| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2004 9:31 am Post subject: Iraq was invaded to protect Israel - U.S. official |
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Date: Sun, 5 Sep 2004 22:13:43 EDT
Subject: Iraq was invaded to protect Israel - U.S. official
To:
RePortersNoteBook Memo:
Just before the invasion of Iraq I saw Senator Orin Hatch being
interviewed.
He was being quite candid about the impending invasion and said that if
we
didn't attack Iraq, the Israelis would. He said this in an almost
matter of fact
way that implied that this reason alone was sufficient for justifying
the
attack. At no time did this interviewer ask how such an attack was in
the United
States' best interest nor did he volunteer any such explanation.
I had always felt that Israel had in some way ''blackmailed'' the U.S.
into
''doing'' Iraq with conventional forces lest she destroy her with
nuclear
weapons. I think the same threat is on the table regarding Iran. Keep
in mind that
even though Israel is the regional superpower, she lacks the
conventional
military depth and logistics to bring about regime change and the long
term
occupation of her more populous and distant enemies. ( remember the
difficulties
Israel faced when she invaded and occupied a small sliver of Lebanon)
--joe
GiuseppeFurioso@aol.com
============
Iraq was invaded to protect Israel - U.S. official
http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2004/9/1093.htm
ISRAELGATE:
ISRAEL AND THE JEWISH NEOCONS LIED AND
PUSHED AND SPIED TO BRING ABOUT IRAQ INVASION
"Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against
us? I'll tell you what I think the real threat [is] and actually has
been
since 1990 - it's the threat against Israel... And this is the threat
that
dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don't care deeply about
that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government
doesn't
want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular
sell."
Pentagon Defense Intelligence Board
Member Philip Zeikow, 10 September 2002
"Israel secretly maintains a large and active intelligence-
gathering operation in the United States that has long
attempted to recruit U.S. officials as spies and to procure
classified documents, U.S. government officials said."
Los Angeles Times,
3 September 2004
MER - Mid-East Realities - MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 4 Sept 04:
Richard Perle, the Israeli-connected top neocon forced to resign as
head of
the Defense Intelligence Board who just in recent days has been
publicly
accused of gross multi-million dollar looting of a major corporation,
brought Philip
Zelikow onto the Defense Intelligence Board of which he was Chairman
shortly
after the Bush/Cheney takeover in Washington.
Down the road the White House and the Republican Congressional
leadership
made the same Philip Zelikow Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission,
which has
since been quite accurately accused of mostly covering up government
failings
and actual policies.
But one year after 9/11, while speaking extemporaneously at a
university
forum, Mr. Zelikow partially let the cat out of the bag when he
actually admitted
that the major reason the U.S. was going to invade Iraq was in order to
protect Israel. Now the Vice-President himself was reported to have
said much the
same during a visit to Israel earlier that same year -- and MER
reported this at
the time -- but there was no actual recording of those secretive
meetings in
Israel.
Now that the new Israeli spy scandal has broken into public view, the
top-level connections between the Jewish neocons at the Pentagon and
the National
Security Council -- among them Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, and
Elliott Abrams
-- the following and associated stories first published earlier this
year
deserve much more than a second look. They should in fact be the basis
for a
full-fledged journalistic investigation into what could yet be called
ISRAELGATE.
==========
Iraq was invaded 'to protect Israel' - US official
By Emad Mekay
Asia Times - 3/31/2004 - Washington: Iraq under Saddam Hussein did not
pose a
threat to the United States, but it did to Israel, which is one reason
why
Washington invaded the Arab country, according to a speech made by a
member of a
top-level White House intelligence group.
Inter Press Service uncovered the remarks by Philip Zelikow, who is now
the
executive director of the body set up to investigate the terrorist
attacks on
the US in September 2001 - the 9/11 commission - in which he suggests a
prime
motive for the invasion just over one year ago was to eliminate a
threat to
Israel, a staunch US ally in the Middle East.
Zelikow's casting of the attack on Iraq as one launched to protect
Israel
appears at odds with the public position of US President George W Bush
and his
administration, which has never overtly drawn the link between its war
on the
regime of Saddam and its concern for Israel's security.
The administration has instead insisted it launched the war to liberate
the
Iraqi people, destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and to
protect
the United States.
