Showing posts with label war crimes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label war crimes. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Five Israeli Talking Points on Gaza - Debunked


Smoke from an Israeli strike rises over the Gaza Strip. (AP, Hatem Moussa)

Israel has killed almost 800 Palestinians in the past twenty-one days in the Gaza Strip alone; its onslaught continues. The UN estimates that more than 74 percent of those killed are civilians. That is to be expected in a population of 1.8 million where the number of Hamas members is approximately 15,000. Israel does not deny that it killed those Palestinians using modern aerial technology and precise weaponry courtesy of the world’s only superpower. In fact, it does not even deny that they are civilians.

Israel’s propaganda machine, however, insists that these Palestinians wanted to die (“culture of martyrdom”), staged their own death (“telegenically dead”) or were the tragic victims of Hamas’s use of civilian infrastructure for military purposes (“human shielding”). In all instances, the military power is blaming the victims for their own deaths, accusing them of devaluing life and attributing this disregard to cultural bankruptcy. In effect, Israel—along with uncritical mainstream media that unquestionably accept this discourse—dehumanizes Palestinians, deprives them even of their victimhood and legitimizes egregious human rights and legal violations.

This is not the first time. The gruesome images of decapitated children’s bodies and stolen innocence on Gaza’s shores are a dreadful repeat of Israel’s assault on Gaza in November 2012 and winter 2008–09. Not only are the military tactics the same but so too are the public relations efforts and the faulty legal arguments that underpin the attacks. Mainstream media news anchors are inexplicably accepting these arguments as fact.

Below I address five of Israel’s recurring talking points. I hope this proves useful to newsmakers.
1) Israel is exercising its right to self-defense.
As the occupying power of the Gaza Strip, and the Palestinian Territories more broadly, Israel has an obligation and a duty to protect the civilians under its occupation. It governs by military and law enforcement authority to maintain order, protect itself and protect the civilian population under its occupation. It cannot simultaneously occupy the territory, thus usurping the self-governing powers that would otherwise belong to Palestinians, and declare war upon them. These contradictory policies (occupying a land and then declaring war on it) make the Palestinian population doubly vulnerable.

The precarious and unstable conditions in the Gaza Strip from which Palestinians suffer are Israel’s responsibility. Israel argues that it can invoke the right to self-defense under international law as defined in Article 51 of the UN Charter. The International Court of Justice, however, rejected this faulty legal interpretation in its 2004 Advisory Opinion. The ICJ explained that an armed attack that would trigger Article 51 must be attributable to a sovereign state, but the armed attacks by Palestinians emerge from within Israel’s jurisdictional control. Israel does have the right to defend itself against rocket attacks, but it must do so in accordance with occupation law and not other laws of war. Occupation law ensures greater protection for the civilian population. The other laws of war balance military advantage and civilian suffering. The statement that “no country would tolerate rocket fire from a neighboring country” is therefore both a diversion and baseless.

Israel denies Palestinians the right to govern and protect themselves, while simultaneously invoking the right to self-defense. This is a conundrum and a violation of international law, one that Israel deliberately created to evade accountability.
2) Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005.
Israel argues that its occupation of the Gaza Strip ended with the unilateral withdrawal of its settler population in 2005. It then declared the Gaza Strip to be “hostile territory” and declared war against its population. Neither the argument nor the statement is tenable. Despite removing 8,000 settlers and the military infrastructure that protected their illegal presence, Israel maintained effective control of the Gaza Strip and thus remains the occupying power as defined by Article 47 of the Hague Regulations. To date, Israel maintains control of the territory’s air space, territorial waters, electromagnetic sphere, population registry and the movement of all goods and people.

Israel argues that the withdrawal from Gaza demonstrates that ending the occupation will not bring peace. Some have gone so far as to say that Palestinians squandered their opportunity to build heaven in order to build a terrorist haven instead. These arguments aim to obfuscate Israel’s responsibilities in the Gaza Strip, as well as the West Bank. As Prime Minister Netanyahu once explained, Israel must ensure that it does not “get another Gaza in Judea and Samaria…. I think the Israeli people understand now what I always say: that there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River Jordan.”

