| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Apr 15, 2007 9:13 pm Post subject: Fisk: Divide and rule - America's plan for Baghdad |
| The following seems to be in accordance with the 'divide and conquer' agenda as conveyed by Israeli Oded Yinon via the 'Israeli Origins of Bush II's War' piece linked below:
Israeli Origins of Bush II's Iraq War:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/04/26/the-israeli-origins-of-bush-ii-s-war.php
Subject: Fisk: Divide and rule - America's plan for Baghdad
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2439530ece
Robert Fisk: Divide and rule - America's plan for Baghdad
The Independent
Revealed: a new counter-insurgency strategy to carve up the city into sealed areas. The tactic failed in Vietnam. So what chance does it have in Iraq?
Published: 11 April 2007
Faced with an ever-more ruthless insurgency in Baghdad - despite President George Bush's "surge" in troops - US forces in the city are now planning a massive and highly controversial counter-insurgency operation that will seal off vast areas of the city, enclosing whole neighbourhoods with barricades and allowing only Iraqis with newly issued ID cards to enter.
The campaign of "gated communities" - whose genesis was in the Vietnam War - will involve up to 30 of the city's 89 official districts and will be the most ambitious counter-insurgency programme yet mounted by the US in Iraq.
The system has been used - and has spectacularly failed - in the past, and its inauguration in Iraq is as much a sign of American desperation at the country's continued descent into civil conflict as it is of US determination to "win" the war against an Iraqi insurgency that has cost the lives of more than 3,200 American troops. The system of "gating" areas under foreign occupation failed during the French war against FLN insurgents in Algeria and again during the American war in Vietnam. Israel has employed similar practices during its occupation of Palestinian territory - again, with little success.
But the campaign has far wider military ambitions than the pacification of Baghdad. It now appears that the US military intends to place as many as five mechanised brigades - comprising about 40,000 men - south and east of Baghdad, at least three of them positioned between the capital and the Iranian border. This would present Iran with a powerful - and potentially aggressive - American military force close to its border in the event of a US or Israeli military strike against its nuclear facilities later this year.
The latest "security" plan, of which The Independent has learnt the details, was concocted by General David Petraeus, the current US commander in Baghdad, during a six-month command and staff course at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. Those attending the course - American army generals serving in Iraq and top officers from the US Marine Corps, along with, according to some reports, at least four senior Israeli officers - participated in a series of debates to determine how best to "turn round" the disastrous war in Iraq.
The initial emphasis of the new American plan will be placed on securing Baghdad market places and predominantly Shia Muslim areas. Arrests of men of military age will be substantial. The ID card project is based upon a system adopted in the city of Tal Afar by General Petraeus's men - and specifically by Colonel H R McMaster, of the 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment - in early 2005, when an eight-foot "berm" was built around the town to prevent the movement of gunmen and weapons. General Petraeus regarded the campaign as a success although Tal Afar, close to the Syrian border, has since fallen back into insurgent control.
So far, the Baghdad campaign has involved only the creation of a few US positions within several civilian areas of the city but the new project will involve joint American and Iraqi "support bases" in nine of the 30 districts to be "gated" off. From these bases - in fortified buildings - US-Iraqi forces will supposedly clear militias from civilian streets which will then be walled off and the occupants issued with ID cards. Only the occupants will be allowed into these "gated communities" and there will be continuous patrolling by US-Iraqi forces. There are likely to be pass systems, "visitor" registration and restrictions on movement outside the "gated communities" . Civilians may find themselves inside a "controlled population" prison.
In theory, US forces can then concentrate on providing physical reconstruction in what the military like to call a "secure environment" . But insurgents are not foreigners, despite the presence of al-Qa'ida in Iraq. They come from the same population centres that will be "gated" and will, if undiscovered, hold ID cards themselves; they will be "enclosed" with everyone else.
A former US officer in Vietnam who has a deep knowledge of General Petraeus's plans is sceptical of the possible results. "The first loyalty of any Sunni who is in the Iraqi army is to the insurgency," he said. "Any Shia's first loyalty is to the head of his political party and its militia. Any Kurd in the Iraqi army, his first loyalty is to either Barzani or Talabani. There is no independent Iraqi army. These people really have no choice. They are trying to save their families from starvation and reprisal. At one time they may have believed in a unified Iraq. At one time they may have been secular. But the violence and brutality that started with the American invasion has burnt those liberal ideas out of people ... Every American who is embedded in an Iraqi unit is in constant mortal danger."
The senior generals who constructed the new "security" plan for Baghdad were largely responsible for the seminal - but officially "restricted" - field manual on counter-insurgency produced by the Department of the Army in December of last year, code-numbered FM 3-24. While not specifically advocating the "gated communities" campaign, one of its principles is the unification of civilian and military activities, citing "civil operations and revolutionary development support teams" in South Vietnam, assistance to Kurdish refugees in northern Iraq in 1991 and the "provincial reconstruction teams" in Afghanistan - a project widely condemned for linking military co-operation and humanitarian aid.
FM 3-24 is harsh in its analysis of what counter-insurgency forces must do to eliminate violence in Iraq. "With good intelligence, " it says, "counter-insurgents are like surgeons cutting out cancerous tissue while keeping other vital organs intact." But another former senior US officer has produced his own pessimistic conclusions about the "gated" neighbourhood project.
"Once the additional troops are in place the insurrectionists will cut the lines of communication from Kuwait to the greatest extent they are able," he told The Independent. "They will do the same inside Baghdad, forcing more use of helicopters. The helicopters will be vulnerable coming into the patrol bases, and the enemy will destroy as many as they can. The second part of their plan will be to attempt to destroy one of the patrol bases. They will begin that process by utilising their people inside the 'gated communities' to help them enter. They will choose bases where the Iraqi troops either will not fight or will actually support them.
"The American reaction will be to use massive firepower, which will destroy the neighbourhood that is being 'protected'. "
The ex-officer's fears for American helicopter crews were re-emphasised yesterday when a military Apache was shot down over central Baghdad.
The American's son is an officer currently serving in Baghdad. "The only chance the American military has to withdraw with any kind of tactical authority in the future is to take substantial casualties as a token of their respect for the situation created by the invasion," he said.
"The effort to create some order out of the chaos and the willingness to take casualties to do so will leave some residual respect for the Americans as they leave."
FM 3-24: America's new masterplan for Iraq
FM 3-24 comprises 220 pages of counter-insurgency planning, combat training techniques and historical analysis. The document was drawn up by Lt-Gen David Petraeus, the US commander in Baghdad, and Lt-Gen James Amos of the US Marine Corps, and was the nucleus for the new US campaign against the Iraqi insurgency. These are some of its recommendations and conclusions:
* In the eyes of some, a government that cannot protect its people forfeits the right to rule. In [parts] of Iraq and Afghanistan. .. militias established themselves as extragovernmental arbiters of the populace's physical security - in some cases, after first undermining that security...
* In the al-Qa'ida narrative... Osama bin Laden depicts himself as a man purified in the mountains of Afghanistan who is inspiring followers and punishing infidels. In the collective imagination of Bin Laden and his followers, they are agents of Islamic history who will reverse the decline of the umma (Muslim community) and bring about its triumph over Western imperialism.
* As the Host Nation government increases its legitimacy, the populace begins to assist it more actively. Eventually, the people marginalise insurgents to the point that [their] claim to legitimacy is destroyed. However, victory is gained not when this is achieved, but when the victory is permanently maintained by and with the people's active support...
* Any human rights abuses committed by US forces quickly become known throughout the local populace. Illegitimate actions undermine counterinsurgency efforts... Abuse of detained persons is immoral, illegal and unprofessional.
* If military forces remain in their compounds, they lose touch with the people, appear to be running scared, and cede the initiative to the insurgents. Aggressive saturation patrolling, ambushes, and listening post operations must be conducted, risk shared with the populace and contact maintained.
* FM 3-24 quotes Lawrence of Arabia as saying: "Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not to win it for them."
* FM 3-24 points to Napoleon's failure to control occupied Spain as the result of not providing a "stable environment" for the population. His struggle, the document says, lasted nearly six years and required four times the force of 80,000 Napoleon originally designated.
* Do not try to crack the hardest nut first. Do not go straight for the main insurgent stronghold. Instead, start from secure areas and work gradually outwards... Go with, not against, the grain of the local populace.
* Be cautious about allowing soldiers and marines to fraternise with local children. Homesick troops want to drop their guard with kids. But insurgents are watching. They notice any friendships between troops and children. They may either harm the children as punishment or use them as agents. | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 9:38 am Post subject: |
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Sent: Sunday, April 15, 2007 7:00 AM
Subject: The sailors' ordeal was a diversion
Iran: the war ahead
http://www.newstatesman.com/200704160013
John Pilger
Published 16 April 2007
The sailors' ordeal was a diversion from the bigger danger. The US and UK identified their new enemy long ago and are preparing the propaganda for the war ahead. Plus Rageh Omaar on how the Iran affair has weakened Britain's hand
The Israeli journalist Amira Hass describes the moment her mother, Hannah, was marched from a cattle train to the Nazi concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. "They were sick and some were dying," she says. "Then my mother saw these German women looking at the prisoners, just looking. This image became very formative in my upbringing, this despicable 'looking from the side'."
It is time we in Britain stopped looking from the side. We are being led towards perhaps the most serious crisis in modern history as the Bush-Cheney-Blair "long war" edges closer to Iran for no reason other than that nation's independence from rapacious America. The safe delivery of the 15 British sailors into the hands of Rupert Murdoch and his rivals (with tales of their "ordeal" almost certainly authored by the Ministry of Defence - until it got the wind up) is both a farce and a distraction. The Bush administration, in secret connivance with Blair, has spent four years preparing for "Operation Iranian Freedom". Forty-five cruise missiles are primed to strike. According to Russia's leading strategic thinker General Leonid Ivashov: "Nuclear facilities will be secondary targets . . . at least 20 such facilities need to be destroyed. Combat nuclear weapons may be used. This will result in the radioactive contamination of all the Iranian territory, and beyond."
And yet there is a surreal silence in Britain, save for the noise of "news" in which our powerful broadcasters gesture cryptically at the obvious but dare not make sense of it, lest the one-way moral screen erected between us and the consequences of an imperial foreign policy collapse and the truth be revealed. John Bolton, formerly Bush's man at the United Nations, recently spelled out the truth: that the Bush-Cheney-Blair plan for the Middle East is "an agenda to maintain division and ethnic tension and the only way to finally capture and enslave a country that has historically thrown out its occupiers on every occasion". He was referring to Iraq, but he also meant Iran, which would be next. That is the news.
