| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2006 7:10 pm Post subject: Jewish PNAC Neocon advocates bombing of Iran (for Israel!) |
| Jewish PNAC Neocon advocates bombing of Iran (for Israel!)
Did you see the interview (on C-SPAN's 'Washington Journal' yesterday) with Reuel Marc Gerecht who was associated with PNAC and is still at AEI? He has the cover article on the 'Weekly Standard' advocating for the bombing of Iran (for Israel, of course!):
http://www.c-span.org/videoarchives.asp?CatCodePairs=Series,WJE&ArchiveDays=30
Here is a tiny URL of the above one:
http://tinyurl.com/l8zmd
Reuel Marc Gerecht, Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute
Reuel Marc Gerecht, Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute, discusses U.S. policy towards Iran. His cover story in this week’s Weekly Standard examines the question of whether the U.S. should bomb Iran or not.
45 min.
General Janis Karpinski spoke about the war for Israel in Iraq and beyond on her radio broadcast this past weekend:
Forwarded:
General Janis Karpinski (of Abu Ghraib) had an excellent program on the Republic Broadcasting Network (via the live link at http://www.rbnlive.com and the following archive URL - click on the link shown for the second hour of the April 22nd, 2006 show as she discussed how we went to war for Israel and how the MEK terrorist group is being used for the coming attack on Iran):
http://mp3.rbnlive.com/Janis06.html
Another excellent call about the Mearsheimer/Walt study on the pro-Israel lobby came at 28.11 into the 2nd hour of the Karen Kwiatkowski program (her interview with Dr. Leon Hadar) for April 22nd, 2006 at the following archive URL as Karen mentioned the Mearsheimer/Walt study again at 33.36 into the 2nd hour of the program (Condi Rice's leak of sensitive defense information to the pro-Israel AIPAC lobby ex-officials was mentioned at 54.42 into the first hour of Karen's broadcast):
http://mp3.rbnlive.com/Karen06.html
Whose War? (Israel's war):
http://www.amconmag.com/03_24_03/cover.html
Rice hints at “coalition of the willing” to tackle Iran:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/uk-and-europe/2006/04/22/rice-hints-at-coalition-of-the-willing-to-tackle-iran.php
Rice Pushes Security Council on Iran-for Israel, of course!:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/04/24/rice-pushes-security-council-on-iran-for-israel-of-course.php
US military operations are already underway in Iran (for Israel, of course!):
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/04/16/u-s-military-operations-are-already-underway-in-iran.php
U.S. Middle East policy motivated by pro-Israel lobby:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/03/17/u-s-middle-east-policy-motivated-by-pro-israel-lobby.php
Even Cindy Sheehan wrote that her son (Casey) died for a PNAC Neocon agenda to benefit Israel:
http://www.slate.com/id/2124788/sidebar/2124791/
http://representativepress.blogspot.com/2005/08/cindy-sheehan-mother-of-spc-casey.html
http://representativepress.blogspot.com/2005/08/gorilla-in-room-is-us-support-for.html
Last edited by Alpha on Tue Apr 25, 2006 4:42 pm; edited 4 times in total | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2006 9:37 pm Post subject: |
| Pro-Israel lobby in U.S. under attack
http://www.upi.com/InternationalIntelligence/view.php?StoryID=20060320-124726-1902r
Intl. Intelligence
WASHINGTON, March 20 (UPI) -- Two of America's top scholars have published a searing attack on the role and power of Washington's pro-Israel lobby in a British journal, warning that its "decisive" role in fomenting the Iraq war is now being repeated with the threat of action against Iran. And they say that the Lobby is so strong that they doubt their article would be accepted in any U.S.-based publication.
Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, author of "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics" and Professor Stephen Walt of Harvard's Kenney School, and author of "Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy," are leading figures American in academic life.
They claim that the Israel lobby has distorted American policy and operates against American interests, that it has organized the funneling of more than $140 billion dollars to Israel and "has a stranglehold" on the U.S. Congress, and its ability to raise large campaign funds gives its vast influence over Republican and Democratic administrations, while its role in Washington think tanks on the Middle East dominates the policy debate.
And they say that the Lobby works ruthlessly to suppress questioning of its role, to blacken its critics and to crush serious debate about the wisdom of supporting Israel in U.S. public life.
"Silencing skeptics by organizing blacklists and boycotts -- or by suggesting that critics are anti-Semites -- violates the principle of open debate on which democracy depends," Walt and Mearsheimer write.
"The inability of Congress to conduct a genuine debate on these important issues paralyses the entire process of democratic deliberation. Israel's backers should be free to make their case and to challenge those who disagree with them, but efforts to stifle debate by intimidation must be roundly condemned," they add, in the 12,800-word article published in the latest issue of The London Review of Books.
The article focuses strongly on the role of the "neo-conservatives" within the Bush administration in driving the decision to launch the war on Iraq.
"The main driving force behind the war was a small band of neo-conservatives, many with ties to the Likud," Mearsheimer and Walt argue." Given the neo-conservatives' devotion to Israel, their obsession with Iraq, and their influence in the Bush administration, it isn't surprising that many Americans suspected that the war was designed to further Israeli interests."
