| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2004 4:30 pm Post subject: A Neocon By Any Other Name |
| http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=3669
September 29, 2004
A Neocon By Any Other Name
They don't want to be named – and who can blame them?
by Justin Raimondo
The neoconservative movement is going underground – in plain sight. Now there's a unique political tactic. How to hide, while the eyes of the whole world are upon you? It's easy: simply declare it a hate crime to call things by their right names.
The Wall Street Journal editorial page is not usually the place to find comedy – unless it's of the unintentional variety. But a great exception was apparently made in the case of one Julia Gorin, whose bio credits her with being part of "The Right Stuff," a claque of ostensibly conservative comedians performing under the slogan "comedy – for real Americans!" I can hear her now, exhorting an indifferent audience to laugh – or be declared illegal combatants.
But Gorin's subject matter is no laughing matter.
She starts out her essay apparently miffed that Pat Buchanan got a gig on Comedy Central's The Daily Show, and that host Jon Stewart and Pat "bonded" over their common opposition to the "liberation," as Gorin puts it, of Iraq. Oh, it was terrrrrible, she whines, that awful Buchanan "derided 'neoconservatives' four times in the course of the six-minute interview."
But why, one has to ask, was Ms. Gorin sitting there counting words? After all, that isn't exactly what one would call listening. But she wasn't interested in what Pat had to say. She was busy keeping score, because, you see, she has a score of her own to settle:
"In his efforts to promote his and his guest's common agenda, Mr. Stewart didn't ask Mr. Buchanan what he meant by 'neoconservatives.' It was clear that the Jewish Mr. Stewart didn't realize that Mr. Buchanan was using what has become an epithet for 'Jews' – an epithet employed most often by the left."
Air America is a major "culprit," according to Gorin. Janeane Garafalo "and other hosts" routinely attack "the neocons" – and mention only Wolfowitz, Perle, Abrams, and Libby. What, she cries, no gentiles? Quick! Someone dial 911 – there's a hate crime in progress!
But Richard Perle comes in for his fair share of opprobrium not because he's Jewish, but because he's Richard Perle, war profiteer and bloodthirsty shrike – a seemingly semi-permanent fixture on the national security scene, and one who has been around since forever. The same bad apples keep showing up: Elliott "Iran-Contra" Abrams, Paul "Liberate Lithuania!" Wolfowitz, and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who entered government service in 1981. These guys hire each other, promote each other's work, and reinforce a commonly-held view that U.S. military power, wielded by a righteous elite, is destined to impose "benevolent global hegemony" on a reluctant world.
In short, we've had to listen to these war birds screech up a storm since the 1970s. Why shouldn't we name them? Does anybody need an explanation of why, in a discussion of American foreign policy, Paul Wolfowitz's name comes up – other than that he's Deputy Secretary of Defense, Rummy's right-hand man, and widely recognized as the intellectual architect of this war?
For Gorin to pretend that the neocons are a phenomenon that requires some detailed explanation, as if they'd just recently dropped down from Mars and into our political life, is laughable – and not the kind of laugh a comedian is usually after.
No doubt aware that her act isn't working, Gorin goes into her Lenny Bruce imitation in a vain attempt to shock her audience into reacting:
"When a member of the enlightened classes, or Pat Buchanan, makes reference to a 'neocon,' what he's saying is 'yid.' That's right, 'neoconservative,' particularly in its shortened form, when employed by a nonconservative (or by Buchananites) and therefore meant derogatorily, is the modern, albeit more specific, word for 'kike' that the left can say."
I like the part about "particularly in its shortened form" – as if abbreviation is a form of denigration. But how, exactly, does that work? Is paleocon – the shortened form of paleoconservative – also a subtle put-down with definite ethnic implications (paleo-con = paleface?). Just about every ideology, left and right, has its prefixed version these days: there are neoliberals (short form: neo-libs), even neo-commies (short form: neo-coms). Why not neocons?
Gorin's line of guff – that to attack the neocons (there, I said it! And isn't that just tough!) is to attack "the Jews" – has been marketed before, to little avail. Neoconservatism has been the subject of too many books and scholarly essays, not to mention articles and documentaries in the popular media – including one self-regarding orgy of neocon narcissism, broadcast on PBS, in which the participants repeatedly referred to themselves as "neocons" and "neoconservatives" almost as many times as they described themselves as "intellectuals."
Jonah Goldberg, David Brooks, and Joshua Muravchik had earlier tried this self-disappearing act by baldly asserting "We're all neoconservatives now." But that was before their crazed foreign policy ideas had murdered untold thousands in Iraq – and provoked real revulsion on the right as well as the left. We aren't all neocons, especially now – and that is precisely what Gorin's diktat, forbidding us to even utter the word, aims to suppress.
There's a rebellion on the right, ably represented by Buchanan, the target of Gorin's ire, a backlash against the monumental conceit of a War Party that promised a cakewalk and delivered, instead, a "catastrophic success." John Kerry isn't the only one claiming to have been duped into war, and, as the situation on the ground deteriorates, we'll see open disaffection from Republicans in Congress. Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.
Gorin's playing the ethnic card is no surprise: that is what third-and –fourth-rate comedians do when all else fails. Her big problem is that it's a lie. Jews oppose neoconservative policies far more than most other sectors of the population. By large majorities, they are against the war, against the GOP, and against everything the neoconservatives stand for. The biggest supporters of the Neocons' War are to be found among the "born again" followers of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, the Christian jihadists of the Bible Belt who pine for World War IV almost as much as Norman Podhoretz.
