What did President Ahmadinejad actually say?

Did you see this?

Excerpt:
But let's take a closer look at what Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said. It is a merit of the 'New York Times' that they placed the complete speech at our disposal. ...It's becoming clear. The statements of the Iranian President have been reflected by the media in a manipulated way. Iran's President betokens the removal of the regimes, that are in power in Israel and in the USA, to be possible aim for the future. This is correct. But he never demands the elimination or annihilation of Israel. He reveals that changes are potential.

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12790.htm

Whatever one might think about the white separatist/racist David Duke, why do we have to find out about the hijacking of our government via the following URL:

www.davidduke.com/

Scroll down to his Web radio broadcasts for today (April 26th, 2006) and yesterday (April 25th, 2006) in his Web broadcast archive at www.davidduke.com as both broadcasts are about the above article.. As usual our fifth columnist serving Israel first US press/media is not covering this...

Here is the exact URL:

www.davidduke.com/

Duke discusses the above during his Web radio broadcasts for April 26th, 2006 and April 25th, 2006 - scroll down to his Web radio archive at www.davidduke.com

Agreed, the partnership needs a much closer look. The difficulty stems from the partnership between Jewish zionists leaders and their supporters (not all Jews) and Christian Evangelists. This partnership is a tough nut to crack. I also found the following post to be very illuminating on the subject. civillibertarian.blogspot.com/2005/10/macro-micro-beyond-tyranny-in.html

Neocons on Iran

www.counterpunch.org/leupp04262006.html

let the jew boys and their sons and daughters go fight!

I AGREE 1000%!!!!!!!!!

General Janis Karpinski spoke about the war for Israel in Iraq and beyond on her radio broadcast this past weekend:

Forwarded:

General Janis Karpinski (of Abu Ghraib) had an excellent program on the Republic Broadcasting Network (via the live link at www.rbnlive.com and the following archive URL - click on the link shown for the second hour of the April 22nd, 2006 show as she discussed how we went to war for Israel and how the MEK terrorist group is being used for the coming attack on Iran):

mp3.rbnlive.com/Janis06.html

Another excellent call about the Mearsheimer/Walt study on the pro-Israel lobby came at 28.11 into the 2nd hour of the Karen Kwiatkowski program (her interview with Dr. Leon Hadar) for April 22nd, 2006 at the following archive URL as Karen mentioned the Mearsheimer/Walt study again at 33.36 into the 2nd hour of the program (Condi Rice's leak of sensitive defense information to the pro-Israel AIPAC lobby ex-officials was mentioned at 54.42 into the first hour of Karen's broadcast):

mp3.rbnlive.com/Karen06.html

The Attack on Mearsheimer and Walt:

www.thornwalker.com/ditch/snieg_mear_walt.htm

here's all the proof he needs. FLASHBACK: AIPAC's Big, Bigger, Biggest Moment By Dana Milbank The Washington Post Tuesday, May 24, 2005; Page A13 How much clout does AIPAC have? Well, consider that during the pro-Israel lobby's annual conference yesterday, a fleet of police cars, sirens wailing, blocked intersections and formed a motorcade to escort buses carrying its conventioneers — to lunch….(Richard) Perle drew cheers for denouncing Palestinian anti-Semitism and the French. Harman mentioned that an aide once worked for AIPAC, called her audience "very sophisticated" and celebrated Yasser Arafat's death as "a blessing." Debating a hard-liner in front of a pro-administration crowd, HARMAN HEAPED PRAISE ON PRESIDENT BUSH, CALLING THE IRAQI ELECTIONS "SENSATIONALLY IMPRESSIVE" AND MOVING TO "APPLAUD" OR "COMMEND" PERLE AND THE ADMINISTRATION A DOZEN TIMES. "RICHARD IS RIGHT, AND SO IS PRESIDENT BUSH," SHE SAID AT ONE POINT. BUT AFTER HALF AN HOUR OF THIS, HARMAN COULD NOT KEEP UP. PERLE PROVOKED CHEERS FROM THE CROWD WHEN HE FAVORED A MILITARY RAID ON IRAN, SAYING THAT "IF IRAN IS ON THE VERGE OF A NUCLEAR WEAPON, I THINK WE WILL HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO TAKE DECISIVE ACTION." WHEN HARMAN SAID THE "BEST SHORT-TERM OPTION" IS THE U.N. SECURITY COUNCIL, THE CROWD REACTED WITH BOOS. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/23/AR2005052301565.html?referrer=emailarticle

let the world know the truth that these greedy war mongers is putting the world in jeopardy.those in the government of the u.s. who puts another countrys interest above theirs are traitors and should be treated as such.

Nixon tapes after 3 days in office--I'm surrounded by FKN Jews
today Bush, Chenny Rummie are closet Jews. Don't let them kid you. United states of Israel. So many stupid fools abound in USa. Want fairness-demand congress pass a law bill---all Americans must convert to Judism--that will fix the problem--JEWS ONLY NEED APPLY!

Dear sirs,
i beg you please to help me alter my religion from islam to the old testament.i'm mamoud hassan aly.lawyer.29 years old.my address is 18 khalf ala st.,shutez,Alexandria,Egypt.i prefer to kill my self than to stay like this.please,please,please.if not where i can ask for help. i hope that will meet with your kind consideration
Mahmoud hassan aly
18 khalf alla street schutez,Alexandria,21411,Egypt
e_mail mahmoud_hassanweb-AT-yahoo.com

What did President Ahmadinejad actually say?

Did you see this?

Excerpt:
But let's take a closer look at what Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said. It is a merit of the 'New York Times' that they placed the complete speech at our disposal. ...It's becoming clear. The statements of the Iranian President have been reflected by the media in a manipulated way. Iran's President betokens the removal of the regimes, that are in power in Israel and in the USA, to be possible aim for the future. This is correct. But he never demands the elimination or annihilation of Israel. He reveals that changes are potential.

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12790.htm

American Jew Jack Bernstein wrote (in his 'Life of an American Jew in Racist/Marxist Israel' via the following URL) that Zionists would trick the USA into fighting wars in the Middle East for Israel with many Americans to die and get horribly wounded/maimed in the process (like we have already experienced with Iraq with Iran soon to come for Israel as well):

www.biblebelievers.org.au/israel.htm

Look folks, if this is what the Zionists want let them have their way-if history is any teacher, this will eventually backfire in their vile faces sooner or later. Israel is an illegitimate entity built on the blood of their original hosts-the Palestinians, who even referred to their Jewish neighbors as PALESTINIAN JEWS.
Zionists always have contingency plans if they don't get their way-either start a civil war in the nation that opposses them, collapse the economy, carry out a "terrorist" operation and pin it on someone else (usually the muslims) or spread mischief and turmoil to weaken the government at hand ( as in the Clinton/Lewisnky scandal).
These are demon spawn, their aim IS TO START a WW3 between the muslims and the Christians and sit on the sidelines and watch, and eventually collect the spoils..........anyway I could go on and on, maybe some other time though.
Thanks for the posts everyone, keep up the good work.

Rice fails to win Greek support on Iran:

english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/5A1C8C00-2007-425F-A7FB-F47C4B6F494A.htm

A "bullseye on Iran"?!? I started laughing and couldn't keep reading. Your "bullseye" are mile markers showing how far an openly hostile Iranian missile could travel hitting continental Europe in the process. Sorry that was "so inflamitory".

Bush's October surprise - it's coming:

www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HD11Ak03.html

Attack Iran, destroy the US constitution:

atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HD26Ak01.html


Deadly serious war games:

www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HD22Ak01.html


Tehran insider tells of US black ops:

www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HD25Ak02.html

www.thejewishweek.com/news/ne...p3

(04/21/2006)

Iran-Israel Linkage By Bush Seen As Threat
Jewish leaders warn of backlash as president cites Jewish state as rationale for possible strikes.
James D. Besser And Larry Cohler-Esses

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 U.S. military conflict with Iran, Jewish leaders and Middle East analysts warned this week.

Bush’s repeated, sometimes exclusive, focus on Israel could spark public fury against the Jewish state and Jews if U.S. military action is accompanied by skyrocketing gas prices, terrorism at home or fallen G.I.’s who might be seen as dying for Israel, some said. Others feared it could fracture the shaky international coalition Bush is striving to assemble to oppose Iran’s nuclear program by framing the threat as primarily to Israel rather than international stability.

Ambassador Edward Walker, a former U.S. envoy to Israel who now heads the Middle East Institute in Washington, termed Bush’s Israel focus “a terrible idea.”

“Just think about if gas prices go up to $7 a gallon as a result, and everybody is saying it’s because of Israel,” he said.

“I don’t believe it is in Israel’s best interests to have the American people going into a major military action, which is what we’re talking about in Iran, with significant implications on the home front in terms of terrorism and energy prices, and then having people blame Israel,” said Walker.

Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice president of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said “The linkage to Israel is not a good idea, because then the Iranians say, you see, it’s the Zionists driving this.

“As much as we appreciate it, the question is whether it’s beneficial to tie this to Israel,” said Hoenlein, whose organization functions as the Jewish community’s official umbrella group for speaking out on foreign policy issues.

Hoenlein pointed out that Iran is tied to terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, which operates in Lebanon and other countries. It also exercises influence over militias accused of atrocities in Iraq and aims to spread its influence throughout the Muslim world.

The danger of a nuclear-armed Iran “is a much greater one than just Israel,” said Hoenlein.

In recent days, there have been reports of extensive U.S. military planning, possibly for a bombing campaign against a variety of Iranian targets. The aim, say the reports, would be to halt or, at least set back, what Iran insists is a peaceful program to produce nuclear energy. The United States, Europe and other countries fear this merely masks a covert Iranian drive to develop nuclear weapons.

Faced with increasing public clamor about a possible military conflict, Bush has repeatedly taken note of the threat a nuclear Iran would pose to Israel. Indeed, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has repeatedly called for Israel’s destruction, most recently this week. On some occasions, President Bush has offered this as his sole rationale for confronting Iran.

In a March 20 speech in Cleveland, for example, Bush replied to a question about the influence of apocalyptic Christian theology on his policies with a long, rambling answer in which he raised the threat he saw from Iran and 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.”

Other administration leaders have brought Israel into center stage on Iran in a different way — suggesting strong U.S. action could be necessary to keep Israel from acting on its own.

“One of the concerns people have is that Israel might [attack Iran] without being asked,” said Vice President Dick Cheney in a February 2005 radio interview, “that if, in fact, the Israelis became convinced the Iranians had significant nuclear capability, given the fact that Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel, the Israelis might well decide to act first and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards.”

Asked why Bush has made Israel a focus, Walker said, “because he is not very attuned to the history of the situation and he has some really strange advisers who do not understand the broader implications of this, in terms of the vast majority of the American public.”

Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-L.I./Queens), a frequent administration critic, said Bush’s focus increases the likelihood of a backlash against Jews and Israel if a U.S.-led war on Iran turns sour.

“It’s a horrible thing to do, it’s dangerous,” he said. “If something goes wrong, it’s a setup to say we did it for Israel and not for America, and to blame the Jews.”

Asked if he thought that was President Bush’s intent, Ackerman said “I don’t believe in accidents and coincidences in this business. They choose their words very carefully. This is not the first time the president has said this, but now it looks like it’s their whole program.”

Ironically, Middle East analysts say Israel’s own public stand has, by and large, played down the threat that Bush is playing up.

“For past few years, the position of the Israeli government has been that Iran’s nuclear program was not an Israeli issue,” said Shai Feldman, director of Brandeis University’s Crown Center for Middle East studies. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon from 2000, said Feldman, Israel stressed the problem was “an international issue, a challenge to international stability.”

Israel may have felt comfortable stepping back because the European countries and even Russia and China have cooperated with the United States on the issue in ways they did not in the lead-up to the War in Iraq, Feldman conceded. This may have allowed Israel to de-emphasize itself, he said.

“In terms of maintaining this kind of international support, to say Israel is a primary concern is extremely counterproductive,” Feldman said.

Furthermore, he explained, many—though not all—Israeli analysts do not see a nuclear Iran as the kind of “existential threat” that Bush depicts. For all its president’s rhetoric, many Israeli analysts view Iran’s record as “on the whole, quite risk averse” and see a rational actor that would remain very aware of Israel’s second-strike capability, he said.

“It’s not that the day after Iran gets the nuclear bomb they drop it on Tel-Aviv,” said Feldman. It is rather, the many “general geopolitical implications” of a nuclear Iran that concern Israel, he said.

“One is that it would lead other countries [in the region] to follow suit” with their own nuclear arms programs, he said. “Two is that an Iran equipped with nuclear weapons would throw its weight around the region to a much greater extent than is currently the case.”

Shoshana Bryen, special projects director for the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), agreed that the administration’s strong focus on Israel could undermine its already shaky efforts to build a broad international coalition to pressure and possibly fight Iran.

“It’s a perfectly reasonable response to the fact that Iran has threatened only two countries — the United States and Israel,” said Bryen, whose group promotes strong ties between the U.S. and Israeli military. “The problem is that doing that gives countries that would like an excuse for not acting on Iran an out.”

Ahmadinejad believes the more Washington focuses on Israel as a factor in the Iran debate, the more trouble it will have recruiting allies, she said.

David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, said he has already seen signs of a backlash against Jewish groups because of his group’s support for a tough stand against Iran’s nuclear program.

Harris’ group recently published an ad in The New York Times and the Financial Times headlined “A Nuclear Iran Threatens Us All,” showing a map with concentric rings delineating the current and projected ranges of Iranian missiles now deployed and under development.

“Our point is and remains that Iran is a global problem,” he said. “Israel is one target, but not the only one.”

But letters to the editor blasted the group and said the ad was proof of the destructive impact of the Jewish lobby, Harris said.

“So there is always the possibility of a backlash,” said Harris.

Harris said his group “welcomes and appreciates the administration’s expressed support for Israel. ... But we maintain this is a problem that goes far beyond Israel.”

Some Jewish leaders seem conflicted — pleased that the president is actively concerned about Israel’s security but uncertain about his motives.

“The fact that the president is saying, time and time again, that Israel is under our [defense] umbrella should be welcomed and encouraged,” said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. But Foxman said the president’s exact motives in linking Israel so closely to U.S. Iran aims are unclear.

“Is this a security umbrella on behalf of Israel? Is it meant as a message to Israel? Or to Iran? At this point nobody really knows its significance.”

Jewish leaders say that while many have pushed for a forceful U.S. stand against Iran, no one is actively promoting the military option. Even some hawkish groups caution that attacking Iran could have unintended and devastating consequences.

JINSA’s Bryen, for example, that a military strike with civilian casualties will probably “strengthen the regime.”

There are no simple options, she continued, “which may be why the president keeps raising the specter of Israel. Everybody is hoping for a magic bullet, whether it be an Israeli or a U.S. magic bullet.” n

James D. Besser is Washington correspondent;

Larry Cohler-Esses is editor at large.

[b]Lobbying on Iran, groups strive
to play down the Jewish angle [/b]

www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp

Groups to Bush: Drop Iran-Israel Linkage
By Ori Nir
May 12, 2006

OFF THE TABLE

Bombing Iran is not only illegal and unjust, it is an unacceptable risk. The risks of "stopping Iran" are greater than not "stopping Iran." It isn't just my opinion that the risks that come with military actions against Iran are unacceptable. Look at the conclusion drawn from war-game simulations of attacking Iran. The final conclusion after running through many options was expressed by General Gardiner, a simulations expert at the U.S. Army’s National War College:

"After all this effort, I am left with two simple sentences for policymakers," Sam Gardiner said of his exercise. "You have no military solution for the issues of Iran. And you have to make diplomacy work.""

The CIA and DIA have war-gamed the likely consequences of a U.S. pre-emptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. No one liked the outcome. As an Air Force source tells it, ‘The war games were unsuccessful at preventing the conflict from escalating.‘” I HOPE BUSH LISTENS! But the Bush Administration OFTEN IGNORES advice from intelligence.

The example of the USSR is an important one to analyze. The biggest close call was because of U.S. policy maker's recklessness and aggression toward Cuba. We don't want to repeat the same kind of mistakes. And the sick part is President Kennedy didn't know about the hypocrisy of U.S. nukes already based a mere 150 miles from Soviet boarders, in Turkey.

As far as the habits of other nuclear countries, the U.S. and Israel are heavily involved in terrorism. The U.S. has inflicted massive amounts of terrorism against Cuba, just one example. And the hypocrisy is incredible. Look at the case of Orlando Bosch. The U.S. Justice Department, which was overruled by Bush I, complained that the U.S. harboring Bosch put the public interests at risk because "the security of this nation is affected by its ability to urge credibly other nations to refuse aid and shelter to terrorists." Look also at the shameful case of the Cuban 5.

We also need to look at what Israel actually is, and it isn't pretty. For example, if all the people living in Israel had equal rights, the same rights we demand for ourselves, that would be the destruction of Israel by definition. Keeping in place a system of discrimination based on religion is not something Americans should risk their lives for. Keeping in place a system of injustice is not something Americans should support. Should the Confederacy have been wiped off the map?
representativepress.blogspot.com/2006/04/off-table-bombing-iran-is-not-only.html

www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3

(04/21/2006)

Iran-Israel Linkage By Bush Seen As Threat
Jewish leaders warn of backlash as president cites Jewish state as rationale for possible strikes.
James D. Besser And Larry Cohler-Esses

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 U.S. military conflict with Iran, Jewish leaders and Middle East analysts warned this week.

Bush’s repeated, sometimes exclusive, focus on Israel could spark public fury against the Jewish state and Jews if U.S. military action is accompanied by skyrocketing gas prices, terrorism at home or fallen G.I.’s who might be seen as dying for Israel, some said. Others feared it could fracture the shaky international coalition Bush is striving to assemble to oppose Iran’s nuclear program by framing the threat as primarily to Israel rather than international stability.

Ambassador Edward Walker, a former U.S. envoy to Israel who now heads the Middle East Institute in Washington, termed Bush’s Israel focus “a terrible idea.”

“Just think about if gas prices go up to $7 a gallon as a result, and everybody is saying it’s because of Israel,” he said.

“I don’t believe it is in Israel’s best interests to have the American people going into a major military action, which is what we’re talking about in Iran, with significant implications on the home front in terms of terrorism and energy prices, and then having people blame Israel,” said Walker.

Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice president of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said “The linkage to Israel is not a good idea, because then the Iranians say, you see, it’s the Zionists driving this.

“As much as we appreciate it, the question is whether it’s beneficial to tie this to Israel,” said Hoenlein, whose organization functions as the Jewish community’s official umbrella group for speaking out on foreign policy issues.

Hoenlein pointed out that Iran is tied to terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, which operates in Lebanon and other countries. It also exercises influence over militias accused of atrocities in Iraq() and aims to spread its influence throughout the Muslim world.

The danger of a nuclear-armed Iran “is a much greater one than just Israel,” said Hoenlein.

In recent days, there have been reports of extensive U.S. military planning, possibly for a bombing campaign against a variety of Iranian targets. The aim, say the reports, would be to halt or, at least set back, what Iran insists is a peaceful program to produce nuclear energy. The United States, Europe and other countries fear this merely masks a covert Iranian drive to develop nuclear weapons.

Faced with increasing public clamor about a possible military conflict, Bush has repeatedly taken note of the threat a nuclear Iran would pose to Israel. Indeed, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has repeatedly called for Israel’s destruction, most recently this week. On some occasions, President Bush has offered this as his sole rationale for confronting Iran.

In a March 20 speech in Cleveland, for example, Bush replied to a question about the influence of apocalyptic Christian theology on his policies with a long, rambling answer in which he raised the threat he saw from Iran and 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.”

Other administration leaders have brought Israel into center stage on Iran in a different way — suggesting strong U.S. action could be necessary to keep Israel from acting on its own.

“One of the concerns people have is that Israel might [attack Iran] without being asked,” said Vice President Dick Cheney in a February 2005 radio interview, “that if, in fact, the Israelis became convinced the Iranians had significant nuclear capability, given the fact that Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel, the Israelis might well decide to act first and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards.”

Asked why Bush has made Israel a focus, Walker said, “because he is not very attuned to the history of the situation and he has some really strange advisers who do not understand the broader implications of this, in terms of the vast majority of the American public.”

Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-L.I./Queens), a frequent administration critic, said Bush’s focus increases the likelihood of a backlash against Jews and Israel if a U.S.-led war on Iran turns sour.

“It’s a horrible thing to do, it’s dangerous,” he said. “If something goes wrong, it’s a setup to say we did it for Israel and not for America, and to blame the Jews.”

Asked if he thought that was President Bush’s intent, Ackerman said “I don’t believe in accidents and coincidences in this business. They choose their words very carefully. This is not the first time the president has said this, but now it looks like it’s their whole program.”

Ironically, Middle East analysts say Israel’s own public stand has, by and large, played down the threat that Bush is playing up.

“For past few years, the position of the Israeli government has been that Iran’s nuclear program was not an Israeli issue,” said Shai Feldman, director of Brandeis University’s Crown Center for Middle East studies. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon from 2000, said Feldman, Israel stressed the problem was “an international issue, a challenge to international stability.”

Israel may have felt comfortable stepping back because the European countries and even Russia and China have cooperated with the United States on the issue in ways they did not in the lead-up to the War in Iraq, Feldman conceded. This may have allowed Israel to de-emphasize itself, he said.

“In terms of maintaining this kind of international support, to say Israel is a primary concern is extremely counterproductive,” Feldman said.

Furthermore, he explained, many—though not all—Israeli analysts do not see a nuclear Iran as the kind of “existential threat” that Bush depicts. For all its president’s rhetoric, many Israeli analysts view Iran’s record as “on the whole, quite risk averse” and see a rational actor that would remain very aware of Israel’s second-strike capability, he said.

“It’s not that the day after Iran gets the nuclear bomb they drop it on Tel-Aviv,” said Feldman. It is rather, the many “general geopolitical implications” of a nuclear Iran that concern Israel, he said.

“One is that it would lead other countries [in the region] to follow suit” with their own nuclear arms programs, he said. “Two is that an Iran equipped with nuclear weapons would throw its weight around the region to a much greater extent than is currently the case.”

Shoshana Bryen, special projects director for the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), agreed that the administration’s strong focus on Israel could undermine its already shaky efforts to build a broad international coalition to pressure and possibly fight Iran.

“It’s a perfectly reasonable response to the fact that Iran has threatened only two countries — the United States and Israel,” said Bryen, whose group promotes strong ties between the U.S. and Israeli military. “The problem is that doing that gives countries that would like an excuse for not acting on Iran an out.”

Ahmadinejad believes the more Washington focuses on Israel as a factor in the Iran debate, the more trouble it will have recruiting allies, she said.

David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, said he has already seen signs of a backlash against Jewish groups because of his group’s support for a tough stand against Iran’s nuclear program.

Harris’ group recently published an ad in The New York Times and the Financial Times headlined “A Nuclear Iran Threatens Us All,” showing a map with concentric rings delineating the current and projected ranges of Iranian missiles now deployed and under development.

“Our point is and remains that Iran is a global problem,” he said. “Israel is one target, but not the only one.”

But letters to the editor blasted the group and said the ad was proof of the destructive impact of the Jewish lobby, Harris said.

“So there is always the possibility of a backlash,” said Harris.

Harris said his group “welcomes and appreciates the administration’s expressed support for Israel. ... But we maintain this is a problem that goes far beyond Israel.”

Some Jewish leaders seem conflicted — pleased that the president is actively concerned about Israel’s security but uncertain about his motives.

“The fact that the president is saying, time and time again, that Israel is under our [defense] umbrella should be welcomed and encouraged,” said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. But Foxman said the president’s exact motives in linking Israel so closely to U.S. Iran aims are unclear.

“Is this a security umbrella on behalf of Israel? Is it meant as a message to Israel? Or to Iran? At this point nobody really knows its significance.”

Jewish leaders say that while many have pushed for a forceful U.S. stand against Iran, no one is actively promoting the military option. Even some hawkish groups caution that attacking Iran could have unintended and devastating consequences.

JINSA’s Bryen, for example, that a military strike with civilian casualties will probably “strengthen the regime.”

There are no simple options, she continued, “which may be why the president keeps raising the specter of Israel. Everybody is hoping for a magic bullet, whether it be an Israeli or a U.S. magic bullet.” n

James D. Besser is Washington correspondent;

Larry Cohler-Esses is editor at large.

[b]Lobbying on Iran, groups strive
to play down the Jewish angle [/b]

www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp

Groups to Bush: Drop Iran-Israel Linkage
By Ori Nir
May 12, 2006

Is the US Waging Israel's Wars?

Many throughout the Muslim world and beyond are asking this question: What are the real reasons behind the US invasion of Iraq and its wish to overthrow the governments of Syria and Iran? …

.. Read the following strangely prophetic segment from an article published in 1982 by the World Zionist Organisation's publication Kivunim and penned by Oded Yinon, an Israeli journalist with links to the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

Yinon's strategy was based on this premise. In order to survive Israel must become an imperial regional power and must also ensure the break-up of all Arab countries so that the region may be carved up into small ineffectual states unequipped to stand up to Israeli military might. …

www.counterpunch.org/heard04252006.html

"A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties" by Oded Yinon:

www.geocities.com/alabasters_archive/zionist_plan.html

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

PNAC 101 - Rise Of The Neocons

www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php

www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

“Hawkish Israeli Lobby Wants War with Iran!”

… “Another important, hard line group is the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). They have been advocating ‘regime change’ in a number of Arab counties: Iraq([search]), Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and with the Palestinian Authority for years. JINSA’s board of advisors has included many Bush administration leaders: Dick Cheney, John Bolton, Richard Perle, James Woolsey and Douglas Feith...They (JINSA) put a report out on April 12th, called, ‘Iran, Iran, Iran and Iran.’ Iran, the document said is the ‘whole list of national security priorities.’ Yes, they want to see ‘regime change’ in Iran. They want to see an attack on Iran.”

It’s interesting to note that one of the members of the U.S. Congress, who supports a U.S. air strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities is the Israeli Firster, Joseph Lieberman (D-CT). …

baltimore.indymedia.org/newswire/display/12448/index.php

www.jinsa.org/home/home.html

Subject: Molly Ivins: Let's call the Israel lobby the Israel lobby jblankfort-AT-earthlink.net
Send Email

What is interesting is that this is, as I recall, the first comment on the M-W paper by a liberal mainstream columnist, or have I missed Robert Scheer or Paul Krugman or Trudy Rubin saying something?
www.workingforchange.com/printitem.cfm

OFF THE TABLE

Bombing Iran is not only illegal and unjust, it is an unacceptable risk. The risks of "stopping Iran" are greater than not "stopping Iran." It isn't just my opinion that the risks that come with military actions against Iran are unacceptable. Look at the conclusion drawn from war-game simulations of attacking Iran. The final conclusion after running through many options was expressed by General Gardiner, a simulations expert at the U.S. Army’s National War College:

"After all this effort, I am left with two simple sentences for policymakers," Sam Gardiner said of his exercise. "You have no military solution for the issues of Iran. And you have to make diplomacy work.""

The CIA and DIA have war-gamed the likely consequences of a U.S. pre-emptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. No one liked the outcome. As an Air Force source tells it, ‘The war games were unsuccessful at preventing the conflict from escalating.‘” I HOPE BUSH LISTENS! But the Bush Administration OFTEN IGNORES advice from intelligence.

The example of the USSR is an important one to analyze. The biggest close call was because of U.S. policy maker's recklessness and aggression toward Cuba. We don't want to repeat the same kind of mistakes. And the sick part is President Kennedy didn't know about the hypocrisy of U.S. nukes already based a mere 150 miles from Soviet boarders, in Turkey.

As far as the habits of other nuclear countries, the U.S. and Israel are heavily involved in terrorism. The U.S. has inflicted massive amounts of terrorism against Cuba, just one example. And the hypocrisy is incredible. Look at the case of Orlando Bosch. The U.S. Justice Department, which was overruled by Bush I, complained that the U.S. harboring Bosch put the public interests at risk because "the security of this nation is affected by its ability to urge credibly other nations to refuse aid and shelter to terrorists." Look also at the shameful case of the Cuban 5.

We also need to look at what Israel actually is, and it isn't pretty. For example, if all the people living in Israel had equal rights, the same rights we demand for ourselves, that would be the destruction of Israel by definition. Keeping in place a system of discrimination based on religion is not something Americans should risk their lives for. Keeping in place a system of injustice is not something Americans should support. Should the Confederacy have been wiped off the map?
representativepress.blogspot.com/2006/04/off-table-bombing-iran-is-not-only.html

Jordanian King to Israel: Give Up Your Nukes
18:17 Apr 24, by Hana Levi Julian

Jordan's King Abdullah said Monday that Israel should disarm its nuclear weapons in the wake of international pressure on Iran to end its uranium enrichment program.

Arab states have united in condemning Western pressure on Iran to dismantle its nuclear program, and Jordan is the latest to join the chorus. "If the world is demanding Iran' doesn't develop nuclear weapons, it should also demand that countries which possess nuclear weapons disarm," he said. "For peace to be achieved in the region, Israel has to disarm its nuclear weapons."

www.israelnn.com/news.php3

Iran says will harm US interests if attacked

By Alireza Ronaghi

13 minutes ago

Iran said on Wednesday it would harm U.S. interests anywhere in the world if the United States launches an attack on the Islamic Republic, which is embroiled in a nuclear standoff with the West.

The comments by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, reported by state television, come two days before the U.N. nuclear watchdog is due to report on whether Iran is complying with U.N. demands to halt uranium enrichment. Tehran says it will not stop.

The United States, which accuses Iran of trying to build atomic bombs, has said it wants a diplomatic solution to the dispute but has not ruled out a military option if diplomacy fails.

"The Americans should know that if they assault Iran their interests will be harmed anywhere in the world that is possible," Khamenei was quoted as saying by a television announcer.

"The Iranian nation will respond to any blow with double the intensity," he added.

The United States has been pushing to impose sanctions if, as Washington expects, Iran is found in the report by the International Atomic Energy Agency to have flouted U.N. demands.

Fellow U.N. Security Council members Britain and France have supported such a step, but sanctions are opposed by Russia and China, which like the other three permanent members of the council have the power to veto council resolutions.

Iran said on Tuesday it would suspend its relations with the IAEA if sanctions were imposed. Diplomats said this could mean withdrawing from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday reiterated his view that Iran could reconsider its commitment to the NPT and its cooperation with the IAEA if it felt it was not benefiting from abiding by international protocols.

SHARED KNOW-HOW

"We have asked them (the U.N. watchdog), and we are waiting for an answer: what have they given us in reward for doing our duty? What sort of help have they given us?" he told reporters after meeting Sudan's president in Tehran.

"We hope they fulfill their duties and make it unnecessary for the Islamic Republic of Iran to reconsider its relations with them," he said.

Although Iran says it bases its nuclear policy on the NPT, it has already pulled out of the treaty's Additional Protocol, which allows snap inspections of atomic facilities. It took that step after Iran's atomic file was referred to the Security Council.

Iran often grumbles that it does not benefit from the NPT's entitlement to shared technology.

But Western diplomats argue Iran's demand for shared know-how under the NPT is spurious as this entitlement would only be valid if it were certain that Tehran's ambitions were peaceful.

The IAEA has said that after three years of investigation it still cannot confirm that Iran does not have a military program, as Tehran insists, but has found no hard proof.

"They should know that they cannot impose any decisions upon us by using the name of the IAEA and U.N. Security Council because illegal decisions do not become legitimate just by using the name of the agency and Security Council," Ahmadinejad said.

"Our scientists have mastered this technology with their own brains, their own might and their own hands," he said.

Despite insisting the atomic program is home-grown, Iran has been heavily reliant on Russian expertise and on black-market trade linked to the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb Abdul Qadeer Khan.

Iran Must Stop Enrichment by Tomorrow By ALEX NICHOLSON, Associated Press Writer
9 minutes ago

The leaders of Russia and Germany urged Iran to fulfill its international nuclear obligations Thursday, a day before a U.N. Security Council deadline for Iran to stop enriching uranium.

Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed that no one could make Tehran give up its nuclear technology, and he warned that the United States and its European allies will regret their decision if they "violate the rights of the Iranian nation."

"The Iranian nation has acquired nuclear fuel production technology. It didn't get assistance from anybody and nobody can take it back," Ahmadinejad told thousands of people in western Iran.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters in the Siberian city of Tomsk that the crisis over Iran's nuclear program could be resolved only through diplomacy.

"It's still too early to run ahead and say what decision we might take together," Putin said. "The main thing is ... that whatever decision is taken is a consensus decision."

Both leaders said Iran must adhere to its international obligations but did not elaborate.

The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, will present a report Friday on Iran's implementation of the Security Council demand. Uranium enrichment can produce fuel for nuclear power or material for nuclear warheads.

If Iran does not comply, the Security Council is likely to consider punitive measures against the Islamic republic. Russia and China, however, have been reluctant to endorse sanctions.

Iran has thus far rejected the demand and issued its toughest warning on the issue Tuesday. Nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said that if the Security Council imposes sanctions, Iran would stop cooperating with the IAEA and conceal its nuclear activities.

"Our position is clear and well known. We are for the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction," Putin said. "But we believe that Iran must have an opportunity to develop modern technologies and peaceful nuclear energy."

Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the IAEA report should not be seen as an ultimatum for Tehran.

"The procedure for referring and examining the report is not an ultimatum," Lavrov said. "It has a working character and therefore, there is no time limit."

Merkel also called for a diplomatic resolution.

"We are very interested for the world community, as it has been from the start, to work together and show Iran that we want to work by diplomatic methods," she said. "But it is necessary for Iran to keep to the agreements that it has committed itself to."

"We are not talking about banning Iran from using nuclear energy for civilian goals, but it must keep to its obligations and agreements," Merkel added.

China's Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, stressed the need for restraint as the crisis reached a crucial stage.

"We hope the relevant parties can keep calm and exercise restraint so as to avoid moves that would further escalate the situation," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang.

Qin said the problem can still be "resolved through dialogue and diplomatic means, which is the correct choice for all parties concerned."

___

Associated Press writer Ali Akbar Dareini in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.

ADL calls Mearsheimer / Walt analysis "A Relentless Assault in
Scholarly
Guise"

Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2006 09:17:18 -0700 From: Jeff Blankfort
<jblankfort-AT-earthlink.net>

" on the refugee issue, scholars recognize that a certain number of
Palestinians
were forced from their homes. But, they also recognize that others left
at the
urging of Arab leaders..."

Apart from the rest of the ad hominem attack on the authors, this is
one of the
Big Lies that Israel and its supporters continue to repeat even though
the
allegation was thoroughly discredited decades ago and not a shred of
evidence
has ever been presented or found to support it. Clearly, the
Mearsheimer-Walt
paper has the The Lobby worried.

ADL Analysis Mearsheimer and Walt's Anti-Israel Screed: A Relentless
Assault in
Scholarly Guise:

www.adl.org/Israel/mearsheimer_walt.asp

[b]Lobbying on Iran, groups strive
to play down the Jewish angle [/b]

www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp

Groups to Bush: Drop Iran-Israel Linkage
By Ori Nir
May 12, 2006

Iran shuns UN on eve of nuclear deadline Thu Apr 27, 1:45 PM ET

Iran's hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed that his country "will not bow to injustice and pressure," the day before a UN deadline to stop sensitive nuclear work expires.

"Thanks to God, we are a nuclear state," the firebrand leader said in a speech in the west of the country.

"We will not bow to injustice and pressure. If they want to attack the rights of the Iranian people, we will stamp shame and regret on them."

Iran insists it has a right to enrich uranium to make reactor fuel, but the process can be extended to make nuclear weapons.

Western powers, led by the United States, are convinced Iran is seeking either a nuclear bomb or the "strategic capacity" to make one.

Iran's refusal to freeze enrichment by Friday in line with last month's UN Security Council demand opens the door to sanctions, despite opposition from Russia and China. The United States has also not ruled out taking military action.

The UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said it would release its report on Iranian compliance to members of the IAEA board of governors and to the UN Security Council on Friday afternoon.

And senior diplomats from the Security Council's five permanent members plus Germany are due to discuss the next steps in a meeting in Paris on Tuesday, although Ahmadinejad showed no sign of worry.

"They think that by frowning, adopting resolutions and going from one organisation to the other, they can hide their horrible face and unjust decisions behind the agency and the Security Council and make us back down," he said.

"We have obtained nuclear fuel technology by ourselves, and nobody can deprive us of it."

Last-minute talks between Iran's nuclear chief Gholam Reza Aghazadeh and IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei on Wednesday failed to make any headway, diplomats said.

One diplomat said Aghazadeh "just rattled around on Iran's previously stated positions. He did not propose anything new."

The White House has warned the country was facing further international isolation after supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei threatened global retaliation to any American military action.

"This is a regime that continues to defy the international community. It continues to ignore and refuses to abide by its obligations," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Wednesday.

In Beijing, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang issued an appeal for calm.

"We indeed think the Iranian nuclear issue is at a crucial stage," he said. "We hope all parties concerned can keep calm, exercise restraint and create favourable conditions so as to properly resolve this issue."

Russian President Vladimir Putin also said the IAEA needed to continue playing a key role in the crisis -- signalling his reluctance to see the matter fully referred to the Security Council.

"It is too early to run ahead and say what decisions we might take together. The main thing is that any decisions that are made must be made in agreement," Putin said at a joint news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the Siberian city of Tomsk.

Merkel, whose country is Iran's largest European trading partner, also called for a diplomatic resolution to the standoff.

Speaking in the Bulgarian capital Sofia, NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer voiced concerns.

"Although it is not playing the first violin, what happens there (in Iran) is a very NATO-relevant subject... I think I can safely say Iran will be a subject of conversation at dinner tonight," he said as he prepared to host talks among the alliance's foreign ministers including US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he expected Iran "to allay world suspicions that its civil nuclear operations are being used to develop a possible weapons program."

Iran has already warned that sanctions could force it to halt cooperation with the IAEA or even quit the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The IAEA has been investigating Iran for more than three years, but it says it is still not in a position to judge the true nature of the country's nuclear programme.

It is still seeking documents on dealings Iran had with a nuclear black market network run by disgraced Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Kahn, the father of his country's atomic bomb.

The Vienna-based watchdog also wants to interview military officers who may have overseen secret enrichment or "dual-use" activities and to find out if Iran hid work with sophisticated P2 centrifuges, which can enrich uranium more quickly and abundantly than earlier models.

And the IAEA is also seeking documents Iran has on making uranium hemispheres that form the core of atom bombs and has questions about work that could be aimed at designing missiles with nuclear warheads.

Above article is from the AFP via www.afp.com

Rice Says U.N. Must Act on Iran Nuke Plan By ANNE GEARAN,

AP Diplomatic Writer
56 minutes ago


Iran seems determined to defy international demands to control its disputed nuclear program, so it is time for the U.N. Security Council to act, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday.

"Is the Security Council going to be credible?" Rice asked after meetings with NATO foreign ministers.

Tehran faces a Friday deadline from the Security Council to stop enriching uranium, a process that can lead either to nuclear power for electricity or to development of weapons. "It's pretty clear Iran is not going to meet those requirements," Rice said. "When that happens the international community, represented by the Security Council, is going to have a choice."

Quick action by the council to impose economic or punitive sanctions seems remote because of splits among its members. The United States is pressing for a strong response and Rice wants such steps to remain an option.

The United States and European allies accuse Iran of hiding ambitions to build a bomb behind a legitimate energy program. Iran denies it but says it must retain control of sensitive nuclear technology, including uranium enrichment.

The United States has long sought the Security Council review now under way, but the powerful U.N. body is divided over what to do next.

Russia and China, both veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council, oppose sanctions against Iran. The United States, France and Britain say if Tehran does not meet the deadline, they will make the enrichment demand and other conditions compulsory.

"In order to be credible the Security Council has to act," Rice told reporters at the NATO session. "The Security Council is the primary and most important institution for the maintenance of peace and stability and security and it cannot have its word and its will simply ignored by a member state."

U.S. diplomats are gauging support in Europe for another course: A network of independent sanctions and restrictions, such as a travel ban on Iranian leaders, that might persuade the clerical leadership to back down.

Many European countries have already indicated a willingness to take such measures on their own, such as asset seizures and potential export bans.

The U.S. already has a near total ban on economic and diplomatic contact with Iran, but European nations and Russia maintain broad ties. Russia is a major commercial partner of Tehran, including exporting its oil.

Earlier Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the Security Council should not assume responsibility for the Iranian nuclear issue.

"It's still too early to run ahead and say what decision we might take together," he said. "The main thing is ... that whatever decision is taken is a consensus decision."

Rice was making the case for continued pressure as part of two days of meetings with European colleagues that followed her unannounced trip to Iraq this week. In Baghdad, Rice and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld endorsed newly selected Iraqi leaders who the United States hopes can regain traction against a violent insurgency and spreading sectarian killings.

