U.S. Facing Bigger Bill For Iraq War Total Cost Could Run As High as $200 Billion,
by Michael Dobbs, Washington Post, December 1, 2002; Page A01
"Although it is difficult to predict how much Americans would pay for a new war with Iraq, one fact seems indisputable: It will be many times more than the cost of the last war, if only because other countries are much more reluctant to share the burden. Informal estimates by congressional staff and Washington think tanks of the costs of an invasion of Iraq and a postwar occupation of the country have been in the range of $100 billion to $200 billion. If the fighting is protracted, and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein blows up his country's oil fields, most economists believe the indirect costs of the war could be much greater, reverberating through the U.S. economy for many years. The 1991 Gulf War led to a brief spike in oil prices and a fall in consumer confidence that helped tip the country into a recession that cost President George H.W. Bush his chances of reelection. Despite the high economic and political stakes, there has been no equivalent of Operation Tin Cup this time around, and the current administration has refused to engage in public debate about the likely costs of a new war. 'If we can plan a war, we should also be planning a way to pay for the war," said Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. (S.C.), the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee. "Last time, we were able to slough the costs off on other countries. This time, we will have to absorb most of these costs ourselves. Someone ought to be asking questions about the impact on the budget' ... In Kuwait, most U.S. troops were able to pack up and go home in a few weeks. In Iraq, a large international military presence will be required for many years to provide security for a post-Hussein government and avert a civil war between ethnic factions, which include Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the center and Shiites in the south. ... Iraq could be expected to assume major responsibility for the long-term costs of its economic reconstruction out of increased oil revenue. But the country has been devastated by two decades of war and economic sanctions, and cannot pay for a U.S.-led invasion and military occupation ... The most uncertain cost of the war, economists agree, is the impact on the broader U.S. economy. Such costs are difficult to quantify. William Nordhaus, a professor of economics at Yale University, estimates the indirect cost of the 1991 conflict with Iraq at about $500 billion, many times larger than the official military price tag. Depending on what happens in a future conflict, the macroeconomic impact of the war could be between zero and $1 trillion, according to his estimates."

A Rose By Another Other Name The Bush Administration's Dual Loyalties,
by KATHLEEN and BILL CHRISTISON, former CIA political analysts,
Counterpunch, December 13, 2002 [IMPORTANT ARTICLE!]
"Since the long-forgotten days when the State Department's Middle East policy was run by a group of so-called Arabists, U.S. policy on Israel and the Arab world has increasingly become the purview of officials well known for tilting toward Israel. From the 1920s roughly to 1990, Arabists, who had a personal history and an educational background in the Arab world and were accused by supporters of Israel of being totally biased toward Arab interests, held sway at the State Department and, despite having limited power in the policymaking circles of any administration, helped maintain some semblance of U.S. balance by keeping policy from tipping over totally toward Israel. But Arabists have been steadily replaced by their exact opposites, what some observers are calling Israelists, and policymaking circles throughout government now no longer even make a pretense of exhibiting balance between Israeli and Arab, particularly Palestinian, interests. In the Clinton administration, the three most senior State Department officials dealing with the Palestinian-Israeli peace process were all partisans of Israel to one degree or another. All had lived at least for brief periods in Israel and maintained ties with Israel while in office, occasionally vacationing there. One of these officials had worked both as a pro-Israel lobbyist and as director of a pro-Israel think tank in Washington before taking a position in the Clinton administration from which he helped make policy on Palestinian-Israeli issues. Another has headed the pro-Israel think tank since leaving government. The link between active promoters of Israeli interests and policymaking circles is stronger by several orders of magnitude in the Bush administration, which is peppered with people who have long records of activism on behalf of Israel in the United States, of policy advocacy in Israel, and of promoting an agenda for Israel often at odds with existing U.S. policy. These people, who can fairly be called Israeli loyalists, are now at all levels of government, from desk officers at the Defense Department to the deputy secretary level at both State and Defense, as well as on the National Security Council staff and in the vice president's office. We still tiptoe around putting a name to this phenomenon. We write articles about the neo-conservatives' agenda on U.S.-Israeli relations and imply that in the neo-con universe there is little light between the two countries. We talk openly about the Israeli bias in the U.S. media. We make wry jokes about Congress being 'Israeli-occupied territory.' Jason Vest in The Nation magazine reported forthrightly that some of the think tanks that hold sway over Bush administration thinking see no difference between U.S. and Israeli national security interests. But we never pronounce the particular words that best describe the real meaning of those observations and wry remarks. It's time, however, that we say the words out loud and deal with what they really signify. Dual loyalties. The issue we are dealing with in the Bush administration is dual loyalties-the double allegiance of those myriad officials at high and middle levels who cannot distinguish U.S. interests from Israeli interests, who baldly promote the supposed identity of interests between the United States and Israel, who spent their early careers giving policy advice to right-wing Israeli governments and now give the identical advice to a right-wing U.S. government, and who, one suspects, are so wrapped up in their concern for the fate of Israel that they honestly do not know whether their own passion about advancing the U.S. imperium is motivated primarily by America-first patriotism or is governed first and foremost by a desire to secure Israel's safety and predominance in the Middle East through the advancement of the U.S. imperium. "Dual loyalties" has always been one of those red flags posted around the subject of Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict, something that induces horrified gasps and rapid heartbeats because of its implication of Jewish disloyalty to the United States and the common assumption that anyone who would speak such a canard is ipso facto an anti-Semite ... But an examination of the cast of characters in Bush administration policymaking circles reveals a startlingly pervasive network of pro-Israel activists, and an examination of the neo-cons' voluminous written record shows that Israel comes up constantly as a neo-con reference point, always mentioned with the United States as the beneficiary of a recommended policy, always linked with the United States when national interests are at issue ... Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz leads the pack. He was a protégé of Richard Perle, who heads the prominent Pentagon advisory body, the Defense Policy Board. Many of today's neo-cons, including Perle, are the intellectual progeny of the late Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a strong defense hawk and one of Israel's most strident congressional supporters in the 1970s. Wolfowitz in turn is the mentor of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, now Vice President Cheney's chief of staff who was first a student of Wolfowitz and later a subordinate during the 1980s in both the State and the Defense Departments. Another Perle protégé is Douglas Feith, who is currently undersecretary of defense for policy, the department's number-three man, and has worked closely with Perle both as a lobbyist for Turkey and in co-authoring strategy papers for right-wing Israeli governments. Assistant Secretaries Peter Rodman and Dov Zachkeim, old hands from the Reagan administration when the neo-cons first flourished, fill out the subcabinet ranks at Defense. At lower levels, the Israel and the Syria/Lebanon desk officers at Defense are imports from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank spun off from the pro-Israel lobby organization, AIPAC. Neo-cons have not made many inroads at the State Department, except for John Bolton, an American Enterprise Institute hawk and Israeli proponent who is said to have been forced on a reluctant Colin Powell as undersecretary for arms control. Bolton's special assistant is David Wurmser, who wrote and/or co-authored with Perle and Feith at least two strategy papers for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in 1996. Wurmser's wife, Meyrav Wurmser, is a co-founder of the media-watch website MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute), which is run by retired Israeli military and intelligence officers and specializes in translating and widely circulating Arab media and statements by Arab leaders ... In the vice president's office, Cheney has established his own personal national security staff, run by aides known to be very pro-Israel. The deputy director of the staff, John Hannah, is a former fellow of the Israeli-oriented Washington Institute. On the National Security Council staff, the newly appointed director of Middle East affairs is Elliott Abrams, who came to prominence after pleading guilty to withholding information from Congress during the Iran-contra scandal (and was pardoned by President Bush the elder) and who has long been a vocal proponent of right-wing Israeli positions. Putting him in a key policymaking position on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is like entrusting the henhouse to a fox. Pro-Israel activists with close links to the administration are also busy in the information arena inside and outside government. The head of Radio Liberty, a Cold War propaganda holdover now converted to service in the "war on terror," is Thomas Dine, who was the very active head of AIPAC throughout most of the Reagan and the Bush-41 administrations. Elsewhere on the periphery, William Kristol, son of neo-con originals Irving Kristol and Gertrude Himmelfarb, is closely linked to the administration's pro-Israel coterie and serves as its cheerleader through the Rupert Murdoch-owned magazine that he edits, The Weekly Standard. Some of Bush's speechwriters - including David Frum, who coined the term 'axis of evil' for Bush's state-of-the-union address but was forced to resign when his wife publicly bragged about his linguistic prowess - have come from The Weekly Standard. Frank Gaffney, another Jackson and Perle protégé and Reagan administration defense official, puts his pro-Israel oar in from his think tank, the Center for Security Policy, and through frequent media appearances and regular columns in the Washington Times. The incestuous nature of the proliferating boards and think tanks, whose membership lists are more or less identical and totally interchangeable, is frighteningly insidious ... Probably the most important organization, in terms of its influence on Bush administration policy formulation, is the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). Formed after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war specifically to bring Israel's security concerns to the attention of U.S. policymakers and concentrating also on broad defense issues, the extremely hawkish, right-wing JINSA has always had a high-powered board able to place its members inside conservative U.S. administrations. Cheney, Bolton, and Feith were members until they entered the Bush administration. Several lower level JINSA functionaries are now working in the Defense Department. Perle is still a member, as are Kirkpatrick, former CIA director and leading Iraq-war hawk James Woolsey, and old-time rabid pro-Israel types like Eugene Rostow and Michael Ledeen. Both JINSA and Gaffney's Center for Security Policy are heavily underwritten by Irving Moskowitz, a right-wing American Zionist, California business magnate (his money comes from bingo parlors), and JINSA board member who has lavishly financed the establishment of several religious settlements in Arab East Jerusalem. By Their Own Testimony Most of the neo-cons now in government have left a long paper trail giving clear evidence of their fervently right-wing pro-Israel, and fervently anti-Palestinian, sentiments ... A recent New York Times Magazine profile by the Times' Bill Keller cites critics who say that 'Israel exercises a powerful gravitational pull on the man' and notes that as a teenager Wolfowitz lived in Israel during his mathematician father's sabbatical semester there. His sister is married to an Israeli. Keller even somewhat reluctantly acknowledges the accuracy of one characterization of Wolfowitz as 'Israel-centric.'"

Beyond Regime Change. The administration doesn't simply want to oust Saddam Hussein. It wants to redraw the Mideast map,
by Sandy Toland, Los Angeles Times, December 1, 2002
"If you want to know what the administration has in mind for Iraq, here's a hint: It has less to do with weapons of mass destruction than with implementing an ambitious U.S. vision to redraw the map of the Middle East. The new map would be drawn with an eye to two main objectives: controlling the flow of oil and ensuring Israel's continued regional military superiority. The plan is, in its way, as ambitious as the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement between the empires of Britain and France, which carved up the region at the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The neo-imperial vision, which can be ascertained from the writings of key administration figures and their co-visionaries in influential conservative think tanks, includes not only regime change in Iraq but control of Iraqi oil, a possible end to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and newly compliant governments in Syria and Iran -- either by force or internal rebellion. For the first step -- the end of Saddam Hussein -- Sept. 11 provided the rationale. But the seeds of regime change came far earlier. 'Removing Saddam from power,' according to a 1996 report from an Israeli think tank to then-incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was 'an important Israeli strategic objective.' Now this has become official U.S. policy, after several of the report's authors took up key strategic and advisory roles within the Bush administration. They include Richard Perle, now chair of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board; Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense; and David Wurmser, special assistant in the State Department. In 1998, these men, joined by Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz (now the top two officials in the Pentagon), Elliott Abrams (a senior National Security Council director), John Bolton (undersecretary of State) and 21 others called for 'a determined program to change the regime in Baghdad.' [NOTE: ALL THOSE NAMED HERE, EXCEPT RUMSFELD, ARE JEWISH] After removing Hussein, U.S. forces are planning for an open-ended occupation of Iraq, according to senior administration officials who spoke to the New York Times ... Control of the country's vast oil reserves, the second largest in the world and worth nearly $3 trillion at current prices, would be a huge strategic prize. Some analysts believe that additional production in Iraq could drive world prices down to as low as $10 a barrel and precipitate Iraq's departure from OPEC, possibly undermining the cartel. This, together with Russia's new willingness to become a major U.S. oil supplier, could establish a long-sought counterweight to Saudi Arabia, still the biggest influence by far on global oil prices ... Next month, key Iraqi exiles will meet with oil executives at an English country retreat to discuss the future of Iraqi petroleum. The conference, sponsored by the Center for Global Energy Studies and chaired by Sheik Zaki Yamani, the former Saudi oil minister, will feature Maj. Gen. Wafiq Samarrai, the former head of Iraqi military intelligence, and former Iraqi Oil Minister Fadhil Chalabi, now executive director of the center ... But taking over Iraq and remaking the global oil market is not necessarily the endgame. The next steps, favored by hard-liners determined to elevate Israeli security above all other U.S. foreign policy goals, would be to destroy any remaining perceived threat to the Jewish state: namely, the regimes in Syria and Iran. 'The War Won't End in Baghdad,' wrote the American Enterprise Institute's Michael Ledeen [also Jewish] in the Wall Street Journal. In 1985, as a consultant to the National Security Council and Oliver North, Ledeen helped broker the illegal arms-for-hostages deal with Iran by setting up meetings between weapons dealers and Israel. In the current war, he argues, 'we must also topple terror states in Tehran and Damascus.' In urging the expansion of the war on terror to Syria and Iran, Ledeen does not mention Israel. Yet Israel is a crucial strategic reason for the hard-line vision to 'roll back' Syria and Iran -- and another reason why control of Iraq is seen as crucial. In 1998, Wurmser, now in the State Department, told the Jewish newspaper Forward that if Ahmad Chalabi were in power and extended a no-fly, no-drive zone in northern Iraq, it would provide the crucial piece for an anti-Syria, anti-Iran bloc. 'It puts Scuds out of the range of Israel and provides the geographic beachhead between Turkey, Jordan and Israel,' he said. 'This should anchor the Middle East pro-Western coalition.' Perle, in the same 1998 article, told Forward that a coalition of pro-Israeli groups was 'at the forefront with the legislation with regard to Iran. One can only speculate what it might accomplish if it decided to focus its attention on Saddam Hussein.' And Perle, Wurmser and Feith (now in the Pentagon), in their 1996 Israeli think tank report to [then-Israeli prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, argued for abandoning efforts for a comprehensive peace in favor of a policy of 'rolling back' Syria to protect Israel's interests. Now, however, Israel is given a lower profile by those who would argue for rollback. Rather, writes Ledeen, U.S. troops would be put at risk in order to 'liberate all the peoples of the Middle East' ... Now, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has joined the call against Tehran, arguing in a November interview with the Times of London that the U.S. should shift its focus to Iran 'the day after' the Iraq war ends ... Publicly, Perle and Ledeen cling to the fantasy that American troops would be welcomed in Baghdad, Tehran and Damascus with garlands of flowers. Yet they are too smart to ignore the rage across the Arab and Muslim worlds that would surely erupt in the wake of war on multiple Middle Eastern fronts. Indeed, the foreshadowing is already with us: in Bali, in Moscow, in Yemen and on the streets of Amman. It's clear that even in Jordan, a close ally of the U.S., the anger at a U.S. attack on Iraq could be hard to contain. Indeed, the hard-liners in and around the administration seem to know in their hearts that the battle to carve up the Middle East would not be won without the blood of Americans and their allies. 'One can only hope that we turn the region into a caldron, and faster, please,' Ledeen preached to the choir at National Review Online last August. 'That's our mission in the war against terror.'"