Gorin's is a fallback position, an acknowledgement that, yes, there really is such a creature as a neocon, but I – Julia Gorin – will decide who gets to call me that. In short, if there's going to be a debate about the proper direction of U.S. foreign policy – and no discussion of foreign policy in the modern era is possible without reference to neoconservatism – then the neocons are determined to define the terms, set the rules, and control the discussion from the outset. "So let's go over the rules," she rants:
"Just because we call ourselves 'neocons,' it doesn't mean you can. Of course, if you're right-leaning and don't intend the word disparagingly, you get a pass. Just know that unless you're aware that 'neoconservative' also includes last names like Bennett, Kirkpatrick, Sowell, Kemp and Ashcroft, when you refer to someone as a neocon, you're saying 'Jew.'"
By this standard, Buchanan clearly qualifies for a pass, as evidenced by his recent interview on the subject of his new book, Where the Right Went Wrong, with CNN's Wolf Blitzer:
BLITZER: The notion that a lot of these neoconservatives are Jewish, that's come up several times, and that you're pointing to that is seen by some as anti-Semitism.
BUCHANAN: I can't help it that many of these folks – if Norman Podhoretz calls for World War IV, an invasion of six or seven countries, and I go after him, he cannot defend himself on the grounds that he is simply Jewish. Bill Bennett's a neoconservative. Jeane Kirkpatrick's a neoconservative. Robert Bartley's a neoconservative. John Bolton's a neoconservative. None of them are Jewish. All of them are mentioned in[my]t book.
In any case, the idea that a common word can be appropriated, and its usage controlled by self-appointed censors, is hardly "conservative": it is positively Soviet.
Gorin complains when Wolfowitz, Perle, etc., are named, because all the names are Jewish. But she doesn't mention a non-Jewish neocon who made headlines recently, the formerly obscure but now perhaps soon to be famous Lawrence A. Franklin. A specialist on Iraq working out of the Defense Department's policy shop, Franklin is a devout Catholic and minor neoconservative ideologue who stands accused of passing classified information to Israel via two gentlemen from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Washington's powerful pro-Israel lobby.
Why did he do it, if he did do it? Ideological zeal is the explanation given, which brings us to a central tenet of neoconservatism, and that is the perfect alignment of American and Israeli national interests. This has been the battle-cry of both the neocons and AIPAC since long before the smoke cleared on 9/11. Israel has played the same role abroad as our neocons have at home, agitating for a war that would transform the Middle East – and, not so indirectly, advance their own interests, including territorial aggrandizement culminating in the creation of a Greater Israel and the extension of Israeli influence as far as Kurdistan.
Of course, the interests of separate nations are never perfectly aligned, never mind identical, which is why supposed allies spy on one another all the time. In Israel's case, however, the penetration of our secrets was seemingly made possible by high-level moles with top priority access to all sorts of information. Franklin was just the small fish, and, now that he's been "turned," and is squealing like a stuck pig, the big fish neocons who aided Israel's campaign of espionage and disinformation live in mortal fear of exposure.
That's why the clueless Gorin is being trotted out with her tired "I'm a victim" act – and in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, yet! The neocons are getting ready to confront one of the biggest espionage scandals in the annals of spookery: the story of how Israel launched a covert operation designed to lure and lie us into war. It wouldn't be the first time a smaller, weaker nation maneuvered a larger imperial power into doing their fighting for them, but never before had such a job been pulled off with such finesse – and so openly!
Oh, sure, the espionage part of it was undercover, naturally enough, but the aboveground open conspiracy was a much bigger, more expensive operation. The architecture of the neoconservative movement, an extensive and complexly interwoven network of thinktanks, foundations, magazines, newspapers, and action organizations, is an impressive edifice. But the underground adjunct served a vital function: it allowed the neocons' foreign allies to better control the terms of the "special relationship" between the U.S. and Israel.
Until now, that is….
While federal prosecutors have put the kibosh on "leaks" from the ongoing investigation, that has only provoked a flood of apologias, which accuse the chief investigator of – you guessed it! – "anti-Semitism." The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports:
"David Szady, the senior FBI counterintelligence official currently heading the controversial investigation of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, is well-known to senior Jewish communal officials, who assert he has targeted Jews in the past.
"Now, an investigation reveals that Szady was involved in a well-publicized case involving a Jewish former CIA staff attorney who sued the FBI, the CIA and its top officials for religious discrimination. Although not named in the suit, Szady headed the elite department that former CIA Director George Tenet admitted in 1999 was involved with "insensitive, unprofessional and highly inappropriate" language regarding the case of the attorney, Adam Ciralsky."
But if I were trying to downplay the extent and seriousness of Israel's spy operations in the U.S., the last subject I would bring up is the Ciralsky case. Author Jerry Pournelle points out this Feb. 7, 2000 Associated Press dispatch:
"An agency memo said a Jewish attorney who says the CIA fired him because of anti-Semitism within the agency failed two lie-detector tests about whether he gave or sold US secrets "to an Israeli national." Adam Ciralsky, 28, of Milwaukee, joined the spy agency in December 1996 as a contract employee in the Office of General Counsel. By the following October, Ciralsky had been placed on unpaid leave. His top-secret security clearance was revoked in July 1998, and he was fired in late 1999. Ciralsky was airing his complaints against the agency Sunday night on CBS' 60 Minutes.