Rice tried to reassure Europeans that the United States is not planning military action against Iran.

"I have been talking with my colleagues around the world about the diplomatic agenda regarding Iran," Rice said. "The president of the United States doesn't take any of his options off the table but we are committed to a diplomatic course" that should succeed "with enough unity and with enough strength and enough common purpose."

Iran shuns UN on eve of nuclear deadline Thu Apr 27, 1:45 PM ET

Iran's hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed that his country "will not bow to injustice and pressure," the day before a UN deadline to stop sensitive nuclear work expires.

"Thanks to God, we are a nuclear state," the firebrand leader said in a speech in the west of the country.

"We will not bow to injustice and pressure. If they want to attack the rights of the Iranian people, we will stamp shame and regret on them."

Iran insists it has a right to enrich uranium to make reactor fuel, but the process can be extended to make nuclear weapons.

Western powers, led by the United States, are convinced Iran is seeking either a nuclear bomb or the "strategic capacity" to make one.

Iran's refusal to freeze enrichment by Friday in line with last month's UN Security Council demand opens the door to sanctions, despite opposition from Russia and China. The United States has also not ruled out taking military action.

The UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said it would release its report on Iranian compliance to members of the IAEA board of governors and to the UN Security Council on Friday afternoon.

And senior diplomats from the Security Council's five permanent members plus Germany are due to discuss the next steps in a meeting in Paris on Tuesday, although Ahmadinejad showed no sign of worry.

"They think that by frowning, adopting resolutions and going from one organisation to the other, they can hide their horrible face and unjust decisions behind the agency and the Security Council and make us back down," he said.

"We have obtained nuclear fuel technology by ourselves, and nobody can deprive us of it."

Last-minute talks between Iran's nuclear chief Gholam Reza Aghazadeh and IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei on Wednesday failed to make any headway, diplomats said.

One diplomat said Aghazadeh "just rattled around on Iran's previously stated positions. He did not propose anything new."

The White House has warned the country was facing further international isolation after supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei threatened global retaliation to any American military action.

"This is a regime that continues to defy the international community. It continues to ignore and refuses to abide by its obligations," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Wednesday.

In Beijing, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang issued an appeal for calm.

"We indeed think the Iranian nuclear issue is at a crucial stage," he said. "We hope all parties concerned can keep calm, exercise restraint and create favourable conditions so as to properly resolve this issue."

Russian President Vladimir Putin also said the IAEA needed to continue playing a key role in the crisis -- signalling his reluctance to see the matter fully referred to the Security Council.

"It is too early to run ahead and say what decisions we might take together. The main thing is that any decisions that are made must be made in agreement," Putin said at a joint news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the Siberian city of Tomsk.

Merkel, whose country is Iran's largest European trading partner, also called for a diplomatic resolution to the standoff.

Speaking in the Bulgarian capital Sofia, NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer voiced concerns.

"Although it is not playing the first violin, what happens there (in Iran) is a very NATO-relevant subject... I think I can safely say Iran will be a subject of conversation at dinner tonight," he said as he prepared to host talks among the alliance's foreign ministers including US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he expected Iran "to allay world suspicions that its civil nuclear operations are being used to develop a possible weapons program."

Iran has already warned that sanctions could force it to halt cooperation with the IAEA or even quit the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The IAEA has been investigating Iran for more than three years, but it says it is still not in a position to judge the true nature of the country's nuclear programme.

It is still seeking documents on dealings Iran had with a nuclear black market network run by disgraced Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Kahn, the father of his country's atomic bomb.

The Vienna-based watchdog also wants to interview military officers who may have overseen secret enrichment or "dual-use" activities and to find out if Iran hid work with sophisticated P2 centrifuges, which can enrich uranium more quickly and abundantly than earlier models.

And the IAEA is also seeking documents Iran has on making uranium hemispheres that form the core of atom bombs and has questions about work that could be aimed at designing missiles with nuclear warheads.

Is the US Waging Israel's Wars?

Many throughout the Muslim world and beyond are asking this question: What are the real reasons behind the US invasion of Iraq and its wish to overthrow the governments of Syria and Iran? …

.. Read the following strangely prophetic segment from an article published in 1982 by the World Zionist Organisation's publication Kivunim and penned by Oded Yinon, an Israeli journalist with links to the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

Yinon's strategy was based on this premise. In order to survive Israel must become an imperial regional power and must also ensure the break-up of all Arab countries so that the region may be carved up into small ineffectual states unequipped to stand up to Israeli military might. …

www.counterpunch.org/heard04252006.html

"A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties" by Oded Yinon:

www.geocities.com/alabasters_archive/zionist_plan.html

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

PNAC 101 - Rise Of The Neocons

www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php

www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

“Hawkish Israeli Lobby Wants War with Iran!”

… “Another important, hard line group is the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). They have been advocating ‘regime change’ in a number of Arab counties: Iraq([search]), Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and with the Palestinian Authority for years. JINSA’s board of advisors has included many Bush administration leaders: Dick Cheney, John Bolton, Richard Perle, James Woolsey and Douglas Feith...They (JINSA) put a report out on April 12th, called, ‘Iran, Iran, Iran and Iran.’ Iran, the document said is the ‘whole list of national security priorities.’ Yes, they want to see ‘regime change’ in Iran. They want to see an attack on Iran.”

It’s interesting to note that one of the members of the U.S. Congress, who supports a U.S. air strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities is the Israeli Firster, Joseph Lieberman (D-CT). …

baltimore.indymedia.org/newswire/display/12448/index.php

www.jinsa.org/home/home.html

Robert Fisk: The United States of Israel:

counterpunch.org/fisk04272006.html

Breaking the Last Taboo
The United States of Israel?
By ROBERT FISK

Stephen Walt towers over me as we walk in the Harvard sunshine past Eliot Street, a big man who needs to be big right now (he's one of two authors of an academic paper on the influence of America's Jewish lobby) but whose fame, or notoriety, depending on your point of view, is of no interest to him. "John and I have deliberately avoided the television shows because we don't think we can discuss these important issues in 10 minutes. It would become 'J' and 'S', the personalities who wrote about the lobby - and we want to open the way to serious discussion about this, to encourage a broader discussion of the forces shaping US foreign policy in the Middle East."

"John" is John Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of Chicago. Walt is a 50-year-old tenured professor at the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. The two men have caused one of the most extraordinary political storms over the Middle East in recent American history by stating what to many non-Americans is obvious: that the US has been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of Israel, that Israel is a liability in the "war on terror", that the biggest Israeli lobby group, Aipac (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee), is in fact the agent of a foreign government and has a stranglehold on Congress - so much so that US policy towards Israel is not debated there - and that the lobby monitors and condemns academics who are critical of Israel.

"Anyone who criticises Israel's actions or argues that pro-Israel groups have significant influence over US Middle East policy," the authors have written, "...stands a good chance of being labelled an anti-Semite. Indeed, anyone who merely claims that there is an Israeli lobby runs the risk of being charged with anti-Semitism ... Anti-Semitism is something no-one wants to be accused of." This is strong stuff in a country where - to quote the late Edward Said - the "last taboo" (now that anyone can talk about blacks, gays and lesbians) is any serious discussion of America's relationship with Israel.

Walt is already the author of an elegantly written account of the resistance to US world political dominance, a work that includes more than 50 pages of references. Indeed, those who have read his Taming Political Power: The Global Response to US Primacy will note that the Israeli lobby gets a thumping in this earlier volume because Aipac "has repeatedly targeted members of Congress whom it deemed insufficiently friendly to Israel and helped drive them from office, often by channelling money to their opponents."

But how many people in America are putting their own heads above the parapet, now that Mearsheimer and Walt have launched a missile that would fall to the ground unexploded in any other country but which is detonating here at high speed? Not a lot. For a while, the mainstream US press and television - as pro-Israeli, biased and gutless as the two academics infer them to be - did not know whether to report on their conclusions (originally written for The Atlantic Monthly, whose editors apparently took fright, and subsequently reprinted in the London Review of Books in slightly truncated form) or to remain submissively silent. The New York Times, for example, only got round to covering the affair in depth well over two weeks after the report's publication, and then buried its article in the education section on page 19. The academic essay, according to the paper's headline, had created a "debate" about the lobby's influence.

They can say that again. Dore Gold, a former ambassador to the UN, who now heads an Israeli lobby group, kicked off by unwittingly proving that the Mearsheimer-Walt theory of "anti-Semitism" abuse is correct. "I believe," he said, "that anti-Semitism may be partly defined as asserting a Jewish conspiracy for doing the same thing non-Jews engage in." Congressman Eliot Engel of New York said that the study itself was "anti-Semitic" and deserved the American public's contempt.

Walt has no time for this argument. "We are not saying there is a conspiracy, or a cabal. The Israeli lobby has every right to carry on its work - all Americans like to lobby. What we are saying is that this lobby has a negative influence on US national interests and that this should be discussed. There are vexing problems out in the Middle East and we need to be able to discuss them openly. The Hamas government, for example - how do we deal with this? There may not be complete solutions, but we have to try and have all the information available."

Walt doesn't exactly admit to being shocked by some of the responses to his work - it's all part of his desire to keep "discourse" in the academic arena, I suspect, though it probably won't work. But no-one could be anything but angered by his Harvard colleague, Alan Dershowitz, who announced that the two scholars recycled accusations that "would be seized on by bigots to promote their anti-Semitic agendas". The two are preparing a reply to Dershowitz's 45-page attack, but could probably have done without praise from the white supremacist and ex-Ku Klux Klan head David Duke - adulation which allowed newspapers to lump the name of Duke with the names of Mearsheimer and Walt. "Of Israel, Harvard and David Duke," ran the Washington Post's reprehensible headline.

The Wall Street Journal, ever Israel's friend in the American press, took an even weirder line on the case. "As Ex-Lobbyists of Pro-Israel Group Face Court, Article Queries Sway on Mideast Policy" its headline proclaimed to astonished readers. Neither Mearsheimer nor Walt had mentioned the trial of two Aipac lobbyists - due to begin next month - who are charged under the Espionage Act with receiving and disseminating classified information provided by a former Pentagon Middle East analyst. The defence team for Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman has indicated that it may call Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley to the stand.

Almost a third of the Journal's report is taken up with the Rosen-Weissman trial, adding that the indictment details how the two men "allegedly sought to promote a hawkish US policy toward Iran by trading favours with a number of senior US officials. Lawrence Franklin, the former Pentagon official, has pleaded guilty to misusing classified information. Mr Franklin was charged with orally passing on information about a draft National Security Council paper on Iran to the two lobbyists... as well as other classified information. Mr Franklin was sentenced in December to nearly 13 years in prison..."

The Wall Street Journal report goes on to say that lawyers and "many Jewish leaders" - who are not identified - "say the actions of the former Aipac employees were no different from how thousands of Washington lobbyists work. They say the indictment marks the first time in US history that American citizens... have been charged with receiving and disseminating state secrets in conversations." The paper goes on to say that "several members of Congress have expressed concern about the case since it broke in 2004, fearing that the Justice Department may be targeting pro-Israel lobbying groups, such as Aipac. These officials (sic) say they're eager to see the legal process run its course, but are concerned about the lack of transparency in the case."

As far as Dershowitz is concerned, it isn't hard for me to sympathise with the terrible pair. He it was who shouted abuse at me during an Irish radio interview when I said that we had to ask the question "Why?" after the 11 September 2001 international crimes against humanity. I was a "dangerous man", Dershowitz shouted over the air, adding that to be "anti-American" - my thought-crime for asking the "Why?" question - was the same as being anti-Semitic. I must, however, also acknowledge another interest. Twelve years ago, one of the Israeli lobby groups that Mearsheimer and Walt fingers prevented any second showing of a film series on Muslims in which I participated for Channel 4 and the Discovery Channel - by stating that my "claim" that Israel was building large Jewish settlements on Arab land was "an egregious falsehood". I was, according to another Israeli support group, "a Henry Higgins with fangs", who was "drooling venom into the living rooms of America."

Such nonsense continues to this day. In Australia to launch my new book on the Middle East, for instance, I repeatedly stated that Israel - contrary to the anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists - was not responsible for the crimes of 11 September 2001. Yet the Australian Jewish News claimed that I "stopped just millimetres short of suggesting that Israel was the cause of the 9/11 attacks. The audience reportedly (and predictably) showered him in accolades."

This was untrue. There was no applause and no accolades and I never stopped "millimetres" short of accusing Israel of these crimes against humanity. The story in the Australian Jewish News is a lie.

So I have to say that - from my own humble experience - Mearsheimer and Walt have a point. And for a man who says he has not been to Israel for 20 years - or Egypt, though he says he had a "great time" in both countries - Walt rightly doesn't claim any on-the-ground expertise. "I've never flown into Afghanistan on a rickety plane, or stood at a checkpoint and seen a bus coming and not known if there is a suicide bomber aboard," he says.

Noam Chomsky, America's foremost moral philosopher and linguistics academic - so critical of Israel that he does not even have a regular newspaper column - does travel widely in the region and acknowledges the ruthlessness of the Israeli lobby. But he suggests that American corporate business has more to do with US policy in the Middle East than Israel's supporters - proving, I suppose, that the Left in the United States has an infinite capacity for fratricide. Walt doesn't say he's on the left, but he and Mearsheimer objected to the invasion of Iraq, a once lonely stand that now appears to be as politically acceptable as they hope - rather forlornly - that discussion of the Israeli lobby will become.

Walt sits in a Malaysian restaurant with me, patiently (though I can hear the irritation in his voice) explaining that the conspiracy theories about him are nonsense. His stepping down as dean of the Kennedy School was a decision taken before the publication of his report, he says. No one is throwing him out. The much-publicised Harvard disclaimer of ownership to the essay - far from being a gesture of fear and criticism by the university as his would-be supporters have claimed - was mainly drafted by Walt himself, since Mearsheimer, a friend as well as colleague, was a Chicago scholar, not a Harvard don.

But something surely has to give.

Across the United States, there is growing evidence that the Israeli and neo-conservative lobbies are acquiring ever greater power. The cancellation by a New York theatre company of My Name is Rachel Corrie - a play based on the writings of the young American girl crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza in 2003 - has deeply shocked liberal Jewish Americans, not least because it was Jewish American complaints that got the performance pulled.

"How can the West condemn the Islamic world for not accepting Mohamed cartoons," Philip Weiss asked in The Nation, "when a Western writer who speaks out on behalf of Palestinians is silenced? And why is it that Europe and Israel itself have a healthier debate over Palestinian human rights than we can have here?" Corrie died trying to prevent the destruction of a Palestinian home. Enemies of the play falsely claim that she was trying to stop the Israelis from collapsing a tunnel used to smuggle weapons. Hateful e-mails were written about Corrie. Weiss quotes one that reads: "Rachel Corrie won't get 72 virgins but she got what she wanted."

Saree Makdisi - a close relative of the late Edward Said - has revealed how a right-wing website is offering cash for University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) students who report on the political leanings of their professors, especially their views on the Middle East. Those in need of dirty money at UCLA should be aware that class notes, handouts and illicit recordings of lectures will now receive a bounty of $100. "I earned my own inaccurate and defamatory 'profile'," Makdisi says, "...not for what I have said in my classes on English poets such as Wordsworth and Blake - my academic speciality, which the website avoids mentioning - but rather for what I have written in newspapers about Middle Eastern politics."

Mearsheimer and Walt include a study of such tactics in their report. "In September 2002," they write, "Martin Kramer and Daniel Pipes, two passionately pro-Israel neo-conservatives, established a website (www.campus-watch.org) that posted dossiers on suspect academics and encouraged students to report behaviour that might be considered hostile to Israel... the website still invites students to report 'anti-Israel' activity."

Perhaps the most incendiary paragraph in the essay - albeit one whose contents have been confirmed in the Israeli press - discusses Israel's pressure on the United States to invade Iraq. "Israeli intelligence officials had given Washington a variety of alarming reports about Iraq's WMD programmes," the two academics write, quoting a retired Israeli general as saying: "Israeli intelligence was a full partner to the picture presented by American and British intelligence regarding Iraq's non-conventional capabilities."

Walt says he might take a year's sabbatical - though he doesn't want to get typecast as a "lobby" critic - because he needs a rest after his recent administrative post. There will be Israeli lobbyists, no doubt, who would he happy if he made that sabbatical a permanent one. I somehow doubt he will.

Robert Fisk writes for the Independent.

www.thenation.com/doc/20060515/weiss

Ferment Over 'The Israel Lobby'
by PHILIP WEISS
[from the May 15, 2006 issue]

An Open Letter to Professor Dershowitz

www.network54.com/Forum/145962/thread/1145717922/last-1145717922/An+Open+Letter+to+Professor+Dershowitz

The following is a tiny URL of the above one:

tinyurl.com/g6k8x

Intellectuals can only dream of having the impact that John Mearsheimer
and
Stephen Walt have had this spring

In the wake of the recent failure of the anti-war movement, activists have been wondering what to do. Some fringe groups that call themselves leftists have emerged to steer the left down the wrong path.

The anti-war movement failed to stop the Iraq([search]) war in 2003 and of course many people are wondering what should be next. In my opinion, young people should lead the way, especially those who do not have roots in 1960s ideology. Hopefully they can come up with some fresh thinking.

However, one fringe ominious trend has been to blame pro-Israeli Americans for everything wrong in America. A rational person can tell the difference between justified debate, analysis, and criticism of Israel or of fundamentalist Christianity--and thinly veiled hate speech. The difference often lies in two tell tale signs: lying and the erasure of history.

Racists and other oppressors always begin by erasing history and lying about their object of hate. For instance, convincing people that African Americans were only 3/5ths human was crucial for Southern slave-owning societies to perpetuate their torment and ecomomic exploitation of African Americans.

International ANSWER, the anti-war group behind many of the mass protests, was the first large-scale leftist group to use the tactics of lying and history-erasure against Israel and the Jewish people. Why that is remains beyond speculation of this article. What doesn't remain beyond the speculation of this article is that International ANSWER turned out to be a Stalinist organization that considered any enemy of America to be its ally, like North Korea. The group also promoted the Palestian cause as much as it was against the war on Iraq.

In 2002 when you went to an International ANSWER rally, you heard speakers complaining about every world issue, and only roughly 20 percent about the Iraq war, the neo-conservative movement, corrupt U.S. politics, oil companies, and why America should pursue a policy of peace. If you went to enough of these rallies, you soon discovered that all the different groups speaking where really part of International ANSWER. When an organization uses front-groups to give itself the appearance of more support than it has, this is called lying. It does not bode well.

After the war started, ANSWER continued to march as if this tactic worked. Then ANSWER itself fell apart and so did large-scale marches, possibly a good development since marches did not work against a smirking administration steering the armored car of history. ANSWER's promotion of pro-Palestinian causes probably is its only lasting effect. And ANSWER did so always in a way that was overwhelming, one-sided, and distorted. In ANSWER literature, Jewish history starts in 1948, maybe 1967. That's very convenient--and laughable--except that many people do not know the history either of the Middle East or Israel, either in the 20th century, the 1st century AD, or before. In 2004, ANSWER's Brian Becker said at an MLK celebration, "Jesus was a Palestinian." This final erasure of history is exactly the mentality that leads to slavery, persecution, and genicide.

Now some leftist activists (or maybe they are really Internet pontificators) would like to pretend that pro-Israeli Americans are in control of the agenda. Some people would like to forget that the Bush([search]) administration lacks a single Jewish cabinet member, and much of this pro-Israeli tilt is from fundamentalist Christians. These same activists also would like to abandon economic analysis of U.S. events and actions to embrace race-baiting analysis and conspiracy theory. This is a dangerous road to go down. Of course, it is this type of politics that has made Karl Rove's Republican agenda so sellable, or should I say, successful.

In an article such as "Paul Wolfowitz’s Heart of Darkness" by William Hughes on Baltimore Indymedia, it is hard to tell that this article is actually race-baiting anti-Jewish propaganda. However, if you think that Hughes' main goal is to single out Jewish Americans as responsible for the second Iraq war, it becomes clear that is all the article is. Hughes calls Wolfowitz the "architect of the Iraq war" based on no proof, though we do know Wolfowitz is Jewish. We also know that Wolfowitz worked for U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in 2003 and 2003, worked for U.S. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney during the first Bush administration, and in between has been an academic. In fact, in Bob Woodward's "Bush at War," Woodward reports that Donald Rumsfeld was the first person to mention attacking Iraq. Vice President Dick Cheney was the attacks biggest PR representative in the media. Why does Hughes only focus on Wolfowitz? Because it fits his agenda to do so.

Of cource Wolfowitz was part of a policy team that planned the 2003 attack on Iraq. However, only in the world of racists does an employee control the actions of their boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Racists think so, though if they go to work themselves they surely know that their boss controls them. Tellingly, Rumsfeld still pursues the Iraq war in the same manner in 2006 as in 2003 and 2004, though Wolfowitz is long gone. Cheney continues his same activities though his chief of staff I. Lewis Libby has been terminated.

In Hughes' more recent piece "Kevin Zeese: “Hawkish Israeli Lobby Wants War with Iran!” we see the same distortion, subtle but obvious to an intelligent and knowledgable reader. The most telltale sign in the article is that Hughes' cites Connecticut Jewish Democratic Senator Joseph Liberman as the pro-Israeli Jewish "traitor" (his implication) behind Congressional support for attacking Iran. It is a tell tale sign that Hughes does not mention a single other Congressional support for an attack in the article. This erasure of history enables Hughes to create that impression Liberman controls Congress, or is even typical of Congress.

While Lieberman does foolishly support this position, Hughes fails to mention that Congress is controlled by Republicans. Republican Senate and House leaders Bill Frist and Dennis Hastart and formerly Tom Delay control the Congress, all self-described Christian Americans. In fact, Lieberman is not even a member of his own party's leadership. In contrast, Jewish-American Democratic Senator from New York Chuck Schumer is a member of his party's leadership, and he is against prevemptive war against Iran and other countries. Interestingly Schumer is not mentioned. THAT would serve the purpose of the article, would it? This distortion and absence of context does help Hughes create the idea that Jewish Americans control the Congress, the White House, and the war on Iraq (please ignore Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of staff, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, et al.)

Interestingly, a Gore-Lieberman administration likely would not have attacked Iraq in 2003, and would not be threatening to bomb Iran today. In fact, a Clinton-Gore administration had begun diplomatic talks with Iran for the first time since the late 1970s. The rise of a more vitrolic Iran is likely due to the 2003 Iraq war than an anti-American agenda itself, and so would not have happened in absence of Bush's policy in Iraq. This blow-back policy failure of Bush should be seen even by Republicans as the blunder it is.

People who have knowledge of history and politics have a responsibility that goes beyond shrill rhetoric and name-calling. If they misuse it, whether on behalf of Karl Rove or Ralph Nadar, doesn't actually matter. It's the same nefarious tactic. It's the same agenda with a different name. It's a different flag but the same crime. It's not a form a justice, but injustice.

Iran Nuke Standoff Looms Over Europe Talks

By ANNE GEARAN,

AP Diplomatic Writer
34 minutes ago


Iran's nuclear standoff with the West loomed over talks between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and European diplomats on the eve of a U.N. deadline for Tehran to halt uranium enrichment.

Several thousand Bulgarians joined an ultra-nationalist demonstration Thursday against an agreement Rice was to sign Friday with the Bulgarian government that grants U.S. troops access to military facilities in the country.

The deal is part of a strategy of shifting troops based in Europe farther east and will deploy up to 2,500 U.S. troops to Bulgaria. It has raised suspicions in Bulgaria that the United States could one day use European soil to launch a military strike on Iran if it refuses to rein in its disputed nuclear program.

Tehran faces a Friday deadline from the Security Council to stop enriching uranium, a process that can lead either to nuclear power for electricity or to development of weapons. Iran says it only wants to generate electric power

"It's pretty clear Iran is not going to meet those requirements," Rice said. "When that happens the international community, represented by the Security Council, is going to have a choice."

"Is the Security Council going to be credible?" Rice said after meetings with NATO foreign ministers.

Quick action by the council to impose economic or punitive sanctions seems remote because of splits among its members. The United States is pressing for a strong response, and Rice wants such steps to remain an option.

The United States and European allies accuse Iran of hiding ambitions to build a bomb behind a legitimate energy program. Iran denies it but says it must retain control of sensitive nuclear technology, including uranium enrichment.

The United States has long sought the Security Council review now under way, but the powerful U.N. body is divided over what to do next.

The basing agreement with Bulgaria concludes five days of diplomatic meetings in Europe and Iraq, where Rice and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld made an unannounced visit to support the country's newly selected leadership.

The United States will have wider use of four military facilities in Bulgaria, giving American forces a jumping-off point closer to potential hotspots in the Middle East.

"We look forward to continued work with Bulgaria and with all of our colleagues to meet the tremendous challenges that we all face around the world, from terrorism, from proliferation of weapons of mass destruction," Rice said. "These are common threats."

American officials want to deploy troops on rotational training tours as part of a broader U.S. strategy of shifting troops based in Europe further east. The U.S. is interested in small, flexible bases, different from those set up to house large numbers of troops during the Cold War.

Bulgaria, a Balkan country of 7.8 million people, joined NATO in 2004 and hopes to join the European Union next year. Bulgarian officials have said the agreement would help improve Bulgaria's armed forces, boost its economy and enhance security.

___

On the Net:

CIA World Factbook site on Bulgaria: www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/bu.html

Iran spurns UN pressure in nuclear dispute By Mark Heinrich
Fri Apr 28, 5:57 AM ET


Iran will ignore pressure to halt its atomic work, its president said on Friday, hours before the world's nuclear watchdog was expected to confirm that Tehran has flouted U.N. Security Council demands.

"Those who want to prevent Iranians from obtaining their right, should know that we do not give a damn about such resolutions," Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a rally in northwest Iran, the official IRNA news agency reported.

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei was likely to report later in the day that Iran has refused to stop enriching uranium and is stalling IAEA inquiries, in defiance of demands set by the Security Council a month ago.

"Enemies think that by ... threatening us, launching psychological warfare or ... imposing embargoes they can dissuade our nation from obtaining nuclear technology," Ahmadinejad said.

He declared earlier this month that Iran had for the first time enriched uranium to a level suitable for use in power plants, was researching a machine to purify it even faster and planned to press ahead with industrial-scale fuel production.

This week Iran vowed to hit U.S. targets worldwide if attacked by Washington, which has not ruled out military options if diplomacy fails to halt what it says is Tehran's quest for nuclear weapons. Iran says its program is purely civilian.

Iran's U.N. envoy said on Thursday Tehran would not heed any Security Council resolution to rein in its nuclear work, on the grounds that this posed no threat to world peace and security.

"If the Security Council decides to take decisions that are not within its competence, then Iran does not feel obliged to obey," Iranian Ambassador Javad Zarif told reporters.

NO SURPRISES

Diplomats anticipated no big surprises in the report.

"ElBaradei obviously will have to report that far from suspending enrichment, Iran is steaming ahead," said one Western diplomat accredited to the Vienna-based IAEA.

Diplomats said questions persisted over Iranian research on advanced "P-2" centrifuges, documents on how to design an atomic bomb core, and intelligence reports of links between uranium ore processing, high-explosives tests and a missile warhead design.

Mark Fitzpatrick, nuclear analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said interest in ElBaradei's report focused on how it assessed Iran's claims to rapid progress toward mastering the enrichment process.

"Answers to such questions will be important in helping the world understand the degree of urgency of the crisis and scope for diplomacy. If the IAEA cannot say much about Iran's progress, then policymakers will rely more on worst-case scenarios," Fitzpatrick told Reuters.

The United States, backed by Britain and France, favors limited sanctions if Iran refuses to shelve enrichment quickly.

Russia and China, the Security Council's other two veto-holding permanent members who want to protect lucrative stakes in Iran's energy sector, have so far opposed such moves.

"To be credible, the Security Council of course has to act. It cannot have its word and its will simply ignored by a (U.N.) member state," U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said.

John Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Washington and its allies want to shift the demands made in a March 29 council statement into a resolution under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, which would be legally binding.

Chinese and U.S. diplomats said the United States was trying to arrange a meeting on Iran of foreign ministers of the five permanent council members and Germany in New York on May 9.

Diplomats in Vienna said ElBaradei was vexed by Iran's refusal to "pause" enrichment even for a limited time to ease tensions, its failure to keep promises to cooperate more with his agency, and by its growing brinkmanship with world powers.

But they said he was also unhappy about the council's intervention and sanctions threats that some IAEA veterans fear could drive Iran out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Iran has invoked that prospect of late, threatening to freeze ties with the IAEA and questioning the value of staying in the NPT without a right to peaceful nuclear technology.

IAEA inspectors have found no hard proof that Iran has a military nuclear program, but ElBaradei has said he still cannot say for sure that it is not conducting one in secret.

(Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi in Tehran)

www.afp.com

Chinese envoy opposes resorting to Chapter 7 resolution on Iran 15 minutes ago

Additional at following URL:

news.yahoo.com/fc/world/iran


China's UN envoy Wang Guangya restated Beijing's opposition to Western plans to invoke Chapter 7 of the UN charter to legally bind Iran to halt its uranium enrichment activities.

Wang, who presides over the 15-member Security Council for this month, said the standoff with Iran over fears that it may be seeking to develop nuclear weapons, should be resolved through diplomacy.

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei, in a report sent to the Council Friday, said Iran has failed to comply with a UN deadline to halt uranium enrichment.

Western diplomats here said they would introduce a Chapter 7 draft resolution in the council next week.

"All we want is to work for a diplomatic issue, because this region is already complicated," Wang said. "I believe that invoking Chapter 7 will (make things) more complicated, and the implications will lead events to a direction that is uncertain."

"We all know what Chapter 7 is... Clearly this would not be the end of the resolutions, this would be the beginning of a series of resolutions. Whatever we do we should promote diplomacy," he added.

A Chapter 7 resolution is invoked to deal with "threats to peace, breaches of the peace, or acts of aggression" and is binding on all UN member states.

It can authorize sanctions or even military action.

Several Security Council resolutions against Iraq were taken under Chapter 7, before the March 2003 US-led invasion.

This was also the basis for UN armed action during the 1950-53 Korean War and the use of coalition forces in Iraq and Kuwait in 1991.

Western diplomats here cautioned not to expect a call for immediate sanctions, saying this would require another resolution.

Russia and China, which have significant economic interests in Iran, oppose such drastic measures and instead urge patient diplomacy spearheaded by the IAEA.

Iran rejects Western allegations that its civilian nuclear program is a cover for developing nuclear weapons and said that as a signatory of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty it has the right to enrich uranium.

Enrichment can be used to produce nuclear reactor fuel but also fuel for bomb-making.

James Bamford's 'A Pretext for War' book had been instrumental in turning Walter 'Freedom Fries' Jones against the Iraq quagmire (be sure to get the paperback version though as it includes an additional chapter on the AIPAC/spying for Israel case that the hard cover edition doesn't have). I heard (from a staffer at Jones' office) that he had used 'A Pretext for War' as a guide for the questioning of JINSA/PNAC associate Richard Perle during a Congressional hearing last year when Perle lied to him about being associated with the 'A Clean Break' agenda which Bamford discusses on pages 261-269/321 of 'A Pretext for War' (can listen to the exchange that Jones had with Perle via the audio link at the following URL):

gorillaintheroom.blogspot.com/2005/04/operating-off-different-agenda.html

Agency Says Iran Has Defied U.N. Deadline By GEORGE JAHN, Associated Press Writer
17 minutes ago

The International Atomic Energy Agency said Friday that Iran has defied a U.N. Security Council call for a freeze on enriching uranium and its lack of cooperation with nuclear inspectors was a "matter of concern."

President Bush said "the world is united and concerned" about what he called Iran's "desire to have not only a nuclear weapon but the capacity to make a nuclear weapon or the knowledge to make a nuclear weapon."

The eight-page report, obtained by The Associated Press, said that after more than three years of an IAEA investigation of Iran's nuclear program, "the existing gaps in knowledge continue to be a matter of concern."

"Any progress in that regard requires full transparency and active cooperation by Iran," said the report, written by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei.

The finding set the stage for a showdown in the U.N. Security Council, which is expected to meet next week and start a process that could result in punitive measures against the Islamic republic.

But Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said no Security Council resolution could make Iran give up its nuclear program.

"The Iranian nation won't give a damn about such useless resolutions," Ahmadinejad told thousands of people Friday in Khorramdareh in northwestern Iran before the IAEA report was issued.

"Today, they want to force us to give up our way through threats and sanctions but those who resort to language of coercion should know that nuclear energy is a national demand and by the grace of God, today Iran is a nuclear country," state-run television quoted him as saying.

Bush said he was not discouraged by Iran's vow to continue despite global pressure, and while he has refused to rule out the possibility of military action against Iran, he emphasized the pursuit of diplomatic efforts.

"I think the diplomatic options are just beginning," he said in Washington.

At the United Nations, Western nations promised to act urgently to introduce a new Security Council resolution next week to demand that Iran abandon uranium enrichment.

John Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said "the United States is ready to take action in the Security Council to move to a resolution. ... We hope that we can get council action just as soon as possible."

Bolton said the resolution should be under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter "making mandatory for Iran the existing requirements of the IAEA resolutions, and particularly the resolution the board passed in February." Chapter 7 resolutions can be enforced by sanctions, or militarily.

He said the IAEA report shows that Iran "has accelerated its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons although, of course, the report doesn't make any conclusions in that regard."

"I think the evidence of Iran's efforts to acquire nuclear weapons, its extensive program to achieve a ballistic missile program of longer and longer range and greater accuracy constitutes a classic threat to international peace and security, especially when combined with Iran's long status as the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism," Bolton said.

The report said Iran's claim to have enriched small amounts to a level of 3.6 percent — fuel-grade uranium as opposed to weapons-grade enriched to levels above 90 percent — appeared to be true, according to initial IAEA analysis of samples.

Uranium conversion — an activity linked to enrichment — "is still ongoing," said the report, adding that more than 120 tons have been converted over the past eight months. Were it used for weapons, that amount would be enough for more than 15 crude nuclear bombs, according to experts.

In one of the few recent developments in the IAEA's inquiry, the report concluded that Iran used undeclared plutonium in conducting small-scale separation experiments.

"The agency cannot exclude the possibility ... that the plutonium analyzed by the agency was derived from source(s) other than declared by Iran," the report said. Plutonium separation is one of the suspect "dual use" activities that could be used for a weapons program.

But the agency was stonewalled by Iran's refusal to give more information on other key issues — details of its centrifuge programs that are used to enrich uranium, information on drawings that show how to form fissile uranium into warheads, and apparent links between Iran's military establishment and what it says is a civilian nuclear program.

The report formally served notice that Tehran had shrugged off a 30-day deadline to meet council demands. As such, it opened the way for further council steps, including the potential threat of sanctions and military action if Iran continues to defy the international community.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice won broad support from NATO allies for a tough diplomatic line on Iran.

However, NATO foreign ministers meeting in Sofia, Bulgaria, did not offer any specific threat of sanctions against Iran, in part to avoid a rift with Russia and China. While Russia and China have been reluctant to endorse sanctions, the council's three other veto-wielding members say a strong response is in order.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak said it was premature to comment on the IAEA report.

"We will study this report very carefully with the aim of agreeing a position and possible future steps to resolve the issues surrounding the Iranian nuclear problem," the Interfax news agency quoted him as saying.

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said the IAEA's report was "a worrying situation for the entire international community," but he added that the message to Iran was "the door to negotiation is not closed."

Iran's U.N. ambassador, Javad Zarif, said Thursday that Tehran will refuse to comply with the Security Council even if its request is turned into a demand through a resolution because its activities are legal and peaceful. Enrichment can be used to generate fuel or make the fissile core of nuclear weapons.

"If the Security Council decides to take decisions that are not within its competence, then Iran does not feel obliged to obey," he said in New York.

As late as Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin questioned the primacy of the council, insisting the IAEA should continue to play a central role in the dispute. "It mustn't shrug this role from its shoulders and pass it on to the U.N. Security Council," Putin said.

But a top French diplomat laid out a starkly contrasting position that also reflects U.S. and British views: The Security Council should not only have the main say in dealing with Iran but also should start considering how to increase the pressure. But, the diplomat said, a U.N. resolution enforceable by military action would not automatically mean resorting to such action.

The Security Council statement a month ago gave Iran until Friday to suspend all activities linked to enrichment because it can be used to make the highly enriched uranium used in the core of nuclear warheads.

Instead of complying, Iran — which says it seeks the technology only to generate electric power — has upped the ante in recent weeks, announcing it had for the first time successfully enriched uranium and was doing research on advanced centrifuges that would let it produce more of the material in less time.

___

On the Net:

www.iaea.org

Reuters

US wants UN action on Iran

By Evelyn Leopold and Irwin Arieff
17 minutes ago


Western powers want to introduce a U.N. Security Council resolution next week that would demand Tehran curb its nuclear ambitions, despite China's objections, U.S. and British diplomats said on Friday.

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton and British Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry were responding to a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency that said Iran had ignored a March council statement demanding it suspend uranium enrichment, a process used in making bombs as well as electric power.

"The point is to enhance international pressure on Iran, to show just how isolated they are," Bolton said. "There is still time for Iran to reverse the policy it is pursuing."

Jones Parry said his delegation would introduce a draft resolution on the IAEA report by the middle of next week. But the initial resolution will not threaten sanctions or hint at military force.

Instead it will put directives by the 35-member IAEA board of governors and the March council statement into a U.N. resolution under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, which makes it legally binding. It would also call Iran's nuclear program a threat to "international peace and security," Bolton said.

Iran will be given a "short time" to comply, after which Western powers would consider targeted sanctions against individuals and possible restrictions on trade, Bolton said.

"They have to comply or the Security Council is prepared to take other steps," he said.

If that fails, Bolton said action could be taken "within or without the Security Council."

The Bush administration has raised the prospect of organizing a coalition that could impose sanctions, although some Europeans are reluctant to do so without U.N. agreement.

Chapter 7 makes council resolutions mandatory under international law. It allows for sanctions or even war, but a separate resolution would be required to specify either step.

CHINA REMAINS OPPOSED

Chinese U.N. ambassador Wang Guangya again made clear Beijing's opposition to sanctions and raised doubts about any resolution under Chapter 7, which was used extensively against Saddam Hussein's Iraq for more than a decade.

"There are a lot of problems in the region and we should not do anything that would cause the situation to become even more complicated," Wang said when asked about sanctions.

"Whenever Chapter 7 is invoked this will not be the end of the resolutions. This will usually be the beginning of a series of resolutions."

Earlier in the week, Wang had told reporters, "I think Chapter 7 means many things, including the worst scenario, and I don't want to elaborate on that."

Nevertheless, Western diplomats expect China and Russia not to use their veto power and kill the initial resolution, although they could well block any sanctions.

Jones Parry said no punitive action would be taken if Iran complied.

But Iran has made clear it would defy any resolution on its nuclear activities.

Tehran's U.N. ambassador Javad Zarif told reporters in New York on Thursday that Iran's program was legal, peaceful and posed no threat to global security.

"If the Security Council decides to take decisions that are not within its competence, then Iran does not feel obliged to obey," Zarif said.

On Friday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was blunter. "Those who want to prevent Iranians from obtaining their right should know that we do not give a damn about such resolutions," he said.

Bush said that he want a 'diplomatic' solution in the lead up to Iraq as well, but we all know that he had the Iraq attack/invasion on his mind the entire time as he blew such hot air rhetoric (remember the Downing Street Memo!):

Bush says Iran nuclear ambitions 'dangerous' but diplomacy first 9 minutes ago


US President George W. Bush said that "Iran's desire to have a nuclear weapon is dangerous" but promised intense diplomatic efforts to find a peaceful solution.

The US leader stressed the international "common front" against Iran's nuclear ambitions after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Iran had failed to meet a UN deadline to stop uranium enrichment.

"Iran's desire to have a nuclear weapon is dangerous, in my judgment, and the diplomatic process is just starting," Bush told reporters at the White House.

The United States has called for a UN Security Council resolution against Iran under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which could impose economic sanctions and military action.

The US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, said Friday he would press for the quick adoption of a resolution that would legally bind Iran to freeze its uranium enrichment.

Bush said "today's IAEA report should remind us all that the Iranian government's intransigence is not acceptable." But he did not mention sanctions in his comments.

Russia and China have spoken against UN sanctions for Iran case and the US leader highlighted the need for a "common voice" to put pressure on Tehran.

"The world wasn't always of like mind that the Iranians were headed for a weapon and that that would be a dangerous course of action," he said.

"And now we are of like mind. And so we are in the stage now of formulating a strategy to achieve a diplomatic solution to this problem."

Questioned about Iran's repeated refusal to comply with the UN demands, Bush said: "I think the diplomatic options are just beginning."

He added: "It's very important for the Iranians to understand there's a common desire by a lot of nations of this world to convince them -- peacefully convince them -- that they ought to give up their weapons ambitions."