One million Iraqis fill the streets of Najaf demanding that Bush and Blair get out of their homeland - that is the news: not our nabbed sailor-spies, nor the political danse macabre of the pretenders to Blair's Duce delusions. Whether it is Gordon Brown, the paymaster of the Iraq bloodbath, or John Reid, who sent British troops to pointless deaths in Afghanistan, or any of the others who sat through cabinet meetings knowing that Blair and his acolytes were lying through their teeth, only mutual distrust separates them now. They knew about Blair's plotting with Bush. They knew about the fake 45-minute "warning". They knew about the fitting up of Iran as the next "enemy".
Declared Brown to the Daily Mail: "The days of Britain having to apo logise for its colonial history are over. We should celebrate much of our past rather than apologise for it." In Late Victorian Holocausts, the historian Mike Davis documents that as many as 21 million Indians died unnecessarily in famines criminally imposed by British colonial policies. Moreover, since the formal demise of that glorious imperium, declassified files make it clear that British governments have borne "significant responsibility" for the direct or indirect deaths of between 8.6 million and 13.5 million people throughout the world from military interventions and at the hands of regimes strongly supported by Britain. The historian Mark Curtis calls these victims "unpeople". Rejoice! said Margaret Thatcher. Celebrate! says Brown. Spot the difference.
Brown is no different from Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and the other warmongering Democrats he admires and who support an unprovoked attack on Iran and the subjugation of the Middle East to "our interests" - and Israel's, of course. Nothing has changed since the US and Britain destroyed Iran's democratic government in 1953 and installed Reza Shah Pahlavi, whose regime had "the highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts and a history of torture" that was "beyond belief" (Amnesty).
True carnage
Look behind the one-way moral screen and you will dis tinguish the Blairite elite by its loathing of real democracy. They used to be discreet about this, but no more. Two examples spring to mind. In 2004, Blair used the secretive "royal prerogative" to overturn a high court judgment that had restored the very principle of human rights set out in Magna Carta to the people of the Chagos Islands, a British colony in the Indian Ocean. There was no debate. As ruthless as any dictator, Blair dealt his coup de grâce with the lawless expulsion of the islanders from their homeland, now a US military base, from which Bush has bombed Iraq and Afghanistan and will bomb Iran.
In the second example, only the degree of suffering is dif ferent. Last October, the Lancet published research by Johns Hopkins University in the US and al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad which calculated that 655,000 Iraqis had died as a direct result of the Anglo-American invasion. Downing Street officials derided the study as "flawed". They were lying. In fact, the chief scientific adviser to the Ministry of Defence, Sir Roy Anderson, had backed the survey, describing its methods as "robust" and "close to best practice", and other government officials had secretly approved the "tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones". The figure for Iraqi deaths is now estimated at close to a million - carnage equivalent to that caused by the Anglo-American economic siege of Iraq in the 1990s, which produced the deaths of half a million infants under the age of five, verified by Unicef. That, too, was dismissed contemptuously by Blair.
"This Labour government, which includes Gordon Brown as much as it does Tony Blair," wrote Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet, "is party to a war crime of monstrous proportions. Yet our political consensus prevents any judicial or civil society response. Britain is paralysed by its own indifference."
Such is the scale of the crime and of our "looking from the side". According to the Observer of 8 April, the voters' "damning verdict" on the Blair regime is expressed by a majority who have "lost faith" in their government. No surprise there. Polls have long shown a widespread revulsion to Blair, demonstrated at the last general election, which produced the second lowest turnout since the franchise. No mention was made of the Observer's own contribution to this national loss of faith. Once celebrated as a bastion of liberalism that stood against Anthony Eden's lawless attack on Egypt in 1956, the new right-wing, lifestyle Observer enthusiastically backed Blair's lawless attack on Iraq, having helped lay the ground with major articles falsely linking Iraq with the 9/11 attacks - claims now regarded even by the Pentagon as fake.
As hysteria is again fabricated, for Iraq, read Iran. According to the former US treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, the Bush cabal decided to attack Iraq on "day one" of Bush's administration, long before 11 September 2001. The main reason was oil. O'Neill was shown a Pentagon document entitled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts", which outlined the carve-up of Iraq's oil wealth among the major Anglo-American companies. Under a law written by US and British officials, the Iraqi puppet regime is about to hand over the extraction of the largest concentration of oil on earth to Anglo-American companies.
Nothing like this piracy has happened before in the modern Middle East, where Opec has ensured that oil business is conducted between states. Across the Shatt al-Arab waterway is another prize: Iran's vast oilfields. Just as non existent weapons of mass destruction or facile concerns for democracy had nothing to do with the invasion of Iraq, so non-existent nuclear weapons have nothing to do with the coming American onslaught on Iran. Unlike Israel and the United States, Iran has abided by the rules of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which it was an original signatory, and has allowed routine inspections under its legal obligations. The International Atomic Energy Agency has never cited Iran for diverting its civilian programme to military use. For the past three years, IAEA inspectors have said they have been allowed to "go anywhere". The recent UN Security Council sanctions against Iran are the result of Washington's bribery.
Until recently, the British were unaware that their government was one of the world's most consistent abusers of human rights and backers of state terrorism. Few Britons knew that the Muslim Brotherhood, the forerunner of al-Qaeda, was sponsored by British intelligence as a means of systematically destroying secular Arab nationalism, or that MI6 recruited young British Muslims in the 1980s as part of a $4bn Anglo-American-backed jihad against the Soviet Union known as "Operation Cyclone". In 2001, few Britons knew that 3,000 innocent Afghan civilians were bombed to death as revenge for the attacks of 11 September. No Afghans brought down the twin towers, only citizens of Saudi Arabia, Britain's biggest arms client, which was not bombed. Thanks to Bush and Blair, awareness in Britain and all over the world has risen as never before. When home-grown terrorists struck London in July 2005, few doubted that the attack on Iraq had provoked the atrocity and that the bombs which killed 52 Londoners were, in effect, Blair's bombs.
In my experience, most people do not indulge the absurdity and cruelty of the "rules" of rampant power. They do not contort their morality and intellect to comply with double standards and the notion of approved evil, of worthy and unworthy victims. They would, if they knew, grieve for all the lives, families, careers, hopes and dreams destroyed by Blair and Bush. The sure evidence is the British public's wholehearted response to the 2004 tsunami, shaming that of the government.
Certainly, they would agree wholeheartedly with Robert H Jackson, chief of counsel for the United States at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders at the end of the Second World War. "Crimes are crimes," he said, "whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct which we would not be willing to have invoked against us."
As with Henry Kissinger and Donald Rumsfeld, who dare not travel to certain countries for fear of being prosecuted as war criminals, Blair as a private citizen may no longer be untouchable. On 20 March, Baltasar Garzón, the tenacious Spanish judge who pursued Augusto Pinochet, called for indictments against those responsible for "one of the most sordid and unjustifiable episodes in recent human history" - Iraq. Five days later, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, to which Britain is a signatory, said that Blair could one day face war-crimes charges.
These are critical changes in the way the sane world thinks - again, thanks to the Reich of Blair and Bush. However, we live in the most dangerous of times. On 6 April, Blair accused "elements of the Iranian regime" of "backing, financing, arming and supporting terrorism in Iraq". He offered no evidence, and the Ministry of Defence has none. This is the same Goebbels-like refrain with which he and his coterie, Gordon Brown included, brought an epic bloodletting to Iraq. How long will the rest of us continue looking from the side?
John Pilger's new film "The War on Democracy" will be previewed at the National Film Theatre, London SE1, on 11 May. http://www.bfi.org.uk/nft
http://www.johnpilger.com | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2007 6:05 am Post subject: |
| http://www.ihr.org/news/0704_weber.shtml
Behind the Iran Crisis: The Israel Lobby's Campaign for War
An address by Mark Weber, director of the Institute for Historical Review, delivered at an IHR meeting in Irvine, Califronia, on March 24, 2007. (A report on the meeting is posted here.)
In the months leading up to the March 2003 attack on Iraq, President Bush and other high-ranking US officials repeatedly warned that the Baghdad regime posed a threat to the US and the world – a threat so grave and imminent that the United States had to act quickly to bomb, invade and occupy that country.
On Sept. 28, 2002, for example, Bush said: “The danger to our country is grave and it is growing. The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given... This regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year.”
Shortly before the invasion, on March 6, 2003, the President declared: “Saddam Hussein and his weapons are a direct threat to this country, to our people, and to all free people... I believe Saddam Hussein is a threat to the American people. I believe he’s a threat to the neighborhood in which he lives. And I’ve got good evidence to believe that. He has weapons of mass destruction... The American people know that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.”
These claims were untrue. As the world now knows, Iraq had no such arsenal, and posed no threat to the US. Alarmist suggestions that the Baghdad regime was working with the al-Qaeda terror network likewise proved to be without foundation. The claims by President Bush and other high-level American officials to justify the war, and their glib assurances about how “regime change” in Iraq would usher in a new dawn of democracy and freedom throughout the region have proven disastrously wrong.
Now, four years later, something of the scale of the calamity is clear. More than 3,000 American military personnel have lost their lives, along with many tens of thousands of Iraqis. Many more have been horribly wounded and maimed. The war and the occupation have cost hundreds of billions of dollars. In Arab and Muslim countries, it has fueled intense hatred of the US, and has brought many new recruits to the ranks of anti-American terrorists. Around the world, it has generated unmatched distrust and hostility toward the United States.
A few months after the attack, President Bush denounced as “revisionists” and “revisionist historians” the skeptics who questioned his claims that the Baghdad regime had an arsenal of weapons so vast and so dangerous that the US had to act quickly to attack and occupy Iraq. On that occasion, Bush was unintentionally telling the truth. Those who question government claims, particularly wartime claims, are indeed “revisionists” – that is, thinking men and women who question dogma, propaganda and political orthodoxy.
Today, virtually the entire world is “revisionist.” Regardless of what President Bush and his friends may snidely suggest, the revisionists were and are right, and revisionism – that is, thoughtful skepticism of official claims – is an honorable and essential feature of any free society.
In recent years, awareness of the Jewish-Zionist role in the war, of the reality of Jewish-Zionist power, and of its hold on US policy, has grown everywhere – an awareness that, once grasped, is obvious and confirmed anew each day with the unfolding of events.
More prominent individuals have been willing publicly to acknowledge this power. In Britain, a veteran member of the House of Commons bluntly declared in May 2003 that Jews had taken control of America’s foreign policy, and had succeeded in pushing the US into war. Tam Dalyell, a Labour party deputy and the longest-serving House member, said: “A Jewish cabal have taken over the government in the United States and formed an unholy alliance with fundamentalist Christians… There is far too much Jewish influence in the United States.”
In Malaysia, prime minister Mahathir Mohammed declared in October 2003: “The Europeans killed six million Jews out of twelve million. But today the Jews rule this world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them.”
