If I were a paranoid anti-Semite, I might expect the President of the
United States to go on Israeli television and make saber rattling
remarks about Iran — while carefully concealing any preparations for a
military strike from the American people …
Back to Main
August 23, 2005
WB: Dying for Israel
Comments
Dying for Israel?
Hi Bil,
You write some incredibly great stuff and true the DLC needs to be IED’d but this is post clueless beyond the pale. It’s nano-anti Semitic at best;-) Even a little open minded research will show you the Israeli Right has enormous influence in US Defense and Foreign Policy. This post reminds me of a micro version of all the hullabaloo saying Mahathir Mohamad’s speech to to the 10th Islamic Summit Conference was an anti-Semitic rant of great magnitude. So I read it and I didn’t find it so. I posted it below. What do you think?
Sincerely,
Mike Adams
SPEECH BY
THE PRIME MINISTER OF MALAYSIA
THE HON. DATO SERI DR MAHATHIR MOHAMAD
AT THE OPENING OF THE
TENTH SESSION OF THE ISLAMIC SUMMIT CONFERENCE
PUTRAJAYA MALAYSIA
20 SHAABAN 1424H (16 OCTOBER 2003)
10.00 AM
link
[copy of speech replaced by link – b.]
Posted by: Michael D. Adams | Aug 23 2005 20:41 utc | 3
Christopher Hitchens: Cindy Sheehan disingenuous in denying writing that son died for Israel in Iraq
link
You might want to access the ‘Comments’ section via clicking on the ‘Comments’ link near the bottom of the following URL as well:
Cindy Sheehan disingenuous in denying writing that son died for Israel in Iraq
link
Posted by: dontcowerfromthetruth | Aug 24 2005 1:44 utc | 4
@dontcowerfromthetruth
Such a long name and so little time.
Say what is on your mind.
I’m really impressed MDA:
Someone can almost count to sixty.
Posted by: Groucho | Aug 24 2005 2:05 utc | 5
Labeling someone an anti-semite is the most overused slander in politics today and I’m surprised anyone would take this statement to be anti-semitic. The DLC statement doesn’t require that the war was engaged as part of a Likudnic/Neocon cabal’s master plan to be true. If the war changes the Palestine problem for the better it is a positive even if the motivations for war had nothing to due with Israel.
It is ridiculous to think that Israeli politics had no influence on this decision. It certainly wasn’t the dominant reason or the only one but Rove was clearly targetting the Jewish vote after 9/11. It is not anti-semitic to acknowledge such a thing.
Posted by: Realist | Aug 24 2005 3:30 utc | 6
The close the deal stories for the Iraq adventure were/are all connected to pro Israeli positions of various types by various of the jackasses, and those positions are consistently and demonstrably at the expense of America’s actual vital interests as well as at the expense of reality.
Agnostic seems wide of the mark. While how this came to be in America cannot be explained by Israeli power – we got us a batch of internal contradictions at work to hatch this made in America disaster, not external ones – the pivotal role of those whose first allegiance is to Israel’s national interest is too important to leave out of any fair accounting of the “War on Terror” and why the Iraq adventure was conducted against all reason, with, the complete acquiescence of the Daily Plant, The Washington Kiss Ass, and the cheerleading of the Moonie Times and the Fox Putsch network. Daily Plant, or New Pravda for those who prefer, will not take a position tttthat disturbs Israel supporters among the professional class. The pro Israel position will be articulated in a regular basis both in the news stories reported and in what those stories choose to give the floor and who those stories choose to quote. I bet “senior Pentagon officials” meant civilian Israel supporter about 70 percent of the time in Pravada/Daily Plant campaign to lay the groundwork for the Iraq adventure.
And for the boobs out there – if you want informed critical reporting on Israel, go to Isreal. You won’t find it in the mainstream American press.