He said the US administration had worked closely with Britain, France and Germany and that consultations would be pursued when German Chancellor Angela Merkel visits Washington next week.

"We will continue discussions about how we can continue to maintain a united front."

Washington and its allies believe that Iran's uranium enrichment and other research hides an effort to build a nuclear bomb. Tehran insists its programme is peaceful.

Bush called the IAEA report an "important statement" because it "should remind the Iranians that the world is united and concerned about their desire to have not only a nuclear weapon, but the capacity to make a nuclear weapon or the knowledge to make a nuclear weapon; all of which we're working hard to convince them not to try to achieve."

Chapter 7 was used to press the case against Iraq before the US-led invasion in March 2003, but the US leader insisted there were major differences between the two cases.

"Iraq went through 16 different Security Council resolutions. There was resolution after resolution after resolution. Iraq had invaded its neighbours. Iraq was shooting at US aircraft. Iraq had actually used weapons of mass destruction on its people before.

"There's a difference between the two countries." He emphasised that no formal resolution has yet been passed by the UN Security Council on Iran.

"The diplomatic process is just beginning. We're forming a strong coalition of like-minded countries that believe that the Iranians should not have a nuclear weapon.

"I've told the American people that diplomacy is my first choice, and it should be the first choice of every American president in order to solve a very difficult problem."

The above article was from the AFP via news.yahoo.com

Oil Prices Rise As IAEA Finds Iran Defiant By MADLEN READ, AP Business Writer
11 minutes ago


Crude futures rose Friday, on oil supply worries after the International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran defied the U.N. Security Council by enriching uranium.

Iran, OPEC's second-largest oil producer, has said it seeks the technology only to generate power, but some other countries, including the United States, believe it aims to create weapons.

Iran has also said it does not intend to halt oil exports as a political tactic, but some traders fear it's a possibility if the dispute escalates. That bullishness has been aggravated by tight U.S. gasoline supplies, strong global demand and supply disruptions by separatist rebels in Nigeria, the fifth-largest source of U.S. oil imports.

Light, sweet crude for June delivery rose 91 cents to settle at $71.88 a barrel Friday on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

On London's ICE futures exchange, Brent crude for June rose $1.11 to settle at $72.02 a barrel.

Gasoline futures rose 2.02 cents to settle at $2.0921 a gallon, while heating oil rose 2.72 cents to settle at $2.0129 a gallon. Natural gas slipped 25 cents to $6.555 per 1,000 cubic feet.

Prices began rising earlier Friday as the United Nations' deadline approached and Iran's hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, offered no hints of conciliation, vowing that "no one" could make his country give up nuclear technology and that the country "won't give a damn" about any U.N. resolutions concerning its nuclear program.

The U.N. Security Council is expected to meet next week to start a process that could result in punitive measures against Iran. The possibility of that inciting the Islamic republic to cut their oil exports is what traders are bracing for.

"As an oil market participant, it's hard to know," said Fimat USA analyst John Kilduff, adding that the Iran situation has added about $10 a barrel to crude futures. "Given all the rhetoric ... everyone's positioning themselves accordingly."

Kilduff added that an agreement with Iran, as well as an agreement between the Nigerian government and separatists, could push crude prices down back towards the $60-a-barrel mark. But if the tension keeps mounting, he said, they will likely rise above $80 a barrel, surpassing the all-time peak of $75.35 reached briefly last Friday.

On Thursday, oil prices had fallen for the fourth straight day after the World Bank tentatively resolved a dispute with Chad and China increased its interest rate, which had threatened to shut off an oil pipeline.

Traders speculated that Chinese oil demand might slow after the nation's central bank said it would raise benchmark one-year lending rates to 5.85 percent from 5.58 percent. China is the world's second-largest oil consumer after the United States.

Also helping to cool prices briefly was the easing of worries about U.S. gasoline supplies ahead of the peak summer-driving season. The U.S. Energy Information Administration on Wednesday reported a sharp recovery in American refinery operations, and President Bush directed the Environmental Protection Agency to grant fuel requirement waivers to states experiencing spot shortages amid a transition to a new blend of motor fuel.

Still, those worries haven't abated, as stores of the new blend have yet to reach sufficient levels to make traders comfortable as the May 6 transition deadline nears, Kilduff said.

The U.S. retail price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline was $2.929 Friday, about 60 cents higher than a year ago, according to AAA's daily fuel gauge report. Many say it will likely surpass the record $3.057 a gallon reached last fall after hurricanes battered the Gulf coast and devastated U.S. oil refining.

Crude oil prices are about 40 percent higher than a year ago. But accounting for inflation, prices are still about 20 percent below the records reached in 1981, when supplies became tight after a revolution in Iran and a war between Iraq and Iran.

www.waynemadsenreport.com/

April 27, 2006 -- More mainstream media comes to the defense of Mearsheimer-Walt paper. A recent paper written by John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard brought out the same type of neocon "swiftboating" against them we have seen in attacks against those who are opposed to the Iraq war fiasco and the fascist policies of the Bush administration. The Mearsheimer-Walt article took a serious look at how the Israel Lobby unduly influences American policy in the Middle East. The same type of paper could have been written about the undue influence of the Cuban community, largely based in southern Florida, over U.S. policy not only in Cuba but now in all of Latin America. But writing anything critical of the Israel Lobby's power over U.S. foreign policy was bound to bring out the typical charges about anti-Semitism from the expected corners. However, the fierce criticism and attacks on the two respected academicians -- Mearsheimer and Walt -- have resulted in a backlash against their attacker. Not only did columnist Molly Ivins write in support of them but in Tuesday's Washington Post's Op-Ed page comes a blistering condemnation by Richard Cohen of those who have attacked Professors Mearsheimer and Walt. Since many neocons are also strong supporters of Israel and there is now evidence of collusion in the lead up to the war by elements inside the Pentagon and the Israeli Prime Minister's Office, the disaster of Iraq is bringing forth a renewed and serious debate about America's uneven relationships within the Middle East. That may be the one good thing to come out of an otherwise disastrous Bush policy in the Middle East.

It has also been learned that new White House Press Secretary Tony Snow was a frequent contributor to the vile racist, homophobic, and fascist web site FreeRepublic.com. The California-based web site is the Der Sturmer of the Internet, replete with hate mongers and other clearly deranged individuals. Snow is seen as a new face for the Bush administration. It would appear that he is more in keeping with the extreme right-wing agenda of the White House and its GOP supporters.

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton Lies, Insists the U.S. Didn't Violate the UN Charter:

representativepress.blogspot.com/2006/04/us-ambassador-john-bolton-lies.html

McCain is owned by the pro-Israel lobby as well.. In addition, he and his admiral father traitorously sold out the USS Liberty survivors for Israel as well (see www.ussliberty.org and www.rense.com/Datapages/usslib.htm as well):

McCain warns Russia, China on Iran

By Reuters

04/28/06 BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A leading U.S. senator warned Russia and China on Friday of damage to their relationship with the United States if they refused to go along with sanctions against Iran.

Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona told a Brussels conference that Iran's nuclear program posed the greatest security threat to the world alongside terrorism.

The U.N. Security Council should impose sanctions including an investment ban, a travel ban and asset freezes on government leaders and nuclear scientists, McCain said.

Asked what consequences there would be if Moscow and Beijing blocked such a move, he told reporters: "Clearly it's going to affect many areas of cooperation between our two countries.

"There will be a reaction in the U.S. Congress."

McCain, a potential White House contender in 2008, said he could not be specific that the areas affected could include trade.

The world's nuclear watchdog said on Friday Iran had flouted a U.N. Security Council call to suspend uranium enrichment and was speeding up its program instead, spurring Western powers to urge tougher U.N. action.

President Bush said he wanted peaceful persuasion to prevail. Iran's president has vowed to spurn any U.N. resolution to stop its professed quest for fuel for atomic power stations -- a front for bomb-making in Western eyes.

McCain said the United States must not rule out military action against Iran as a last resort, saying: There's only one thing worse than military action and that's a nuclear-armed Iran."

McCain did not rule out the possibility of direct U.S. talks with Tehran or Washington's involvement in multilateral negotiations with Iran.

He said Bush had made clear he would explore every possible option and that could include "six-party talks, four-party talks, two-party talks."

McCain added he was not trying to tell the administration what to do.

He said that military action would be very complicated but the United States could not risk a nuclear Iran exterminating Israel.

House passes 'Iran Freedom Support Act', by Justin Raimondo

www.antiwar.com/justin/

April 28, 2006

Steppingstone to War
House passes 'Iran Freedom Support Act'
It is "a steppingstone to war," said Rep. Dennis Kucinich, during the debate over the so-called Iran Freedom Support Act, and if this vote is any measure of the degree of congressional opposition to the looming prospect of war with Tehran, then we have a lot to worry about.

Only 21 members of the House stood up against the overwhelming bipartisan wave of support for the bill, which would impose economic sanctions on the Iranians – and openly proclaims the goal of effecting "regime change." Rep. Ron Paul, a Texas Republican, said the bill reminds him of a 1998 congressional resolution – the Iraq Liberation Act – that paved the way for the Iraqi debacle. Yet most of the "antiwar" contingent in the House of Representatives caved and voted in favor, including Democrats John Conyers, Maxine Waters, Jack Murtha, Bernie Sanders, Barbara Lee, and Lynn Woolsey.

The bill was opposed by the Bush administration, which officially holds that diplomacy is the way to go on the Iranian nukes issue. Thus it was supported by many Democrats, including the voluble Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), a co-author of the bill along with Florida Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Passage is a major goal of AIPAC, Israel's premier lobbying organization in the U.S., which for the past twoyears has featured the alleged Iranian threat to America as its convention theme: this year's conclave featured a multimedia exhibit supposedly dramatizing how Iran is "pursuing nuclear weapons and how it can be stopped." As Middle East expert Trita Parsi, of the John Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies, put it: "I don't see any other major groups behind this legislation that have had any impact on it."

The Israelis have made no secret of their efforts to get Uncle Sam to launch an attack. If you guys don't, a number of Israeli officials have implied, then we will. This last, however, is an empty threat, as the Israelis don't have the military capacity to wipe out Iran's widely dispersed nuclear research facilities in a single blow, and, in any case, are more than likely to wait until the last possible moment before they take the unusual step of fighting their own war. After all, why should they, when the U.S. is perfectly willing to sacrifice American troops and treasure on the altar of Israel's alleged national security interests?

Iran represents a threat to nothing and no one but Israel, and everybody knows it. It is likewise universally acknowledged that the one Middle Eastern power we definitely know to be in possession of a substantial nuclear stockpile is Israel. The Iranians, then, could be seen as engaging in a defensive policy of deterrence: after all, Israel has never even acknowledged its nukes, let alone declared a policy of "no first strike." Unlike the Israelis, the Iranians are signatories of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. But of course we aren't allowed to mention that, because depicting the government of Israel as a gang of duplicitous scheming aggressors intent on holding a nuclear sword of Damocles over the entire Middle East would be "anti-Semitic," according to the latest definition of anti-Semitism, albeit all too true.

The timing on this vote is significant on two counts. Coming as it did at a time when the debate about Israel's inordinate influence over U.S. foreign policy is getting heated, this vote demonstrates that, as John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt point out in "The Israel Lobby":

"AIPAC, which is a de facto agent for a foreign government, has a stranglehold on the U.S. Congress. Open debate about U.S. policy towards Israel does not occur there, even though that policy has important consequences for the entire world."

The sheer power of what Mearsheimer and Walt call "the Lobby" is further demonstrated by the general public revulsion against the consequences of our very similar policy in Iraq. The unpopularity of our military presence in the Middle East has not deterred politicians from jumping on the war-with-Tehran bandwagon. Even as (some) Democratic lawmakers decry the occupation of Iraq and call for a timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal, they join in the war whoops of the neoconservatives who are pushing to ignite a new war with Tehran. So much for the Democratic Party as a vehicle for antiwar sentiment.

While the Iran Freedom Support Act contains language explicitly disavowing the charge that it represents a blank check for war with Iran, that is precisely what it does. It sets the stage for isolating Iran economically and paves the way for the creation of an Iranian version of Ahmed Chalabi and his "heroes in error." We will, once again, pay for the privilege of being lied to. As that old Peter, Paul, and Mary song goes: "When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?"

In the Senate, the primary proponents of this bill are likely to be Hillary Clinton and the rabidly neocon wing of the Republican Party. Hillary came out for sanctions long ago, and, in a fiery speech to AIPAC, stopped just short of calling for war with Iran if the mullahs did not cease and desist. Go here for an entirely plausible "future history" account of "the tragedy that followed Hillary Clinton's bombing of Iran in 2009." The matter-of-fact opening of Timothy Garton Ash's near-future scenario is frighteningly plausible:

"May 7, 2009, will surely go down in history alongside September 11, 2001. '5/7,' as it inevitably became known, saw massive suicide bombings in Tel Aviv, London, and New York, as well as simultaneous attacks on the remaining Western troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Total casualties were estimated at around 10,000 dead and many more wounded. The attacks, which included the explosion of a so-called dirty bomb in London, were orchestrated by a Tehran-based organization for 'martyrdom-seeking operations' established in 2004. '5/7' was the Islamic Republic of Iran's response to the bombing of its nuclear facilities, which President Hillary Clinton had ordered in March 2009."

Seymour Hersh and others seem to think the Bush administration will beat President Hillary to it, and that military operations involving both the Americans and the Israelis have already commenced. The Iran Freedom Support Act would merely drag these covert activities up into the sunlight, although their roots would stay submerged in the murky underworld of shadowy exile groups and Pentagon subcontractors. Passage of the Act would give rise to a whole new sector of the democracy-export business. Iranian exile groups – including monarchists, Marxists, and a motley collection of alleged "democrats" – would vie for funds and the American imprimatur. A new gold rush for the democracy exporters would commence, shifting the scene of the action from Iraq to Iran, even as the War Party sets its sights on the latter.

Let no one say they were against this war with Iran, when it comes, if they didn't vote with the heroic 21 naysayers. These sanctions against Iran are but a prelude to war, just as sanctions were the first step in the long run-up to the invasion of Iraq. However, we may not enjoy such a lengthy interval between cause and effect this time around. Events are proceeding at an ever accelerating pace, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice now saying the time for talking is over and the time for action has begun – not military action (at least not yet), but action by the Security Council of the United Nations, whose "credibility is at stake." I wonder if that same standard applies to the many UN resolutions that Israel continues to defy. Hasn't the UN already lost all credibility when such brazen defiance has gone unnoticed by the Security Council?

Let no one say they weren't warned. Using Iraq as a "model" for the methodology of the War Party, we can see, when it comes to Iran, that all the elements are falling neatly into place. Once again, we have the specter of WMD and their possible existence or nonexistence: a mirage projected by the credulous Western "mainstream" media, one that is sure to dissipate only after we're waist-deep in an Iranian quagmire. Another familiar phenomenon: dubious exile groups, along the lines of the infamous Iraqi National Congress, only this time even wackier, wilder, and woolier.

The Bush administration is going too slow for the Lobby's taste, and the House vote is a good indication of their displeasure. In spite of widespread antiwar sentiment and a general disgust with the notion of meddling in the affairs of other nations, the War Party has effectively seized control not only of major policymaking bodies of the U.S. government, but also both major political parties. Mearsheimer and Walt describe the campaign by Israel's amen corner to rush us into another war:

"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 get a nuclear arsenal. As a result, the Lobby has intensified its pressure on the U.S. government, using all of the strategies in its playbook."

One new strategy is to be prepared to abandon the Republicans if a sufficiently warlike Democrat – such as Hillary Clinton – wins the nod for a White House run. As for this White House, while it may have developed plans for an attack on Iran, the current administration seems eager to draw out the diplomatic dance as long as possible, even in the face of what Mearsheimer and Walt depict as a Katrina-like storm of propaganda and political pressure:

"Op-eds and 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. The Lobby is also pushing Congress to approve the Iran Freedom Support Act, which would expand existing sanctions on Iran. Israeli officials also warn they may take preemptive action should Iran continue down the nuclear road, hints partly intended to keep Washington focused on this issue."

The Lobby is on the march, and war is in the wind. The cries of the banshee pundits and the sonorous resolutions coming out of Israeli-occupied Capitol Hill, are portents of the coming storm. Mearsheimer and Walt, two distinguished professors from two of our nation's most prestigious universities, have been vilified by the Amen Corner and have had their thesis twisted and willfully misunderstood by ultra-Zionists and anti-Semites alike. They have admirably refused to get down in the gutter with such dishonest, agenda-driven scribblers, and instead have let their work speak for itself as a predictor and critic of U.S. policy in the Middle East:

"One might argue that Israel and the Lobby have not had much influence on U.S. policy toward Iran, because the United States has its own reasons to keep Iran from going nuclear. This is partly true, but Iran's nuclear ambitions do not pose an existential threat to the United States. If Washington could live with a nuclear Soviet Union, a nuclear China, or even a nuclear North Korea, then it can live with a nuclear Iran. And that is why the Lobby must keep constant pressure on U.S. politicians to confront Tehran. Iran and the United States would hardly be allies if the Lobby did not exist, but U.S. policy would be more temperate and preventive war would not be a serious option."

As for this essay's predictive value: in light of the knowledge that it was commissioned by The Atlantic magazine and written sometime last year, the section on the Iran nuke issue seems prescient, an ample demonstration of the paper's thesis – that the Israel lobby has hijacked American foreign policy, especially when it comes to the Middle East.

Mearsheimer and Walt's critique of U.S. policy, as distorted by neoconservative fealty to Israel, is more than borne out by the Iran nuke brouhaha. Iranian missiles trained on Tel Aviv, or even London, do not a threat to the U.S. make. It is doubtful they represent a plausible threat even to the targeted cities, as the threat of massive retaliation in kind would successfully deter such a heinous act, just as it deterred Stalin and his successors for half a century.

It is both alarming and baffling that we have any number of lobbies operating out of Washington on behalf of dozens of foreign countries: not only Israel, but all sorts of overseas potentates and unsavory dictators of one sort or another have their bought-and-paid-for Amen Corners in the form of at least one pricey public relations firm. But I have yet to hear of a foreign policy lobby that operates on behalf of Americans – that looks out for exclusively American interests. Why isn't there a countering force arrayed against all these foreign agents and their domestic allies who push for the narrow interests of the "homeland" – usually at Uncle Sam's expense? Who will lobby Congress to start putting America first?

EU and US strike different tones on Iran 49 minutes ago


The United States and the European Union struck different tones on Saturday on how to respond to Iran's nuclear defiance while insisting they were in full agreement.

Speaking at a transatlantic conference, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said no one was considering military action over Tehran's refusal to halt uranium enrichment and Europe did not want to join a "coalition of the willing" against Iran.

Influential U.S. Senator John McCain told the Brussels Forum in a speech on Friday night: "There is only one thing worse than military action, and that is a nuclear-armed Iran."

He said the United States would not stand by and let Iran wipe out Israel, as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had called for.

The Islamic republic, a major oil and gas producer, denies it aims to build a bomb and says its programme is purely for civilian energy purposes.

Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, a leading Democratic foreign policy expert, said the response to Iran's nuclear programme, which the West says is aimed at making weapons, was a defining issue for transatlantic relations.

"Iran is THE test case about whether we'll have effective transatlantic cooperation," Holbrooke said.

The more divisions there were in the West and with China and Russia over Iran, the more likely it was that the United States would face the terrible choice painted by McCain, he said.

UNITED?

Solana, who has been involved in efforts by the EU's three main powers, Britain, France and Germany, to negotiate a solution with Tehran, said he did not believe there were differences between the United States and Europe on Iran.

NATO and EU foreign ministers, including U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, had debated the issue at a meeting in Sofia on Thursday and "nobody at that point in time considered the possibility of a military solution in Iran."

He said he did not believe anyone was seeking a "coalition of the willing" to act against Iran and no European country wanted that.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Dan Fried said the next step was a strong U.N. Security Council resolution.

"I cannot predict how things will come out, but that is where we are headed, united with Europe," he told reporters.

Asked why he was unwilling to talk of military action unlike McCain and Holbrooke, Solana said that he held political office and did not have the same freedom of speech.

The most important thing was to work with Russia and China to build the broadest possible consensus on a United Nations resolution raising pressure on Tehran to comply with international demands to halt nuclear enrichment.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog delivered a report on Friday saying Iran had done little or nothing to prove it was not developing nuclear arms.

It had hampered checks by inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency and rebuffed requests to stop making nuclear fuel, the report by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said.

April 28, 2006
Of Imperial Presidents and Congressional Cowards

by Patrick J. Buchanan
Now that Congress is back fromspring break and looking ahead to Memorial Day, July 4, the August recess and adjournment early in October for elections, perhaps it can take up this question.

Does President Bush have, or not have, the authority to take us to war with Iran? Because Bush and the War Party are surely behaving as though this were an executive decision alone.

No sooner had President Ahmadinejad declared that his country had enriched a speck of uranium than the war drums began again.

Bush has said of Iran that even "a process which would enable Iran to develop a nuclear weapon is unacceptable." John McCain has said too many times to count, "The military option is on the table." The 2006 National Security Strategy re-endorses preventive war and elevates Iran to the No. 1 threat to the United States.

This is not enough for The Weekly Standard, which equates our situation with that of France in 1936, when Paris sat immobile while Hitler marched three lightly armed battalions back into the German Rhineland, which had been demilitarized by the Versailles Treaty.

"To Bomb or Not to Bomb, That Is the Iran Question," is the title of an extended piece in the Standard, whose editorial calls for "urgent operational planning for bombing strikes." As that would likely ignite Shia and Revolutionary Guard terror attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, the Standard wants Bush to send more troops.

In an editorial "Iran, Now," National Review is already into target acquisition. It calls for plans for a massive bombing campaign "coupled with an aggressive and persistent efforts to topple the regime from within." Ideally, U.S. bombs "should hit not just the nuclear facilities, but also the symbols of state oppression: the intelligence ministry, the headquarters of the Revolutionary Guard, the guard towers of the notorious Evin Prison."

In The Washington Post, Mark Helprin, who is identified as having "served in the Israeli army and air force," says "the obvious option is an aerial campaign to divest Iran of its nuclear potential: i.e., clear the Persian Gulf of Iranian naval forces, scrub anti-ship missiles from the shore and lay open antiaircraft-free corridors to each target. … Were the targets effectively hidden or buried, Iran could be shut down, coerced and perhaps revolutionized by the simple and rapid destruction of its oil production and transport."

Since Muslims may not like what we are up to, Helprin cautions, we should prepare "for a land route from the Mediterranean across Israel and Jordan to the Tigris and Euphrates," and, presumably, from there the final push on to Tehran.

In all this hawk talk, something is missing. We are not told how many innocent Iranians we will have to kill as we go about smashing their nuclear program and defenses. Nor are we told how many more soldiers we will need for the neocons' new war, nor how long they will have to fight, nor how many more wings we should plan for at Walter Reed, nor when it will be over – if ever.

Moreover, where does Bush get the authority to launch a war on a nation that has not attacked us? As few believe Iran is close to a nuclear weapon, while four neighbors – Russia, India, Pakistan, and Israel, not to mention the United States – already have the bomb, what is America's justification for war?

If we sat by while Stalin got the bomb, and Mao got the bomb, and Kim Jong-Il got the bomb, why is an Iranian bomb a threat to the United States, which possesses thousands?

There is a reason the Founding Fathers separated the power to conduct war from the power to declare it. The reason is just such a ruler as George W. Bush, a man possessed of an ideology and sense of mission that are not necessarily coterminous with what is best for his country. Under our Constitution, it is Congress, not the president, who decides on war.

Many Democrats now concede they failed the nation when they took Bush at his word that Iraq was an intolerable threat that could be dealt with only by an invasion. Now, Bush and the War Party are telling us the same thing about Iran. And the Congress is conducting itself in the same contemptible and cowardly way.

It is time for Congress to tell President Bush directly that he has no authority to go to war on Iran and to launch such a war would be an impeachable offense. Or, if they so conclude, Congress should share full responsibility by granting him that authority after it has held hearings and told the people why we have no other choice than another Mideast war, with a nation three times as large as Iraq.

If Congress lacks the courage to do its constitutional duty, it should stop whining about imperial presidents. Because, like the Roman Senate of Caesar's time, it will have invited them and it will deserve them.

COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.








Find this article at:
www.antiwar.com/pat/

Watch the Iraq war panels at the Los Angeles Festival of Books at UCLA from today and tomorrow (see the schedule via www.booktv.org)

Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter mentioned that war with Iran is already underway during his Iraq panel at UCLA yesterday in association with the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books (his panel airs tomorrow - Sunday, April 29th, 2006 - at 12 Noon on west coast and at 3 PM on the east coast on C-SPAN 2 according to what is mentioned via the following URL:

www.booktv.org/misc/la_festival_0406.asp

Can watch via the C-SPAN 2 live broadcast link near the bottom of www.c-span.org as the panel should repeat tomorrow (Sunday) evening and in the future as well...

Iran: Sanctions Would Boost Oil Prices

By SADAQAT JAN, Associated Press Writer
Sun Apr 30, 10:30 AM ET


The Iranian deputy oil minister said Sunday he did not believe the United Nations would impose sanctions on Iran because that would boost oil prices even higher.

"Any action like that will increase oil prices very high. And I believe that the U.N. or its bodies will not put any sanctions on oil or the oil industry," M.H. Nejad Hosseinian told reporters after talks in Islamabad with Pakistani officials over a proposed pipeline to transport Iranian gas to Pakistan and India.

The United States and its European allies have pushed the possibility of sanctions after a report from the U.N. nuclear monitor confirmed the Iranians had successfully produced enriched uranium and defied the Security Council's Friday deadline to stop the process.

Russia and China — two veto-wielding Security Council members — have opposed the possibility of such punitive actions.

Iran has not budged on the enrichment program. But it offered Saturday to allow U.N. inspectors to resume snap inspections of its nuclear facilities if the Security Council left the dispute to the U.N. nuclear monitor, the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The White House rejected the offer, saying Iran must give up its nuclear ambitions and the debate must move to the Security Council.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday she believed Iran was "playing games."

"But, obviously, if they're not playing games they should come clean, they should stop the enrichment," she told ABC's "This Week."

Rice also said the United States probably would seek a U.N. resolution requiring Iran to comply with demands that it stop enriching uranium. Rice mentioned a resolution under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, which means it can be enforced through penalties or military action.

"The international community's credibility is at stake here," she said. "And we have a choice, too. We can either mean what we say, when we say that Iran must comply, or we can continue to allow Iran to defy."

Enriched uranium, depending on the degree of processing, can be used either to fuel civilian power plants or to make nuclear weapons.

While Iran insists it has no plans to make weapons and does not need or want them, the United States, Britain and France suspect the program is aimed at producing nuclear warheads.

In Tehran, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said Iran wanted to resolve the dispute through diplomacy but warned it would not "surrender under threats and pressures."

But Asefi reiterated Iran's offer off allowing intrusive inspections if the Security Council dropped the matter. He did not comment on Washington's rejection of the proposal.

___

Associated Press reporter Ali Akbar Dareini in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.

From: Jeff Blankfort
Date: Thu May 11, 2006 10:10 pm
Subject: Jewish Groups to Bush: Drop Iran-Israel

This is acknowledged be a fallout from the Mearsheimer-Walt paper which correctly places most of the blame for the Iraq war on the Israel lobby. In fact, having the US confront Iran has been the main issue on the entire lobby's agenda, not just AIPACs for the past year and in December AIPAC publicly criticized Resident Bush for being soft on Iran. Now, with the war on Iraq having been proved a disaster, the collars around the lobby's white shirts are probably feeling a little tighter.

www.forward.com/articles/7764

Groups to Bush: Drop Iran-Israel Linkage
By Ori Nir
May 12, 2006

WASHINGTON — 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.

Messages were passed to the White House through several channels, Jewish activists said. And it seems to have worked: Speaking before the annual conference of the American Jewish Committee in Washington last week — his most recent address before a Jewish audience — President Bush talked about America's commitment to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and about his administration's commitment to Israeli security, but he did not link the two, as he has several times in recent months.

"We are basically telling the president: We appreciate it, we welcome it. But, hey, because there is this debate on Iraq, where people are trying to put the blame on us, maybe you shouldn't say it that often or that loud," said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. "Within the Jewish community there is a real sense of 'thank you but no thank you.'"

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. Such statements, they say, create an impression that the United States is considering a military option against Iran for the sake of Israel — and could lead to American Jews being blamed for any negative consequences of an American strike against Iran.

Jewish activists are concerned that "there would be [a scenario] just like with Iraq: the idea that somehow the Jewish community and the neoconservatives have dragged the United States into a conflict with Iran," said Martin Raffel, associate executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, a policy coordinating organization that brings together 13 national Jewish agencies and 123 local Jewish communities. "And if things go badly and our people are killed, then who is to blame?"

In early February, during an interview with Reuters, the president was asked about America's reaction to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad's threats against Israel. Bush replied: "We will rise to Israel's defense, if need be. So this kind of menacing talk is disturbing. It's not only disturbing to the United States, it's disturbing for other countries in the world, as well." Asked whether he meant that the United States would militarily defend Israel, Bush said: "You bet we'll defend Israel."

The White House's public liaison office has been ending its e-mails to the Jewish community with the following Bush quote from a March 20 appearance: "I made it clear. I'll make it clear again, that we will use military might to protect our ally, Israel." At the time, Bush was speaking about the threat posed by Iran.

Most Jewish communal leaders, despite their unease, say that the president talks about defending Israel from Iran out of a deep, personal commitment to the Jewish state.

"This comes from the heart," Foxman said.

Some, however, say that other factors may be at work, specifically the president's poor approval ratings, even among members of his political base. Two recent opinion polls show Bush's support among conservatives dropping, including among evangelicals, who consistently cite their support of Israel as a key political priority.

"I wouldn't be surprised if the White House is playing politics here," said an activist with a major Jewish group, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Jewish objections to the president's rhetoric have increased in recent weeks, as the storm created by a recent paper by two academics criticizing the influence of the "Israel Lobby" continues to grow. The study, co-authored by John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, has been attracting support in national media outlets with its thesis that Israel, with the help of powerful supporters in Washington, has all but hijacked America's policy in the Middle East.

In one such article, Arnaud de Borchgrave, editor at large at United Press International, wrote April 24 that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the lobbying powerhouse known as Aipac, "has maneuvered to make Israel the third rail of American foreign policy." In addition, more than 1,000 Americans, most of them university professors, have signed an online petition challenging the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, an umbrella body of 52 groups that serves as Jewish community's main united voice on Middle East issues, to "condemn" the "smearing" of Mearsheimer and Walt by several fellow scholars and pundits as "antisemites."

The executive vice chairman of the Presidents Conference, Malcolm Hoenlein, said that none of the Jewish organizations in the umbrella group had accused the two scholars of being antisemitic. But Juan Cole, the University of Michigan professor who initiated the petition, pointed out that the Anti-Defamation League has. In a comment on the study posted on its Web site in March, the ADL expressed the hope that "mainstream individuals and institutions will see it for what it is ññ a classical conspiratorial anti-Semitic analysis invoking the canards of Jewish power and Jewish control."

Even with the buzz surrounding Walt and Mearsheimer's paper, not everyone agrees that the president's statements are potentially damaging for the Jewish community. One senior official with a major Jewish group, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: "So what do [Jewish communal leaders] want? They want the president of Iran to be threatening Israel with nuclear destruction and the United States will say nothing? If that happens they would be complaining: 'Why aren't you committing yourselves to protecting Israel?'"

Robert Freedman, a professor of political science at Baltimore Hebrew University and an expert on Iran, calls the concerns about the president's statements "nonsense" and "foolish." First, he said, the case for tough action against Iran is stronger than the case was for action against Iraq — the intelligence this time is solid, the Iranian president says he wants to destroy Israel and Iran's possession of nuclear weapons poses a much greater danger to the region than Saddam Hussein's regime ever did. Second, according to Freedman, the risk of an entanglement in Iran is much smaller. A military campaign against Iran would most likely not involve a ground invasion, but an air bombing campaign. Third, he said, Israel is not in as good a position to carry out such a bombing campaign as the United States is.

"So," Freedman said, "if the president of the United States says, 'I am going to support Israel and we will not let Israel be destroyed,' that should be taken as a given and as a good given."

From: "Stephen Sniegoski"
To: "Sniegoski, Stephen"
Subject: Karen Kwiatkowski Radio Program (Correction)
Date: Fri, 12 May 2006 12:14:33 -0400

Friends,

Karen Kwiatkowski Radio Program (Correction)

A correction here. It was the Office of Special Plans (not planning) that pushed the neocon propaganda. Sorry for the brain malfunction. A friend corrected it.

Karen Kwiatkowski Radio Program (Correction)
I will be on Karen Kwiatkowski's radio program "American Forum" on Saturday, May 20 from 9-11 PM Eastern Time. It is broadcast on the Internet www.rbnlive.com/listen.html... (and archived) As you probably know, Karen Kwiatkowski provided the early eye-witness accounts of the Office of Special Plans--the neocon propaganda unit in the Pentagon that helped to push the US into the war on Iraq. At the time, she was a USAF lieutenant-colonel working at the Pentagon's Near East/South Asia bureau. Kwiatkowski has a Ph.D. in World Politics, with a background in intelligence--she also worked with the National Security Agency while in the military.
Kwiatkowski left NESA in February, 2003 and retired from the Air Force the following month, after 25 years of military service Since that time she has been writing about what she experienced at the Pentagon as well as commenting on more general topics concerning politics and foreign policy (regularly for LewRockwell.com). She is obviously a strong critic of the war agenda in the Middle East.
I will be talking on the neocon-Israel role in the Iraq war and current developments with Iran. I think it should be an interesting show.
Steve Sniegoski
Republican Broadcasting Network American Forum w/Karen Kwiatkowski
www.rbnlive.com/listen.html...
Also short-wave radio frequency 5.050
Saturday, May 20
8-10 PM Central Time
9-11 PM Eastern Time
If you live in another time zone, you will have to make your own calculations. The radio programs are also archived for future listening. If you listen to the live broadcast, the Call-in Number is 800-313-9443

Who runs the US press/media?:

www.davidduke.com/

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/24/AR2006042401396.html

No, It's Not Anti-Semitic

By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, April 25, 2006; A23


During the Jim Crow era, many American communists fiercely fought racism. This is a fact. It is also a fact that segregationists and others often smeared civil rights activists by calling them communists. This technique is sometimes called guilt by association and sometimes "McCarthyism." If you think it's dead, you have not been following the controversy over a long essay about the so-called "Israel Lobby."

On April 5, for instance, The Post ran an op-ed, "Yes, It's Anti-Semitic," by Eliot A. Cohen, a professor at the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a respected defense intellectual. Cohen does not much like a paper on the Israel lobby that was written by John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard University. He found it anti-Semitic. I did not.

But I did find Cohen's piece to be offensive. It starts by noting that the paper, titled "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," had been endorsed by David Duke, the former head of the Ku Klux Klan. It goes on to quote Duke, who, I am sure, has nodded his head in agreement over the years with an occasional piece of mine, as saying the paper is a "modern Declaration of American Independence." If you follow Cohen's reasoning, then you would have to conclude that David Duke and the Founding Fathers have something in common. I am not, as they say, willing to go there.

Unfortunately, Cohen's piece is not unique. The New York Sun reported on its front page of March 24 an allegation from Alan Dershowitz that some of the quotes from the Israel lobby paper "appear on hate sites." Maybe they do, but Mearsheimer and Walt took those quotes (about press coverage of Israel) from a book written by Max Frankel, a former editor of the New York Times. To associate Mearsheimer and Walt with hate groups is rank guilt by association and does not in any way rebut the argument made in their paper on the Israel lobby.

There is hardly a stronger, more odious, accusation than anti-Semitism. It comes freighted with more than a thousand years of tragic history, culminating in the Holocaust. The mere suggestion of it is enough for any sane person to hold his tongue. Yet this did not stop the respected German newspaper editor Josef Joffe from stating in the New Republic that the lobby paper "puts 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion' to shame." He is referring to the most notorious anti-Semitic text of all time. My friend Joffe is in dire need of a cold compress.

My own reading of the Mearsheimer-Walt paper found it unremarkable, a bit sloppy and one-sided (nothing here about the Arab oil lobby), but nothing that even a casual newspaper reader does not know. Its basic point -- that Israel's American supporters have immense influence over U.S. foreign policy -- is inarguable. After all, President Bush has just recently given Israel NATO-like status without so much as a murmur from Congress. "I made it clear, I'll make it clear again, that we will use military might to protect our ally Israel," Bush said. This was the second or third time he's made this pledge, crossing a line that previous administrations would not -- in effect, promulgating a treaty seemingly on the spot. No other country gets this sort of treatment.

Israel's special place in U.S. foreign policy is deserved, in my view, and not entirely the product of lobbying. Israel has earned it, and isn't there something bracing about a special relationship that is not based on oil or markets or strategic location but on shared values? (A bit now like Britain.) But I can understand how foreign policy "realists" such as Mearsheimer and Walt might question its utility and not only think that a bit too much power is located in a specific lobby but that it is rarely even discussed. This may be wrong, but it is not (necessarily) anti-Semitic. In fact, after reading the Mearsheimer-Walt paper, the respected Israeli newspaper Haaretz not only failed to discern anti-Semitism but commended the paper to its readers. "The professors' article does not deserve condemnation," Haaretz stated in an editorial.

An abridged version of the Mearsheimer-Walt paper was published by the London Review of Books and is available online at www.lrb.co.uk/ . Read it and decide for yourself whether it is anti-Semitic. Whatever the case, their argument is hardly rebutted by purple denunciations and smear tactics. Rather than being persuasive, Mearsheimer and Walt's more hysterical critics suggest by their extreme reactions that the duo is on to something. These tactics by Israel's friends sully Israel's good name more than Mearsheimer and Walt ever could.

cohenr-AT-washpost.com

From: Jeff Blankfort <jblankfort@...>
Date: Sun May 14, 2006 3:34 pm
Subject: A hot paper muzzles Harvard - Los Angeles Times

"But make a list of how professors have come out on this divide and you'll find it is an awfully neat proxy for deeper ideological divisions. Those who dislike the U.S. relationship with Israel suddenly find themselves champions of free speech; those supportive of Israel are recast as defenders of high standards of scholarship. It's just that nobody can talk about that schism."

An interesting way to take a knock at the Mearsheimer-Walt paper which is extensively documented and footnoted which one would not know from any of the paper's critics or this article. It should be clear that those who support the paper are afraid to speak out because they are aware, as Mearsheimer and Walt, indicated, that they would be smeared with the brush of anti-semitism. This writer, of course, ignores that, and smears Juan Cole, the only US based academic who has supported the paper as a "a media-hungry professor-blogger."


www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-op-fairbanks14may14,1,6447050.story

A hot paper muzzles Harvard
Controversial "Jewish lobby" paper raises nary a peep on the cowed campus.
By Eve Fairbanks, Eve Fairbanks works at the New Republic as a reporter-researcher.
May 14, 2006

DID YOU THINK there was a controversy in academia over "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," the paper by Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer contending that a shadowy "Israel Lobby" — including everyone from the New York Times and Hillary Clinton to Pat Robertson and Paul Wolfowitz — has seized control of American foreign affairs? I did too, but let me tell you: We were wrong.

When professors Walt and Mearsheimer (of Harvard and the University of Chicago, respectively) went public with their paper in the London Review of Books on March 23, it seemed the whole world started screaming. From columnists Richard Cohen and Max Boot to historian Tony Judt and Democratic Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, public figures battled in the pages of the major papers. Accusations of anti-Semitism and divided loyalties flew. The magazine I work for published three articles on the paper in a single week.

ADVERTISEMENT
Of course, if the paper caused such uproar in the public sphere, you'd think academia (and particularly the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, where Walt is the academic dean) would be, as the Harvard Crimson put it, the ultimate "field of battle." And as far as conspiratorial rumors and unexplained reversals go, it has been.

The Kennedy School pulled its name off the article, nervous to be associated with the argument that an expansive lobby is undermining American interests on behalf of the Jewish state. Bob Belfer, the fabulously wealthy (and Jewish) oil baron who endowed Walt's chair at the Kennedy School, was hopping mad. Angry donors reportedly threatened to retract gifts. Whispers began that faculty relationships were fraying, and gossip circulated that campus forces were plotting to oust Walt from panels and boards. Harvard had to deny that his decision to step down as dean had anything to do with the paper.

But something else happened at Harvard, something strange. Instead of a roiling debate, most professors not only agreed to disagree but agreed to pretend publicly that there was no disagreement at all. At Harvard and other schools, the Mearsheimer-Walt paper proved simply too hot to handle — and it revealed an academia deeply split yet lamentably afraid to engage itself on one of the hottest political issues of our time. Call it the academic Cold War: distrustful factions rendered timid by the prospect of mutually assured career destruction.