Palestinians have yet to experience a day of self-governance. Israel immediately imposed a siege upon the Gaza Strip when Hamas won parliamentary elections in January 2006 and tightened it severely when Hamas routed Fatah in June 2007. The siege has created a “humanitarian catastrophe” in the Gaza Strip. Inhabitants will not be able to access clean water, electricity or tend to even the most urgent medical needs. The World Health Organization explains that the Gaza Strip will be unlivable by 2020. Not only did Israel not end its occupation, it has created a situation in which Palestinians cannot survive in the long-term.
3) This Israeli operation, among others, was caused by rocket fire from Gaza.
Israel claims that its current and past wars against the Palestinian population in Gaza have been in response to rocket fire. Empirical evidence from 2008, 2012 and 2014 refute that claim. First, according to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the greatest reduction of rocket fire came through diplomatic rather than military means. This chart demonstrates the correlation between Israel’s military attacks upon the Gaza Strip and Hamas militant activity. Hamas rocket fire increases in response to Israeli military attacks and decreases in direct correlation to them. Cease-fires have brought the greatest security to the region.

During the four months of the Egyptian-negotiated cease-fire in 2008, Palestinian militants reduced the number of rockets to zero or single digits from the Gaza Strip. Despite this relative security and calm, Israel broke the cease-fire to begin the notorious aerial and ground offensive that killed 1,400 Palestinians in twenty-two days. In November 2012, Israel’s extrajudicial assassination of Ahmad Jabari, the chief of Hamas’s military wing in Gaza, while he was reviewing terms for a diplomatic solution, again broke the cease-fire that precipitated the eight-day aerial offensive that killed 132 Palestinians.

Immediately preceding Israel’s most recent operation, Hamas rocket and mortar attacks did not threaten Israel. Israel deliberately provoked this war with Hamas. Without producing a shred of evidence, it accused the political faction of kidnapping and murdering three settlers near Hebron. Four weeks and almost 700 lives later, Israel has yet to produce any evidence demonstrating Hamas’s involvement. During ten days of Operation Brother’s Keeper in the West Bank, Israel arrested approximately 800 Palestinians without charge or trial, killed nine civilians and raided nearly 1,300 residential, commercial and public buildings. Its military operation targeted Hamas members released during the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange in 2011. It’s these Israeli provocations that precipitated the Hamas rocket fire to which Israel claims left it with no choice but a gruesome military operation.
4) Israel avoids civilian casualties, but Hamas aims to kill civilians.
Hamas has crude weapons technology that lacks any targeting capability. As such, Hamas rocket attacks ipso facto violate the principle of distinction because all of its attacks are indiscriminate. This is not contested. Israel, however, would not be any more tolerant of Hamas if it strictly targeted military objects, as we have witnessed of late. Israel considers Hamas and any form of its resistance, armed or otherwise, to be illegitimate.

In contrast, Israel has the eleventh most powerful military in the world, certainly the strongest by far in the Middle East, and is a nuclear power that has not ratified the non-proliferation agreement and has precise weapons technology. With the use of drones, F-16s and an arsenal of modern weapon technology, Israel has the ability to target single individuals and therefore to avoid civilian casualties. But rather than avoid them, Israel has repeatedly targeted civilians as part of its military operations.

The Dahiya Doctrine is central to these operations and refers to Israel’s indiscriminate attacks on Lebanon in 2006. Maj. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot said that this would be applied elsewhere:
What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on. […] We will apply disproportionate force on it and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases.
Israel has kept true to this promise. The 2009 UN Fact-Finding Mission to the Gaza Conflict, better known as the Goldstone Mission, concluded “from a review of the facts on the ground that it witnessed for itself that what was prescribed as the best strategy [Dahiya Doctrine] appears to have been precisely what was put into practice.”

According to the National Lawyers Guild, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, Israel directly targeted civilians or recklessly caused civilian deaths during Operation Cast Lead. Far from avoiding the deaths of civilians, Israel effectively considers them legitimate targets.
5) Hamas hides its weapons in homes, mosques and schools and uses human shields.
This is arguably one of Israel’s most insidious claims, because it blames Palestinians for their own death and deprives them of even their victimhood. Israel made the same argument in its war against Lebanon in 2006 and in its war against Palestinians in 2008. Notwithstanding its military cartoon sketches, Israel has yet to prove that Hamas has used civilian infrastructure to store military weapons. The two cases where Hamas indeed stored weapons in UNRWA schools, the schools were empty. UNRWA discovered the rockets and publicly condemned the violation of its sanctity.

