapons.
Behind that threat is a hope that the rest of the world can persuade
Iran, with threats and diplomacy, to drop the parts of its nuclear
program that could be used for armaments. But Israeli officials say
they have not had great success so far in encouraging a preoccupied
Washington, a conflicted Russia and a divided Europe to do much
about Iran except talk anxiously about it.
Iran's program - which its leaders maintain is for peaceful
purposes - is far more sophisticated and widespread than the single
Iraqi nuclear reactor Israel bombed in 1981, and Israeli officials
make clear that they do not want to act alone against Iran.
Iran, however, has an increasing number of cards to play in the
region. According to the Israeli military, it has strong influence
over the radical Palestinian group Hamas and over the Lebanese
Shiite group Hezbollah, which has been financing and organizing most
of the attacks against Israelis from the Palestinian West Bank. Iran
is gaining influence with the Shia factions jockeying for power in
southern Iraq. Officials in Washington have said Iran is helping to
foment anti-American resistance there. Most important, perhaps, Iran
has increasingly sophisticated Shahab missiles that could hit the
outskirts of Tel Aviv.
Iran's leaders do not acknowledge ambitions for nuclear arms, but
they are building reactors and there is logic for them wanting a
bomb: their neighbors India and Pakistan have nuclear arms, Israel
is presumed to have them, and American troops are on their borders.
Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the Israeli Parliament's foreign and
defense committee, argues that Iran is a clear danger for the entire
West, since it is working on an intercontinental missile that could
threaten Europe and NATO. "The Iran nuclear program is so ambitious
that after producing a first bomb, they could produce 20 bombs a
year," he said. "It's up to the Americans and Europeans to solve
Iran," he added, "not little Israel."
Mr. Steinitz's concerns are expressed as well by senior Israeli
political, military and intelligence officials who spoke on the
condition that they not be quoted by name. Israel has been pushing
Washington to deal with Iran's nuclear program since the mid-1990's.
"If Iran develops nuclear weapons, there will be a new Middle
East,'' said Gerald M. Steinberg of Bar-Ilan University. "It would
lead to a lot more brinkmanship and tension, with higher stakes for
Israel's survival and pressure on other countries, like Egypt, Saudi
Arabia and Syria, to develop nuclear weapons of their own.''
Amatzia Baram, a scholar of Iraq, thinks Israel and the region are
safer for now with Mr. Hussein gone. But the euphoria Israelis felt
following his quick defeat has dissipated, Mr. Baram says, and has
been replaced by anxiety over the possibility of American failure in
Iraq.
"So far, with the American Army in Iraq, things are O.K., if not
very stable, and in the best case, Iraq will settle down, a net gain
for Israel,'' said Mr. Baram, a professor of Middle Eastern history
at Haifa University. "But worst case, the Americans decide to go,"
he said, and that would mean: "There's no central control, growing
anarchy, western Iraq becomes a no man's land, like a little
Afghanistan. Iran will be a power broker in southern Iraq, and then
Jordan is under threat and there's more terrorism in the world."
"The jury's still out" on what will happen, he said, "and the stakes
are very high.''
Iran's nuclear ambitions began under Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi in
the 1970's, a time when the United States, France and Germany
competed to build reactors there and Iran and Israel were proto-
allies against a hostile Arab world. But the shah's overthrow in an
Islamic revolution in 1979 changed the Middle East.
Israel later watched with some relief as Mr. Hussein's Iraq fought a
war with Iran at such a bloody cost that both countries were
weakened for years. But both regimes survived, with their animosity
intact.
In the short run, Israel has gained enormously from the ouster of
Mr. Hussein, said Michael B. Oren, a historian and senior fellow at
Jerusalem's Shalem Center.
Not only did Mr. Hussein sent $25,000 checks to the families of
suicide bombers and promise to wipe Israel off the map, but his huge
if indifferent army was the focus of the old Israeli specter of a
massed invasion by Syrian, Jordanian and Iraqi armies moving
together against Israel's narrow waist. "That was our nightmare, and
it's over, buried,'' Mr. Oren said.