A couple of weeks ago, keeping in mind Henry Kissinger's famous aphorism that academic quarrels are so vicious because the stakes are so small, I began calling around Harvard, expecting to find a major fight flourishing. Spirited exchanges! A divided faculty! Parties canceled! Walt egged!

Instead, most people I spoke to assured me that, at Harvard, there is no controversy. Most everyone, they said, agreed about the paper. But what they all "agreed" on, hilariously, depended on whom I was talking to.

One anecdote illuminated the puzzle. At a faculty meeting, the paper came up, and the department head remarked that she was sure everyone had the same reaction when they read it — approval. One professor piped up: "No, this article is rubbish!" The room became very quiet. Finally, someone changed the subject. Through moments like these, a de facto consensus developed not to discuss the paper at all.

Most professors I reached wouldn't speak on the record about the flap because they didn't want their feelings to become known on campus. Walt ignored my requests for comment. Harvard's Alan Dershowitz, one of just a few professors who have conspicuously denounced the paper, says that when he was scheduled for a BBC face-off with Mearsheimer, the author mysteriously canceled moments before airtime.

Most fishily, one Kennedy School professor who had previously gone public with his opinions clammed up completely, explaining cryptically to me that even chatting off the record about the paper isn't "the right thing for me to do at this time." Another senior Kennedy School professor admitted that he was baffled by the dearth of discussion of the paper. "We debate everything else here," he said.

The closest we've gotten to open academic argument over the paper is an online petition circulated by Juan Cole, a media-hungry professor-blogger at the University of Michigan, condemning the paper's critics for "McCarthyite race-baiting." It has garnered nearly 1,000 professors' signatures.

But even Cole's petition — many signers of which haven't read the paper — exemplifies how, instead of knocking heads over the paper's core argument, it's become acceptable merely to debate drier questions of academic standards. Critics condemn the paper as shoddy scholarship; supporters, such as Cole, insist that the academic world's primary ethic is the right to say whatever you believe.

But make a list of how professors have come out on this divide and you'll find it is an awfully neat proxy for deeper ideological divisions. Those who dislike the U.S. relationship with Israel suddenly find themselves champions of free speech; those supportive of Israel are recast as defenders of high standards of scholarship. It's just that nobody can talk about that schism.

So is this collective campus lip-sealing evidence that Mearsheimer and Walt are right that the Israel Lobby squelches criticism? No, because professors fear taking a stand on either side.

Professors I spoke to offered various reasons they must tiptoe around the paper: That its style was too provocative. That they're skittish after witnessing Harvard President Larry Summers' ouster for making fractious comments. That the long-running PC wars have made them tired of controversy. That it's too "personal."

Most interestingly, they explained that topics related to the Middle East, though they provoke some of the deepest divisions in opinion between faculty members, are just too strewn with ideological landmines for them because academics are supposed to be above dogma — an explanation that also sheds light on why most Middle East studies departments languish in mediocrity and lack influential senior faculty.

And most sadly, professors admitted that academia's notorious office politics — in uniquely volatile combination with all these other reasons — interfere with natural reactions to the paper, resulting in a collective response that one described as "nervous laughter."

"A lot of [my colleagues] were more concerned about the academic politics of it, and where they should come down, in that sense," another Ivy League professor told me, ruefully.

But isn't this all a little bit ironic? Mearsheimer and Walt clearly wrote their paper to be provocative. They took pleasure in breaking a taboo — only to see another one erected around their work. And universities ought to be the centers of debate about ideas, right? "It's perhaps not a great reflection on academia — perhaps we should be more out there," mused Princeton's Andrew Moravcsik, who calls himself an "idealist" about his profession.

Perhaps.

But it seems more likely that academic tempers will continue to boil on the inside, without any release valve.

One observer close to the debate was profusely sorry to request anonymity, explaining that he had opinions concerning the paper but feared professional retaliation no matter what he might say.

"People might debate it if you gave everyone a get-out-of-jail-free card," he said, "and promised that afterward everyone would be friends."

Let's Stop a US/Israeli War on Iran

www.counterpunch.org/christison12292005.html

'A Clean Break' mentioned in the following article as well:


www.counterpunch.org/christison01252003.html

Let's Stop a US/Israeli War on Iran

www.counterpunch.org/christison12292005.html

'A Clean Break' mentioned in the following article as well:


www.counterpunch.org/christison01252003.html

See the traitors to America at the top of www.nowarforisrael.com and the message threads linked in the left margin of the following URL as well:

www.nowarforisrael.com/

If you are going to quote this website, at least know who is responsible for it:

Domain Name: NOWARFORISRAEL.COM
Registrar: INTERCOSMOS MEDIA GROUP, INC. D/B/A DIRECTNIC.COM
Whois Server: whois.directnic.com
Referral URL: www.directnic.com
Name Server: NS1.DAVIDDUKE.COM
Name Server: NS2.DAVIDDUKE.COM
Registrant: The Duke Report
Status: ACTIVE

Yep. David Duke, former head of the KKK. Still want to quote "no war for israel"? Hmmm. What did your daddy tell you about sleeping with dogs?

While you brought up David Duke, one might be interested in taking a look at the Jewish supremacists in control of the White House via the picture at the following URL:

www.davidduke.com/

Well, between Condi rice and Colin Powell, could it be the Black supremacists? Or the 35 Episcolpalians in the Bush cabinet- maybe its Episcolpalian supremacists?

Notice no one has mentioned the 20 Million dollars the Saudis gave to Harvard- that buys you a lot of influence. Yep, there is a lot of money floating around, and its not from THE JEWS- its from Big Oil.

See the 'Comments' section of page one (scroll down to such) to see how even Jews have mentioned that the Iraq invasion was for Israel:

www.huffingtonpost.com/2005/09/13/michael-kinsley-editoria_n_7284.html

I have my doubts on Cheney and Rumsfeld as they could be crypto-Jews):

Crypto Jews? You mean practicing in secret?
Please explain.

JewishPress.com > News > View Article
The largest Orthodox Anglo-Jewish weekly in the world. ... Security Adviser Dr. Condoleezza Rice said that the "security of Israel is the key to security of the world." www.jewishpress.com/news_article.asp

Stephen Zunes is a close associate of Noam Chomsky

Stephen Zunes attacks Mearsheimer/Walt - The Israel Lobby: How Powerful
is it Really?

Date: Tue, 16 May 2006 18:34:50 -0700 From: Jeff Blankfort
<jblankfort-AT-earthlink.net>

In this article, Prof. Stephen Zunes, a self-declared Zionist ("I will
be a Zionist as long as there is anti-semitism"), who has publicly said
on more than one occasion that he "supports Israel as Jewish state" and
that the establishment of Israel "was an example of global affirmative
action" indulges in the most vicious attack yet on the Israel Lobby
paper by Mearsheimer and Walt. He also has written that the US has been
using Israel as the feudal lords used Jews as middlemen and that Israel
is therefore the victim of anti-semitism on the part of the US
government .That anyone uttering and writing such poppycock could be
taken seriously, let alone considered an authority on the Middle East
and on the Israel-Palestine should make us shake our heads, but his
book Tinderbox which includes this formulation has been praised by the
likes of Noam Chomsky, Rabbi Michael Lerner, As'ad AbuKhalil, Naseer
Aruri, Richard Falk, Joel Beinin, Howard Zinn, and Saul Landau. Whether
or not any of them actually read the book before endorsing it is
questionable but it illustrates the intellectual poverty from which
"the Left," such as it is, not to mention the domestic Palestinian
movement, has approached this issue. www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3270.

Foreign Policy In Focus | The Israel Lobby: How Powerful is it Really?

Stephen Zunes

May 16, 2006

Since its publication in the London Review of Books in March, John
Mearsheimer and Steve Walt's article
www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html "The Israel Lobby" - and the
longer version published as a working paper for Harvard University's
John F. Kennedy School of Government - has received widespread
attention from across the political spectrum. These noted professors
put forward two major arguments: the first is the very legitimate and
widely acknowledged (outside of official Washington) concern that U.S.
Middle East policy, particularly U.S. support for the more
controversial policies of the Israeli government, is contrary to the
long-term strategic interests of the United States. Their second, and
far more questionable, argument is that most of the blame for this
misguided policy rests with the " Israel lobby" rather than with the
more powerful interests that actually drive U.S. foreign policy.

The Mearsheimer/Walt article has been met by unreasonable criticism
from a wide range of rightist apologists for U.S. support of the
Israeli occupation, including Democratic Congressman Eliot Engel (who
accused the authors of being "anti-Semites"), Harvard Law professor
Alan Dershowitz (who falsely claimed that the authors gathered
materials from websites of neo-Nazi hate groups), pundits like Martin
Kramer and Daniel Pipes, and publications like the New York Sun and the
New Republic. The authors have also been unfairly criticized for
supposedly distorting the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
though their overview is generally quite accurate. The problem is in
their analysis.

The article has garnered unreasonable praise from many in progressive
circles, who have posted it on websites, circulated it on listservs,
and lauded it as an example of speaking truth to power. Though
critiques in establishment circles of the bipartisan U.S. support for
the Israeli occupation are unusual and welcome, progressive promoters
of this article have largely failed to assess the ideological agenda of
its authors and the validity of their specific arguments.

It should be noted that Mearsheimer and Walt are prominent figures in
the realist school of international relations, which discounts
international law, human rights, and other legal and moral concerns in
foreign policy. The realist tradition downplays diplomacy not backed by
military force, belittles the United Nations and other
intergovernmental organizations, and dismisses the growing role of
international nongovernmental organizations and popular movements.

With some notable exceptions, Mearsheimer and Walt have been largely
supportive of U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War and subsequently.
For example, during the 1980s, Mearsheimer - a graduate of West Point -
opposed both a nuclear weapons freeze and a no-first-use nuclear
policy. A critic of nonproliferation efforts, Mearsheimer has defended
India's atomic weapons arsenal and has even called for the spread of
nuclear weapons to non-nuclear states such as Germany and Ukraine. He
was also an outspoken supporter of the 1991 U.S.-led Gulf War.

It is ironic, then, that these two men have suddenly found themselves
lionized by many progressive critics of U.S. foreign policy as a result
of their article. Any adulation should be tempered by the authors'
blind acceptance of a number of naive assumptions regarding America's
role in the world, such as their assertion that the foreign policy of
the United States - the world's number one arms supplier for
dictatorial regimes - is designed "to promote democracy abroad."

It is always welcome and significant when traditional conservatives,
hawks, and others in the foreign policy establishment speak out against
specific manifestations of U.S. foreign policy, such as when
Mearsheimer and Walt joined other prominent conservatives in academia
in opposing the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. However, such realist
opposition grows not out of concern over any of the important moral or
legal questions but out of a rational calculation that a particular war
could lead to greater instability and thereby run counter to America's
national security interests. Indeed, Israel's violation of
international legal norms and its impact on the civilian population in
the occupied territories are mentioned in the article primarily as a
means to counter claims that U.S. policy in support of the Israeli
government is based upon a moral imperative.

What progressive supporters of Mearsheimer and Walt's analysis seem to
ignore is that both men have a vested interest in absolving from
responsibility the foreign policy establishment that they have served
so loyally all these years. Israel and its supporters are essentially
being used as convenient scapegoats for America's disastrous policies
in the Middle East. And though they avoid falling into simplistic,
anti-Semitic, conspiratorial notions regarding Jewish power and
influence for the failures of U.S. Middle East policy, it is
nevertheless disturbing that the primary culprits they cite are largely
Jewish individuals and organizations.

Also problematic are the article's references to U.S. Middle East
policy resulting in part from the influence of "Jewish voters," since
most American Jews take more moderate positions regarding Iraq, Iran,
and Palestine than does Congress or the Bush administration. Similarly,
while Mearsheimer and Walt do not claim that the Israel lobby is
monolithic or centrally directed, they fail to emphasize how not all
pro-Israel groups support the policies of the Israeli government,
particularly its right-wing administrations. Groups like Americans for
Peace Now, the Tikkun Community, Brit Tzedek v' Shalom, and the Israel
Policy Forum all identify themselves as pro-Israel but oppose the
occupation, the settlements, the separation wall, and Washington's
unconditional support for Israeli policies.

Perhaps the most twisted argument in their article is the authors'
claim that the 2003 invasion of Iraq "was motivated in good part by a
desire to make Israel more secure." This is ludicrous on several
grounds. First of all, Israel is far less secure as a result of the
rise of Islamist extremism, terrorist groups, and Iranian influence in
post-invasion Iraq than it was during the final years of Saddam
Hussein's rule, when Iraq was no longer a strategic threat to Israel or
actively involved in anti-Israeli terrorism. Indeed, it had been more
than a decade since Iraq had posed any significant threat to Israel and
some of Israel's biggest supporters on Capitol Hill were among the most
outspoken voices against the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Within the Bush administration, although the neoconservatives who
championed the invasion of Iraq were supporters of Israel's rightist
governments, they had for many years also been supporters of rightist
governments in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere out of a
belief that such alliances strengthened American hegemony. More
fundamentally, the United States has had strong strategic interests in
the Persian Gulf predating the establishment of modern Israel. Indeed,
oil companies and the arms industry exert far more economic and
ideological influence over Washington's policy in the Persian Gulf
region than does the Israel lobby. (See fpif.org/fpiftxt/3011
The U.S. Invasion of
Iraq: Not the Fault of Israel and Its Supporters.)

Mearsheimer and Walt also claim that the Israel lobby has urged
Washington to put "very heavy" pressure on Syria. In reality, the
Israeli government - fearing instability and a rise of Islamic
fundamentalism should the Assad regime be toppled - has been
encouraging the United States to back off from putting too much
pressure on Syria. Furthermore, dozens of House members who voted in
favor of the Syria Accountability Act in 2003 have opposed a number of
resolutions supporting Israeli policies. (See
fpif.org/fpiftxt/787 The Syrian Accountability Act and the
Triumph of Hegemony.)

The authors' claim that the Israel lobby is a major factor in the
formulation of overall U.S. Middle East policy is plainly false.
Indeed, U.S. policy in the Middle East over the past several decades -
orchestrating military interventions and CIA-backed coups, backing
right-wing dictatorships, peddling neoliberal economic policies through
the International Monetary Fund and other international financial
institutions, undermining the United Nations and international law,
imposing sanctions against nationalist governments, etc. - is
remarkably similar to U.S. policy toward Latin America, Africa, and
Southeast Asia. If the United States can pursue such policies elsewhere
in the world without pressure from the Israel lobby, why is its
presence necessary to explain U.S. policies in the Middle East?

If the agenda advocated by the Israel lobby was substantially at
variance with U.S. foreign policy elsewhere in the world, one could
make a strong case that these lobbyists were influential. However, that
is simply not the case. This is why some of the most outspoken
opponents of U.S. foreign policy in general and of U.S. support for
Israel in particular - such as Noam Chomsky, Phyllis Bennis, Larry
Michalak, Simona Sharoni, Joseph Massad, Steve Niva, and Norman
Finkelstein - have raised serious questions about the supposed power of
the Israel lobby, noting that it is responsible, in the words of
Professor Massad, for "the details and intensity but not the direction,
content, or impact of such policies."

When it comes to U.S. policy toward Israel and Palestine, groups like
the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its related
political action committees (PACs) have certainly influenced some
members of Congress as well as some decision-makers in both Republican
and Democratic administrations. Moreover, mainstream and conservative
Jewish organizations have mobilized considerable lobbying resources,
financial contributions from the Jewish community, and citizen pressure
on the news media and other forums of public discourse in support of
the Israeli government. At times, they have even created a climate of
intimidation against many who speak out for peace and human rights or
who support the Palestinians' right of self-determination. But all this
is very different from claiming that the Israel lobby is primarily
responsible for U.S. policy in the Middle East, even when it comes to
Israel.

What Motivates U.S. Support for the Israeli Government?

The unfortunate reality is that the U.S. government is perfectly
capable of supporting right-wing allies in efforts to invade, repress,
and colonize weaker neighbors without a well-organized ethnic minority
somehow forcing Congress or the administration to do so. To claim
otherwise is to assume that without the pro-Israel lobby, the United
States would be supportive of international law and human rights in its
foreign policy. Given that U.S. foreign policy has rarely ever been
supportive of international law and human rights, except when it
corresponds with short-term political interests, why should the Middle
East be an exception? There was no Indonesian-American lobby
responsible for the bipartisan support for Indonesia's quarter century
of brutal occupation in East Timor, nor is there a Moroccan-American
lobby responsible for the bipartisan support for the ongoing Moroccan
occupation of Western Sahara.

It is certainly true that the United States is, in the words of
Mearsheimer and Walt, "out of step" with the vast majority of the
international community on the question of Israel and Palestine. Yet
the United States is also out of step with the vast majority of the
international community regarding the treaty banning land mines, the
International Criminal Court, the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, and
the embargo against Cuba. Similarly, two decades ago the United States
was also out of step with the vast majority of the international
community in regard to the mining of Nicaraguan harbors and support for
the Contra terrorists as well as opposition to sanctions against the
apartheid regime in South Africa and allying with Pretoria in
supporting the UNITA rebels in Angola.

Mearsheimer and Walt's observation that U.S. support of Israel runs
contrary to U.S. strategic interests by stimulating anti-Americanism in
the Arab/Islamic world is not an unprecedented dissenting position.
During any administration, there are elements within establishment
circles that come to conclusions challenging the prevailing mindset.
For example, Mearsheimer and Walt joined Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jacek
Krugler, and other realists who recognized that the invasion of Iraq
was contrary to U.S. national security interests, but the Bush
administration and a sizable majority of Congress (including the
leadership of both parties) believed otherwise. Similarly, some leading
realists of the 1960s, such as Hans Morgenthau, opposed the Vietnam
War, but that didn't stop an overwhelming bipartisan majority in
Washington from mistakenly believing, at least until the late 1960s,
that the war was somehow in America's best interests. In other words,
administrations of both parties have repeatedly proven themselves
capable of acting contrary to long-term national interests without the
Israel lobby forcing them to do so.

In certain narrowly defined, short-term ways, U.S. support for the
Israeli government does enhance U.S. interests. In a region where
radical nationalism and Islamist extremism could threaten U.S. control
of oil and other strategic interests, Israel has played a major role in
preventing victories by radical movements, not just in Palestine but in
Lebanon and Jordan as well. Israel has kept Syria, with its radical
nationalist government once allied with the Soviet Union, in check, and
the Israeli air force is predominant throughout the region.

Israel's frequent wars facilitate battlefield testing of U.S. weapons
and Israel's arms industry has provided weapons and munitions for
governments and opposition movements supported by the United States.
Moreover, during the 1980s, Israel served as a conduit for U.S. arms to
governments and movements too unpopular in the United States to receive
overt military assistance, including South Africa under the apartheid
regime, Iran's Islamic Republic, Guatemala's rightist military juntas,
and the Nicaraguan Contras. Israeli military advisers assisted the
Contras, the Salvadoran junta, and other movements and governments
backed by the United States. The Israeli intelligence agency Mossad has
cooperated with the CIA and other U.S. agencies in gathering
intelligence and spearheading covert operations. Israel possesses
missiles capable of striking targets thousands of miles from its
borders and has collaborated with the U.S. military-industrial complex
in research and development for new jet fighters and anti-missile
defense systems, a relationship that is growing every year. As one
Israeli analyst described it during the Iran-Contra scandal, where
Israel played a crucial intermediary rule, "It's like Israel has become
just another federal agency, one that's convenient to use when you want
something done quietly." Former U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig
once described Israel as the largest and only unsinkable U.S. aircraft
carrier in the world.

One of the most fundamental principles in the theory of international
relations is that the most stable military relationship between
adversaries (besides disarmament) is strategic parity. Such a
relationship provides each opponent with an effective deterrent against
the other launching a preemptive attack. If the United States was
concerned simply with Israel's security, Washington would maintain
Israeli defenses only to a level approximately equal to any combination
of Arab armed forces. Instead, leaders of both U.S. political parties
have called for insuring qualitative Israeli military superiority. When
Israel was less dominant militarily, there was less consensus in
Washington for backing Israel. The continued high level of U.S. aid to
Israel stems less out of concern for Israel's survival than from a
desire for Israel to continue its political dominion over the
Palestinians and its military dominance of the region.

The enormous amount of military aid received by Israel annually has
been cited by Mearsheimer and Walt, among others, as indicative of the
power of the Israel lobby. Yet the pattern of this aid merely reflects
the importance of Israel to U.S. interests. Immediately following
Israel's spectacular victory in the 1967 war, when it demonstrated its
military superiority in the region, U.S. aid skyrocketed by 450%. Part
of this increase, according to the New York Times, apparently was
related to Israel's willingness to provide the United States with
examples of new Soviet weapons captured during the war. Following the
1970-71 civil war in Jordan, when Israel exhibited its ability to deter
Syrian intervention in support of the uprising against the pro-Western
monarchy and thus curb revolutionary movements outside its borders,
U.S. aid expanded still further. When Israel further proved its
strength in successfully countering a surprisingly strong Arab military
assault in October 1973, U.S. military aid burgeoned once again. These
aid increases paralleled the British decision to withdraw its forces
from areas east of the Suez Canal. Along with the shah of Iran, who
also received massive arms and logistical cooperation as a key
component of the Nixon Doctrine, Israel emerged as an important allied
force in the wake of the British withdrawal.

This pattern continued when aid shot up yet again in 1977, following
the election of the first right-wing Likud government in Israel.
Subsequent aid boosts coincided with the fall of the shah and the
ratification of the Camp David Treaty with Egypt. U.S. aid swelled
still further soon after the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. In 1983
and 1984, when the United States and Israel signed memoranda of
understanding on strategic cooperation and military planning and
conducted their first joint naval and air military exercises, Israel
was rewarded with an additional $1.5 billion in economic aid and
another half billion dollars for the development of a new jet fighter.
During and immediately after the Gulf War, U.S. aid strengthened by
$650 million. In the decade following - as concerns arose regarding the
threat of terrorist groups, Islamic extremists, and so-called "rogue
states" - U.S. aid to Israel grew further still. A peace treaty with
Jordan and a series of disengagement agreements with the Palestinians
led to still additional arms transfers despite the resulting enhanced
security for Israel.

Rather than being a liability, as Mearsheimer and Walt claim, the 1991
Gulf War once again proved Israel to be a strategic asset: Israeli
developments in air-to-ground warfare were integrated into allied
bombing raids against Iraqi missile sites and other targets;
Israeli-designed conformal fuel tanks for F-15 fighter-bombers greatly
enhanced their range; Israeli-provided mine plows were utilized during
the final assaults on Iraqi positions; Israeli mobile bridges were used
by U.S. Marines; Israeli targeting systems and low-altitude warning
devices were employed by U.S. helicopters; and Israel developed key
components for the widely-used Tomahawk missiles. Israel is also the
fifth-largest supplier of high-tech military hardware to the United
States. Not surprisingly, U.S. aid to Israel intensified still further
in the 1990s, even as military support for Israel's key Arab
adversaries plummeted due to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Since the Sept. 2001 terrorist attacks, the perception of Israel as a
natural ally in President George W. Bush's "war on terror" has cemented
the strategic partnership still further, as the Pentagon pre-positions
equipment in Israel to enhance military readiness for intervention
elsewhere in the Middle East. Israel has also been supportive of U.S.
military operations in Iraq by helping to train U.S. Special Forces in
aggressive counterinsurgency techniques and sending urban warfare
specialists to Fort Bragg to instruct assassination squads targeting
suspected Iraqi guerrilla leaders. The U.S. civil administration in
Iraq, established following the 2003 invasion, was modeled after
Israel's civil administration in the occupied Arab territories
following the 1967 Israeli invasion. U.S. officers have traveled to
Israel and Israeli officers have traveled to Iraq for additional
consulting. What's more, Israelis have helped arm and train
pro-American Kurdish militias and have assisted U.S. officials in
interrogation centers for suspected insurgents under detention near
Baghdad. Israeli advisers have shared helpful tips on erecting and
operating roadblocks and checkpoints, have provided training in
mine-clearing and wall-breaching methods, and have suggested techniques
for tracking suspected insurgents using drone aircraft. Israel has also
provided aerial surveillance equipment, decoy drones, and armored
construction equipment. In return, Israel has reaped ever-greater U.S.
support.

In short, the stronger, more aggressive, and more compliant with U.S.
interests that Israel has become, the higher the level of aid and
strategic cooperation it receives. A militant Israel is seen to advance
American interests. Indeed, an Israel in a constant state of war -
technologically sophisticated and militarily advanced, yet lacking an
independent economy and dependent on the United States - is far more
willing to perform tasks unacceptable to other allies than an Israel at
peace with its neighbors. As former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
once put it, in reference to Israel's reluctance to make peace,
"Israel's obstinacy ... serves the purposes of both our countries
best."

In contrast, Washington's Arab allies - still suspicious of U.S.
intentions and lacking the Israeli advantages of well-trained armed
forces, political stability, technological sophistication, and the
ability to mobilize human and material resources - could never
substitute for America's alliance with Israel. Since continued support
of Israel - despite its ongoing repression of the Palestinians - has
not precluded unprecedented U.S. cooperation with Egypt, Morocco, and
the Persian Gulf monarchies, few policymakers have expressed concern
that the U.S.-Israeli alliance will interfere with cultivating even
closer strategic relationships with authoritarian Arab regimes.

In short, though counterproductive in the long-term, U.S. support for
the Israeli government is rooted in the same strategic considerations
that have led Washington to bolster other governments that violate
international legal norms. Indeed, it strains credibility to assume
that such an overwhelming bipartisan consensus of lawmakers would
knowingly pursue policies they believed to be contrary to the national
security interests of the United States. There is plenty of historic
precedent, however, for a wide bipartisan consensus of lawmakers
myopically pursuing policies which end up hurting U.S. interests. While
the Israel lobby certainly contributes to this myopia through its
distortions of the historical narrative and the current situation,
there are plenty of other cultural, political, and related factors also
at work.

As leading Israeli academic and peace activist Jeff Halper observed,
"Israel is able to pursue its occupation only because of its
willingness to serve Western (mainly U.S.) imperial interests" and has
essentially become "a handmaiden of American Empire." In other words,
the Israel lobby appears powerful because Israel supports U.S. global
interests. By contrast, i f Israel had a genuinely leftist government
or an anti-imperialist foreign policy, the Israel lobby would not
appear to be so powerful.

The Lobby's Influence on Policymakers

The Israel lobby appears more powerful than it really is because its
agenda normally parallels the interests of those who really hold power
in Washington. When its agenda conflicts with those interests, its
weakness becomes apparent.

American presidents are hardly powerless when it comes to pressure by
the Israel lobby. Evidence suggests that whenever U.S. presidents have
come to the conclusion that policies advocated by the Israel lobby were
not in America's best interests, the administration has generally won.
During the Suez Crisis of 1956, just days before the presidential
election, President Dwight Eisenhower - fearing a radical backlash in
the Arab world if the United States failed to do otherwise - strongly
condemned the Israeli/French/British invasion of Egypt. Threatening to
end the tax-exempt status for Israeli bonds and related private
contributions to Israel, Eisenhower forced the Israeli government to
completely withdraw from Egyptian territory within months. Similarly,
when Israeli forces invaded southern Lebanon in 1978, advancing as far
north as the Litani River, President Jimmy Carter forced Israeli troops
back to within a few miles of the border by threatening a suspension of
some U.S. aid. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan successfully defeated a
concerted effort by AIPAC to get Congress to block the proposed sale of
advanced AWACS planes to Saudi Arabia. Ten years later, the senior
President George Bush successfully fought off enormous pressure from
AIPAC and delayed a $10 billion loan guarantee to Israel until after
the Israeli election, thereby insuring the defeat of rightist Prime
Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who had been stonewalling the peace process
much to the chagrin of the Bush administration. In 2004, the current
Bush administration successfully pressured Israel to renege on a deal
with China to upgrade Harpy surveillance aircraft and forced the ouster
of the Israeli Defense Ministry's director general, Amos Yaron. In
short, the Israel lobby hardly has a "stranglehold" on U.S. Middle East
policy, as professors Walt and Mearsheimer claim.

Though the U.S. bias in supporting the Israeli government and
Washington's double standards regarding Israeli behavior are
undeniable, such official U.S. conduct is not uniquely applicable to
Israel. For example, Mearsheimer and Walt correctly observe how
Washington's support for Israel despite its human rights abuses against
the Palestinians "makes it look hypocritical when it presses other
states to respect human rights," but there is no mention of the equally
hypocritical U.S. support for Saudi Arabia (see
www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/2405 Time to Question the U.S. Role In
Saudi Arabia), Egypt (see fpif.org/fpiftxt/239 Bombings and
Repression in Egypt Underscore Failures in U.S. Anti-Terrorism
Strategy), Oman, Morocco (see www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/2005 Morocco
and Western Sahara), and other repressive Arab regimes. Similarly, the
authors are accurate in observing how " U.S. efforts to limit nuclear
proliferation appear equally hypocritical given its willingness to
accept Israel's nuclear arsenal." But is this any more hypocritical
than signing a nuclear cooperation agreement with India or selling
sophisticated nuclear-capable fighter-bombers to the Pakistani
government in spite of those countries' nuclear arsenals? (See
fpif.org/fpiftxt/170 Bush Administration Stokes Dangerous Arms
Race on Indian Subcontinent.)

The Israel lobby, like most lobbying groups, is most influential when
it comes to Congress. Yet Congress only rarely plays a crucial role in
the development of foreign policy and, in recent decades, foreign
policy has become even more the prerogative of the executive branch.
Congress generally plays a reactive role regarding foreign policy.

In any case, it is incorrect to assume that most members of Congress
stridently defend the policies of the Israeli government because their
careers would be at stake if they did otherwise. Indeed, the majority
of the most outspoken congressional champions of the Israeli government
are from some of the safest districts in the country and need no
support from pro-Israel PACs or Jewish donors in order to be
re-elected. For example, my congresswoman, Nancy Pelosi, routinely wins
re-election with 80% of the vote and could easily stave off any
challenge from the right in her very liberal district. (After more than
a decade of communicating with her office on Middle East issues, I am
convinced that her hard-line anti-Palestinian position is the result of
her anti-Arab racism, not any fear that evenhandedness would harm her
chances of re-election.)

Many of the cases frequently cited as evidence of the Israel lobby's
power to defeat incumbents who challenge the extent of U.S. support for
Israeli policies are not as clear-cut as their proponents make them out
to be.

For example, Illinois Republican Congressman Paul Findley was indeed
targeted by pro-Israel PACs in his unsuccessful re-election bid in
1982, but he was also targeted by pro-union, pro-environmentalist,
pro-feminist, and pro-Democratic PACs. He represented a rural district
at a time when farm prices were low and he was the nominee of the
incumbent party in the White House in an off-year election. Not
surprisingly, several other Republican incumbents from rural Midwestern
districts, who were not targeted by pro-Israel PACs, were also defeated
that year.

Similarly, when Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney was defeated in
the Democratic primary for renomination in 2002, there were some
pro-Israel PACs that contributed to her challenger's campaign. The bulk
of her challenger's contributions, however, came from downtown Atlanta
business interests and right-wing groups incensed at McKinney's
outspoken opposition to the Bush administration on other issues.
Georgia is one of the few states that allow crossover voting, and
thousands of Republicans in her district voted in the Democratic
primary that year, providing the margin for her defeat. In recapturing
her seat two years later, McKinney acknowledged the diversity of
interests responsible for her failed renomination in 2002. Yet, despite
this, some still blame her defeat, like that of Rep. Findley, primarily
on the Israel lobby.

Throughout most of the 1950s and 60s, it was widely assumed in
Washington that there could never be diplomatic relations between the
United States and communist China because of the supposed power of the
pro-Taiwanese " China lobby." Those who raised the possibility of
normalized relations were believed to be putting their political
careers at risk. (There were even efforts undertaken to impeach Supreme
Court Justice William O. Douglas when he suggested recognizing the
reality of the communist government in Beijing.) However, once
President Richard Nixon, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and other
national security elites realized that it was in America's interest to
open up to "Red China," there was little the pro-Taiwan lobbyists could
do about it. Similarly, if there ever came a time when those in power
in Washington decided that a major shift in policy toward Israel was
necessary, they could likely effect such a shift, how ever the Israel
lobby might react.

Mearsheimer and Walt correctly note the bias in the mainstream media,
particularly among leading columnists and other pundits, in its defense
of Israeli government policies and U.S. support for such policies. It
is unclear, however, whether this bias is any stronger than in other
conflict regions or international policy issues in which the U.S.
government is heavily invested. During the 1980s, for example, it was
extremely rare to read or hear anything positive in the mainstream
media about the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. Articles
documenting that leftist regime's human rights abuses were more
prominent than accounts of the far greater human rights abuses by
rightist regimes in Guatemala and El Salvador. Today, negative press
coverage regarding Cuba and Venezuela outweighs any negative stories
regarding pro-U.S. governments with poor human rights records like
Colombia and Mexico. Similarly, rarely is there serious critical
analysis of the neoliberal model of globalization or the Pentagon's
bloated budget, nor are there many positive news stories or opinion
pieces regarding groups challenging corporate greed and militarization.

This is not to say that those who challenge U.S. policy regarding the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict haven't been subjected to enormous
pressure from organized right-wing forces. I have often been on the
receiving end of such attacks. As a result of my opposition to U.S.
support for the Israeli government's policies of occupation,
colonization, and repression, I have been deliberately misquoted,
subjected to slander and libel, and been falsely accused of being
"anti-Semitic" and "supporting terrorism;" my children have been
harassed and my university's administration has been bombarded with
calls for my dismissal. I have also had media appearances and speaking
engagements cancelled, even by groups generally supportive of the right
to dissent. (For example, in 2003, just two weeks prior to its annual
meeting at which I had been scheduled to speak on U.S. foreign policy
and international law, the State Bar Association of Arizona rescinded
its invitation after the president and board received a flurry of
emails claiming that I was "anti-Israel." A few years earlier, the
Oregon Peace Institute cancelled an invitation for me to speak at a
forum in Portland following similar pressure from the campaign of the
first district's Democratic nominee for Congress. And a recent peace
studies conference at Hofstra University insisted at the last minute on
adding a right-wing supporter of the Israeli government to their
plenary program in order to counter my scheduled "anti-Israel"
presentation, wherein I raised concerns about Washington's role in the
Israeli-Palestinian peace process; at no other plenary session, even
those involving other left-leaning speakers on controversial issues,
did the organizers at Hofstra insist upon such "balance" from the
right.)

It is important to remember, however, that those who challenge U.S.
policy anywhere are going to be subjected to intimidation. Recent
attacks against U.S. professors specializing in the Middle East and
criticism of the Middle East Studies Association are very disturbing,
but no more disturbing than similar attacks against professors
specializing in Latin America and the Latin American Studies
Association during the 1980s. Right-wing criticism during the 1960s
targeting Southeast Asia scholars was also widespread. In other words,
intellectuals with empirical knowledge of any world region who dare
challenge the lies and distortions of a given administration relevant
to their area of research are going to be subjected to intimidation.

This is not to belittle the exceptional nature of the challenges faced
by critics of U.S. support for the Israeli government. Given that
Israel is the world's only Jewish state and that some criticism of
Israel really is rooted in anti-Semitism, organized attacks against
those opposing Israeli policies tend to carry more resonance since they
involve alleged manifestations of prejudice against a minority group.
If a Jewish state were not the focus, many liberals would dismiss such
attacks as passé McCarthyism and would not take them seriously.
As a result, assaults on critics of Israeli policies have been more
successful in limiting open debate, but this gagging censorship effect
stems more from ignorance and liberal guilt than from any all-powerful
Israel lobby.

A related problem is that progressive movements in the United States
have failed to challenge U.S. policy toward Israel and Palestine in an
effective manner. For years, many mainstream peace and human rights
groups have avoided taking a public position on Israel and Palestine,
even while doing exemplary work regarding other injustices. Such
prominent liberal groups as the Coalition for a New Foreign Policy,
National Impact, and Demilitarization for Democracy have refused to
include Israel in their otherwise-ambitious lobbying agenda linking
arms transfers with respect for human rights.

And groups that do take a progressive position on Israeli-Palestinian
issues rarely make it a legislative priority. For example, Peace
Action, the largest and most influential peace organization in the
country, routinely endorses House and Senate candidates who take
extreme anti-Palestinian positions and defend Israeli occupation
policies. Ironically, the group recently posted a link to the
Mearsheimer/Walt article on its home webpage. Like many groups on the
left, Peace Action is more prone to complain about the power of the
Israel lobby and its affiliated PACs than to do serious lobbying on
this issue or condition its own PAC contributions on support for a more
moderate U.S. policy.

Meanwhile, some groups that do challenge U.S. policy on this issue have
accepted funding from autocratic Arab regimes, thereby damaging their
credibility. Some others have taken hard-line positions that not only
oppose the Israeli occupation but challenge Israel's very right to
exist and are therefore not taken seriously by most policymakers.

In the absence of an effective counter-lobby, the Israel lobby appears
more powerful than it really is. In addition, the myth of an
all-powerful Israel lobby is so pervasive that it has often scared off
progressive funding and organizing that could conceivably challenge it.
As a result, exaggerating the power of the Israel lobby leads to a
self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Real Lobby: The Military-Industrial Complex

When examining the power of the Israel lobby in negatively influencing
U.S. Middle East policy, it is important to recognize the role of other
lobbies that have an interest in encouraging the dangerous direction of
current U.S. policy. Placing so much emphasis on AIPAC and its allied
groups ignores other special interests and ideologies which also play a
role in urging U.S. support for the Israeli government.

Such allied groups include fundamentalist Christians, who believe that
a militarily dominant Israel is necessary for the Second Coming of
Christ, but Mearsheimer and Walt mention them only in passing in their
article. The authors recount, as an example of the power of the Israel
lobby, how - after President Bush's initial call on Israel to back off
from its bloody spring 2002 re-conquest of West Bank cities was
rebuffed by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon - the administration
backed down and threw its support behind the offensive. However, most
accounts of President Bush's backtracking attribute it not primarily to
pressure from AIPAC and other Jewish groups but rather to the more than
100,000 emails received by the White House from Christian conservatives
defending the Israeli offensive. Indeed, these Christian Zionists
exercise a much more influential role in the current administration
than do Jewish Zionists. (See fpif.org/fpiftxt/560 The Influence
of the Christian Right on U.S. Middle East Policy.) During his two
presidential election campaigns, George W. Bush was less dependent on
Jewish voters than any modern president, but no president has ever been
more beholden to the Christian Right.

Other ideological factors impact U.S.-Israel policy as well. Some older
liberals maintain an overly sentimental conception of Israel and are
defensive - out of sympathy for a historically oppressed minority and
respect for Israel's democratic institutions - regarding any criticism
of the Jewish state. And then there are anti-Arab racists and
Islamaphobes who simply hate Palestinians. The American psyche also
identifies with a poor embattled Israel, consciously or subconsciously.
Both states were founded by European pioneers, both peoples aspired to
progressive democratic principles, and both nations' histories are
replete with ethnic cleansing and widespread repression of the
indigenous populations.

But the most important special interest pressing for strong U.S.
support of the Israeli government is the arms industry. The
military-industrial complex has a considerable stake in encouraging
massive arms shipments to Israel and other Middle Eastern U.S. allies
and can exert enormous pressure on members of Congress who do not
support a weapons-proliferation agenda. This clout is due in part to
the sheer size of the Middle East military contracts. It is far easier,
for example, for a member of Congress to challenge a $60 million arms
deal to Indonesia than the more than $2 billion in weapons sent
annually to Israel, particularly when so many congressional districts
include factories that produce this military hardware.

The arms industry contributes more than $7 million each election cycle
to Congressional campaigns, twice that of pro-Israel groups. In terms
of lobbying budgets, the difference is even more profound: Northrop
Grumman alone spends seven times as much money in its lobbying efforts
annually than does AIPAC and Lockheed Martin outspends AIPAC by a
factor of four. Similarly, the lobbying budget of AIPAC is dwarfed by
those of General Electric, Raytheon, and Boeing and other corporations
with substantial military contracts.

Contrary to many predictions, the end of the Cold War and the
significant advances in the Middle East peace process in the 1990s did
not lessen U.S. military and economic aid to Israel. U.S. aid to Israel
is higher now than 30 years ago, when Egypt's massive and well-equipped
armed forces threatened war, when Syria's military was expanding
rapidly with advanced Soviet weaponry, when armed factions of the
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) were launching terrorist
attacks inside Israel, when Jordan still claimed the West Bank and
stationed large numbers of troops along its lengthy border and
demarcation line with Israel, and when Iraq was embarking upon an
ambitious militarization effort. Today, Israel's borders are far less
threatened. Egypt has honored a longstanding peace treaty that
established a large demilitarized and internationally monitored buffer
zone in the Sinai Peninsula, Syria's military has been severely
weakened by the collapse of its Soviet patron, the PLO is supporting
the peace process, a peace treaty has achieved full normalized Israeli
relations with Jordan, and Iraq's offensive military capabilities have
been destroyed by wars, crippling sanctions, internationally monitored
disarmament, and U.S. occupation. And yet high levels of military aid
to Israel continue.