Here in the United States, John Mearsheimer, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt, a professor of international affairs at Harvard, issued in March of last year a carefully written, judiciously worded and copiously referenced paper, “The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy,” which has generated wide interest and spirited discussion.
Quickly, and predictably, the paper and its authors came under fierce attack from Zionist leaders and organizations – a response that underscored one of the paper’s main points. But the critics have been outnumbered by those who have welcomed this work as a landmark event and as an important breakthrough.
In their paper, professors Walt and Mearsheimer wrote:
“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 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 US security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history…
“The Israeli government and pro-Israel groups in the United States have worked together to shape the administration’s policy towards Iraq, Syria and Iran, as well as its grand scheme for reordering the Middle East. Pressure from Israel and the Lobby was not the only factor behind the decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was critical. Some Americans believe that this was a war for oil, but there is hardly any direct evidence to support this claim. Instead, the war was motivated in good part by a desire to make Israel more secure.”
Almost nothing in the Walt-Mearsheimer paper is new or original. Its main point about the dangerous role of what they call “The Lobby” is understood around the world by informed men and women who closely follow political affairs and history. The paper is significant because it was written by two scholars of eminence and stature.
Another important contribution to the growing public awareness of the power and impact of the pro-Israel lobby has been the new book by former president Jimmy Carter. In this book, entitled Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, and in statements made in connection with the book’s appearance, Carter has spoken pointedly and critically about the pro-Israel lobby and its role in shaping US policy to support Israeli oppression and war.
Immediately following the book’s publication, the former president was predictably assailed with the usual smears, and by the usual crowd. Jewish writer David Horowitz, for one, wrote a widely-circulated essay entitled “Jimmy Carter: Jew-Hater, Genocide-Enabler, Liar,” a vicious item that reflects his outlook and the attitude of many other pro-Israel activists.
As it happens, I had a run-in myself with David Horowitz in December, when I appeared with him as a fellow “guest,” if that’s the right word, on the nationally-broadcast radio show of Sean Hannity. I won’t go into details of that raucous appearance, except to mention that both Horowitz and Hannity were as ignorant and as bigoted as they were rude.
In recent months the most pressing international issue has been the question of a new war in the Middle East . The world is anxiously following the so-called crisis over Iran, or as Israel-firsters prefer to call it “The Iranian Threat.”
This crisis is artificial. It is every bit as phony as the one manufactured to provide a pretext for war against Iraq.
Once again our leaders prepare Americans for a new war.
Once again we are told that another country that Israel regards as an adversary is a grave threat to peace.
Once again our politicians and a compliant media present a barrage of sensational and frightening propaganda claims – claims remarkably similar to those we heard in 2002 and 2003, and from the same Israel-friendly crowd.
For more than a year now, Washington has been pressuring Iran with economic sanctions and repeated threats of military attack to back its demand that the Tehran government give up its nuclear development program.
The announcement last year that Iran had enriched a minute amount of uranium unleashed urgent calls for a preventive US military strike against that country. Officials in Washington ominously declare that “all options” are “on the table.” Vice President Cheney has said that Iran is “right at the top” of the world’s so-called dangerous countries, and he expressed the view that Israel “might well decide to act first” to destroy Iran’s nuclear program.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared: “The pursuit by the Iranian regime of nuclear weapons represents a direct threat to the entire international community, including to the United States and to the Persian Gulf region.”
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reports that the US is planning military action against Iran, and that President Bush is already intent on “regime change” there. Hersh wrote that the Bush administration is stepping up clandestine activities inside Iran, and has intensified planning for a major air attack. Hersh also concluded that the White House is considering the use of tactical nuclear weapons against Iran.
With regard to Iran, professors Walt and Mearsheimer wrote in their paper:
“Israelis tend to describe every threat in the starkest terms, but Iran is widely seen as their most dangerous enemy because it is the most likely to acquire nuclear weapons. Virtually all Israelis regard an Islamic country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons as a threat to their existence… In late April 2003, [the Israeli daily] Ha’aretz reported that the Israeli ambassador in Washington was calling for regime change in Iran. The overthrow of Saddam, he noted, was ‘not enough’. In his words, America ‘has to follow through. We still have great threats of that magnitude coming from Syria, coming from Iran.’ The neo-conservatives, too, lost no time in making the case for regime change in Tehran … As usual, a bevy of articles by prominent neo-conservatives made the case for going after Iran…
“The Bush administration has responded to the Lobby’s pressure by working overtime to shut down Iran’s nuclear program. But Washington has had little success, and Iran seems determined to create a nuclear arsenal. As a result, the Lobby has intensified its pressure. Op-eds and other articles now warn of imminent dangers from a nuclear Iran, caution against any appeasement of a ‘terrorist’ regime, and hint darkly of preventive action should diplomacy fail... Israeli officials also warn they may take pre-emptive action should Iran continue down the nuclear road, threats partly intended to keep Washington’s attention on the issue.
“One might argue that Israel and the Lobby have not had much influence on policy towards Iran, because the US has its own reasons for keeping Iran from going nuclear. There is some truth in this, but Iran’s nuclear ambitions do not pose a direct threat to the US. If Washington could live with a nuclear Soviet Union, a nuclear China or even a nuclear North Korea, it can live with a nuclear Iran. And that is why the Lobby must keep up constant pressure on politicians to confront Tehran. Iran and the US would hardly be allies if the Lobby did not exist, but US policy would be more temperate and preventive war would not be a serious option.”
A good example of the “bevy of articles” referred to here by Walt and Mearsheimer is a prominently featured piece in the Los Angeles Times last November, entitled, “Force is the Only Answer.” Written by Joshua Muravchik, a prominent neocon associated with the pro-Israel “American Enterprise Institute” think tank, the essay begins with the sentence: “We must bomb Iran.”
In Israel, prime minister Ehud Olmert called Iran an “existential threat,” and in January the London Sunday Times reported that the Israeli government is planning to attack Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons.
In December the former commander of the artillery units of Israel’s armed forces, Brigadier General Oded Tira, has been candid in calling for a US attack against Iran on behalf of the Jewish state. General Tira declared:
“President Bush lacks the political power to attack Iran. As an American strike in Iran is essential for our existence, we must help him pave the way by lobbying the Democratic Party and US newspaper editors. We need to do this in order to turn the Iranian issue to a bipartisan one and unrelated to the Iraq failure. We must turn to Hillary Clinton and other potential candidates in the Democratic Party so that they publicly support immediate action by Bush against Iran.”
Scott Ritter, an American who served as a senior United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, says in his new book, Target Iran: “The Bush administration, with the able help of the Israeli government and the pro-Israel lobby, has succeeded in exploiting the ignorance of the American people about nuclear technology and nuclear weapons so as to engender enough fear that the American public has more or less been pre-programmed to accept the notion of the need to militarily confront a nuclear armed Iran.” Ritter also writes: “Let there be no doubt: If there is an American war with Iran it is a war that was made in Israel and nowhere else.”
An attack against Iran by the United States, or Israel, would be, in the absence of an imminent threat, an illegal, unilateral act of war. If undertaken by the US without a formal congressional declaration of war, such an attack would be unconstitutional. A war against Iran would serve only Israeli and Zionist interests. For everyone else, war against Iran would be a catastrophe.
For many years now, American political leaders of both parties have declared themselves staunchly committed to Israel and its security. This unparalleled devotion to Israel – which is an expression of the Jewish-Zionist grip on America’s political and cultural life – seems to have reached an apex in the current administration.
In an address to pro-Israel activists at a convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), President Bush said: “The United States is strongly committed, and I am strongly committed, to the security of Israel as a vibrant Jewish state.”
President Bush’s worldview is shared by Condoleezza Rice, who served as his National Security Advisor, and is now US Secretary of State. In a May 2003 interview Rice made the astounding statement that the “security of Israel is the key to security of the world.”
It’s difficult to imagine an American leader making a similar statement about any other country. Imagine a US Secretary of State saying, for example, that the “security of Nigeria is the key to security of the world.” Or, that the security of Russia, Taiwan, or Serbia, is the key to security of the world. It’s unthinkable.
President Bush, in talking about the possibility of war against Iran, has sometimes “slipped” by candidly citing Israel as the sole or primary reason for taking military action against Iran.
In an interview in February 2006, he was asked about his reaction to anti-Israel remarks by Iran’s president. Bush replied: “We will rise to Israel’s defense, if need be.” And he added, “You bet we’ll defend Israel."
In a speech in March 2006, Bush said: “Now that I’m on Iran … the threat from Iran is, of course, their stated objective to destroy our strong ally Israel. It’s a threat to world peace; it’s a threat, in essence, to a strong alliance. I made it clear, I’ll make it clear again, that we will use military might to protect our ally, Israel.”
Such remarks have worried Jewish leaders – not because they do not agree with them, or because they doubt Bush’s sincerity, but because they believe that the President has been too candid, too open, in acknowledging Israel’s importance in determining American war policy. Jewish leaders are concerned that non-Jews might draw all-too-obvious conclusions from such statements.
In April 2006, the Jewish Week of New York reported: “President Bush is risking a backlash that could injure the Jewish community – and his own cause – by repeatedly citing Israel as his top rationale for possible US military conflict with Iran, Jewish leaders and Middle East analysts warned... Bush’s repeated, sometimes exclusive, focus on Israel could spark public fury against the Jewish state and Jews if US military action is accompanied by skyrocketing gas prices, terrorism at home or fallen GIs who might be seen as dying for Israel, some said.”
Another Jewish community paper, the influential Forward of New York reported in May 2006: “Jewish community leaders have urged the White House to refrain from publicly pledging to defend Israel against possible Iranian hostilities, senior Jewish activists told the Forward … [Jewish] communal leaders say that although they deeply appreciate the president’s repeated promises to come to Israel’s defense, public declarations to that effect do more harm than good.” Jewish leaders went on to express concern that such statements “could lead to American Jews being blamed for any negative consequences of an American strike against Iran.”
George W. Bush, and others in his administration, have often lectured Iran about democracy. Well, that’s pretty rich coming from a man who became president after an election in which he received fewer votes than his opponent.
Contrary to the impression given by the Bush administration and neocon propagandists, Iran was never allied with, or even friendly to, the Al Qaeda organization or the Taliban regime in neighboring Afghanistan. In fact, in 1999 Iran almost went to war against Taliban-ruled Afghanistan after Taliban fighters kidnapped and murdered nine Iranian diplomats.
In the barrage of alarmist anti-Iran and pro-war propaganda of recent months, we’ve heard a lot about how Iran is a great danger to Jews. To be sure, Jews do not have anything like the power and influence in Iran that they do here in the US, but the insinuation that Iran’s Jews are somehow terrorized or oppressed is rubbish. Jews have far more freedom in Iran than they do in several Middle East countries that are allied with the United States, such as Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. Iran’s Jewish community of some 25,000 is represented in the nation’s parliament by a Jewish representative. There are 20 active synagogues in Tehran. The Jews of Iran, many of whom own and run successful businesses, have a standard of living that is above the country’s average.