International human rights organizations that have investigated these claims have determined that they are not true. It attributed the high death toll in Israel’s 2006 war on Lebanon to Israel’s indiscriminate attacks. Human Rights Watch notes:
The evidence Human Rights Watch uncovered in its on-the-ground investigations refutes [Israel’s] argument…we found strong evidence that Hezbollah stored most of its rockets in bunkers and weapon storage facilities located in uninhabited fields and valleys, that in the vast majority of cases Hezbollah fighters left populated civilian areas as soon as the fighting started, and that Hezbollah fired the vast majority of its rockets from pre-prepared positions outside villages.
In fact, only Israeli soldiers have systematically used Palestinians as human shields. Since Israel’s incursion into the West Bank in 2002, it has used Palestinians as human shields by tying young Palestinians onto the hoods of their cars or forcing them to go into a home where a potential militant may be hiding.

Even assuming that Israel’s claims were plausible, humanitarian law obligates Israel to avoid civilian casualties that “would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.” A belligerent force must verify whether civilian or civilian infrastructure qualifies as a military objective. In the case of doubt, “whether an object which is normally dedicated to civilian purposes, such as a place of worship, a house or other dwelling or a school, is being used to make an effective contribution to military action, it shall be presumed not to be so used.”

In the over thee weeks of its military operation, Israel has demolished 3,175 homes, at least a dozen with families inside; destroyed five hospitals and six clinics; partially damaged sixty-four mosques and two churches; partially to completely destroyed eight government ministries; injured 4,620; and killed over 700 Palestinians. At plain sight, these numbers indicate Israel’s egregious violations of humanitarian law, ones that amount to war crimes.

Beyond the body count and reference to law, which is a product of power, the question to ask is, What is Israel’s end goal? What if Hamas and Islamic Jihad dug tunnels beneath the entirety of the Gaza Strip—they clearly did not, but let us assume they did for the sake of argument. According to Israel’s logic, all of Gaza’s 1.8 million Palestinians are therefore human shields for being born Palestinian in Gaza. The solution is to destroy the 360-kilometer square strip of land and to expect a watching world to accept this catastrophic loss as incidental. This is possible only by framing and accepting the dehumanization of Palestinian life. Despite the absurdity of this proposal, it is precisely what Israeli society is urging its military leadership to do. Israel cannot bomb Palestinians into submission, and it certainly cannot bomb them into peace.

Read Next: Sharif Abdel Kouddous reports from a hospital in Gaza overwhelmed with victims of Israeli attacks. 

Source: The Nation

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Michael Scheuer: Civilian Casualties Don't Matter



Most people know Michael Scheuer from his appearance on the Bill Maher show, where he bravely advocated a refreshing America-first, Israel-last policy as he was interviewed by the rattled Zionist Bill Maher. He raised the spectre of the Osama Bin Laden boogeyman by describing him as 'more dangerous than a terrorist', but his stance against Israel and his non-interventionist attitude was admirable. Non-interventionism is pretty much what Michael Scheuer is about (he named his website Non-Intervention.com).

 

He's written some good stuff, despite his adamance that America's true enemies are the "Islamists". Here are a couple of examples.

  • On the American Israel lobby: Does Israel Conduct Covert Action in America? You Bet it Does
  • On the neocons and other Zionists skewing U.S. foreign policy in Israel's favour: Turning The Tables on the Israel Firsters
  • When recently he spoke out against Israel and the Lobby on C-Span, he was widely condemned by Zionists like Jeffrey Goldberg at the TheAtlantic.com who described him as a "Jew-hating crank", IsraelNationalNews.com (IsraelNN) and Adam Holland, which wasn't half predictable.

     

    I posted the IsraelNN article here at WUFYS, implicitly endorsing Scheuer and his views, some of which I was already aware were highly questionable. Nothing quite as questionable as this, though - check this out:

    We can't win anyway

    By Michael F. Scheuer

    Adjunct Professor of Security Studies, Georgetown University

    The military option should be taken off the table in all instances -- save an immediate response to foreign attack -- until we elect a president and congress that will abide by the constitutional requirements and machinery for declaring war that were put in place by the Founders.

