| Alpha | | Posted: Sat Aug 19, 2006 10:19 am Post subject: Elliot Abrams: "Tomorrow's lobby for Israel has got to |
| Elliot Abrams: "Tomorrow's lobby for Israel has got to be conservative Christians, because there aren't going to be enough Jews to do it".
In the internal struggle over peace in the Middle East, the neo-conservatives within the administration prevailed. Elliot Abrams, chief of Middle East affairs at the NSC, was their main man. During the Iran-contra scandal, Abrams had helped set up a rogue foreign policy operation. His soliciting of $10m from the Sultan of Brunei for the illegal enterprise turned farcical when he juxtaposed numbers on a Swiss bank account and lost the money. He pleaded guilty to lying to Congress and then spent his purgatory as director of a neo-conservative thinktank, denouncing the Oslo Accords and arguing that "tomorrow's lobby for Israel has got to be conservative Christians, because there aren't going to be enough Jews to do it". Abrams was rehabilitated when George Bush appointed him to the NSC.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1084880,00.html
Staff change means Mideast policy shift
By Richard Sale
UPI Intelligence Correspondent
A staff shake-up at the National Security Council is likely to mean the United States will take a harder pro-Israel stance in the Middle East, several serving and former intelligence officials tell United Press International.
According to these sources, Elliott Abrams, the controversial former Reagan administration official who President Bush last December appointed to the NSC to take charge of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, has removed several staff members who were regarded as even-handed on the issue.
Ben Miller, who was on loan from the CIA and who had the Iraqi file at the NSC, was "abruptly let go," according to former long-time CIA Middle East analyst Judith Yaphe.
Yaphe, whose account was confirmed by administration officials speaking on condition of anonymity, said two other officials, Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann, have also been removed from the NSC. Leverett, who was also seconded from the CIA, had worked at the NSC since February 2002 and was appointed senior director for Middle East initiatives on Dec. 3, 2002 -- the same day that Abrams took up his post.
Mann was on loan to the NSC from the State Department where a colleague described her as a "a pure Foreign Service Officer type."
A White House official said that the moves were part of the usual staff turnover at the NSC.
Leverett was an advocate of the so-called "roadmap" for a Palestinian-Israeli peace, according to former CIA counter-terrorism chief Vince Cannistraro.
NSC spokesman Sean McCormack told UPI that there had been no firings, but acknowledged that Miller was changing assignments. He said Miller had been detailed to the NSC from the CIA and his tour had come to an end. He said that Leverett was still at the NSC, but was also coming to the end of his tour.
Asked why he would be leaving a post to which he was only appointed Dec. 3, McCormack said only that staff rotations at the NSC were standard.
Neither Mann nor Miller returned phone messages. Staff in Leverett's office said he was on long-term leave and could not be reached for comment.
Josef Bodansky, the director of the Congressional Task Force on Terror and Unconventional Warfare, confirmed that Miller had been fired. He said Miller's leaving was very abrupt. He said Abrams had "led Miller to an open window and told him to jump," adding, "that's his (Abram's) management style."
Bodansky confirmed that Mann and Leverett had also been told to leave.
He said that Abrams believes "a strong Israel will prove to be the U.S. cornerstone in the Middle East." As a result, Abrams "is not going to yield to those who want to pressure Israel over the Arab-Israeli peace process." Bodansky said Abrams will "impose a policy and administer it very vigorously."
Yaphe added, "The clean sweep would indicate Abrams is going to bring in his own people."
Elliot Abrams was appointed Dec. 3, 2002, to be the NSC's senior director for Near East, Southwest Asian and North African affairs with responsibility for Arab-Israeli issues, according to the White House.
Until his new appointment, Abrams had been the senior director of the NSC's Office of Democracy, Human Rights, and International Operations, a post he took up in June 2001, according to the White House.
In 1991, Abrams was indicted by the Iran-Contra special prosecutor for giving false testimony before Congress in 1987 about his role in illicitly raising money for the Nicaraguan Contras. He pleaded guilty to two lesser offenses of withholding information to Congress in order to avoid a trial and a possible jail term.
He was pardoned by President George H. W. Bush along with a number of other Iran-Contra defendants on Christmas night 1992.
Cannistraro said that the shake-up means Abrams and the White House, "are getting rid of people willing to compromise on the Arab-Israeli dispute." Referring to the 1993 land-for-peace deal between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, he said, "It's pretty well known that Abrams is no friend of the Oslo Accords."
According to one State Department official, Abrams was critical of then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak for withdrawing from Lebanon and hailed the election of Ariel Sharon as prime minister, being "enamored of Sharon's security through strength line."
Tony Cordesman, Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, was critical of the changes, saying that Miller, Mann and Leverett "were among the saner minds discussing the Arab-Israeli issue."