"The agency said it acted against Ciralsky because he did not fully reveal a relationship with two people holding dual US- Israeli citizenship, both employees of Israeli defense firms with possible ties to Israeli intelligence. Bill Harlow, CIA public affairs director, disputed Ciralsky's allegations of anti-Semitism. He said the allegations had been reviewed by the agency's inspector general, by several congressional panels and by a citizens' review group.
"The memorandum about Ciralsky's case, first reported by The Washington Post, was written by Alan Wade, the CIA's associate deputy director for security. The memo said Ciralsky failed two polygraph examinations. The questions he was asked, Wade wrote, were about 'deliberately compromising US government classified information to an Israeli national, accepting compensation from an Israeli national in exchange for US government classified information, and deliberately concealing from the US government a relationship with an Israeli national.' The CIA's Harlow refused to discuss the memo. He said the agency had been willing to publicly discuss details of Ciralsky's case, but that his lawyers had blocked them from doing so by invoking the Privacy Act."
It doesn't sound to me like Szady was committing a hate crime: he was merely doing his job, which is the serious business of counterintelligence. Before we hurl mud at a competent and loyal public servant, let Ciralsky come clean by waiving his Privacy Act privileges and letting the whole story come out.
As the campaign to exonerate the crew of Pollardites in the Pentagon revs up even before the indictments come down, the smears directed at Szady are the first shots of the neocons' war for survival. Backed up against a wall, discredited by the war they wanted and still defend, faced with charges of treason and maybe even a little jail time, you can bet they'll fight to the death.
But if Julia Gorin is one of the heavier guns in their arsenal, I think they'd better start thinking about negotiating a truce, or even entering a plea bargain. I don't know if Ms. Gorin is much of a hit on the Republican Ladies Club chicken-and-dumplings circuit, but a humorless ideologue pretending to be a third-rate comedienne is hardly an act with a whole lot of promise. Drop the political correctness, Julie, and get yourself another shtick – conservatives aren't buying it, and neither is anybody else.
– Justin Raimondo | |  | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2004 5:12 pm Post subject: Pentagon Neocons Planning War on Syria & Iran for Israel |
| Look how the following from 'Newsweek' magazine is right in accordance with the Zionist 'A Clean Break' agenda which James Bamford conveys on page 261 of his new book ('A Pretext for War'):
Forwarded:
From: Susan
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 19:52:44 EDT
Subject: War on Syria, Iran
Plans: Next, War on Syria?
Newsweek
Oct. 4 issue - Deep in the Pentagon, admirals and generals are updating plans for possible U.S. military action in Syria and Iran. The Defense Department unit responsible for military planning for the two troublesome countries is "busier than ever," an administration official says. Some Bush advisers characterize the work as merely an effort to revise routine plans the Pentagon maintains for all contingencies in light of the Iraq war. More skittish bureaucrats say the updates are accompanied by a revived campaign by administration conservatives and neocons for more hard-line U.S. policies toward the countries. (Syria is regarded as a major route for jihadis entering Iraq, and Iran appears to be actively pursuing nuclear weapons.) Even hard-liners acknowledge that given the U.S. military commitment in Iraq, a U.S. attack on either country would be an unlikely last resort; covert action of some kind is the favored route for Washington hard-liners who want regime change in Damascus and Tehran.
—Mark Hosenball
© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.
Here is another URL which might be of interest to you:
http://www.rense.com/Datapages/zionismdata.htm | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2004 5:43 pm Post subject: The President's Comedy Routine |
| http://www.antiwar.com/reese/?articleid=3649
September 28, 2004
The President's Comedy Routine
by Charley Reese
President George Bush's denial of the reality of Iraq is beginning to sound like a stand-up comedy routine.
"Mr. President, the insurgency has spread to the whole country."
"We're making great progress."
"But Mr. President, the attacks against coalition forces have escalated dramatically."
"We're making great progress."
"But Mr. President, all but two percent of the Iraqi people want us to leave."
"We're making great progress."
"And the interim government has no support and in fact can't step outside the Green Zone without being surrounded by American security."
"We're making great progress."
And so forth. Whether the president is actually in denial or is misleading the public for partisan purposes, I will leave to your judgment. It would be less dangerous if he were engaged in deliberate deception. That, at least, is a sign of sanity.
Some are now speculating that the president's solution to the morass in Iraq will be to launch an attack against Iran – after the election, of course. There can be no other reason to sell Israel bunker-buster bombs. The only possible target would be Iran's nuclear reactors. The Iranians would retaliate, and, of course, the United States would join the war in defense of Israel. Widening the war to a country with 60 million people might sound stupid, but with this administration's record of stupid decisions, it's not to be ruled out.
Nothing would destroy the democratic movement in Iran quicker than an attack by Israel and the United States. The same stupid people who thought we would be greeted as liberators in Iraq, however, might actually think Iranians would welcome an attack. People who spend their lives in academic surroundings can be forgiven for not knowing much about human nature. The most basic response of all humans is to rally around their country's government when it is attacked by a foreign power. The Iranians would certainly do that, as they demonstrated in the 1980s when Saddam Hussein attacked them.
As all democratic nations do, we have uneven luck in choosing our leaders, but this is the first administration that actually scares me. There is nothing so stupid and wrongheaded that I can't visualize them doing it.
Bush has no real compassion. That's why he forbids ceremonies for returning dead. According to Ollie North, President Reagan was at the airport every time a dead American serviceman's body came home. The British also formally greet their returning dead with honor and respect. Only in the United States does the government even forbid news organizations from greeting the dead.