Des Moines Speech,
by Charles Lindbergh, 1941, PBS
[Here Lindbergh argued against U.S. involvement in World War II. Some of it is eerily echoes today's prospects for war with Iraq].
"It is not difficult to understand why Jewish people desire the overthrow of Nazi Germany. The persecution they suffered in Germany would be sufficient to make bitter enemies of any race. No person with a sense of the dignity of mankind can condone the persecution of the Jewish race in Germany. But no person of honesty and vision can look on their pro-war policy here today without seeing the dangers involved in such a policy both for us and for them. Instead of agitating for war, the Jewish groups in this country should be opposing it in every possible way for they will be among the first to feel its consequences. Tolerance is a virtue that depends upon peace and strength. History shows that it cannot survive war and devastations. A few far-sighted Jewish people realize this and stand opposed to intervention. But the majority still do not. Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government. I am not attacking either the Jewish or the British people. Both races, I admire. But I am saying that the leaders of both the British and the Jewish races, for reasons which are as understandable from their viewpoint as they are inadvisable from ours, for reasons which are not American, wish to involve us in the war. We cannot blame them for looking out for what they believe to be their own interests, but we also must look out for ours. We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country to destruction."

Portrait of a War Bird. 10 questions for 'the philosophical whore of North Beach',
by Justin Raimondo, antiwar.com, December 6, 2002
[An examination of war hawk Stephen Schwartz, raised Jewish, former Left wing radical, who converted to Islam and now rails for war against Iraq]
"National Review Online recently posted 'Ten Questions for Adel al-Jubeir,' yet another rant by Stephen Schwartz, the Michael Ruppert of the Right, who claims that the Saudi government was really behind the 9/11 attacks. It is the usual fare from the neocons' resident Saudi-phobe, a weird mixture of smears and unintentional humor. For example, Schwartz asks when terrorists arrested by the Kingdom are going to be named, and given public trials – but he might well ask the same question of John Ashcroft, who has rounded up thousands without identifying them and claims the authority to haul them before secret tribunals."

War With Iraq,
by Charlie Reese, King Features Syndicate, November 27, 2002
"The president's sudden interest in enforcing United Nations resolutions is hypocritical. There are many countries that ignore U.N. resolutions, most especially Israel, just as there are many countries that have weapons of mass destruction, including Israel ... [T]he fact that Saddam Hussein is a dictator should be of no concern to us. We have neither the moral nor legal right to go around the world deciding who should and should not rule other countries. I hope no American is so naive as to imagine that the leaders of China are democratic choices; in that case, we have literally crawled into bed with a government that has a record of having murdered more than 60 million people. Still, if the world is to live in reasonable peace, it is absolutely essential that the sovereignty of other nations and their people be respected. The one aspect of terrorism that the president has consistently ignored is the question of why anyone would wish to attack the United States in the first place. People do not do things, especially important things, for no reason at all. Any sensible and honest person, confronted with terrorism, must ask: What is the motivation for these attacks? The president's juvenile claim that we are attacked because others are jealous of our freedom is, on its face, nonsense. He knows well why we were attacked — because of our policy in the Middle East. The whole world knows that the U.S. government has allowed itself to become the puppet of Israel and that the Israeli government has politically gone mad. When the leading choice for leaders is either Benjamin Netanyahu or Ariel Sharon, there is not a ghost of a chance for peace with the Palestinians. Both men foolishly believe that they can annihilate the Palestinians with brute force. This policy, and our unquestioning support for it, is what fuels hatred for the United States in the Arab world. Like it or not, that's the truth. Furthermore, it is Israel that fears Iraq and more importantly Iran. The U.S. attack on Iraq is just the first stage in attacking Iran and probably Syria. The American people have no idea what their government is about to lead them into, and since most of the corporate press in America is the lapdog of the government, they probably won't find out until it's too late."

Senate Intelligence Chiefs Tell Bush: Go After Hezbollah Before,
[Jewish] Forward, November 22, 2002
"Riding a renewed wave of criticism of the Bush administration's war against terrorism following the reemergence of Osama Bin Laden, two leading senators with intelligence portfolios are demanding that the United States strike Hezbollah and Hamas before going to war against Iraq. Florida Democrat Bob Graham and Alabama Republican Richard Shelby told CNN this week that they see terrorist camps operating in the Middle East as an immediate threat that should be addressed with preemptive strikes. Graham and Shelby have both enjoyed access to intelligence briefings, putting weight behind their remarks and pressure on the administration. Other observers say that Hezbollah is focusing its guerrilla activities in Lebanon where it has become an entrenched political force, and is unlikely to resume the international terrorist operations it conducted during the 1980s. They note that Hamas has never targeted the United States. However, recent trials and arrests of Hezbollah operatives in North Carolina and Canada, as well as a flurry of reports about the existence of Hezbollah cells around the globe, have fueled speculation that the group might join hands with Al Qaeda or Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in case of a war against Iraq."

Did Bullies Torment Richard Perle? Calvin Trillin's joke springs to life,
Slate, November 21, 2002
"Calvin Trillin writes political doggerel every week for The Nation. On Sept. 16, he published a poem titled 'Richard Perle: Whose Fault Is He?' The satirical conceit was that schoolyard bullies who pushed Perle around as a child 'have got a lot to answer for,/ 'Cause Richard Perle now wants to start a war.' (Perle, who was assistant secretary of defense for international security during the Reagan administration, now chairs the Defense Policy Board, which advises the Pentagon, and is America's leading Iraq hawk.) ... After [the Perle poem] appeared, a couple of Perle's childhood acquaintances contacted Trillin. 'These sources basically said, 'How did you know this? We went to school with him,' 'Trillin told Chatterbox. 'It's kind of disillusioning. You can't even invent a slander in this country anymore.'"

No War with Iraq,
The Nation, November 4, 2002 issue
[Compilation of links to articles and web sites against a war with Iraq]

Journalist Helen Thomas condemns Bush administration,
MIT Tech Talk, November 6, 2002
"Veteran journalist Helen Thomas brought the grit and whir of a White House press conference to Bartos Theater on Monday evening, speaking with passion about the media's role in a democracy whose leaders seem eager for war. Actually, the 82-year-old former United Press International reporter didn't just speak: she surged into her topic, giving everyone present an immediate sense of the grumpy wit and fierce precision that gave her reporting on American presidents Kennedy through Bush II such a competitive and lasting edge. 'I censored myself for 50 years when I was a reporter,' said Thomas, who is now a columnist for Hearst News Service. 'Now I wake up and ask myself, 'Who do I hate today?' ... 'I have never covered a president who actually wanted to go to war. Bush's policy of pre-emptive war is immoral - such a policy would legitimize Pearl Harbor. It's as if they learned none of the lessons from Vietnam,' she said to enthusiastic applause. Thomas ignored the clapping just as she once ignored the camera flashes and shouting matches of the Washington press corps. 'Where is the outrage?' she demanded. 'Where is Congress? They're supine! Bush has held only six press conferences, the only forum in our society where a president can be questioned' ... Again and again, Thomas warned the MIT audience, 'It's bombs away for Iraq and on our civil liberties if Bush and his cronies get their way. Dissent is patriotic!'" [Why is Congress 'supine?']

Oil and Israel. Two unspoken reasons why Bush wants to wage war against Iraq,
by Michael Kinsley, MSNBC (Slate magazine), October 24, 2002
"So, why exactly is Iraq different from North Korea? Both are founding members of President Bush’s 'axis of evil,' and both deserve that honor. North Korea has now admitted to a nuclear weapons development program on about the same timeline as what we only suspect about Iraq. So, why are we barely complaining in one case and off to war in the other? ... The lack of public discussion about the role of Israel in the thinking of 'President Bush' is easier to understand, but weird nevertheless. It is the proverbial elephant in the room: Everybody sees it, no one mentions it. The reason is obvious and admirable: Neither supporters nor opponents of a war against Iraq wish to evoke the classic anti-Semitic image of the king’s Jewish advisers whispering poison into his ear and betraying the country to foreign interests. But the consequence of this massive 'Shhhhhhhhh!' is to make a perfectly valid American concern for a democratic ally in a region of nutty theocracies, rotting monarchies, and worse seem furtive and suspicious." [Kinsley is Jewish]

Jewish Legislators Back Iraq Resolution,
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, October 18, 2002
"Stop Saddam Hussein now, before it’s too late. That is the message elected officials, ranging from local members of Congress to President George W. Bush, worked to get across to the Americans these past few weeks. 'We have to confront him sooner or later," Rep. Howard Berman (D-Mission Hills) told The Journal. 'Even though it is risky and we are worried about all the things that could go wrong, it is less risky, less costly and less dangerous to do it now than it would be later, both for our military and for the Iraqi people.' It is a position shared by many in Congress. Despite fierce debate in the House and the Senate, both houses last week passed a joint resolution giving Bush the authority to use military force, if necessary, to compel Iraq to destroy its biological and chemical weapons and disband its nuclear weapons program. Support for the measure was mixed among California representatives and senators, but strong among the state’s Jewish elected officials."

Old Money Wants Iraq Back,
Newsday, October 10, 2002
"The limousine was so long it looked like a small, mobile country of tinted glass. It was escorted by four Nassau County police cars. When Ahmed Chalebi stepped from it at the Mineola courthouse to speak to the media yesterday, correction officers stood guard. They wore bullet-proof vests. Chalebi wore a nice suit. He is an Iraqi-born, Western-educated investment banker and head of an organization calling itself the Iraqi National Congress. The members of this group are all exiles, and all opponents of Saddam Hussein. They want him out. They want parliamentary democracy in. The occasion for this visitation to the grubby courthouse by Chalebi, a patrician-looking, soft-spoken man, was a little obscure, to be honest. It seems Chalebi is friendly with a Long Island man named Mark Broxmeyer, who is in the real estate business, and who also is chairman of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, and who also happens to be a member of the board of trustees of Hofstra University. Through whatever association it was, Broxmeyer apparently arranged for Chalebi to give a lecture about Iraq yesterday at Hofstra. An hour before that, Chalebi spoke to the media in Mineola about the great historic homeland to which he would like to return."

Hawking for Israel. South Florida reps push for war. But who are they pushing for?,
New Times (Florida), September 26, 2002
"Bashing Bush With a manner strongly reminiscent of fellow Brooklyn native John McEnroe arguing a line call, Robert Wexler has made himself one of the nation's loudest critics of President Bush. The liberal congressman from Boca Raton has made more than 100 appearances on cable television shows during the past two years, debating with Bill O'Reilly, Bob Novak, Pat Buchanan, and other conservative carnival barkers. He's attacked Bush on the environment, prescription drugs, corporate scandals, tax cuts for the rich, and the issue that first put him on the TV map: the president's 2000 election tactics ... So when Wexler appeared on CNN's TalkBack Live September 4 to discuss the president's bull rush to invade Iraq, we might have expected to finally hear a South Florida Democrat vociferously attack the ill-conceived plan ... But Wexler instead told host Arthel Neville that war on Iraq is a swell idea. "Well, I support the president's stated goal, which is a regime change in Iraq," the congressman proclaimed. "And I agree with the president that Saddam Hussein has to go' ... Wexler isn't a new convert to Bush -- he's just an old loyalist to Israel, a country that, along with a powerful Washington, D.C., lobbying group called the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), is pushing the war on Iraq with a vengeance. In essence, the Israeli lobby is urging big brother America to come out, flex its military muscles, and make the Israel-American alliance the dominant power in the Middle East. An orthodox Jew, Wexler has always been a Zionist hard-liner and has received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from pro-Israel interests during the past six years. And he's picked up a big stick for the fight against Iraq. A member of the House committee on international relations, lately he's been spending an inordinate amount of time traveling around the country and the world promoting Israel and the war on Hussein ... Broward County's own Jewish Democrat in Congress, Rep. Peter Deutsch, is another near-fanatical, pro-Israel politician who expects to vote for military action in Iraq and has publicly backed it ... The Washington, D.C.-based Jews for Peace in Palestine and Israel has put both Deutsch and Wexler in its 'Hall of Shame' for their pro-Israel voting records. Powerful lobbying groups like the American Jewish Congress and AIPAC have 'hijacked the agenda' with millions of dollars in campaign contributions and powerful backers, alleges JPPI founder Josh Ruebner, adding that politicians like Wexler are 'representing the government of Israel, absolutely. Most American Jewish members of Congress are guilty of that.'"

Maureen Dowd: 'Influential Jews' Pushing Iraq War,
Newsmax, Monday, Oct. 7, 2002
"New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd was on the hot seat Monday morning for a paragraph buried deep in her Sunday column where she seemed to blame 'influential Jewish conservatives' for persuading President Bush to go to war in Iraq. 'Influential Jewish conservatives inside and outside the administration have been fierce in supporting a war on Saddam, thinking it could help Israel by scrambling the Middle East map and encouraging democracy,' contended the Irish Catholic liberal. Dowd's suggestion that Jews in the Bush administration were putting Israel's interests over the U.S.'s raised eyebrows on the 'Imus in the Morning' program. Asked about the Times columnist's 'influential Jewish conservatives' reference, Newsweek's Howard Fineman, a Dowd soulmate, insisted, 'Maureen Dowd doesn't have an anti-Semitic bone in her body.' But moments later, when NBC Pentagon reporter Jim Miklaszewski was asked to explain what he thought Dowd meant by the remark, he said she was talking about a 'what many would call a cabal within the administration.'"