But in the long run, the situation in Iraq "is very uncertain,
hazardous and possibly catastrophic,'' he said. Even an American
success in democratizing Iraq "will almost definitely entail
majority Shia rule, linked to a rapidly nuclearizing Iran, causing
upheaval and increased expectations among Shias throughout the
Gulf.'' He imagines a Shiite belt from the Persian Gulf through
southern Lebanon, organized against America and Israel. "That's
scary, because the raison d'être of the Iranian regime is to export
holy war,'' he said. Also, Mr. Oren said, "there's a genuine fear
here that if America withdraws precipitously from Iraq, the initial
message, that the West will stand up to terror, is not only lost,
but supplanted by: 'You shoot at Americans and Westerners long
enough and they'll retreat, so don't stop shooting.' ''
For Dan Schueftan, a senior fellow at the National Security Studies
Center at Haifa University and at the Shalem Center, the situation
is deeply worrisome, but not yet a crisis. Mr. Hussein's fall, he
said, has been a clear benefit to Israel, which would have had Iran
as an enemy in any case. The improbability of a big land war means
that Israel's army can start renovating itself in earnest -
mothballing armor, cutting its size and acquiring high technology
like precision weapons, drones and anti-missile defenses that will
help deter Iran.
Iran presents a global problem "already recognized by the United
States and Europe, which is within missile range,'' Mr. Schueftan
said. "So we feel less lonely vis-à-vis Iran than we did with Iraq
in the 80's.''
But, he said, he worries about what Iran could do with nuclear
weapons, and their impact on the region.
A nuclear Iran would embolden Syria and Hezbollah to feel protected
by an Iranian nuclear umbrella, he suggested. Egypt and other Arab
countries would feel pressure to develop nuclear weapons, and other
radical regimes could come into being. Egypt is under pressure from
Islamic radicals. A change there, he said, "would change the region
completely.''
Mr. Baram also makes the point that Iran's regime is less secure
internally and more unpredictable than the Soviet regime that the
United States faced in the cold war. "In Iran, I can imagine some
commander, acting out of ideology, like some Dr. Strangelove,
shooting off a nuclear bomb against Israel,'' he said.
There would be deterrence of a kind between Iran and Israel, he
conceded, based on the old theory of mutually assured destruction,
or MAD. "But then everything hangs on MAD, and MAD in an area that
is mad enough is a big problem,'' he said. "And an existential one.''
And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may
live through its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise
above its own ashes. ~Khalil Gibran
--- End forwarded message --- | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2004 10:49 am Post subject: War in Iraq for Israel (Not Oil) |
| Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2004 22:13:44 -0700
From: "Jeffrey Blankfort" <jblankfort@earthlink.net>
Subject: The New York Times > International > Middle East > The U.N. Program: New Scrutiny of the Flow of Iraqi Oil to American Consumers
For those, like myself, who have argued that the war in Iraq was not
primarily "a war for oil" but a war for Israel, this article offers
proof that the major US oil companies were doing quite well dealing
with
Saddam and vice-versa without going to war and destabilizing the
industry.
Jeff
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/11/international/middleeast/11crude.html?oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/11/international/middleeast/11crude.html?oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=>
HTML Attachment [ Download File | Save to my Yahoo! Briefcase ]
var google_hints = "Oil+(Petroleum)+and+Gasoline,Iraq,ChevronTexaco+Corporation,United+Nations"; var google_ad_channel = "ar_international";
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October 11, 2004
THE U.N. PROGRAM
New Scrutiny of the Flow of Iraqi Oil to American Consumers
By SIMON ROMERO and SCOTT SHANE
s Saddam Hussein pressed the United Nations oil-for-food relief program for more money that he used to buy banned weapons, an unwitting ally may have been the American driver. Almost until the eve of the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, American oil companies were among the largest purchasers of Iraqi crude oil.
The role that the companies, including ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco, played in the oil-for-food program is now coming under greater scrutiny in the wake of a report by the chief arms inspector for the Central Intelligence Agency that disclosed how extensively Mr. Hussein was abusing profits from the oil sales.
Executives at the two companies insisted over the weekend that their purchases of Iraqi oil were not illegal or unknown in international oil markets in recent years. Industry analysts also said they did not know of any improprieties by the companies.
"All of our purchases of Iraqi crude were conducted in full compliance with the program," a spokesman for ChevronTexaco, Michael Barrett, said.
In 2001, Iraq was the source of 7 percent of all United States petroleum imports, ranking sixth behind the largest foreign suppliers: Saudi Arabia, Canada, Venezuela, Mexico and Nigeria, according to the Energy Department.
Yet while such imports were considered routine, disclosures about irregularities in how the Iraqi government selected partners to market the oil have led to several investigations of the program - by the United Nations, Congressional committees and a federal grand jury. The United States attorney's office in Manhattan has issued subpoenas to several American companies whose names appear on the Iraqi list as having received vouchers for Iraqi oil.