To put this Iran “crisis” into some perspective, it’s worth noting that although Iran has not attacked another country in 200 years, it has itself repeatedly been a victim of aggression. A look at the historical record shows that Iran has at least some valid reason to be skeptical of Washington ’s policies and intentions.
In 1941, military forces of Britain and the Soviet Union, with backing from the United States, invaded and occupied Iran in flagrant violation of international law. The British and Soviet Russian occupation forces removed the government in Tehran, which was considered too sympathetic to Germany, and installed the youthful Mohammed Reza Pahlavi as the country’s Shah, or monarch.
In 1953 the United States, operating through the Central Intelligence Agency, and acting in concert with the British, organized the overthrow of the popular government of prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh, and brought back to power the Shah who had briefly fled the country.
From 1953 until 1979, the United States generously supported the Shah, a ruler who became increasingly out of touch with the interests and aspirations of his people. In 1979 he was overthrown in a popular uprising, and fled into exile. An Islamic Republic was proclaimed.
In the aftermath of the Iranian revolution, Saddam Hussein in neighboring Iraq ordered his armed forces to invade what he regarded as a weakened and vulnerable Iran. The war started by Iraq in September 1980 lasted nearly eight years, and was one of the most destructive of the twentieth century. Casualty figures are uncertain, though estimates suggest more than one and a half million war and war-related casualties. Iran acknowledged that nearly 300,000 people died in the war, and estimates of the Iraqi dead range from 160,000 to 240,000.
The US role in that conflict was a cynical one. While publicly lamenting the bloodshed, the United States at the same time provided aid and support to Iraq. To cement that support, Donald Rumsfeld, who later served as Secretary of Defense during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, flew to Baghdad in December 1983 as a special envoy of President Reagan, to meet and shake hands with Saddam Hussein, and to reaffirm US backing in the war against Iran.
In the current US-Iran showdown, much of the world is mindful of the blatant double standard of US policy. While Washington threatens war against Iran for developing a nuclear program, it sanctions Israel ’s vast arsenal of nuclear weapons, and seemingly has no problem with a nuclear-armed China, Pakistan, Russia or India.
In fact, given its geo-political position, Iran would be foolish if it did not try to develop the most effective military force possible. On its eastern border is Pakistan, which now has nuclear weapons, and Afghanistan, which is currently under the control of the military forces of a nuclear-armed United States. On Iran’s western border is Iraq, which likewise is occupied by the armed forces of a nuclear US.
In the region, the only country that currently has a nuclear weapons arsenal, that occupies territory of its neighbors, and which is in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions – is Israel.
In fact, if the United States held Israel to the same standards that it has applied to Iraq and now Iran, American bombers and missiles would be blasting Tel Aviv, and American troops would seize Israel’s leaders and punish them for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
When a society is healthy, its leaders – political, social, cultural and intellectual – speak to its citizens with honesty and candor. A sound social-political system encourages truth. In a sick and corrupt society, leaders resort to lies and deceit. And the more decayed the society, the more its leaders lie and deceive.
In our society, the official lies and deceptions are so numerous and so brazen, it’s difficult to enumerate them. I’ve already referred to its lies about the Baghdad regime in the months before the US invasion of Iraq. But it’s much worse than that.
In the aftermath of the 2001 Nine Eleven terrorist attack, for example, President Bush on national television told the world that: “America was targeted for attack because we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world." The next day he said that "freedom and democracy are under attack," and that the perpetrators had struck against "all freedom-loving people everywhere in the world." These are not just false statements. They are absurdly ignorant and deceptive ones.
The focus of the Walt-Mearsheimer paper, mentioned earlier, is, appropriately, the role of the Israel lobby in determining US policy in the Middle East. But this is no ordinary lobby. Its power and influence is much greater, more insidious, and more dangerous, than that of any other lobby. Far beyond determining US policy in the Middle East, it has a profound impact on every aspect of American social, political and cultural life. That’s one reason why, instead of talking about the “Israel Lobby,” I routinely speak instead of Jewish-Zionist power.
The Walt-Mearsheimer paper is much more than a trenchant analysis or persuasive critique of a particular lobby. It is implicitly a damning indictment of the American social-political system. The Jewish-Zionist grip on our nation is an expression of a profound and deeply rooted problem. Such a lobby or power – particularly one that represents the interests of a self-absorbed community that makes up no more than three or four percent of the population – could only gain such a hold on the governmental machinery of a society that is fundamentally sick and corrupt. No healthy society would permit a small minority to gain and hold such power, and wield it for its own particular interests.
The failure of virtually the entire American political and intellectual establishment to challenge this power is an expression of deep-rooted cowardice and corruption. Cowardice and corruption on such a scale is possible only in a society that is gravely ill – one that is beyond reform or redemption. This sickness is manifest not merely in the hijacking of our foreign policy, or in the corruption of our political system, but also in the squalor of our inner cities, in our nation’s high level of crime, in a culture that is ever more infantile and crass, and in the spreading vulgarity of our social life.
In every society, it is quite normal that most people are concerned with little more than the happiness, interests and well-being of themselves, their families, and their friends. In any society, only a small number of men and women have the wit and awareness to understand the social, political and cultural forces that shape the present and the future. Only a small minority has the soul or temperament to care about, and be seriously concerned for, the long-term health and well-being of the world, or even of their country.
Normally, and understandably, we expect – and have every right to expect – that our political leaders are mindful of and planning for the long-term interests of the nation. Tragically, our leaders have proven themselves grossly derelict. With very few exceptions, our political leaders – Republican and Democrat, conservative and liberal – show far more concern for their own welfare and for the outcome of the next election, than for the long-term interests of our people and the world.
We seek to raise public awareness of the great issues that confront us, that impact every aspect of our lives, and which have the most profound consequences for the future. We realize, of course, that our words will reach the minds and hearts of only a few. We know that we cannot hope to match the financial resources, influence and outreach of our adversaries. We cannot hope to compete, much less offset, the great power and influence of the media giants who control most of what we read, hear and view.
Our great task is to reach those who, first, think about the present and the past, and second, who care about our future. That is, we work to reach men and women, especially younger men and women, of unusual awareness and a higher sense of responsibility – the men and women who will be the leaders of the future, who can, and, if our children and grand-children are to live in a decent world, must assume power, replacing the failed leaders who have betrayed the people’s trust.
A few of those who are here this evening have come, perhaps, out of simple curiosity, or to meet others who are attending. But most of us are here this evening because we care. We care about what is right and wrong. We care about what is true and not true.
We care about the past and, more importantly, we care about the future. We care about the world we live in. We feel a sense of responsibility for the world we’ve inherited, and for the world of the future. We want to make a difference – to make this a better world – a world that, even beyond our own lifetimes, is more just and right.
Some of us may feel a special concern for the cause of peace, mindful of the destruction, suffering, and death of war. Some may be moved by a strong concern for justice, perhaps especially for the people who have lived for decades under Zionist occupation. Some may have an unusually strong religious sensibility. Some may feel a special concern for the welfare and future of his or her own culture, race or nation, while others may feel a responsibility for the future of all mankind.
Regardless of the particular causes or principles that most move us, that are closest to our hearts, no issue is of greater urgency than breaking the Jewish-Zionist grip on American political, social and cultural life. As long as that power remains entrenched, there will be no end to the systematic Jewish-Zionist distortion of history and current affairs, the Jewish-Zionist corruption and domination of the US political system, Zionist oppression of Palestinians, the bloody conflict between Jews and non-Jews in the Middle East, and the Israeli threat to peace.
We are engaged in a great, global struggle – in which two distinct and irreconcilable sides confront each other. A world struggle that pits an arrogant and malevolent power that feels ordained to rule over others, on one side, and all other nations and societies – indeed, humanity itself – on the other.
This struggle is not a new one. It is the latest enactment of a great drama that has played itself out again and again, over centuries, and in many different societies, cultures and historical eras. In the past this drama played itself out on a local, national, regional, or, sometimes, continental stage. Today this is a global drama, and a global clash.
It is a struggle for the welfare and future not merely of the Middle East, or of America, but a great historical battle for the soul and future of humanity itself. A struggle that calls all of us – across the country and around the world – who share a sense of responsibility for the future of our nation, of the world, and of humankind.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2007 7:21 am Post subject: John 'Israel first' McCain is the AEI 'Neoconian' candidate |
| John 'Israel first' McCain is the AEI 'Neoconian' candidate:
At a stop on Senator John McCain's "Straight Talk" tour, the 2008 presidential candidate decided to respond to a question with some bars of a song, but it is unlikely that Arizona's Republican senator will be reaching the final rounds of Fox's "American Idol."
Speaking at Murrells Inlet VFW Hall in South Carolina, McCain was asked when he thought that the US Military might "send an air mail message to Tehran."
"McCain began his answer by changing the words to a popular Beach Boys song," the Georgetown Times reports.
"'Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran,' he sang to the tune of Barbara Ann," the paper notes.
McCain then added, "Iran is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. That alone should concern us but now they are trying for nuclear capabilities. I totally support the President when he says we will not allow Iran to destroy Israel."
The paper notes that McCain stopped short of answering the actual question and did not say if he supports an invasion of Iran."
Later, McCain campaign spokesman Kevin McLaughlin told ABC News that the senator "was just trying to add a little humor to the event."
ABC's report adds, "On a more serious note, however, McCain has long been an advocate of dealing with rogue states aggressively. Back in 2000 when then-Gov. George W. Bush was wary of nation building and talking about a foreign policy based on humility and restraint, McCain was advocating a policy of 'rogue-state rollback,' which he described in a 1999 speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies as a '21st century interpretation of the Reagan doctrine.'"
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/McCain_unplugged_Bomb_bomb_bomb_bomb_0419.html
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Bandar has been instrumental in convincing other members of the "axis of fear" apart from Saudi Arabia - Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and the Emirates - that the US must attack Iran sooner rather than later.
Hezbollah's number two, has been roundly denouncing Washington for pulling no punches in preventing any agreement between the Siniora government and the opposition. Qassem says the US "wants to tie Lebanon into negotiations that benefit Israel and their plan for a New Middle East".
Middle East
Apr 19, 2007
THE ROVING EYE
Hezbollah's big challenge
By Pepe Escobar
BEIRUT - "You are in heaven and those who killed you will go to hell," reads a poster in a middle-class, predominantly Sunni neighborhood in north Beirut.
Those depicted in heaven include Saddam Hussein, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri (killed in a car bombing in 2005), and Sheik Ahmed Yassin (the Hamas leader assassinated by the Israelis in 2004). There's
not much to unite Saddam, Arafat, Hariri and Yassin - who all "went to heaven" by different methods - except they were Sunni.