Posted by: razor | Aug 24 2005 4:00 utc | 7
I didn’t detect any antisemitism in Marshall’s words. The fact is, the U.S. presence in Iraq does indeed change the Israeli-Arab relationship, but only indirectly through the collective will of popular opinion on both sides of the non-relational relationship of Arab and Jew.
The reason the U.S. is in Iraq, however, is not for Israel’s strategic interests, but for oil, and in particular laying hold of the oil as a show of global power in front of the Chinese.
If Marshall and others want to sound off about Israel and risk sounding antisemitic, they should be asking what will happen to U.S. aid to Israel when the oil runs out, and thus Israel’s purpose as a regional foothold has expired.
By then, of course, the bloated American empire will have succumbed to consumption (in both senses of that term).
It is truly a shame that Wolfowitz, Perle and other neocons are Jewish and architects of this catastrophic failure in Iraq, thereby giving rise to the over-wrought cliche of Jewish conspiracy. Whatever successes for Israel they may have thought lay in invading Iraq, ultimately such successes would likely have been viewed as a fringe benefit for their friends in the community. The real motive is far grander but equally as insidious: wealth and the fame that comes with reshaping the map of the Middle East. I don’t see the Iraq war architects as baldly working for the interests of Israel, but I do see among them a clear contempt for Islam and Muslims. That’s an important distinction, but no less detestable.
Posted by: argent | Aug 24 2005 4:01 utc | 8
Realist :
‘ If the war changes the Palestine problem for the better it is a positive even if the motivations for war had nothing to due with Israel. ‘
For the better? How can the Palestinians’ situation can be viewed to be better in any light?
As a consequence of the neo-con ascendency George W Bush has given up any weak attempts he might have made to rein in Ariel Sharon. The Gaza has been transformed into one large Concentration Camp and the West Bank has been further reduced in size and partitioned by the Apartheid Wall, both financed by the United States Treasury.
So I must assume the “Palestinian Problem” to which you refer is the fact that there are still any Palestinians at all in Palestine, and grabbing all of Palestine certainly does seem to be the aim of the Likud and their neo-con brethren in the United States.
The war is fought for oil, from the Oil lobby’s point of view. Look at the profits in the oil industry.
The war is fought for the sake of war itself from the War lobby’s point of view. Look at the profits in the military industrial complex. Especially those of Halliburton which presciently morphed into a war and oil company.
The war is fought for the sake of the Likud’s plans for Greater Israel from the Likud lobby’s point of view. Look at the pay off for Ariel Sharon and his crew.
The convergent interests of these three lobbies were the reason the invasion and occupation of Iraq were undertaken and the reason it is sustained.
The Likud lobby is no different in kind, from it’s point of view. than any of the other lobbies.
But it has the equivalent impact upon Americans that Yosarion’s contract to bomb his own base had. A sound business decision by the American political class, they were up in the air, their landing lights on with Yosarion, when the actual bombs fell below, on 9/11.
Posted by: John Francis Lee | Aug 24 2005 4:24 utc | 9
If criticism of Israel is anti semitism then any decent person should be proud to be an anti semite.
Posted by: Foppe Dykstra | Aug 24 2005 5:31 utc | 10
Here is the URL for the ‘Whose War?’ article which I posted above (it is a must read all the way through it):
linkl
Posted by: dontcowerfromthetruth | Aug 24 2005 5:54 utc | 12
I think I know what you mean to say, Foppe, but that’s a very bad way to say it. Unless of course you really are an antisemite, which I will assume is not the case. The accusation of antisemitism has become a way to shut down any serious criticism of Israel. Your way of accepting the insult is a gift to the people trying to suppress honest discussion.
And the suppression of honest discussion has been very successful, based on conversations I’ve had with friends about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. People are amazingly ignorant about Israeli crimes against Palestinians, and seem to see Israel as the almost completely innocent victim of Arab intransigence (which is almost a direct quote of a friend of mine). In one case I mentioned that the Palestinian death toll is three times higher than the Israeli toll and the response was “I wonder how many were suicide bombers?” Given the coverage in the US, the incredible moral obtuseness of this response was perfectly understandable.