A spokesman for the House International Relations Committee said yesterday that the committee was exploring which oil companies had received Iraqi oil or had been trading in the vouchers. While committee investigators had been concentrating on the connection between vouchers and Iraqi arms purchases, the report issued last week by Charles A. Duelfer, the arms inspector, that named United States oil companies as recipients of vouchers was now prompting the panel's investigators to expand their inquiry to include the United States oil companies as well.
In the meantime, an investigator associated with the independent United Nations-appointed panel looking into corruption in the oil-for-food program, said that his group had not begun investigating whether or how American and other oil companies had benefited. The panel, led by Paul A. Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve system, is concentrating on accusations of wrongdoing by United Nations employees and companies like Cotecna Inspection of Switzerland and Saybolt International, a Dutch concern, which the United Nations hired to monitor parts of the program.
The investigator said that the panel would only begin to focus on oil companies that got Iraqi crude oil, with or without United Nations authorization, after this initial phase of the inquiry was completed, which is likely to be weeks or even months away. The investigator noted that the panel did not have subpoena power and lacked the authority to take punitive action against any company, American or foreign. Under the oil-for-food program, he said, member countries, not the United Nations, were responsible for ensuring that their companies obeyed sanctions against Iraq.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee has also joined the inquiry, with the chairman, Representative Joe L. Barton, Republican of Texas, sending a letter last Thursday to the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, asking Mr. Annan to release "any information in U.N. possession which relates to the use of oil-for-food money to produce chemical weapons in Iraq."
The oil-for-food program, over its life, resulted in $64.2 billion in sales, making it the world's largest relief program, American officials say. The amount of oil sold fluctuated as the program went on. At the start, in December 1996, Iraq was allowed to sell only $2 billion worth of oil every six months. That limit was raised to $5.26 billion every six months by December 1999 and then was lifted altogether, until the oil-for-food program came to an end in March 2003.
The program allowed Iraq the power to determine, with certain exceptions, whom it sold oil to and whom it bought goods from, based on the profits of the sale, according to the United Nations, but the United Nations had veto authority over all the contracts. For a United States oil company to participate, it first needed permission from Washington. The revenue ultimately financed $31 billion of relief supplies and equipment, including $1.6 billion of oil-industry spare parts and equipment, among other items, according to the United Nations.
At the same time, Mr. Hussein was imposing illegal surcharges, collecting kickbacks and smuggling oil outside the approved program, generating almost $11 billion in illicit revenue, which he used to buy weapons, other prohibited items and to build lavish palaces, according to the Duelfer report.
Moreover, oil experts have said, the largest source of money from unreported oil sales was from Iraq's illicit sale of oil to neighboring Turkey and Jordan. Neither the United States nor Britain objected to these sales to staunch Middle East allies until Mr. Hussein's government began making similar oil shipments to Syria. Only then did Washington protest the deals, the experts said.
Regardless of the route through which this oil reached world markets, the United States was the single largest importer under the United Nations program, with as much as half the oil in certain periods processed at American refineries for sale in this country.
During the first seven months of 2002, the United States imported an average of 566,000 barrels a day from Iraq, with big importers including ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, Valero Energy and Koch Petroleum, according to the Energy Department.
These American companies acquired the oil after it passed through a complicated route of trading concerns and intermediaries. The Duelfer report said that Bayoil, a Houston-based trading company, and Oscar S. Wyatt Jr., a prominent Texas energy investor with a long history of dealings in Iraq, were among those who received vouchers to buy Iraqi oil under the program. Their receipt of these oil allocations does not mean that they did anything illegal.
Mr. Wyatt did not respond yesterday to requests for comment, and messages left at Bayoil's offices were not answered.
Illustrating the convoluted way Iraqi oil reached the United States, the Energy Information Administration estimated in late 2002 that about 30 percent of it was first sold to Russian companies, with the rest bought by companies from nations including Cyprus, Sudan and Pakistan.
The Iraqi oil was resold to intermediaries who then marketed it internationally, largely to American oil companies. For example, in 2001, the energy administration estimated that significant amounts of Iraqi crude oil wound up at American refineries, some of which had been built decades ago in part to handle Iraqi blends.
Almost 80 percent of crude oil from the Basra region and more than 30 percent of oil from Kirkuk went to the United States in 2001, according to the energy administration. Imports of Iraqi oil under the program grew from an average of 89,000 barrels a day in 1997, to a peak of 795,000 barrels in 2001, and then declining to 459,000 barrels a day in 2002, the Energy Department said.