Zelikow made his statements about "the unstated threat" during his
tenure on
a highly knowledgeable and well-connected body known as the President's
Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), which reports directly to
the
president. He served on the board between 2001 and 2003.
"Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I'll
tell
you what I think the real threat [is] and actually has been since 1990
- it's
the threat against Israel," Zelikow told a crowd at the University of
Virginia
on September 10, 2002, speaking on a panel of foreign policy experts
assessing
the impact of September 11 and the future of the war on al-Qaeda.
"And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the
Europeans
don't care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the
American
government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it
is not
a popular sell," said Zelikow.
The statements are the first to surface from a source closely linked to
the
Bush administration acknowledging that the war, which has so far cost
the lives
of nearly 600 US troops and thousands of Iraqis, was motivated by
Washington's desire to defend the Jewish state.
The administration, which is surrounded by staunch pro-Israel,
neo-conservative hawks, is currently fighting an extensive campaign to
ward off accusations
that it derailed the "war on terrorism" it launched after September 11
by
taking a detour to Iraq, which appears to have posed no direct threat
to the US.
Israel is Washington's biggest ally in the Middle East, receiving
annual
direct aid of US$3-4 billion.
Even though members of the 16-person PFIAB come from outside
government, they
enjoy the confidence of the president and have access to all
information
related to foreign intelligence that they need to play their vital
advisory role.
Known in intelligence circles as "Piffy-ab", the board is supposed to
evaluate
the nation's intelligence agencies and probe any mistakes they make.
The
unpaid appointees on the board require a security clearance known as
"code word"
that is higher than top secret.
The national security adviser to former president George H W Bush
(1989-93)
Brent Scowcroft, currently chairs the board in its work overseeing a
number of
intelligence bodies, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the
various
military intelligence groups and the Pentagon's National Reconnaissance
Office.
Neither Scowcroft nor Zelikow returned numerous phone calls and e-mail
messages from IPS for this story.
Zelikow has long-established ties to the Bush administration. Before
his
appointment to PFIAB in October 2001, he was part of the current
president's
transition team in January 2001. In that capacity, Zelikow drafted a
memo for
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice on reorganizing and
restructuring the
National Security Council (NSC) and prioritizing its work.
Richard A Clarke, who was counter-terrorism coordinator for Bush's
predecessor president Bill Clinton (1993-2001) also worked for Bush
senior, and has
recently accused the current administration of not heeding his
terrorism warnings.
Clarke said that Zelikow was among those he briefed about the urgent
threat
from al-Qaeda in December 2000.
Rice herself had served in the NSC during the first Bush
administration, and
subsequently teamed up with Zelikow on a 1995 book about the
unification of
Germany.
Zelikow had ties with another senior Bush administration official -
Robert
Zoellick, the current trade representative. The two wrote three books
together,
including one in 1998 on the United States and the Muslim Middle East.
Aside from his position on the 9/11 commission, Zelikow is now also
director
of the Miller Center of Public Affairs and White Burkett Miller
Professor of
History at the University of Virginia. His close ties to the
administration
prompted accusations of a conflict of interest in 2002 from families of
victims
of the September attacks, who protested his appointment to the
investigative
body.
In his university speech, Zelikow, who strongly backed attacking the
Iraqi
dictator, also explained the threat to Israel by arguing that Baghdad
was
preparing in 1990-91 to spend huge amounts of "scarce hard currency" to
harness
"communications against electromagnetic pulse", a side-effect of a
nuclear
explosion that could sever radio, electronic and electrical
communications.
That was "a perfectly absurd expenditure unless you were going to ride
out a
nuclear exchange - they [Iraqi officials] were not preparing to ride
out a
nuclear exchange with us. Those were preparations to ride out a nuclear
exchange
with the Israelis," according to Zelikow.
He also suggested that the danger of biological weapons falling into
the
hands of the anti-Israeli Islamic Resistance Movement, known by its
Arabic acronym
Hamas, would threaten Israel rather than the US, and that those weapons
could
have been developed to the point where they could deter Washington from
attacking Hamas.
"Play out those scenarios," he told his audience, "and I will tell you,
people have thought about that, but they are just not talking very much
about it".
"Don't look at the links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, but then ask
yourself the
question, 'gee, is Iraq tied to Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad
and
the people who are carrying out suicide bombings in Israel?' Easy
question to
answer; the evidence is abundant."