Abrams, he said, "is remarkably unqualified for his job."
In a recent New York Sun article, a commentator on Iraq who follows the Iraqi opposition movement, Laurie Mylroie, called Miller's leaving "very important."
She added: "You need people there who will carry out the administration's policies. He was reflecting the CIA's position, which is to be hostile to a democratic future for Iraq."
Mylroie did not respond to repeated requests for comment from UPI. But Yaphe called her assertion "ridiculous."
"The agency is in no way opposed to a democratic Iraq," she added.
Incoming officials in Washington often appoint subordinates with whom they see eye-to-eye. There is no information available as to who will replace the three officials.
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20030225-083116-7747r.htm
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Bush and Blair - the betrayal
America's first loyalty was to Ariel Sharon, not the prime minister
Sidney Blumenthal
Friday November 14, 2003
The Guardian
Tony Blair, about to welcome George Bush to London with pomp and circumstance, has assumed the mantle of tutor to the unlearned president.
Bush originally came to Blair determined to go to war in Iraq, but without a strategy. Blair instructed him that the casus belli was Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, urged him to make the case before the UN, and - when the effort to obtain a UN resolution failed - convinced him to revive the Middle East peace process, which the president had abandoned. The road map for peace was the principal concession Blair wrested from him.
The prime minister argued that renewing the negotiations was essential to the long-term credibility of the coalition goals in Iraq and the whole region. But within the Bush administration that initiative was systematically undermined. Now Blair welcomes a president who has taught him a lesson in statecraft that he refuses to acknowledge.
Flynt Leverett, a former CIA analyst, revealed to me that the text of the road map was ready to be made public before the end of 2002: "We had made commitments to key European and Arab allies. The White House lost its nerve. It took Blair to get Bush to put it out." This man knows what he's talking about. In addition to his CIA role, Leverett is a former senior director for Middle East affairs at the national security council, an author of the road map, and a fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. "We needed to work this issue hard," he says, "but because we didn't want to make life difficult with Sharon, we undercut our credibility."
In the internal struggle over peace in the Middle East, the neo-conservatives within the administration prevailed. Elliot Abrams, chief of Middle East affairs at the NSC, was their main man. During the Iran-contra scandal, Abrams had helped set up a rogue foreign policy operation. His soliciting of $10m from the Sultan of Brunei for the illegal enterprise turned farcical when he juxtaposed numbers on a Swiss bank account and lost the money. He pleaded guilty to lying to Congress and then spent his purgatory as director of a neo-conservative thinktank, denouncing the Oslo Accords and arguing that "tomorrow's lobby for Israel has got to be conservative Christians, because there aren't going to be enough Jews to do it". Abrams was rehabilitated when George Bush appointed him to the NSC.
In his new position, Abrams set to work, trying to gut the text of the road map. He was suspicious of the Europeans and British, considering them to be anti-Israel, if not inherently anti-semitic. But working in league with his allies in Cheney's office and at the defence department, Abrams failed to prevent Blair from persuading Bush to issue the road map at last.
The key to the road map's success was US support for the Palestinian prime minister, Abu Mazen, indispensable as a partner for peace, but regarded as a threat by both Sharon and Arafat. At the June summit on the road map, Bush told Abu Mazen: "God told me to strike at al-Qaida and I struck them; then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did; and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act."
Abu Mazen was scheduled to come to Washington to meet Bush a month later. For his political survival, he desperately required US pressure on the Sharon government to make concessions on building settlements on the West Bank. Abu Mazen sent a secret emissary to the White House: Khalil Shikaki. I met Shikaki in Ramallah, where he gave his account of this urgent trip. He met Elliot Abrams and laid out what support was needed from Bush if Abu Mazen - and therefore the road map - were to survive. Abrams told him, he says, that Bush "could not agree to anything" due to domestic political considerations: Bush's reliance on the religious right, his refusal to offend the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the demands of the upcoming election. Shikaki pleaded that Abu Mazen presented "a window of opportunity" and could not go on without US help. "He has to show he's capable of doing it himself," Abrams answered dismissively.
Inside the NSC, those in favour of the road map - CIA analysts Flynt Leverett and Ben Miller among others - were forced out. On September 6, Abu Mazen resigned, and the road map collapsed.
Blair provided Bush with a reason for the war in Iraq, and led him to express his plan for peace for the Middle East, preventing Bush from appearing a reckless and isolated leader. In return, the teacher's seminar on the Middle East has been dropped.
Harold Macmillan remarked that after empire the British would act towards the Americans as the Greeks to the Romans. Though the Greeks were often tutors to the Romans, Macmillan neglected to mention that the Greeks were slaves.
· Sidney Blumenthal was a senior adviser to President Clinton and is the author of The Clinton Wars
sidney_blumenthal @yahoo.com
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1084880,00.html | |