Eric Lipton and Judith Miller contributed reporting for this article. | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Oct 23, 2004 6:35 pm Post subject: How to Skew Intelligence |
| The following article (appearing in the New York Times today - October 23rd, 2004) is exactly what James Bamford conveys via the URL below in association with his excellent new book ('A Pretext for War') about how the Zionist (JINSA/CSP/PNAC) neoconservatives (most of whom are Jewish Zionist extremist racists against Arabs) in the Bush regime pushed the US to invade/occupy Iraq for their Likud cronies in Israel.
James Bamford's new book ('A Pretext for War') also conveys how US support of Israel's brutal oppression of the Palestinian people was the root cause for the World Trade Center attacks in 1993 and on 9/11 as well:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/articles/2004/07/22/james-bamford-on-msnbc-hardball-about-a-pretext-for-war.php
From: "Jim Bronke" <jvbronke@comcast.net>
Subject: How to Skew Intelligence
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 08:33:53 -0400
The NY Times finally got it right (after the damage has been done). We have to hold Bush accountable. The reality is that any good sleuth knew this before the war. Hence, the inherent shortcomings of our news media. Anyone who would buy in to an argument that Iraq was a real threat to America is missing some serious screws somewhere.
jb
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/23/opinion/23sat1.html?oref=login
October 23, 2004
EDITORIAL
How to Skew Intelligence
t's long been obvious that the allegations about Saddam Hussein's dangerous weapons and alliance with Osama bin Laden were false. But as the election draws closer, the remaining question is to what extent President Bush's team knew the allegations were wrong and used them anyway to persuade Americans to back the invasion of Iraq.
A report issued Thursday by the senior Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin of Michigan, shows that on the question of an Iraqi-Qaeda axis, Mr. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and others offered an indictment that was essentially fabricated in the office of Douglas Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy.
Mr. Levin's report does not prove that President Bush knew that the Hussein-bin Laden alliance was fiction. But officials like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz - as well as Mr. Cheney's chief of staff and the deputy national security adviser - knew that Mr. Feith's tailored conclusions were contrary to the views of the entire intelligence community. Mr. Cheney presented them to the public as confirmed truth about Iraq and Al Qaeda.
The Levin report is a primer on how intelligence can be cooked to fit a political agenda. It is another sad reminder of this administration's refusal to hold anyone accountable for the way the public was led into the war with Iraq.
It focuses on the intelligence operation set up by Mr. Rumsfeld, who had been advocating an invasion of Iraq long before Mr. Bush took office and wanted more damning evidence against Baghdad after 9/11 than the Central Intelligence Agency had.
This operation, run by Mr. Feith, tried to persuade the Pentagon's own espionage unit, the Defense Intelligence Agency, to change its conclusion that there was no alliance between Iraq and Al Qaeda. When the Defense Intelligence Agency rebuffed this blatant interference, Mr. Feith's team wrote its own report.
It took long-discredited raw intelligence and resurrected it to create the impression that there was new information supporting Mr. Feith's preordained conclusions. It misrepresented the C.I.A.'s reports and presented fifth-hand reports as authoritative, all to depict Iraq as an ally of Al Qaeda.
Bipartisan reports from the 9/11 commission and the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that the intelligence community had been right and Mr. Feith wrong: there was no operational relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda, and no link at all between Mr. Hussein and the 9/11 attacks.
For those who were confused before the war, and still are, by all the Bush administration's claims - that the hijacker Mohamed Atta met with an Iraqi official shortly before 9/11, that a member of Al Qaeda set up a base in Iraq with the help of Mr. Hussein, that Iraq helped Al Qaeda learn to make bombs and provided it with explosives - the evidence is now clear. The Levin report, together with the 9/11 panel's findings and the Senate intelligence report, show that those claims were all cooked up by Mr. Feith's shop, which knew that the C.I.A. and the Defense Intelligence Agency had already shown them to be false.
We don't know exactly how much of that the White House knew because Mr. Feith tried to confuse things. He eliminated points that the C.I.A. disputed when he showed the intelligence agency his report, and he put them back in when he sent it to the White House.
The Bush administration called Mr. Levin's report pre-election partisan sniping. It is far more than that, but voters, unfortunately, won't get final answers.
The Senate Intelligence Committee, which has reported on the C.I.A.'s actions before the war, has delayed a review of the administration's behavior until after the election. We also will not see the C.I.A.'s own report because Mr. Bush's new intelligence chief, Porter Goss, has rebuffed a bipartisan request from Congress to release it.