Beyond Regime Change. The administration doesn't simply want to oust Saddam Hussein. It wants to redraw the Mideast map,
by Sandy Toland, Los Angeles Times, December 1, 2002
"If you want to know what the administration has in mind for Iraq, here's a hint: It has less to do with weapons of mass destruction than with implementing an ambitious U.S. vision to redraw the map of the Middle East. The new map would be drawn with an eye to two main objectives: controlling the flow of oil and ensuring Israel's continued regional military superiority. The plan is, in its way, as ambitious as the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement between the empires of Britain and France, which carved up the region at the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The neo-imperial vision, which can be ascertained from the writings of key administration figures and their co-visionaries in influential conservative think tanks, includes not only regime change in Iraq but control of Iraqi oil, a possible end to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and newly compliant governments in Syria and Iran -- either by force or internal rebellion. For the first step -- the end of Saddam Hussein -- Sept. 11 provided the rationale. But the seeds of regime change came far earlier. 'Removing Saddam from power,' according to a 1996 report from an Israeli think tank to then-incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was 'an important Israeli strategic objective.' Now this has become official U.S. policy, after several of the report's authors took up key strategic and advisory roles within the Bush administration. They include Richard Perle, now chair of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board; Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense; and David Wurmser, special assistant in the State Department. In 1998, these men, joined by Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz (now the top two officials in the Pentagon), Elliott Abrams (a senior National Security Council director), John Bolton (undersecretary of State) and 21 others called for 'a determined program to change the regime in Baghdad.' [NOTE: ALL THOSE NAMED HERE, EXCEPT RUMSFELD, ARE JEWISH] After removing Hussein, U.S. forces are planning for an open-ended occupation of Iraq, according to senior administration officials who spoke to the New York Times ... Control of the country's vast oil reserves, the second largest in the world and worth nearly $3 trillion at current prices, would be a huge strategic prize. Some analysts believe that additional production in Iraq could drive world prices down to as low as $10 a barrel and precipitate Iraq's departure from OPEC, possibly undermining the cartel. This, together with Russia's new willingness to become a major U.S. oil supplier, could establish a long-sought counterweight to Saudi Arabia, still the biggest influence by far on global oil prices ... Next month, key Iraqi exiles will meet with oil executives at an English country retreat to discuss the future of Iraqi petroleum. The conference, sponsored by the Center for Global Energy Studies and chaired by Sheik Zaki Yamani, the former Saudi oil minister, will feature Maj. Gen. Wafiq Samarrai, the former head of Iraqi military intelligence, and former Iraqi Oil Minister Fadhil Chalabi, now executive director of the center ... But taking over Iraq and remaking the global oil market is not necessarily the endgame. The next steps, favored by hard-liners determined to elevate Israeli security above all other U.S. foreign policy goals, would be to destroy any remaining perceived threat to the Jewish state: namely, the regimes in Syria and Iran. 'The War Won't End in Baghdad,' wrote the American Enterprise Institute's Michael Ledeen [also Jewish] in the Wall Street Journal. In 1985, as a consultant to the National Security Council and Oliver North, Ledeen helped broker the illegal arms-for-hostages deal with Iran by setting up meetings between weapons dealers and Israel. In the current war, he argues, 'we must also topple terror states in Tehran and Damascus.' In urging the expansion of the war on terror to Syria and Iran, Ledeen does not mention Israel. Yet Israel is a crucial strategic reason for the hard-line vision to 'roll back' Syria and Iran -- and another reason why control of Iraq is seen as crucial. In 1998, Wurmser, now in the State Department, told the Jewish newspaper Forward that if Ahmad Chalabi were in power and extended a no-fly, no-drive zone in northern Iraq, it would provide the crucial piece for an anti-Syria, anti-Iran bloc. 'It puts Scuds out of the range of Israel and provides the geographic beachhead between Turkey, Jordan and Israel,' he said. 'This should anchor the Middle East pro-Western coalition.' Perle, in the same 1998 article, told Forward that a coalition of pro-Israeli groups was 'at the forefront with the legislation with regard to Iran. One can only speculate what it might accomplish if it decided to focus its attention on Saddam Hussein.' And Perle, Wurmser and Feith (now in the Pentagon), in their 1996 Israeli think tank report to [then-Israeli prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, argued for abandoning efforts for a comprehensive peace in favor of a policy of 'rolling back' Syria to protect Israel's interests. Now, however, Israel is given a lower profile by those who would argue for rollback. Rather, writes Ledeen, U.S. troops would be put at risk in order to 'liberate all the peoples of the Middle East' ... Now, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has joined the call against Tehran, arguing in a November interview with the Times of London that the U.S. should shift its focus to Iran 'the day after' the Iraq war ends ... Publicly, Perle and Ledeen cling to the fantasy that American troops would be welcomed in Baghdad, Tehran and Damascus with garlands of flowers. Yet they are too smart to ignore the rage across the Arab and Muslim worlds that would surely erupt in the wake of war on multiple Middle Eastern fronts. Indeed, the foreshadowing is already with us: in Bali, in Moscow, in Yemen and on the streets of Amman. It's clear that even in Jordan, a close ally of the U.S., the anger at a U.S. attack on Iraq could be hard to contain. Indeed, the hard-liners in and around the administration seem to know in their hearts that the battle to carve up the Middle East would not be won without the blood of Americans and their allies. 'One can only hope that we turn the region into a caldron, and faster, please,' Ledeen preached to the choir at National Review Online last August. 'That's our mission in the war against terror.'"

The Dearth of Jewish War Deaths,
by Richard Early (author of War, Money and American Memory. Diane Publishing Co.) birdman.org
"Both the Encyclopedia Judaica and the Winter 1993 edition of the Jewish Veteran give the number of Jews dying for Imperial Germany in World War I as 12,000 out of a total of over 1,800,000 Germans who died from that war. The 600,000 Jews died for the Kaiser at the rate of 20 per thousand while the rest of the populace, some 57 million, died at a rate of over 31 per thousand. With records authenticated up to July 1, 1946 the claim was made that 10,500 Jews died in the military service of the United States in World War II with 8000 deaths in combat. The census for the United States of 1940 gave a total population of something over 131,000,000 with almost 13,000,000 of the citizenry of African descent. This leaves 118,000,000 (to include Hispanics) who were judged to be white. Of this number almost 5,000,000 were Jews. Due to severe restrictions on blacks fighting in World War II only 700 blacks died in combat. The total number of dead for America in World War II was 292,000 killed in combat and some 116,000 killed in accidents, training or deaths not regarded as combat related. A guess would be that blacks, because they were not trained for combat arms in significant numbers did not approximate their proportion of the population in training for war. Accordingly the total of number of blacks dying in uniform for the United States during World War II could be reasonably guessed at a maximum of 8000 with over 7000 coming from non-combat deaths. This would leave 400,000 deaths contributed by non-blacks. Jews, if giving a "fair share", would account for a ratio of 4,975,000 to 118,000,000, or slightly over 4.2 percent of the non-black deaths. This meant they would have had 12,300 battle deaths and a little over 4,550 in non-battle deaths for a total dead of about 16,850. In no manner of adding or manipulating data compiled by Jews did the number of dead come close to that figure ... They have come to regard themselves as a privileged class permitted by their God to send others to fight, and, if necessary, die in their place. Death and maiming are to be reserved for the goyim."

[Jews represent 2.5% of the American population and are severely underrepresented in the Army with only .3 percent of its soldiers]
Colonel recognized by national women's magazine,
DC Military, November 14, 2002
"Winning an award is always an honor, but winning an award you didn't know you were in the running for is amazing. Just ask Col. Michelle Ross, director of the Medical Chemical Defense Research Program for the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, chosen as one of Jewish Woman magazine's 10 Women to Watch for 2002. 'I had no idea they knew anything about me,' she said. 'It was a complete surprise because I'm way behind the scenes and not generally in the forefront' ... Other women to make the top 10 list include a breast cancer researcher, a rabbi, a vice president with Chanel, and a documentary filmmaker, to name a few ... For Ross, one benefit in winning the award is the insight it gives the Jewish community into the Department of Defense--and vice versa. 'Historically, Jews make up a very small minority in the DoD [Department of Defense], so the visibility works both ways,' she said. In fact, according to the Army Chief of Chaplains Office, 0.3 percent or 1,488 soldiers self identify themselves as being Jewish on their dog tags."

U.S.: Iran working on nuclear weapons IAEA: Nuclear facilities not a surprise Friday, CNN, December 13, 2002
[NOTE: Zionist activism has been pushing the U.S. to attack Iran after Iraq -- two of Israel's major enemies; here's the beginning of the softening of the American public to the idea of more invasions in the Islamic world]
"The United States accused Iran Friday of 'actively working' on a nuclear weapons program and said that recent satellite photographs of a massive nuclear power construction project 'reinforce' that belief. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said two facilities seen in the photographs 'are not justified by the needs of Iran's civilian nuclear program.' 'There is no economic gain for a state that's rich in oil and gas like Iran to build costly nuclear fuel cycle facilities,' he said. 'I point out that Iran flares more gas annually than the equivalent energy its desired reactors would produce.' Boucher added: 'We've reached the conclusion that Iran is actively working to develop nuclear weapons capability.'"

The double standards, dubious morality and duplicity of this fight against terror. Meanwhile, we are ploughing on to war in Iraq, which has oil, but avoiding war in Korea, which does not have oil,
by Robert Fisk, The Independent (UK), January 4, 2003
"I think I'm getting the picture. North Korea breaks all its nuclear agreements with the United States, throws out UN inspectors and sets off to make a bomb a year, and President Bush says it's 'a diplomatic issue'. Iraq hands over a 12,000-page account of its weapons production and allows UN inspectors to roam all over the country, and – after they've found not a jam-jar of dangerous chemicals in 230 raids – President Bush announces that Iraq is a threat to America, has not disarmed and may have to be invaded. So that's it, then. How, readers keep asking me in the most eloquent of letters, does he get away with it? Indeed, how does Tony Blair get away with it? ... Why do we tolerate this? Why do Americans? Over the past few days, there has been just the smallest of hints that the American media – the biggest and most culpable backer of the White House's campaign of mendacity – has been, ever so timidly, asking a few questions. Months after The Independent first began to draw its readers' attention to Donald Rumsfeld's chummy personal visits to Saddam in Baghdad at the height of Iraq's use of poison gas against Iran in 1983, The Washington Post has at last decided to tell its own readers a bit of what was going on. The reporter Michael Dobbs includes the usual weasel clauses ('opinions differ among Middle East experts... whether Washington could have done more to stop the flow to Baghdad of technology for building weapons of mass destruction'), but the thrust is there: we created the monster and Mr Rumsfeld played his part in doing so. But no American – or British – newspaper has dared to investigate another, almost equally dangerous, relationship that the present US administration is forging behind our backs: with the military-supported regime in Algeria. For 10 years now, one of the world's dirtiest wars has been fought out in this country, supposedly between "Islamists" and "security forces", in which almost 200,000 people – mostly civilians – have been killed. But over the past five years there has been growing evidence that elements of those same security forces were involved in some of the bloodiest massacres, including the throat-cutting of babies. The Independent has published the most detailed reports of Algerian police torture and of the extrajudicial executions of women as well as men. Yet the US, as part of its obscene "war on terror", has cosied up to the Algerian regime. It is helping to re-arm Algeria's army and promised more assistance. William Burns, the US Assistant Secretary of State for the Middle East, announced that Washington "has much to learn from Algeria on ways to fight terrorism' ... Meanwhile, inside the US, the profiling of Muslims goes on apace. On 17 November, thousands of Iranians, Iraqis, Syrians, Libyans, Afghans, Bahrainis, Eritreans, Lebanese, Moroccans, Omanis, Qataris, Somalis, Tunisians, Yemenis and Emiratis turned up at federal offices to be finger-printed ... Indeed, many Americans don't even know what the chilling acronym of the "US Patriot Act" even stands for. "Patriot" is not a reference to patriotism. The name stands for the "United and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act". America's $200m (£125m) "Total Awareness Programme" will permit the US government to monitor citizens' e-mail and internet activity and collect data on the movement of all Americans. And although we have not been told about this by our journalists, the US administration is now pestering European governments for the contents of their own citizens' data files ... The new rules even worm their way into academia. Take the friendly little university of Purdue in Indiana, where I lectured a few weeks ago. With federal funds, it's now setting up an 'Institute for Homeland Security', whose 18 'experts' will include executives from Boeing and Hewlett-Packard and US Defence and State Department officials, to organise 'research programmes' around 'critical mission areas'. What, I wonder, are these areas to be? Surely nothing to do with injustice in the Middle East, the Arab-Israeli conflict or the presence of thousands of US troops on Arab lands. After all, it was Richard Perle, the most sinister of George Bush's pro-Israeli advisers, who stated last year that 'terrorism must be decontextualised'."

Playing skittles with Saddam. The gameplan among Washington's hawks has long been to reshape the Middle East along US-Israeli lines,
Guardian (UK), September 3, 2002
"In ['Pentagon hawks'] eyes, Iraq is just the starting point - or, as a recent presentation at the Pentagon put it, 'the tactical pivot' - for re-moulding the Middle East on Israeli-American lines. This reverses the usual approach in international relations where stability is seen as the key to peace, and whether or not you like your neighbours, you have to find ways of living with them. No, say the hawks. If you don't like the neighbours, get rid of them. The hawks claim that President Bush has already accepted their plan and made destabilisation of 'despotic regimes' a central goal of his foreign policy. They cite passages from his recent speeches as proof of this, though whether Mr Bush really knows what he has accepted is unclear. The 'skittles theory' of the Middle East - that one ball aimed at Iraq can knock down several regimes - has been around for some time on the wilder fringes of politics but has come to the fore in the United States on the back of the 'war against terrorism'. Its roots can be traced, at least in part, to a paper published in 1996 by an Israeli thinktank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies. Entitled 'A clean break: a new strategy for securing the realm', it was intended as a political blueprint for the incoming [Israeli] government of Binyamin Netanyahu. As the title indicates, it advised the right-wing Mr Netanyahu to make a complete break with the past by adopting a strategy 'based on an entirely new intellectual foundation, one that restores strategic initiative and provides the nation the room to engage every possible energy on rebuilding Zionism ...' It also urged Israel to abandon any thought of trading land for peace with the Arabs, which it described as 'cultural, economic, political, diplomatic, and military retreat'. 'Our claim to the land - to which we have clung for hope for 2,000 years - is legitimate and noble,' it continued. 'Only the unconditional acceptance by Arabs of our rights, especially in their territorial dimension, 'peace for peace', is a solid basis for the future.' The paper set out a plan by which Israel would 'shape its strategic environment', beginning with the removal of Saddam Hussein and the installation of a Hashemite monarchy in Baghdad. With Saddam out of the way and Iraq thus brought under Jordanian Hashemite influence, Jordan and Turkey would form an axis along with Israel to weaken and 'roll back' Syria. Jordan, it suggested, could also sort out Lebanon by 'weaning' the Shia Muslim population away from Syria and Iran ... . To succeed, the paper stressed, Israel would have to win broad American support for these new policies - and it advised Mr Netanyahu to formulate them 'in language familiar to the Americans by tapping into themes of American administrations during the cold war which apply well to Israel'. At first glance, there's not much to distinguish the 1996 'Clean Break' paper from the outpourings of other right-wing and ultra-Zionist thinktanks ... except for the names of its authors. The leader of the 'prominent opinion makers' who wrote it was Richard Perle - now chairman of the Defence Policy Board at the Pentagon. Also among the eight-person team was Douglas Feith, a neo-conservative lawyer, who now holds one of the top four posts at the Pentagon as under-secretary of policy. Mr Feith has objected to most of the peace deals made by Israel over the years, and views the Middle East in the same good-versus-evil terms that he previously viewed the cold war. He regarded the Oslo peace process as nothing more than a unilateral withdrawal which "raises life-and-death issues for the Jewish state". Two other opinion-makers in the team were David Wurmser and his wife, Meyrav (see US thinktanks give lessons in foreign policy, August 19). Mrs Wurmser was co-founder of Memri, a Washington-based charity that distributes articles translated from Arabic newspapers portraying Arabs in a bad light. After working with Mr Perle at the American Enterprise Institute, David Wurmser is now at the State Department, as a special assistant to John Bolton, the under-secretary for arms control and international security. A fifth member of the team was James Colbert, of the Washington-based Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (Jinsa) - a bastion of neo-conservative hawkery whose advisory board was previously graced by Dick Cheney (now US vice-president), John Bolton and Douglas Feith. One of Jinsa's stated aims is 'to inform the American defence and foreign affairs community about the important role Israel can and does play in bolstering democratic interests in the Mediterranean and the Middle East'. In practice, a lot of its effort goes into sending retired American military brass on jaunts to Israel - after which many of them write suitably hawkish newspaper articles or letters to the editor. Jinsa's activities are examined in detail by Jason Vest in the September 2 issue of The Nation. The article notes some interesting business relationships between retired US military officers on Jinsa's board and American companies supplying weapons to Israel. With several of the 'Clean Break' paper's authors now holding key positions in Washington, the plan for Israel to 'transcend' its foes by reshaping the Middle East looks a good deal more achievable today than it did in 1996. Americans may even be persuaded to give up their lives to achieve it. The six-year-old plan for Israel's 'strategic environment' remains more or less intact, though two extra skittles - Saudi Arabia and Iran - have joined Iraq, Syria and Lebanon on the hit list ... The task of promoting Prince Hassan as Iraq's future king has fallen to Michael Rubin, who currently works at the American Enterprise Institute but will shortly take up a new job at the Pentagon, dealing with post-Saddam Iraq. One of the curious aspects of this neo-conservative intrigue is that so few people outside the United States and Israel take it seriously. Perhaps, like President Mubarak, they can't imagine that anyone who holds a powerful position in the United States could be quite so reckless. But nobody can accuse the neo-conservatives of concealing their intentions: they write about them constantly in American newspapers. Just two weeks ago, an article in the Washington Times by Tom Neumann, executive director of Jinsa, spelled out the plan in clear, cold terms: 'Jordan will likely survive the coming war with US assistance, so will some of the sheikhdoms. The current Saudi regime will likely not. The Iran dissident movement would be helped enormously by the demise of Saddam, and the Palestinians would have to know that the future lies with the West. Syria's Ba'athist dictatorship will likely fall unmourned, liberating Lebanon as well. Israel and Turkey, the only current democracies in the region, will find themselves in a far better neighbourhood.' Would anyone like to bet on that?"