"The neo-conservatives had been determined to topple Saddam even before Bush became president. They caused a stir early in 1998 by publishing two open letters to Clinton, calling for Saddam's removal from power. The signatories, many of whom had close ties to pro-Israel groups like JINSA (Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs) or WINEP (Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy), and who included Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, Bernard Lewis, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, had little trouble persuading the Clinton administration to adopt the general goal of ousting Saddam. But they were unable to sell a war to achieve that objective. They were no more able to generate enthusiasm for invading Iraq in the early months of the Bush administration. They needed help to achieve their aim. That help arrived with 9/11. Specifically, the events of that day led Bush and Cheney to reverse course and become strong proponents of a preventive war," Walt and Mearsheimer write.
The article, which is already stirring furious debate in U.S. academic and intellectual circles, also explores the historical role of the Lobby.
"For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centerpiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel," the article says.
"The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread 'democracy' throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized not only U.S. security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the U.S. been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state?" Professors Walt and Mearsheimer add.
"The thrust of U.S. policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the 'Israel Lobby'. Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that U.S. interests and those of the other country - in this case, Israel -- are essentially identical," they add.
They argue that far from being a strategic asset to the United States, Israel "is becoming a strategic burden" and "does not behave like a loyal ally." They also suggest that Israel is also now "a liability in the war on terror and the broader effort to deal with rogue states.
"Saying that Israel and the U.S. are united by a shared terrorist threat has the causal relationship backwards: the US has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel, not the other way around," they add. "Support for Israel is not the only source of anti-American terrorism, but it is an important one, and it makes winning the war on terror more difficult. There is no question that many al-Qaida leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are motivated by Israel's presence in Jerusalem and the plight of the Palestinians. Unconditional support for Israel makes it easier for extremists to rally popular support and to attract recruits."
They question the argument that Israel deserves support as the only democracy in the Middle East, claiming that "some aspects of Israeli democracy are at odds with core American values. Unlike the US, where people are supposed to enjoy equal rights irrespective of race, religion or ethnicity, Israel was explicitly founded as a Jewish state and citizenship is based on the principle of blood kinship. Given this, it is not surprising that its 1.3 million Arabs are treated as second-class citizens."
The most powerful force in the Lobby is AIPAC, the American-Israel Public affairs Committee, which Walt and Mearsheimer call "a de facto agent for a foreign government," and which they say has now forged an important alliance with evangelical Christian groups.
The bulk of the article is a detailed analysis of the way they claim the Lobby managed to change the Bush administration's policy from "halting Israel's expansionist policies in the Occupied Territories and advocating the creation of a Palestinian state" and divert it to the war on Iraq instead. They write "Pressure from Israel and the Lobby was not the only factor behind the decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was critical."
"Thanks to the lobby, the United States has become the de facto enabler of Israeli expansion in the Occupied Territories, making it complicit in the crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians," and conclude that "Israel itself would probably be better off if the Lobby were less powerful and U.S. policy more even-handed."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/8ed824fc-c11b-11da-9419-0000779e2340,s01=1.html
Financial times
America and Israel
Published: April 1 2006 03:00 | Last updated: April 1 2006 03:00
Freedom of academic debate, political polemic, populist prejudice,
outlandish exaggeration and even mildly slanderous innuendo about
anything from Britney Spears to the president is axiomatic in the United
States of America, is it not? Well, perhaps not altogether.
Reflexes that ordinarily spring automatically to the defence of open
debate and free enquiry shut down - at least among much of America's
political elite - once the subject turns to Israel, and above all the
pro-Israel lobby's role in shaping US foreign policy.
Even though policy towards the Middle East is arguably the single
biggest determinant of America's reputation in the world, any attempt to
rethink this from first principles is politically risky.
Examining the specific role of organisations such as the American Israel
Public Affairs Committee, commonly considered to be the most effective
lobby group in the US apart from the National Rifle Association, is
something to be undertaken with caution.
Doctrinal orthodoxy was flouted last month in a paper on the Israel
lobby by two of America's leading political scientists, Stephen Walt
from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and John Mearsheimer from
the University of Chicago. They argue powerfully that extraordinarily
effective lobbying in Washington has led to a political consensus that
American and Israeli interests are inseparable and identical.
Only a UK publication, the London Review of Books, was prepared to carry
their critique, in the same way that it was Prospect, a British monthly
journal, that four years ago published a path-breaking study of the
Israel lobby by the American analyst, Michael Lind.
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=5003
Moral blackmail - the fear that any criticism of Israeli policy and US
support for it will lead to charges of anti-Semitism - is a powerful
disincentive to publish dissenting views. It is also leading to the
silencing of policy debate on American university campuses, partly as
the result of targeted campaigns against the dissenters.
Judgment of the precise value of the Walt-Mearscheimer paper has been
swept aside by a wave of condemnation. Their scholarship has been
derided and their motives impugned, while Harvard has energetically
disassociated itself from their views. Mr Walt's position as academic
dean of the Kennedy School is in doubt.