Posted by: Donald Johnson | Aug 24 2005 5:55 utc | 13
General Zinni, retired Senator Fritz Hollings, several former CIA analysts including Ray McGovern & Bill & Kathy Christison agree that the war was for Israel.
The PNAC screed signatures were virtually all of the neo-cons who played the major role for the Iraq war, among them Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, both of whom have, at various times, have been described as the “architects” of the Iraq War. Look on their website, their plans were wrote out in the 90’s. It’s not a secret.
People always throw the anti-Semitic card on the table whenever Israel is criticized in anyway. This proves that these people are trying to hide something and are avoiding the original question in mind. We are aware this of type of tactic, you people may as well give up this stupid ploy, it’s not working and we will not give up in getting the truth out about our stab in the back spying so-called ally friend who deliberately murdered 34 American sailors, a peace activist, Rachel Cory, along with an Arab American professor,Dr. Salah and his son Mohammed. Plus deliberating disfiguring another peace activist for life by shooting him in the face, Brian Avery.
These phrases, “hate speech” and “anti-Semite”, J*w hater, are well-worn devices to shut up a critic of Israel without having to answer the criticisms. Indeed they have been used so much that they have become red warning flags that the person using those phrases has something to hide and needs to shut down the discussion by any means possible. By screaming “hate speech” or “anti-Semite”, J*w hater, Israel’s supporters hope to shut down the debate without actually examining the issues involved.
It’s the only defense they have which is a progressive weakness on their part.
Posted by: Freedom Dot Calm | Aug 24 2005 10:06 utc | 14
http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/israel.htm
Written in 1985 by Jack Bernstein
Young men already in the U.S. armed forces and their parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters should especially be concerned about Israeli precipitated wars and attempts to involve the U.S. in these wars, because if necessary, to save Israel in one of their acts of aggression, the U.S. Goverment will bow to the American Zionists and send American boys into combat — the boys will have no choice but fight on the side of Zionist/Marxist Israel.
IF AMERICAN BOYS DIE IN A FUTURE MIDEAST WAR, YOU WILL KNOW THAT THOSE RESPONSIBLE WILL BE THE ZIONIST JEWS OF AMERICA and THE WEAKSPINED POLITICIAN IN WASHINGTON, D.C.WHO BOW TO THEIR ZIONIST
LORDS.
A Warning to Mr, Mrs and Miss America
The Marxist Zionists who rule Israel and the Marxist Zionists in America have been trying to trick the U.S. into a Mideast war on the side of Israel, of course. They almost succeeded when U.S. Marines were sent to Labanon in 1982. The blood of the 250 American Marines who died in Lebanon is dripping from the hands of the Israeli and American Zionists.
If more Americans are not made aware of the truth about Zionist/Marxist Israel, you can be sure that, sooner or later, these athiests who claim to be God’s Chosen People will trick the U.S. into a Mideast war against the Arabs who in the past have always been America’s best friends. Then, —
More American boys will die because of these clever murderous Zionists, WHO, incidentally, have been responsible for pushing America into WORLD WAR I, WORLD WAR II, the KOREAN WAR and the VIETNAM WAR.
While Zionist International Bankers and other Zionist Jews were busy counting their profits from those wars, American mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters were mourning the loss of their sons and brothers.
WILL YOU SOMEDAY BE MOURNING THE LOSS OF YOUR SON OR BROTHER — because of Zionist treachery?
Rice: The “security of Israel is the key to security of the world.”
Posted 5/14/2003
By Avraham Shmuel Lewin, Israel Correspondent
TEL AVIV – In an exclusive interview with Israel’s daily Yediot Aharonot recently, National Security Adviser Dr. Condoleezza Rice said that the “security of Israel is the key to security of the world.”
http://www.jewishpress.com/news_article.asp?article=2380
Posted by: Freedom Dot Calm | Aug 24 2005 10:10 utc | 15
I now read the speech by the Malaysian president.