Noteworthy is the often-repeated insistence by successive
administrations and leaders of both political parties that U.S. aid to
Israel should be increased or "kept at current levels." If the real
objective was providing adequate support for Israeli defense, U.S.
officials would instead be focused upon maintaining Israel's security
requirements, and aid levels would vary according to those needs.
However, Israel's actual defense needs are not Washington's bottom-line
concern.

Matti Peled, the late Israeli major general and Knesset member,
reported that as far as he could tell, the $2.2 billion figure of
annual U.S. military support of Israel at that time was conjured up
"out of thin air." Such a figure, he argued, was far more than
necessary to replenish stocks, was not apparently related to any
specific security requirements, and had remained relatively constant
during the previous several years, reinforcing his impression that "aid
to Israel" is little more than a U.S. government subsidy for American
munitions manufacturers. This benefit to U.S. defense contractors is
multiplied by the fact that every major arms transfer to Israel creates
a new demand by Arab states - most paying in petrodollar cash - for
additional American weapons to challenge Israel's increased military
capacity. Indeed, Israel announced its acceptance of a proposed freeze
on arms exports to the Middle East back in 1991, but the Bush and
Clinton administrations, under pressure from the defense industry,
effectively blocked it.

In 1993, seventy-eight senators wrote President Bill Clinton insisting
that the United States send even more military aid to Israel. The
lawmakers justified their request by citing massive weapons procurement
by Arabs states, neglecting to note that 80% of this military hardware
was of U.S. origin. If they were really concerned about Israeli
security, they would have voted to block these arms transfers. Yet this
was clearly not their purpose. Even AIPAC did not actively oppose the
sale of 72 highly sophisticated F-15E jet fighters to Saudi Arabia in
1992, since the Bush administration offered yet another boost in U.S.
weapons transfers to Israel in return for Israeli acquiescence. In many
respects, U.S. aid policy serves the interests of both Israel and
autocratic pro-Western Arab regimes in that all share an interest in
curbing radical nationalism and Islamism and preserving the regional
status quo - if necessary, by military force. In addition, for the
Israelis, Arab militarism serves as an excuse for continued repression
in the occupied territories and resistance to demands for greater
territorial compromise. For autocratic Arab leaders, Israeli military
power serves as an excuse for their lack of internal democracy and
unwillingness to implement badly-needed social and economic reforms.
(It is noteworthy that until 1993, the United States refused to even
talk with the Palestinians while sending billions of dollars worth of
military equipment to autocratic Arab monarchies in the Persian Gulf,
which took a much harder line toward Israel than did the PLO.) The
resulting arms race has been a bonanza for U.S. munitions
manufacturers, whose hopes for continued prosperity provide a major
explanation for U.S. aid policy.

Though Mearsheimer and Walt observe that U.S. foreign aid to Israel
comes out to "about $500 a year for every Israeli," they ignore the
fact that virtually all of the military assistance goes directly to
American arms merchants and the economic aid is barely more than what
Israel pays annually for interest on loans from U.S. banks for previous
weapons purchases. In other words, ordinary Israelis never see that
money. Furthermore, for every dollar of U.S. military aid, Israeli
taxpayers are forced to pay two to three dollars to cover personnel,
training, and spare parts.

The Functions of Blaming the Israel Lobby

Columbia University professor Joseph Massad - who regularly endures
attacks by the Israel lobby for his defense of Palestinian rights -
contends that the attraction of Mearsheimer and Walt's argument is that
"it exonerates the United States government from all the responsibility
and guilt that it deserves for its policies in the Arab world." There
is something quite convenient and discomfortingly familiar about the
tendency to blame an allegedly powerful and wealthy group of Jews for
the overall direction of an increasingly controversial U.S. policy.
Indeed, like exaggerated claims of Jewish power at other times in
history, such an explanation absolves the real powerbrokers and assigns
blame to convenient scapegoats. This is not to say that Mearsheimer,
Walt, or anyone else who expresses concern about the power of the
Israel lobby is an anti-Semite, but the way in which this exaggerated
view of Jewish power parallels historic anti-Semitism should give us
all pause.

Those of us who have lobbied for a more balanced U.S. policy toward the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict have often, but always off-the-record,
been told by congressional aides - and sometimes by members of Congress
themselves - that they are not to blame for right-wing voting records
on Israeli-Palestinian issues because they are the victims of pressure
from the Israel lobby. Such claims, however, are frequently
disingenuous and self-serving.

For example, in 1991, during a meeting with a prominent staffer of
Washington Democratic Senator Brock Adams, in which I raised concerns
about the senator's hard-line anti-Palestinian voting record, the
staffer insisted that the senator took such positions to appease
wealthy Jewish campaign contributors. He advised that if I really
wanted to change the senator's position, I should work for campaign
finance reform. In early 1992, a major sex scandal forced Senator Adams
to abandon his re-election bid and any hope of ever again being elected
to public office. In his remaining year as a lame-duck senator,
however, he continued to vote as strongly as ever in defense of Israeli
government policies. In short, Jewish money had little to do with Adams
' anti-Palestinian extremism. His aide, like many of his counterparts
on Capitol Hill, cynically utilized the age-old anti-Semitic stereotype
of "blaming the Jews" rather than acknowledging the right-wing
militarist predilections of his boss.

To this day, however, you still hear some peace and human rights
activists quoting congressional aides and members of Congress as if
these influential and (mostly) wealthy, white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant
lawmakers were actually helpless, innocent victims of a sinister cabal
of rich and powerful Jews. Opposing inhumane Israeli policies is not
anti-Semitic, but when those in positions of power utilize an
exaggerated claim of Jewish clout in order to divert public attention
from their own complicity with unpopular policies, they are indeed
flirting with anti-Semitism.

Even more disturbing is the way that blaming the Israel lobby has been
used in foreign capitals to get U.S. decision-makers off the hook for
America's controversial policies regarding Israel and Palestine.
Another prominent professor of international relations, A.F.K.
Organski, observes, "The belief that the Jewish lobby ... is very
powerful has permitted top U.S. policymakers to use 'Jewish influence'
or 'domestic politics' to explain the policies ... that U.S. leaders
see as working to U.S. advantage, policies they would pursue regardless
of Jewish opinion on the matter." Organski further notes that when Arab
and European leaders have raised concerns about U.S. positions, " U.S.
officials need give only a helpless shrug, a regretful sigh, and
explain how it is not the administration's fault, but that policymakers
must operate within the constraints imposed by powerful domestic
pressures molding congressional decisions." My interviews with a half
dozen Arab foreign ministers and deputy foreign ministers in recent
years have confirmed that U.S. diplomats routinely blame the "Jewish
lobby" as a means of diverting blame away from the U.S. government.
This cynical excuse has contributed to the frightening rise in recent
years of anti-Jewish attitudes in the Arab world.

Conclusion

The consequences of U.S. policy regarding the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict could be tragic, not just for Palestinians and other Arabs,
who are the immediate victims of the diplomatic support and largess of
American aid to Israel, but ultimately for Israel as well. The fates of
American client states have often not been positive. Though differing
in many respects, Israel could end up like El Salvador or South
Vietnam, whose leadership made common cause with U.S. global designs in
ways that ultimately led to untold misery and massive destruction.
Israeli leaders and their counterparts in many American Zionist
organizations have been repeating the historic error of accepting
short-term benefits for their people at the risk of compromising
long-term security.

It has long been in Washington's interest to maintain a militarily
powerful and belligerent Israel dependent on the United States. Real
peace could undermine such a relationship. The United States has
therefore pursued a policy that attempts to bring greater stability to
the region while falling short of real peace. Washington wants a Middle
East where Israel can serve a proxy role in projecting U.S. military
and economic interests. This symbiosis requires suppressing challenges
to American-Israeli hegemony within the region.

This also requires suppressing challenges to this policy within the
United States and there is no question that the Israel lobby plays an
important role in this regard. However, this is primarily an issue of
the Israel lobby working at the behest of U.S. foreign policymakers,
not U.S. foreign policymakers working at the behest of the Israel
lobby.

Unfortunately, Washington's agenda provokes a reaction that all but
precludes any kind of stable order that would enhance the long-term
national security interests of the United States or Israel, much less
peace or justice. U.S. policy has resulted in dividing Israelis from
Arabs, although both are Semitic peoples who worship the same God, love
the same land, and share a history of subjugation and oppression. The
so-called peace process is not about peace but about imposing a Pax
Americana. To blame the current morass in the Middle East on the Israel
lobby only exacerbates animosities and plays into the hands of the
divide-and-rule tactics of those in Congress and the administration
whose primary objective is ultimately not to help Israel but to advance
the American Empire.

Stephen Zunes is a professor of politics and is Middle East editor for
the Foreign Policy In Focus project. He is the author of Tinderbox:
U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage
Press, 2003).

For More Information John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, "The Israel
Lobby," www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html"; Stephen Zunes, "Why
the United States Supports Israel," www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/1545
Noam Chomsky, "The Israel Lobby?"
www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm Joseph
Massad, "Blaming the Israel Lobby,"
www.counterpunch.org/massad03252006.html

JewishPress.com > News > View Article
The largest Orthodox Anglo-Jewish weekly in the world. ... Security Adviser Dr. Condoleezza Rice said that the "security of Israel is the key to security of the world." www.jewishpress.com/news_article.asp

US, ISRAEL OPERATE IN IRAN
COVERT FORCES IN IRAN TRAINING KURDISH REBELS
Richard Walker
May 17, 2006

Behind the increasingly shrill rhetoric and saber rattling over Iran’s nuclear ambitions America and Israel are engaged in a secret war against Iran that has echoes of the years when the CIA supported the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviet Union.

This time, the United States and Israel are running covert operations with the help of Kurdish militias and rebel Iranian fighters. For some observers, training and arming Islamic fighters smacks of the days of Soviet rule in Afghanistan.

Then, the Soviet army, which was the second most powerful military in the world, was defeated by Islamic militants, including men like Osama bin Laden.

Now the U.S. military, with Israeli commandos lending a hand, is arming and secretly training a different breed of mujahideen, or Islamic fighters—Kurdish militias with links to ethnic Kurdish communities in Iran and Syria, and fighters from the Iranian Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), which has bases in southern Iraq and has provided the United States with information about the Iranian military and Iran’s nuclear sites.

From the perspective of Washington and Tel Aviv, the history of the Kurds makes them ideal recruits for a covert war against Iran and Syria.

During and after Saddam Hussein’s rule, the Kurds of northern Iraq longed for an independent Kurdistan. When the so-called "no-fly zone" was in place over Iraq, the Kurds had protection from the U.S. Air Force and U.S. allies. That enabled them to build a large militia force and to develop a burgeoning economy.

But, since the fall of Saddam the Kurds have become disillusioned with the country’s slide into chaos and have hinted that they would be happy to see Iraq divided into three parts. In that event, they would establish an autonomous region called Kurdistan and the rich northern oil fields of Kirkuk would ensure their prosperity for decades to come.

Not everyone favors creation of an independent Kurdistan. The Turks, Iranians and Syrians are united in a belief that it would generate instability by encouraging large ethnic Kurdish communities in their countries to demand separation and an alignment with Iraq’s Kurds.

In the 20th century ethnic Kurdish demands for autonomy led to more than 30,000 of them being slaughtered by the Turks. In Iran, they were brutally suppressed in three provinces they dominated.

As part of a covert scheme to destabilize and soften up the Iranian regime for possible Special Forces attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities, Washington has turned to disaffected Iranian Kurds for help and to Iranian dissidents in the MEK.

Using fighters trained by the United States in secret bases in southern Iraq, the MEK has carried out a series of attacks in Iran. In recent months, there has been increasing instability inside three Iranian provinces dominated by Kurds, as well as attacks on Iranian troops near the border with Iraq. A Kurdish guerrilla group claimed responsibility for two of the attacks, saying they were in retaliation for Iranian shelling into Kurdish areas of northern Iraq.

New York journalist Seymour Hersh claimed in December 2005 that U.S. combat troops were already in Iran. Following that report, there was an incident near the Iran-Iraq border in January when an Iranian military cargo plane carrying 10 top Iranian Revolutionary Guard commanders mysteriously crashed. Later, there were rumors it was brought down by U.S. Special Forces within Iran.

In April 2006, Iran said it shot down a U.S. surveillance drone flying over the country. Israel has been running its own black operations with the help of Kurds it has trained. The Kurds reportedly have strong ties to Israel because it supports the creation of an independent Kurdistan. From an Israeli perspective, such an entity would provide Israel with an ally in a region in which it is totally isolated and would keep Iraq destabilized.

It was Israel’s neo-con friends in Washington who once believed a new Iraq would be Israel’s best ally, but the more that vision has turned to nightmare, the more Israel has looked to the creation of a separate Kurdish state in Iraq as the next best thing.

Israel’s relationship with the Kurds goes back a long way. During the Iran-Iraq war, the Israelis supplied the Kurds with weapons to attack Saddam Hussein’s forces. Then, after the first Gulf War, when the United States and its allies abandoned the Kurds, Israel continued to provide them with weapons and training.

To that end, Israeli special forces and Mossad have been training and recruiting Kurds for clandestine operations and surveillance in Iran and Syria. The advantage of having Kurdish fighters carry out operations is that they can easily blend into ethnic Kurdish communities and sow dissent.

They can also recruit rebel elements and build bases for future operations. Kurdish militiamen and fighters from the MEK are seen by Israel as ideal insurgents.

Richard Walker is the nom de plume of a former mainstream news producer who now writes for AFP so he can expose the kinds of subjects that he was forbidden to cover in the controlled press.



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Rewriting Mearsheimer and Walt

jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com/2006/05/rewriting-mearsheimer-and-walt.html

The US sold Israel bunker buster bombs last year. Maybe we are setting up Israel, not the other way around

Zionist (Israel first) Jews were behind the Iran war (see the 'Comments' section of the following URL):

www.huffingtonpost.com/2005/09/13/michael-kinsley-editoria_n_7284.html

You know, of course that "nowarforIsrael" is a David Duke site? Yes, former head of the KKK David Duke. Its hard for a rational person to take seriously anything that comes out of Duke's head.

So what is exactly inaccurate about Duke mentions there? NOTHING...

I don't frequent sites run by the KKK. You shouldn't either. Anyone with such a racist ideology is inherently suspect.

So, now we've got a rogue state Iran, with a megomaniac leader threatening a staunch US ally with destruction via nuclear weapons. (Remember the first gulf war? We helped out Kuwait, and they were'nt even as strong an ally as Israel?)
Do you realize if Iran is allowed to use nuclear weapons in the middle East, it will wipe out all the Palestinians as well? And a great deal of the Jordanians? Israel is a tiny land- about the size of New Jersey or Conneticut, our 2nd smallest states. You can't use nukes in such a limited area without destroying the ecosysytem and sacrificing millions of lives.

Bush: U.S. would aid Israel if attacked (WE DON'T HAVE A TREATY WITH ISRAEL FOR SUCH!):

www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/05/23/us.mideast/index.html

POLITICS:
Iran Target of Apparent Disinformation Ploy
Jim Lobe

www.ipsnews.net/news.asp

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To: "rbleier" <rbleier-AT-igc.org>
From: "Ronald" <rbleier-AT-igc.org>

Date: Tue, 23 May 2006 12:38:40 -0400

Subject: [IntelligentMinds] J. Cole: Ahmadinejad didn't say wipe Israel off the map

Here's what Ahmadinejad really said according to Cole.

"The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] from the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad)."

Ahmadinejad was not making a threat, he was quoting a saying of Khomeini and urging that pro-Palestinian activists in Iran not give up hope-- that the occupation of Jerusalem was no more a continued inevitability than had been the hegemony of the Shah's government.

Friends:
Did I get this wrong, or was Cole's revelation that President Ahmadinejad didn't say Israel should be wiped off the map, prompted by an attack by Christopher Hitchens?
If that's. the case, why wasn't this information distributed independently?
According to Cole the supposed remark was invented as a deliberate slander on the part of the usual subject. I gather that Hitchens is way beyond the appeals to truth, common sense or apologies. Yet, as low as he's fallen, does he really want Bush to attack Iran with all the chaos and disaster that it might bring? Talk about descents. . --- Ronald
***

Hitchens the Hacker; And, Hitchens the Orientalist
By Juan Cole, 3 May 2006 (source: www.juancole.com)


Christopher Hitchens owes me a big apology.

I belong to a private email discussion group called Gulf2000. It has academics, journalists and policy makers on it. It has a strict rule that messages appearing there will not be forwarded off the list. It is run, edited and moderated by former National Security Council staffer for Carter and Reagan, Gary Sick, now a political scientist at Columbia University. The "no-forwarding" rule is his, and is intended to allow the participants to converse about controversial matters without worrying about being in trouble. Also, in an informal email discussion, ideas evolve, you make mistakes and they get corrected, etc. It is a rough, rough draft.

Hitchens somehow hacked into the site, or joined and lurked, or had a crony pass him things. And he has now made my private email messages the subject of an attack on me in Slate. (I am not linking to the article because it is highly unethical and Slate does not deserve any direct traffic from my site for it.) Moreover, he did not even have the decency to quote the final outcome of the discussions.

I'd like to take this opportunity to complain about the profoundly dishonest character of "attack journalism." Journalists are supposed to interview the subjects about which they write. Mr. Hitchens never contacted me about this piece. He never sought clarification of anything. He never asked permission to quote my private mail. Major journalists have a privileged position. Not just anyone can be published in Slate. Most academics could not get a gig there (I've never been asked to write for it). Hitchens is paid to publish there because he is a prominent journalist. But then he should behave like a journalist, not like a hired gun for the far Right, smearing hapless targets of his ire. That isn't journalism. For some reason it drives the Right absolutely crazy that I keep this little web log, and so they keep trotting out these clowns in amateurish sniping attacks. It is rather sad, that one person standing up to them puts them into such piranha-like frenzy.

The precise reason for Hitchens' theft and publication of my private mail is that I object to the characterization of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as having "threatened to wipe Israel off the map." I object to this translation of what he said on two grounds. First, it gives the impression that he wants to play Hitler to Israel's Poland, mobilizing an armored corps to move in and kill people.

But the actual quote, which comes from an old speech of Khomeini, does not imply military action, or killing anyone at all. The second reason is that it is just an inexact translation. The phrase is almost metaphysical. He quoted Khomeini that "the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time." It is in fact probably a reference to some phrase in a medieval Persian poem. It is not about tanks.

Since Mr. Hitchens wants to splash my private mail all over the internet against my will, as though he were himself an agent of the Bush Administration's electronic spying on the private conversations of Americans, I'm glad to share the message that encapsulates the results of our deliberations at Gulf2000.

Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2006 15:34:18 -0400 From: "Cole, Juan"

The speech in Persian is here:

Sorry that I misremembered the exact phrase Ahmadinejad had used. He made an analogy to Khomeini's determination and success in getting rid of the Shah's government, which Khomeini had said "must go" (az bain bayad berad). Then Ahmadinejad defined Zionism not as an Arabi-Israeli national struggle but as a Western plot to divide the world of Islam with Israel as the pivot of this plan.

The phrase he then used as I read it is "The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] from the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad)."

Ahmadinejad was not making a threat, he was quoting a saying of Khomeini and urging that pro-Palestinian activists in Iran not give up hope-- that the occupation of Jerusalem was no more a continued inevitability than had been the hegemony of the Shah's government.

Whatever this quotation from a decades-old speech of Khomeini may have meant, Ahmadinejad did not say that "Israel must be wiped off the map" with the implication that phrase has of Nazi-style extermination of a people. He said that the occupation regime over Jerusalem must be erased from the page of time.

Again, Ariel Sharon erased the occupation regime over Gaza from the page of time.

I should again underline that I personally despise everything Ahmadinejad stands for, not to mention the odious Khomeini, who had personal friends of mine killed so thoroughly that we have never recovered their bodies. Nor do I agree that the Israelis have no legitimate claim on any part of Jerusalem. And, I am not exactly a pacifist but have a strong preference for peaceful social activism over violence, so needless to say I condemn the sort of terror attacks against innocent civilians (including Arab Israelis) that we saw last week. I have not seen any credible evidence, however, that such attacks are the doing of Ahmadinejad, and in my view they are mainly the result of the expropriation and displacement of the long-suffering Palestinian people.

It is not realistic for Americans to call for Iran to talk directly to the Israeli government (though in the 1980s the Khomeinists did a lot of business with Israel) when the US government won't talk directly to the Iranians about most bilateral issues. In fact, an American willingness to engage in direct talks might well pave the way to an eventual settlement of these outstanding issues.

cheers

Juan Cole


I don't have any intention of making a point by point reply to Hitchens's completely inaccurate screed. He blames me for not referring to some other speech of Khomeini, when in fact I never instanced any speeches of Khomeini at all in this discussion except the snippet cited by Ahmadinejad-- I was arguing that there is no Persian idiom to wipe something off the map, and that Ahmadinejad has been misquoted.

Hitchens imagines a whole discourse of mine (which mostly never took place) that he now sets out to refute-- from English translations! But I was saying that the wire service translations were the problem in the first place. Hitchens seems to think that he can over-rule my reading of a Persian text by reference to some hurried journalist's untechnical rendering into English.

Hitchens alleges that I said that Khomeini never called for wiping Israel from the face of the map. Actually, I never said anything at all about Khomeini's own speeches or intentions. I was solely discussing Ahmadinejad. Hitchens should please quote me on Khomeini and Israel. He cannot. He is making it up out of whole cloth. He should retract.

I write so much with which the Far Right disagrees so vehemently. I publish it here. Why is it that they keep having to invent quotations and put them in my mouth. Now, Cole is alleged to deny that Khomeini's rhetoric was hostile to Israel. Is that even a plausible allegation?

But, by the way, Khomeini sold oil to Israel, and Israel sold him weapons and spare parts, and put the Reagan administration up to doing the same thing. You will note that when Khomeini originally made the statement about the occupation regime over Jerusalem vanishing from the page of time, that was not front page news. In fact, secret Israeli arms shipments were arriving in Tehran as Khomeini was speaking. So whatever is going on now is not about the rhetoric, is it?

Here is what the National Security Archive says about Khomeini and Israel:

' Even during the hostage crisis in Tehran, Israel?later the United States' partner through much of the Iran initiative?began to strike weapons deals of its own with Iran. Tel Aviv, like Washington, had a long history of selling arms to the Shah, which Tehran's revolutionary government was willing to exploit secretly, despite its public animosity toward the state of Israel. Reportedly, the United States knew about Israeli transactions during the early 1980s but turned a blind eye. News accounts alleged later that President Reagan's first secretary of state, Alexander Haig, gave Tel Aviv an "amber light," acquiescing in the weapons transfers without officially approving them. One report stated that Haig gave permission to Israel to sell U.S.-made military spare parts for fighter planes to Iran in early 1981 after discussions between his counselor at the State Department, Robert McFarlane, and Israeli Foreign Ministry official David Kimche. An Israeli account of the U.S.-backed weapons sales of 1985-1986 reports that Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon proposed as early as 1982 that Washington consider an opening to factions in Iran using limited military sales as a vehicle. The White House apparently declined the suggestion but four years later would be more receptive to a similar proposal brought to McFarlane, then national security advisor, by his long-time counterpart, Kimche. '


Note that not only were the Israelis dealing with Khomeini, they are alleged to have been doing so while he was holding American hostages.

Back to Hitchens. How to explain this peculiar behavior on the part of someone who was at one time one of our great men of letters?

Well, I don't think it is any secret that Hitchens has for some time had a very serious and debilitating drinking problem. He once showed up drunk to a talk I gave and heckled me. I can only imagine that he was deep in his cups when he wrote, or had some far Rightwing think tank write, his current piece of yellow journalism. I am sorry to witness the ruin of a once-fine journalistic mind.

But the other reason for Hitchens's piece may be that he has become a warmonger, and it is possible that he wants a US war against Iran. More on that below.

As for the matter at issue, Ahmadinejad is a non-entity. The Iranian "president" is mostly powerless. The commander of the armed forces is the Supreme Jurisprudent, Ali Khamenei. Worrying about Ahmadinejad's antics is like worrying that the US military will act on the orders of the secretary of the interior. Ahmadinejad cannot declare war on anyone, or mobilize a military. So it doesn't matter what speeches he gives.

Moreover, Iran cannot fight Israel. It would be defeated in 72 hours, even if the US didn't come in, which it would (and rightly so if Israel were attacked). Iran is separated by several other countries from Israel. It has not attacked aggressively any other country militarily for over a century (can Americans say that of their own record?) It has only a weak, ineffective air force. So why worry about it?

What is really going on here is an old trick of the warmongers. Which is that you equate hurtful statements of your enemy with an actual military threat, and make a weak and vulnerable enemy look like a strong, menacing foe. Then no one can complain when you pounce on the enemy and reduce his country to flames and rubble.

It is obvious that powerful political forces in Washington are fishing for a pretext to launch a war on Iran, and that they are just delighted to have Ahmadinejad as cartoon villain and pretext. But they had a moderate, reforming president in Mohammad Khatami for 8 years, and just blew off all his overtures to the West. Iranians organized big candle-light vigils for America after September 11, in sympathy!


Washington never gave the reform movement the slightest encouragement, perhaps in hopes that the Iranians would be forced to turn right again and form a proper object of US hatred. If so, they got their wish last summer, when Ahmadinejad used the same dirty techniques to get elected as had George W. Bush.

All the warmongers in Washington, including Hitchens, if he falls into that camp, should get this through their heads. Americans are not fighting any more wars in the Middle East against toothless third rate powers. So sit down and shut up.

One, two, three, four! We don't want your stinking war!

We are not going to see any more US troops come home in body bags at Dover for the sake of some Cheney affiliate grabbing the petroleum in Iran's Ahvaz fields.

We are not going to have another 15,000 wounded vets flood onto our streets with spine damage and brain damage.

We are not going to put Yazd behind barbed wire to liberate it, as a millenarian Christian general did to Habbaniyah in Iraq.

We are not going to imprison and torture thousands of Iranians at Evin Penitentiary in Tehran, as worthy successors to the bloodthirsty Shah and Khomeini.

We are not going to kill 200,000 Iranians with aerial bombardments of Tabriz, Isfahan, Qom, Kerman, Shiraz and Mashahd.

We are not going to let dozens of US corporations loot the American people and the Iranian people alike with no-bid "contracts", embezzlement, corruption, and graft.

We are not going to let you have a war against Iran.

So sit down and shut up, American Enterprise Institute, and Hudson Institute, and Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and American Heritage Institute, and this institute and that institute, and cable "news", and government "spokesmen", and all the pundit-ferrets you pay millions to make business for the American military-industrial complex and Big Oil.

We don't give a rat's ass what Ahmadinejad thinks about European history or what pissant speech the little shit gives.

I call on university students across America to begin holding antiwar rallies. The only way you can have a war on Iran is to draft the young people. It is you who are on the line. Demonstrate! Demonstrate against the very hint of war! Demonstrate in front of the warmongering "institutes" in Washington, DC! Demonstrate to end the one we've already got! (See Speaker's Forum on Iraq

Here is what the real Iran experts think about the prospect of an Iran war.

Because Hitchens's dirty tricks and lies against me are only the beginning. Whoever stands against the Perpetual War machine will be attacked, slimed, marginalized, and destroyed if the warmongers get their way. I don't care. Thus far and no farther.

One, two, three, four. We don't want your stinking war!

posted by Juan @ 5/03/2006 06:30:00 AM

"Our dear Imam said that the occupying regime must be wiped off the map and this was a very wise statement. "

Sorry, Juan Cole. You lie like a rug.

Full Translation of Ahmadinejad's Speech
www.nytimes.com/2005/10/30/weekinreview/30iran.html
October 30 2005
This is a translation, by Nazila Fathi in The New York Times Tehran bureau, of the October 26 speech by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to an Islamic Student Associations conference on "The World Without Zionism." The conference was held in Tehran, at the Interior Ministry.

The text of the speech was posted online, in Persian, by the Iranian Student News Agency (www.isnagency.com). Bracketed explanatory material is from Ms. Fathi.
I thank God that I have had the opportunity to participate in the event today ….

We need to examine the true origins of the issue of Palestine: is it a fight between a group of Muslims and non-Jews? Is it a fight between Judaism and other religions? Is it the fight of one country with another country? Is it the fight of one country with the Arab world? Is it a fight over the land of Palestine? I guess the answer to all these questions is ‘no.’

The establishment of the occupying regime of Qods [Jerusalem]was a major move by the world oppressor [ the United States] against the Islamic world. The situation has changed in this historical struggle. Sometimes the Muslims have won and moved forward and the world oppressor was forced to withdraw.

Unfortunately, the Islamic world has been withdrawing in the past 300 years. I do not want to examine the reasons for this, but only to review the history. The Islamic world lost its last defenses in the past 100 years and the world oppressor established the occupying regime. Therefore the struggle in Palestine today is the major front of the struggle of the Islamic world with the world oppressor and its fate will decide the destiny of the struggles of the past several hundred years.

The Palestinian nation represents the Islamic nation [Umma] against a system of oppression, and thank God, the Palestinian nation adopted Islamic behavior in an Islamic environment in their struggle and so we have witnessed their progress and success.

I need to thank you for choosing this valuable title for the conference.

Many who are disappointed in the struggle between the Islamic world and the infidels have tried to spread the blame. They say it is not possible to have a world without the United States and Zionism. But you know that this is a possible goal and slogan.

Let’s take a step back. We had a hostile regime in this country which was undemocratic, armed to the teeth and, with SAVAK, its security apparatus of SAVAK [the intelligence bureau of the Shah of Iran’s government] watched everyone. An environment of terror existed. When our dear Imam [Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder the Iranian revolution] said that the regime must be removed, many of those who claimed to be politically well-informed said it was not possible. All the corrupt governments were in support of the regime when Imam Khomeini started his movement. All the Western and Eastern countries supported the regime even after the massacre of September 7 [1978] and said the removal of the regime was not possible. But our people resisted and it is 27 years now that we have survived without a regime dependant on the United States. The tyranny of the East and the West over the world must should end, but weak people who can see only what lies in front of them cannot believe this.

Who could believe that one day we could witness the collapse of the Eastern Empire? But we have seen its fall during our lives and it collapsed in such a way that we have to refer to libraries because no trace of it is left. Imam [Khomeini] said Saddam must go and he said he would grow weaker than anyone could imagine. Now you see the man who spoke with such arrogance ten years ago that one would have thought he was immortal, is being tried in his own country in handcuffs and shackles by those who he believed supported him and with whose backing he committed his crimes.

Our dear Imam said that the occupying regime must be wiped off the map and this was a very wise statement. We cannot compromise over the issue of Palestine. Is it possible to create a new front in the heart of an old front. This would be a defeat and whoever accepts the legitimacy of this regime [Israel] has in fact, signed the defeat of the Islamic world. Our dear Imam targeted the heart of the world oppressor in his struggle, meaning the occupying regime. I have no doubt that the new wave that has started in Palestine, and we witness it in the Islamic world too, will eliminate this disgraceful stain from the Islamic world. But we must be aware of tricks. For over 50 years the world oppressor tried to give legitimacy to the occupying regime and it has taken measures in this direction to stabilize it. About 27 or 28 years ago they took a major step and unfortunately one of the leading countries made a mistake which we hope will correct it.[an apparent reference to the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel].

Recently they [the Israelis] tried a new trick. They want to show the evacuation from the Gaza strip, which was imposed on them by Palestinians, as a final victory for the Palestinians and end the issue of Palestine with the excuse of establishing a Palestinian government next to themselves. Today, they want to involve Palestinians with mischief and trick them into fighting with one another over political positions so that they would drop the issue of Palestine.

They want to convince some of the Islamic countries that, since they evacuated the Gaza strip with good intentions, the legitimacy of their corrupt regime should be recognized. I hope Palestinian groups and people are aware of this trick.

The issue of Palestine is not over at all. It will be over the day a Palestinian government, which belongs to the Palestinian people, comes to power; the day that all refugees return to their homes; a democratic government elected by the people comes to power. Of course those who have come from far away to plunder this land have no right to choose for this nation.

I hope the Palestinian people will remain alert and aware in the same way that they have continued their struggle in the past ten years.

If we get through this brief period successfully, the path of eliminating the occupying regime will be easy and down-hill.

I warn all leaders of the Islamic world that they should be aware of this trick. Anyone who recognizes this regime because of the pressure of the World oppressor, or because of naiveté or selfishness, will be eternally disgraced and will burn in the fury of the Islamic nations.

Those who are sitting in closed rooms cannot decide for the Islamic nation and cannot allow this historical enemy to exist in the heart of the Islamic world.

themiddleeastnow.com/ref/jadspeech

World powers inch forward in Iran nuclear talks By Madeline Chambers
Wed May 24, 5:33 PM ET


World powers made progress but failed to reach consensus in talks on Wednesday on a package of incentives and threats to prevent Iran from being able to build a nuclear bomb.

Senior officials from U.N. Security Council permanent members China, Russia, the United States, France and Britain, plus Germany had met to try to narrow divisions over how to induce Tehran to halt sensitive uranium enrichment work.

Washington also said Iran, which insists on its right to a full range of nuclear technology, had sought bilateral talks with the United States, but the administration was committed to a multilateral approach.

"What I've heard is that there has been great progress," said a State Department spokesman about Wednesday's meeting, adding, however, that a deal was "not done yet."

As preparatory work continues in coming days, officials will propose that foreign ministers should meet soon to take final decisions, said a spokesman for Britain's Foreign Office.

"This is a complex and sensitive diplomatic negotiation," he said, declining to be drawn on details of the talks.

Washington and some of its Western allies suspect Iran's professed bid for nuclear power for its economy is a cover for efforts to develop an atomic bomb.

As the talks took place, London's International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) said there was a growing international consensus that Iran will almost inevitably develop nuclear arms.

Director-General John Chipman said the IISS still believed 2010 was the earliest Iran could produce enough uranium for a bomb, but 2008 and 2009 were "within the margin of error."

Serious differences have persisted between Washington and Moscow over U.S. demands that Iran face sanctions, resisted by Russia, if it continues to defy the international community.

IRAN DEFIANT

The Islamic Republic says it is developing nuclear technology for civilian energy generation and Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad issued a defiant message on Wednesday.

"Using nuclear energy is Iran's right," Ahmadinejad told a rally in a speech broadcast live on state television.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, speaking during a visit to Vietnam, said he had appealed to Iran "not to reject anything out of hand" that might emerge from the London talks.

The final package is likely to include an offer of a light-water reactor and a supply from abroad of fuel for civilian atomic plants so Iran would not have to enrich uranium.

Enriched to a low level, uranium is used as nuclear power plant fuel. But if purified to a higher grade, uranium can set off the chain reaction that detonates atomic bombs.

The EU package will also warn of possible sanctions if Iran, the world's fourth-biggest oil producer, refuses the offer.

Diplomats say they would discuss targeted sanctions, such as visa bans on Iranian officials involved in the nuclear programme, before seeking ways of curtailing trade deals.

At a separate meeting in Washington, Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said he discussed Iran's views with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice after talks with Tehran's negotiator, Ali Larijani.

"Of course I briefed Secretary Rice on the Iranian point of view, but it's rather different from the U.S point of view," he said.

ElBaradei also told reporters it was up to the United States to decide whether it would take part in direct talks with Iran.

Some EU officials, many analysts and the IAEA, say efforts to end the crisis could be boosted if Washington began talking to Iran after 26 years of official silence.

They believe one way to entice Iran back to good-faith negotiations and stop it seeking sensitive atomic know-how would be a U.S. pledge not to try to topple Tehran's government, which the Bush administration has labeled ripe for "regime change."

Tehran cites a right to civilian atomic research under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which allows it enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, and calls it non-negotiable.

(Additional reporting by David Clarke, Andrew Gray, Edmund Blair in Tehran, Lou Charbonneau in Berlin, Tabassum Zakaria and Carol Giacomo in Washington and Mark Heinrich in Vienna)

Study Alleging Dominant Influence of Israeli Lobby Sparks Heated Fallout:

www.democracynow.org/article.pl

The following is the article mentioned in the above URL with the writer:

The Storm over the Israel Lobby:

www.nybooks.com/articles/19062

Ahmadinejad: Not Hitler After All


Ahmadinejad: Not Hitler After All
By Jan Frel, AlterNet
Posted on May 25, 2006, Printed on May 25, 2006
www.alternet.org/story/36654/
A now discredited article by Iranian-American and neocon chum Amir Taheri that appeared last Friday in the Canadian National Post suggested that new legislation in Iran would require Jews and other religious minorities to wear distinctive color badges. At the article's end appeared this invitation to readers:

"Dangerous Parallel: Is Iran turning into the new Nazi Germany? Share your opinion online at nationalpost.com."

The readers who wrote in immediately savaged the article, its author and the National Post's facile, transparent attempt to resurrect the Wermacht. No one took the bait, and the disbelief quickly spread across the internet.

The swift rejection of this attempt to turn Iran into the Fourth Reich incarnate is surely a natural reflex of a public still smarting from the ordeal of the Iraq PR campaign. Another explanation for the rapid response is the massive growth in streams of alternative information available to the public -- organizations like Media Matters and PR Watch literally make their living exposing lies and propaganda as they are released through media and government channels.

And then there are the bloggers who can singlehandedly get to the bottom of large-scale lies. In the case of the National Post story, blogger Taylor Marsh phoned the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which had confirmed Taheri's story after the report came out. A researcher Marsh spoke with on Friday "was eager to confirm it, using words like 'throwback' to the Nazi era, 'very true' and 'very scary.' ... "

Within the day, the story was repudiated. Middle East expert Juan Cole revealed that there was no evidence of any such anti-Jewish Iranian legislation, citing a report in the Australian press that quoted an Iranian politician denying its existence. Later in the day, Marsh again called the Wiesenthal Center and got the runaround. Looking at a fax the researcher sent her as background, Marsh discovered that the National Post had suggested to a rabbi at the Wiesenthal Center that it was important to "draw attention" to Taheri's report, exposing the scaffolding behind the propaganda effort.

Marsh concluded with the pointed question, "Who got the Simon Wiesenthal Center to stick their necks out on this bogus Iranian badge story, risking their very reputation and funding credibility, and who had what to gain by doing so?"

Marsh's deconstruction matters, because the story quickly made the rounds in conservative media, as analyst Jim Lobe wrote for IPS:

Taheri's story ... was reprinted by the New York Post, which is owned by media baron Rupert Murdoch, and picked up by the Jerusalem Post, which also featured a photo of a yellow star from the Nazi era over a photo of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Another neoconservative publication, the New York Sun, also noted the story Monday, claiming that the specific report that special badges were required by the legislation had been "incorrect." At the same time, however, the Sun quoted two Iranian-American foes of the Islamic Republic as suggesting that dress requirements for religious minorities were still being considered by Iran's ruling circles. It offered no evidence to support that assertion.
The rapid discrediting of the Taheri article had real impact; instead of Condi Rice's trumpeting it as evidence of a proto-Nazi human-rights disaster, all we heard was a peep from U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, who professed ignorance of the now-toxic article and slyly referred to the idea of Iran forcing people to wear badges as evocative of "Germany under Hitler."

Since the evil dictator line has been used and abused to the point of meaninglessness over the past five years in Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea and elsewhere, Bush and his team have been reduced to plundering words that still have some resonance in American life: "Hitler," "Nazis" and "Holocaust." Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker quoted a former senior intelligence official who said that Hitler is the comparison "name they are using" for Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

But, as the National Post story makes apparent, this tactic is not really working. The columnists and propagandists who support attacking Iran appear to sense that the Nazi backdrop through which they have been asked to present "The Iranian Question" reflects the utter baselessness of the charge and the facility with which opponents can easily refute their claims. Unlike the point-blank lies and bullet-point shotgun blasts on the op-ed pages and cable segments we got with Iraq about evil and weapons programs, with the Iran campaign, it has to be subliminal, surreptitious, stab-in-the-back.

Take conservative pundit Niall Ferguson's attempt in the L.A. Times. His May 15 opinion article was ostensibly about the rise of many little Cold Wars with the proliferation of nuclear powers. But within six sentences, Ferguson reveals that he wants to talk about Iran. Soon enough, in the most backhanded way possible, he tiptoes toward the Nazis:

"It is, of course, always dangerous to draw analogies with the 1930s. Too many bad decisions have been made over the years on the basis of facile parallels -- between Hitler and Nasser, between Hitler and Saddam Hussein."