ON THE DOWNLOW. Consultants tell Israel's amen corner: "Pipe down!" But will their advice be taken?,
by Justin Raimondo, antiwar.com, December 16, 2002
"A group of pro-Israel political consultants, the Israel Project, is telling partisans of the Jewish state to kindly shut up about their fulsome support for Gulf War II – lest they give the show away. A memo entitled 'Talking About Iraq,' directed at American Jewish leaders, as well as Israelis, advises: 'Let American politicians fight it out on the floor of Congress and in the media. Let the nations of the world argue in front of the UN. Your silence allows everyone to focus on Iraq rather than Israel.' 'If your goal is regime change, you must be much more careful with your language because of the potential backlash. You do not want Americans to believe that the war on Iraq is being waged to protect Israel rather than to protect America.' If you guys just keep quiet, those stupid Americans may not notice that they’re fighting, dying, and paying for your wars. After all, how many of them can locate Iraq on a map? Geographically challenged, and naïve to a fault, most Americans don’t realize that Saddam’s 'weapons of mass destruction,' if they exist, haven’t got a range much beyond four-hundred miles. Iraq’s rickety Scuds could barely reach Israel, and are no threat to the U.S. Saddam’s target is Tel Aviv, not Toledo, Ohio, but we are supposed to forget that there is any distinction. Israel’s fans in the U.S. would do well to watch their language, but I’m afraid this good advice is wasted on them. Ever since 9/11, what Pat Buchanan calls Israel’s 'amen corner' has been in the ascendant: an unholy alliance of neoconservative policy wonks who dream of 'benevolent world hegemony' and dispensationalist Protestant nutballs who see war in the Middle East (with Israel at the center) as a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy – and a necessary prelude to the Second Coming."

Poll Analysis: Americans Are of Two Minds About War in Iraq,
by Susan Pinkus, Los Angeles Times, December 17, 2002
"More than half of the American public believe George W. Bush is not getting a balanced view of whether to go to war or not from his advisors, but rather a more hawkish view favoring military action in Iraq, according to a new Los Angeles Times poll ... Fifty-one percent believe Bush is only listening to the advisors who advocate war, rather than receiving a balanced perspective (20%) or even a view opposing the war (11%)."

Leaked report says German and US firms supplied arms to Saddam Baghdad's uncensored report to UN names Western companies alleged to have developed its weapons of mass destruction,
The Independent (UK), December 18, 2002
"Iraq's 11,000-page report to the UN Security Council lists 150 foreign companies, including some from America, Britain, Germany and France, that supported Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction programme, a German newspaper said yesterday. Berlin's left-wing Die Tageszeitung newspaper said it had seen a copy of the original Iraqi dossier which was vetted for sensitive information by US officials before being handed to the five permanent Security Council members two weeks ago. An edited version was passed to the remaining 10 members of the Security Council last night. British officials said the list of companies appeared to be accurate. Eighty German firms and 24 US companies are reported to have supplied Iraq with equipment and know-how for its weapons programmes from 1975 onwards and in some cases support for Baghdad's conventional arms programme had continued until last year. It is not known who leaked the report, but it could have come from Iraq. Baghdad is keen to embarrass the US and its allies by showing the close involvement of US, German, British and French firms in helping Iraq develop its weapons of mass destruction when the country was a bulwark against the much feared spread of Iranian revolutionary fervour to the Arab world. The list contained the names of long-established German firms such as Siemens as well as US multi-nationals. With government approval, Siemens exported machines used to eliminate kidney stones which have a 'dual use' high precision switch used to detonate nuclear bombs. Ten French companies were also named along with a number of Swiss and Chinese firms ... American weapons experts have recently voiced concern that the German Government has permitted Siemens to sell Baghdad at least eight sophisticated medical machines which contain devices that are vital for nuclear weapons."

The Zionist Plan for the Middle East,
translated and edited by Israel Shahak, Roundtable-Texts,
June 13, 1982, A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties by Oded Yinon (This essay originally appeared in Hebrew in KIVUNIM (Directions), A Journal for Judaism and Zionism; Issue No, 14--Winter, 5742, February 1982, Editor: Yoram Beck. Editorial Committee: Eli Eyal, Yoram Beck, Amnon Hadari, Yohanan Manor, Elieser Schweid. Published by the Department of Publicity/The World Zionist Organization, Jerusalem.
"Foreword [by Israel Shahak]. The following essay represents, in my opinion, the accurate and detailed plan of the present Zionist regime (of Sharon and Eitan) for the Middle East which is based on the division of the whole area into small states, and the dissolution of all the existing Arab states. I will comment on the military aspect of this plan in a concluding note. Here I want to draw the attention of the readers to several important points: 1. The idea that all the Arab states should be broken down, by Israel, into small units, occurs again and again in Israeli strategic thinking. For example, Zeev Shiff, the military correspondent of Ha'aretz (and probably the most knowledgeable in Israel, on this topic) writes about the 'best' that can happen for Israeli interests in Iraq: 'The dissolution of Iraq into a Shi'ite state, a Sunni state and the separation of the Kurdish part" (Ha'aretz 6/2/1982). Actually, this aspect of the plan is very old. 2. The strong connection with Neo-Conservative thought in the USA is very prominent, especially in the author's notes. But, while lip service is paid to the idea of the 'defense of the West' from Soviet power, the real aim of the author, and of the present Israeli establishment is clear: To make an Imperial Israel into a world power. In other words, the aim of Sharon is to deceive the Americans after he has deceived all the rest. 3. It is obvious that much of the relevant data, both in the notes and in the text, is garbled or omitted, such as the financial help of the U.S. to Israel. Much of it is pure fantasy. But, the plan is not to be regarded as not influential, or as not capable of realization for a short time. The plan follows faithfully the geopolitical ideas current in Germany of 1890-1933, which were swallowed whole by Hitler and the Nazi movement, and detennined their aims for East Europe. Those aims, especially the division of the existing states, were carried out in 1939-1941, and only an alliance on the global scale prevented their consolidation for a period of time."

[If it isn't really the "oil companies" pushing us to war with Iraq, what else might it be?]
Oilmen don't want another Suez. Critics of US policy claim it aims to carve up Iraq's oil wealth. But, argues Anthony Sampson, oil companies fear the fallout from a new Gulf war,
Observer (UK), December 22, 2002
"While Washington hawks depict a war against Iraq as achieving security of oil supplies, Western oil companies are worried about the short-term danger and the supposed long-term benefits of intervention. Left-wing critics in Britain depict the proposed invasion as an oil war. Former Cabinet Minister Mo Mowlam has called it a 'war to secure oil supplies' as a cover for a war on terrorism. And the fact that President George Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney have both been enriched by oil companies raises suspicions about their motives for war. But oil companies have had little influence on US policy-making. Most big American companies, including oil companies, do not see a war as good for business, as falling share prices indicate; while the obvious beneficiaries of war are arms companies ... Many neo-conservatives in Washington are indicating they want the US intervention to go beyond Iraq; and to redraw the diplomatic map of the Middle East. They look to a realignment of US foreign policy, to intervene in both Iran and Saudi Arabia, ensuring both the security of American oil supplies, and the security of Israel. Above all, they see the development of Iraqi oil as lessening US dependence on Saudi Arabia, which they see as a dangerous source of future terrorists. The oil companies are much less confident that this escalation will protect supplies. Shell and Exxon-Mobil have made huge investments in natural gas in Saudi Arabia, which could be at risk in a confrontation with the Saudi government. All oil companies in the Middle East would face a more dangerous political climate, caught between the American-Israeli intervention and nationalists fearing reversion to a neo-colonial system. Oil companies dread having supplies interrupted by burning oilfields, saboteurs and chaotic conditions. And any attempt to redraw the frontiers could increase the dangers in both Iran and Iraq, as rivals seek to regain territory. Hawks in Washington believe military intervention could bring about the demise of Opec (the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries), thus cutting oil prices. But collapsing prices would be devastating, not only for regional producers, but for Russia, which depends on exporting oil for its economic survival. A low oil price would massively increase unemployment and poverty in producing countries."

Honorary Doctorate Speech - Turin University,
by Harold Pinter (27th November 2002)
[Playwright Pinter is of partial Jewish descent]
"The US is at this moment developing advanced systems of 'weapons of mass destruction' and it prepared to use them where it sees fit. It has more of them than the rest of the world put together. It has walked away from international agreements on biological and chemical weapons, refusing to allow inspection of its own factories. The hypocrisy behind its public declarations and its own actions is almost a joke. The United States believes that the three thousand deaths in New York are the only deaths that count, the only deaths that matter. They are American deaths. Other deaths are unreal, abstract, of no consequence. The three thousand deaths in Afghanistan are never referred to. The hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children dead through US and British sanctions which have deprived them of essential medicines are never referred to. The effect of depleted uranium, used by America in the Gulf War, is never referred to. Radiation levels in Iraq are appallingly high. Babies are born with no brain, no eyes, no genitals. Where they do have ears, mouths or rectums, all that issues from these orifices is blood. The two hundred thousand deaths in East Timor in 1975 brought about by the Indonesian government but inspired and supported by the United States are never referred to. The half a million deaths in Guatemala, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Uruguay, Argentina and Haiti, in actions supported and subsidised by the United States are never referred to. The millions of deaths in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia are no longer referred to. The desperate plight of the Palestinian people, the central factor in world unrest, is hardly referred to. But what a misjudgement of the present and what a misreading of history this is. People do not forget. They do not forget the death of their fellows, they do not forget torture and mutilation, they do not forget injustice, they do not forget oppression, they do not forget the terrorism of mighty powers. They not only don't forget. They strike back. The atrocity in New York was predictable and inevitable. It was an act of retaliation against constant and systematic manifestations of state terrorism on the part of the United States over many years, in all parts of the world."

Postcard USA: Bush fighting Sharon’s war?,
Daily Times (Pakistan), December 29, 2002
"Israel’s great achievement in the political and diplomatic realm has been to draw American anger from those who carried out the 9/11 attacks to its own enemies, namely Saddam, Hamas and the non-existent Al Qaeda in Palestine. Barring the occasional article in newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times which gives a viewpoint other than that favoured by Sharon and his ardent supporters in the United States, among which you can include the president himself, his deputy, his defence secretary and his national security adviser, the rest of the mainstream US publications remain uncritically pro-Israel. As for the networks, in particular cable channels such as Fox News, the less said about their lack of balance on the Middle East the better. Many people in Pakistan can view for themselves today, thanks to the satellite dish, what some of them churn out with such sickening predictability day after day on the issue. It is, therefore, something of a surprise to have one of the leading conservative columnists of the country, Robert D Novak, invite attention a day after Christmas to a speech by Sen. Chuck Hagel that would have gone unreported otherwise. The Republican senator from Nebraska who recently returned from a week-long fact-finding trip to the Middle East told the Chicago Council of Foreign Affairs that the road to Arab-Israeli peace would not go through Baghdad as was being argued by President George Bush and those who support his thinking. The Senator left no one who heard him in any doubt that the war about to be launched against Iraq was not America’s war so much as it was Ariel Sharon’s. According to Novak, 'In private conversation with Hagel and many other members of Congress, the former general leaves no doubt that the greatest US assistance to Israel would be to overthrow Saddam’s Hussein’s Iraqi regime. That view is widely shared inside the Bush administration, and is a major reason why US forces today are assembling for war.' Hegel told his audience that military force alone would neither assure a democratic transition in Iraq, bring peace to Israelis and Palestinians, nor assure stability in the Middle East. He also warned that as America prepared for war, its standing among Muslim countries, even among long-time allies, was low. Novak writes, 'Yet the Bush administration has tied itself firmly to Sharon and his policies. Gen. Amran Mitzna, the new [Israeli] Labour Party leader challenging the heavily favoured Sharon in the January 28 election, is denied access to US officials. In private conversation, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice has insisted that Hezbollah — not Al Qaeda — is the world’s most dangerous terrorist organisation. How could that be, considering Al Qaeda’s global record of mass carnage? Quite correctly, Novak concludes from the national security adviser’s comments that the US war against terrorism, accused of being Iraq-centric, is actually Israel-centric."