Bush and his corporate cronies care for Bush and his corporate cronies. If Reagan was the Teflon president, Bush is the irresponsible and unaccountable president. Not only has he created a bloody mess in Iraq, his economic policies have forced many American working men to endanger their lives by going there to work. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2004 6:30 pm Post subject: Jane's: Israeli Moles Penetrate Pentagon |
| Jane's: Israeli Moles Penetrate Pentagon
A mole called Mega
The scandal over a suspected Israeli mole in the Pentagon who allegedly passed highly sensitive policy documents on Iran to Israeli agents in Washington has rekindled suspicions long held by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and others in Washington, that Israel systematically spies on its strategic ally and benefactor.
The FBI probe currently under way goes far beyond the allegations that a lone analyst was providing the Israelis with US secrets.
Shortly before George Tenet retired as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in June, he alleged that an Israeli agent was operating in Washington. Tenet was challenged to identify the agent but for reasons that were never explained apparently did not do so. For years, the FBI has been convinced that there is at least one high-level Israeli mole in Washington.
The Tenet episode underlined growing unease in some quarters in Washington about the influence that Israel's right wing has in US President George W Bush's administration through the pro-Likud neo-conservatives, largely in the Pentagon, and the politically powerful America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and loosely associated organisations, such as the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence service, is known to seek out Jews around the world to serve as informal agents, known in Hebrew as sayanim or 'helpers'.
The Israeli government and AIPAC have strenuously denied that they were involved in the current scandal. But Israel's intelligence organisations have been spying on the US and running clandestine operations since Israel was established. These operations range from spiriting an estimated 200 lbs of weapons-grade uranium for its secret nuclear arms programme in the 1960s to widescale industrial espionage.
Much of this is conducted by the secret Scientific Liaison Bureau, known by its Hebrew acronym Lakam, run by the Ministry of Defence and its equally little-known successor, Malmab (the Security Authority for the Ministry of Defence).
http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/fr/fr040929_1_n.shtml | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2004 5:39 pm Post subject: New Book: Republicans (GOP) Split over Iraq |
| Author: GOP split over Iraq
Thursday, September 30, 2004
Debate rages within the Bush administration over how hard to fight the ongoing war in Iraq, says Kalamazoo College's Gary Dorrien.
Instead of pulling back to let Iraqis take greater responsibility, such neoconservatives as Vice President Dick Cheney want the United States to beef up attacks on Sunni strongholds and to even consider invading Iran.
"This neoconservative faction within the Republican party has become the most powerful in the Bush administration and is having an enormous impact on American foreign policy," Dorrien said.
Dorrien, Parfet Distinguished Professor at K-College, has just come out with a book titled "Imperial Designs: Neoconservatism and the New Pax Americana."
In the book, he sketches the history of the movement that, he says, is turning this country into an imperial power that is using pre-emptive military might to achieve its ends.
"The neocons don't have as much of a following in the Republican party as other factions, and yet they have been so much better at getting into power," Dorrien said.
Dorrien will lecture on the topics detailed in his book at 10:50 a.m. Friday in Stetson Chapel on the K-College campus.
He will then sign copies of his book and speak in coming days at locations across West Michigan.
His new book, he said, is an expansion of "The Neoconservative Mind: Politics, Culture, and the War of Ideology," which was published in 1993.
Neo-cons, he says, once saw the Soviet Union as the biggest threat to America's peace and security.
When the Soviet Union fell, this group, led by such people as Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, turned its attention to the world at large.
"It was a huge shock to them when the Soviet Union disbanded," Dorrien said. "When they developed their next idea, they decided they needed to think big."
During the Clinton administration when it was out of power, this group developed a doctrine that has led, in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to the war in Iraq.
"In order to enhance American power and standing in the world, they wanted to use this nation's immense military for purposes of good," Dorrien said.
A main thrust of their philosophy is to "to treat the whole world like it's America's geo-political neighborhood," he said.
Other factions in the Republican party today include the libertarians who want to cut way back on government spending and call for less involvement in other nations.
Then there are the "old right nationalists" like former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan who are "sort of isolationist" and are "bitterly opposed" to the war in Iraq, Dorrien said.
Finally, he said, there are the "conservative realists" such as Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Secretary of State James Baker who are "much more realistic and less ideological" in trying to force American values on other nations.
George W. Bush aligned himself to an extent with the conservative realists until the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. At that point, Bush needed a vision and the neo-cons had one, Dorrien said.
Even now, though, Bush straddles the fence on such questions as what to do about China and North Korea -- countries that the neo-cons would like to deal with much more harshly.
"If Bush loses the presidential election, there will be a war between the neo-cons and the conservative realists for power in the Republican party," Dorrien said.
© 2004 Kalamazoo. Used with permission
http://www.mlive.com/news/kzgazette/index.ssf?/base/news-11/1096561440238050.xml | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2004 8:21 pm Post subject: Neocon Pink Slips And The Fall Of America |
| Neocon Pink Slips And The Fall Of America
By Kurt Nimmo
Online Journal
10-4-4
Here's the unspeakable truth: I lost my job to make Israel safe.
Or more specifically: an obscene amount of tax dollars are flushed down the Pentagon rat hole every year while billions are slashed from state and social programs, including education. I worked for a state-funded education program. I was pink-slipped because there's no money for the program this year.
In short, George Bush fired me.