    In addition, and more practically, the option should be taken off the table vis-à-vis Iran because we have a military that cannot win a war. The common wisdom is that the politicians are to blame for preventing the generals from doing their job; that is, killing the enemy and, as needed, its civilian supporters until each is convinced it is irrefutably defeated. I begin to think, however, that the common wisdom is only partially correct. Our bipartisan political leadership surely is pathetic when it comes to war-making, but the U.S. general officer corps -- save for a few Marine generals -- is today chockfull of bureaucrats, nation-builders, and wanna-be social scientists.

    Take that might warrior General McChrystal, for example. In the midst of a supposedly “major offensive” in Helmand Province, the general has spent most of his time apologizing for the deaths of civilian supporters of the Taleban and al-Qaeda, and withdrawing from the battlefield a weapon system that presumably was there because it contributed to victory and helped protect our soldiers and Marines. Sparing civilian casualties might make sense if those civilians were pro-U.S. or even pro-Karzai, but they are not.

    The Taleban’s steadily upward trend line across Afghanistan -- not just in the southern provinces -- since 2006 can only be explained by growing popular support from Afghans who are pro-Taleban (some) and/or opposed to the U.S.-NATO occupation (most). To think you are going to win the hearts and minds of these Afghans by limiting civilian casualties is a figment of the social-science minds of counter-insurgency theorists. It is not for nothing that the acerbic but thoroughly brilliant Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld wrote that counter-insurgency doctrine is always written by losers.

    Martin van Creveld is the Israeli academic who threatened that 'we could destroy all European capitals' and that "we have the capability to take the rest of the world down with us [with nukes]. And I can assure you that that will happen, if Israel goes under."

    For the life of me, and as the father of a newly draft-age son, I cannot imagine why American parents still trust their soldier-children to politicians -- in both parties -- and generals who are unwilling to do anything so old-fashion, anachronistic, and politically incorrect as relentlessly killing the enemy and his supporters until they are defeated. One hopes that American parents will soon wise up and begin to discourage their kids from joining a military whose generals increasingly see U.S. casualties as the necessary cost, not of winning, but of nation-building, fawning over their addled political masters, and pleasing international opinion and the pacifist purveyors of international law.

    [Yeah, who cares about international law? Pfft.]

    The wars we are fighting today are the products of the lethal-for-America fantasy that war has changed and no longer requires much killing or an outright victory. This, of course, is nonsense and only our elites and those of Europe believe it; our Islamist enemies know better. America once knew that you never go to war without aiming for victory, and led by men like William Sherman, U.S. Grant, Nathan Bedford Forrest, George Patton, and, until recently, most Marine generals, our military leaders knew that, in Forrest’s words, war means fighting, and fighting means killing. Armed with this fact, and with Sherman’s dictum that the only mercy in war is fast and complete victory, the U.S. military once put fear and sober second thoughts into those who meant America harm. Today, the same military causes some circumspection among our enemies, but it mostly causes mirth in their minds over the specter of a hapless pack of coddled general officers who seek to win un-winnable hearts and minds at the cost of many hundreds of billions dollars and numerous wasted young lives.

    Tom Feeley of InformationClearingHouse.info (ICH) posted this on his site, but not to point out Scheuer's callous disregard for human life. It was posted under the title What Should Obama Do Next On Iran? Act For The Republic and Independence, apparently to endorse a list of actions that Obama should take on the Iran issue, which was apparently written by Scheuer. But if you click on the source link at the ICH post, the list is not there. The link will take you straight to Scheuer's rant about all the fuss over killing innocents, which to him is just an impediment to "victory".

    Scheuer is a regular contributor to Antiwar.com. He might claim to be a non-interventionist but he doesn't sound very anti-war, does he?

    Is Scheuer a Shill?

    Scheuer could still be on the CIA's payroll, but shillery is usually the least likely explanation for suspect behaviour. It stands to reason that most people accused of being disinformationalists are just plain wrong.

    The problem with the online movement is that shillery is often the first conclusion people jump to, especially in the anti-Zionist scene. For example, if a journalist, writer or radio host doesn't blame Israel and Zionism for 9/11, we'll conclude that they're government agents or disinformation artists - a part of the conspiracy - when it's much more likely that they simply believe what they're saying (that cave-dwelling Muslims orchestrated 9/11 or that the Bush family did, or whatever else the case may be). Some will go even further and claim, arbitrarily, that they must be 'Jews'. It's pathological with some people. Rationalisation goes out the window and all they seem to have left is conspiracy theory. Kind of ironic, really.