On various counts, this is a shame and a self-inflicted wound no society
built on freedom should allow.
Honest and informed debate is the foundation of freedom and progress and
a precondition of sound policy. It is, to say the least, odd when
dissent in such a central area of policy is forced offshore or reduced
to the status of samizdat. Some of Israel's loudest cheerleaders,
moreover, are often divorced by their extremism from the mainstream of
American Jewish opinion and the vigorous debate that takes place inside
Israel. As Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, remarked in
Haaretz about the Walt-Mearsheimer controversy: "It would in fact serve
Israel if the open and critical debate that takes place over here were
exported over there [the US]."
Nothing, moreover, is more damaging to US interests than the inability
to have a proper debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, how
Washington should use its influence to resolve it, and how best America
can advance freedom and stability in the region as a whole. Bullying
Americans into a consensus on Israeli policy is bad for Israel and makes
it impossible for America to articulate its own national interest.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/19/opinion/19judt.html?ex=1303099200&en=309d2e34c279f148&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
April 19, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
A Lobby, Not a Conspiracy
By TONY JUDT
IN its March 23rd issue the London Review of Books, a respected British journal, published an essay titled "The Israel Lobby."
( http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html ) The authors are two distinguished American academics (Stephen Walt of Harvard and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago) who posted a longer (83-page) version of their text on the Web site of Harvard's Kennedy School:
http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06-011
As they must have anticipated, the essay has run into a firestorm of vituperation and refutation. Critics have charged that their scholarship is shoddy and that their claims are, in the words of the columnist Christopher Hitchens, "slightly but unmistakably smelly." The smell in question, of course, is that of anti-Semitism.
This somewhat hysterical response is regrettable. In spite of its provocative title, the essay draws on a wide variety of standard sources and is mostly uncontentious. But it makes two distinct and important claims. The first is that uncritical support for Israel across the decades has not served America's best interests. This is an assertion that can be debated on its merits. The authors' second claim is more controversial: American foreign policy choices, they write, have for years been distorted by one domestic pressure group, the "Israel Lobby."
Some would prefer, when explaining American actions overseas, to point a finger at the domestic "energy lobby." Others might blame the influence of Wilsonian idealism, or imperial practices left over from the cold war. But that a powerful Israel lobby exists could hardly be denied by anyone who knows how Washington works. Its core is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, its penumbra a variety of national Jewish organizations.
Does the Israel Lobby affect our foreign policy choices? Of course — that is one of its goals. And it has been rather successful: Israel is the largest recipient of American foreign aid and American responses to Israeli behavior have been overwhelmingly uncritical or supportive.
But does pressure to support Israel distort American decisions? That's a matter of judgment. Prominent Israeli leaders and their American supporters pressed very hard for the invasion of Iraq; but the United States would probably be in Iraq today even if there had been no Israel lobby. Is Israel, in Mearsheimer/Walt's words, "a liability in the war on terror and the broader effort to deal with rogue states?" I think it is; but that too is an issue for legitimate debate.
The essay and the issues it raises for American foreign policy have been prominently dissected and discussed overseas. In America, however, it's been another story: virtual silence in the mainstream media. Why? There are several plausible explanations. One is that a relatively obscure academic paper is of little concern to general-interest readers. Another is that claims about disproportionate Jewish public influence are hardly original — and debate over them inevitably attracts interest from the political extremes. And then there is the view that Washington is anyway awash in "lobbies" of this sort, pressuring policymakers and distorting their choices.
Each of these considerations might reasonably account for the mainstream press's initial indifference to the Mearsheimer-Walt essay. But they don't convincingly explain the continued silence even after the article aroused stormy debate in the academy, within the Jewish community, among the opinion magazines and Web sites, and in the rest of the world. I think there is another element in play: fear. Fear of being thought to legitimize talk of a "Jewish conspiracy"; fear of being thought anti-Israel; and thus, in the end, fear of licensing the expression of anti-Semitism.
The end result — a failure to consider a major issue in public policy — is a great pity. So what, you may ask, if Europeans debate this subject with such enthusiasm? Isn't Europe a hotbed of anti-Zionists (read anti-Semites) who will always relish the chance to attack Israel and her American friend? But it was David Aaronovitch, a Times of London columnist who, in the course of criticizing Mearsheimer and Walt, nonetheless conceded that "I sympathize with their desire for redress, since there has been a cock-eyed failure in the U.S. to understand the plight of the Palestinians."
And it was the German writer Christoph Bertram, a longstanding friend of America in a country where every public figure takes extraordinary care to tread carefully in such matters, who wrote in Die Zeit that "it is rare to find scholars with the desire and the courage to break taboos."
How are we to explain the fact that it is in Israel itself that the uncomfortable issues raised by Professors Mearsheimer and Walt have been most thoroughly aired? It was an Israeli columnist in the liberal daily Haaretz who described the American foreign policy advisers Richard Perle and Douglas Feith as "walking a fine line between their loyalty to American governments ...and Israeli interests." It was Israel's impeccably conservative Jerusalem Post that described Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, as "devoutly pro-Israel." Are we to accuse Israelis, too, of "anti-Zionism"?