[Jewish author gets it partly right -- Like most Jews, she can't bring herself to say "Israel"]
Politics of fear,
sfgate, by Ruth Rosen, December 30, 2002
"These are scary times. Al Qaeda terrorists prepare to attack American civilians. A desperate and paranoid North Korea builds an arsenal of nuclear weapons. And how does our government respond? The Bush administration declares an urgent need to invade Iraq. Why Iraq? Because Saddam Hussein may have weapons of destruction, which he might use against some unspecified enemy some time in the future. Since we aren't all that sure, we must wage a pre-emptive war against a nation that, just by coincidence, happens to sit on the world's second-largest reserve of oil. Follow that? If not, you're not alone. The domestic scene is just as surreal. Rank opportunism rules. In the name of preventing terrorism, the Bush administration has employed a politics of fear to create the most extensive national security apparatus in our nation's history. Military tribunals. Mandatory registration. Mass detentions. Electronic surveillance. Government secrecy. Executive privilege. Office of Total Awareness. Perpetual war. Folks, this is the stuff of such dystopian novels as Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World' or George Orwell's '1984.'"

Group Urges Pro-Israel Leaders' Silence on Iraq Memo,
Washington Post, November 27, 2002, p. A13
"A group of U.S. political consultants has sent pro-Israel leaders a memo urging them to keep quiet while the Bush administration pursues a possible war with Iraq. The six-page memo was sent by the Israel Project, a group funded by American Jewish organizations and individual donors. Its authors said the main audience was American Jewish leaders, but much of the memo's language is directed toward Israelis, urging them to play down the likelihood Israel would retaliate after an Iraqi attack and asking them not to lecture Americans about the Middle East conflict. The memo reflects a concern that involvement by Israel in a U.S.-Iraq confrontation could hurt Israel's standing in American public opinion and undermine international support for a hard line against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. 'Let American politicians fight it out on the floor of Congress and in the media,' the memo said. 'Let the nations of the world argue in front of the U.N. Your silence allows everyone to focus on Iraq rather than Israel.' The memo, meant to guide pro-Israel leaders' statements before and during possible hostilities with Iraq, is the latest contribution to an international public relations battle that has shadowed the diplomatic maneuvers involving Iraq and the Middle East ... The Iraq memo was issued in the past few weeks and labeled 'confidential property of the Israel Project'" which is led by Democratic consultant Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi with help from Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg and Republican pollsters Neil Newhouse and Frank Luntz. Several of the consultants have advised Israeli politicians, and the group aired a pro-Israel ad earlier this year. 'If your goal is regime change, you must be much more careful with your language because of the potential backlash,' said the memo, titled 'Talking About Iraq.' It added: 'You do not want Americans to believe that the war on Iraq is being waged to protect Israel rather than to protect America' ... The memo coached: '(A)s an Israeli, most certainly don't talk about why some Arab leaders and their people dislike the United States. Americans don't want to be told by an Israeli why we have problems in the Middle East or why people hate us.'"

Kuwaitis seethe with anger as U.S. war drum beats,
MSNBC, December 31, 2002
"Kuwaitis in American-style shopping malls, coffee shops and mosques are hoping for Saddam Hussein's downfall. But they no longer trust the old friend who ousted the Iraqi leader's forces from their country in 1991 -- the United States. As thousands of U.S. soldiers train for war in Kuwait near the Iraqi border, some of the people they have promised to protect are growing tired of what they call U.S. President George W. Bush's 'cowboy' style of leadership. 'We don't like Saddam. But we hate the Americans,' said Ramiz Abu Qweidar, a civil engineer who lives in the poor town of Jahra, a 30-minute drive from the capital. Perhaps the United States thought its liberation of Kuwait in 1991 would give it unlimited political mileage in the country, where many people still drive big, gas-guzzling American cars. Many Kuwaitis -- from Islamic militants to lawyers to parliament members -- would disagree. Although they believe only the United States has the military firepower to topple Saddam, many Kuwaitis complain that Washington has gone too far in its war on terrorism and unilateral calls for regime change in Iraq. Those mixed emotions were palpable at a diwaniya, an informal gathering of parliamentarians, lawyers and businessmen ... 'The attacks in Kuwait were not surprising and I expect more to take place. The Americans talk about democracy in the Arab world but that is not their motivation. Everyone knows that,' said Mahmoud Awadi, a retired businessman. The U.S. embassy in Kuwait has warned Americans to avoid apartment buildings and public places where Westerners gather. Anti-American sentiment was even running deep at a coffee shop where teenagers puffed on cigarettes and water pipes while watching U.S. pop stars in music videos. On the wall, a large photograph of a Kuwaiti official aiming a Kalashnikov rifle who was killed in the Gulf War reminded customers that oil-rich Kuwait remains vulnerable. 'It is a game. The Americans are just trying to impose their influence on Muslims. We hate the Americans,' said Salih al-Bishr, 17. For now, Kuwaitis are preparing for war by simulating chemical weapons attacks in the event that Baghdad takes revenge against the land it once called Iraq's 19th province. 'When the Americans liberated Kuwait my wife used to make drawings for them and I used to give them art as presents. But now things are clearer. We know why they are here. It is not for the sake of the beautiful eyes of Kuwaitis,'' said Khalifa Ikhrafi, a municipal council member."

Arabs urged to seek nuclear arsenal,
Globe and Mail (Canada) January 2, 2002
"The Arab world should follow North Korea's example and arm itself with nuclear weapons to prevent further humiliation at U.S. hands, a leading Iraqi newspaper owned by Saddam Hussein's son said yesterday. 'Korea insists on its right to possess a technology used by the United States to raze Japanese cities, and which it still uses to blackmail the world and force it to obey,' the newspaper Babel said as it urged the Arab world to take heed. 'Arabs need to learn the lesson from the Korean example,' it added, calling on Arabs to launch a joint effort to acquire nuclear weapons. U.S. President George W. Bush's markedly different approach to the two rogue states has increasingly drawn criticism, both domestically and internationally. While threatening war against Baghdad to force it to disarm and to oust Mr. Hussein, the Iraqi President, Mr. Bush says he wants dialogue with Pyongyang, which has already developed a handful of nuclear warheads. Despite his professed loathing for leader Kim Jong-il and his vow to prevent rogue and terrorist-supporting states from acquiring weapons of mass destruction, the U.S. President says he wants a diplomatic solution to the North Korean crisis. The difference was seized on yesterday by the Iraqi newspaper, owned by Uday Hussein, elder son of the Iraqi ruler. 'Through its courageous stance, North Korea demands that international law be applied to all in the same manner,' Babel said. In the Middle East, only Israel is believed to have a nuclear-weapons arsenal. The U.S. inclination toward diplomacy with North Korea followed Pyongyang's defiant decision to restart a nuclear reactor capable of processing weapons-grade plutonium ... Mr. Bush insisted that Baghdad poses a far greater and more immediate danger to the United States than does North Korea."

The Corporations That Supplied Iraq's Weapons Program,
The Memory Hole
"Even before Iraq released its weapons-program dossier on 7 December 2002, it was said that the report would name the corporations that supplied Iraq with the equipment and other material it needed to develop biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons. Soon after the report was released, those suspicions were confirmed. Sources who had seen the report said that it identified suppliers from the US, UK, Germany, France, China, and elsewhere. Now, that part of the report has been leaked. The leftist German daily newspaper Die Tageszeitung received portions of the original, uncensored 12,000-page dossier. (The names of the corporations have been blacked out of the version of the report given to the ten non-permanent members of the Security Council.) The paper has printed the list, presented below. [read more about the leak at the Independent (London), Financial Times, the Guardian (London), and the Associated Press (the only US news outlet to touch the story, albeit in an unrevealing article)] Key A = nuclear weapon program B = biological weapon program C = chemical weapon program R = rocket program K = conventional weapons, military logistics, supplies at the Iraqi Ministry of Defense, and building of military plants USA 1. Honeywell (R, K) 2. Spectra Physics (K) 3. Semetex (R) 4. TI Coating (A, K) 5. Unisys (A, K) 6. Sperry Corp. (R, K) 7. Tektronix (R, A) 8. Rockwell (K) 9. Leybold Vacuum Systems (A) 10. Finnigan-MAT-US (A) 11. Hewlett-Packard (A, R, K) 12. Dupont (A) 13. Eastman Kodak (R) 14. American Type Culture Collection (B) 15. Alcolac International (C) 16. Consarc (A) 17. Carl Zeiss - U.S (K) 18. Cerberus (LTD) (A) 19. Electronic Associates (R) 20. International Computer Systems (A, R, K) 21. Bechtel (K) 22. EZ Logic Data Systems, Inc. (R) 23. Canberra Industries Inc. (A) 24. Axel Electronics Inc. (A) "In addition to these 24 companies home-based in the USA are 50 subsidiaries of foreign enterprises which conducted their arms business with Iraq from within the US. Also designated as suppliers for Iraq's arms programs (A, B, C & R) are the US Ministries of Defense, Energy, Trade and Agriculture as well as the Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories."

Plan: Tap Iraq’s Oil U.S. considers seizing revenues to pay for occupation, source says,
Newsday, January 10, 2002
"Bush administration officials are seriously considering proposals that the United States tap Iraq's oil to help pay the cost of a military occupation, a move that likely would prove highly inflammatory in an Arab world already suspicious of U.S. motives in Iraq. Officially, the White House agrees that oil revenue would play an important role during an occupation period, but only for the benefit of Iraqis, according to a National Security Council spokesman. Yet there are strong advocates inside the administration, including the White House, for appropriating the oil funds as 'spoils of war,' according to a source who has been briefed by participants in the dialogue. 'There are people in the White House who take the position that it's all the spoils of war,' said the source, who asked not to be further identified. 'We [the United States] take all the oil money until there is a new democratic government [in Iraq].' The source said the Justice Department has urged caution. 'The Justice Department has doubts,' he said. He said department lawyers are unsure 'whether any of it [Iraqi oil funds] can be used or has to all be held in trust for the people of Iraq.' Another source who has worked closely with the office of Vice President Dick Cheney said that a number of officials there too are urging that Iraq's oil funds be used to defray the cost of occupation. Jennifer Millerwise, a Cheney spokeswoman, declined to talk about 'internal policy discussions.' Using Iraqi oil to fund an occupation would reinforce a prevalent belief in the Mideast that the conflict is all about control of oil, not rooting out weapons of mass destruction, according to Halim Barakat, a recently retired professor of Arab studies at Georgetown University. 'It would mean that the real ... objective of the war is not the democratization of Iraq, not getting rid of Saddam, not to liberate the Iraqi people, but a return to colonialism,' he said. 'That is how they [Mideast nations] would perceive it.' The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the cost of an occupation would range from $12 billion to $48 billion a year, and officials believe an occupation could last 1-1/2 years or more. And Iraq has a lot of oil. Its proven oil reserves are second in the world only to Saudi Arabia's."

[Note: Mr. le Carre was accused of anti-Semitism by the Jewish Thought Police for his novel The Tailor of Panama.]
The United States of America has gone mad,
by John le Carré, Times Online (UK), January 15, 2003
"America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War. The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press. The imminent war was planned years before bin Laden struck, but it was he who made it possible. Without bin Laden, the Bush junta would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it came to be elected in the first place; Enron; its shameless favouring of the already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for the world’s poor, the ecology and a raft of unilaterally abrogated international treaties. They might also have to be telling us why they support Israel in its continuing disregard for UN resolutions. But bin Laden conveniently swept all that under the carpet. The Bushies are riding high. Now 88 per cent of Americans want the war, we are told. The US defence budget has been raised by another $60 billion to around $360 billion. A splendid new generation of nuclear weapons is in the pipeline, so we can all breathe easy. Quite what war 88 per cent of Americans think they are supporting is a lot less clear. A war for how long, please? At what cost in American lives? At what cost to the American taxpayer’s pocket? At what cost — because most of those 88 per cent are thoroughly decent and humane people — in Iraqi lives? How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America’s anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. But the American public is not merely being misled. It is being browbeaten and kept in a state of ignorance and fear. The carefully orchestrated neurosis should carry Bush and his fellow conspirators nicely into the next election. Those who are not with Mr Bush are against him. Worse, they are with the enemy. Which is odd, because I’m dead against Bush, but I would love to see Saddam’s downfall — just not on Bush’s terms and not by his methods. And not under the banner of such outrageous hypocrisy. The religious cant that will send American troops into battle is perhaps the most sickening aspect of this surreal war-to-be. Bush has an arm-lock on God. And God has very particular political opinions. God appointed America to save the world in any way that suits America. God appointed Israel to be the nexus of America’s Middle Eastern policy, and anyone who wants to mess with that idea is a) anti-Semitic, b) anti-American, c) with the enemy, and d) a terrorist."

[Cities for Peace web site],
Cities for Peace, January 15, 2003
"41 Cities have now passed resolutions against the war [including] Chicago, Des Moines and Gary ..."

War in Context,
War in Context (web site)
"Critical Perspectives on the War on Terrorism, War Against Iraq, and the Middle East Conflict"

[Too many Jews like this guiding U.S. foreign policy on behalf of Israel:]
Enlarging the Problem,
by Kenneth Adelman, Fox News, April 03, 2002
"My longtime mentor, Donald Rumsfeld, is fond of saying: When a particular problem is intractable, enlarge it. Granted, that sounds funny, but it may also be profound. Let's apply it now to the Israel-Palestinian war, which has clearly become intractable. Let's imagine the Bush administration enlarging this problem by moving beyond the status of Jerusalem, the legality of Israeli settlements, the right of return by displaced Palestinians, and sundry other problems. Let's move beyond the false hope that temporary cease-fires might usher in lasting changes. In a nutshell, the administration should enlarge today's particular problem by focusing on the longtime campaign against Israel — and against America, as a fellow prosperous and successful democracy. To enlarge the problem, the Bush administration should: ... STOP maintaining that no evidence exists linking Iraq to terrorism ... STOP considering Saudi Arabia as 'a peacemaker' proposing a serious peace initiative. Remember that the Saudis have been funding hatred towards Jews, Christians, Israelis, and Americans ... STOP funding Egypt to the whopping tune of $2 billion per year ... START transforming the dynamics of Arabian thought and politics by changing the Iraqi regime, from the worst to among the best in the region. A moderate, pro-Western, quasi-democratic, somewhat tolerant Iraq — after the removal of Saddam Hussein by American forces — could speed up the looming mass revolution in Iran. And once these jumbo dominos fall, then fundamental changes in Saudi Arabia and Egypt could easily follow. The more that Islamic states in the Middle East begin to resemble Turkey and Bangladesh — and the less they continue to echo Iraq and Syria — the greater are the chances for peace and stability. Thus the safer become both Israel and America. All this is a large order, but that's what it takes. Enlarging the problem, here at least, is the only way to solve this otherwise intractable tangle." [Kenneth Adelman is a frequent guest commentator on Fox News, was assistant to U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld from 1975 to 1977 and, under President Ronald Reagan, U.N. ambassador and arms-control director.]