    Scheuer is not your typical case study, though. The 9/11 operation had to fool the bulk of the global intelligence community as well as the civilian population to be viable and effective, but Scheuer is an expert on al Qaeda and Bin Laden, and was head of the CIA's Bin Laden unit from 1996-99, and then Special Advisor to that unit until 2004. He's written entire books about the al Qaeda 'threat' in which he criticises American policy, the first of which he started writing in 1999, well before September 11, 2001. As a senior CIA analyst, how can he not be aware that Bin Laden and al Qaeda was a creation of, and an asset to, that agency? And if he is aware, why hasn't he written about it? He published his books anonymously and was, perhaps conveniently, 'outed' as the author just in time to come out as a non-interventionist pundit for the anti-war scene. But despite Scheuer's contribution to sites like AntiWar.com and his criticism of the Israel lobby and neocon policy, he is still an ardent promoter of the "war on terror" and ergo the Zionist war against Islam. His position is essentially the same as Ron Paul's: that America's real enemy is radical Islam but American interventionism is to blame for that radicalism.

    Another interesting factoid is that Scheuer's work has been promoted by Bin Laden himself - from the grave. In a tape released in 2007, well after his death, "Bin Laden" sporting a nice, black, freshly "dyed" beard says:

    "If you want to understand what's going on and if you would like to get to know some of the reasons for your losing the war against us, then read the book of Michael Scheuer."



    Wednesday, October 10, 2007

    Dying For Zion

    "Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I'll tell you what I think the real threat [is] and actually has been since 1990 - it's the threat against Israel."

    Philip Zelikow, Director of the 9/11 Commission and Bush administration official


    'War for oil' is still the majority consensus on what's really behind America's insatiable appetite for military adventurism in the Middle East. [1] Anti-war types in the U.S. and worldwide favor this explanation as the real reason for the American-led invasion of Iraq. Those that subscribe to the war-for-oil idea believe that the White House is acting under false pretenses to secure Iraq's oil reserves in the long term strategic interests of an aggressive and imperialistic America, or to benefit corporate interests. [2] [3]

    Evidence of the predominance of the oil idea is reflected in the phrase itself. 'War for oil' has become part of the Western lexicon, a word sequence that everyone has heard and recognises, just like other familiar expressions such as 'tit for tat', 'spill the beans' or 'spank the monkey'. The 'no blood for oil' slogan [4] will go down in history as the defining sentiment of the anti-war scene of the noughties, testament to the widespread acceptance of the war-for-oil meme.

    There are other ideas about the American leadership's reasons for involving itself in such insanity. One is the ridiculous notion touted by the government and its media mouthpieces that America's prime objective is to export to the rest of the world what it sees as its unique contribution to human culture - liberty, freedom and democracy [5] [6]. Those things are core, defining ideologies central to America's deluded impression of itself, and the popular appeal of the idea of America being the heroic and righteous savior of the rest of the world has long been understood and cleverly marketed by political ideologues and the mainstream media. The American public's arrogant sense of moral and cultural superiority is easily exploited by government, as evidenced by the small but significant minority of Americans that happily accept Bush's 'they hate our freedoms' bullshit [7] [8] as justification for full-scale military invasions of harmless, sovereign nations like Afghanistan and Iraq. 'Spreading freedom' is the Bush administration's Orwellian euphemism for all-out war against Islam and the Arab nations that are said to harbor the elusive, jealous, Muslim "terrorists" that don't like how 'free' they say we are. The "war on terror" is ostensibly our struggle for freedom and democracy, an epic fight between good and evil. It's a romantic idea, conducive to a patriotic belief in America as the great purveyor of righteousness and justice, but it's the weakest, least credible and most unconvincing justification of all, and nothing but a lame subterfuge [9] [10].