The damage that is done by America's fear of anti-Semitism when discussing Israel is threefold. It is bad for Jews: anti-Semitism is real enough (I know something about it, growing up Jewish in 1950's Britain), but for just that reason it should not be confused with political criticisms of Israel or its American supporters. It is bad for Israel: by guaranteeing it unconditional support, Americans encourage Israel to act heedless of consequences. The Israeli journalist Tom Segev described the Mearsheimer-Walt essay as "arrogant" but also acknowledged ruefully: "They are right. Had the United States saved Israel from itself, life today would be better ...the Israel Lobby in the United States harms Israel's true interests."
BUT above all, self-censorship is bad for the United States itself. Americans are denying themselves participation in a fast-moving international conversation. Daniel Levy (a former Israeli peace negotiator) wrote in Haaretz that the Mearsheimer-Walt essay should be a wake-up call, a reminder of the damage the Israel lobby is doing to both nations. But I would go further. I think this essay, by two "realist" political scientists with no interest whatsoever in the Palestinians, is a straw in the wind.
Looking back, we shall see the Iraq war and its catastrophic consequences as not the beginning of a new democratic age in the Middle East but rather as the end of an era that began in the wake of the 1967 war, a period during which American alignment with Israel was shaped by two imperatives: cold-war strategic calculations and a new-found domestic sensitivity to the memory of the Holocaust and the debt owed to its victims and survivors.
For the terms of strategic debate are shifting. East Asia grows daily in importance. Meanwhile our clumsy failure to re-cast the Middle East — and its enduring implications for our standing there — has come into sharp focus. American influence in that part of the world now rests almost exclusively on our power to make war: which means in the end that it is no influence at all. Above all, perhaps, the Holocaust is passing beyond living memory. In the eyes of a watching world, the fact that an Israeli soldier's great-grandmother died in Treblinka will not excuse his own misbehavior.
Thus it will not be self-evident to future generations of Americans why the imperial might and international reputation of the United States are so closely aligned with one small, controversial Mediterranean client state. It is already not at all self-evident to Europeans, Latin Americans, Africans or Asians. Why, they ask, has America chosen to lose touch with the rest of the international community on this issue? Americans may not like the implications of this question. But it is pressing. It bears directly on our international standing and influence; and it has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. We cannot ignore it.
Tony Judt is the director of the Remarque Institute at New York University and the author of "Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Countdown to U.S.-Iran War Has Begun: Reports
Presence of U.S. bombers in England seen as advance signals
http://www.libertyforum.org/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=news_news&Number=294554676&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=21&vc=1&t=0#Post294554676
Here is a tiny URL of the above one:
http://tinyurl.com/rmzg9
Neoconservatism as a Jewish Movement:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/04/06/neoconservatism-as-a-jewish-movement.php
War on Iran:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HD13Ak01.html
Neocons Turn Up Heat for Iran Attack:
http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=8852
Iran Showdown Tests Power of "Israel Lobby"
http://www.alternet.org/story/34935/
Colin Powell feared the power of the pro-Israel lobby:
http://www.selvesandothers.org/view3631.html | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 8:10 am Post subject: US will go for other states after Iran and Iraq, says Margol |
| http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006%5C04%5C24%5Cstory_24-4-2006_pg7_36
Daily Times - Site Edition Monday, April 24, 2006
US will go for other states after Iran and Iraq, says Margolis
* Well-known journalist calls Bush’s statements on Iran’s N-programme ‘ridiculous and nonsense’
Daily Times Monitor
LAHORE: Renowned American journalist Eric Margolis has said that the US will “go for” Pakistan and Saudi Arabia after Iraq and Iran.
“We have leaks from reliable sources that after Iraq and Iran, the US plans to go for Pakistan and Saudi Arabia,” Margolis said in an interview with IWT NEWS on Saturday. Margolis supported Iran’s nuclear weapons programme, saying that it poses no threat to the world community. US President George W Bush’s statements on Iran’s nuclear programme were “ridiculous and nonsense”, he said. “Iran has no nuclear bombs and no capability to bomb a country with these weapons,” Margolis said.
He said that Iran’s longest-range missile, Shahab-III, had a maximum range of 1,200-1,500 kilometres, which meant that Iran could not attack North America or Western Europe. “No substantial evidence has yet been found that Iran has nuclear weapons, and anyone saying that Iran is a threat to the world is lying and deceiving the world,” Margolis said. He said that Bush’s statement about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction had “proved baseless”. The US and Israel were planning to attack Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and major military installations, he said.
Margolis said that Iran had been trying to acquire nuclear weapons since 1970, when it signed an agreement with Israel to provide it with nuclear warheads and medium range missiles. He said that Pakistani intelligence sources had told him that decades ago, Iran had offered to pay for Pakistan’s entire defence budget for 10 years in exchange for nuclear technology. “Why shouldn’t Iran have nuclear weapons? It is surrounded by nuclear powers like Pakistan, Russia, Israel and India,” Margolis said. He said that the US was providing India with nuclear secrets and the latest nuclear technology in spite of the fact that the latter had not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. He said that India is developing submarine-launched missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, and Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles with a range of 7,000 miles. “With these weapons, India can strike even the US, but the Bush administration is still providing India with modern nuclear technology,” he said. He said that the US had supplied Israel with bomber airplanes, which could travel to Iran and even Pakistan. It had also given Israel around 500 “penetrating bombs, which are very lethal”.
