> One of the aspects that has not been fully examined is the reason that Brent
> Scocroft and James Baker, both close to George the First, are not siding with
> George the Second's rush to invade Iraq. It's the role of Israel and its domestic
> lobby, today more powerful than ever , which in the form of JINSA, (the Jewish
> Inst. of National Security Affairs, see the Nation 9/2) is now dictating US Middle
> east policy in Washington. Any careful examination of George I's record (and I
> recommend Moshe Aren's book, Broken Covenant, Simon and Shuster, 1995, for
> openers) will realize that Poppy has had an animus towards Israel that goes back
> at least to his days as Veep under Reagan.
> Then, as president, he told Yitzak Shamir that Israel could not have the $10
> billion in loan guarantees that he requested unless Shamir agreed to freeze all
> settlement construction in the West Bank and Gaza, and that he would wait 120 days
> for Shamir to act on it. Shamir, decided, as have other Israeli prime ministers
> before him, to defy the president and go directly to Congress which, given the
> massive sums that the Israel lobby has bestowed on its members, is clearly in the
> lobby's pocket. Within a few days, 234 members of Congress wrote a letter to Bush,
> urging him to okay the loan guarantees and this was followed up by a massive
> invasion of Jewish lobbyists to Capitol Hill to urge Congress to act immediately.
> Bush responded by going on TV--it was 9/11 or 9/12/91, claiming that 1000 Jewish
> lobbyists at arrived in Washington pitted against "little old me." Although what
> polls were taken showed the public was on his side, the lobby declared war against
> him ("A day that will live in infamy," claimed Tom Dine, head of AIPAC, and,
> immediately, the leading attack dogs of the Republican Right, Bill Safire and
> George Will were on his case, attacking him for that and finding fault lines in
> the economy. Chomsky, who is myopic when it comes to the subject of the Israel
> lobby claimed that Bush's declaration on TV proved the lobby to be a "paper
> tiger." (When subsequent events provedthe opposite, Chomsky, predictably, did not
> admit his error which was not surprising since people on his God-like level never
> do.)
> Bush had earlier angered both Israel and the lobby by demanding that Israel stay
> on the sidelines during the first Gulf War, and then opposing Congress's request
> to give Israel another $650 million in compensation which he threatened to veto
> but backed down when the appropriation passed by a veto-proof majority. In the
> 1988 election Bush had received an estimated 36-38% of the Jewish vote. In 1992,
> that dropped to 6-8%, and that was the difference in winning and losing.
> Now, let's fast forward to this Spring, when George the Second, who had tried to
> avoid dealing with the Israel-Palestine confict, was pressured by our European
> allies to make some statement following Sharon's massive re-occupation of a number
> of West Bank towns. "Enough is enough," he publicly declared, telling Sharon to
> withdraw, a statement that made headlines throughout the world. Like Shamir
> before him, and Begin before him (during the Lebanon invasion) Sharon was
> defiant, and again Congress came to his rescue and immediately there was George
> Will again, writing that Dubya had lost his "moral clarity," a phrase which not
> coincidentally, both Ehud Barak and Tom Friedman used on the same op-ed page in
> the NY Times two days ago. Bush immediately, backed off, humiliated by Israel and
> what Pat Buchanan (in this case, and for the wrong reasons) aptly named its "Amen
> Corner" in Congress and the media, not the first president to undergo this
> experience, and soon was referring to Sharon as a "man of peace." That the Jewish
> lobby had now dropped whatever reservations it had with working with the Christian
> right as an ally was no doubt important, but this routine existed long before the
> Falwell-Robertson-Reed crowd had that much input on our Middle East policy.