Voters have to decide whether to hold Mr. Bush accountable for the skewed intelligence cooked up by his administration to justify the war.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |
Jim Bronke
This email is an _expression of my personal opinion only and does not represent that of any other entity.
If a friend forwarded this to you and should you wish to be on my list just ask. My listers know they can
be removed at any time if they wish.
jvbronke@comcast.net | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Oct 28, 2004 9:39 am Post subject: Bush or Kerry: Any Real Difference in Foreign Policy? |
| http://www.ihr.org/news/041026_weber.shtml
October 26, 2004
Bush or Kerry: Any Real Difference in Foreign Policy?
by Mark Weber
Oct. 26, 2004
President George W. Bush's fervent support for Israel and its hardline premier is well known. He reaffirmed it, for example, in June 2002 in a major speech on the Middle East. In the view of "leading Israeli commentators," the London Times reported, the address was "so pro-Israel that it might have been written by Ariel Sharon."
Indeed, concern for Israel's security was an important factor in Bush's decision to invade Iraq. This is so widely understood by Washington insiders that US Senator Ernest Hollings was moved in May to declare that Iraq was invaded "to secure Israel," and that "everybody" knows it. Referring to the cowardly reluctance of his Congressional colleagues to openly acknowledge this reality, Hollings said that "nobody is willing to stand up and say what is going on." Due to "the pressures we get politically," he added, members of Congress uncritically support Israel and its policies.
In August 2002, some months before the invasion of Iraq, General Wesley Clark, the former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, said in an interview: "Those who favor this attack now will tell you candidly, and privately, that it is probably true that Saddam Hussein is no threat to the United States. But they are afraid at some point he might decide if he had a nuclear weapon to use it against Israel."
In an address to pro-Israel activists at this year's convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Bush said: "The United States is strongly committed, and I am strongly committed, to the security of Israel as a vibrant Jewish state." He also told the gathering: "By defending the freedom and prosperity and security of Israel, you're also serving the cause of America."
Condoleeza Rice, Bush's National Security Advisor, echoed the president's outlook in a May 2003 interview, saying that the "security of Israel is the key to the security of the world."
In light of all this, it's no wonder that millions of people — across the United States and around the world — look with hope to Bush's challenger in this year's presidential election campaign.
But is John Kerry really an alternative? Although he is more polished and articulate than Bush, Kerry's record of emphatic commitment to Jewish and Zionist interests offers little reason to believe that, as president, he would chart a fundamentally different policy in the strife-torn Middle East.
In an advertisement issued by their campaign and published in the Jewish community weekly Forward (Sept. 17), Kerry and his vice-presidential running mate, John Edwards, proclaim that "Israel's cause must be America's cause." They also renew their "commitment to a safe and secure Jewish state of Israel," and pledge to "strengthen our special relationship with Israel." In another ad by their campaign (Forward, Sept. 24), Kerry and Edwards proclaim that they "have always stood firmly with Israel," and that "they stand with American Jews on every issue."
Kerry has named Mel Levine, an ardent Zionist, as his top advisor on Middle East affairs. Levine, a former US Congressman, has been a board member of AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobby organization.
During the presidential campaign debate on Sept. 30, which focused on US foreign policy, neither Bush nor Kerry made a single reference to the Israel-Palestine conflict. To be sure, each did mention Israel, but only to reaffirm his commitment to the Zionist state.
"A free Iraq," said Bush, "will be an ally in the war on terror, and that's essential. A free Iraq will set a powerful example in the part of the world that is desperate for freedom. A free Iraq will help secure Israel. A free Iraq will enforce the hopes and aspirations of the reformers in places like Iran. A free Iraq is essential for the security of this country."
Kerry was no less fervent in his _expression of concern for Israel: "Soldiers know over there [in Iraq] that this isn't being done right yet. I'm going to get it right for those soldiers, because it's important to Israel, it's important to America, it's important to the world, it's important to the fight on terror."
Two decades ago, Admiral Thomas Moorer, one-time Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke with blunt exasperation about the Zionist hold on Washington: "I've never seen a President — I don't care who he is — stand up to them [the Israelis]. It just boggles the mind. They always get what they want... If the American people understood what a grip those people have got on our government, they would rise up in arms. Our citizens certainly don't have any idea what goes on."
Most Americans are still clueless.
Bush and Kerry, like most US politicians, are so beholden to Jewish-Zionist power, and so committed to Israel and its interests, that regardless of who wins the presidential election on November 2, there will be no real change in US foreign policy, and certainly not in the Middle East.
See also: A Look at the 'Powerful Jewish Lobby' | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