The Bushcon invasion of Iraq costs $177 million per day, $7.4 million per hour, and $122,820 per minute. So far, the invasion has cost an astounding $134.5 billion. "When you integrate Iraqi spending, which is necessary, with the effort to control spending, it puts more pressure on you to make harder choices," said Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) in June. "If you can name one part of government immune from this, I'd like to know."
Hard choices - like throwing Americans out of work.
But according to Republicans such as Patrick Toomey (R-Pa), even more Americans need face the "hard choice" of poverty. Education and social services are non-starters when compared to blowing things up and butchering thousands of mostly innocent people. "I'd say let's have a smaller deficit," said Toomey in June. "But most of all, don't spend it on something else. The non-defense, non-security part of the budget is out of control."
For instance, literacy programs for poor kids.
In other words, billions will be squandered on "security" to protect Israel from its enemies before a dime is spent here in America on education, nutrition programs, repairing our crumbling infrastructure, and other things insignificant to Republicans and their multinational corporate masters.
As we now know, or should know if we pay attention, Iraq was invaded at the behest of Israel and a small clan of extreme right-wing Likudites. Philip Zelikow, executive director of Bush's 9/11 whitewash commission, admitted as much during a speech delivered at the University of Virginia on September 10, 2002. "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 1990óit's the threat against Israel," said Zelikow.
Never mind Saddam had no nukes, or even a few mustard gas shells.
Paul W. Schroeder, a veteran diplomatic historian, wrote for the American Conservative magazine on October, 21, 2002, "the unacknowledged real reason and motive behind the policy [is] security for Israel. . . . It would represent something to my knowledge unique in history. It is common for great powers to try to fight wars by proxy, getting smaller powers to fight for their interests. This would be the first instance I know where a great power (in fact, a superpower) would do the fighting as the proxy of a small client state."
"The suggestion that the war with Iraq is being planned at Israel's behest, or at the instigation of policymakers whose main motivation is trying to create a secure environment for Israel, is strong," write Kathleen and Bill Christison, former CIA political analysts. "Many Israeli analysts believe this."
But not the forever gullible American people. For them, Osama is Saddam and Bush's "war on terror" is about payback for September 11, 2001, even if those on the blunt end of the murderous payback truncheon are innocent civilians.
Israel Firsters have essentially taken over the United States government, from the White House and the Pentagon to Congress. Fighting (largely manufactured) terrorism sells the Israel First policy well, if only because it is wrapped in an American flag.
"These people, who can fairly be called Israeli loyalists, are now at all levels of government, from desk officers at the Defense Department to the deputy secretary level at both State and Defense, as well as on the National Security Council staff and in the vice president's office," note the Christisons.
In Congress, the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) rules supreme, and if you don't vote for the pro-Likud agenda there's a good chance you will not be re-elected. Ask Cynthia McKinney. "Jewish donors have already begun to back McKinney challenger Denise Majette, a former state court judge from Atlanta who proudly touts a strong pro-Israel position," wrote Eli Kintisch of the Forward prior to the last mid-term elections. Majette eventually unseated McKinney.
"The American Israel Political Action Committee is a lobbying group that used to support whatever government was in power in Israel, and used to give money even-handedly inside the US," writes Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor, on his blog. "My perception is that during the past decade AIPAC has increasingly tilted to the Likud in Israel, and to the political Right in the United States."
AIPAC is so powerful it operates a long-running spy operation that passes classified information on to the Likudites in Israel. As an example of Bushcon influence over not only foreign but domestic policy, an FBI investigation of the AIPAC spy operation was seriously compromised by a preemptory media leak and the investigation is now all but dead in the water.
How is it possible a major spy scandal has fallen so effortlessly by the wayside?
Anti-Semitism, the perpetual and unfailing canard. "In an indication of their growing estrangement with the Bush administration, neoconservatives are slamming the White House for failing to stop what they describe as an anti-Semitic campaign to marginalize them being conducted by the CIA and the State Department," writes Marc Perleman of Forward.
Of course, Perleman has it wrong: the neocons, or Israel Firsters, are not estranged from the Bush administration - they *are* the Bush administration and their calculated attack is aimed at the CIA and the State Department, who have not demonstrated the required degree of enthusiasm for the Israel First cause at the expense of American lives and treasure. As the Israel Firsters know, anti-Semitism is so emotionally charged that there is virtually no defense against it. Once painted as an anti-Semite, the only two possible options are atonement or banishment.
If you believe the November election will change things, think again. Even if Kerry is elected, the Israel Firsters will rule supreme in Washington. Kerry has gone out of his way to align himself with Sharon and the Likudites. If need be he will perform summersaults to accommodate AIPAC and the Likudites and their long-standing dream of a Greater Israel at the expense of not only Arabs and Iranians but the beleaguered American taxpayer.
Sharon and the Israel Firsters are not really keen on the "liberal" Kerry, so we can probably expect four more years (or four more decades) of the Christian Zionist Bush and the Straussian neocons. No way are they going to allow a mere election to sidetrack plans launched during the Bush I administration by Wolfowitz, Feith, and their fellow neocon travelers - alumni going back to Reagan and the Iran-Contra days - and subsequently taken up by the Project for a New American Century, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a camarilla - or more appropriately, a crime syndicate - that has labored long and hard to make the Likudite vision of Greater Israel America's primary foreign policy objective.
Of course, if Kerry does "win" in November, we can expect the neocons to quickly refashion themselves into "war hawk" Democrats. Remember: Richard Perle, neocon par excellence, the Prince of Darkness (as his colleagues fondly call him), started his political career as a "Scoop" Jackson Democrat.