    The pervasive influence of corporate interests operating within and throughout the highest levels of the United States government [11] could conceivably explain its penchant for warmongering and conquest too, and is commonly used to explain America's addiction to war. The corporatocracy [12] model is much the same as the war-for-oil idea, but includes the huge military industrial complex, building contractors, and other corporate interests that benefit financially from war [13]. Under this world-view today's post-9/11 culture of militarism is all about government succumbing to pressure from industry, and about U.S. imperialism in the form of military-industrial conquest and economic exploitation of lesser developed countries (who tend not to cooperate until they've been bombed into a stupour), as the huge corporations that profit from war get filthy rich. It's all explained by the lust for money, profit and power of a greedy corporate elite that hold sway over government, or even hold positions in government and business simultaneously, creating dangerous conflicts of interest which result in warped policy and the kind of insanity we're seeing now [14] [15]. For the sake of expediency and in the interests of keeping it simple, when I speak of corporate interests in this context, I'm not including the private central banking cartel [16] [17].

    Those are the main ones and the ones worth mentioning, but none of them are really behind what's going on in the Middle East, at least not in any real, fundamentally causal way. They're all real factors, and evidence that all those things play major roles is easy to come by, and maybe even difficult to look past at times. But the real force behind the U.S. government and its insane hunger for war in the Middle East is Israel - Israel itself and the zionist regime behind it; zionist agents inside the US political system who represent Israel's interests and work to further them via lobbying, funding and other means; and those who work to realise the objectives of Israel from within the highest levels of US government and beyond, even to the extreme detriment of the U.S. itself, as American leaders and policy-makers, and as representatives of the American people. The so-called neo-conservatives are the most powerful and obvious example of the latter, and their rise to power was, in many ways, the final phase of the Israeli coup d'etat [18] [19].

    The Ziocons

    The American neocons (most of them Jewish, many of them Israeli 'dual nationals', and all of them ardent zionists) [20] [21] are openly loyal to Israel and their hawkish foreign policy reflects it. U.S. foreign policy under the neocons is barely distinguishable from Israeli foreign policy, because that's basically what it is [22] [23]. Israel has long sought to weaken and destabilise its Arab neighbors as a means to improve and ensure its own security [24] while simultaneously disrupting support given to the indigenous Palestinians by Arab groups and nations sympathetic to their cause. In The Israeli Origins of Bush II's War Stephen J. Sniegoski writes:

    Because Israel's neighbors opposed the Zionist project of creating an exclusivist Jewish state, the idea of weakening and dissolving those neighbors was not an idea just of the Israeli Right but a central Zionist goal from a much earlier period, promoted by David Ben-Gurion himself. As Saleh Abdel-Jawwad, a professor at Birzeit University in Ramallah, Palestine, writes:

    "Israel has supported secessionist movements in Sudan, Iraq, Egypt, and Lebanon and any secessionist movements in the Arab world which Israel considers an enemy. Yet the concern for Iraq and [Israel's] attempts to weaken or prevent it from developing its strengths has always been a central Zionist objective. At times, Israel succeeded in gaining a foothold in Iraq by forging secret yet strong relationships with leaders from the Kurdish movement."
    [25]


    It's by no coincidence that we're seeing the U.S. use the same modus operandi right now in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran. Thanks to a well-established network of powerful Jewish Bush administration executives and the Israel lobby at large, the Zionist agenda has become America's agenda, and the new preemptive war-for-Israel doctrine of post-9/11 USA has become official American policy.

    The ziocons made their policy views clear well before 9/11 in the document called A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm [26], prepared back in 1996 for Israel's psycho right wing Likud party, led by then Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu. It was authored by a group of rabidly zionist neoconservative Jews including Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser, on behalf of The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS), and proposed a hawkish plan based on military preemption, a more aggressive approach to the Palestinian 'problem', the removal of Saddam Hussein from power, and the eventual elimination of the governments of Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Iran - the kind of ideas that only sit well in the minds of madmen and belligerent Jewish supremacists. A Clean Break stated, in part:

    Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right — as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions.


    There was nothing new in the Clean Break paper, it was just good old fashioned zionism: territorial expansion by force in the name of a 'Greater Israel'. Its authors, Richard Perle (Israeli dual national), Douglas Feith (also an Israeli dual national) and David Wurmser (another zionist Jew) would all go on to hold powerful positions in the Bush administration where they've worked tirelessly to realise the vision they outlined for Netanyahu in the Clean Break document [27] - Feith as Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Wurmser as Middle East Adviser to Dick Cheney, and Perle as Chairman of the Defense Policy Board.