To date, the possibility of the US attacking Iraq to protect Israel has
been
only timidly raised by some intellectuals and writers, with few public
acknowledgements from sources close to the administration. Analysts who
reviewed
Zelikow's statements said that they are concrete evidence of one factor
in the
rationale for going to war, which hasbeen hushed up.
"Those of us speaking about it sort of routinely referred to the
protection
of Israel as a component," said Phyllis Bennis of the Washington-based
Institute of Policy Studies. "But this is a very good piece of evidence
of that."
Others say that the administration should be blamed for not making
known to
the public its true intentions and real motives for invading Iraq.
"They [the
administration] made a decision to invade Iraq, and then started to
search for
a policy to justify it. It was a decision in search of a policy and
because of
the odd way they went about it, people are trying to read something
into it,"
said Nathan Brown, professor of political science at George Washington
University and an expert on the Middle East.
But he downplayed the Israel link. "In terms of securing Israel, it
doesn't
make sense to me because the Israelis are probably more concerned about
Iran
than they were about Iraq in terms of the long-term strategic threat,"
he said.
Still, Brown says that Zelikow's words carried weight. "Certainly his
position would allow him to speak with a little bit more expertise
about the thinking
of the Bush administration, but it doesn't strike me that he is any
more
authoritative than [Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul] Wolfowitz, or
Rice or
[Secretary of State Colin] Powell or anybody else. All of them were
sort of fishing
about for justification for a decision that has already been made,"
Brown
said. Asia Times - 31 March 2004
(Inter Press Service)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FC31Aa01.html
Israel Has Long Spied on U.S., Say Officials
By Bob Drogin and Greg Miller
The Los Angeles Times - 03 September 2004 - WASHINGTON - Despite its
fervent
denials, Israel secretly maintains a large and active
intelligence-gathering
operation in the United States that has long attempted to recruit U.S.
officials as spies and to procure classified documents, U.S. government
officials
said.
FBI and other counterespionage agents, in turn, have covertly followed,
bugged and videotaped Israeli diplomats, intelligence officers and
others in
Washington, New York and elsewhere, the officials said. The FBI
routinely watches
many diplomats assigned to America.
Officials said FBI surveillance of a senior Israeli diplomat, who was
the
subject of an FBI inquiry in 1997-98, played a role in the latest probe
into
possible Israeli spying. The bureau now is investigating whether a
Pentagon
analyst or pro-Israel lobbyists provided Israel with a highly
classified draft
policy document. The document advocated support for Iranian dissidents,
radio
broadcasts into Iran and other efforts aimed at destabilizing the
regime in Tehran,
officials said this week.
The case is unresolved, but it has highlighted Israel's unique status
as an
extremely close U.S. ally that presents a dilemma for U.S.
counterintelligence
officials.
"There is a huge, aggressive, ongoing set of Israeli activities
directed
against the United States," said a former intelligence official who was
familiar
with the latest FBI probe and who recently left government. "Anybody
who worked
in counterintelligence in a professional capacity will tell you the
Israelis
are among the most aggressive and active countries targeting the United
States."
The former official discounted repeated Israeli denials that the
country
exceeded acceptable limits to obtain information.
"They undertake a wide range of technical operations and human
operations,"
the former official said. "People here as liaison ... aggressively
pursue
classified intelligence from people. The denials are laughable."
Current and former officials involved with Israel at the White House,
CIA,
State Department and in Congress had similar appraisals, although not
all were
as harsh in their assessments. A Bush administration official confirmed
that
Israel ran intelligence operations against the United States. "I don't
know of
any foreign government that doesn't do collection in Washington," he
said.
Another U.S. official familiar with Israeli intelligence said that
Israeli
espionage efforts were more subtle than aggressive, and typically
involved the
use of intermediaries.
But a former senior intelligence official, who focused on Middle East
issues,
said Israel tried to recruit him as a spy in 1991.
"I had an Israeli intelligence officer pitch me in Washington at the
time of
the first Gulf War," he said. "I said, 'No, go away,' and reported it
to
counterintelligence."
The U.S. officials all insisted on anonymity because classified
material was
involved and because of the political sensitivity of Israeli relations
with
Washington. Congress has shown little appetite for vigorous
investigations of
alleged Israeli spying.