Parallel And Linked Genocides: Iraq And Palestine,
by Edward S. Herman, Swans, January 20, 2003
"What is truly remarkable, however, is that in this New World Order, genocide, supposedly something the world community would 'never again' allow to happen after the horror of the Nazi Holocaust, has become more commonplace, in process today in two separate but neighboring locales, with the two politically linked to one another. It is also notable that these parallel and mutually-supportive genocides are being implemented by the superpower that claims to be a repository of a higher morality, and by its Israeli client, widely regarded in the United States as a 'light unto others' (Anthony Lewis), and whose Jewish citizens are heirs of the victims of the Nazi genocide. In these ongoing genocides the United States has been the dominant factor, carrying out one of them directly and facilitating the second by aid to, and protection of its implementer. It has pressed the 'sanctions of mass destruction' that have decimated the Iraq population, and it is preparing for a war of aggression against that victim state and populace that should add to an already immense death toll. Israel, on its side, has been engaged in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians for half a century, with crucial U.S. economic and military aid and diplomatic protection, but it has stepped up its cleansing pace under the protection of George Bush and the 'war on terror.' The United States uses Israel as its proxy to help it maintain domination in the Middle East and for other services, and Israel uses the United States to help it pursue a 'redeeming the land' from non-Jewish inhabitants in the occupied territories. For Israel, Iraq has been a rival local power that it is happy to have its protector destroy and occupy, and as noted by numerous Israeli and other commentators -- but ignored in the U.S. mainstream media -- under the cover of the war which the United States is preparing to unleash, Israel will be able to ethnically cleanse the occupied territories more rapidly. This possibility is under active discussion in Israel itself. The two genocides are also linked by the close connection between the military establishments of the two states, and by the force of the powerful pro-Israel lobby in the United States, which advances Israeli interests by pushing for U.S. aid and protection to Israel, and, currently, by pressing for a war against Iraq, which again will serve Israeli interests. This lobby has not only helped control media debate and made congress into 'Israeli occupied territory,' it has seen to it that numerous officials with 'dual loyalties' occupy strategic decision-making positions in the Bush administration (see Kathleen and Bill Christison, "A Rose By Another Name: The Bush Administration's Dual Loyalties," Counterpunch, Dec. 13, 2002) ... U.S. warnings that it might 'end states' harboring terrorists, and scores of Israeli statements dehumanizing their victims and expressing an intent to displace or otherwise get rid of non-Jews in Eretz Israel are treated differently in the West. Arguably, policies that carry state terrorism to the point of mass killings for political ends and 'deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part' (Article 2(c) of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide), constitute genocide."

The Peace Movement is Making a Mistake. Oil Shouldn't Be the Only Reason for Opposing This War,
by Bill and Kathleen Christison, Counterpunch, January 21, 2003
"Amy Goodman said it (speech in Albuquerque, Saturday, January 18). Robert Fisk wrote it (The Independent, same day). Much of the U.S. Peace Movement talked about it (in demonstrations around the country, same day). On that day of all days, when the peace movement went into high gear around the United States, just about everybody seemed to emphasize, as Amy put it, 'a three-letter word, O-I-L' as the real reason the Bush administration wants war in Iraq. Some peace advocates also mentioned the U.S. drive for global domination as a related reason. Few (we heard none) discussed Israeli policy and the increasingly close partnership between the Bush and Sharon governments as a factor at least as important as oil in pushing the U.S. toward war. Some people who oppose war in Iraq undoubtedly have a strong and sincere belief that no connection exists between the Israel-Palestine issue and U.S. policy on Iraq. More people, however, perhaps the vast majority of those who oppose the war, believe it is wise tactically to soft-pedal any Israeli connection to the war. The peace movement, after all, needs whatever support it can get, and many supporters of Israel also oppose war on Iraq even if the present Israeli government does not. Supporters of Israel tend to bristle at any effort to link Israel to the U.S war effort. So the thinking most likely goes like this: Why bring up the issue? We need the biggest coalition we can cobble together. Let's bury other differences where we can ... The evidence is equally clear that strong supporters of a Likud-led government in Israel exist among the neo-cons at very high levels of the Bush administration in Washington. Over the years, these people have not talked or written much for the record about oil and the Middle East, but they have written a lot about strengthening Israel's position through transforming the Middle East. No one can deny that Bush and Vice President Cheney have deep and lasting interests in oil, but the close political relationship that seems to have developed between Sharon and Bush makes it likely that Bush has by now accepted the transformation argument as being just as important as oil. It is also logical that Bush would see his acceptance of this argument as increasing his chances of obtaining more Jewish-American votes in 2004 than he received in 2000. If Bush (and Karl Rove) are in fact thinking along these lines, those of us who oppose war on Iraq should be facing this issue of Middle East transformation head-on, not ignoring it for tactical reasons or out of fear of charges of anti-Semitism. Second, and more important, by not talking about the link between Israel and Iraq, the peace movement is making it easier for Israel to continue its almost 36-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Every day or week that passes with little discussion in the media of the occupation is a plus for Sharon and his Likud government, because the absence of discussion makes it easier for Israel to slip its new proposal for large-scale aid from the U.S. through Congress while continuing its harsh and unjust actions in the West Bank and Gaza. Furthermore, talk is continuing to mount in Israel of 'transfer,' that is, expelling the Palestinians in the West Bank to Jordan, leaving the West Bank open to total takeover by the Israelis. This transfer is an integral part of the Middle East transformation that the peace movement seems not to want to talk about."

Letter from Iraq: The Children's Ward Inside an Iraqi hospital, where the Gulf War's effects are still felt,
Time, Saturday, Jan. 25, 2003
"Zainab is 40 days old and has spent her entire life at the Basra hospital. After all this time, her doctors think she just might pull through because she now weighs four and a half pounds. But even if she survives, her future is bleak. Zainab was born with underdeveloped limbs. Her mother Nazad says she knew the reason as soon as her newborn daughter was shown to her. 'It is because my womb is poisoned,' she said, rocking the tightly wrapped bundle of her child. 'The baby became sick and came out early.' Doctors have a different explanation, but Nazad's reasoning is close enough. Her family lives in Al Zubair, a town on Iraq's border with Kuwait. This area was heavily bombed during the Gulf War. According to the U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute, more than 900,000 depleted uranium tipped bullets were fired. When they exploded, say experts, toxic substances were released in the ground and air, and after four or five years, entered the food chain, affecting human lives. Gulf War syndrome has been reported in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and even among American soldiers on the ground. (Washington denies that the illnesses are caused by depleted uranium.) The Iraqi government has noted a remarkable increase in cancer, reduced fertility, miscarriages and children born with congenital defects. In the southern Basra province, multiple congenital malformation cases have shot up from 37 in 1990 to 301 in 2002. 'We have a generation of children that are going to die too soon,' says Dr. Jnana Ghalib Hassan, Zainab's pediatrician. 'First the Americans poisoned our land, and now we are being denied medicines to help these people.' Dr. Hassan stalks through the cancer ward of the Basra hospital where several children lie hooked up to intravenous drips. She shows hideous photographs of damaged children, many of them little more than lumps of meat. Those did not make it, but there are plenty that would survive if only they had some medication. But these are poor people and cannot afford medicines. Cancer drugs, for instance, fall under the dual use category and are listed under UN sanctions. So, although medical services are highly subsidized in Iraq, these children can have no treatment."

Too Many Smoking Guns to Ignore: Israel, American Jews, and the War on Iraq, by Bill and Kathleen Christison, former CIA political analysts, Counterpunch, January 25, 2003
"Most of the vociferously pro-Israeli neo-conservative policymakers in the Bush administration make no effort to hide the fact that at least part of their intention in promoting war against Iraq (and later perhaps against Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, and the Palestinians) is to guarantee Israel's security by eliminating its greatest military threats, forging a regional balance of power overwhelmingly in Israel's favor, and in general creating a more friendly atmosphere for Israel in the Middle East. Yet, despite the neo-cons' own openness, a great many of those on the left who oppose going to war with Iraq and oppose the neo-conservative doctrines of the Bush administration nonetheless utterly reject any suggestion that Israel is pushing the United States into war, or is cooperating with the U.S., or even hopes to benefit by such a war. Anyone who has the temerity to suggest any Israeli instigation of, or even involvement in, Bush administration war planning is inevitably labeled somewhere along the way as an anti-Semite. Just whisper the word 'domination' anywhere in the vicinity of the word 'Israel,' as in 'U.S.-Israeli domination of the Middle East' or 'the U.S. drive to assure global domination and guarantee security for Israel,' and some leftist who otherwise opposes going to war against Iraq will trot out charges of promoting the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the old czarist forgery that asserted a Jewish plan for world domination. This is tiresome, to put it mildly. So it's useful to put forth the evidence for the assertion of Israeli complicity in Bush administration planning for war with Iraq, which is voluminous, as the following recitation will show ..."

Europe urges restraint, but Bush knows best,
By Eric Margolis, Toronto Sun, January 26, 2003-- Contributing Foreign "Time's European edition asked its readers what nation posed the greatest threat to world peace. Of the 268,000 respondents (as of this writing), 7.8% replied North Korea, 8.9% named Iraq and a shocking 83.3% said the United States. Good work, President Bush. The Time poll mirrors feeling around the globe, with the exceptions of Israel and Britain. American neo-conservatives, however, will dismiss this poll as just another example of European wimpiness, irrelevance and anti-American prejudice. So will George Bush and his hawkish entourage, who have made it plain they don't care what the rest of the world thinks so long as America and Israel get their way ... Europeans see the Mideast very differently from North Americans, thanks to their long experience in the region, and their media, which provides far more accurate, balanced and diverse reporting on the region than do ours. Americans accuse the French of arrogance, rudeness and illusions of grandeur, which is often true. The French rightly accuse American politicians - epitomized for Europeans by President Bush - of being arrogant and ignorant, as well as loud, uncultured, impatient and dreadfully lacking in those two fundamentals of civilized education: geography and history. French intellectuals warn American TV and movies are spreading 'cretinization' to Europe's youth, a charge easily confirmed by an evening's viewing of North American television ... Unfortunately, the Bush Administration, obsessed to the point of psychosis with Iraq, refuses to heed the cautions of its old European friends, listening only to exhortations of Israel's far right wing, whose American supporters now dominate the Pentagon and National Security Council."

[The Anti-Defamation is a corrupt, pro-Israel, pro-war, Thought Police organization that seeks to view all political events on the planet through a prism of "anti-Semitism."]
Anti-Israel Protest Calendar,
Anti-Defamation League, updated: January 28, 2003
"The prospect of war against Iraq and the crisis in the Middle East have led to a continuation of large rallies against Israel across the United States in 2003. As in 2002, anti-globalization, antiwar and Muslim and Arab-American groups and supporters have increasingly coalesced against Israel's treatment of Palestinians and the American government's policies in the Middle East. While ADL does not consider mere criticism of Israel to be anti-Semitic or illegitimate, large rallies opposing the Jewish state - spurred by events in the Middle East - repeatedly serve as forums supporting violence and terrorist organizations, and have been marred by anti-Semitic expression. In attempting to de-legitimize Israel and challenge its right to exist, members of organizations that publicly repudiate bigotry against Jews - as do most of those named below - tolerate or initiate at their events a grotesque inversion of history equating Zionism with Nazism."

Mandela Blasts Bush on Iraq, Warns of 'Holocaust',
Yahoo!, (from Reuters) January 30, 2003
"Former South African President Nelson Mandela lashed out at U.S. President George Bush's stance on Iraq on Thursday, saying the Texan had no foresight and could not think properly. Mandela, a towering statesman respected the world over for his fight against Apartheid-era discrimination, said the U.S. leader and British Prime Minister Tony Blair were undermining the United Nations, and suggested they would not be doing so if the organization had a white leader. 'It is a tragedy what is happening, what Bush is doing in Iraq,' Mandela told an audience in Johannesburg. 'What I am condemning is that one power, with a president who has no foresight, who cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust,' he added, to loud applause."

At Arms Talks, Israel and Iraq Call Each Other Peril to Peace,
New York Times (Reuters), January 30, 2003
"Iraq accused Israel today of harboring biological, chemical and nuclear weapons — turning the spotlight on the Jewish state at the main United Nations arms control agency. The Iraqi ambassador, Samir al-Nima, and the Israeli ambassador, Yaakov Levy, also traded insults over their countries' leaders during speeches to the United Nations Conference on Disarmament here. Syria and Algeria joined in the heated debate at the 66-member forum, while the American delegation kept quiet during attacks on Israel, its close ally. The dispute erupted after Mr. Levy appealed for a Middle East free of biological, chemical and nuclear arms and accused 'certain countries' of seeking weapons of mass destruction and supplying 'terrorist groups' with conventional arms and rockets. But Mr. Nima retorted: 'The international community has not seen practical steps taken by Israel to disarm in the nuclear field. We all know Israel has nuclear arms and has signed the treaty banning chemical weapons, but nobody knows where their stocks are. We also know Israel has biological weapons, but nobody knows where those stocks are.' An Israeli Defense Ministry spokeswoman declined to comment on the Iraqi remarks. Israel is widely believed to have about 300 nuclear warheads but its policy is never to discuss the issue. Envoys from Syria and Algeria expressed regret that Israel had not opened its nuclear sites to the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency. The agency's inspectors are scouring Iraq for weapons of mass destruction."

[Israel has little water, and much of it is polluted. This looms as an extremely serious future problem for the Jewish nation. So here's another reason for the Jewish Lobby pushing America into an invasion of Iraq: not only to get rid of an Arab regime hostile to Israel, and not only to steal its oil, but also to get its water.]
A War Crime or an Act of War?,
By Stephen C. Pelletiere, New York Times, January 31, 2003
"It was no surprise that President Bush, lacking smoking-gun evidence of Iraq's weapons programs, used his State of the Union address to re-emphasize the moral case for an invasion ... The accusation that Iraq has used chemical weapons against its citizens is a familiar part of the debate. The piece of hard evidence most frequently brought up concerns the gassing of Iraqi Kurds at the town of Halabja in March 1988, near the end of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. President Bush himself has cited Iraq's 'gassing its own people,' specifically at Halabja, as a reason to topple Saddam Hussein. But the truth is, all we know for certain is that Kurds were bombarded with poison gas that day at Halabja. We cannot say with any certainty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds. This is not the only distortion in the Halabja story. I am in a position to know because, as the Central Intelligence Agency's senior political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, and as a professor at the Army War College from 1988 to 2000, I was privy to much of the classified material that flowed through Washington having to do with the Persian Gulf ... The Kurdish civilians who died had the misfortune to be caught up in that exchange. But they were not Iraq's main target. And the story gets murkier: immediately after the battle the United States Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report, which it circulated within the intelligence community on a need-to-know basis. That study asserted that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds, not Iraqi gas. The agency did find that each side used gas against the other in the battle around Halabja ... There may be justifications for invading Iraq, but Halabja is not one of them. In fact, those who really feel that the disaster at Halabja has bearing on today might want to consider a different question: Why was Iran so keen on taking the town? A closer look may shed light on America's impetus to invade Iraq. We are constantly reminded that Iraq has perhaps the world's largest reserves of oil. But in a regional and perhaps even geopolitical sense, it may be more important that Iraq has the most extensive river system in the Middle East ... In the 1990's there was much discussion over the construction of a so-called Peace Pipeline that would bring the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates south to the parched Gulf states and, by extension, Israel. No progress has been made on this, largely because of Iraqi intransigence. With Iraq in American hands, of course, all that could change. Thus America could alter the destiny of the Middle East in a way that probably could not be challenged for decades, not solely by controlling Iraq's oil, but by controlling its water ... . Before we go to war over Halabja, the administration owes the American people the full facts ... Until Washington gives us proof of Saddam Hussein's supposed atrocities, why are we picking on Iraq on human rights grounds, particularly when there are so many other repressive regimes Washington supports?"