Compare this to posters all over bombed-out south Beirut depicting smiling Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah alongside Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad.
That's one way to see a Sunni-Shi'ite divide played out in a single Middle Eastern capital. Another way is to confront the configuration of the city itself.
Flush with Saudi Arabian funds, Hariri, a billionaire Sunni, set out to rebuild Beirut from the ashes of the Lebanese civil war.
Western Christians - and Saudi Wahhabis - may be impressed with the malls and the smart cafes. But the Shi'ite masses from south Beirut - or south Lebanon for that matter - won't be seen sipping a cappuccino at the al-Maarad, facing the excavated ruins of the Roman cardus maximus (city center); they won't be shopping for Prada in Ras Beirut; they won't even be allowed at the door of the US$300-a-night hotel Albergo in Achrafiye; and the kids won't be able to afford $10 drinks at the Strange Fruit nightclub.
The game of what many call Hariri Inc was to rebuild the former "Paris of the East" from top - downtown - down during the 1990s, and then the rest of Lebanon would also join the party. It didn't happen. Shi'ites not only didn't profit from it, they were bombed by Israel last summer, after downtown Beirut had become a de facto Saudi playground.
But then, last December, a mass Lebanese opposition campaign, direct-democracy-style, was unleashed, led by Hezbollah. Downtown is now relatively empty - occupied by people drinking tea and playing backgammon in tents for days, even weeks, in a round-the-clock anti-government sit-in to the sound of macho martial rhythms.
Lebanon may be losing as much as $70 million a day as the impasse continues. Wealthy Saudi and Emirates tycoons are laying off people in droves. The affluent, non-Shi'ite, party-going crowd moved back to the coffee shops in old Hamra Street. But downtown is not dead - at least not yet, if one counts as sustainable development projects like La Residence, a $140 million, Ivana Trump-designed luxury apartment tower, still selling at a brisk pace.
Lebanon as a model
The easiest way to avoid trouble in Lebanon is to behave like a Shi'ite in the south, like a Sunni in Jiyyih and like a Christian in Beirut. Anyone strictly secular may run the risk of talking to the deaf. Unlike Syria, sectarianism rules. It sounds like Iraq in more ways than one - a non-viable state.
Crackpots abound - like Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, who qualifies Nasrallah as a Syrian agent, Assad as a "serial killer" and Hezbollah as puppets of Tehran. Or Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who proposed chartering flights full of Lebanese politicians to Saudi Arabia so they can be all swayed (by checkbook?) by King Abdullah. As'ad AbuKhalil, host of the Angry Arab website, always stresses that the Lebanese civil war never ended. What outsiders don't know is the current sectarian wave was unleashed by Hariri Inc and their wealthy Saudi associates.
But the buck doesn't stop with them. Because there will always be the Washington-House of Saud axis.
Saudi Arabia's powerful Prince Bandar, former ambassador to Washington, also known as Bandar Bush - who harbors desires of becoming the next Saudi king - is basically pro-US and anti-Syria, thus fiercely anti-Hezbollah. Bandar has been instrumental in convincing other members of the "axis of fear" apart from Saudi Arabia - Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and the Emirates - that the US must attack Iran sooner rather than later.
It's an open secret in Beirut - and across the Middle East - that the US is financing the Fouad Siniora government with Bandar money, not to mention the almost $9 billion which "mysteriously" disappeared from Iraq. A US-pushed January conference in Paris came up with pledges of no less than $8 billion to Lebanon, including more than $1 billion from the House of Saud. Rafik Hariri himself was always very close to the House of Saud, and Prince Bandar in particular.
A United Nations investigation revealed no direct evidence of Syrian implication in Hariri's assassination. Officials in Damascus are more than happy to remind anyone that Hariri was also very close to former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) asset, former Iraqi interim prime minister and "Butcher of Fallujah", Iyad Allawi, Not to mention that he was the facilitator of a $20 billion arms deal between the Russians and the House of Saud. As for the pitiful Siniora, he could not even place a call to President George W Bush last summer to stop Israel from bombing his own country to the Stone Age.
Lebanon is a mere pawn in this Big Brother (US-Bandar Bush) game. No wonder Sheikh Naim Qassem, Hezbollah's number two, has been roundly denouncing Washington for pulling no punches in preventing any agreement between the Siniora government and the opposition. Qassem says the US "wants to tie Lebanon into negotiations that benefit Israel and their plan for a New Middle East".
Qassem also stresses that the US is waging a "covert war" against Hezbollah. Hezbollah is just reading the news here: before Christmas 2006, and after long discussions with Bandar Bush, Bush signed a "non-lethal presidential finding", officially deniable, giving the green light to the CIA to take on Hezbollah - under the guise of providing financial and logistical support to the Siniora government. Although the finding was top secret, the news leaked.
This configures the US, plus the "axis of fear", plus Israel all united to, in White House/Pentagon newspeak, "stop Iranian hegemony in the Middle East". It's hard not to agree with Iran's ambassador to Damascus, Mohammad Hassan Akhtari, when he says that the US is using the old British imperial tactic of divide and rule, sowing discord among Sunnis and Shi'ites to try to isolate Iran.
Give a hand to al-Qaeda
The US game in Lebanon is hardcore. It involves $60 million support for a Hezbollah witchhunt operated by the Internal Security Force at the Interior Ministry; and generous, active support to al-Qaeda-affiliated Sunni jihadis. Once again the Bush administration is merrily playing al-Qaeda's game. Blowback will be inevitable.
Just as Iraq is in Syria, Iraq has also come to Lebanon. Hundreds of new jihadis plucked from among the more than 400,000 Palestinians who live in refugee camps in Lebanon - like Fatah al-Islam, originally from the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon, or Asbat al-Ansar, from the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp - crossed to Iraq and acquired battlefield experience fighting the US occupation. At least some of them are back, as well as a smattering of Salafi-jihadis from northern Lebanon who settled back in Tripoli. There's also al-Qaeda fi Bilad as-Sham ("al-Qaeda in the lands of the Levant"), which sprung up when Syrian forces left Lebanon in 2005.
These are among the new US "friends" in Lebanon. Not surprisingly, billionaire Saad Hariri, Rafik's son - who looks like a cross between a sleazy car salesman and a cheap hoodlum and happens to double as Sunni majority leader of the Lebanese Parliament - has already bailed out and obtained amnesty for a smattering of Salafi-jihadis from Dinniyeh trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.
Nasrallah - who night after night is never allowed to sleep in the same place - is the number one target not only of these Salafi-jihadis but also of Jordanian intelligence, faithful to "axis of fear" stalwart and staunch US ally King Abdullah. On an Arab street level, Nasrallah remains the undisputed top politician all over the Middle East, be it among Sunnis or Shi'ites: in Damascus his posters are found even in Christian and Armenian businesses.
A landmark January interview by Nasrallah to the satellite channel al-Manar remains essential in outlining Hezbollah's take on the Lebanese game. Lebanon is viewed as part of the US-concocted "New Middle East"; its destiny is intimately related to occupied Palestine and Iraq, as much as the US fomenting sectarianism in Lebanon is also intimately related to the US fomenting a civil war in Iraq.
The White House has of course accused Hezbollah - with no proof - of supporting Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army (Nasrallah has repeatedly said Hezbollah supports the Iraqi resistance "in all its dimensions"). It's true that Muqtada supported Hezbollah when Israel attacked Lebanon last summer. In Kufa and Beirut it is also widely recognized that Muqtada respects Nasrallah as a towering, extremely popular, nationalist leader - and has tried to model the Mehdi Army, to some extent, on Hezbollah.
Yes, there are indeed Muqtada-meets-Nasrallah posters - and these will be collectors' items in CIA boot camps. But although they both may lead nationalist resistance movements - thus inevitably incurring America's wrath - there are fundamental differences. Hezbollah is a solid block, the Mehdi Army has splintered into at least three factions. Hezbollah is not sectarian, unlike at least two of the Mehdi Army's factions still engaged in attacks against Sunni civilians.
Nasrallah is very much aware of divide and rule. In his January interview, he defined the New Middle East as "a collection of statelets that are divided along religious, sectarian and racial lines, from Lebanon to Syria to Iraq to Iran to Turkey to Afghanistan to Pakistan; all the way to Saudi Arabia and Yemen and the rest of the Gulf States, reaching North Africa. A founding pillar of the 'New Middle East' is continuous conflict between these statelets."
Already in January, Nasrallah was puzzled by "some politicians in Lebanon who are intimately tied to the US, and who are known to coordinate closely with the Americans, these politicians are agitating Sunnis against Shi'ites under the pretext that Shi'ites are American collaborators. This is a bizarre, surreal contradiction." Bizarre is indeed the middle name of the Bush administration's game - as it pits its Sunni clients against Shi'ites in Lebanon while pitting its own Shi'ite collaborators against "other" Shi'ites and assorted Sunnis in Iraq. But Nasrallah may not be puzzled at all that the Bush administration had to reach for al-Qaeda to take on Hezbollah.
It all boils down to the same game: smashing any true nationalist resistance movement, whatever it takes, to the benefit of easily pliable client regimes. Thus the Nuri al-Maliki client regime in Iraq killing Sunnis (and, as much as possible, also Sadrists); the Abbas client regime in Palestine against Hamas; the Siniora client regime in Lebanon attacking Hezbollah. In appropriate newspeak the surge for a region-wide Sunni-Shi'ite war is then labeled as "support for democracy" and spun on pliant corporate media. The repressive, retrograde House of Saud couldn't be a better partner in this "peace process" - as it sees nationalists such as Nasrallah, Muqtada and Hamas leader Khalid Meshal as the plague.
No more wars
Hezbollah officials in Beirut told Asia Times Online that the party is very much aware that Bush, Bandar Bush and Israel are working to unleash fitna - doubt, anger, the implosion of Islam. They say the US wants a partition not only of Iraq, but also of Syria and Lebanon. Hezbollah is doing all it can to prevent a regional Sunni-Shi'ite war - which would start by a partition of Iraq.
This is exactly what we hear from Iraqi refugees in Damascus: the US wants Sunnis and Shi'ites to kill each other instead of US occupation soldiers. And this is also what Syrian intelligence hears from these same Iraqi refugees, whether they come from Baghdad, Hilla and Najaf or from Fallujah and Ramadi.
Hezbollah does not want another civil war in Lebanon. And Hezbollah also does not want another war with Israel. But just in case, the party is preparing non-stop for another possible Israeli attack, which "could happen before the end of 2008".
Meanwhile, no one knows what will happen in downtown Beirut. Hezbollah swears the sit-in will continue. Hezbollah and other groups in the opposition want veto power over the US-backed Siniora cabinet. Christian Maronites and Sunnis may scream, but the majority of Lebanon's population agree.