He said that a US or Israeli attack on Iran could be “very dangerous”, as Iran had the ability to “punish American forces in Iraq”. He said that the present Iraqi government was a Shia government which is very close to Iran. “So an attack on Iran can outrage the Shia community of Iraq,” he said. Margolis said that Iran had the ability to launch “commando attacks” on US forces in the gulf. “Iran can attack US bases in Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar. Iran can hamper oil exports from the area, which will create a major panic in the world and in the US,” he said.
“Iranians are prepared to take huge casualties (to defend themselves) because they are a dedicated and nationalistic nation, whereas the US lacks this advantage,” Margolis said, adding that Iran can even send troops to Iraq. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 8:24 am Post subject: |
| http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006%5C04%5C24%5Cstory_24-4-2006_pg7_36
Daily Times - Site Edition Monday, April 24, 2006
US will go for other states after Iran and Iraq, says Margolis
* Well-known journalist calls Bush’s statements on Iran’s N-programme ‘ridiculous and nonsense’
Daily Times Monitor
LAHORE: Renowned American journalist Eric Margolis has said that the US will “go for” Pakistan and Saudi Arabia after Iraq and Iran.
“We have leaks from reliable sources that after Iraq and Iran, the US plans to go for Pakistan and Saudi Arabia,” Margolis said in an interview with IWT NEWS on Saturday. Margolis supported Iran’s nuclear weapons programme, saying that it poses no threat to the world community. US President George W Bush’s statements on Iran’s nuclear programme were “ridiculous and nonsense”, he said. “Iran has no nuclear bombs and no capability to bomb a country with these weapons,” Margolis said.
He said that Iran’s longest-range missile, Shahab-III, had a maximum range of 1,200-1,500 kilometres, which meant that Iran could not attack North America or Western Europe. “No substantial evidence has yet been found that Iran has nuclear weapons, and anyone saying that Iran is a threat to the world is lying and deceiving the world,” Margolis said. He said that Bush’s statement about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction had “proved baseless”. The US and Israel were planning to attack Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and major military installations, he said.
Margolis said that Iran had been trying to acquire nuclear weapons since 1970, when it signed an agreement with Israel to provide it with nuclear warheads and medium range missiles. He said that Pakistani intelligence sources had told him that decades ago, Iran had offered to pay for Pakistan’s entire defence budget for 10 years in exchange for nuclear technology. “Why shouldn’t Iran have nuclear weapons? It is surrounded by nuclear powers like Pakistan, Russia, Israel and India,” Margolis said. He said that the US was providing India with nuclear secrets and the latest nuclear technology in spite of the fact that the latter had not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. He said that India is developing submarine-launched missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, and Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles with a range of 7,000 miles. “With these weapons, India can strike even the US, but the Bush administration is still providing India with modern nuclear technology,” he said. He said that the US had supplied Israel with bomber airplanes, which could travel to Iran and even Pakistan. It had also given Israel around 500 “penetrating bombs, which are very lethal”.
He said that a US or Israeli attack on Iran could be “very dangerous”, as Iran had the ability to “punish American forces in Iraq”. He said that the present Iraqi government was a Shia government which is very close to Iran. “So an attack on Iran can outrage the Shia community of Iraq,” he said. Margolis said that Iran had the ability to launch “commando attacks” on US forces in the gulf. “Iran can attack US bases in Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar. Iran can hamper oil exports from the area, which will create a major panic in the world and in the US,” he said.
“Iranians are prepared to take huge casualties (to defend themselves) because they are a dedicated and nationalistic nation, whereas the US lacks this advantage,” Margolis said, adding that Iran can even send troops to Iraq.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The above is in accordance with the JINSA (and PNAC) agenda (see the following URLs):
http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles114.htm
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020902/vest
Also access the following message threads:
http://www.nowarforisrael.com/Rachel%20Corrie.htm
Whose War? (Israel's war):
http://www.amconmag.com/03_24_03/cover.html
US military operations already underway in Iran for Israel:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/04/16/u-s-military-operations-are-already-underway-in-iran.php
Fifth columnist pro-Israel lobby (AIPAC and similar) pushing US to attack Iran for Israel like it did with Iraq:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/03/17/u-s-middle-east-policy-motivated-by-pro-israel-lobby.php
Pro-Israel lobby in U.S. under attack
http://www.upi.com/InternationalIntelligence/view.php?StoryID=20060320-124726-1902r
Intl. Intelligence
WASHINGTON, March 20 (UPI) -- Two of America's top scholars have published a searing attack on the role and power of Washington's pro-Israel lobby in a British journal, warning that its "decisive" role in fomenting the Iraq war is now being repeated with the threat of action against Iran. And they say that the Lobby is so strong that they doubt their article would be accepted in any U.S.-based publication.
Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, author of "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics" and Professor Stephen Walt of Harvard's Kenney School, and author of "Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy," are leading figures American in academic life.
They claim that the Israel lobby has distorted American policy and operates against American interests, that it has organized the funneling of more than $140 billion dollars to Israel and "has a stranglehold" on the U.S. Congress, and its ability to raise large campaign funds gives its vast influence over Republican and Democratic administrations, while its role in Washington think tanks on the Middle East dominates the policy debate.
And they say that the Lobby works ruthlessly to suppress questioning of its role, to blacken its critics and to crush serious debate about the wisdom of supporting Israel in U.S. public life.
"Silencing skeptics by organizing blacklists and boycotts -- or by suggesting that critics are anti-Semites -- violates the principle of open debate on which democracy depends," Walt and Mearsheimer write.
"The inability of Congress to conduct a genuine debate on these important issues paralyses the entire process of democratic deliberation. Israel's backers should be free to make their case and to challenge those who disagree with them, but efforts to stifle debate by intimidation must be roundly condemned," they add, in the 12,800-word article published in the latest issue of The London Review of Books.
The article focuses strongly on the role of the "neo-conservatives" within the Bush administration in driving the decision to launch the war on Iraq.
"The main driving force behind the war was a small band of neo-conservatives, many with ties to the Likud," Mearsheimer and Walt argue." Given the neo-conservatives' devotion to Israel, their obsession with Iraq, and their influence in the Bush administration, it isn't surprising that many Americans suspected that the war was designed to further Israeli interests."
"The neo-conservatives had been determined to topple Saddam even before Bush became president. They caused a stir early in 1998 by publishing two open letters to Clinton, calling for Saddam's removal from power. The signatories, many of whom had close ties to pro-Israel groups like JINSA (Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs) or WINEP (Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy), and who included Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, Bernard Lewis, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, had little trouble persuading the Clinton administration to adopt the general goal of ousting Saddam. But they were unable to sell a war to achieve that objective. They were no more able to generate enthusiasm for invading Iraq in the early months of the Bush administration. They needed help to achieve their aim. That help arrived with 9/11. Specifically, the events of that day led Bush and Cheney to reverse course and become strong proponents of a preventive war," Walt and Mearsheimer write.
The article, which is already stirring furious debate in U.S. academic and intellectual circles, also explores the historical role of the Lobby.
"For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centerpiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel," the article says.
"The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread 'democracy' throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized not only U.S. security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the U.S. been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state?" Professors Walt and Mearsheimer add.
"The thrust of U.S. policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the 'Israel Lobby'. Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that U.S. interests and those of the other country - in this case, Israel -- are essentially identical," they add.
They argue that far from being a strategic asset to the United States, Israel "is becoming a strategic burden" and "does not behave like a loyal ally." They also suggest that Israel is also now "a liability in the war on terror and the broader effort to deal with rogue states.
"Saying that Israel and the U.S. are united by a shared terrorist threat has the causal relationship backwards: the US has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel, not the other way around," they add. "Support for Israel is not the only source of anti-American terrorism, but it is an important one, and it makes winning the war on terror more difficult. There is no question that many al-Qaida leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are motivated by Israel's presence in Jerusalem and the plight of the Palestinians. Unconditional support for Israel makes it easier for extremists to rally popular support and to attract recruits."
They question the argument that Israel deserves support as the only democracy in the Middle East, claiming that "some aspects of Israeli democracy are at odds with core American values. Unlike the US, where people are supposed to enjoy equal rights irrespective of race, religion or ethnicity, Israel was explicitly founded as a Jewish state and citizenship is based on the principle of blood kinship. Given this, it is not surprising that its 1.3 million Arabs are treated as second-class citizens."
The most powerful force in the Lobby is AIPAC, the American-Israel Public affairs Committee, which Walt and Mearsheimer call "a de facto agent for a foreign government," and which they say has now forged an important alliance with evangelical Christian groups.
The bulk of the article is a detailed analysis of the way they claim the Lobby managed to change the Bush administration's policy from "halting Israel's expansionist policies in the Occupied Territories and advocating the creation of a Palestinian state" and divert it to the war on Iraq instead. They write "Pressure from Israel and the Lobby was not the only factor behind the decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was critical."
"Thanks to the lobby, the United States has become the de facto enabler of Israeli expansion in the Occupied Territories, making it complicit in the crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians," and conclude that "Israel itself would probably be better off if the Lobby were less powerful and U.S. policy more even-handed."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/8ed824fc-c11b-11da-9419-0000779e2340,s01=1.html
Financial times
America and Israel
Published: April 1 2006 03:00 | Last updated: April 1 2006 03:00
Freedom of academic debate, political polemic, populist prejudice,
outlandish exaggeration and even mildly slanderous innuendo about
anything from Britney Spears to the president is axiomatic in the United
States of America, is it not? Well, perhaps not altogether.
Reflexes that ordinarily spring automatically to the defence of open
debate and free enquiry shut down - at least among much of America's
political elite - once the subject turns to Israel, and above all the
pro-Israel lobby's role in shaping US foreign policy.