But even if the Bush neocons don't stage a comeback in the event Kerry is selected to be CEO of America, there is no shortage of Israel First zealots in the Democratic Party, as evidenced by the Clinton administration (one such zealot was Martin S. Indyk, Clinton's ambassador to Israel, who is the founding executive director for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy where the Straussian neocon Wolfowitz sits on the board of directors). Kerry's senior foreign policy adviser is none other than James P. Rubin, Clinton's Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, an AIPAC-installed Zionist who believes UN-documented facts of Palestinian suffering under the brutal and interminable Israeli occupation are "exaggerated" and amount to self-inflicted misery, as he told Dr. Khaled M. Batarfi of Arab News in August, adequately demonstrating the difference between "liberal" Arab haters and "conservative" Arab haters is at best negligible.
Our collective lot is cast, Kerry or Bush.
Crushing debt and the rapid devaluation of the dollar in the coming year will result in more pink slips, more Americans relegated to the ranks of the ignored poor, more compounded and intensified misery under the leadership of Republicans, who will maintain a stranglehold on Congress no matter who is selected CEO of America. For the Israel First clan commanding the highest reaches of our government, unemployment and tumbling standards of living are far less of a concern than the "threat" posed to the sacrosanct state of Israel by Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia.
For Americans unfortunately age 18-35, unemployment will not be a problem in the coming year because thousands, possibly millions of them will be working for Uncle Sam as conscripted bullet-stoppers, or if not bullet-stoppers as slaves assigned to other "national security" tasks - under proposed legislation known as the "Skills Draft" - for the Ministry of Homeland Security and the misnamed Department of Defense (this behemoth should revert to its old name, the Department of War).
I will be 52 years old soon after the next CEO of America is selected, so my services will not be required - although my tax dollars will be, that is if I ever find gainful employment again (a bleak prospect for "older workers," that is to say workers who demand a living wage).
In the meantime, I sit here, in an apartment I can scarcely afford, running a computer that chews up vastly overpriced electricity (our electric corporation was owned by Enron before Enron became one of the largest criminal organizations in history). I will continue to write about the high-paid quislings in Congress, the plutocrats, the corporatists - who, as Mussolini knew, defined fascism - and the Israel Firsters, conspiring with the aforementioned quislings in Congress, who are selling our government and the American people down the river to a foreign power, about as close to a textbook definition of treason as there is.
I do not expect the American people to turn this country around.
Far too many are reduced to mindless and conditioned flag-waving and have bought into the nocuous illusion that voting for corporate candidate A or B is the only acceptable way solve our (usually government or corporate created) problems - and robotically allowing themselves to believe the "issues" are about swift boats and who will do a better job fighting perpetual wars waged against manufactured enemies, in other words Israel's opponents, not ours.
I have no faith in the American people because the Fox News induced lobotomy is too severe and obviously irreversible.
It's a long way back from where we are now.
Most of us not only don't know the way back, we don't realize there is a way back or, worse, that there is even anything particularly wrong - beyond the in-your-face nastiness of bin Laden and al-Qaeda so rudely penetrating our consumerist fantasy cocoon - and thus requiring the people to do what Thomas Jefferson implored: have a revolution every few years and throw out the quislings, defrauders, and traitors.
It's not going to happen.
History teaches that the Roman Empire fell with a loud noise - and our fall, our catastrophic decline, will be far noisier, if only because we have perfected the art of noisemaking. It took western civilization nearly 10 centuries to recover from the fall of the Roman Empire. It took over 900 years to reach the Renaissance. Hopefully, it will not take us that long to recover from what the Straussian neocons, the Israel Firsters, and their corporate collaborators - who are not particularly ideological, are more akin to scurrilous and amoral carpetbaggers going along for the profitable ride - will ultimately do to us, only because we will let them, only because we duteously believe 2 + 2 = 5, as repeated ad nauseam by the Ministry of Truth (viz., the alphabet corporate news organizations).
Such a fall, however, does have an upside. It will mean the telescreens will be blank - that is to say there will no longer be Fox News gibbering 24/7.
- Kurt Nimmo is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Visit his excellent no holds barred blog at www.kurtnimmo.com/blogger.html.
Copyright © 1998-2004 Online Journal. All rights reserved.
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Commentary/100204Nimmo/100204nimmo.html | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Oct 06, 2004 8:13 pm Post subject: How Zionist Neoconservative Perle hijacked foreign policy |
| From: "Couples Company"
Subject: How Perle hijacked foreign policy
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 2004 13:44:51 -0700
The State Department's extreme makeover
A veteran Foreign Service officer warns that when Colin Powell departs in a second Bush term, America will lose its last bulwark against the radical ideologues who are planning more Iraqs.
Editor's note: "Anonymous" is a veteran Foreign Service officer currently serving as a State Department official. The views expressed are personal and not related to his official position.
http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/salon39.html
By Anonymous
Oct. 4, 2004 | Secretary of State Colin Powell is not staying for a second Bush term. When he goes, the last bulwark against complete neoconservative control of U.S. foreign policy goes with him. The implications are enormous, yet the American electorate appears to be blinded by the Bush campaign's deliberate manipulations of 9/11.
Powell has served both as the reasoned voice of career diplomats and the experienced voice of career U.S. military in the Bush administration. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ignored military advice and excluded Department of State career professionals from Iraq planning. Power was concentrated in the hands of a clique of neocon ideologues he placed in key policy positions, including Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith. In the first term of George W. Bush, protégés of now disgraced former Defense Policy Board member and neocon godfather Richard Perle achieved control or subordination of every executive branch foreign-policymaking body -- except the Department of State.