Hezbollah sees the cabinet as a US puppet. The Siniora government and Hariri Inc say Hezbollah is a puppet from Syria and Iran. Dialogue seems virtually impossible. Breaking the deadlock may have to wait until November, when President Emile Lahoud finishes his term. It's been widely rumored in Beirut that Lahoud may appoint a new government. Surrealist Lebanon would then have two competing cabinets. No wonder Lebanon is suffering a massive brain drain.
And then there's the non-stop US pressure for the UN Security Council to set up an international tribunal to examine the killing of Hariri. Hezbollah is not against a tribunal - but against a tribunal manipulated by the US as a political weapon.
Hezbollah has a sound proposal for breaking the Lebanese deadlock now: new elections or a referendum. The US's clients keep saying no. Nasrallah will have to wait. He may already be the most clever - and popular - statesman in the Middle East. But the true test of his caliber will not be to offer tangible proof that Hezbollah is not a puppet of Syria and Iran; it will be to offset the specter of a regional, US-encouraged, Sunni-Shi'ite war.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2007 3:35 am Post subject: |
| Subject: US drumming up a war with Iran according to former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer
SCHEUER: Certainly not on Afghanistan. The Iranians if there are Iranian weapons in Afghanistan they're very marginal. I think General Pace and Mr. Gates should be very careful about what they're talking about, suggesting Iranian influence. The Iranians are very eager to keep the Afghans at arm's length, and don't really want to get involved in Afghanistan, except for protecting the Shias. And we're kind of in the same position we were when people said that the Americans, if it wasn't for the Americans the Afghans wouldn't keep fighting. The Afghans are going to fight us until we leave, which probably won't be very much longer and they don't need Iranian guns. The Saudis are running guns in there, the Kuwaitis. All of the Sunni nations in the Middle East are supporting the Taliban. It's a mistake. I'm very wary of this Iranian claim simply because it looks to me like they're trying to create a cause (INAUDIBLE) for a war with the United States.
Scroll down to the bold type below:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0704/21/tww.01.html
Straight ahead, we'll go inside Afghanistan and look at how the Taliban is using all too familiar tactics to fight coalition forces. Stick with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
FOREMAN: IEDs, suicide bomb attacks, identifying and killing informers, all tactics terribly familiar in Iraq and emerging more and more in Afghanistan. Is the Taliban being schooled by insurgents trained in Baghdad? Joining me for analysis are two experts in the region just back from the front lines in Nuristan, senior international correspondent Nic Robertson is now in Jalalabad, he spent the past two months embedded with British and American forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And here with me, Michael Scheuer, he was the chief of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit, he's now a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation. Let me start with you Nic, how is the Taliban feeling right now about their war in Afghanistan?
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: From their own perspective, they think that they're gaining ground. They say, for example, in large provinces in the south like Alman(ph) and Kandahar, that they say they have about 80 percent support of the population. They're using tactics that, similar tactics that are being used in Iraq. They're using suicide bombings. They're using roadside bombings. It's pretty safe to say that the way that they're using these tactics is not as effective as insurgents in Iraq, but they're beginning to mold themselves on an Iraqi style insurgency. The attacks so far this year, March and February of this year, are double the attacks on the same time last year. Tom?
FOREMAN: Let me ask you about this Nic, you've spent a lot of time down, we go to the map here, down in the southern part of the country and in the northern part. Nuristan is where you've been most recently. We've talked a lot about the south how they're strong down there. But up in these places like Kala Gush where you've been, are they getting stronger there as well?
ROBERTSON: What's happening, the U.S. military is expending its influence into Nuristan, which is a very, very mountainous area, it's the Hindu Kush Mountains, very steeply sided valleys. The roads that we over flew in helicopters today are absolutely impossible because of rock slides. Seven avalanches we saw in just a few short kilometers of road. In Kala Gush itself, which is at the bottom end of Nuristan that has become relatively stable. They aren't seeing a lot of Taliban-type attacks in that area. Further north this is an area that has traditionally been a holdout, an area of resistance against the government, it's where the resistance, against the Russian occupation in the 1980s began. The Russians never conquered Nuristan, they were never able to defeat it because of the terrain. And in that area, coalition forces here are seeing some small numbers of foreign fighters come in, some Taliban-type potentially fighters moving up from the south as well as sort of the indigenous resistance in that area holding out. Coalition says that they're making gains in those areas. It is very difficult. They're using counterinsurgency techniques but there's no doubt that the potential for violence there is increasing, because the number of fighters is increasing in that area, and they're seeing them crossing over the border, coming in from Pakistan, they're hearing people speaking Arabic on the radios that they're picking up. A clear indication they say that foreign fighters are moving in there. They do say not big numbers, though, Tom.
FOREMAN: Michael Scheuer, you were nodding your head during all of this. How much of what is happening in Afghanistan is imported tactics, imported war and how much of it is indigenous with the Taliban?
MICHAEL SCHEUER, FMR. CIA BIN LADEN UNIT CHIEF: I think a lot of it is indigenous, but clear what we're seeing is an exchange of talents across the two theatres of war, Iraq and Afghanistan. The Iraqis for example are becoming proficient in downing our helicopters with small arms, which is an Afghan specialty. And as Mr. Robertson said, the use of IEDs and suicide bombers in Afghanistan was almost unheard of until the last 18 months or so. And as he also said, they're on a learning curve but they'll get much better at it.
FOREMAN: You say they're very good at the media war as well. I've seen packages coming out of the people in that area, very well produced.
SCHEUER: Yes sir, it's an astounding development. The Taliban before our invasion in 2001 really didn't give a hoot about international opinion or media coverage. The sophisticated packages we're seeing coming out of Afghanistan now I think is a direct reflection of the maturing of the Taliban as an organization, but also the very powerful influence of al Qaeda's al Sahab media organization, both in Iraq and in Afghanistan.
FOREMAN: And you see characters like Mullah Dadullah in the south who seems to be a very forward-thinking member of the Taliban in terms of embracing this media.
SCHEUER: Yeah, Dadullah is a very interesting character, he has a very good touch with the western world. He's much more Middle Eastern in ways regarding Islam and the way the war is fought than we think of when we think of the one eye Mullah Omar, kind of a recluse.
FOREMAN: Speaking of the idea of international influence, other countries getting involved, listen to what was said by Defense Secretary Robert Gates Wednesday in Cairo about Iran's possible role in Afghanistan.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERT GATES, DEFENSE SECRETARY: Well, we have, as General Pace indicated, found Iranian weapons and Iranian explosives in Afghanistan. We don't know the magnitude of the assistance. It's obviously troubling.
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
FOREMAN: Nic Robertson, I'm sure many Americans are troubled, too when they hear talk about other countries having weapons. What weapons are they? People are worried about what the truth may be. What do you know about this from the Taliban?
ROBERTSON: Well I certainly know from talking to a source here who is deeply involved in behind-the-scenes negotiations to try and bring a settlement here based on talking rather than fighting, and his analysis, and it does seem to be deeply nuanced analysis, is that Iran sees an advantage here in Afghanistan of keeping the fight going, of helping whoever it is to attack U.S. troops, to send a message to the United States. This was his analysis to send a message to the United States that they shouldn't go interfering in these countries and clearly a country that's on the border with Iran. Iran is plagued -- has had an involvement in the fights and battles of Afghanistan over several decades, they are intimately familiar with the players, with the country, with the terrain and how to effectively use forces inside here. So the analysis I've been given by somebody very close to this is, yes, Iran is involved, yes it is aimed at destabilizing what the United States is trying to achieve here, Tom.
FOREMAN: Michael Scheuer, it keeps coming back to Iran time and time again. Is Iran ultimately going to have to be dealt with by the world community?
SCHEUER: Certainly not on Afghanistan. The Iranians if there are Iranian weapons in Afghanistan they're very marginal. I think General Pace and Mr. Gates should be very careful about what they're talking about, suggesting Iranian influence. The Iranians are very eager to keep the Afghans at arm's length, and don't really want to get involved in Afghanistan, except for protecting the Shias. And we're kind of in the same position we were when people said that the Americans, if it wasn't for the Americans the Afghans wouldn't keep fighting. The Afghans are going to fight us until we leave, which probably won't be very much longer and they don't need Iranian guns. The Saudis are running guns in there, the Kuwaitis. All of the Sunni nations in the Middle East are supporting the Taliban. It's a mistake. I'm very wary of this Iranian claim simply because it looks to me like they're trying to create a cause (INAUDIBLE) for a war with the United States.
FOREMAN: All right, thanks much, Michael Scheuer for coming in. Nic Robertson, always great insights, we appreciate your help.
When we come back, the story of a soldier whose proudest moment came when he helped his comrades survive. THIS WEEK AT WAR. | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2007 5:26 am Post subject: Kucinich files articles of impeachment against Cheney |
| Kucinich files articles of impeachment against Cheney:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0704/24/sitroom.03.html
A rare and dramatic move by a Democratic presidential candidate. That would be Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich. Just a few hours ago he announced he's introducing articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
Dennis Kucinich is joining us from Capitol Hill right now.
Congressman, thanks for coming in.
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH (D-OH), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Thank you, Wolf.
BLITZER: Lots of questions. Why the vice president, if you're so concerned about the war, as opposed to the commander-in-chief? That would be the president.
KUCINICH: Well, the vice president had a singular responsibility in whipping up public sentiment to lay the groundwork for a war against Iraq on false pretenses, and the articles of impeachment cover that. And there's another practical reason, Wolf, and that is that if someone was to aim at impeaching the president, then Mr. Cheney would become the president. I don't think that this country could tolerate two consecutive impeachments. So I think that the evidence is there to focus on the vice president. That's the appropriate place to begin. And that's what I've done today in filing House Resolution 333.
BLITZER: A lot of your critics already suggesting it's a political stunt, given the fact that the speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has ruled out impeachment. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, says that's not on his agenda.
Do you think you have enough votes to really get this out of a committee?
KUCINICH: I think that people in Congress are about to find out that all over the United States, citizens have been asking questions, what kind of a government do we have? And why isn't someone stepping forward to challenge the conduct of this vice president?
And so my -- people are asking me today, is anyone standing behind me? And I think that there are millions of Americans who believe that it was time to raise this issue.
And the reason I did it now, Wolf, is because the vice president is beating the same drums of war against Iran that he beat against Iraq under false pretenses, and he's doing it all over again, against Iran. The same false pretenses. And I say that it's time to stand up to that.
Our country couldn't afford this last war, we sure can't afford to go into another one. And somebody has to challenge the conduct of this vice president. And that's what I've done today.
BLITZER: Well, high crimes and misdemeanors. That's a high threshold. Specifically, explain to our viewers what your articles -- you have three articles of impeachment, what they are alleging.