Even though policy towards the Middle East is arguably the single
biggest determinant of America's reputation in the world, any attempt to
rethink this from first principles is politically risky.
Examining the specific role of organisations such as the American Israel
Public Affairs Committee, commonly considered to be the most effective
lobby group in the US apart from the National Rifle Association, is
something to be undertaken with caution.
Doctrinal orthodoxy was flouted last month in a paper on the Israel
lobby by two of America's leading political scientists, Stephen Walt
from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and John Mearsheimer from
the University of Chicago. They argue powerfully that extraordinarily
effective lobbying in Washington has led to a political consensus that
American and Israeli interests are inseparable and identical.
Only a UK publication, the London Review of Books, was prepared to carry
their critique, in the same way that it was Prospect, a British monthly
journal, that four years ago published a path-breaking study of the
Israel lobby by the American analyst, Michael Lind.
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=5003
Moral blackmail - the fear that any criticism of Israeli policy and US
support for it will lead to charges of anti-Semitism - is a powerful
disincentive to publish dissenting views. It is also leading to the
silencing of policy debate on American university campuses, partly as
the result of targeted campaigns against the dissenters.
Judgment of the precise value of the Walt-Mearscheimer paper has been
swept aside by a wave of condemnation. Their scholarship has been
derided and their motives impugned, while Harvard has energetically
disassociated itself from their views. Mr Walt's position as academic
dean of the Kennedy School is in doubt.
On various counts, this is a shame and a self-inflicted wound no society
built on freedom should allow.
Honest and informed debate is the foundation of freedom and progress and
a precondition of sound policy. It is, to say the least, odd when
dissent in such a central area of policy is forced offshore or reduced
to the status of samizdat. Some of Israel's loudest cheerleaders,
moreover, are often divorced by their extremism from the mainstream of
American Jewish opinion and the vigorous debate that takes place inside
Israel. As Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, remarked in
Haaretz about the Walt-Mearsheimer controversy: "It would in fact serve
Israel if the open and critical debate that takes place over here were
exported over there [the US]."
Nothing, moreover, is more damaging to US interests than the inability
to have a proper debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, how
Washington should use its influence to resolve it, and how best America
can advance freedom and stability in the region as a whole. Bullying
Americans into a consensus on Israeli policy is bad for Israel and makes
it impossible for America to articulate its own national interest.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/19/opinion/19judt.html?ex=1303099200&en=309d2e34c279f148&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
April 19, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
A Lobby, Not a Conspiracy
By TONY JUDT
IN its March 23rd issue the London Review of Books, a respected British journal, published an essay titled "The Israel Lobby."
( http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html ) The authors are two distinguished American academics (Stephen Walt of Harvard and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago) who posted a longer (83-page) version of their text on the Web site of Harvard's Kennedy School:
http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06-011
As they must have anticipated, the essay has run into a firestorm of vituperation and refutation. Critics have charged that their scholarship is shoddy and that their claims are, in the words of the columnist Christopher Hitchens, "slightly but unmistakably smelly." The smell in question, of course, is that of anti-Semitism.
This somewhat hysterical response is regrettable. In spite of its provocative title, the essay draws on a wide variety of standard sources and is mostly uncontentious. But it makes two distinct and important claims. The first is that uncritical support for Israel across the decades has not served America's best interests. This is an assertion that can be debated on its merits. The authors' second claim is more controversial: American foreign policy choices, they write, have for years been distorted by one domestic pressure group, the "Israel Lobby."
Some would prefer, when explaining American actions overseas, to point a finger at the domestic "energy lobby." Others might blame the influence of Wilsonian idealism, or imperial practices left over from the cold war. But that a powerful Israel lobby exists could hardly be denied by anyone who knows how Washington works. Its core is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, its penumbra a variety of national Jewish organizations.
Does the Israel Lobby affect our foreign policy choices? Of course — that is one of its goals. And it has been rather successful: Israel is the largest recipient of American foreign aid and American responses to Israeli behavior have been overwhelmingly uncritical or supportive.
But does pressure to support Israel distort American decisions? That's a matter of judgment. Prominent Israeli leaders and their American supporters pressed very hard for the invasion of Iraq; but the United States would probably be in Iraq today even if there had been no Israel lobby. Is Israel, in Mearsheimer/Walt's words, "a liability in the war on terror and the broader effort to deal with rogue states?" I think it is; but that too is an issue for legitimate debate.
The essay and the issues it raises for American foreign policy have been prominently dissected and discussed overseas. In America, however, it's been another story: virtual silence in the mainstream media. Why? There are several plausible explanations. One is that a relatively obscure academic paper is of little concern to general-interest readers. Another is that claims about disproportionate Jewish public influence are hardly original — and debate over them inevitably attracts interest from the political extremes. And then there is the view that Washington is anyway awash in "lobbies" of this sort, pressuring policymakers and distorting their choices.