Win Without War
(web site)

Israel reportedly helping with U.S. war preparation,
by John Diamond, USA TODAY, November 3, 2002
"Israel is secretly playing a key role in U.S. preparations for possible war with Iraq, helping to train soldiers and Marines for urban warfare, conducting clandestine surveillance missions in the western Iraqi desert and allowing the United States to place combat supplies in Israel, according to U.S. Defense and intelligence officials. The activities are designed to help shorten any war with Iraq and keep Israel out of it. But working with Israel on the war effort is highly sensitive. It could undercut already shaky support for an invasion among friendly Arab states. Because Israel's activities are classified, they have drawn little attention or criticism in the Middle East. 'The Americans have asked us to keep a low profile, and we accept that,' an Israeli official says. Speaking on condition of anonymity, members of the Bush administration, intelligence officials and diplomats described Israel's involvement: Israeli commandos, using their own satellite intelligence and imagery provided by U.S. intelligence services, have conducted clandestine surveillance missions of Scud missile sites in western Iraq, according to the intelligence official and a senior Pentagon official. Missiles launched from western Iraq could reach Israel, potentially carrying chemical or biological weapons."

Israeli agents accused of creating fake al-Qaeda cell,
Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), December 9, 2002
"A senior Palestinian security official says his services have uncovered an Israeli plot to create a fake al-Qaeda cell in the Gaza Strip, a charge Israel has dismissed as absurd. The head of preventive security in Gaza, Rashid Abu Shbak, said Israeli agents posing as operatives of al-Qaeda recruited Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. 'Over the past nine months we've been investigating eight [such] cases,' Mr Abu Shbak said. His claims came after the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, said al-Qaeda militants were operating in the Gaza Strip and in Lebanon, raising fears of an intensification of Israeli military occupations. A spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry branded the Palestinian claim as ridiculous and 'some kind of propaganda campaign', adding that 'the Palestinian territories have become a breeding ground for terrorism'. 'There is no need for Israel to make up something like this because [the hardline Islamic movements] are all the same as al-Qaeda,' the spokesman said. Mr Abu Shbak said three Palestinians used by Israeli intelligence had been arrested, while another 11 were released 'because they came and informed us of this Israeli plot.'"

Israeli help in planning Iraq war may keep it out of actual fighting,
Jewish Telegraphic Agency, February 5, 2003
"Neither the United States nor Israel wants the Jewish state involved in an anticipated war against Iraq. To minimize the chances of that happening, however, Israel has become very involved in planning an attack. U.S.-Israel coordination becomes ever more crucial after U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s briefing to the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday. The briefing is seen as the major U.S. effort to convince the international community that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is flouting weapons inspections and must be disarmed by force. Powell used audio tapes and satellite images to prove that Iraq has been hiding weapons materials from U.N. inspectors and continues to produce dangerous weapons. He also claimed that members of the Al-Qaida terrorist network are hiding in Iraq ... Both Israel and the United States are trying to minimize reports of their coordination ahead of any U.S.-led attack on Iraq. But if the United States does go to war with Iraq, Israel’s fingerprints will be on the battle plans. The two counties have been spending years coordinating information, developing technology for battle in the Middle East and trying to protect Israel from weapons of mass destruction. ... Protecting Israel is less of an issue this time around, as U.S.-Israel coordination has cemented their mutual agenda. Even if Israel does stay out of the war, its technology and equipment will not. Among the Israeli technology that American forces may use is the HAVE NAP air-to-ground missile, which the Israelis call Popeye. It is used to destroy targets such as concrete military bunkers from great distances, and can be re-targeted while already in the air. The United States also is using Israeli-made Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, which allow the military to identify targets and assess bomb damage without risking pilots’ lives. The Israeli-made Litening device uses heat sensors to enable aircraft to fly and target in bad weather. Israel and the United States also share communications channels that could prove vital in any war."

[Big shots at the New York Sun include media mogul Conrad Black (a non-Jewish Zionist from Great Britain), wealthy Jewish "hedge-fund" financier Michael Steinhardt, and chief editors Seth Lipsky and Ira Stoll (both Jewish).]
New York Sun suggests treason prosecution for free speech,
Spin Sanity, February 7, 2003
"Since Sept. 11, 2001, we have documented many instances in which pundits and politicians have tried to demonize dissent, suggesting that it is unpatriotic and even that it aids the enemy. But none has gone so far as to suggest an actual prosecution for treason simply for voicing one's political views - until now. In an editorial yesterday, the editors of the New York Sun, a conservative newspaper founded last year, call on New York City to obstruct a protest against a potential war in Iraq for as long as possible and to monitor the protestors for 'an eventual treason prosecution.' This breathtaking article is a direct attack on the free speech rights of every American. The Sun begins with this paean to obstruction of the constitutional right to political protest: 'Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Kelly are doing the people of New York and the people of Iraq a great service by delaying and obstructing the anti-war protest planned for February 15. The longer they delay in granting the protesters a permit, the less time the organizers have to get their turnout organized, and the smaller the crowd is likely to be. And we wouldn't want to overstate the matter, but, at some level, the smaller the crowd, the more likely that President Bush will proceed with his plans to liberate Iraq. And the more likely, in that case, that the Iraqi people will be freed and the citizens of New York will be rescued from the threat of an Iraqi-aided terrorist attack.' As the Sun goes on to say, the city objects not to the demonstration itself, but to the demonstrators' plan to 'march down First Avenue near the United Nations,' which would obstruct traffic and require police protection. But the editors' logic is clear -- irrespective of these factors, it is desirable to obstruct free speech rights in order to advance a particular political cause. No matter that public officials are obligated not to discriminate between groups in this way. This shows a willful disregard for the legal principles of free speech, though the editors grudgingly concede later in the piece that the demonstrators 'probably' have a right to hold their protest. But '[s]o long as the protesters are invoking the Constitution,' the Sun continues, 'they might have a look at Article III,' which provides a legal definition of treason, including the requirement of two witnesses for a treason prosecution. How is the protest in any way relevant to treason?"

REAL AUTHORS OF IRAQ DOSSIER BLAST BLAIR,
Mirror (UK), Feb 8 2003
"Sean Boyne and student Ibrahim al-Marashi have attacked Tony Blair for using their reports to call for war against Iraq. Mr Boyne, who works for military magazine Jane's Intelligence Review, said he was shocked his work had been used in the Government's dossier. Articles he wrote in 1997 were plagiarised for a 19-page intelligence document entitled Iraq: Its Infrastructure Of Concealment, Deception And Intimidation to add weight to the PM's warmongering. He said: 'I don't like to think that anything I wrote has been used for an argument for war. I am concerned because I am against the war.' The other main source was a thesis by post-graduate student, Ibrahim al-Marashi, the US-born son of Iraqis, who lives in California. His research was partly based on documents seized in the 1991 Gulf War. He said: 'This is wholesale deception. How can the British public trust the Government if it is up to these sort of tricks? People will treat any other information they publish with a lot of scepticism from now on.' After the dossier's origins were revealed, Mr Blair was accused by his own MPs of theft and lied ... The bulk of the Government's document is directly copied, without acknowledgement, from Ibrahim's 5,000-word thesis - Iraq's Security and Intelligence Network - published last September ... Mr al-Marashi and Mr Boyne said their figures had been altered in the Government document. Former Labour Defence Minister MP Peter Kilfoyle said: 'It just adds to the general impression that what we have been treated to is a farrago of half-truths. I am shocked that on such thin evidence that we should be trying to convince the British people that this is a war worth fighting.' And Labour MP Glenda Jackson said: 'It is another example of how the Government is attempting to mislead the country and Parliament. And of course to mislead is a Parliamentary euphemism for lying' ... The dossier had been praised by US Secretary of State Colin Powell in his speech to the UN Security Council."

Israel, U.S. reach secret agreement Read more Conflict with Iraq,
St. Augustine Record, February 10, 2003
"Israel and Washington have reached a secret agreement on conditions for ousting Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat after the U.S. topples Saddam Hussein in Iraq, a leading Israeli newspaper reported Sunday. Reached by Knight Ridder Newspapers, spokesmen for both Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv declined to either confirm or deny the report carried in the tabloid Yediot Aharanot under the headline, 'After Saddam: It is Going to be Arafat's Turn.' But Palestinian Authority regime change has been a long-standing goal of Sharon, whose Likud Party recently swept national elections and who has rejected Arafat as a suitable negotiating peace partner for plans for an independent state of Palestine. Sharon has dispatched trusted aide Dov Weisglass to Washington several times in recent months and, according to the newspaper report, the U.S. and Israel now have a secret agreement -- in writing. It did not report the terms. But Weisglass told state-run Israel Radio over the weekend that, rather than exile the Palestinian leader, or kill him, Israel wants the Palestinians to create the position of a powerful prime minister, which would leave Arafat in a more ceremonial role as president. Israel has such a system. If Arafat refuses the transfer of power, 'We'll kick him out of here with American authorization,' according to an unnamed 'high-ranking Israeli official' quoted in the article."

The war on Iraq: Conceived in Israel, [in five parts]
by StephenJ. Sniegoski, Thornwalker, February 10, 2003
"During the Clinton administration, neoconservatives promoted their views from a strong interlocking network of think tanks — the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Middle East Media Research Institute (Memri), Hudson Institute, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Middle East Forum, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), Center for Security Policy (CSP) — which have had great influence in the media and which have helped to staff Republican administrations. Some of the organizations were originally set up by mainline conservatives and only later taken over by neoconservatives; others were established by neocons, with some of the groups having a direct Israeli connection. For example, Colonel Yigal Carmon, formerly of Israeli military intelligence, was a co-founder of the Middle East Media Research Institute (Memri). And the various organizations have been closely interconnected. For example, the other co-founder of Memri, Meyrav Wurmser, was a member of the Hudson Institute, while her husband, David Wurmser, headed the Middle East studies department of AEI. And [Richard] Perle was both a 'resident fellow' at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and a trustee of the Hudson Institute. In a recent article in the The Nation, Jason Vest discusses the immense influence in the current Bush administration of people from two major neocon research organizations, JINSA and CSP. Vest details the close links among the two organizations, right-wing politicians, arms merchants, military men, Jewish billionaires, and Republican administrations."

[Steve Bing is the grandson of Jewish real estate mogul Leo S. Bing]
Actor Penn Claims Lost Movie Role Over Iraq Views,
Reuters, February 12, 2003
"Actor Sean Penn is claiming in a lawsuit that he lost a movie role because of his public opposition to a U.S. war against Iraq. But movie producer Steve Bing has countered in his own lawsuit that Penn is 'irrational and irresponsible' and accused the actor of trying to extort $10 million for a movie he had no deal to star in. Bing and Penn hit each other with Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuits on Tuesday in a bitter feud over the putative movie, 'Why Men Shouldn't Marry,' that could result in a classic courtroom showdown. Penn, the ex-husband of Madonna, accused Bing of 'borrowing a page from the dark era of Hollywood blacklisting' by allegedly reneging on a contract for him to play the lead in the movie after Penn aired his views on Iraq in a January television interview. Bing, most famous for a bitter dispute over paternity of British actress Elizabeth Hurley's child, termed Penn's claim blackmail."

[Why is this international news? And who is really attacking who?]
Iraqi Official Snubs Israeli Journalist in Rome by Refusing to Answer Question,
ABC News, February 14, 2003
"Touching off hoots and boos, a top Iraqi official snubbed an Israeli journalist Friday, refusing to answer the correspondent's question about whether Baghdad might attack Israel in a case of a U.S. military strike on Iraq. Correspondent Menachem Gantz, based in Rome for the Israeli newspaper Maariv, asked Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz at a news conference in the Italian capital: 'Are you considering any kind of attack as a possibility against Israel in case of an American attack?' Aziz, invited by the Foreign Press Association to give the news conference, responded: 'When I came to this press conference it was not in my agenda to answer questions by the Israeli media. Sorry.' Some journalists in the packed room of the association's headquarters whistled and booed at that reply. The association's president, Eric Jozsef, a French [Jewish?] journalist, urged Aziz to respond. 'No, I'm not going to answer,' the Iraqi official said. The room was packed with about 100 journalists, with scores of others listening from another room. About 20 of the journalists, including Israeli and German correspondents, walked out, Gantz among them. Later at the news conference, another journalist asked the same question and Aziz replied: 'We don't have the means to attack anyone outside our territory."

[After Iraq, Israel's next victim: Iran.]
Bomb Bushehr,
Israel Insider, February 14, 2003
"Through the financing of Palestinian terrorism and sponsoring of Hizbullah, Iran has long endeavored to undermine Israel through proxies but its development of a sophisticated missile program makes Tehran a more direct threat today. There seems little doubt that the Shahab 3 rocket, with a range of 1,300 kms, is specifically designed to attack Israel and the fact that it can carry a nuclear payload is worrying in the extreme. That Iran is actively pursuing the means to arm it makes action by Israel imperative. President Khatami's announcement Sunday of the "discovery" and extraction of uranium near Yadz lends a new urgency to this already serious situation. David Ivry has recalled that, given the environmental risks, the attack on the Osirak had to be executed before radioactive materials arrived on site and the same condition applies with regard to Bushehr, the Persian Gulf port city where Iran is building a nuclear reactor with Russian assistance ... What can Israel do to counter this threat? ... To paraphrase President Bush, Israel must act against the emerging Iranian threat before it is fully formed. Menachem Begin proclaimed in 1981 that no enemy of Israel would be allowed to develop WMDs, a position wholeheartedly supported by then-Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon, who argued at the time for the adoption of a policy under which the development of nuclear weapons by a hostile regional power would constitute a casus belli. The soundness of this judgment has not been eroded by time. Of course there will be criticism of any Israeli action. Europe will be apoplectic but Israel has survived their reproaches thus far."

