| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2006 10:32 pm Post subject: Rice Pushes Security Council on Iran-for Israel, of course! |
| Here goes Condi pushing for more war for Israel against Iran as well:
Rice Pushes Security Council on Iran
By ANNE GEARAN, AP Diplomatic Writer
2 hours, 16 minutes ago
The credibility of the U.N. Security Council will be in doubt if it does not take clear-cut action against Iran over Tehran's nuclear program, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday.
Rice made her remarks four days before the expiration of a United Nations deadline for Iran to stop uranium enrichment. That process can produce fuel for nuclear energy or material for nuclear weapons.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, has accused Iran of failing to answer questions about its nuclear program. In late March, it reported Tehran to the Security Council and gave it one month to address the demands.
"When the international community reconvenes after the 30 days, there has to be some message, clear message, that this kind of behavior is not acceptable, or you will start to call into question the credibility of what the Security Council says when it says it," Rice said while flying to diplomatic visits to Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria.
Though the United States has said it prefers decisive steps, Security Council members Russia and China have opposed forceful sanctions. As permanent members of the council, either of those countries could veto any proposals.
"We'll continue to discuss this with the Russians and with others, but I expect that we're going to have to have some kind of action by the Security Council that demonstrates that this is a serious matter," Rice said.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad indicated Monday that Iran might withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty on nuclear activities, and he predicted the Security Council would not impose sanctions on his country.
Meanwhile, a leading German legislator said the United States should delay "for some time" any U.N. Security Council action on Iran and talk directly to Tehran about its security concerns.
"We have time to be patient," Ruprecht Polenz, chairman of the international relations committee of the German Bundestag, said before meetings in Washington with Undersecretary of State Nichols Burns and Elliott Abrams of the National Security Council.
In the meantime, Polenz said, Russia could explore expressions of renewed interest by Iran in joint enrichment of uranium on Russian territory. The Russian proposal has U.S. and European support as a way to make sure Iran does not use enriched uranium for weapons development.
Nor, he said, would it be "a bad idea" for the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency to resume its review of Iran's nuclear activities.
By contrast, a State Department spokesman was skeptical that Iran really was interested in the Russian proposal.
"One day they will say there is a deal and the other day they will say there is no deal, and then they will say there is one -- only on their terms," spokesman Adam Ereli said.
Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the watchdog group, is due to report to the Security Council by the end of the week on Iran's nuclear activities, which Iran says are entirely peaceful in purpose.
Next week, U.S., British, French, Chinese, Russian and German officials will meet "to consider the next steps that we should take in response to what we expect to be a negative report," Ereli said.
___
AP Diplomatic Writer Barry Schweid in Washington contributed to this report
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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
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/04/22/rice-denies-leaking-defen_n_19612.html
US military operations 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
Bush sinks to all time low in the polls:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/04/24/bushs-approval-ratings-s_n_19709.html | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2006 10:46 pm Post subject: |
| Rice is simply a 'talking head' for her masters with the fifth columnist (serving Israel first) 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
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."
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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."
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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
Whose War? (Israel's war):
http://www.amconmag.com/03_24_03/cover.html | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 5:46 pm Post subject: |
| Coverage in the Israeli newspapers but hardly any in the serving Israel first US press/media:
AIPAC defense team to subpoena Rice
Nathan Guttman, THE JERUSALEM POST Apr. 22, 2006
A US district court Friday allowed the defense in the trial of two former AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) employees to ask Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to testify in the trial, after they claimed that Rice had leaked to the AIPAC staffers the same information that they had received from a former Pentagon employee and for which they are being prosecuted.
Judge T.S. Ellis of the US District Court in Alexandria Virginia granted the defense's motion to subpoena Rice and three other government officials: retired general Anthony Zinni who was the administration's special envoy to the Middle East; William Burns, who was assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs and is now the US ambassador to Moscow; and David Satterfield, who was Burns's deputy and is now the Deputy Chief of Mission in Baghdad.
The decision to allow the defense to proceed with the subpoena process does not ensure that the government officials will actually appear in court, but it does give the defense permission to contact the State Department and put in a request for the testimony.
In the hearing, attorney Abbe Lowell, representing former AIPAC staffer Steve Rosen, told the court that Rice's testimony is needed since she had met with Rosen in the past, while serving as National Security Adviser, and conveyed to him the same information that he and his colleague Keith Weissman later received from former Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin.
Rosen and Weissman were indicted for communicating national defense information which they got from Franklin to Israeli diplomats and members of the press. Franklin signed a plea agreement with the government and was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
US attorney Kevin DiGregory asked the court not to grant the defense's request to summon the government officials, and denied Lowell's claim that Rice had leaked information to Rosen.
The State Department denied the allegations Rice herself had leaked classified information to the former AIPAC staffer, and spokesman Sean McCormack said that "the claims by these defense lawyers are utterly false." Jewish activists in Washington speculated over the weekend that the meeting between Rosen and Rice, who was at the time National Security Adviser, was not a private conversation but rather a routine meeting Rice held with a group of Jewish activists.
"These are usual meetings that take place from time to time in which we discuss issues regarding the US policy on matters we are concerned about," said the Jewish activist.
This is the first time Rice's name has been mentioned in connection to the AIPAC case. The request to subpoena her sheds some light on the possible tactics of the defense, which will seek to show that the exchange of information between Rosen and Weissman and Franklin was not unusual and was similar to that they had conducted with senior administration officials, including Rice.
While allowing the defense to move on with their attempt to subpoena senior government officials to the trial, Ellis denied their request to depose three Israeli diplomats who are mentioned in the indictment. Ellis ruled that since the Israelis have refused to be deposed by the defense, there is no sense for the court to allow such depositions. The US court has no authority to force foreign officials to testify or give depositions.
In the Friday hearing, both sides provided oral arguments regarding Rosen's and Weissman's requests to dismiss the entire case. Attorney Lowell claimed that the 1917 Espionage Act by which the former lobbyists are being prosecuted is vague and was never used in such a case, and thus Rosen and Weissman had no way of being aware of the fact they were breaking the law. He also argued that prosecuting them as citizens who received oral information impacts on their right to freedom of speech as provided by the First Amendment.
Prosecutor DiGregory claimed the law was not vague and argued it does not infringe on the defendants' right to free speech, since the communication between the lobbyists and Franklin can not be defined as protected speech.
Ellis has not ruled on the request to dismiss the case. The trial, which was supposed to begin in late May, was postponed once again, due to the lengthy process of clearing classified information which the defense wishes to use in the case. The trial is now scheduled to begin on July 11.
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1143498894351&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