My idea is that he was far too friendly towards the part of the Asjekenazi Jewry that causes such misery on Jews and the world.
He apparently does not know that Ben Gurion in mid 1944 did NOT consider it necessary to try to stop the extermination of some 500.000 Hungarian Jews that then supposedly took place.
He does not know about the financing of Lenin by the New York Jewish banking house Schiff.
He does not know how the Jewish-financial group The Focus in 1931 hired Churchill.
He does not know how Weizmann in 1939 rejected the German offer that all German Jews could emigrate taking the value of all their German assets with them; Weizmann just wanted emigration to Palestine.
He does not know how Jewish New York bankers in 1919 summoned Wilson back to New York, to prevent striking war debts. The war debts with which Germany was burdened was the creation of Hitler, who wanted to restore the 1914 Germany.
He does not know how Sephardic Jews blame the Askenazi Jews for their expulsion from Spain around 1500; by imposing in 1300 the Asjkenazi rabbi Fisher on them.
And so on, and so forth.
Posted by: Foppe Dykstra | Aug 24 2005 15:20 utc | 16
…I’d love to know what the guys on the IDF general staff think about the “strategic equation” now…
See Efraim Halevy, Sharon Advisor in Haaretz
link
Aparently, some in Israel worry that it might soon be up to Israel to make ‘consessions’ to help America stop its bleeding in Iraq. Another irony, huh?
Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 24 2005 16:53 utc | 17
Hi Bil,
The ‘Whose War?’ link above is not going through because of that ‘l’ just after the ‘link’… Here is the URL for it again:
http://www.amconmag.com/03_24_03/cover.html
Thank you for your excellent URL to post comments to here…:-)
Posted by: TELLUSTHETRUTHCINDY | Aug 24 2005 17:11 utc | 18
I now read the speech by the Malaysian president. My idea is that he was far too friendly towards the part of the Asjekenazi Jewry that causes such misery on Jews and the world.
Why is it that everytime I talk about the U.S. relationship with Israel, the lunatics come out of the woodwork? Can’t ANYBODY think rationally about this???
Posted by: Billmon | Aug 24 2005 17:58 utc | 19
i can think rationally but words are not coming. were here tho…
Posted by: annie | Aug 24 2005 18:14 utc | 20
It is rarely a rational discussion. I’ve never been able to distinguish the lunatics from the non; it points vaguely to something unknown/unknowable about what underlies “discussion” of Israel. And then too there is the evidence…
Posted by: rapt | Aug 24 2005 18:21 utc | 21
Zionist historian Benny Morris has an OpEd today in the NYT arguing that Gaza was not part of the historic jewish state but the west bank is. (How anyone can taklk of a “right” to a land where some of his ancestors are believed to have lived some 2000 years ago is beyond me). Preparing the American public for the annectation of all the west bank by Israel and the “transfer” of the non-jew semitic population living there, including the following wars.
Benny Morris is beyond the borderline of fashism. See his interview in Haaretz reproduced at Counterpunch and tell me why he isn´t.
Is Cindy Sheehan an ‘anti-Semite’ for telling it as it is about PNAC/Israel (even if she is disingenuously denying that she wrote such)?:
link
link
Posted by: dontcower | Aug 24 2005 18:57 utc | 23
Billmon, you said:
Personally, after all that’s come out over the past 2 1/2 years, I no longer feel like I have any idea why the Cheney administration invaded Iraq . . . oil, Saudi Arabia, post-9/11 hysteria, Bush’s messiah complex.
The only frame by which I’ve been able to make sense of the invasion of Iraq was presented by Teresa Nielsen Hayden in a comment on her family blog, Making Light.
I quoted it on my own Livejournal some time ago:
Huh. I’ve suddenly realized that I know the form of this scam: it’s a bustout.