In his first public comments on the case, Israel's ambassador, Daniel
Ayalon,
repeated his government's denials this week. "I can tell you here, very
authoritatively, very categorically, Israel does not spy on the United
States,"
Ayalon told CNN. "We do not gather information on our best friend and
ally."
Ayalon said his government had been "very assured that this thing will
just fizzle
out. There's nothing there."
In public, Israel contends it halted all spying operations against the
United
States after 1986, when Jonathan Jay Pollard, a former Navy analyst,
was
convicted in U.S. federal court and sentenced to life in prison for
selling secret
military documents to Israel.
U.S. officials say the case was never fully resolved because a
damage-assessment team concluded that Israel had at least one more
high-level spy at the
time, apparently inside the Pentagon, who had provided serial numbers
of
classified documents for Pollard to retrieve.
The FBI has investigated several incidents of suspected intelligence
breaches
involving Israel since the Pollard case, including a 1997 case in which
the
National Security Agency bugged two Israeli intelligence officials in
Washington discussing efforts to obtain a sensitive U.S. diplomatic
document. Israel
denied wrongdoing in that case and all others, and no one has been
prosecuted.
But U.S. diplomats, military officers and other officials are routinely
warned before going to Israel that local agents are known to slip into
homes and
hotel rooms of visiting delegations to go through briefcases and to
copy
computer files.
"Any official American in the intelligence community or in the foreign
service gets all these briefings on all the things the Israelis are
going to try to
do to you," said one U.S. official.
At the same time, experts said relations between the CIA and Israel's
chief
intelligence agency, the Mossad, were so close that analysts sometimes
shared
highly classified "code-word" intelligence on sensitive subjects. Tel
Aviv
routinely informs Washington of the identities of the Mossad station
chief and the
military intelligence liaison at its embassy in America.
"They probably get 98% of everything they want handed to them on a
weekly
basis," said the former senior U.S. intelligence officer who has worked
closely
with Israeli intelligence. "They're very active allies. They're treated
the way
the British are."
Another former intelligence operative who has worked with Israeli
intelligence agreed. "The relationship with Israeli intelligence is as
intimate as it
gets," he said.
Officials said Israel was acutely interested in U.S. policies and
intelligence on the Middle East, especially toward Iran, Syria and
Saudi Arabia.
"They are sophisticated enough to want to know where the levers are
they can
influence, which people in our government are taking which positions
they can
try to influence," said a former high-ranking CIA official.
But the official said the relationship between the U.S. and Israel, at
least
in intelligence circles, "is not one of complete trust at all."
The latest counterintelligence investigation began more than two years
ago,
and initially focused on whether officials from a powerful Washington
lobbying
group, the American Israel Political Action Committee, passed
classified
information to Israel, officials said.
Several months later, the FBI conducted surveillance of Naor Gilon,
chief of
political affairs at the Israeli Embassy, meeting with two AIPAC
officials.
The arrival of a veteran Iran analyst at the Pentagon, Larry Franklin,
sparked a
new line of FBI inquiry.
In 1997 and 1998, the FBI had monitored Gilon as part of an
investigation
into whether Scott Ritter, then a U.S. intelligence official working
with U.N.
weapons inspectors in Iraq, was improperly delivering U.S. spy-plane
film and
other secret material to Israeli intelligence. Gilon was posted in New
York at
the time and operated as liaison between Israel's Anan, or military
intelligence service, and the U.N. teams, several officials said.
"Naor was the focus of FBI surveillance into allegations that I was a
mole,"
said Ritter, who was never charged in the case. "They suspected Naor
was
working me to gain access to U.S. intelligence, which was absurd."
In an e-mail message this week, Gilon said he was under orders not to
talk to
the media about the current case. He has denied any wrongdoing in
interviews
with Israeli newspapers.
Franklin has not responded to requests for comment, and officials said
he was
cooperating with authorities. The FBI interviewed several AIPAC
officials
last Friday and copied the contents of a computer hard drive. AIPAC has
denied
any wrongdoing and said it was cooperating fully with investigators.
In a statement released Thursday, AIPAC said the group's continued
access to
the White House, senior administration officials and ranking members of
Congress during the two-year probe would have been "inconceivable ...
if any shred
of evidence of disloyalty or even negligence on AIPAC's part" had been
discovered.