Career employees of the department enthusiastically greeted Colin Powell when he pulled up to the curb for the first time at Foggy Bottom in his PT Cruiser. They have supported him, and through him, have unfailingly supported the president through thick and thin over four years -- up to and including volunteering in record numbers to staff fully the highly dangerous positions in the new embassy in Baghdad, Iraq. Even after being dumped on by the Pentagon neocons and witnessing the debacle of the Pentagon's Jay Garner's post-conflict solution, the State Department's Civil and Foreign Service staff took up the slack when the Pentagon unceremoniously fled responsibility for Iraq reconstruction and stabilization. Now, Powell's departure is seen within the department as an invitation to a lynching.
The realization that the same neocons who dismissed State's accurate "Future of Iraq Project," prepared before the war, may now take over at State in the second term is widely viewed inside the department as a threat to the very integrity of the country's diplomatic first line of defense. Corridor discussion has turned desperate -- maybe former Secretary of State James Baker will intervene, maybe former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft will talk to someone, maybe 41 will talk to 43.
State personnel are used to comings and goings of Democratic and Republican administrations, serving all equally and fairly. Not since Vietnam, however, has the U.S. diplomatic establishment viewed the future with such a degree of alarm. Retired U.S. ambassadors and diplomats have raised their own public concerns in signed public statements about the direction of U.S. foreign policy -- but that concern pales compared with the quiet revolt brewing against a neocon takeover at Foggy Bottom.
After 9/11, Wolfowitz, Feith and his subordinate, Harold Rhode, recruited David Wurmser as a contractor from the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute to set up what became known internally as the "Wurmser-Maloof" project. F. Michael Maloof, neocon fellow traveler and former aide to Richard Perle, and Wurmser created a hidden intelligence unit, the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group, under Feith at the Pentagon. The purpose of the group was to end-run the CIA and create the rationale for invading Iraq. The parallel operations model was previously followed by Oliver North at the National Security Council and Elliott Abrams at State in their ill-fated Iran-Contra strategy. It should have come as no surprise that another neocon think-tank insider, Abram Shulsky, an Abrams colleague from their days as staffers to Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson, would end up heading up what became the Office of Special Plans, the secret intelligence unit at the Pentagon under Feith. The weapons of mass destruction disinformation that was fed to the president and to the American public came directly from Shulsky's shop.
After setting up this operation at the Pentagon for Wolfowitz and Feith, Wurmser, with the help of Perle, was sent in early 2002 to burrow in at State as senior advisor to John Bolton, under secretary for arms control and international security.
In December 2002, Wolfowitz, Feith, Wurmser and Vice President Cheney's national security advisor, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, acting together, maneuvered Condoleezza Rice into appointing Elliott Abrams to the position of special assistant to the president and senior director for the Middle East at the National Security Council. This appointment gave the neocons everything they wanted -- the NSC, Executive Office of the President, Office of the Vice President, the Pentagon, a cornered director in George Tenet at CIA, and Wurmser at State.
The neocons had control of the information reaching the president and a channel for their pseudo-intelligence product from Wolfowitz and Feith's secret Pentagon Office of Special Plans. The only wild card was Colin Powell and State's elite and independent Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR).
Neither Powell nor his deputy, Richard Armitage, who is also leaving with Powell, seems to have been fooled by Wurmser's desire to leave the Pentagon and join John Bolton's staff -- in effect, to come work for Powell. They cornered and then neutralized Wurmser. Wurmser's target was to get at the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, a thorn in the neocons' side and Powell's intelligence ace-in-the-hole against Tenet's "slam-dunk" sellout at the CIA.
INR kept telling Powell the truth about Saddam's nonexistent WMD. State's Future of Iraq project, led by a career Foreign Service officer, who was cold-shouldered by Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, laid out what might happen if we took over control of Iraq. Unfortunately, even the sober minds of INR could not stop Powell from lending his credibility to the "unfortunate error" show at the U.N. Security Council. Modeled on Adlai Stevenson's Oct. 25, 1962, Cuban missile presentation to the Security Council, Powell's Feb. 5, 2003, presentation marks the low point of his tenure and, in retrospect, underscores how badly his credibility was needed and then was abused by Vice President Cheney and the president.
The whole time Wurmser was at State, career professionals around him saw someone acting more like an agent of influence than as a subordinate of the secretary of state. He was in constant contact with his Pentagon intelligence cell. Questions were asked -- but never answered -- as to how Wurmser got a full security clearance when he never registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act for his 1996 policy work for Israel's incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (including advice on how to lobby the U.S. Congress) and as someone who was married to an Israeli citizen with close ties to Israel's Likud Party -- in theory, a party to U.S.-brokered Middle East peace negotiations.
In September 2003, Wurmser left the Department of State to become Vice President Cheney's principal deputy for national security affairs under "Scooter" Libby. He left before any questions were answered about his access to and use of classified information. His clearances were never questioned when he joined the vice president's staff, and his status under the Foreign Agents Registration Act has never been clarified.