Here’s the deal: Your basic bustout starts when crooks take control of a legitimate business that has a good credit rating, most often by entering into an agreement to buy it from its original owners, and possibly making a token initial payment.
In the next phase, the crooks start placing large orders for easily liquidated merchandise with the business’s regular suppliers, and also with new suppliers who think they’ve acquired a valuable new customer. And since the orders are coming from an established business with a good credit rating, the suppliers don’t ask for payment up front. . . .
At that point the business’s new owners vanish, and all the money vanishes with them. Since they’ve never actually paid the agreed-upon price for the business, it reverts to the original owners. Unfortunately, what they get back is a plundered company that’s deeply in debt to its suppliers and has a wrecked credit rating.
Thus with the national situation. The looting has been swift and efficient, but it’s taken a while for the full extent of the plundering to become apparent. We’re going to be feeling this one for a long time to come.
Posted by: Kevin J. Maroney | Aug 24 2005 19:06 utc | 24
You know, Foppe, on second thought, when you accepted the label of antisemite maybe you were just expressing your actual opinion. I thought you were just expressing anger in an over-the-top and unfortunate way, but when you start talking about Jewish banker conspiracies I feel like running very far and very fast in the other direction.
I understand why so many people avoid this topic altogether.
Posted by: Donald Johnson | Aug 24 2005 21:16 utc | 25
it seems to me – and i consider myself one who sincerely desires the wellbeing of the jewish people as a platonic idea (or jewish people as actual human beings, for that matter)- some of my best friends are jews, you know, seriously – that anyone who still thinks the zionist dream of a century ago is making progress towards an eventual happy ending needs to have their contact with reality examined – so it doesn’t surprise me to encounter lunacy when the general topic of israel is discussed
i think a number of the above posters have misunderstood billmon, but it is possible that i have misunderstood billmon myself, and/or misunderstood them
i’m just a soul whose intentions are good – oh lord, please don’t let ME be misunderstood
as lenny bruce once said, “i’m a liberal – i’ve got the cancelled checks to prove it” –
may g-d have mercy on our souls, if any
Posted by: mistah charley, ph.d. | Aug 24 2005 21:37 utc | 26
“deliberately murdered 34 American sailors”
What’s this about? Anything serious?
Yes, trying to differentiate between the Likudnuts and the rest of the Israelis is difficult. Informed Comment goes through that shitfield regularly.
Posted by: christofay | Aug 25 2005 3:29 utc | 27
….and few seem to understand the difference between anti-semites and anti-israelis.
Posted by: lenin’s ghost | Aug 25 2005 5:37 utc | 28
Billmon, this post WB: Dying for Israel , and the one above,”word salad” reminded me of just how important “language” is, Wilson writes, Somebunall is, i think,a word that we badly need. It means some but not all. Perception involes abstaction(or subtraction)-When we look at an apple we do not see all the apple but only part of the suface of the apple -and our generalizations or models or reality tunnels are made up of coordinations or orchestrations of these abstactions
We never know “all” ; we really know,at best sombunall. he goes on to say, “Imagine a world in which Germany did not contain the word “alles” or any of its derivatives, but did include “sombuall” Adolph Hitler would never had been able to say or think most of his gerealizations of all jews. At most he would have been talking and thinking about sombunall jews.
And this is my point, these knee-jerk emotionally half-baked followers of the high priestdom of devine Bushco (and even the ones who don’t like to think themselves as such)are under a spell and manipulated as we know, by language and symanatics. Extremist Holocaust mentalities are encouraged by all-ness statments.
It is interesting, in this connection, that Nietzsche dropped “psychological” language from his books as he went along and replaced it with “physiological” language. For instance, in his later works, such as The Anti-Christ, the “resentment” within slave-morality (conventional Christianity) is diagnosed as a physiological reaction characteristic of certain physical types.