[The Jewish Lobby -- via their control of Judeo-centric, pro-Israel American foreign policy -- gets to finally attack Germany. America continues to become a pariah nation, thanks to Israel.]
US to punish German 'treachery',
Observer (UK), February 16, 2003
"America is to punish Germany for leading international opposition to a war against Iraq. The US will withdraw all its troops and bases from there and end military and industrial co-operation between the two countries - moves that could cost the Germans billions of euros. The plan - discussed by Pentagon officials and military chiefs last week on the orders of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - is designed 'to harm' the German economy to make an example of the country for what US hawks see as Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's 'treachery'. The hawks believe that making an example of Germany will force other countries heavily dependent on US trade to think twice about standing up to America in future. This follows weeks of increasingly angry exchanges between Rumsfeld and Germany, in which at one point he taunted Germany and France for being an irrelevant part of 'old Europe'. Now Rumsfeld has decided to go further by unilaterally imposing the Pentagon's sanctions on a country already in the throes of economic problems. 'We are doing this for one reason only: to harm the German economy,' one source told The Observer last week. 'Our troops contribute many millions of dollars. Why should we continue to support a country which has treated Nato and the protection we provided for decades with such incredible contempt?' Another Pentagon source said: 'The aim is to hit German trade and commerce. It is not just about taking out the troops and equipment; it is also about cancelling commercial contracts and defence-related arrangements.' The Pentagon plan - and the language expressed by officials close to Rumsfeld - has horrified State Department officials, who believe that bullying other countries to follow the US line will further exacerbate anti-Americanism and alienate those European countries that might support a United Nations resolution authorising a war ... Rumsfeld and his staff have made no attempt to hide their fury at Schröder's 'treachery and ineptitude' over Iraq."

[The Jewish Sulzberger clan owns the NY Times and most of its editorial hierarchy is Jewish.]
Disarming Iraq,
EDITORIAL: New York Times, February 15, 2003
"As much as the feuding members of the United Nations Security Council might like Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei to settle the question of war or peace with Iraq, these two mild-mannered civil servants can't make that fateful judgment. All they can do, which they did again yesterday, is to tell the Council how their inspection efforts are faring. So-so was the answer. It's up to the Council members — especially the veto-wielding quintet of the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China — to decide whether Iraq is disarming. In our judgment, Iraq is not. The only way short of war to get Saddam Hussein to reverse course at this late hour is to make clear that the Security Council is united in its determination to disarm him and is now ready to call in the cavalry to get the job done. America and Britain are prepared to take that step. The time has come for the others to quit pretending that inspections alone are the solution. The Security Council, as we said the other day, needs to pass a new resolution that sets a deadline for unconditional Iraqi compliance and authorizes military action if Baghdad falls short ... The Security Council doesn't need to sit through more months of inconclusive reports. It needs full and immediate Iraqi disarmament. It needs to say so, backed by the threat of military force."

A monument to hypocrisy. Every one of us must raise our voices, and march in protest, now and again and again,
by Edward Said, Al-Ahram (Egypt), February 13-19, 2003
"It has finally become intolerable to listen to or look at news in this country [America]. I've told myself over and over again that one ought to leaf through the daily papers and turn on the TV for the national news every evening, just to find out what 'the country' is thinking and planning, but patience and masochism have their limits ...[T]he planners of this war, as Ralph Nader has forcefully said, are chicken hawks, that is, hawks who are too cowardly to do any fighting themselves. Wolfowitz, Perle, Bush, Cheney and others of that entirely civilian group were to a man in strong favour of the Vietnam War, yet each of them got a deferment based on privilege, and therefore never fought or so much as even served in the armed forces. Their belligerence is therefore morally repugnant and, in the literal sense, anti-democratic in the extreme. What this unrepresentative cabal seeks in a war with Iraq has nothing to do with actual military considerations. Iraq, whatever the disgusting qualities of its deplorable regime, is simply not an imminent and credible threat to neighbours like Turkey, or Israel, or even Jordan (each of which could easily handle it militarily) or certainly to the US. Any argument to the contrary is simply a preposterous, entirely frivolous proposition ...[O]nce big powers start to dream of regime change -- a process already begun by the Perles and Wolfowitzs of this country -- there is simply no end in sight. Isn't it outrageous that people of such a dubious caliber actually go on blathering about bringing democracy, modernisation, and liberalisation to the Middle East? God knows that the area needs it, as so many Arab and Muslim intellectuals and ordinary people have said over and over. But who appointed these characters as agents of progress anyway? And what entitles them to pontificate in so shameless a way when there are already so many injustices and abuses in their own country to be remedied? It's particularly galling that Perle, about as unqualified a person as it is imaginable to be on any subject touching on democracy and justice, should have been an election adviser to Netanyahu's extreme right-wing government during the period 1996-9, in which he counseled the renegade Israeli to scrap any and all peace attempts, to annex the West Bank and Gaza, and try to get rid of as many Palestinians as possible. This man now talks about bringing democracy to the Middle East, and does so without provoking the slightest objection from any of the media pundits who politely (abjectly) quiz him on national television ... But what is so monumentally hypocritical about the official US position is that literally everything Powell has accused the [Iraqi] Ba'athists of has been the stock in trade of every Israeli government since 1948, and at no time more flagrantly than since the occupation of 1967. Torture, illegal detention, assassination, assaults against civilians with missiles, helicopters and jet fighters, annexation of territory, transportation of civilians from one place to another for the purpose of imprisonment, mass killing (as in Qana, Jenin, Sabra and Shatilla to mention only the most obvious), denial of rights to free passage and unimpeded civilian movement, education, medical aid, use of civilians as human shields, humiliation, punishment of families, house demolitions on a mass scale, destruction of agricultural land, expropriation of water, illegal settlement, economic pauperisation, attacks on hospitals, medical workers and ambulances, killing of UN personnel, to name only the most outrageous abuses: all these, it should be noted with emphasis, have been carried on with the total, unconditional support of the United States which has not only supplied Israel with the weapons for such practices and every kind of military and intelligence aid, but also has given the country upwards of $135 billion in economic aid on a scale that beggars the relative amount per capita spent by the US government on its own citizens ... How he and his bosses and co- workers can stand up before the world and righteously sermonise against Iraq while at the same time completely ignoring the ongoing American partnership in human rights abuses with Israel defies credibility."

[The consequence of pro-Israel, dual loyalist Jews taking over American foreign policy: like Israel, the U.S. faces increased disgust from the international moral community.]
Trailer trash politics threaten world stability,
By Tom McGurk, Sunday Business Post (Ireland) February 16, 2003
"Once upon a time and not a very long time ago, the prospect of the EU creating a unified and coherent foreign policy to distinguish the new post colonial Europe in the 21st century seemed like a gradual, if not complex, task. It seemed then a matter of the Franco-German diplomatic engine slowly drawing together in the years ahead all the disparate strands and beginning a determined courtship of Britain. Indeed, a large part of the rush to bring into membership the eastern states and the former Soviet states was the thought that they would welcome the opportunity to be part of a new western political alliance. Above all, it drew them further and further away from the post-Soviet foreign designs being drawn up across the Urals. All that was just a few months ago, but how extraordinarily the diplomatic map of Europe has crashed and fragmented in the last few weeks. To borrow an old political 'Irishism', it's GUBU time in the EU. Not only have the old cold war alignments, which had persisted anyway, fallen apart, but traditional diplomatic patterns, many over a century old, have dramatically sundered. In a word, the post cold war map of Europe has suddenly altered beyond imaginable recognition. As the EU leaders arrive in Greece tomorrow for an emergency summit on Iraq, which UN secretary general Kofi Annan has also been invited to attend, they may well look like shell-shocked survivors entering a landscape changed beyond their recognition. I suspect that even George W Bush had no idea of just how cataclysmic for the established world order his determination to effect regime change in Iraq might be. The Pentagon may be groaning under situation papers drawn up for all the likely repercussions in the Middle East and further across the Muslim world, but I suspect that there are few if any who anticipated the crisis into which Europe has been plunged. Suddenly, Bush's rush to war has created the most unexpected result, a consequent and profound sense of being Europeanist has spread to citizens right across the European continent. From Russia in the east to Ireland in the west, Europeans have for the last week or so been contemplating two profoundly conflicting views of the US. One has been the cultural and consumerist map of the world, the other the humanitarian and internationalist order map of the world. Never has the Atlantic seemed so wide, and never has the sense of the need to be European grown more poignantly attractive. As the EU leaders gather in Greece tomorrow they should be well aware of how critical the task of the creation of a new common European foreign policy has suddenly become. The deeply worrying reality is that the government of the United States of America has passed into the hands of people who are politically dysfunctional, utterly ignorant of the complexities of the world of the 21st century and woefully unaware of the extent of the international crisis they are about to unleash across the Third World. By any standards, Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are political trailer parkers, the poorest diplomatic white trash that the US has had the misfortune to inherit ... Despite massive public rejection of the US position in regard to Iraq in the populations of places such as Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and the Baltic States, their governments are intent on ignoring public opinion and supporting the Bush line."

Lessons from Israel. A War Without Legitimacy,
by Lev Grinberg, Counterpunch, February 15, 2003
"Apparently the Israelis know something about preemptive wars that President Bush ignores. I would suggest learning some lessons from the Israeli experience. Israel has waged two wars that were defined as preemptive: The 1967 War, named The Six Days War, and the Lebanon War in 1982. In both cases, Israel had serious reasons to assume it was going to be attacked, a hundred times more so than the US's current concern about its security ... Using a dubious pretext the IDF invaded Lebanon, headed by Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, who lied to the Israeli public and government, claiming that his intentions were purely defensive, i.e., take over Southern Lebanon to prevent Katyusha missile attacks against Israel. Within two days, the IDF was deployed on the outskirts of Beirut, which was kept under siege for two and half months; its entry into the city was blocked by pressure from Israeli and international public opinion concerned about the potential catastrophe that would ensue from a military invasion into a city where tens of thousands of fighters were entrenched. Following the withdrawal of PLO forces from Beirut, the notorious massacre at the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps pushed out on the streets almost 10% of Israel's citizens in an unprecedented mass demonstration against their government. Sharon was fired from his job as the result of the conclusions of an inquiry committee regarding his ministerial responsibility in the affair. The outcomes of both preemptive wars are well known: Both ended in a military victory and a moral and diplomatic defeat ... There are no just wars, unless they are defensive wars perceived as vital for saving life. Soon it would be Bush, rather than Sadam Hussein, who would be putting the world in danger. American aggression would no longer be regarded as an expression of its might, but as a public admission of weakness. Having already exposed the underbelly of the world's only superpower, Osama Bin Laden would soon become the great winner of the war, and the religious belief that God is on his side will only grow stronger. Again, there is a lesson to be learned from Israel's experience with the rise of Hizballa in Lebanon after 1982 and of Hamas and Islamic Jihad among the Palestinians in the 1990's. Military occupation is not the way to fight terrorism; it is the sure way to boost and encourage it. You have been warned."

The case against war: A conflict driven by the self-interest of America, by Robert Fisk, The Independent, February 15, 2003
"In the end, I think we are just tired of being lied to. Tired of being talked down to, of being bombarded with Second World War jingoism and scare stories and false information and student essays dressed up as 'intelligence'. We are sick of being insulted by little men, by Tony Blair and Jack Straw and the likes of George Bush and his cabal of neo-conservative henchmen who have plotted for years to change the map of the Middle East to their advantage ... Blair cannot discuss the dark political agenda behind George Bush's government, nor the 'sinister men' (the words of a very senior UN official) around the President ... The British, like other Europeans, are an educated people. Ironically, their opposition to this obscene war may make them feel more, not less, European. Palestine has much to do with it. Brits have no love for Arabs but they smell injustice fast enough and are outraged at the colonial war being used to crush the Palestinians by a nation that is now in effect running US policy in the Middle East. We are told that our invasion of Iraq has nothing to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - a burning, fearsome wound to which Bush devoted just 18 words in his meretricious State of the Union speech - but even Blair can't get away with that one; hence his 'conference' for Palestinian reform at which the Palestinians had to take part via video-link because Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, refused to let them travel to London ... Nor can the Americans hide the link between Iraq and Israel and Palestine ... The men driving Bush to war are mostly former or still active pro-Israeli lobbyists. For years, they have advocated destroying the most powerful Arab nation. Richard Perle, one of Bush's most influential advisers, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton and Donald Rumsfeld were all campaigning for the overthrow of Iraq long before George W Bush was elected - if he was elected - US President. And they weren't doing so for the benefit of Americans or Britons. A 1996 report, A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (http://www.israeleconomy.org/strat1.htm) called for war on Iraq. It was written not for the US but for the incoming Israeli Likud prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and produced by a group headed by - yes, Richard Perle. The destruction of Iraq will, of course, protect Israel's monopoly of nuclear weapons and allow it to defeat the Palestinians and impose whatever colonial settlement Sharon has in store. Although Bush and Blair dare not discuss this with us - a war for Israel is not going to have our boys lining up at the recruiting offices - Jewish American leaders talk about the advantages of an Iraqi war with enthusiasm. Indeed, those very courageous Jewish American groups who so bravely oppose this madness have been the first to point out how pro-Israeli organisations foresee Iraq not only as a new source of oil but of water, too; why should canals not link the Tigris river to the parched Levant? No wonder, then, that any discussion of this topic must be censored, as Professor Eliot Cohen, of Johns Hopkins University, tried to do in the Wall Street Journal the day after Powell's UN speech. Cohen suggested that European nations' objections to the war might - yet again - be ascribed to 'anti-Semitism of a type long thought dead in the West, a loathing that ascribes to Jews a malignant intent.' This nonsense, it must be said, is opposed by many Israeli intellectuals who, like Uri Avnery, argue that an Iraq war will leave Israel with even more Arab enemies, especially if Iraq attacks Israel and Sharon then joins the US battle against the Arabs. The slur of 'anti-Semitism' also lies behind Rumsfeld's snotty remarks about 'old Europe'."

Enthusiastic IDF awaits war in Iraq,
Ha'aretz (Israel), February 16, 2003
"The Prime Minister's Office ascribes little importance to the diplomatic hurdles America must overcome in the UN Security Council on the path to a war against Iraq. Israel estimates that the date of attack depends only on logistical considerations, when the deployment of U.S. troops is complete, and that the war will begin at the end of February or the beginning of March. No delays or any kind of influence are expected from the coalition negotiations. The military and political leadership yearns for war in Iraq, seeing it as an opportunity to win the war of attrition with the Palestinians. According to their approach removing Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat from his position will signify Palestinian surrender. Major General Amos Gilad, Coordinator of Government Activities in the West Bank and Gaza, expressed the army's position Saturday, saying that a U.S.-led attack on Iraq would remove the Iraqi threat, and would be an example for 'the removal of other dictators closer to us who use violence and terror.' Senior IDF officers and those close to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, such as National Security Advisor Ephraim Halevy, paint a rosy picture of the wonderful future Israel can expect after the war. They envision a domino effect, with the fall of Saddam Hussein followed by that of Israel's other enemies: Arafat, Hassan Nasrallah, Bashar Assad, the ayatollah in Iran and maybe even Muhammar Gadaffi. Along with these leaders, will disappear terror and weapons of mass destruction. There is also excitement in the IDF's planning department over the standoff between the U.S. and its NATO allies. A paper distributed to the army's upper echelons even spoke of an opportunity to remove the pro-Palestinian Europeans from the Middle East. A senior source said Saturday that the U.S. will punish the Europeans for their back-stabbing on the road to Baghdad, and will no longer ask them for input regarding Israeli concessions. But the conflict in the Security Council shows that the U.S. is having a hard time controling the international community, and is still focused on transforming the Middle East into an area under U.S. protection, in which Israel will enjoy privileged status."

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