KUCINICH: Well, the first article, and I quote, says that he "fabricated a threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to justify the use of the United States armed forces against the nation of Iraq." And the second article points to the fact that he "fabricated a connection between the government of Iraq and al Qaeda and used that to justify war." And the third article says that he's "openly threatening aggressive war against Iran," which is a violation of Article VI of our Constitution and a violation of Article II Section 4 of the U.N. Charter.
That's basically a synopsis of the articles.
BLITZER: Even a war critic as fierce as John Murtha, Democrat of Pennsylvania -- I spoke with him yesterday here in THE SITUATION ROOM. I asked him about your -- then expected plan to release these articles of impeachment. He himself said he didn't think it was a good idea to do any kind of thing like that right now.
KUCINICH: You know what? I respect John Murtha. He's a good friend of mine. He's a great patriot. These articles are filed in response to the question of, who are we as a nation that we can let high public officials violate the law with impunity, take us into war that are based on lies? Who are we? Who is going to stand up to this?
And these articles of impeachment are a response really to questions that are being asked all over the United States. And so, that's my stand today, House Resolution 333.
People should know that someone can take a stand. And, you know, I think that the American people will be heard from now and members of Congress will be guided accordingly.
BLITZER: What about the argument, Congressman, that this is during a time of war, and that's not a time to go after impeaching a sitting vice president?
KUCINICH: Well, we have to keep in mind that the United States was still involved in conflict during the Nixon years. I think that we have to consider that it's important for us to be able to protect our constitutional form of government.
And we're at war, Wolf, because lies were told by top public officials. In this case, Mr. Cheney. That's why we're at war. And the next question is, how do we stop from getting into another war? It could become much worse than it is.
BLITZER: Did you discuss this with the speaker, Nancy Pelosi...
KUCINICH: No, no.
BLITZER: ... with the majority leader, Steny Hoyer? Any of the leadership -- the Democratic leadership in the House?
KUCINICH: No, I very carefully have sought to avoid any attempt at making this look like a partisan move. It is not.
These articles are filed far beyond any questions of partisanship. This is about being an American. This is about loyalty to our country and to our nation's highest principles.
BLITZER: We've got to leave it there, Congressman. Dennis Kucinich announcing that he has filed articles of impeachment against the vice president of the United States. Thanks for coming in.
KUCINICH: Thank you very much, Wolf.
I have to commend CBS News (at the network level and discussing such at the local level) for making mention of Congressman Dennis Kucinich's filing of articles of Impeachment against Cheney today (Kucinich was a patriot for doing such as he mentioned that Cheney is currently doing similar against Iran like he did to get US into the Iraq quagmire). I was at a speaking event which Kucinich held the last time he was running for president and mentioned to him that the JINSA agenda had Iran in its sights next. He responded by saying that he thought I was right.. Similar to how he responded to the guy who mentioned that AIPAC was responsible for having Pelosi take out the language barring an attack on Iran without Congressional approval (see what she mentioned at the recent AIPAC convention in that Dutch AIPAC documentary to see why!). See the following article:
http://www.counterpunch.org/walsh04172007.html
April 17, 2007
Capuano and Kucinich Come Clean About the Lobby
Why is the Peace Movement Silent About AIPAC?
By JOHN WALSH
"AIPAC!" was the forceful one-word answer of Congressman Michael Capuano when we asked him, "Why was the Iran clause forbidding war on Iran without Congressional approval taken out of the recent supplemental for the Iraq war funding?" I nearly fell out of my chair at his reply - not because this was news but because of who had just said it. Capuano is a close ally of Nancy Pelosi, her fixer and enforcer. That was last Friday morning when a small delegation from Cambridge and Somerville, MA, were visiting the Congressman, known for his bluntness, as part of the nationwide UFPJ (United For Peace and Justice) home lobbying effort during the Congressional recess.
Later that day, Dennis Kucinich made an appearance at Harvard, where he was asked the same question, the reason for removing the Iran provision. "AIPAC," I volunteered out loud. Kucinich looked my way and said, "Exactly." Again my chair almost failed to contain me.
A few weeks earlier we had gone to the offices of Senators Kennedy and then Kerry to discuss the war. (My intention was to call their attention to www.FilibusterForPeace.org to which the Kennedy aide was sympathetic and the Kerry aide predictably hostile.) I raised the question of AIPAC directly with Kerry's aide, inquiring about its hawkish influence on Kerry and other Senators. Suddenly the aide was quite engaged. Leaning forward, he said: "That will never be discussed publicly. That will never be discussed publicly." Clearly even Kerry's office is unhappy with the pressure that comes from AIPAC.
It is widely acknowledged that the reps and senators are ticked at AIPAC, and their hostility seems to be growing these days. With upwards of 60% of their campaign contributions coming directly or indirectly from the Israel Lobby, the Democratic congressmen are not free to respond to their antiwar base. This opens them to an antiwar electoral challenge on the Left or Right from forces not subservient to AIPAC. And that could cost them their next election, a little thing which has them very worked up. Capuano's cry of "AIPAC" was no simple outburst of candor but a cri de coeur for his career.
So here we have even Congressmen and Senator's aides complaining publicly about AIPAC. AIPAC is being outed all over the mainstream media, largely thanks to the door opening work of Mearsheimer and Walt. AIPAC is skewered routinely by Justin Raimondo on Antiwar.com and by Alex Cockburn and many others here on CounterPunch. But there remains no anti-AIPAC campaign within the mainstream antiwar organizations, like UFPJ or Peace Action. (Even one supposed Congressional ally of the peace movement was announced as a celebrity guest at the recent colossal AIPAC meeting in Washington, where half the Congress shows up and Dick Cheney is a regular speaker. What gives?)
I have been told by leaders of the peace movement that AIPAC is a distraction from the main thrust of the antiwar movement. And so we should not engage it; AIPAC is to be immune. But with all due respect to the sentiments of that leadership, immunity for AIPAC is a prescription for disaster. To use a military analogy, which I do not especially like, suppose that we were trying to take a hill in Germany in 1944. And suppose we said that we would not attack one pillbox, which kept devastating our forces. Leave just that one pillbox alone! The result would be devastating; we would be cut down with every succeeding attempt at advance. So it is with AIPAC which campaigns relentlessly for war on Iraq, war on Iran, war on Syria, war on Lebanon and the slow genocide of the Palestinian people. AIPAC constantly puts the peace movement on the defensive while it is free to be on the offensive all the time.
AIPAC is not just an issue for Jewish Americans or the Jewish wing of the peace movement like Jewish Voice for Peace; it is a major force, although not the only one, driving the U.S. to wars in the Middle East. AIPAC is no less a force for war than is the Republican National Committee. In fact it is worse, because it sinks its teeth into the foreign policy establishment of both parties, perhaps the Dems more so than the Republicans. If the peace movement is to be worth its salt, then it must take action against AIPAC. (It is marathon season here in Boston and my friend, Israeli expatriate Joshua Ashenberg, tells me that the foregoing thought harbors a logical error. As he says: "A 'movement' that does not work against AIPAC is NOT a peace movement by definition. It will not help if I call myself a marathon runner, while I never ran a marathon.")
In the Boston area, AIPAC appears to be especially powerful, and so we have a special responsibility to take it on. At the recent AIPAC conference in Washington, the delegates from Boston/New England were the most hawkish toward Iran. Just before the last election a notorious ad in the Boston Globe, cheering on the Israeli bombing of Lebanon, was engineered by the Jewish Community Relations Council, an arm of AIPAC here. Every major political figure in MA signed the ad, including our "liberal" governor, Deval Patrick, and supposed peacenik Congressman Jim McGovern. Only Conressmen Capuano and Delahunt withheld their signatures. In addition AIPAC appears to raise a lot of money in our neck of the woods.
So I have a modest suggestion. On Sunday, April 29, beginning at 6 pm, AIPAC has its annual fundraising dinner at the Westin Hotel in Copley Square in Boston. (Last year a good table for 10 went for a modest $10,000.) Show up at 5 pm to protest the machinations of AIPAC. Which peace organizations in our area will be there? Which ones will promote the rally? And which will maintain their silence?
* American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)
John V. Walsh can be reached at John.Endwar@gmail.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2007 10:03 am Post subject: IPAC and the Anti-War Movement: Missing in Action?Author |
| The following is another excellent post by DangerousDNA which I just saw that she added to the following URL:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/06/01/how-israel-corrupts-and-controls-the-us-congress-and-media.php
AIPAC and the Anti-War Movement: Missing in Action?Author
Gabriel Ash
24 Apr 2007 11:23:43 PM
This isn't all that suprising. The media has done everything in its power to keep these trials, and AIPAC's spying, a secret.
There will be a Plant along to apply Disinformation Tactics, but this only exposes the Regime's fear of this issue gaining exposure.
AIPAC and the Anti-War Movement: Missing in Action?
by Gabriel Ash
www.dissidentvoice.org
April 21, 2007
It is becoming clear, if it ever wasn’t, that the Democratic Congress does not have what it takes to end the war in Iraq, or to stop any escalation that the Bush administration might contemplate. Congress will not cut funding. Congress will not even expressly forbid Bush to attack Iran. All the major Democratic presidential hopefuls have taken mushy, watered down nominally anti-war positions, but essentially endorse the indefinite continuation of U.S. military presence in Iraq. Obama, Clinton and Edwards are even more hawkish on Iran than Bush is. If any of them gets elected in 2008, he or she is set to continue and possibly escalate the conflict.
Why do the Democrats so brazenly ignore their base? According to Paul Krugman, Democrats are “off base” because they are haunted by unreasonable and outdated fears and do not grasp that the electorate would welcome a firmer anti-war stance. [1] Krugman is the one who is off base. The Democrats read the same poll data as everyone else. They do not listen to their base because their first commitment is to their donors and the interests of the corporate kleptocracy to which they belong. Far from being spineless, their continuing disregard for the wishes of their grassroots is evidence of nerves of steel.