Nietzsche was on the right track, but lacking neurology [and linguistics training]he looked for the physical basis of these processes in genetics alone.Imprinting theory suggests, on the contrary, that such physiological Bottom Dog reflexes are created by specific triggers at earlymoments of imprint vulnerability. This is in my view the reason the use of anti-semites and anti-israelis, can be whiped out by the priesthood and enable them to invaladate and discount everything said or written by anyone who critisizes Israel. Hence, Cindy Sheehan as well as you (billmon) being the scapegoat and labeled antisemitic. Interestingly enough, Egyptian priests kept written language a secret among themselves,as did the Mayan priests.
I have posted before about the methodical and systemic manipulation and use of language by the PTB (powers that be)in that as MIA poster Kate Storm wrote:
Language informs thought. Control the language. Control thought. As it was in the beginning, it seems, is now and ever shall be, world without end. (Amen)
I was part of a discussion with a group of writers more than ten years ago about the language-thought connection. The subject came up more than once at Billmon’s bar. The subject I find endlessly fascinating.
Confucius said: “If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. hence, there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.”
The very use of written languages and other
symbols like mathematics creates the time-binding sense of Korzybski: we know ourselves as receivers of messages sent by sages “of olde” and as potential transmitters of messages that may be scanned ages in the [priesident]future.
This little man is a semantic spook; he exists only in the language, and yet once the language has invoked him it almost seems to make sense to wish he would go away.
Finally, recent advances in semantics, semiotic, linguistic analysis,foundations of mathematics, logic, etc. have demonstrated that our conceptual field-our symbolic environment-is haunted by
many such “spooks.”
A Zen saying sums it all up:
“To think that I am not going to think of you anymore is still thinking of you. Let me then try not to think that I am not going to think of you.”
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 25 2005 11:31 utc | 31
I suppose Billmon considers arch-Zionist Philip Zelikow a self-hating Jew? Consider:
IRAQ:
War Launched to Protect Israel – Bush Adviser
Emad Mekay
WASHINGTON, Mar 29 (IPS) – IPS uncovered the remarks by Philip Zelikow, who is now the executive director of the body set up to investigate the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001 — the 9/11 commission — in which he suggests a prime motive for the invasion just over one year ago was to eliminate a threat to Israel, a staunch U.S. ally in the Middle East.
Zelikow’s casting of the attack on Iraq as one launched to protect Israel appears at odds with the public position of President George W. Bush and his administration, which has never overtly drawn the link between its war on the regime of former president Hussein and its concern for Israel’s security.
The administration has instead insisted it launched the war to liberate the Iraqi people, destroy Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and to protect the United States.
Zelikow made his statements about ”the unstated threat” during his tenure on a highly knowledgeable and well-connected body known as the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), which reports directly to the president.
He served on the board between 2001 and 2003.
”Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I’ll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990 — it’s the threat against Israel,” Zelikow told a crowd at the University of Virginia on Sep. 10, 2002, speaking on a panel of foreign policy experts assessing the impact of 9/11 and the future of the war on the al-Qaeda terrorist organisation.
”And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don’t care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell,” said Zelikow.
The statements are the first to surface from a source closely linked to the Bush administration acknowledging that the war, which has so far cost the lives of nearly 600 U.S. troops and thousands of Iraqis, was motivated by Washington’s desire to defend the Jewish state.
The administration, which is surrounded by staunch pro-Israel, neo-conservative hawks, is currently fighting an extensive campaign to ward off accusations that it derailed the ”war on terrorism” it launched after 9/11 by taking a detour to Iraq, which appears to have posed no direct threat to the United States.
Israel is Washington’s biggest ally in the Middle East, receiving annual direct aid of three to four billion dollars.
Even though members of the 16-person PFIAB come from outside government, they enjoy the confidence of the president and have access to all information related to foreign intelligence that they need to play their vital advisory role.
Known in intelligence circles as ”Piffy-ab”, the board is supposed to evaluate the nation’s intelligence agencies and probe any mistakes they make.
The unpaid appointees on the board require a security clearance known as ”code word” that is higher than top secret.