AIPAC, has especially close ties to the Bush administration. Addressing
the
group's policy conference on May 18, President Bush praised AIPAC for
"serving
the cause of America" and for highlighting the nuclear threat from
Iran.
Washington and Tel Aviv differ on their assessments of Iran's nuclear
weapons
development. Israel considers Iran's nuclear ambitions its No. 1
security
threat, and the issue is the top priority for AIPAC. The Bush
administration
takes the Iran nuclear threat seriously, but its intelligence estimates
classify
the danger as less imminent than do the Israeli assessments.
What mystifies those who know AIPAC is how one of the savviest,
best-connected lobbying organizations in Washington has found itself
enmeshed in a spy
investigation.
Although never previously implicated in a potential espionage case,
AIPAC has
frequently been a subject of controversy. Its close ties to Israel and
its
aggressive advocacy of Israeli government positions has drawn criticism
that it
should be registered as an agent of a foreign country. Others, noting
its
ability to organize significant backing for or against candidates
running for
national office, have demanded that it be classified as a political
action
committee.
So far the group has avoided both classifications, either of which
would
impose major restrictions on its activities.
Three years ago, Fortune magazine ranked AIPAC fourth on its list of
Washington's 25 most powerful lobbying groups - ahead of such
organizations as the
AFL-CIO and the American Medical Assn.
Times staff writers Mark Mazzetti and Tyler Marshall in Washington
contributed to this report.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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RePorterNoteBook@aol.com | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2004 10:02 am Post subject: FBI probes Jewish sway on Bush government |
| Even Israelis like Uri Avnery know that the Iraq invasion was for Israel and that most of the neoconservatives who pushed for the invasion are Jewish:
http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery04102003.html
Neoconservatism is a Jewish movement:
http://www.vdare.com/misc/macdonald_neoconservatism.htm
Iraq War for Israel:
http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/02/12/Counterpunch_1.html
http://www.leftcurve.org/LC28WebPages/WarForIsrael.html
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/473428.html
FBI probes Jewish sway on Bush government
By Nathan Guttman
WASHINGTON - The FBI investigation into the Pentagon mole affair has expanded beyond data analyst Larry Franklin's immediate circle to encompass the entire issue of Jewish influence on the neoconservative part of the administration.
The FBI queries have recently been focusing on a number of officials, all from the neoconservative wing, who had access to the debates on Iranian affairs, the Washington Post reported yesterday.
The officials include Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith; Pentagon adviser Richard Perle; adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, David Wormser; and Iran specialist Harold Rhode, all of them Jews.
The Washington Post reported that FBI people recently spoke to administration officials and Middle East experts to sound them out on the suspicion that senior officials funneled secret material to Israel. They asked each official whether he believes that a certain group of people could spy for Israel and transfer secret information.
The investigation now appears to center on the claim made by the opponents of the neoconservatives in the administration - that the latter are responsible for the U.S. Middle East policy and that they are suspected of bias in favor of Israel's interests.
The issues being queried have also increased. It transpires that the FBI is investigating, in addition to funneling classified information to Israel, the possibility that secret information had been given to Ahmed Chalabi, of the Iraqi opposition. Chalabi was close to many of the people mentioned in the affair and was a central source of information to the Americans on the goings-on in Iraq before the war.
The Washington Post said the FBI asked the administration officials about Israeli embassy officials in Washington who allegedly held contacts with administration officials to procure secret information. So far, only the name of Naor Gilon, the political adviser in the embassy, was mentioned as involved in the affair.
The L.A. Times reported on Friday that the American administration does not believe Israel's contention that it does not spy on America and that U.S. government officials say Israel secretly maintains a large and active intelligence-gathering operation in the U.S.
The officials said the FBI and other bodies spy on Israeli diplomats in Washington and New York as a matter of routine. The report said that Israel has long attempted to recruit U.S. officials as spies and to procure classified documents, according to the Times.
Israel said it set a policy of not spying on the United States after Jonathan Pollard's arrest in November 1985 and the damage it did to bilateral relations in general and to intelligence and security ties in particular. For 20 years, Israel said, that policy has translated into unequivocal directives to the intelligence and defense communities: They are not allowed to locate candidates for recruiting as agents, cannot recruit and operate agents, nor pay for information. | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