In other words, even the Nazi comparison may have been looted of its meaning in the name of making bad decisions. So haven't we learned our lesson? No, because Bush still has one very bad decision to make, and a fanatic obsession with war does not generally give rise to creative impulses. So Ferguson relents: "Still, in one respect, Ahmadinejad really has taken a leaf out of the Führer's book."

It would be a distraction to explain just which leaf Ferguson is referring to, because then we'd be missing the point, which is to push us to link our historic venom against Nazis with anything Iranian, at any cost. Even the projection of Ahmadinejad as supreme leader is dubious; analysts and reporters have argued that he's merely a figurehead, and Seymour Hersh qouted a European diplomat who declared, "Ahmadinejad is not in control."

If enough people laugh off the attempts to draw Hitler's moustache on Ahmadinejad's upper lip, we might see the domestic propaganda division of the Get Iran effort shut down. The rapid and torrential takedown of the Taheri story is a good step in that direction.

But what if the propaganda were to stop, yet the attack on Iran were launched anyway?

Given the growing sense of total independence the Bush administration has displayed over the years, and its contempt for the press, it doesn't take a huge leap of the imagination to envision them attacking Iran while ignoring congressional power, public opinion, protesters and dissidents alike. That would be a very scary "first" in American history -- the only administration to go to war without a propaganda campaign. They don't even feel the need to lie to us anymore.

Jan Frel is an AlterNet staff writer.

View this story online at: www.alternet.org/story/36654/

To: Sniegoski, Stephen
Sent: Friday, May 26, 2006 9:11 AM
Subject: My Second Mearsheimer-Walt Article

Friends,

My Second Mearsheimer-Walt Article

I have written another piece on the Mearsheimer and Walt "Israel Lobby" essay controversy. My new article is at The Last Ditch website: "The second wave against Mearsheimer and Walt: A well-tempered smother-out as a new war looms"
www.thornwalker.com/ditch/snieg_mear_walt_2.htm

I am including a portion of my article here and hope that you will go to the site for the remainder.

The second wave against Mearsheimer and Walt: A well-tempered smother-out
as a new war looms
By Stephen J. Sniegoski
The initial reaction to John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's essay "The Israel Lobby" consisted of a relentless barrage of vituperative insults, smears, character assassination, misrepresentations, and other inflammatory rhetoric that condemned the essay in toto. In large part, the vicious pillorying of the piece came from members of the Israel lobby denying their own power and even existence. Presumably, the purpose of that approach was to intimidate anyone from ever daring to investigate the subject. But the effect of the venomous verbal bombardment also unintentionally illustrated the absolute correctness of the essay's claim about the lobby's power to suppress.
Since that initial period a more moderate tone has emerged in the responses, which in many cases concede a substantial portion of the points presented by Mearsheimer and Walt. Nonetheless, despite a general improvement in substance as well as tone, the more temperate responses have tended to downplay the actual value of the essay and the significance of the rabid attacks that initially accompanied it. This more recent approach to the "Israel Lobby" study represents a variant of what Harry Elmer Barnes, the great revisionist historian of the two world wars, described as the smother-out approach. At best, the newer responses divert attention to peripheral issues — was the essay properly nuanced? was the issue of the Israel lobby placed in proper context? — rather than accept and emphasize the significance of the essay's central thesis and current relevance. In short, the essential need to apply the message of the study to current American Middle East policy — namely, the move on Iran that is being spearheaded by Israel and its lobby — receives minimal attention.
Continued: www.thornwalker.com/ditch/snieg_mear_walt_2.htm

The Psuedo-Zionist Globalist Infection
by Changeling Sunday, May. 28, 2006 at 8:20 AM
Changeling_au_2004-AT-yahoo.com.au (+61)409 952 382 Melbourne, Australia

so typical says: " The Zionist propaganda mill knows this all too well. That is why they are attacking the messengers instead of trying to refute what Mearsheimer and Walt have said."

Well, considering that the "Zionist propaganda mill" is just another element of the Globalist propaganda machine based largely at the CFR (Council on Foreign Relations), we certainly can't expect them to refute Mearsheimer and Walt's paper. That's not their job. Their job is (in part) to align the interests of Israelis - in the public mind - with the interests of the US establishment. Then, when the designed-to-fail war in Iraq becomes an undisputed failure, the US establishment can hand Iraq over to their covert allies among Iran's Islamists (see www.hirhome.com/iraniraq/guide-iraniraq.htm ) all the while pretending that it's all an unintended consequence of "mistakes" and lies which the public mind is being prepared to blame on "Pro-Israel forces".

So no, the "Zionist propaganda mill" won't bother refuting Mearsheimer and Walt's paper except maybe in ways which are quite absurd. That task is best left to those of us who realise that it is not only possible, but indeed highly desirable, to be both Pro-Israeli and Pro-Palestinian.

There is no obligation for anyone to subscribe to the phony dialectic of "Arabs Vs Israelis" - which is how the Global ruling elite's propaganda machine clearly wish us to perceive it.

Reply to Mearsheimer & Walt's "The Israel Lobby"

Historical and Investigative Research - 31 March 2006

by Francisco Gil-White

www.hirhome.com/israel/mearsheimer_walt.htm

__________________________________________________________

Just a few days ago, The Jerusalem Post carried the headline: "Harvard study: AIPAC leads US to act against own interests."[1] This was followed by a headline that read "The Israel conspiracy" in The Wall Street Journal, and then "Who’s afraid of the ‘Israel Lobby’?" in The Los Angeles Times.[2] You get the picture.

What is all this noise about?

John Mearsheimer, from the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt, from Harvard University, both political scientists, published a paper with the title, The Israel Lobby.[3] In this paper they claim that "For the past several decades...the centerpiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel," and they characterize the nature of this relationship as one of "unwavering [US] support for Israel." According to them, "the thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely from [US] domestic politics, and especially the activities of the ‘Israel Lobby.’" This so-called ‘Israel Lobby’ has such tremendous power over the US government, say Mearsheimer and Walt, that US foreign policy becomes pro-Israel to the point of hurting US interests. They write:

"Other special-interest groups have managed to skew [US] foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the [US] national interest would suggest..."

The most important offender in this ‘Israel Lobby,’ the professors explain, is AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee).

But Mearsheimer and Walt are wrong.

I’ll give you one example. Mearsheimer and Walt complain about the US money that yearly goes to Israel, and represent this as evidence of an exaggeratedly and absurdly pro-Israeli US foreign policy.

"Washington has provided Israel with a level of support dwarfing that given to any other state. It has been the largest annual recipient of direct economic and military assistance since 1976, and is the largest recipient in total since World War Two, to the tune of well over $140 billion (in 2004 dollars). Israel receives about $3 billion in direct assistance each year, roughly one-fifth of the foreign aid budget, and worth about $500 a year for every Israeli. This largesse is especially striking since Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income roughly equal to that of South Korea or Spain."

The professors forget to mention, however, that this money comes at a very high price for the Israelis. Some years ago, the US threatened Israel repeatedly, for a period of 8 months, that it would lose all US economic assistance unless Israel accepted the PLO inside the Jewish state. The money was badly needed because at the time, Israel was trying to resettle hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the Soviet Union. But the PLO needed this US diplomacy more than Israel needed the money, because the PLO was then a thoroughly defeated organization, in exile, in Tunis, where it would have remained were it not for the singular interest the United States ruling elite takes in this antisemitic, terrorist organization. The crucial bit of US bullying happened in 1991, and you can read about this by clicking on the hyperlink for 1991 in the Table of Contents for the following piece:

"IS THE US AN ALLY OF ISRAEL?: A Chronological Look at the Evidence"; Historical and Investigative Research; by Francisco Gil-White.

www.hirhome.com/israel/ihrally.htm

1991 is just one example. The piece above covers US foreign policy towards the Jewish people and state for the period beginning in the 1930s and ending with the year 2005. My claim is that perceiving a pattern of net US foreign policy favors to Israel is not difficult but impossible. Utterly.

The money that Israel gets from the United States is precisely the opposite of what professors Mearsheimer and Walt claim. It is not a symptom of a US government that hurts US interests in order to help Israel; it is, rather, the payment with which the US ruling elite has purchased control of Israeli foreign policy in order to hurt Israeli interests. Such control over Israeli foreign policy requires that Israeli citizens deeply trust the US government, and that kind of trust is expensive, so the US ruling elite buys it by sending an enormous amount of money to Israel (though it is really a small amount if you subtract from it the money that the US sends to Israel’s genocidal and antisemitic enemies). With the money to Israel, the US ruling elite softens Israeli skepticism towards US-sponsored policies such as the Oslo ‘Peace’ Process, which involved forcing the Israelis, with threats of no more money, to accept as the government over the West Bank and Gaza Arabs an antisemitic and terrorist organization pledged to the destruction of the Jewish state,[3a] which organization at the time had already been defeated, and which languished in Tunisian exile, far away from its Israeli targets.

What is the logical consequence?

Well, if the net effect of US foreign policy is not pro-Israel, then the alleged ‘fact’ that professors Mearsheimer and Walt supposedly mean to ‘explain’ is (in fact) a non-fact. But they must know this, because Professor John Mearsheimer occupies an endowed chair at the University of Chicago (the most prestigious university in the world), and Professor Stephen Walt occupies an endowed chair at Harvard University (the second most prestigious university in the world), so they undoubtedly have the skills to document something that is trivial to document: that US foreign policy has been markedly anti-Israel.

But guess what else is trivial to document? This: that what professors Mearsheimer and Walt call the ‘Israel lobby’ (most people call it the ‘Jewish lobby’) does not even try to produce pro-Israeli US foreign policy. On the contrary, it tries hard, amazingly but obviously, to produce pro-PLO US foreign policy, and then it loudly applauds it. This would include Mearsheimer and Walt’s special bogeyman: AIPAC.

To see that this is true, it will suffice to examine the documentation in just two HIR pieces:

1) This piece documents AIPAC’s pro-PLO stance:

www.hirhome.com/israel/aipac.htm

2) This other piece documents the anti-Israel activities of a broad spectrum of the so-called ‘Jewish lobby’:

www.hirhome.com/israel/leaders2.htm

What is the logical consequence?

Well, that the thing which professors Mearsheimer and Walt invoke in order to ‘explain’ their non-fact -- an ‘Israel lobby’ pushing for pro-Israeli US foreign policy -- does not exist.

I think losing either the thing one was going to explain, or the proposed cause, ought to be considered fatal for any theory. Mearsheimer and Walt are missing both. So unless somebody can find problems with the documentation or the logic in the above pieces (and professors Mearsheimer and Walt are invited to try), then professors Mearsheimer and Walt stand refuted.

But I would like to add something.

If Mearsheimer and Walt’s ‘Israel lobby’ controlling the US government to hurt US interests reminds you of how the Nazis accused ‘the Jews’ of controlling in secret the US government (and other Western governments) to hurt non-Jews, there is a good reason for this: Mearsheimer & Walt’s accusation should remind you.

It was a slander then, and it is a slander now. It was dangerous then, and it is dangerous now. If you would like to understand the forces behind such accusations better, the following HIR piece provides the broad historical context, documenting also the manner in which these sorts of accusations are mobilized these days.

"THE MODERN ‘PROTOCOLS OF ZION’: How the mass media now promotes the same lies that caused the death of more than 5 million Jews in WWII"; Historical and Investigative Research; 25 August 2005; by Francisco Gil-White

www.hirhome.com/israel/mprot1.htm



Full disclosure

______________

Before I went to UCLA to obtain my Ph.D. in biological and cultural anthropology (which I earned in January 2002), I got a master’s degree in the social (and biological) sciences from the University of Chicago. While there I took a course with professor Stephen Walt, who was then a full decade younger, and teaching at the most prestigious university in the world, not the second most prestigious. He was an engaging lecturer and I very much enjoyed his class. I did not, however, enjoy getting an F on my do-at-home-essay midterm exam. But I fully deserved my F, I hate to admit. Without any regard for the content of the course, I had gone off on a tangent of mine and I had theorized liberally and extravagantly with zero documented facts. Professor Walt extended a special invitation for me to meet with him in his office so that he could give me a thorough scolding, and everything he said about my paper was true: it was trash. I did not turn confrontational, but conceded my error, pleaded for leniency, and promised to conduct myself like a good student and scholar in the final exam. Professor Walt seemed impressed by my act of contrition and promised that I could still get a good grade for the course if I did very well on the final. I got an A- on the final and landed a B for my course grade, after which I made a special trip to Professor Walt’s office to thank him for giving me an opportunity to recoup my grade. "Congratulations on recouping!" was his gracious and friendly reply.

I think Professor Stephen Walt was fair to me, and I learned an important lesson that stuck. I never approached another assignment with less than complete seriousness and scholarship, and my University of Chicago master’s thesis, I am proud to say, went on to win a prize.[4] Since I am indebted to Professor Walt, I would now like to extend the same courtesy to him. If Professor Walt, after finally doing some actual social science, publicly retracts himself in a manner and venue comparable to the manner and venue in which he made his absurd claims about the so-called ‘Israel lobby,’ moreover providing the public with a full explanation of how he came to make such absurd claims, I will publish a special recognition that he has done so. This is Professor Stephen Walt’s chance to recoup the F that his paper with Professor John Mearsheimer richly deserves, a grade that I would give Stephen Walt if he were a student of mine at the University of Pennsylvania, and that he would give himself if he were still upholding the standards of scholarship which he rightly applied to me.



__________________________________________________________

Footnotes and Further Reading

__________________________________________________________

[1] Harvard study: AIPAC leads US to act against own interests, The Jerusalem Post, March 19, 2006, Sunday, NEWS; Pg. 2, 574 words, Nathan Guttman Jerusalem Post Correspondent

[2] THE ISRAEL CONSPIRACY, Information Bank Abstracts, WALL STREET JOURNAL ABSTRACTS, March 25, 2006, Saturday, Section A; Page 8, Column 1, 81 words, BY BRET STEPHENS

Who's afraid of the `Israel Lobby'?, Los Angeles Times, March 26, 2006 Sunday, Home Edition, CURRENT; Editorial Pages Desk; Part M; Pg. 3, 1169 words, Nicholas Goldberg, NICHOLAS GOLDBERG is editor of the Op-Ed page and the Current section.

[3] London Review of Books | Vol. 28 No. 6 dated 23 March 2006 | John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt | The Israel Lobby

www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html

[3a] In this footnote I address two points: 1) that the PLO means to exterminate the Jewish people; and 2) that the controlling core of the PLO, Al Fatah, was created by a leader of Adolf Hitler’s Final Solution.

The claim that the PLO means to exterminate the Israeli Jews is supported by the PLO’s own constitution, for this is what the PLO happens to announce as its intention:

Article 9…says that "armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine."

Article 15 says it is "a national duty to repulse the Zionist imperialist invasion from the great Arab homeland and to purge the Zionist presence from Palestine."

Article 22 declares that "the liberation of Palestine will liquidate the Zionist and imperialist presence and bring about the stabilization of peace in the Middle East."

TRANSLATION: The Associated Press, December 15, 1998, Tuesday, AM cycle, International News, 1070 words, Clinton meets with Netanyahu, Arafat, appeals for progress, By TERENCE HUNT, AP White House Correspondent, EREZ CROSSING, Gaza Strip. [Emphasis added]

Historian Howard Sachar explains the following about Al Fatah, Yasser Arafat’s and Mahmoud Abbas’ organization, which is the core component of the PLO, calling all the shots:

"...the Fatah (Arab Liberation Movement) [was] organized...by veterans of the Mufti’s former Arab Higher Committee."

SOURCE: Sachar, Howard Morley - A history of Israel : from the rise of Zionism to our time / Howard M. Sachar. 1982, c1979. (p.619)

Who was "the Mufti" -- the man behind the creation of Al Fatah?

That would be Hajj Amin al Husseini, who was given bureaucratic authority and a large budget by the British when they made him Mufti of Jerusalem in 1920, after Hajj Amin demonstrated that he could organize large-scale terrorist attacks against innocent Jews in British Mandate ‘Palestine.’ He used this power to organize another terrorist riot in 1921 (after which the British expanded his budget and bureaucratic authority), and then a much larger attack in 1929, followed by an even bigger attack in 1936-37 (this last one was called the ‘Arab Revolt’ and was organized with weapons provided by the Nazis). Each time, Hajj Amin’s attacks were against civilians, and they included, for example, such things as torturing Jewish children to death. In 1941 Hajj Amin met Hitler in Berlin. Hitler promised to conquer the Middle East and exterminate all the Jews living there, after which Hajj Amin would be installed as the local leader. Hajj Amin, for his part, immediately became one of the supreme leaders of the Final Solution in Europe, organizing large SS divisions in Bosnia composed of tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslim volunteers who carried out large-scale exterminations of Serbs, Jews, and Roma (gypsies) in Yugoslavia. He also played an important role in getting hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews sent to Auschwitz, and in speeding up the operation of the death camps. Yasser Arafat proudly explained to his Arab audiences that Hajj Amin was his mentor and hero.

To read more about Hajj Amin al Husseini, read Part 2 of:

"Anti-Semitism, Misinformation, And The Whitewashing Of The Palestinian Leadership"; Israel National News; May 26, '03 / 24 Iyar 5763; by Francisco J. Gil-White

www.israelnationalnews.com/article.php3

Also:

"Mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin's Role as Leading Instigator of the Shoah (Holocaust)"; Emperor’s Clothes; 5 November 2003; by Jared Israel

emperors-clothes.com/docs/bakera.htm

[4] 1996 EARL S. & ESTHER JOHNSON PRIZE. University of Chicago ($1000), for my MA Thesis: The use of biology: A general defense of the evolutionary approach to human behavior. It is "awarded annually to that student in the Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences whose paper best combines high scholarly achievement with concern for humanistic aspirations and the practical applications of the Social Sciences."

mapss.uchicago.edu/about_mapss/johnson_prize.shtml

To learn more about my academic background and work, visit:

www.hirhome.com/academic.htm

www.dissidentvoice.org/May06/Leupp29.htm

“Echoes of Germany Under Hitler”

The Office of Iranian Affairs, Embedded Journalism,
and the Disinformation Campaign for War on Iran

by Gary Leupp
www.dissidentvoice.org
May 29, 2006





According to Laura Rosen of the Los Angeles Times, the Office of Special Plans has been reincarnated as the Office of Iranian Affairs, apparently housed in the same Pentagon offices inhabited by its predecessor and involving some of the same slimy personnel. Notably, Abram Shulsky, who headed the OSP under Douglas Feith, is back. His crew will be reporting to none other than Elizabeth Cheney, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, and daughter of the Vice President. Dick Cheney is generally understood to be the strongest advocate for an attack on Iran in the administration. (He is also, by the way, architect of Bush’s “signing statements” appended to laws entitling him to ignore them. He is the man behind the throne, surrounded by neocon acolytes.)



As I wrote last November, “it is too soon to speak of the ‘twilight of the neocons’ while [John] Hannah, [Stephen] Hadley, [William] Luti, [David] Wurmser, Elliott Abrams, John Bolton, John Negroponte and other neocons remain in power, with [Michael] Ledeen and [Abram] Shulsky still skulking about.” This was the same month that Democrats staged an abortive mini-rebellion in the Senate, demanding that the Intelligence Committee’s long-delayed Phase II investigation focusing on Feith’s OSP finally get off the ground. But this seems to have been deliberately delayed by the initiation of a separate in-house investigation of Feith’s office by the Pentagon’s inspector general. Feith’s successor and fellow neocon Eric Edelman and Rumsfeld’s intelligence chief Stephen Cambone are supposedly cooperating on that. I wouldn’t expect any startling report detailing the disinformation campaign leading to the Iraq war anytime soon.



Meanwhile, Abram Shulsky, the neocon’s neocon, a scholar of Leo Strauss and Machiavelli, who has written about the application of Strauss’s thought to intelligence, is back. The Straussians of course uphold the use of disinformation (“noble lies”) to prepare the public for the difficult choices they, the Wise, have made. Already there is evidence for the deliberate planting of bogus stories planted in the press, such as occurred in the months leading up to the Iraq attack. Amir Tahiri’s report on the front page of Canada’s National Post about a religious dress code adopted by the Iranian parliament was immediately, eagerly embraced by State Department spokesman Sean McCormick, who at a May 19 press briefing was asked by James Rosen of Fox News the following:



QUESTION: On Iran, are you aware or is the Department aware of published reports stating that the Iranian parliament this week passed a measure that would require non-Muslims to wear badges that identify them as such?



MR. MCCORMACK: I have seen the news reports. These have, I think, recycled over time. There is -- as I understand it, there is a -- some law currently in the parliament, the exact nature of which is unclear, so I’m not going to try to delve into giving a definitive comment or a detailed comment about something about which I don't have all the facts.



That said, if you did have such an occurrence, whether it was in Iran or elsewhere, it would certainly be despicable.



QUESTION: Can I just follow up for a second on it?



MR. MCCORMACK: Go ahead.



QUESTION: You said that it’s been something that, to your understanding, has been recycled over time. How long has the Department been following it or did you just become aware of these reports today for the first time?



MR. MCCORMACK: Well, I've seen various news -- similar news reports and I can’t give you the exact dates, you know months ago, and they seem to be coming up again, based on the progression of -- well, I guess, for lack of a better term -- law through the Iranian parliament. The exact nature of that law is a little bit unclear and the exact motivations behind that are a little unclear. So I can’t offer, like I said, a detailed comment about it.



QUESTION: Two more questions, if I might. What is the -- what kinds of means does the Department have at its disposal for verifying the passage of laws in the Iranian parliament?



MR. MCCORMACK: Well, certainly we have access to open source material and we also talk frequently with other countries who have diplomatic representation in Iran.



QUESTION: And is there an effort underway right now to ascertain more about this?



MR. MCCORMACK: Yes.



QUESTION: And why would it be despicable, if it were true?



MR. MCCORMACK: Well, I think it has clear echoes, James, of Germany in the -- under Hitler, so I think that that’s pretty clear. But again, you know, I don’t want to delve too deeply into that because we don’t have the facts.



Does anybody else smell the soggy sheets of embedded journalism here? The Canadian paper was retracting the sensationalistic story even as McCormick spoke. There is in fact discussion in the Iranian Majlis about a law specifying Islamic dress. There’ve been laws about appropriate dress in Iran for better or worse since the inception of the Islamic Republic, so this is nothing new. But badges? The disinformationists may have cooked that up recalling an effort by Afghanistan’s Taliban in 2001 to require Hindus to wear yellow badges. Or maybe they were thinking about their own press badges.



I can just imagine some brainstorming session between the Office of Iranian Affairs guys and some Judith Miller-types.



“So what else can we do to equate Ahmadinejad to Hitler?”



“How about the dress code law?”



“Well, that’s an Islamic thing, like the dress code in Saudi Arabia.”



“We could say, badges.”



“Badges?”



“You know, like Star of David badges in Nazi Germany.”



“Do they really plan badges?”



“No, but remember the Taliban, how they put yellow badges on Hindus in 2001?”



“Yeah, in Afghanistan.”



“People will buy it. They won’t distinguish Afghanistan and Iran.”



“Yeah, and if the Afghans could do it, the Iranians could.”



“And the Germans.”



“Yeah, that works. Let’s try it.”



“The administration will comment on a press report. We’ll cover our ass and say we don’t have all the facts. But if it’s true, it’s awful.”



“Follow-up question will prompt the reference to the Nazis.”



“Yeah, that’s good. Let’s get on it.”



In the coming weeks I’d expect a rash of false reports emanating from the duplicitous fear-mongering apparatus straddling the press and the Bush administration as the western alliance heatedly debates Cheney’s plans to attack Iran, as Israel intensifies its campaign to encourage such an attack, and as U.S. efforts to legitimatize the use of force through the UN Security Council run their course. Jorge Hirsch makes a good case for the possibility that the administration will accuse Iran of spreading bird flu into the west. Yes, it’s nuts. (Just as nuts as the reports by Martin Arostegui in Insight Magazine after 9-11 suggesting “evidence pointing to [Fidel] Castro’s involvement with the introduction of West Nile virus into the U.S. via migratory birds.” John Bolton and Pat Robertson have used such material to build a case for regime change in Cuba.)



Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com dissects a report in Israel’s most popular newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth to the effect that the Lebanese Shiite party Hizbollah, aligned with Iran, plans a terrorist attack on the World Cup soccer tournament in Germany. Here’s another story to watch warily. The Europeans only last year, reluctantly and under U.S. pressure, added Hizbollah to their list of international terrorist organizations. But demonizing Hizbollah is key to the U.S. and Israeli policy of effecting regime change in Syria and Lebanon. The still mysterious assassination last February of Rafiq Hariri was immediately attributed by U.S. officials to Hizbollah’s patron Syria. Iran is an even more important Hizbollah supporter.



There was a real attack by some Arabs on a sports event in Munich, Germany in 1972. Palestinian terrorists seized the Israeli athletes’ quarters and killed eleven. Maybe some are thinking, “What if something like that happened again? People would be so outraged! And if we could blame Iran -- well, enough said!”



The strategy is clear. Define a target as evil. Find some kind of connection with weapons of mass destruction -- chemical, biological, nuclear -- or just to low-tech “terrorism,” draw some sort of Hitler parallel and get strategically placed press people on board. Plant the stories, then cite them as though they were troubling news to you. Then cite “intelligence” -- this mystical reservoir of wisdom restricted to the elite (rather like the gnosis of ancient mystery religions) -- trusting that the foolish masses will accept it on faith, at least until the job’s all done and the noble lies are inevitably exposed. You can always scapegoat the intelligence community for any errors. It can’t, by its very nature, resist that scapegoating.



And maybe, just maybe, the neocon-led administration will stage something in Germany or elsewhere that could serve as another 9-11. In his Universal Fascism (1995), prominent neocon Michael Ledeen (widely accused of involvement in the Niger uranium forgery) wrote, “In order to achieve the most noble accomplishments, the leader may have to ‘enter into evil.’ This is the chilling insight that has made Machiavelli so feared, admired and challenging... [W]e [ordinary people] are rotten.... It’s true that we can achieve greatness if, and only if, we are properly led.”



What I’d call “proper leadership” at this point is calling for regime change in this country, through impeachment or more radical methods. There is a race for time, a battle to create public opinion, lopsided given the mainstream press’s abject deference to the neocon project. There is no emotion stronger than fear, and the Bush administration so clumsy about everything else deploys this weapon with extraordinary deftness. In opposition the antiwar movement at its best wields critical reason, humanism, truth. However powerful the lies, that truth will ultimately out. Sooner better than later.



Gary Leupp is a Professor of History, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion, at Tufts University and author of numerous works on Japanese history. He can be reached at: gleupp-AT-granite.tufts.edu

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[b]Weaken Iran
A campaign to promote democracy and fund dissidents prompts speculation that the administration's goal is to change the regime.[/b]

By Laura Rozen, Special to The Times
May 19, 2006

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration, shunning pressure from allies for direct dialogue with Iran, is shifting toward a more confrontational stance and intensifying efforts to undercut the country's ruling clerics.

U.S. officials have taken a series of steps to increase pressure on Iran, most recently creating new offices in the State Department and Pentagon specifically to bolster opposition to the Tehran government. In February, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asked Congress for $75 million to supplement $10 million in funds to promote democracy, aid Iranian dissidents and expand the Voice of America's Persian-language broadcasts beamed across the Persian Gulf from Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.

ADVERTISEMENT
"We are more out of sync now with Iran than at any time since 1979," said a State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "I don't think the time is right now for a dialogue. We seem to be moving closer toward a confrontational stance, versus a compromise stance."

Although some observers note similarities in the Iran policy to the stance on Iraq in the lead-up to the war in that nation, officials emphasize that this time around, State Department diplomats rather than Pentagon war planners are in charge. Still, the campaign illustrates the administration's hostility toward Iran's rulers and raises the question of whether its ultimate goal is to curb Iran's nuclear program or change the regime.

"The administration is trying to make regime change through democratization the policy, instead of making confrontation by military means the policy," said Trita Parsi, a Middle East specialist at Johns Hopkins University who advocates direct U.S. talks with Tehran.

The administration's efforts are taking shape on the second floor of the State Department, where a new Office of Iranian Affairs has been charged with leading the push to back Iranian dissidents more aggressively, boost support to democracy broadcasters and strengthen ties with exiles.

Nearby at the Pentagon, an Iranian directorate will work with the State Department office to undercut the government in Tehran.

Rice and other officials have publicly advocated steps to pressure the Iranian government. But by setting up the new offices, staffs and programs, the administration is institutionalizing its long-held antipathy toward Iran's government.

The new offices are modest in size — the Pentagon's directorate began with six full-time staff members. But they can draw on expertise throughout the government, providing access to potentially hundreds of specialists.

The State Department's new Iranian Affairs office is headed by David Denehy, a longtime democracy specialist at the International Republican Institute, who will work under Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Elizabeth Cheney, daughter of the vice president.

Recently, Denehy and other officials went to Los Angeles for meetings with Iranian exiles and the Persian-language media. The purpose was to inform them of the government's plans, get feedback and — perhaps not a secondary consideration — create a buzz within the Iranian American diaspora and its satellite media outlets, which are beamed into Tehran.

Afterward, some Iranian Americans were left disappointed by their first look at the new campaign and by the fact that officials had not begun distributing money to exile groups.

"They came here — we didn't know why they came — asking: 'What do you think about Iran? Do you have any connections to people inside?' " recounted Zia Atabay, the founder of Los Angeles-based NITV, a Persian-language broadcaster. "We said, 'The reason you are here is you know we have a connection.' "

Assistance to dissidents in Iran is complicated by the Iranian regime's demonstrated brutality toward its critics — writers, bloggers, trade union members and human rights activists — much less anyone perceived to be receiving U.S. aid. For that reason, the State Department does not publicly disclose whom it funds.

Even private U.S. groups receiving money to support democracy efforts in Iran are reluctant to discuss their programs for fear they will put their Iranian partners in harm's way.

As much as $50 million of the funds requested will go to the Voice of America for Persian-language broadcasts. The State Department also is planning to send 15 foreign service officers to countries neighboring Iran and to capitals with large Iranian exile populations to serve as "Iran watchers."

At the Pentagon, the new Iranian directorate has been set up inside its policy shop, which previously housed the Office of Special Plans. The controversial intelligence analysis unit, established before the Iraq war, championed some of the claims of Ahmad Chalabi. A number of assertions made by the former Iraqi exile and onetime Pentagon favorite were later discredited.

Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Venable declined to name the acting director of the new Iran office and would say only that the appointee was a "career civil servant." Among those staffing or advising the Iranian directorate are three veterans of the Office of Special Plans: Abram N. Shulsky, its former director; John Trigilio, a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst; and Ladan Archin, an Iran specialist.

Even if the chief U.S. goal is arresting Iran's nuclear program — and not overthrowing the government — the democratization effort could be a useful part of the strategy, some experts said.

"The State Department policy of isolating the regime diplomatically is the main policy so far," said Daniel Byman, a professor at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and a former CIA analyst who also worked for the Sept. 11 commission.

"But there are all these different ways you could game this. Supporting opposition groups could also be a way of raising the stakes, in effect saying, 'Here's what we are going to do if you won't comply,' " he said.

The new focus also may be contradictory, Richard N. Haass, a State Department official during President Bush's first term and now president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said at a conference in Washington this month. .

"We are telling Iran, 'We want regime change, but while you're still here, we'd like to negotiate with you to stop your nuclear program,' " Haass said.

Reminiscent of the Holocaust”
More Disinformation on Iran

by Gary Leupp
www.dissidentvoice.org
May 29, 2006

Jim Lobe and Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com have both posted columns about the latest episode in the neocons’ relentless Iran disinformation campaign. A Canadian paper, the National Post, published an article on May 19 by Iranian-American journalist Amir Taheri reporting that on May 15, the Iranian Parliament had passed a law establishing “separate dress codes for religious minorities, Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians, who will have to adopt distinct colour schemes to make them identifiable in public. The new codes would enable Muslims to easily recognize non-Muslims so that they can avoid shaking hands with them by mistake, and thus becoming najis (unclean).”

The story was picked up by UPI and reproduced in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, the Jerusalem Post, and elsewhere, and represented as fact by U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack. “Despicable,” declared McCormack, adding that Iran was just like “Germany under Hitler.” “This is reminiscent of the Holocaust,” echoed Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. “Iran is moving closer and closer to the ideology of the Nazis.”

The National Post pulled the story within hours, as it became apparent that no such law had been passed or even discussed. On May 19, the day after the story had appeared, the newspaper published a piece challenging it. But like malicious slanders that linger in the air even after being disproved, the mental image of Iranian religious minorities, badged, marching off to their doom, will remain in the public mind. So this was a success for the disinfo apparatus.

And there’ve been other successes. The masses have been indoctrinated with the conviction that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, is defying the “international community” and international law, and is plotting the destruction of Israel. The latter charge is bolstered by the report that President Ahmadinejad has denied the Holocaust and called for Israel to be wiped off the map. But he never actually said that. He quoted the Ayatollah Khomeini, who died 17 years ago, as stating that the occupation of Jerusalem would be erased from the page of history, which is a rather different statement. No matter. The Washington line is that Iran wants to use nukes to annihilate the Jews.

Preparing to attack Iraq, the Bush administration argued that Saddam (“a new Hitler”) might turn over weapons of mass destruction to al-Qaeda terrorists who could then produce a mushroom cloud over New York. It was all nonsense, subsequently debunked, but in the interim the lies accomplished their purpose: to generate fear. The neocon disinformation specialists are at it again, confident they can fool the masses twice or three times as they pursue their project for a Southwest Asian empire. And maybe they’re right. They must take comfort in poll results that show most Americans would favor military strikes against Iran if it proceeds with its (imagined) nuclear weapons program. They know most Americans can’t find Iran on the map, and don’t know that it’s bordered on either side by U.S.-occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, surrounded by U.S. bases in those countries as well as Kyrgyzstan and Kuwait, that it is bordered by the oil-rich Caspian Sea to the north and the Persian Gulf to the south. They know that most Americans have short historical memories, do not realize that Iran hasn’t attacked any country in its modern history or that the last time the U.S. successfully intervened in Iran it deposed a democratic regime, empowered the vicious Shah, and set the stage for the massive anti-Shah popular uprising of 1979. They know that most Americans are clueless when it comes to the nature of nuclear technology, and that the mushroom-cloud image is the most potent fear weapon they can deploy as they set Iran up.

Their embarrassments and setbacks notwithstanding, the warmongers continue to dish out the bullshit, the psy-ops directed at the American people -- who to the extent that they wise up, constitute their real and natural enemy.

Gary Leupp is a Professor of History, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion, at Tufts University and author of numerous works on Japanese history. He can be reached at: gleupp-AT-granite.tufts.edu.

Other Articles by Gary Leupp

From: "Jeff Blankfort" <jblankfort-AT-earthlink.net>

Date: Tue, 30 May 2006 20:08:35 -0700
Subject: Israel says war on Iraq would benefit the region

There are those like Professors Stephen Zunes and Joel Beinin and Jewish
Voice for Peace's Mitchell Plitnick, all of them based in California,
who have insisted in widely circulated articles that the notion that the
Iraq war might have been orchestrated by the neocons in Israel's behalf
is ludicrous because Iraq was no threat to Israel while ignoring
statements by Israeli officials and military men across the political
spectrum calling for the US to attack Iraq because it would benefit
Israel. This was forwarded to me today and so I am passing it on to you.
It also might cause one to ask, which is the client state, which one is
"the cop on the beat?" Note the date.

Note the date:

New York Times February 27, 2003

Israel says war on Iraq would benefit the region

By James Bennet

Israelis once believed that the Oslo agreement with the Palestinians would
usher in a new Middle East of comfortable Israeli-Arab coexistence.

With Oslo in tatters, the Israelis are now putting similar hopes in an
American war on Iraq.

Other nations may cavil, but many in Israel are so certain of the rightness
of a war on Iraq that officials are already thinking past that conflict to
urge a continued, assertive American role in the Middle East.

Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told members of the Conference of Presidents of
Major American Jewish Organizations last week that after Iraq, the United
States should generate "political, economic, diplomatic pressure" on Iran.
"We have great interest in shaping the Middle East the day after" a war, he
said.

It may seem paradoxical that the country most vulnerable to an Iraqi attack
in case of war is most eager for that war to begin. But Israel's military
intelligence apparatus has concluded that the chances of a successful Iraqi
missile strike here during this war, while ever present, are small.

The Israeli government and military elite believe that Saddam Hussein seeks
devastating weapons but has far less capacity for mayhem than he had during
the Persian Gulf war of 1991, when his forces fired 39 Scud missiles at
Israel. The Israeli Army also believes that its own national defenses are
much improved.

Israel regards Iran and Syria as greater threats and is hoping that once
Saddam Hussein is dispensed with, the dominoes will start to tumble.
According to this hope - or evolving strategy - moderates and reformers
throughout the region would be encouraged to put new pressure on their own
governments, not excepting the Palestine Authority of Yasir Arafat.

"The shock waves emerging from post-Saddam Baghdad could have wide-ranging
effects in Tehran, Damascus, and in Ramallah," Efraim Halevy, Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon's national security adviser, said in a speech in Munich this
month.

Until recently, Mr. Halevy was the chief of the Mossad, Israel's spy agency.
He said, "We have hopes of greater stability, greater enhanced confidence
from the Persian Gulf to the Atlantic shores of Morocco."

Israelis have also suggested that that an Iraq war may salvage their economy
and even prompt the opposition Labor Party to join Mr. Sharon's coalition in
a new government of national unity.

Expressed in its broadest, vaguest terms, that theory has come in for the
sort of mockery that the idealistic vision of Oslo's effects suffered from
the right. The accusation is the same: fuzzy, wishful thinking.

Uzi Benziman, a journalist and author of a biography of Mr. Sharon, wrote in
the newspaper Haaretz, "Israel is looking for Ares, the ancient Greek god of
war, to play the part of the deus ex machina in this drama."

Referring to this "almost pagan faith," he continued, "It's still hard to
shake the feeling that what the fervency of Israeli expectations regarding
the war really attests to is despair." Opinion polls here have shown a
strong though not overwhelming majority in favor of war.

The precise mechanism for converting a war into regional stability has not
been detailed.

Mark Heller, a senior researcher at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies
at Tel Aviv University, said the potential engine for change would be the
example of a transformed Iraq. "It's at least conceivable that Al Jazeera
will end up showing pictures of Iraqis celebrating in the streets, in which
case people in other places - like Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt - are going
to start saying, `If Iraqis deserve decent government, so do we.' " Al
Jazeera is a widely watched Arab broadcast network.

Israeli officials say that only sustained American pressure can turn that
hope into reality. Mr. Mofaz warned that without continued attention to the
rest of the region, an Iraqi collapse could strengthen Iran.

As they look ahead to the aftermath of an Iraq war, Israeli officials are
also considering how the Bush administration's present diplomatic struggle
could help or hurt them. A top Israeli official predicted that after such a
war would come a fork in the road for American policy and "a battle for the
heart and mind" of President Bush.

The official said the Bush administration might try to mend relations with
Arab and European nations by wringing concessions from Israel toward the
Palestinians.

But he said it was more likely that rising American frustration with Europe
would benefit Israel. Mr. Sharon has been alarmed by the recent efforts of
the so-called quartet - the United States, the United Nations, the European
Union and Russia - to intervene in the conflict here. Mr. Sharon would much
prefer to deal only with the United States.

The top Israeli official said the quartet might prove a "casualty" of an
Iraqi war. "The idea of using the quartet as the great instrument of
resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - there are people in Washington
who are going to say, `What do we need these people for?' " he said.

Review: Neocons and the Corruption of the American Republic
Wednesday, May 24, 2006

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Review of Deadly Dogma: How Neoconservatives Broke the Law to Deceive America by Grant F. Smith: (Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, 2006)
By Terry Walz, CNI Staff

A new book on the "neoconservatives" in power calls for criminal indictments and shows how its leading members, including Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and Frank Gaffney, have engaged in corrupt and illegal actions that have resulted in the deaths of upward a hundred thousand people and the pilfering of the American treasury. In place of policy, the American government has been subjected to racketeering, fraud, con games, and deception, and American soldiers have been deliberately put in harm's way.

Deadly Dogma, written by Grant S. Smith, director of research at the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, reviews the specific violations of the U.S. criminal law code that the Neocons have practiced since coming to power of George W. Bush in 2000. Some of the violations date earlier, to articulations made during Ronald Reagan's presidency and then publicized once again during the late years of the second Clinton administration. "Dogma," states Smith following Webster, is a statement of principle that is authoritative without adequate grounds.

The Neocon dogmas are summarized as follows: (1) the use of the pre-emptive as a way of perpetuating America First (i.e. Neocon) power; (2) a deep belief in unlimited military spending, even for weaponry that make no sense, since it often results in fat donations to Neocon pockets; (3) the elevation of frauds to policy lies, as in the case of the case for weapons of mass destruction that allowed Americans to agree to go to war in Iraq; (4) the willingness to plunder and saturate the media with pundits promoting their goals (and thereby violating U.S. laws safeguarding the public against fraud); (5) the placing of Israeli interests above even those of the United States; and (6) the belittling of international law so that is becomes non-binding and neutered.