According to a growing view, the Democrats are beholden to AIPAC, the leading organization of the Israel Lobby and an important promoter of war. AIPAC supported the Iraq war and has been busy pushing for confrontation with Iran at every occasion. The message of Scott Ritter, Jeffrey Blankfort, James Petras and others is that AIPAC is the major force behind the Iraq war and US policy in the Middle East in general. Belief in the complicity of AIPAC and other Zionists in keeping the US on a war footing in the Middle East is becoming more and more mainstream, owing much to the successful interventions of professors Mearsheimer and Walt. John Walsh claims that even high ranking Democrats admit that AIPAC is becoming a liability, one that might cost them the next elections. [2]
Many of the left and liberal side refuse to accept AIPAC’s political significance. Some, such as Stephen Zunes, believe that AIPAC is a powerless puppet and Israel a docile servant of US imperialism. But one doesn’t need to be a fanatical Israel Lobby denier to poke holes in the theory that lays US misadventures in the Middle East primarily at AIPAC’s door. Mearsheimer and Walt are ideologues of imperialism with a deeply flawed understanding of US politics -- the words ‘corporations,’ ‘finance’ and ‘capitalism’ are simply not part of their lexicon. [3] Others are differently myopic. If one were to believe James Petras, the billionaires who put Bush in the White House in 2000 with the best funded campaign in US history were taken for a ride by a cabal of secret Israeli agents such as Wolfowitz, Perle and Feith, who sent the US into a losing war that nearly bankrupt the US, damaged the prospects of the its oil majors and threatened the worldwide advances of American corporations, all out of their commitment to Zionism. [4] That America’s billionaire class came back for a second round and supported Bush in 2004 as well must be chalked up to their masochism and the desire to lose even more money. [5] Zionism is a loathsome ideology, and AIPAC is a powerful organization. Nevertheless, the tunnel vision that sees Zionism as the major determinant of US politics is a new permutation of the classical right-wing knife-in-the-back myth. [6] To those who buy this fairytale understanding of US politics, stripped off corporate power, the military-industrial complex, petrodollars, conflicts of accumulation and the class war, all I can offer is a pack of premium Enron shares at a discount.
Rejecting this tunnel vision does not however justify the cowardly refusal of liberal and left anti-war groups to challenge AIPAC. Unfortunately, the left-liberal camp includes many who use theoretical complexity as an excuse for practical inaction. As an example, I’ll take Mitchell Plitnick from “Jewish Voice for Peace.” Plitnick pretends to want to “challenge” AIPAC, but in fact does his best to shield it from criticism.
The occasion for his recent intervention was the latest success of AIPAC in striking out from the appropriation bill the clause requiring Congressional authorization for an attack on Iran. [7] Plitnick admits that “AIPAC did indeed lobby vigorously for the removal of that clause. But to say they were the reason for, or even a major factor in that clause being rescinded flies in the face of the facts.” He then goes to an amazing level of minute detail explaining why the clause was vulnerable and would have been probably taken out regardless of AIPAC. I assume he is right; there are many political, cultural, and financial forces that drive US confrontation with Iran and would have worked against that clause besides Israel. But not having the ability to check counterfactual claims, I have no way of verifying what would have transpired if AIPAC weren’t involved, and neither does Plitnick. The one fact we can both ascertain is that AIPAC lobbied hard and successfully to weaken Congressional opposition to a potential escalation of the war. Plitnick’s argument reads like a right-wing parody of the Marxist who believes structural analysis means individual agents bear no responsibility for their actions.
Plitnick cautions critics that “the power of the ‘Israel Lobby’ has always been overstated.” No doubt there have always been marginal voices claiming that US policy in the Middle East was completely dominated by Israeli “interests”. And I agree that this is false. But somehow Plitnick forgets that the vast majority of mainstream, liberal, and left commentators on American politics have always almost completely ignored the Lobby in their analysis. Perhaps Plitnick forgets that even many of those who have criticized Mearsheimer and Walt’s bombshell essay (including this author) could not but welcome the fact that someone from Harvard actually noticed that the Lobby existed at all.
Arguing that we should neither overestimate not underestimate the Lobby, Plitnick counsels challenging the Lobby “by doing the work of political advocacy with great skill,” because (sic) “[T]hey are not a sinister organization, but simply one which plays the game of American politics as well as anyone and better than most.” In other words: don’t blame AIPAC! The American political game is perhaps corrupt and dominated by money. And AIPAC have been so successful advancing their agenda because they have been pimping Jewish identity better than anyone else. Instead of complaining, we should try to one up them, presumably by pimping our identities harder. After all, that’s how the game is played, and let the best team win!
This is what Plitnick means by “challenging” AIPAC. I assume that Plitnick’s advice to those who oppose the way Nike treats their workers is to “challenge” Nike by starting a competing sports shoes manufacturer.
Even if we accept Plitnick’s theoretical skepticism about AIPAC’s power (and I accept parts of it), it remains that his practical recommendation is not merely a capitulation to AIPAC, but actually an important component of its power. Democrats know that the left-liberal grassroots groups, thanks to voices such as Plitnick’s, would rather shoot their left foot than utter an unkind word about a “Jewish” organization. Blaming AIPAC is therefore the best strategy for the Democratic leadership to manage the growing tension between their angry base and their elite clients. It is an arrangement that helps AIPAC promote the pro-war agenda unchallenged. On whose behalf AIPAC advances this agenda is a secondary concern. It doesn’t require subscription to the full fairy tale told by James Petras and others to understand the following simple and uncontroversial facts:
* AIPAC lobbies aggressively for a pro-war agenda.
* AIPAC is extremely well funded, connected and effective on Capitol Hill.
* AIPAC is an organization committed to subverting meaningful democracy.
Does the anti-war movement need more reasons to take off the gloves and really challenge AIPAC’s pro-war advocacy?
Challenging AIPAC, however, should not mean matching its corrupt influence. Challenging AIPAC means challenging the game itself, its legitimacy, and the legitimacy of those who play it. It is wrong for paid lobbyists representing who cares whose interests to hoist war on the Middle East and on the American public. Those who do that are not legitimate democratic voices. They are indeed sinister. And they should be stopped. The death toll in Iraq is reaching 700,000 and would pass the million mark soon enough if not halted. An $60 million a year organization that lobbied, cajoled, and threatened behind the scenes in favor of this carnage yesteryear and is now working to perpetuate it, regardless of whether it was or wasn’t alone in that endeavor, is an enterprise of organized crime, not a legitimate “civil society” group. It should be as welcome in congressional offices as Al Capone.
It is high time for a campaign, endorsed by all anti-war organizations, to challenge AIPAC’s legitimacy. Fomenting a disastrous war with Iran is not an acceptable and legitimate object of ‘Jewish community’ lobbying. AIPAC’s overwhelming presence on Capitol Hill and the general willingness of representatives to take marching orders from it, for whatever reasons, on central foreign policy matters is an unacceptable and morally indefensible situation in a democratic country, regardless of how one understands the root sources of AIPAC’s power.
The antiwar movement should demand that lawmakers return campaign contributions from all war promoters, including AIPAC (mostly its satellite PACs) and all those associated with it. AIPAC should be under criminal investigation, as well as all those who subverted the working of government agencies in the course of advancing the Iraq war. Lawmakers who claim to oppose Bush’s wars should not be allowed to fudge and take umbrage behind AIPAC. They should be forced to chose between listening to AIPAC and grassroots support. The antiwar movement should also issue a call to all Jewish organizations to disavow AIPAC’s pro-war agenda and take action to curb it. AIPAC should be outed as a warmongering tool. It should be disrupted, shamed, and hopefully closed. And it is the duty of the antiwar movement to do that.
If you’re anti-war, you are also anti pro-war.
If you find excuses to defend the legitimacy of effective pro-war lobbying, you are not a peace activist, you are a war enabler.
Warmongering is wrong. Period. Nobody should get away with it. Subverting democracy in the interest of war is not just wrong, it should be criminal. And nobody should get away with it.
It is as simple as that.
Gabriel Ash is an activist and writer who writes because the pen is sometimes mightier than the sword and sometimes not. He welcomes comments at: g.a.evildoer (at) gmail.com.
REFERENCES
[1] Paul Krugman, "Way Off Base," New York Times, April 16, 2007.
[2] John Walsh, "Why is the Peace Movement Silent About AIPAC?," CounterPunch, April 17, 2007.
[3] See my extended appraisal.
[4] Hagit Borer, James Petras, and Norman Finkelstein, "The Pro-Israel Lobby Debate," Dissident Voice, April 17, 2007.
[5] The idea that the U.S. ruling class had been financially damaged as a result of Bush’s adventures requires a commitment never to read a newspaper business section, just as the belief that AIPAC is merely a servant of “American imperialism” requires a commitment to never read Haaretz or any U.S. Jewish community paper. The blindness of both sides in this utterly silly debate is simply infuriating.
[6] Kevin Baker, "Stabbed in the Back," Harper's, June 2006.
[7] Mitchell Plitnick, "Over-Estimating AIPAC: The Iraq Spending Bill and the Stricken Language on Iran," The Third Way, March 25, 2007.
www.dissidentvoice.org/Apr07/Ash21.htm | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2007 1:50 am Post subject: |
| Iran May Be Closer to Nukes Than Thought/ Israel might launch a preemptive strike against Iran
Iran May Be Closer To Nukes Than Thought
April 26, 2007
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/26/eveningnews/main2732837.shtml
(CBS) CBS News has learned that a new intelligence report says Iran has overcome technical difficulties in enriching uranium and could have enough bomb-grade material for a single nuclear weapon in less than three years.
U.S. intelligence officials caution that before Iran could meet or beat that 2010 date, it would have to make further technical progress in operating a uranium enrichment plant now under construction, reports CBS News national security correspondent David Martin.
As a result, there is no change in the official estimate that it will take Iran until 2015 to become a nuclear power. But David Albright, a leading expert, thinks that doesn't give Iranian scientists enough credit.
"I think Iran can get enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon sooner than that," Albright says. "I think the 2015 number reflects too much skepticism about Iran's technical capabilities, and they are making progress."
Although U.S. intelligence still considers an Iranian nuclear weapon by 2010 as a worst-case scenario, Pentagon officials say the new report narrows the window in which Israel might launch a preemptive strike against Iran, as it did in 1981 against an Iraqi nuclear reactor.
Israel is the country most threatened by the prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapon. Former CIA officer Bruce Riedel says this latest intelligence would increase the chances of an Israeli strike launched with American-built warplanes.
"The Israelis have long believed that Iran is closer than U.S. intelligence believes it is," Riedel says. "If they now hear that the Americans think it's getting closer as well, it puts pressure on Israel to take its own action."
Riedel adds that an Israeli strike would be seen in Iran as no different from an American strike and could involve the U.S. in a war against a much tougher opponent than Iraq.
In Tehran, CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports the nuclear program is a matter of national pride.
A few weeks ago, president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gathered reporters at the main nuclear plant in Natanz to boast that his country now could enrich uranium on an industrial scale.
But what exactly does that mean?
In the enrichment process, scientists feed uranium gas into linked centrifuges. Iranian officials hint that they have 3,000 centrifuges working at Natanz. But international atomic energy commission inspectors — who toured the plant last month — are reported to have seen less than half that many working — 1,300 — and only a few had uranium gas in them.
Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only — to make fuel for power plants being built in Iran by the Russians.
Two years ago, Palmer and her CBS News crew were the first Western reporters to be shown the heavy water plant at Arak, which the Iranians say is for making medical radioactive isotopes.
The trouble is few world leaders are convinced and at the moment there is no surefire way of checking until — perhaps — it's too late. | | | | Alpha | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