The national security adviser to former President George H.W. Bush (1989-93) Brent Scowcroft, currently chairs the board in its work overseeing a number of intelligence bodies, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the various military intelligence groups and the Pentagon’s National Reconnaissance Office.
Neither Scowcroft nor Zelikow returned numerous phone calls and email messages from IPS for this story.
Zelikow has long-established ties to the Bush administration.
Before his appointment to PFIAB in October 2001, he was part of the current president’s transition team in January 2001.
In that capacity, Zelikow drafted a memo for National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice on reorganising and restructuring the National Security Council (NSC) and prioritising its work.
Richard A. Clarke, who was counter-terrorism coordinator for Bush’s predecessor President Bill Clinton (1993-2001) also worked for Bush senior, and has recently accused the current administration of not heeding his terrorism warnings, said Zelikow was among those he briefed about the urgent threat from al-Qaeda in December 2000.
Rice herself had served in the NSC during the first Bush administration, and subsequently teamed up with Zelikow on a 1995 book about the unification of Germany.
Zelikow had ties with another senior Bush administration official — Robert Zoellick, the current trade representative. The two wrote three books together, including one in 1998 on the United States and the ”Muslim Middle East”.
Aside from his position at the 9/11 commission, Zelikow is now also director of the Miller Centre of Public Affairs and White Burkett Miller Professor of History at the University of Virginia.
His close ties to the administration prompted accusations of a conflict of interest in 2002 from families of victims of the 9/11 attacks, who protested his appointment to the investigative body.
In his university speech, Zelikow, who strongly backed attacking the Iraqi dictator, also explained the threat to Israel by arguing that Baghdad was preparing in 1990-91 to spend huge amounts of ”scarce hard currency” to harness ”communications against electromagnetic pulse”, a side-effect of a nuclear explosion that could sever radio, electronic and electrical communications.
That was ”a perfectly absurd expenditure unless you were going to ride out a nuclear exchange — they (Iraqi officials) were not preparing to ride out a nuclear exchange with us. Those were preparations to ride out a nuclear exchange with the Israelis”, according to Zelikow.
He also suggested that the danger of biological weapons falling into the hands of the anti-Israeli Islamic Resistance Movement, known by its Arabic acronym Hamas, would threaten Israel rather than the United States, and that those weapons could have been developed to the point where they could deter Washington from attacking Hamas.
”Play out those scenarios,” he told his audience, ”and I will tell you, people have thought about that, but they are just not talking very much about it”.
”Don’t look at the links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, but then ask yourself the question, ‘gee, is Iraq tied to Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the people who are carrying out suicide bombings in Israel’? Easy question to answer; the evidence is abundant.”
To date, the possibility of the United States attacking Iraq to protect Israel has been only timidly raised by some intellectuals and writers, with few public acknowledgements from sources close to the administration.
Analysts who reviewed Zelikow’s statements said they are concrete evidence of one factor in the rationale for going to war, which has been hushed up.
”Those of us speaking about it sort of routinely referred to the protection of Israel as a component,” said Phyllis Bennis of the Washington-based Institute of Policy Studies. ”But this is a very good piece of evidence of that.”
Others say the administration should be blamed for not making known to the public its true intentions and real motives for invading Iraq.
”They (the administration) made a decision to invade Iraq, and then started to search for a policy to justify it. It was a decision in search of a policy and because of the odd way they went about it, people are trying to read something into it,” said Nathan Brown, professor of political science at George Washington University and an expert on the Middle East.
But he downplayed the Israel link. ”In terms of securing Israel, it doesn’t make sense to me because the Israelis are probably more concerned about Iran than they were about Iraq in terms of the long-term strategic threat,” he said.
Still, Brown says Zelikow’s words carried weight.