The scope of the fraud, racketeering, and con games embraced by the Neocons is reviewed in absorbing detail in Smith's book. Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Frank Gaffney's promotion of Boeing's tanker leasing deal of 2003, which would have cost $27 billion and was considered outdated and of limited use, shows the brazenness of the Neocon frauds, which to date have not been prosecuted. Though Neocons may not have directly benefited themselves from their efforts, their think-tanks and journals have enjoyed enormous (if undisclosed in some cases) support. The difficulty of prosecuting the Neocons has been shown in the collapse of the case brought by Hollinger Shareholders against Richard Perle over the payment of hundreds of thousands of dollars in unscrupulously earned fees. The Neocons are as tricky to catch as the Mafia is.

In the chapter "Nobility of Lies", Smith takes Condoleezza Rice and Paul Wolfowitz to task for promoting fear among the American people that Iraqi-made nuclear bombs would soon be raining down on American cities. Neither bombs nor the ability to deliver such weaponry was ever discovered, but only after American troops were dispatched to invade Iraq and begin a hugely costly occupation that shows no sign of waning. Now these statements are said to be based on false intelligence, but they were part of a carefully staged conspiracy to defraud the American people and are punishable by law.

Smith's early chapter discusses the evolution of the principle of the "preemptive strike," which is a cardinal tenet of Neoconservatism. He traces it to Israel's use of the preemptive strike against Egypt, Syria and Jordan in the 1967 Middle East War that resulted in a great victory for Israeli armed forces. Using newly released State Department documents, Smith shows how the Israeli "preemptive strike" was a strategic choice, not the result of real aggression, and that Egypt was actively seeking to mediate the dispute between them and the Israelis when the Israeli air force demolished the Egyptian air capability. Preemptive strike, Smith argues, seems clever, but in fact it is a costly and uncontrollable strategic tool. The occupation of Palestine by Israel in 1967 and the occupation of Iraq by the US, both based on the use of the preemptive strike, have resulted in huge costs and liabilities for both countries.

As for Israel, "a priori devotion to Israel is a common denominator for all neoconservatives," Smith writes. Many of the neoconservatives were strongly pro-Likud Party and worked to restrategize Middle East policy on behalf of Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of the Likud, shortly before he became Israeli prime minister. Support for Israel is the only explanation of why so many neoconservatives have risked violating US criminal law by passing on secret information to Israel.

Smith concludes, “This [deadly] dogma’s influence on the United States can be rolled back so that common sense, historical evidence, reason, and uncorrupted thinking may against navigate the ship of state.” Deadly Dogma is highly provocative: it provokes thought and outrage, and should be read by any citizen concerned by in the current wayward and malodorous drift of American policy and government.

www.rescuemideastpolicy.com/modules.php

tinyurl.com/r8rqu

nomorewarforisrael.blogspot.com

Review: Neocons and the Corruption of the American Republic
Wednesday, May 24, 2006

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Review of Deadly Dogma: How Neoconservatives Broke the Law to Deceive America by Grant F. Smith: (Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, 2006)
By Terry Walz, CNI Staff

A new book on the "neoconservatives" in power calls for criminal indictments and shows how its leading members, including Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and Frank Gaffney, have engaged in corrupt and illegal actions that have resulted in the deaths of upward a hundred thousand people and the pilfering of the American treasury. In place of policy, the American government has been subjected to racketeering, fraud, con games, and deception, and American soldiers have been deliberately put in harm's way.

Deadly Dogma, written by Grant S. Smith, director of research at the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, reviews the specific violations of the U.S. criminal law code that the Neocons have practiced since coming to power of George W. Bush in 2000. Some of the violations date earlier, to articulations made during Ronald Reagan's presidency and then publicized once again during the late years of the second Clinton administration. "Dogma," states Smith following Webster, is a statement of principle that is authoritative without adequate grounds.

The Neocon dogmas are summarized as follows: (1) the use of the pre-emptive as a way of perpetuating America First (i.e. Neocon) power; (2) a deep belief in unlimited military spending, even for weaponry that make no sense, since it often results in fat donations to Neocon pockets; (3) the elevation of frauds to policy lies, as in the case of the case for weapons of mass destruction that allowed Americans to agree to go to war in Iraq; (4) the willingness to plunder and saturate the media with pundits promoting their goals (and thereby violating U.S. laws safeguarding the public against fraud); (5) the placing of Israeli interests above even those of the United States; and (6) the belittling of international law so that is becomes non-binding and neutered.

The scope of the fraud, racketeering, and con games embraced by the Neocons is reviewed in absorbing detail in Smith's book. Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Frank Gaffney's promotion of Boeing's tanker leasing deal of 2003, which would have cost $27 billion and was considered outdated and of limited use, shows the brazenness of the Neocon frauds, which to date have not been prosecuted. Though Neocons may not have directly benefited themselves from their efforts, their think-tanks and journals have enjoyed enormous (if undisclosed in some cases) support. The difficulty of prosecuting the Neocons has been shown in the collapse of the case brought by Hollinger Shareholders against Richard Perle over the payment of hundreds of thousands of dollars in unscrupulously earned fees. The Neocons are as tricky to catch as the Mafia is.

In the chapter "Nobility of Lies", Smith takes Condoleezza Rice and Paul Wolfowitz to task for promoting fear among the American people that Iraqi-made nuclear bombs would soon be raining down on American cities. Neither bombs nor the ability to deliver such weaponry was ever discovered, but only after American troops were dispatched to invade Iraq and begin a hugely costly occupation that shows no sign of waning. Now these statements are said to be based on false intelligence, but they were part of a carefully staged conspiracy to defraud the American people and are punishable by law.

Smith's early chapter discusses the evolution of the principle of the "preemptive strike," which is a cardinal tenet of Neoconservatism. He traces it to Israel's use of the preemptive strike against Egypt, Syria and Jordan in the 1967 Middle East War that resulted in a great victory for Israeli armed forces. Using newly released State Department documents, Smith shows how the Israeli "preemptive strike" was a strategic choice, not the result of real aggression, and that Egypt was actively seeking to mediate the dispute between them and the Israelis when the Israeli air force demolished the Egyptian air capability. Preemptive strike, Smith argues, seems clever, but in fact it is a costly and uncontrollable strategic tool. The occupation of Palestine by Israel in 1967 and the occupation of Iraq by the US, both based on the use of the preemptive strike, have resulted in huge costs and liabilities for both countries.

As for Israel, "a priori devotion to Israel is a common denominator for all neoconservatives," Smith writes. Many of the neoconservatives were strongly pro-Likud Party and worked to restrategize Middle East policy on behalf of Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of the Likud, shortly before he became Israeli prime minister. Support for Israel is the only explanation of why so many neoconservatives have risked violating US criminal law by passing on secret information to Israel.

Smith concludes, “This [deadly] dogma’s influence on the United States can be rolled back so that common sense, historical evidence, reason, and uncorrupted thinking may against navigate the ship of state.” Deadly Dogma is highly provocative: it provokes thought and outrage, and should be read by any citizen concerned by in the current wayward and malodorous drift of American policy and government.

www.rescuemideastpolicy.com/modules.php

tinyurl.com/r8rqu

nomorewarforisrael.blogspot.com

www.irna.ir/en/news/view/line-20/0605192657141239.htm

Look who is leading the charge for the UK (in getting the attack on Iran going for Israel):

Zionist lobby welcomes Beckett becoming UK Foreign Secretary London, May 19, IRNA
UK-Beckett-Lobby
The Zionist lobby in the UK has welcomed Margaret Beckett becoming Britain's new Foreign Secretary, saying that her sudden appointment may benefit Israel.

According to the Jewish Telegraph Friday, Beckett is "likely to take a harder line than her predecessor Jack Straw over Iran's threat to Israel."
"Beckett is expected to back her political master (Prime Minister) Tony Blair in a more unified Anglo-American approach to Iran," it suggested.

Labour Friends of Israel director Dan Fox told the paper that Margaret Beckett had been one of the most effective government ministers since 1997 and that "there is no doubt we will see that continuing."
"Israel enjoys good relations with Britain and we are certain that they will continue," a spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in London was also quoted say.

But the Jewish Telegraph was unable to produce any evidence of any bias towards Israel or for that matter support for the Palestinian cause to reclaim their occupied homeland, saying that "to call her a Zionist would be inaccurate."
The only occasion it could find that the former Environment Secretary spoke of her understanding and appreciation of the Zionist regime was at dinner organized by Labour's Poale Zion organization in parliament 12 years ago when her party was out of government.

The newspaper was also able to recall that she visited the occupied lands on at least one occasion when she was Trade Secretary briefly between 1997 and 1998 and also met her counterpart at the time, Natan Sharansky, during a three-day visit to Britain.

Former CIA Analyst Says
Iran Strike Set For June Or July
6-1-6
Former CIA analyst and Presidential advisor Ray McGovern, fresh from his heated public confrontation with Donald Rumsfeld, fears that staged terror attacks across Europe and the US are probable in order to justify the Bush administration's plan to launch a military strike against Iran, which he thinks will take place in June or July.

www.prisonplanet.com/articles/june2006/010606iranstrike.htm

June 1, 2006
Too Stupid for Citizenship
Will Americans fall for Bush's lies again?

by Charley Reese
If we allow the Bush administration to drag this country into a war with Iran, we should all burn our voter-registration cards and go ahead and admit that we are no longer worthy of being citizens of a self-governing republic.

For heaven's sake, the administration is employing the same tactics it used to justify the war against Iraq – refusal to negotiate, lies, disinformation, and demonization of the Iranian leader. Are we going to fall for the exact same con job all over again? If so, we are far too dumb to be trusted near a voting booth.

Recently, a story was floated that the Iranians had passed legislation requiring religious minorities to wear an identifying badge. "Nazi, Nazi" cried the neocon warmongers. Trouble is, the story was completely false. No such legislation was passed, and this bit of disinformation was knocked askew by the representative of Iran's Jewish community in the Iranian Parliament.

The source of the story was an Iranian who had been a big shot when the Shah was in power and is now with a public-relations firm that represents – surprise – many of the neoconservatives.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert also told a big whopper when he said Iran was only months away from making a nuclear bomb. No nuclear expert I'm aware of agrees with that assessment, and Olmert is no nuclear expert. Even assuming Iran wants a bomb, it is years away from being able to produce one.

It's clear that the Bush administration has chosen war. One, it refuses to negotiate with Iran; two, it refuses to recognize Iran's right, as a signer of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes; three, it has already set up an office in the Pentagon and another in the State Department to agitate for regime change; and four, it has begun its anti-Iranian propaganda campaign.

President Bush is a liar when he says he wants to use diplomacy to end the crisis. In the first place, he created the crisis; in the second place, he refuses to negotiate; and in the third place, he has, for all practical purposes, issued an ultimatum: Give up your right to enrich uranium, or we'll attack.

No country in the world wants us to attack Iran except Israel. That's no surprise. If the American people haven't figured out that Israel exerts an undue and injurious influence on the American government, then that's another reason for them to tear up their voter-registration cards.

And if driving toward war with Iran isn't bad enough, the Bush administration has restarted the Cold War with Russia by its incessant criticism of Vladimir Putin's government. I think, sometimes, that the whole Bush administration is out of touch with reality and should be on medication, starting with the president and vice president.

When you consider the wars, the profligate spending, the out-of-control debt and trade deficits, the refusal to control the borders, the alienation of most of the world and the constant spitting on the Constitution and civil liberties, you can conclude that this administration is going to destroy the United States as we know it. I don't say that lightly. I never in a million years would have imagined that this administration would do what it's done.

And if you are one of those armchair jingoists who thinks it's fun to kill foreigners, just keep that thought in mind when you have to pay $10 a gallon for gasoline and the economy comes crashing down on your head. Sure, we can damage Iran's nuclear facilities and kill a lot of Iranians, but we can't do it and keep the oil flowing out of the Persian Gulf at the same time.

It isn't out of concern for the Iranians that the rest of the world doesn't want a war. It's because other nations recognize the damage it will cause the world economy. It's also because they recognize that this is a phony crisis, like Iraq's mythical weapons of mass destruction.

Even if Iran developed a nuclear weapon, so what. We have thousands; the Israelis have hundreds. Iran isn't going to attack anybody. It hasn't attacked anyone in the past 100 years.








Find this article at:
www.antiwar.com/reese/

More Zionist propaganda geared to getting US to bomb Iran for Israel (American Jew Jack Bernstein warned via www.biblebelievers.org.au/israel.htm that Zionists would trick the US into fighting wars for Israel in the Middle East with many Americans to die and get horribly wounded/maimed in the process like we have already experienced in the Iraq quagmire with Iran soon to come for Israel as well):

U.S. studying Iran's retaliation options By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 51 minutes ago


If cornered by the West over its nuclear program, Iran could direct Hezbollah to enlist its widespread international support network to aid in terrorist attacks, intelligence officials say.

In interviews with The Associated Press, several Western intelligence officials said they have seen signs that Hezbollah's fundraisers, recruiters and criminal elements could be adapted to provide logistical help to terrorist operatives.

Such help could include obtaining forged travel documents or off-the-shelf technology — global positioning equipment and night goggles, for example — that could be used for military purposes.

The senior officials spoke only on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive positions they occupy.

Hezbollah was responsible for the 1983 bombings of the U.S. Embassy and the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. The group's Saudi wing, in coordination with the larger Lebanese Hezbollah, is blamed for the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in 1996 that killed hundreds of American servicemen.

Tensions between Iran and the U.S. and its allies have grown over Iran's expanding nuclear program. Iran insists its aims are peaceful; leading U.S. officials say they are convinced the Iranians intend to develop a nuclear weapon within the next decade.

John Negroponte, head of the U.S. intelligence network, suggested in an interview aired Friday by the British Broadcasting Corp. that an Iranian bomb could be a fact in as little as four years away, although he admitted, "We don't have clear-cut knowledge."

The U.S. and five other world powers agreed Thursday on a plan designed to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions. Iran's president, without directly mentioning the proposal, pledged Friday that the West would not deprive his country of nuclear technology.

The Bush administration and U.S. allies know Iran could order attacks. Some officials believe that threat is a bargaining chip worth more to Iran if kept in reserve.

Given that diplomacy could fail to defuse the nuclear standoff, U.S. intelligence agencies are studying Iran's options to retaliate: using oil as a weapon, attacking Americans in Iraq and elsewhere, unleashing Hezbollah or deploying other tactics.

To the State Department, Hezbollah is a militant Lebanese group classified as a terrorist organization. Its terrorist wing, the Islamic Jihad Organization, is a global threat with cells in the Middle East, Europe, Africa, South America, Asia and North America. Before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Hezbollah was responsible for more American deaths than any other single terrorist organization.

Yet in many countries, Hezbollah is praised for providing education, medical care and housing, particularly in Lebanon's south, and raising money for it is legal.

So far there are no signs the Iranian-backed group is planning an imminent attack on U.S. interests. But that possibility has counterterrorism agencies keeping close watch as the friction with Iran grows.

U.S. analysts believe the potential is greater for Iran to use terrorism to retaliate, rather than to strike first. But they have considered scenarios under which Iran may view its own pre-emptive attack as a deterrent.

One senior official said that if Iran was backed into a corner and considered U.S.-led military action as inevitable, the Iranians might calculate that terrorism could break international unity, increase pressure on the U.S. or shift American public opinion.

U.S. analysts, however, are cautious in their judgments about what might lead Iran to order strikes.

Hezbollah, which means Party of God, was founded in 1982 to respond to Israel's invasion of Lebanon. The radical Shiite organization advocates for Israel's elimination and the establishment of an Islamic government in Lebanon modeled after the religious theocracy in Iran.

With some exceptions, Hezbollah has not targeted the United States in recent years — a strategic decision that gives the group more freedom to operate, according to one U.S. counterterrorism official.

On orders from Iran, Hezbollah was tied to a string of kidnappings and assassinations of Westerners in the 1980s, including the abduction of the CIA's station chief in Tehran, William Buckley, in 1984.

Hezbollah is accused of bombing the Israeli Embassy and a Jewish community center in Argentina in the early 1990s, killing more than 100. The group denies the charges.

A former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said before and right after the Sept. 11 attacks that Hezbollah was believed to have the largest embedded terrorist network inside the U.S. "I have no reason to believe that there has been a dismantlement of that capability," said former Sen. Bob Graham (news, bio, voting record), D-Fla.

Steven Monblatt, the head of the Organization of American States' Inter-American Committee Against Terrorism, said tensions with Iran could lead Hezbollah to take steps to prepare attacks on Western interests in Latin America and elsewhere.

"I think it is legitimate to be concerned about situations where terrorist groups will not have an operational base, but will have made the preparations to establish one," said Monblatt, a former State Department official. "I don't know anyone alleging an operational cell right now. Now, how do you distinguish an operational cell from a sleeper operation — a more kind of logistical base?"

Leadership in Hezbollah is exercised by Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, a Shiite Muslim cleric who took over after Sheik Abbas Musawi was killed in southern Lebanon in an Israeli helicopter strike in 1992.

Hezbollah gets significant support from Iran, Shiite communities and particularly the Lebanese diaspora. One official said the group has access to several hundred million dollars a year, much of it going to the social service network in southern Lebanon.

The organization has been linked to all kinds of organized crime, including drug trafficking, drug counterfeiting and stolen baby formula. The substantial profits are thought to be funneled almost entirely back to the Middle East.

Kevin Brock, a career FBI agent who is now deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center, recently told reporters that the U.S. has active investigations into Hezbollah around the world.

"The prioritization obviously has been al-Qaida, but that doesn't mean Hezbollah has dropped off the screen by any stretch of the imagination," Brock said.

The FBI and other law enforcement agencies have had success in breaking up Hezbollah-linked crime rings, including a cigarette-smuggling operation in North Carolina.

This year, the Justice Department announced an indictment charging 19 people with a global racketeering conspiracy to sell counterfeit rolling papers, contraband cigarettes and counterfeit Viagra. Portions of the profits, law enforcers allege, went to Hezbollah.

Extensive operations have been uncovered in South America, where Hezbollah is well connected to the drug trade, particularly in the region where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay meet. The area has a large Shiite Muslim immigrant population.

Iran Won't Give Up Nuclear Program Under Western Pressure But Agrees To Talks...

www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/06/03/iran-wont-give-up-nuclea_n_22150.html

Iran Warns US on Oil Shipments:

www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/06/04/us.iran/index.html

So the JINSA/PNAC Neocon (war for Israel) agenda is going to create a world oil crisis as well when they push Bush to have US attack Iran next via Cheney's office

Iran: Gulf War III:

www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_06_05/feature.html

Zionists manipulating public opinion to get US to attack Iran:

representativepress.blogspot.com/2006/06/manipulating-public-opinion.html

Zionists manipulating public opinion to get US to attack Iran:

representativepress.blogspot.com/2006/06/manipulating-public-opinion.html

Iran: Gulf War III?:

www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_06_05/feature.html

Not Wiped Off the Map (2):

gorillaintheroom.blogspot.com/2006/06/not-wiped-off-map-2.html

Pro-Israel group pushes tough U.S. policy on Iran
Wed Jun 7, 2006 4:15 AM IST


By Carol Giacomo, Diplomatic Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As the Bush administration pursues sensitive diplomacy, the influential U.S. pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC has sent out a fundraising letter seeking support for a tough U.S. line against Iran's nuclear program.

In a letter to supporters this week, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee requested contributions to build support for a proposed law tightening U.S. sanctions on Iran.

Meanwhile, President George W. Bush is backing a new diplomatic initiative offering incentives to Iran, including the prospect of direct talks and economic benefits, as an inducement to end its nuclear program.

The package, agreed by Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany as well as the United States, also outlines penalties if Iran rejects the deal.

It was formally presented to Iranian officials in Tehran on Tuesday. Many American and European officials are doubtful that Tehran will accept any deal but see the overture as diplomacy's best chance.

AIPAC, with about 100,000 members, has for years considered Iran and its nuclear program the most serious threat to U.S. ally Israel and sought to ensure a tough American policy.

"Iran's apocalyptic president (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) has openly and repeatedly called for Israel's destruction. But long before he began making headlines ... AIPAC was working behind-the-scenes to educate leaders throughout the U.S. government about the growing Iranian threat," the fundraising letter states.

"While many organizations now realize the threat that Iran poses, AIPAC is the only organization uniquely positioned to work with (the U.S.) Congress and the administration to take meaningful action against this terrorist regime," it said.

The letter added, "we need your help to stop Iran" and to pass the Iran Freedom Support Act.

The act, which was overwhelmingly approved by the U.S. House of Representatives and has considerable support in the Senate, would tighten sanctions on Iran, urge disinvestment from companies investing in its oil sector and support assistance for democratic forces inside Iran.

An AIPAC official said the letter's timing was not connected to the major powers' offer and its message essentially mirrored long-standing AIPAC policy.

AIPAC has not formally endorsed the U.S. decision to back the major powers' offer to Iran.

AIPAC spokesman Josh Block said: "If Iran fulfills the demands of the international community ... by immediately stopping all of its work on the nuclear fuel cycle and allowing inspectors unfettered access, that would be a positive development."

But he added: "We must remain cautious and aware of Iran's two decade history of deception and delay, and not allow the offer of dialogue to devolve into a time-wasting exercise."

The United States and its partners believe Iran is trying to produce nuclear weapons but Tehran insists its activities are only aimed at generating civilian energy.

Iran to make counteroffer to West By NASSER KARIMI, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 1 minute ago


Tehran will make a counteroffer in response to a Western incentive package aimed at persuading Iran to suspend uranium enrichment, the foreign minister said Saturday.

The counteroffer may be a variation of the proposal made by Europe, the United States, China and Russia or could be an entirely new package, Manouchehr Mottaki said, according to the state-run news agency IRNA.

"We hope that Iran's real proposal, which might come within a modified or new package, will be examined carefully by Europe," he said.

He did not elaborate on how the Iranian proposal might differ from the Western package.

"We intend to take steps toward a comprehensive understanding that considers the rights of one side, Iran, and resolves the concerns of the other side at the same time," Mottaki said. "Iran has begun examination of the European package and it will officially response to the European side."

Meanwhile, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, briefed Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit on Tehran's position on the proposal during talks in Cairo, a statement from the Egyptian side said. Larijani and Abul Gheit were to meet again Sunday, it said.

The package put forward by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany aims to restart negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program.

It included some significant concessions by Washington aimed at enticing Tehran to freeze enrichment. The United States would provide Iran with peaceful nuclear technology, lift some sanctions and join direct negotiations with Tehran.

The package also pulls back from demands that Iran outright scrap its enrichment program as an initial condition for negotiations, seeking a suspension instead. However, it also contains the implicit threat of U.N. sanctions if Iran remains defiant.

When presented with the details Tuesday, Iran said the package contains "positive steps" but also ambiguities, which it said had to be cleared up in further talks. It said it would study the package before announcing its stance.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who conveyed the offer to Tehran, said he expected a reply within "weeks."

Iran has consistently refused to give up enrichment, a process that can produce either fuel for a nuclear reactor or the material for a nuclear warhead. Iran insists its program is peaceful and that it has the right to develop enrichment — though it has signaled it might compromise on large-scale enrichment.

On Friday, a powerful hard-line cleric, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, came out against the Western incentive package, reflecting conservative pressure on the government to reject the offer.

"It's not good for Iran," Jannati said in his Friday prayer sermon, telling worshippers that the West has "no choice but to accept" an Iranian enrichment program.

Jannati is the head of the powerful Guardian Council, a constitutional watchdog arbitrating between the parliament and the government. He holds considerable influence, but the ultimate power in state matters lies with supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has sometimes overruled hard-liners on the nuclear issue.

Will the White House Moron Bring On Armageddon?

June 12, 2006
Will the White House Moron Bring On Armageddon?

by Paul Craig Roberts
John Bolton, a notorious neocon warmonger who could not be confirmed as America's ambassador to the UN by even the compliant and corrupt U.S. Senate, got the job as a recess appointment. He is using the platform to push America into war with Iran.

Bolton told the Financial Times (June 9) that the Bush Regime has no intention of reaching an agreement with Iran. Time is running out for diplomacy, Bolton told the Financial Times. Iran has a short time remaining in which it can give up its right under the nonproliferation treaty to enrich uranium for nuclear energy or be attacked. Bolton said that U.S. security guarantees for Iran "were not on the table."

There is no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. Every physicist knows that the enrichment requirement for weapons is many times greater than for nuclear energy and that Iran can barely achieve the latter. Despite the facts, Bolton told the Financial Times: "They've [Iran] got both feet on the accelerator, which is why we have a sense of urgency. Each day that goes by gives Iran more time to continue to perfect its efforts for mass production."

Bolton is lying through his teeth. Bush Regime lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and propagandistic references to mushroom clouds convinced the befuddled American public to accept an illegal invasion of Iraq. The same collection of neocon war criminals is again deceiving the American public about Iran.

In his remarks to the Financial Times, Bolton shows himself to be extremely disturbed by the prospect that the diplomatic efforts of Europe, Russia, and China could undermine the Bush Regime's plan to attack Iran. Bolton is doing everything possible to make certain that there is no diplomatic solution.

To help undermine any prospect for peace in the Middle East, Israeli gunboats shelled a public beach and killed or wounded 50 Palestinians. This was done in order to provoke Hamas into abandoning the long-established cease-fire that Hamas had imposed in the interest of negotiating a Palestinian settlement.

The Israeli government succeeded, and now there will a resurgence of "Hamas terrorism" that Bolton and his neocon compatriots can use to build a frightening spectacle of Muslim terrorism.

The Bush/Olmert axis-of-evil have made it clear that "we don't want no stinking peace."

Writing on Antiwar.com, University of California Professor Jorge Hirsch explains the tripwire that the Bush Regime has laid for Iran in order to have an excuse to launch an attack on that country. Just as the Bush Regime planned to attack Iraq and then orchestrated a case based on lies, the Bush Regime has already planned to attack Iran. Only this time, nuclear weapons will be used.

Nuking Iran is an essential part of the attack plan. The U.S. lacks the necessary conventional military force to invade and occupy Iran, but the use of nuclear weapons against Iran has a wider purpose. The neocons are determined not to have any more embarrassments, such as the Iraqi insurgency. By nuking Iran they intend to send a wider message that the U.S. will use every means at its disposal to ensure its hegemony. The neocons believe that the use of nukes will convince Arabs and the wider world that there is no recourse to accepting America's will.

The neoconservatives could not care less about public opinion. Neocons are contemptuous of the American people. Leo Strauss taught neocons that it was their duty to deceive the clueless American people in order to implement their agenda of global domination. The neocons believe that they have a perfect right, even the obligation, to manipulate the public through propaganda and black ops in order to create acceptance and support for their wars of aggression.

Neocons are the epitome of evil, and they have succumbed to hubris. Like Hitler when he attacked the Soviet Union, neocons believe that their manipulative skills and use of military power will carry the day for their agenda. Hitler's hubris doomed Germany to destruction. What price will America pay for neocon hubris?

When the neocons nuke Iran, it will revive memories in Japan and break the U.S.-Japanese alliance. Japan owns enough U.S. Treasury bonds to be able to destroy both the U.S. dollar and the market for Washington's endless red ink. Russia, China, India, and even our European lackeys will have it forcefully brought home to them that the U.S. is an out-of-control rogue nation. They will unify against us. Most likely our bought and paid-for puppets in the Middle East will fall, and Islamic leaders will gain Pakistan's nuclear weapons. Al-Qaeda will gain tens of millions of recruits.

Francis Fukuyama's phrase "the end of history" takes on new meaning.


Find this article at:
www.antiwar.com/roberts/

www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HF13Ak04.html

The day the US took a beating over Iran
By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - Despite claims that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has regained the diplomatic initiative from Iran with a conditional offer to join multilateral talks with Tehran, the real story behind the policy shift is that the US administration has suffered a decisive defeat of its effort to get international sanctions for possible military action against Iran.

US officials and French and British diplomats have sought to obscure the failure to get the agreement of Russia and China to a hardline United Nations Security Council resolution making Iranian


compliance mandatory if it refused to suspend its uranium-enrichment activities.

Nevertheless, details of the proposal finally given to Iran and Russia's subsequent statement both confirm that the US administration has had to accept a package without the threat of Security Council action it had counted on.

The list of "possible measures in the event that Iran does not cooperate" in the proposal, as revealed by Reuters on Friday based on the earlier draft of the proposal released by ABC (American Broadcasting Co) News and interviews with Western diplomats, includes 13 economic and diplomatic "disincentives" to be applied gradually, depending on Iran's behavior.

But the document makes no reference to the possibility of an enforceable Security Council decision that the US administration could use to justify a military attack on Iran.

Going into the crucial negotiations on Iran's nuclear program between Washington and the other five powers - France, Britain, China, Russia and Germany - in early May, the administration of President George W Bush had regarded such an enforceable Security Council action as the key to its strategy for increasing the pressure on Iran.

The New York Times reported on April 30 that US officials had described a plan by Rice to get agreement on a UN Security Council resolution requiring that Iran cease enriching uranium that would be enforceable under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter. Chapter VII authorizes the use of penalties, and if those are ineffective, of military force.

It now is clear that Rice hoped to get the agreement of the five powers to her plan by making a concession the US administration had been resisting for weeks - the agreement to join the talks between the EU-3 (Britain, France and Germany) and Iran. On her way to New York for the crucial meeting with the other five powers on May 8 and 9, Rice shared with aides her plan to offer that concession at the meeting, as senior State Department officials later revealed to the Times.

In return, the United States wanted the five powers to call for UN sanctions under Chapter VII. But the Russians and Chinese had other ideas.

Before the crucial New York meeting, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki had received assurances from both Russia and China that they would not support any Chapter VII resolution in the Security Council. On May 2, Mottaki told the conservative Kayhan newspaper, "The thing these two countries have officially told us and expressed in diplomatic negotiations is their opposition to sanctions and military attacks." The Iranian foreign minister expressed confidence that "no sanctions or anything like that will be on the agenda of the Security Council".

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Chinese counterpart, Li Zhaoxing, were unmoved by Rice's sudden willingness to join the talks with Iran. Reuters reported that night, "China has made it clear that any reference to possible sanctions or war should be eliminated from the UN resolution order to Tehran to curb is nuclear program. Both Moscow and Beijing oppose invoking Chapter VII of the UN Charter."

Steve Weisman of the New York Times confirmed in a May 19 report that Lavrov had made it clear in the May 8-9 meeting that Russia would not go along with any Security Council resolution that made compliance mandatory. The Europeans at the meeting, he observed, had been more realistic, hoping only that the Russians would accept a threat of sanctions divorced from Chapter VII.

Thus the real story behind Rice's dramatic May 31 announcement and the proposal announced in muted terms the following day in Vienna is that the US had backed down and accepted a package without the threat of Security Council sanctions that Rice and Bush had wanted going into New York.

It was a major defeat for the Bush administration's policy, which Rice and other administration officials immediately began to cover up. The day after the fateful New York meeting, Rice admitted only to "some tactical differences about how to express that in the Security Council", and suggested that those slight differences would all be ironed in "a couple of weeks".

That same day, Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick assured members of Congress that China had "agreed in principle" to go along with the US plan for sanctions - something he most likely knew by then was not the case. But a careful read-through of his testimony would have noted his clear attempt to pressure China over the issue, saying China's relationship with the US was "going to be determined by how they act in Iran in dealing with this nuclear issue".

Rice continued to maneuver over the next three weeks, along with Britain and France, to get agreement on a Chapter VII resolution. The Associated Press reported of May 20 that the three governments had agreed on a draft that included the sentence, "Where appropriate, these measures would be adopted under Chapter VII, Article 41 of the UN Charter."

The US administration's desperation to obtain Russian and Chinese support for the US aim is indicated by the fact that Bush made a personal call to Russian President Vladimir Putin on May 30, according to a June 1 Los Angeles Times report.

Bush was unable to sway the Russian leader. As reported by RIA (Russian Information Agency) Novosti on Thursday, Lavrov said Russia would back UN Security Council "measures" against Iran only if "Iran starts to act in contradiction to its obligations under the [nuclear] Non-Proliferation Treaty" (NPT).

Iran's enrichment program itself does not constitute a violation of the NPT, much to the dismay of the United States, which has proposed changes to the treaty that would outlaw such activities.

At her May 31 press conference, when asked whether she had agreement from Russia and China for UN sanctions, Rice ducked the issue, saying, "I think there is substantial agreement and understanding that Iran now faces a clear choice."

The defeat of the Bush administration's plan for getting major-power support for the threat of potential military action does not mean the administration is incapable of going to war. But it makes the possibility of military action increasingly difficult, adding another dimension to Rice's refrain that "Iran is not Iraq".

Gareth Porter is a historian and national-security policy analyst. His latest book Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam was published in June 2005.

(Inter Press Service)

Non-aligned states to back Iran at IAEA By Mark Heinrich
16 minutes ago


Non-aligned states will back Iran's right to nuclear fuel production at a U.N. meeting this week, unmoved by U.S. calls to join efforts to get Tehran to stop enriching uranium, diplomats said.

U.N. Security Council powers are waiting for Iran to respond to an offer they made last week for incentives if Tehran suspends enrichment and penalties if it does not.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was quoted as saying on Tuesday Tehran will "soon" give its response to the package, but gave no precise timetable.

Washington has nudged Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) states to endorse the package at a session of the International Atomic Energy Agency governing board meeting in Vienna this week.

It had hoped support by the 15 NAM nations on the 35-member IAEA board would help Washington and the European Union deflect Iranian assertions it is being bullied by powerful countries bent on denying the Islamic state nuclear energy.

But diplomats from the NAM, which groups 114 nations, said it would reissue a declaration made by its foreign ministers in Malaysia on May 30 backing Iran's right to nuclear technology.

"We won't make a new statement referring to the current (big power) proposal or make supportive noises in this regard," said a NAM diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"NAM does not want to pronounce on a proposal that basically no one knows full details about," the diplomat added.

Iran says its atomic drive is meant to generate electricity.

The West, noting Iran has the world's second largest reserves of oil and gas, suspects Tehran is concealing an atom bomb project since it hid enrichment research from the IAEA for almost 20 years and has called for Israel's destruction.

Elements of the package of trade and technology sweeteners offered to Iran by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany have been leaked by diplomats. They include unspecified penalties should Iran rebuff the offer.

DIPLOMACY NOT CONFRONTATION?

Gregory Schulte, U.S. envoy to the IAEA, told Reuters he still expected NAM states "with few exceptions" would urge Iran to "choose the path of diplomacy rather than confrontation."

"My consultations with other board members make clear that countries from every region and grouping are concerned with Iran's failure to build international confidence," he said.

NAM countries are worried that making Iran abandon its nuclear fuel enrichment plans would set a precedent preventing other developing states pursuing an atomic energy option.

They oppose any resort to sanctions as mooted by the West, seeing no justification so long as Iran has not been proved to be using enrichment technology to build atom bombs in violation of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Tensions also resurfaced at the board within the group of six world powers.

Russia and China, which had insisted the Iran offer dilute references to possible sanctions, were now refusing a French proposal to have the group, in a joint statement to the board, push Iran to embrace the package, an EU diplomat said.

"They didn't say why. But they want to maintain ambiguity, balance with several balls in the air, not look one-sided. Their trade interests are a factor," he said, alluding to Russian and Chinese stakes in Iran's energy industry.

"Only when we resume dialogue can we resolve differences," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Jiang Yu said in Beijing. "We do not wish to see new disturbances in the Middle East as a result of this issue."

The IAEA board was to take stock of the dispute in debate on Thursday. A series of statements was likely but no resolutions.

A board vote on February 4 to refer Iran to the council was joined by a narrow majority of NAM members after heavy Western lobbying. But two influential non-aligned giants, South Africa and Indonesia, abstained, demonstrating continued misgivings in the developing world about singling out Iran.

(Additional reporting by Lindsay Beck in Beijing and Mark Felsenthal in Washington)

If we gave Palistine the money to buy missel as we do Isreal, we could spot the horrible suciside bumbings, and let the Palestinians take direct aim at the Isrealies warlords and thiefs!

If we gave Palistine the money to buy missel as we do Isreal, we could spot the horrible suciside bumbings, and let the Palestinians take direct aim at the Isrealies warlords and thiefs!

If we gave Palistine the money to buy missel as we do Isreal, we could stop the horrible suciside bumbings, and let the Palestinians take direct aim at the Isrealies warlords and thiefs!

Nuking Iran

By Paul Craig Roberts

iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/article/91340

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13588.htm

06/12/06 "Information Clearing House" - -- John Bolton, a notorious
neocon warmonger who could not be confirmed as America's ambassador to
the UN by even the compliant and corrupt US Senate, got the job as a
recess appointment. He is using the platform to push America into war
with Iran.

Bolton told the Financial Times (June 9) that the Bush Regime has no
intention of reaching an agreement with Iran. Time is running out for
diplomacy, Bolton told the Financial Times. Iran has a short time
remaining in which it can give up its right under the non-proliferation
treaty to enrich uranium for nuclear energy or be attacked. Bolton said
that US security guarantees for Iran "were not on the table."

There is no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. Every
physicist knows that the enrichment requirement for weapons is many
times greater than for nuclear energy and that Iran can barely achieve
the latter. Despite the facts, Bolton told the Financial Times:
"They've Iran got both feet on the accelerator, which is why we have a
sense of urgency. Each day that goes by gives Iran more time to
continue to perfect its efforts for mass production."

Bolton is lying through his teeth. Bush Regime lies about Iraqi weapons
of mass destruction and propagandistic references to mushroom clouds
convinced the befuddled American public to accept an illegal invasion
of Iraq. The same collection of neocon war criminals is again deceiving
the American public about Iran.

In his remarks to the Financial Times, Bolton shows himself to be
extremely disturbed by the prospect that the diplomatic efforts of
Europe, Russia, and China could undermine the Bush Regime's plan to
attack Iran. Bolton is doing everything possible to make certain that
there is no diplomatic solution.

To help undermine any prospect for peace in the Middle East, Israeli
gunboats shelled a public beach and killed or wounded 50 Palestinians.
This was done in order to provoke Hamas into abandoning the
long-established cease-fire that Hamas had imposed in the interest of
negotiating a Palestinian settlement.

The Israeli government succeeded, and now there will a resurgence of
"Hamas terrorism" that Bolton and his neocon compatriots can use to
build a frightening spectacle of Muslim terrorism.

The Bush/Olmert axis-of-evil have made it clear that "we don't want no
stinking peace."

Writing in Antiwar.com (June 10), University of California Professor
Jorge Hirsch explains the tripwire that the Bush Regime has laid for
Iran in order to have an excuse to launch an attack on that country.

Just as the Bush Regime planned to attack Iraq and then orchestrated a
case based on lies, the Bush Regime has already planned to attack Iran.
Only this time nuclear weapons will be used.

Nuking Iran is an essential part of the attack plan. The US lacks the
necessary conventional military force to invade and occupy Iran, but
the use of nuclear weapons against Iran has a wider purpose. The
neocons are determined not to have any more embarrassments, such as the
Iraqi insurgency. By nuking Iran they intend to send a wider message
that the US will use every means at its disposal to ensure its
hegemony. The neocons believe that the use of nukes will convince Arabs
and the wider world that there is no recourse to accepting America's
will.

The neoconservatives could not care less about public opinion. Neocons
are contemptuous of the American people. Leo Strauss taught neocons
that it was their duty to deceive the clueless American people in order
to implement their agenda of global domination. The neocons believe
that they have a perfect right, even the obligation, to manipulate the
public through propaganda and black ops in order to create acceptance
and support for their wars of aggression.

The neocons are the epitome of evil, and they have succumbed to hubris.
Like Hitler when he attacked the Soviet Union, neocons believe that
their manipulative skills and use of military power will carry the day
for their agenda. Hitler's hubris doomed Germany to destruction. What
price will America pay for neocon hubris?

When the neocon nazis nuke Iran it will revive memories in Japan and
break the US-Japanese alliance. Japan owns enough US Treasury bonds to
be able to destroy both the US dollar and the market for Washington's
endless red ink. Russia, China, India, and even our European lackeys
will have it forcefully brought home to them that the US is an
out-of-control rogue nation. They will unify against us. Most likely
our bought and paid for puppets in the MIddle East will fall, and
Islamic leaders will gain Pakistan's nuclear weapons. Al Qaeda will
gain tens of millions of recruits.

Francis Fukuyama's phrase, "the end of history" takes on new meaning.