> This brings in the role of JINSA which was founded in 1976 as a think-tank lobby
> whose goal was to spread US power in the Middle East with support for Israel at
> its center, and over the years, thanks to the likes of Richard Perle, it has
> become increasingly powerful, bringing in such folks as Dick Cheney, who was on
> its board, Jeanne Kirkpatrick and Oliver North, and of equal importance a number
> of former generals and admirals and officials from the arms industry, such as the
> Grumman company that makes the F-16s. Thus today, we have the
> Israel-Military-Industrial Complex writing the script in Washington. The year
> that JINSA was founded, 1976 is quite significant and does not appear in the
> otherwise revealing Nation article. It was in that year that Pres. Gerry Ford
> stopped aid to Israel for six months because it was slow in removing its troops
> from the Sinai in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Ford, irritated
> with Israel's intransigence, decided that the time had come to downgrade the
> US-Israel relationship and was prepared to make a major speech to that effect. Of
> course, the news of this was leaked to the lobby which got 75 of the Senators,
> whose loyalty to Israel (or to the bucks they receive working in its behalf) has
> been proven time and again to be greater than their loyalty to the US public and
> to the Constitution, to write Ford a letter, warning him about taking such a
> step. Ford followed in the footsteps of his predecessors, and kept silent. None
> of this is any great secret. Several books by both supporters of Israel and its
> critics have described this phenomenon. Following the Chomsky line, however, the
> left has studiously ignored it, feeling more comfortable with describing Israel as
> a client state of the US when the truth is just the opposite. The Israeli
> leadership, both Sharon and Peres, and Sharon's noxious mouthpiece, Raanan Gissin,
> have publicly called for the US to attack Iraq in terms that even the US lackey,
> Tony Blair hasn't mustered. It is speculated in the Israeli press, by such
> respected figures as Meron Ben Venisti, former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, that
> Sharon is hoping to use a US attack on Iraq as a cover for ethnically cleansing
> the Palesitnians from the West Bank, an act that has the support of at least half
> of the Israelis since 1988, when in the first year of the first intifada, a poll
> was taken (before any suicide bombers, before any Israeli civilian casualties,
> when the Palestinians were just using stones.) For those who will accuse me of
> replicating a modern version of the Protocols of the Learned Elders Zion, I can
> only reply that what we see today (as the defeat of Hilliard and McKinney also
> indicate) is life imitating bad art, and that as I told an audience in Berkeley
> the other night, the situation today makes the Protocols read like the funny
> papers. And that isn't funny.
Jeff Blankfort
> Jerry West wrote:
>
> A lot of talk these days about war with Iraq. The
> talk in favour mostly by people who either don't have
> much of a first hand understanding of war, or who put
> greed and ideology ahead of the public welfare.
> George Bush is the figurehead for this policy, a man
> who dodged the Vietnam War by hiding out in the
> National Guard. Some of his closest advisors who
> push this agenda also managed to duck out when their
> country called for cannon fodder. It is interesting
> to note that some like Colin Powell and others who
> have actually been involved in war are not too keen
> on the idea of sending thousands of young Americans
> off to die for the glory of George Bush and the
> regressive neo-conservative ideology. It seems a
> large number of Americans are not too keen on the
> idea either, and almost none of the US's allies.
>
> Why is it that a nation that was instrumental in the
> creation of the United Nations over half a century
> ago is now so flagrantly willing to violate the UN
> Charter and launch an aggressive war against another
> member nation? What real justification is there for
> this war except for that found within US politics?
> The claim is that Iraq poses a danger to the US, yet
> no connections have been made between Iraq and the
> events of September 11, and US weapons inspectors who
> have been inside Iraq have said that Iraq poses no
> serious threat with weapons of mass destruction.
>
> There is also the claim that Saddam Hussein is an
> evil character, even gassing his own people along
> with other brutalities, and a threat to his
> neighbours. These accusations are probably true, but
> since when have they been the motivating force for US
> intervention anywhere? The fact is that the US
> routinely supports and even encourages regimes that
> torture and suppress their people, that threaten
> their neighbours and otherwise trod heavily upon
> human rights. It is blatant hypocrisy for the US to
> wrap itself with the mantle of protector of freedom,
> democracy or human rights given the course of its own
> foreign policy over the past fifty years. In fact
> Saddam himself is a product of US support, and
> evidence is coming out that even his ability to
> manufacture and stockpile poison gas was abetted by
> the US.
>
> Taking out Saddam Hussein and characters like him is
> not a bad idea, but it must be done for the right
> reasons and through internationally sanctioned
> actions. A stronger and more effective United
> Nations would be a step forward in policing rogue
> regimes, but the US, which could drive this process,
> has chosen to side step the UN and the broader
> interest of all nations whenever it pleases. A
> strong international court system could also advance
> the case of peace and human rights, but the US has
> seen fit to not only shun the recently created
> International Criminal Court, but to threaten those
> nations, such as Canada, that actively support it.
>
> In reality the US itself has become a rogue nation,
> at least from the stand point of supporting human
> rights and the ideals embodied in the documents of
> its own creation. Through its foreign policy it has
> derailed and set back the cause of democracy in other
> nations, and has helped crush popular will wherever
> the interests of US corporations have been
> threatened. It has become a nation noted for
> hypocrisy, and now it seeks, against almost universal
> international disapproval, to carry out a major act
> of aggression against another country, though evil it
> may be, that poses no significant threat to the
> territory of the United States.
>
> Canadians everywhere should voice their condemnation
> of this proposed US action, and the Canadian
> government should let it be known that such
> aggressive behaviour by the US in violation of the
> spirit of the UN Charter will not be supported.
> Instead, Canada should make it clear that it will
> become a haven for those US citizens who oppose this
> act, and will do everything in its power to obstruct
> and impede US prosecution of this war.
>
> Jerry West
>
> Copyright West's International, 2002
>
> - --
> Jerry West
> THE RECORD
> Editor/Publisher/Janitor
> http://www.island.net/~record
>
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