Powell's early 2005 departure is the subject of intense jockeying among the neocons. A Perle neocon protégé, Michael Rubin, has been given the task of destroying the only competition -- L. Paul "Jerry" Bremer, the former Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority chief, not a neocon insider and the favorite of traditional Republican conservatives. The neocon plan is to make Bremer the scapegoat: It was not bad neocon policy, it was bad Bremer decisions that has led to the fiasco in Iraq. Rubin was sent to Baghdad to be Wolfowitz's man inside the CPA. Bremer dissed Rubin as a lightweight. Rubin tried to push neocon policy inside the CPA -- what he, Perle and Ahmed Chalabi had pushed from the American Enterprise Institute -- restoring the Hashemite monarchy in Iraq by placing Jordan's Crown Prince Hassan on the throne. Bremer would have none of it. Rubin is now tasked by Perle and Wolfowitz to trash Bremer -- which he is dutifully doing in print and media appearances arranged by neocon handler, lecture agent and media booker Eleana Benador. They intend to close the Foggy Bottom door to any aspirations Bremer, a former Foreign Service officer and Kissinger protégé, might have to take over from Powell.
Given the implosion of Iraq, Wolfowitz and his coterie have doubts that Wolfowitz can be confirmed as secretary (of either DOD or State) without a debilitating confirmation process, though State remains choice No. 1. A more complicated plan is to again play behind Condoleezza Rice. With Rice as secretary of state and Wolfowitz in as national security advisor, neocons would put David Wurmser or John Bolton in as Rice's deputy, replacing Armitage.
Wurmser, Perle and Feith were the principal authors of the 1996 100-day policy plan for incoming Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. None ever registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act for this work.
That plan, "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," published by Israel's Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, has served as the guiding road map for the neocons both in Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office and in the Bush administration. No one should have been surprised by Iraq -- the neocons have not been coy in laying out their vision of Israel's security requirements. David Wurmser published a book-length version of his IASPS study at AEI. The introduction to that screed, "Tyranny's Ally: America's Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein," was written by Richard Perle. It lists as sources Ahmed Chalabi, Michael Ledeen, Douglas Feith and Harold Rhode.
Control at State would remove the last obstacle to the plan Perle, Wurmser and Feith laid long before 9/11. The neocons telegraphed their intentions clearly in President Bush's GOP convention acceptance speech in New York, in which the neocon hand was palpable in the ambitious agenda to remake the Middle East.
The president used political buzzwords to whip the crowd -- and the voting public -- into a noncomprehending patriotic frenzy of "four more years." Like Pope Urban at the 1095 Council of Clermont, who launched the First Crusade to cries of "God Wills It" from the frenzied Christians wanting to take back the Holy Land, Bush has decreed a crusade to bring enlightened Western democracy to the Muslim populations of the Middle East, left otherwise bereft in dysfunctional colonial-inspired states by the breakup of the Ottoman Empire.
But Bush the Crusader is off to a rocky start in Iraq. The ongoing meltdown is awakening Americans to the reality of the neocon agenda. But is it too late? Neocons are not dissuaded by the problems in Iraq; on the contrary, they are arguing that the problem is "Bremerism" -- the U.S. has not gone far enough. In their view, we need to take out the Palestinians, Syria and Iran now.
The neocons, working in tandem with a similar staff in the office of Prime Minister Sharon of Israel, have a three-part agenda for the first part of Bush's second term: first, oust Yasser Arafat; second, overthrow the secular Baathist al-Assad dictatorship in Syria; and, third, eliminate, one way or another, Iran's nuclear facilities.
Nowhere has support for the neocon Middle East crusade resonated more than in the constituency of Rep. Tom DeLay, who is the top Christian Zionist handler in the Republican Party and poised to strike GOP gold with his gerrymandering of Texas congressional districts.
For the neocons, Sept. 11 and Israel's security policy under Sharon have morphed into a single concept, the kind of thinking typified by Secretary Rumsfeld's recent lapses mixing Saddam Hussein with 9/11 and Osama bin Laden with Iraq.
Working with direct input from Israeli intelligence, Feith's Pentagon office coordinated with Libby and Wurmser in the vice president's office to spread the story that the missing WMD are to be found hidden in Syria. Israeli agents have worked overtime to neutralize and undo Syrian cooperation with the CIA against al-Qaida. This comes on the heels of a similar highly successful destruction of CIA inroads with the Palestinian Authority. We are now light-years beyond the two-state solution focus of Middle East policy. Instead of chasing Laden, the neocons plan to put the U.S. on the road to Damascus -- and Tehran. The groundwork is laid.
While the FBI scrutinizes whether Pentagon neocon aide Larry Franklin and AIPAC passed secrets to Israel, the larger story of Richard Perle and the neocons' carefully orchestrated takeover of Bush foreign policy has yet to be fully comprehended by the electorate.
Powell is leaving. We need to repeat that. When this reality sinks in, we will finally understand what we are getting ourselves into in a second Bush term. A handful of conservative columnists, Republican senators and a few other GOP luminaries are trying to reclaim a traditional conservative Republican foreign policy approach. But it is clearly too late.
Comparing Bush's foreign policy views in 2000 with his New York convention acceptance speech, it is clear that since 2000, the neocons started with a blank foreign policy slate. Looking carefully at Bush's 2000 campaign and statements and comparing them with the current 2004 campaign, it is startling how far he has come from his traditional Republican base. He has become the "Neoconian Candidate."
George W. Bush has signed on to the neocon agenda with the unshakeable faith of the born again. At this point, we all need a reminder that Crusades 1 through 5 ended badly in the long run, not just for the Crusaders, but on the home front. In a new Bush crusade, in a second term, the first to fall may be the professionals at the State Department. | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