John Bolton, taunted and jeered by law students in an Oxford
seminar, bolts

Taunted and jeered, Bolton bolted

Michael Carmichael, Spinwatch, 14 June 2006

www.spinwatch.org/modules.php

"John Bolton is the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at
Armageddon, if it should be my lot to be on hand for what is forecast
to be the final battle between good and evil in this world." Senator
Jesse Helms (Republican, North Carolina, retired)

Facing an increasingly hostile group of law students in an Oxford
seminar that had somehow gone dreadfully wrong, beads of sweat began to
pop out on John Bolton's furrowed brow. Amidst a rising chorus of
taunts, jeers, hisses and outright denunciations, Bolton was swiftly
surrounded by his entourage of three American security agents and
whisked out the door of the seminar room at Oriel College on Friday,
the 9th of June.

Pursued by vocal recriminations from angry and frustrated American
students who led the incisive questioning and the equally incisive
jeering -- with taunts like, "You should be doing a better job!" Bolton
bolted. He turned sharply on his heel and took flight out the door and
then fled down the mediaeval passageway and into the relative safety
and calm of his bullet-proof diplomatic limousine. Bolton swiftly
headed out of Oxford, rudely foregoing the well-established tradition
of lingering to talk with interested members of the audience.

Bolton's swift exit contrasted sharply with Oxford appearances by two
other American politicians earlier this term. Both John Podesta and
Richard Perle enjoyed lingering for discussions with Oxford audiences
after their talks. John Bolton would have none of it, and the reason
was obvious. Throughout the questioning, the audience became
increasingly hostile and combative towards his neoconservative agenda.

Numbering over one hundred and consisting of a large contingent of
Americans intermingled with British and international students, the
audience was eager to hold Bolton accountable for the neoconservative
arguments he put forward in his talk. The keen attitude of the audience
infused Bolton with a noticeable reticence to remain and exchange
viewpoints even though it is a time-honoured Oxford tradition. Bolton's
performance was tantamount to arriving late for dinner, wolfing one's
food and then leaving abruptly before the cigars and Amontillado.

Bolton had been invited to Oxford for a one-hour seminar organised by
The Law Society. His talk would be followed by the routine question and
answer session.

Upon his arrival, Bolton announced that his talk would not be a free
and open discussion but strictly limited to his few selected topics: UN
reform, scandal and the next Secretary General. Predictably, Bolton
launched into his standard speech -- little more than a right-wing
denigration of the UN as riddled with corruption in the form of the Oil
for Food scandal.

Bolton began his broadside with an examination of the principle of
'sovereign equality,' whereby every nation has exactly the same voting
rights as every other member of the General Assembly. He adopted an
unsophisticated book-keeper's perspective, stating that the
contributions made by the USA dwarfed those of many other nations. He
argued unconvincingly that even those forty-seven members who paid the
bare minimum had the same voting power in the General Assembly as
America. This observation failed to impress the audience who were more
than well aware of America's financial and economic superiority to the
debt-ridden nations in the third world ? a superiority accumulated
through trade negotiations designed to extract capital from the poorest
nations and transfer it to the wealthiest.

Bolton's panacea for the bureaucratic inefficiency was simple ? a tax
cut for the wealthiest nations. At its core, he implied that a group of
sharp-eyed book-keepers backed by accountants, auditors and a hardened
core of dues-collectors should run the United Nations along strict
financial guidelines as if it were a private club with a dining room
and golf course rather than the world's premiere organization mandated
to prevent armed conflict between sovereign nations, foster economic
development, enhance social equality and cultivate international law.
If Bolton is aware of the principles defining the mission of the United
Nations, he made no mention of them whatsoever. His sole focus was a
totally transparent harangue on the disparity of dues, a tissue of an
argument that would not have convinced a fifteen year old ? much less
Oxford law students.

Turning to his case for corruption, Bolton launched into a literal
diatribe about the Oil for Food programme that he described as a
substantial scandal. The background to this is important: led by
Bolton, neoconservative critics of the UN attempted unsuccessfully to
make a criminal case against Kofi Annan and members of his family
through the Oil for Food investigation, but their efforts largely were
wasted. The investigation did discover some relatively minor official
corruption involving a paltry $150,000 paid to one individual. The
largest amount of corruption appears to have come in the form of
kickbacks and bribes to the government of Iraq by oil companies seeking
cheap oil. Of the kickbacks paid to the government of Iraq, 52% came
from the US in the form of bribes for cheap oil, a figure that is more
than the rest of the planet of 190 nations combined. While a partisan
Republican Senator, Norm Coleman of Minnesota, made allegations against
one high profile figure, George Galloway a British MP, they have been
refuted. The investigation is ongoing, but of 54 internal audits only
one has been made public. Bolton did not mention any of these details,
nor did he provide any substantive evidence for his charge of serious
levels of official corruption at the UN.

Neither did Bolton call attention to the fact that the Oil for Food
case pales into insignificance when compared to the massive scandals
engulfing American operations in Iraq involving tens and possibly
hundreds of billions of dollars or the Abramoff millions and the Enron
scandal soaring into billions of dollars. Weak, prejudiced and hostile
in its intent, Bolton's case against the UN failed to impress his keen
academic audience of law students. Bolton failed to get an indictment
from this grand jury.

The final part of Bolton's talk dealt with the next Secretary General
of the UN who will take office later this year. He criticized the
obligatory rotation of the office, arguing for a review of the rules
governing selection of the Secretary General. Although making comments
about the need for balance and fairness, Bolton observed that the next
Secretary General should come not from Asia but from the ranks of
Eastern Europe ? a favourite region for Bolton who champions the
increasing integration of Eastern European nations and leaders into the
American sphere of influence. Bolton left the impression that he is
deeply involved in the selection process for the next Secretary
General. From his remarks, it is clear that he is making every effort
to influence this selection by anointing an Eastern European
functionary loyal to the neoconservative agenda of George Bush, Dick
Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

Perhaps most dramatically, Bolton presented a stark message to his
Oxford
audience: the UN exists to institutionalize inequalities of power,
wealth and national security. In his view, the UN should be a club for
powerful nations to manage their relations with poor nations by denying
them any real power. As an agent of corporate wealth and institutional
power, in his Oxford remarks Bolton focused exclusively on justice for
capital and repudiated the notion of a democratic basis for the UN.
Bolton demanded that the UN should remain a gated community devoid of
power-sharing with its small clique of five Security Council members
wielding veto power over the remaining 190 members of the General
Assembly.

During the question period, Bolton recognized a law student who
politely asked him to justify the application of a double standard in
the Middle East that favors Israel over Syria or other Muslim nations.
Detecting the student's accent, Bolton pointedly asked, "Where are you
from?" The student was Syrian. On that note, Bolton refused to answer
the question, and instead he criticized Syria for what he deemed to be
its unwarranted interference in the Middle East and Lebanon even though
they withdrew their final 15,000 troops last year. From a historical
perspective, it is ironic that Bolton would have cited this case, for
Syria was invited to provide security operations in Lebanon by the
Maronite Christians with the tacit approval of the United Nations and
the support of the Arab League. The hypocrisy at the heart of his own
case - since he represents a hegemonic power with more than one hundred
and thirty thousand uninvited troops on the ground in Iraq, thousands
more uninvited troops in Afghanistan and which now threatens to launch
a new war against Iran - was lost on Bolton. But, Bolton's hypocrisy
was not lost on his perceptive audience who now zeroed in on him with a
barrage of pointed questions.

The next question to Bolton was why should the UN be based on dues paid
and the wealth and power of its members i.e one nation, one vote --
instead of population, which would mean -- one man, one vote. Detecting
another foreign accent, Bolton asked, "Where are you from?" The student
was from India. Bolton said that any alteration in the current articles
of the UN charter to reform on a demographic basis would change the
nature of the institution, and he indicated that principle, i.e.
democracy and one man, one vote ? remained totally unacceptable to the
United States as a basis for the United Nations. Quite.

In what was rapidly becoming his interrogation, a woman from America
questioned Bolton about the need for a balanced approach where America
would represent the best interests of the world at large rather than
its own particular regional self-interest. At that point, Bolton
fumbled. In a clumsy and misguided attempt to turn the tables on his
adroit and incisive challengers, Bolton threw out a question of his
own. He called for a show of hands of those in the audience who were
British. Bolton then asked how many of them wanted the British
Ambassador at the UN to represent the interests of Britain. Only one or
two hands were raised. Then he asked to see a show of hands of those
British subjects who wanted the British Ambassador at the UN to
represent not only the interests of Britain but also the collective
interests of the other members as well. At least a dozen hands went up
into the air. Stunned, Bolton was dumbfounded and said rather
witlessly, "I would have gotten a different result in America."

At that point, the crowd was warming to the battle unfolding before
them and led so capably by the incensed Americans in the audience. With
their voices rising in taunts and jeers and more than a dozen hands
demanding to be recognized to put more questions to him, Bolton's
attention turned to his phalanx of security agents who surrounded him
drawing the question and answer session to an abrupt close. In
retrospect, Bolton's was a disgraceful performance, one committed to an
ancien regime of property, monetary wealth and military power in
diametrical opposition to the democratic rights of humanity. John
Bolton showed himself to be a behemoth of corporate greed and corrupt
political influence in world diplomacy. My view is that his appointment
to the Ambassadorship of the United Nations was tantamount to
appointing Vito Corleone to head the FBI.

The primary purpose of Bolton's visit to Britain was not made public,
but it was clear nevertheless from his public remarks. With a history
of trips to Europe to demand the sackings of officials for whom he has
a personal dislike, Bolton's visit to Britain was obviously to demand
the sacking of the Deputy Secretary of the UN, a British subject, Mark
Malloch Brown. Bolton appeared on the influential BBC4 Today programme,
where he was interviewed by Jim Naughtie. Deputy Secretary of the UN
Brown was Bolton's first target. Brown's speech critical of US policy
vis a vis the UN had clearly irritated Bolton. Brown had criticized the
US for using the UN to take care of many foreign policy problems while
US officials hypocritically attacked it back home in red state America.
By pointing this out, Brown touched a sensitive nerve in Bolton's
neoconservative brain. For starters, Bolton falsely accused Brown of
criticizing the American people ? a sheer fabrication. Then, Bolton
lashed out at Brown for making remarks that would injure the UN. Coming
from Bolton, this appraisal sounded more like a threat than serious
criticism. In explaining the US position on the UN, he stated, "I think
that the administration has told the truth about the UN ? the good, the
bad and the ugly," a strange choice of metaphors for a man with as
controversial a reputation as Bolton.

Naughtie turned to the Iran crisis, and Bolton reiterated the official
White House line: the situation remains under negotiation but volatile.
Either Iran will acquiesce to the demands placed upon it, or it will
face dire consequences including military intervention. Leaving no
doubt that Bush and Bolton propose unilateral action, Bolton confirmed
that Iran would be a test case to determine whether the UN Security
Council could be effective in the war against terrorism.

When interviewed on the same day by the Financial Times, Bolton quashed
the concept that the Bush administration was holding out the
possibility of a "grand bargain" with Iran. In Bolton's mind, the terms
of the negotiations are focused exclusively on the Iranian nuclear
programme and do not encompass diplomatic recognition or the
normalization of relations. Far from detente, Bolton's definition of
the process is simple: the US is threatening Iran with war unless they
submit to terms which Iran finds unattractive ? the cessation of what
they state is peaceful research into nuclear energy.

Given his very public actions as exemplified by his statements in the
UK and the US, Bolton should now be considered to be functioning as the
US Secretary of State. It would not be surprising to see him elevated
to that post in the event of Condoleezza Rice leaving the State
Department or upon the election of a new Republican administration in
2008.

John Bolton has a fascinating back-story. A Lutheran from Baltimore,
Bolton studied law at Yale. The extreme right-wing presidential
campaign of Barry Goldwater politicized him, and in the late 1970s, he
emerged as a top legal advisor to the extreme racist Republican,
Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina. A description of Bolton's
political extremism records, "A veteran of Southern electoral
campaigns, Bolton has long appealed to racist voters." (John Bolton,
Right Web) During the 2000 Florida vote fiasco, Bolton played a high
profile partisan role. Working under Jim Baker, Bolton led the
so-called "white collar riot" that brought a halt to the counting of
ballots in Florida.

Throughout the 1980s, Bolton was a leader of Republican Party efforts
to undermine voting rights for minorities. Forming an alliance with
James Baker, Bolton served in both the Reagan and Bush 41
administrations. During the Clinton years, Bolton served as an
assistant to Baker when he worked as Kofi Annan's envoy in the Western
Sahara. It is somewhat ironic that Bolton is now the principal critic
of Annan. Additionally, Bolton spent time at the usual right-wing and
neoconservative institutions
including: the American Enterprise Institute; Project for the New
American Century; Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and
the Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf. Before his
appointment as US Ambassador to the United Nations, Bolton served as
Undersecretary of State for Arms Control.

In the mid-1990s, Bolton was involved in a political money-laundering
scandal that opened a channel for funds from Taiwan to Republican
candidates. (ibid.) Prior to his appointment as UN Ambassador, Bolton
was deeply involved in the Bush administration's overt campaign to
undermine international law. Bolton masterminded the systematic
abrogation of several key international treaties including: the 1972
Biological Weapons Convention; the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty; the
Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court and the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. During his work for the Reagan
administration, Bolton supported the Nicaraguan contras and sought to
deny federal investigators access to key evidence in the Iran Contra
scandal. (John Bolton, Officialssay)

Personal scandals have also tarnished John Bolton. A woman accused him
of hostile intimidation that led to a case of sexual discrimination.
Larry Flynt published evidence that Bolton's first marriage had
collapsed after he forced his wife to have group sex at Plato's Retreat
during the Reagan administration. (Rawstory)

When Bush nominated him for the UN Ambassadorship, Bolton suffered
intense scrutiny. He failed to get the endorsement of the Foreign
Relations committee, and a ranking Republican, George Voinovich of
Ohio, openly opposed him. When the nomination came to the floor of the
Senate, the Democrats launched a filibuster. When a small group of
Republicans attempted to invoke cloture to stop the debate, the motion
failed for lack of support. During a congressional recess, Bush was
forced to appoint Bolton in what is called a "recess appointment." This
weakens Bolton's stature, and the law demands that his appointment must
be renewed early next year by the Senate in spite of the embarrassment
it will cause him.

An embarrassing incident occurred last month that confirms the
suspicions of Bolton's polite Syrian questioner at Oxford. In remarks
to B'nei Brith International, the Israeli ambassador to the UN
identified Bolton as "a secret member of Israel's own team at the
United Nations," underlining his confidence in Bolton by stating,
"Today the secret is out. We really are not just five diplomats. We are
at least six including John Bolton." (Haaretz)

During his Oxford harangue, Bolton said that America is a democracy
where people vote for change and the policies they believe to be right.
His own role in the racist politics of the South, the cessation of vote
counting in 2000 and the obstruction of the Iran Contra investigation
transforms every word he ever says claiming America as a model of
democracy into the ne plus ultra of political hypocrisy. George Bush,
Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Condoleezza Rice and John
Bolton are a comfortable clutch of hypocritical politicians, and their
approval ratings now demonstrate that they are not the agents of
democracy. Quite the opposite, the democratic disconnection ? the
increasing disparity between popular opinion and government policy - in
Bush and Bolton's America is a scandal of global proportions that could
well be driving the United States over the precipice and into the abyss
of failed and failing states.

References

Bolton rejects 'grand bargain' with Iran
news.ft.com/cms/s/3016bd02-f7e9-11da-9481-0000779e2340.html

Woman accuses Bolton of harassment
www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-04-20-whitehouse-bolton_-
x.htm

Bolton Delay Offensive to Jewish Community, Says JINSA
releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp

Israel's UN ambassador slams Qatar, praises U.S. envoy Bolton
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/718679.htmlIsrael's UN ambassador
slams Qatar, praises U.S. envoy Bolton

Larry Flynt: Bush UN nominee won't answer questions about troubled
marriage
rawstory.com/exclusives/byrne/larry_flynt_bolton_511.htm

John R. Bolton
www.sourcewatch.org/index.php

Who Is John Bolton?
www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp

John Bolton ? Profile ? rightweb
rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/972

Rice's Iran Gambit
www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/06/05/rices_iran_gambit.php

John Bolton - officialssay
home.earthlink.net/~platter/neo-conservatism/bolton.html

Bush urges Iran to respond faster on nuclear offer By Steve Holland
1 hour, 47 minutes ago


President Bush said on Wednesday Iran was taking too long to respond to an offer of incentives to halt nuclear work that could lead to atomic weapons, and urged it to reply within weeks.

Responding to a suggestion by Iran that it would reply to the major powers' proposals by August 22, Bush said: "It should not take the Iranians that long to analyze what is a reasonable deal. I said weeks, not months."

Bush was speaking at a news conference in Vienna after a summit with leaders of the European Union which, together with Russia and China, has backed Bush in his drive to ensure Iran does not develop a nuclear arsenal.

Senior officials representing the six powers -- the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China -- then reaffirmed in a conference call that Iran should respond to the proposal within weeks, the State Department said.

Spokesman Adam Ereli said the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany agreed they had made a "very good offer to Iran and we all urge Iran to accept that proposal."

Bush hoped in Vienna to ensure the threat of punishment such as U.N. sanctions remains strong if Iran does not abandon nuclear enrichment, a step in the production of nuclear arms, in return for the offer of incentives made on June 6.

"We have agreed that if Iran decides not to engage in negotiations, further steps would be taken in the Security Council. We urge Iran to take the positive path," the EU and United States said in a joint statement after their talks.

Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel, whose country holds the EU presidency, said: "It's better we agree as soon as possible. Time is limited. We should not play with time."

The sextet have set an informal deadline of mid-July, when a Group of Eight industrial nations summit is planned.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said shortly before Bush spoke that Tehran would respond by August 22.

Western diplomats have said Iran's hesitation to respond may be aimed at buying time to expand its nuclear fuel enrichment program and make it a fait accompli.

IRANIAN DEBATE

Diplomats said the delay was more a sign of debate within a complex Iranian power structure over how to respond. Iran, which has the second largest oil and gas reserves, says its drive to enrich uranium is solely to provide electricity for its economy.

"The problem is that it is very difficult for them to come to a final decision. The main problem is the consequences of this decision," said Iranian political analyst Mahmoud Alinejad.

"It is clear that the leadership is not prepared to accept total suspension (of nuclear enrichment) and this is a position it is very difficult to walk back from," he said.

Bush also warned North Korea against test-firing its long-range Taepodong-2 missile, saying it must abide by international agreements. The EU said in a statement that such a test would be "deeply regrettable" and a provocative act.

Bush and EU leaders, including European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, underlined the improvement in relations since strains that appeared over the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

"I fully understand we have had our differences on Iraq. I can understand the difficulties but what's past is past and what is ahead is a hopeful democracy in the Middle East," Bush said.

Austrian police said 15,000 people protested peacefully against Bush.

The summit touched on differences between the United States and Europe on the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba and U.S. visa requirements for many eastern European countries.

On Guantanamo, Schuessel welcomed a reiteration by Bush that he wanted to close the camp eventually but said "we can only have a victory in the fight against terror if we don't undermine our common values."

On a row over global trade negotiations, both Bush and Barroso said they believed a successful deal was still possible, despite several missed deadlines.

(Additional reporting by Boris Groendahl and Mark Heinrich in Vienna, Carol Giacomo in Washington, Edmund Blair in Tehran)

JINSA/PNAC Neocon Richard Perle: Why Did Bush Blink on Iran?:



Can submit questions/comments to the JINSA/PNAC ('A Clean Break') Neocon Richard Perle via the following URL (this serving Israel first fifth columnist traitor to America is shown at the top of www.nowarforisrael.com ):


www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2006/06/23/DI2006062301135.html

Stephen Sniegoski <hectorpv-AT-comcast.net> wrote:

Friends,

Perle: Why Did Bush Blink on Iran?

Many seem to think that the chances of the US attacking Iran are now very slim. But the neocons are still pushing for war, although as leading neocon Richard Perle points out in this article, the opponents of the neocons in the Bush administration have grasped control over policy. Some type of violent incident, however, could return power to the neocons.

Note that as in the case of Iraq, Perle is pushing the liberation theme for Iran along with the weapons danger. And he implies that the great majority of Iranians want to overthrow the regime.

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/23/AR2006062301375_pf.html
Why Did Bush Blink on Iran? (Ask Condi)

By Richard Perle

Washington Post
Sunday, June 25, 2006; B01


President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran knows what he wants: nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them; suppression of freedom at home and the spread of terrorism abroad; and the "shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems."

President Bush, too, knows what he wants: an irreversible end to Iran's nuclear weapons program, the "expansion of freedom in all the world" and victory in the war on terrorism.

The State Department and its European counterparts know what they want: negotiations.

For more than five years, the administration has dithered. Bush gave soaring speeches, the Iranians issued extravagant threats and, in 2003, the State Department handed the keys to the impasse to the British, French and Germans (the "E.U.-3"), who offered diplomatic valet parking to an administration befuddled by contradiction and indecision. And now, on May 31, the administration offered to join talks with Iran on its nuclear program.

How is it that Bush, who vowed that on his watch "the worst weapons will not fall into the worst hands," has chosen to beat such an ignominious retreat?

Proximity is critical in politics and policy. And the geography of this administration has changed. Condoleezza Rice has moved from the White House to Foggy Bottom, a mere mile or so away. What matters is not that she is further removed from the Oval Office; Rice's influence on the president is undiminished. It is, rather, that she is now in the midst of -- and increasingly represents -- a diplomatic establishment that is driven to accommodate its allies even when (or, it seems, especially when) such allies counsel the appeasement of our adversaries.

The president knows that the Iranians are undermining us in Iraq. He knows that the mullahs are working to sink any prospect of peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, backing Hamas and its goal of wiping Israel off the map. He knows that for years Iran has concealed and lied about its nuclear weapons program. He knows that Iran leads the world in support for terrorism. And he knows that freedom and liberty in Iran are brutally suppressed.

The president knew all this in 2003 when he learned of Natanz, Arak and other concealed Iranian nuclear facilities. After the International Atomic Energy Agency became aware of Iran's hidden infrastructure in June of that year, we could have referred the matter to the U.N. Security Council and demanded immediate action. But neither our allies nor our diplomats nor the State Department experts assigned to the White House desired confrontation. It would be better, they argued (as always) to buy time, even though diplomatic time for them was weapons-building time for Iran.

So, after declaring that a nuclear Iran was "unacceptable," Bush blinked and authorized the E.U.-3 to approach Tehran with proposals to reward the mullahs if they promised to end their nuclear weapons program.

During these three years, the Iranians have advanced steadily toward acquiring nuclear weapons, defiantly announcing milestones along the way. At the end of May, with Ahmadinejad stridently reiterating Iran's "right" to enrich the uranium necessary for nuclear weapons, the administration blinked again.

The mullahs don't blink -- they glare. Two weeks ago, the secretary of Iran's Expediency Council, dismissing the United States as a paper tiger, said: "Something very important is happening. . . . The Americans are no longer saying that Iran must be deprived of its nuclear rights forever. Iran has accomplished a great thing."

The "great thing" Mohsen Rezai sees is a weakened U.S. position, with Washington backing away from the brave words of the past, and Rice offering to substitute the United States for the E.U.-3. Just last week, Ahmadinejad said that Iran will need nearly three months to respond to our latest offer. (How time flies when you're having fun.)

Twenty years ago, I watched U.S. diplomats conspire with their diffident European counterparts to discourage President Ronald Reagan from a political, economic and moral assault on the Soviet Union aimed at, well, regime change. Well-meaning diplomats pleaded for flexibility at the negotiating table, hoping to steer U.S. policy back toward d?tente. But Reagan knew a slippery slope when he saw one. At the defining moments, he refused the advice of the State Department and intelligence community and earned his place in history.

It is not clear whether Bush recognizes the perils of the course he has been persuaded to take. What has been presented to Ahmadinejad as a simple take-it-or-leave-it deal -- stop the activities that could enable you to acquire nuclear weapons and we will reward you, or continue them and we will punish you -- is nothing of the sort. Neither the activities nor the carrots and sticks are clearly defined or settled with our allies, much less with Russia and China. If the punishments require approval by the U.N. Security Council, the United States would need an unlikely combination of approvals and abstentions from council members. The new policy, undoubtedly pitched to the president as a means of enticing the E.U.-3 to support ending Iran's program, is likely to diminish pressure on Iran and allow the mullahs more time to develop the weapons they have paid dearly to pursue.

No U.S. administration since 1979 has had a serious political strategy regarding Iran. That has been especially evident in the past decade, when the bloom was off the rose of the Islamic revolution, the Revolutionary Guard joined the baby boomers in middle age and the Islamic republic sank into political, economic and social decline. Opponents of the regime have been calling for a referendum on whether to continue as an Islamic theocracy or join the world of modern, secular democracies. They are sure of the outcome.

The failure of successive U.S. administrations, including this one, to give moral and political support to the regime's opponents is a tragedy. Iran is a country of young people, most of whom wish to live in freedom and admire the liberal democracies that Ahmadinejad loathes and fears. The brave men and women among them need, want and deserve our support. They reject the jaundiced view of tired bureaucrats who believe that their cause is hopeless or that U.S. support will worsen their situation.

In his second inaugural address, Bush said, "All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: The United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for liberty, we will stand with you."

Iranians were heartened by those words, much as the dissidents of the Soviet Union were heartened by Reagan's "evil empire" speech in 1983. A few days ago, I spoke with Amir Abbas Fakhravar, an Iranian dissident student leader who escaped first from Tehran's notorious Evin prison, then, after months in hiding, from Iran.

Fakhravar heard this president's words, and he took them to heart. But now, as he pleads for help for his fellow citizens, he is apprehensive. He wonders whether the administration's new approach to the mullahs will silence the president's voice, whether the proponents of accommodation with Tehran will regard the struggle for freedom in Iran as an obstacle to their new diplomacy.

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) tried two weeks ago to pass the Iran Freedom Support Act, which would have increased the administration's too-little-too-late support for democracy and human rights in Iran. But the State Department opposed it, arguing that it "runs counter to our efforts . . . it would limit our diplomatic flexibility."

I hope it is not too late for Fakhravar and his friends. I know it is not too late for us, not too late to give substance to Bush's words, not too late to redeem our honor.

rperle-AT-aei.org

Richard Perle, former chairman of the Defense Policy Board and assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration, is an American Enterprise Institute fellow.

Iranian leader: U.S. nuke talks not needed By NASSER KARIMI, Associated Press Writer
Tue Jun 27, 9:30 PM ET


Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Tuesday that Iran does not need negotiations with the United States over its nuclear program, apparently seeking to reassure hard-liners the country will not cave in as it considers a key Western incentives package.

Khamenei, who has the final word on all state matters, did not give his position on the proposals aimed at persuading Iran to impose a long-term moratorium on enriching uranium.

In Washington, White House press secretary Tony Snow said Khamenei's remarks were "ambiguous" and that the Bush administration has heard varying responses from different quarters in Iran. He said Washington expects a formal response from Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, to European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana.

"We're waiting for a consistent, official response," Snow said.

Iran received the proposals June 6, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said the government will not respond officially until at least mid-August. The United States and Europe are pressing for a quicker reply.

The long period of deliberations suggests internal divisions within Iran's leadership over the proposals, which entail major concessions from Washington and a difficult compromise by Tehran.

At United Nations headquarters in New York, Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged Iran's foreign minister to speed up Tehran's response. Annan met Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki for the second time in less than a week to discuss the nuclear negotiations.

The United States has said it would join direct talks with Iran, which is being asked to suspend uranium enrichment — a program it has vowed to pursue and never give up completely. Enrichment is a process that can produce fuel for nuclear generators or the material for nuclear warheads.

The United States and its allies suspect that Iran's nuclear enrichment activities are a cover for a weapons program. Iran insists its nuclear program is limited to peaceful energy uses.

Hard-liners in Iran's clerical-run leadership have called on the government to reject the proposals and have painted any agreement to talks with Washington as a surrender.

Khamenei's remarks could be aimed at assuaging their fears by showing that talks with the United States are not a major lure for the government and that negotiations with the West will not mean giving up enrichment.

"Negotiations with the United States would have no benefit for us, and we do not need them," state television quoted Khamenei as telling visiting Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade.

He said Iran was willing to hold talks on its own terms, warning that the West can misuse the negotiating process to bar Tehran from what it considers its right to pursue enrichment.

"We do not negotiate with anybody on achieving and exploiting nuclear technology," Khamenei said. "But if they recognize our nuclear rights, we are ready to negotiate about controls, supervisions and international guarantees."

Earlier this year, Khamenei supported negotiations with Washington over stabilizing neighboring Iraq. In doing so, he overruled hard-liner opposition, though the prospects of U.S.-Iranian talks on Iraq have fallen apart since then.

If Iran accepts the incentives package, the United States has offered to join European nations in multilateral talks with Tehran over a framework that will guarantee its nuclear program cannot produce weapons.

The package also offers the lifting of some U.S. sanctions and other economic incentives, as well as a promise of American and European nuclear technology for Iran.

Washington's offer to join talks was seen as a major concession since the United States lists Iran as a sponsor of international terrorism and there have been no diplomatic relations between the two countries since 1979, when militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took Americans hostage for 444 days.

President Bush has warned Iran that it faces U.N. Security Council action unless it accepts the incentives. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier warned Iran on Saturday that it faces isolation if it rejects the package.

Iran pressed to respond to nuclear offer:

www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/06/29/russia.rice/index.html

Iran pressed to respond to nuclear offer:

www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/06/29/russia.rice/index.html

Mearsheimer/Walt on NPR discussing pro-Israel lobby

www.wamu.org/programs/dr/06/06/21.php

Why not just the old "Protocols of the elders of Zion?" This new version is no different.

Popularity

reese.king-online.com/Reese_20060630/index.php

reese.king-online.com/Reese_20060630/index.php

Popularity

When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president of Iran by a narrow margin, the U.S. experts predicted he wouldn't last three months. Ahmadinejad's approval ratings are now in the 70 percent range (as opposed to President George Bush's 30 percent range). At the present, he seems assured of re-election.

According to Iranians quoted in a British newspaper article, his popularity is a result of his honesty and the fact that he is not as radical as some had feared. He pushed to allow women to attend soccer games, and he has criticized the lifestyles of some of the clerics. He is an Islamic populist.

He is certainly one of the most misquoted men in the world. Having read the text of some of his speeches from which a few words were lifted by the American press, it's easy to see how his words are distorted for propaganda purposes, but that is par for the course of everyone who gets picked as the enemy of the day by the U.S. government. He has never threatened any country.

Our president still seems to think that he can deal with the rest of the world by issuing ultimatums. You will not enrich uranium, he has told Iran. You will disarm and do it in exchange for nothing, he has told the North Koreans. Neither country is likely to respond to threats and ultimata — especially having watched how Mr. Bush has turned the Iraq War into a cluster of errors, blunders and corruption.

In fact, a joke going around is that Mr. Bush invaded Afghanistan and created an Islamic republic and then invaded Iraq and created an Islamic republic; therefore, there is no need to invade Iran, because it is already an Islamic republic.

I seriously doubt the Bushies will invade Iran, though they might bomb it. Even doing that will have unpredictable consequences. It's no wonder that most of the world now sees the U.S. as the greatest threat to peace.

Bush and the Neocon Gang won't touch North Korean, however. They are afraid of it. A war on the Korean peninsula would make Iraq seem like a military picnic. Casualties in a Korean war would be measured in the tens of thousands, and very quickly, too. Koreans, north and south, are tough people, and nobody should ever make the mistake of thinking that a dictator's army can't fight just because the country is poor economically. World War II came roaring out of the Great Depression, yet both Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin fielded armies that could fight. Our "poor boys" did quite well themselves.

Some years ago, a few South Korean demonstrators chopped off their fingers to demonstrate their sincerity. That's taking gestures a bit too far in my book, but people who can get that passionate about politics should be left alone.

Someone should remind Bush that China got involved in the first Korean War to prevent what it considered to be a potential U.S. ally from occupying territory adjacent to its borders. I don't think China's policy in that regard has changed.

Still another president more popular than Bush is Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. The Bush administration is presently engaged in a campaign of bribes and bullying in an attempt to prevent Latin American countries from voting Venezuela a seat on the United Nations Security Council. That childish scheme will probably fail, too. The Bushies are backing that important country, Guatemala.

Let's face it, folks. We have a spoiled frat boy in the White House, and all we can do is pray that he doesn't cause too many more deaths and economic disasters before his term expires.

Bush and campaign grand wizard Karl Rove fooled the American people — some of them twice. Let's hope we have a better choice in 2008 and make a better decision, though I don't envy the person who has to come in and clean up the fiscal and foreign-policy messes of this administration.

Palace Of Lies

reese.king-online.com/Reese_20060703/index.php

Palace Of Lies
The Iraq War is an elaborate palace of lies, and to keep it shored up, the Bush administration continues to lie about it.

One of its lies is that sovereignty has been granted to the Iraqis. That's not true. An Iraqi police officer cannot investigate any crime committed by an American, much less arrest an American. When the U.S. disliked Iraq's prime minister, he was forced to withdraw. The Iraqi government, in fact, has no control over and will play no part in determining when and if American forces withdraw from the country. In short, Iraq remains under American occupation.

The foundational lie was that invading Iraq was a logical and necessary part of the phony war on terrorism. Iraq, under the secular dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, had nothing to do with terrorism. It had nothing to do with the attack on the U.S. It had nothing to do with Osama bin Laden, who publicly excoriated Saddam and was, in turn, excoriated by Saddam.

Saddam Hussein sent money to every Palestinian family who lost somebody in the intifada. It didn't matter how they were killed — shot by an Israeli sniper or killed carrying a bomb - the family got a check. The Bush administration chooses to call that supporting terrorism, but in fact, Saddam was supporting Palestinian independence. Palestinians, as with everyone else in the world, have the right to resist occupation of their country and are doing nothing that the Jews didn't do when they were resisting British occupation during the Palestine Mandate period.

Some religious cultists believe that God gave Palestine to the Israelis, but the last time I checked, God wasn't in the real estate business. British colonialism was.

The big lie used to sell the war to the gullible American public was the claim that Iraq possessed huge stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons and was pursuing a nuclear weapon. That proved false. There were no stockpiles, no programs to produce any, and no nuclear-weapons program. A Republican senator recently made a fool out of himself by claiming that a few old chemical shells scattered around the desert proved the WMD claim. To his embarrassment, even the Pentagon pooh-poohed his claim. Those old shells, now unusable, were scattered about by American bombing. Their existence had been known and noted a long time ago. As the Iraqis had told us repeatedly, they had not produced a chemical or biological weapon since prior to 1991.

Still another lie the Bush administration perpetrated was to inflate the importance of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist recently sent to hell by two 500-pound bombs. This was necessary to perpetuate the lie that most of the resistance was from foreign terrorists. No, most of the resistance was, has been and will continue to be from Iraqis who want us out of their country. Except for a couple of televised executions, we can't be sure what Zarqawi actually did. He was a Jordanian with no ties to Iraq. Two or three months ago, I predicted that it was only a matter of time before someone dropped a dime on him.

You will notice that after his death, the violence in Iraq has continued without as much as a hiccup. This indicates that he may have been taking credit for, or been given credit by the U.S. for, attacks others were committing.

The simple truth is that the invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with the war on terrorism. It was done to make the Middle East safe for Israel. The same group who led us into this war had been advocating invading Iraq long before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Americans should be outraged that they were lied into a war, but they seem to accept that passively. They are somewhat disgruntled that the war isn't going well and appears to be endless. That's at least something. Both the war in Iraq and the one in Afghanistan will last as long as American troops remain in those two countries.

The truth is that, in the end, we will have won nothing except lucrative contracts for American and British corporations. Those are not worth the life of one American, much less more than 2,500.

www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/07/04/iran.deadline/index.html

Iran defiant on nuclear deadline
Wednesday, July 5, 2006; Posted: 5:26 a.m. EDT (09:26 GMT)

Iran's president has insisted its uranium enrichment program is for peaceful purposes.



(CNN) -- Iran has reiterated that it will issue its reply in August to the Western plan for incentives and talks over the country's nuclear program, an Iranian news report said.
The Islamic Republic News Agency on Tuesday quoted Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki as saying the date for a reply cannot be altered.
"August as a date set by Iran was determined as a result of all-out and careful study of the EU package and is unchangeable," Mottaki is quoted as saying during a meeting with his Qatari counterpart Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassim al-Thani.
IRNA reported that Mottaki said until then, Iran, the European Union and other countries "involved in offering the incentives package, can hold talks and consult on the nuclear issue."
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said he did not plan to respond until August 22, but the five permanent U.N. Security Council members and Germany have been pressing Tehran to respond before the G8 summit on July 15-17 in St. Petersburg, Russia.
The permanent, veto-wielding members of the council -- United States, Britain, France, China and Russia -- are offering Iran economic, technical and political incentives if it halts uranium enrichment.
Tehran insists its uranium enrichment program is for peaceful purposes, but Western countries believe the Islamic republic is building a weapons program.
Copyright 2006 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.

Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Iran sends Solana to Paris without a deal in hand



Compiled by Daily Star staff



Iran on Tuesday rejected Western pressure for an immediate response to an international offer of incentives to suspend uranium enrichment, telling the European Union the proposal lacked proper legal guarantees. A meeting between chief Iranian negotiator Ali Larijani and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana ended with no sign of progress, although they agreed to keep in touch after Solana reports to major power foreign ministers in a Paris meeting on Wednesday.

"During these negotiations certain important points came up. Mr. Solana must consult his friends and then we will have to define together how we will proceed because we have a long road to travel," Larijani said afterward.

"We must be patient and try to negotiate ... We must allow more time for negotiations to work," he said, rebuffing calls for a quick answer to the offer.

While the Brussels talks were under way, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad breathed defiance back home, saying his country would defend its right to produce nuclear fuel.

"The Iranian nation will not retreat one iota on its way to realizing all of its rights, including complete nuclear rights and employing the capacities to produce nuclear fuel," student news agency ISNA quoted him as saying in northwest Iran.

Solana said he would report to the ministers from the six powers which drew up the offer and "we will make an analysis ... to see how we proceed."

Larijani responded to Western talk of sanctions if Iran played for time with a veiled warning of consequences for European energy supplies.

"Energy security for Europe is not a small thing, so we have to take into account all the dimensions," he said.

Talking to reporters later at the Iranian Embassy, Larijani was more upbeat, saying that the offer was broadly "suitable" but that the issue of suspending enrichment remained the central problem.

"There are different ambiguities but the offer has a central core that is suitable, acceptable," he said.

"We think that the Iranian dossier can be resolved very easily through negotiations," he said.

A senior Iranian nuclear official said differences persisted and Solana had been unable to answer all Larijani's questions.

"One of the main problems of this proposal is that there is no clear legal guarantees," he told Iranian reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"For example, they offer us a reactor, but it's not clear which country is giving it, which company, and can the government oblige those companies to give Iran those reactors if pressured by the United States," the official added.

Senior officials from Britain, France, Germany and Russia participated in the talks alongside Solana.

In Washington, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said "It is really time to get an authoritative answer."

"We hope the Iranians choose the path before them for cooperation but, of course, we can always return to the other path should we need to ... the path to the Security Council," Rice said. - Reuters, AFP

Iran rejects nuclear talk deadline

Jul. 11 - The Iranian negotiator, Dr. Ali Larijani, rejected demands for an immediate response to the latest European offer.

A senior Iranian nuclear official said there were still differences, and the Europeans had been unable to answer all of Larijani's questions. ''One of the main problems of this proposal is that there is no clear legal guarantees,'' he told Iranian reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Benet Allen reports.



SOUNDBITE: Iranian Negotiator Dr Ali Larijani, saying (Farsi with English translation):
''I see no reason for being skeptical. We want to allow more time for negotiations. Talks could be very important for the region, and I think all matters must be discussed. We should be able to go step by step in order to reach our goals.''

nuke iran / north korea / china / russia and put a stop to it all thanks

Bravo Kevin. Excellent work.

Note: The Hbrw aka Habiru aka Hebrew took the goddess Ishtar from the Iraqis and now I'm taking it back from them. Ishtar is the matriarchal Iraqi goddess who represents the morning and evening star in an old tale of the cosmos.

Bravo Kevin. Excellent work.

Note: The Hbrw aka Habiru aka Hebrew took the goddess Ishtar from the Iraqis and now I'm taking it back from them. Ishtar is the matriarchal Iraqi goddess who represents the morning and evening star in an old tale of the cosmos.

Good Quotes on the Israeli Lobby:

"The Israelis control the policy in the congress and the senate."
--Senator Fullbright, Chair of Senate Foreign Relations Committee: October 7, 1973 on CBS' "Face the Nation"

"The Israeli puppeteer travels to Washington. The Israeli puppeteer meets with the puppet in the White House; and then moves down Pennsylvania Avenue and meets with the puppets in Congress; and then takes back billions of taxpayer dollars."
--Ralph Nader, June 30, 2004 (speaking on the cable network C-Span about Israel's lobby in Washington: AIPAC)