Each of these considerations might reasonably account for the mainstream press's initial indifference to the Mearsheimer-Walt essay. But they don't convincingly explain the continued silence even after the article aroused stormy debate in the academy, within the Jewish community, among the opinion magazines and Web sites, and in the rest of the world. I think there is another element in play: fear. Fear of being thought to legitimize talk of a "Jewish conspiracy"; fear of being thought anti-Israel; and thus, in the end, fear of licensing the expression of anti-Semitism.
The end result — a failure to consider a major issue in public policy — is a great pity. So what, you may ask, if Europeans debate this subject with such enthusiasm? Isn't Europe a hotbed of anti-Zionists (read anti-Semites) who will always relish the chance to attack Israel and her American friend? But it was David Aaronovitch, a Times of London columnist who, in the course of criticizing Mearsheimer and Walt, nonetheless conceded that "I sympathize with their desire for redress, since there has been a cock-eyed failure in the U.S. to understand the plight of the Palestinians."
And it was the German writer Christoph Bertram, a longstanding friend of America in a country where every public figure takes extraordinary care to tread carefully in such matters, who wrote in Die Zeit that "it is rare to find scholars with the desire and the courage to break taboos."
How are we to explain the fact that it is in Israel itself that the uncomfortable issues raised by Professors Mearsheimer and Walt have been most thoroughly aired? It was an Israeli columnist in the liberal daily Haaretz who described the American foreign policy advisers Richard Perle and Douglas Feith as "walking a fine line between their loyalty to American governments ...and Israeli interests." It was Israel's impeccably conservative Jerusalem Post that described Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, as "devoutly pro-Israel." Are we to accuse Israelis, too, of "anti-Zionism"?
The damage that is done by America's fear of anti-Semitism when discussing Israel is threefold. It is bad for Jews: anti-Semitism is real enough (I know something about it, growing up Jewish in 1950's Britain), but for just that reason it should not be confused with political criticisms of Israel or its American supporters. It is bad for Israel: by guaranteeing it unconditional support, Americans encourage Israel to act heedless of consequences. The Israeli journalist Tom Segev described the Mearsheimer-Walt essay as "arrogant" but also acknowledged ruefully: "They are right. Had the United States saved Israel from itself, life today would be better ...the Israel Lobby in the United States harms Israel's true interests."
BUT above all, self-censorship is bad for the United States itself. Americans are denying themselves participation in a fast-moving international conversation. Daniel Levy (a former Israeli peace negotiator) wrote in Haaretz that the Mearsheimer-Walt essay should be a wake-up call, a reminder of the damage the Israel lobby is doing to both nations. But I would go further. I think this essay, by two "realist" political scientists with no interest whatsoever in the Palestinians, is a straw in the wind.
Looking back, we shall see the Iraq war and its catastrophic consequences as not the beginning of a new democratic age in the Middle East but rather as the end of an era that began in the wake of the 1967 war, a period during which American alignment with Israel was shaped by two imperatives: cold-war strategic calculations and a new-found domestic sensitivity to the memory of the Holocaust and the debt owed to its victims and survivors.
For the terms of strategic debate are shifting. East Asia grows daily in importance. Meanwhile our clumsy failure to re-cast the Middle East — and its enduring implications for our standing there — has come into sharp focus. American influence in that part of the world now rests almost exclusively on our power to make war: which means in the end that it is no influence at all. Above all, perhaps, the Holocaust is passing beyond living memory. In the eyes of a watching world, the fact that an Israeli soldier's great-grandmother died in Treblinka will not excuse his own misbehavior.
Thus it will not be self-evident to future generations of Americans why the imperial might and international reputation of the United States are so closely aligned with one small, controversial Mediterranean client state. It is already not at all self-evident to Europeans, Latin Americans, Africans or Asians. Why, they ask, has America chosen to lose touch with the rest of the international community on this issue? Americans may not like the implications of this question. But it is pressing. It bears directly on our international standing and influence; and it has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. We cannot ignore it.
Tony Judt is the director of the Remarque Institute at New York University and the author of "Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Countdown to U.S.-Iran War Has Begun: Reports
Presence of U.S. bombers in England seen as advance signals
http://www.libertyforum.org/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=news_news&Number=294554676&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=21&vc=1&t=0#Post294554676
Here is a tiny URL of the above one:
http://tinyurl.com/rmzg9
Neoconservatism as a Jewish Movement:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/04/06/neoconservatism-as-a-jewish-movement.php
War on Iran:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HD13Ak01.html
Neocons Turn Up Heat for Iran Attack:
http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=8852
Iran Showdown Tests Power of "Israel Lobby"
http://www.alternet.org/story/34935/
Colin Powell feared the power of the pro-Israel lobby:
http://www.selvesandothers.org/view3631.html | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 9:39 am Post subject: What did President Ahmadinejad actually say? |
| What did President Ahmadinejad actually say?
Did you see this?
Excerpt:
But let's take a closer look at what Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said. It is a merit of the 'New York Times' that they placed the complete speech at our disposal. ...It's becoming clear. The statements of the Iranian President have been reflected by the media in a manipulated way. Iran's President betokens the removal of the regimes, that are in power in Israel and in the USA, to be possible aim for the future. This is correct. But he never demands the elimination or annihilation of Israel. He reveals that changes are potential.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12790.htm | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