”Certainly his position would allow him to speak with a little bit more expertise about the thinking of the Bush administration, but it doesn’t strike me that he is any more authoritative than Wolfowitz, or Rice or Powell or anybody else. All of them were sort of fishing about for justification for a decision that has already been made,” Brown said. (END/2004)
Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States
I read this morning a reprint of Billmon’s article “Dying for Israel” on antiwar.com. Maybe it was the white background and the black type, I don’t know, but seeing Billmon’s writing “outside of the house” made me realize just how wry and incisive is his writing, how deadly accurate is his analysis. And he’s playin’ right here on the web, real good, for free. I’m glad I’m not a “professional journalist”. I’d feel like the other guys on the PGA Tour did when Tiger Woods showed up playing a whole other game.
Reading through the comments above I noticed Billmon’s lament at the crackpots that show up everytime he writes about the US/Israeli Politico symbiosis. Better to have them out in the open looking as nuts as they naturally are than festering away in the dark corners of their minds.
In addition to re-reading Billmon I read Jennfer Loewenstein’s The Shame of It All on Counterpunch. I sent her the email below today. My “mission” is to see sane Israelis and Americans join up to beat the anti-Semitism dodge and to remove the far-right from power.
Dear Jennifer Loewenstein,
I have to admit that I skipped “The Shame of It All” when it was first published on Counterpunch. I have read so many articles lamenting the monstrous condition of the Palestinians that I thought I would give my heart a rest when I saw yours. I turned the page.
But this morning I saw some of the letters you’ve received in response to your essay and the gratitude they expressed for your writing and those letters sent me back to your article.
I hope that the connection can be made between the terrorism we Americans experienced on 9/11 and our three decades of support for the far-right wing in Israel, enablement really, for the Likud could never have found the resources to so terrorize and oppress the Palestinians on their own.
The juggernaut of jingo in the United States attendant upon the mass murders of 9/11 which enabled the present monstrous “adventure” in Iraq has made me understand just how debilitating the vast sums of money transferred to the Israeli far-right from the United States, the “Likud Entitlement Program” really, must be to the cause of justice in Israel itself.
I try my best to encourage others in the United States to think of the Israelis as potential allies in the struggle against the far-right wing regimes both in Israel and the United States, for together we may overthrow them.
Cindy Sheehan, an ordinary human being rather than a member of the corrupt American political class, said it simply and straight-forwardly : “You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine and you’ll stop the terrorism.”
This simple message has been as missed in public discourse as the pictures of the despoilment of Palestine and the oppression of the Palestinians whose lack you lament.
I try to point out that there are at least 1663 Israelis refuseniks, including 27 Israeli airmen, more than a dozen members of Sayeret Matkal, and Noam Bahat, Hagay Mattar, Adam Mouar, Shimi Tzamrit and Mittan Kminar who are serving prison terms for refusing to serve in Israel’s illegal, immoral war against the Palestinians.
That’s like 80,000 people here in the United States. And I imagine that it takes every bit as much backbone to stand up to the Likud in Israel as it does to stand up to the present regime here in America. The peace movements in Israel and the United States must join together, to make common cause against the common enemy, to vow together never again.
If we don’t drain the swamp of despair and humiliation that creates such hatred for Americans and Israelis we will continue to reap the terror we sow. Retaliatory attacks will kill Americans and Israelis again, and the Likud will again use those attacks as the reason to continue the cycle of terror.
If we can turn the growing realization of the monstrosity of this adventure in Iraq into a resolve to defund both the open-ended War on Terror and the open-ended Likud Entitlement Program, if we can use this pivotal moment as an opportunity to unite right-thinking people in America and Israel and to snatch power back from the far-right wing in both countries, then all the deaths that have accumulated over the past three, nearly four decades will not have been completely in vain.
I imagine that since your article has drawn the response that it has it may well, finally, be time when change is possible, time for us to confront the shame of it all, to right things to the best of our ability, and to carry on from here with the resolution fresh in our minds, never again.
Posted by: John Francis Lee | Aug 26 2005 9:52 utc | 33