    Richard "The Prince of Darkness" Perle is a particularly nasty zionist. Aside from his treasonous role in the U.S. government, he's a member of such pro-Israel think tanks as the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) , the Center for Security Policy (CSP), the Hudson Institute, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP, which is basically an offshoot organisation of AIPAC), and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) [28]. He's also a director of the Jerusalem Post, a personal friend of former Israeli prime minister and arch-zionist Ariel "The Butcher" Sharon, an ex-employee of Soltam, an Israeli weapons manufacturer [29], and a spy for Israel [30] [30b].

    When prominent ziocons William Kristol and Robert Kagan founded the Project For A New American Century (PNAC) [31] in 1997, Perle and Feith were keen to come to the party along with a whole host of other ardent zionist neocons such as Elliott Abrams, Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Rabbi Dov Zakheim, Elliot Cohen, Norman Podhoretz et al [32], and the following year in 1998, the PNAC group sent Bill Clinton a letter [33] urging him to attack Iraq and oust Saddam from power, in keeping with the policy advice given to Israel by the same group years earlier in the Clean Break document. From the letter:

    "It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil will all be put at hazard. As you have rightly declared, Mr. President, the security of the world in the first part of the 21st century will be determined largely by how we handle this threat." [34]


    By "world", of course, they meant "Israel", since Saddam was never a threat to America, and PNAC knew it. In December of 1998, Clinton went ahead with PNAC's advice and heavily bombed Iraq, citing the security of its neighbours as part of his reason for doing so:

    "Earlier today, I ordered America's armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq. They are joined by British forces. Their mission is to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors.

    Their purpose is to protect the national interest of the United States, and indeed the interests of people throughout the Middle East and around the world.

    Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons."
    [35]


    Clinton's attack on Iraq left Saddam in power though, which wasn't good enough for the PNAC ziocons. That was made Kristol clear with the September 2000 publication (just before Bush's non-election) of their infamous 90 page long 'Rebuilding America's Defenses' (RAD) policy document [36.pdf], in which they advocated more of the same aggressive, warmongering strategy proposed earlier in the Clean Break paper. RAD was just a massively beefed up version of Israel's Clean Break dressed up to look as though it had American interests at heart. Peter Shaenk put it this way in an article called Once a Company Man, Always a Company Man:

    When PNAC was founded, a group of neo-cons wrote a spin-off paper elaborating on "Clean Break". It was entitled "Rebuilding America’s Defenses" or RAD. The title implies that agents of Israel, (Perle and co.) got together and wrote a policy paper that was concerned only with America’s future security and establishment as the preeminent world power. A PAX Americana if you will. They even got Dick Cheney to participate to give it a more "American" look and less of an "Israeli" front group image. [37]


    When Bush was not-elected in January 2001 [38], the ziocons' time had come. No less than twelve of PNAC's members scored prominent positions in his administration - Dick Cheney, Vice President; Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense; Rabbi Dov Zakheim, Undersecretary of Defense and Comptroller of the Pentagon [39]; Richard Armitage, Deputy Sec. of State; Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Chief of Staff to Cheney; Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense; Richard Perle, Member, Defense Policy Advisory Board; John Bolton, Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, Elliot Abrams, Special Asst. to the President; Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy; Zalmay Kahlilzad, Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Iraq; and James Woolsey, Member, Pentagon Defense Policy Board [40]. It was nothing short of an Israeli political takeover of the U.S. government. The pieces had been put in place to implement the ziocon vision outlined in A Clean Break and RAD, and now all that was needed was the false flag attacks of 9/11 [41] [42] [43] to kickstart and justify the neocon wet dream of endless Israeli proxy wars in the Middle East in the name of the oxymoronic "war on terror".

    Within 24 hours of staging their "catastrophic and catalyzing event" which was not unlike a "new Pearl Harbor", both Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, barely able to contain themselves, called for another attack on Iraq [44], nevermind the fact that Saddam had nothing at all to do with it and no meaningful ties at all to 9/11 scapegoat Osama Bin Laden [45]. That didn't stop the ziocons from working feverishly through the media to link Iraq to 9/11 though (the tired old "links-to-Al-Qaeda" soundbite), mainly through Cheney who was the most vociferous of the bunch. But (dis)credit should also go to Rumsfeld, because one of the biggest whoppers came from him in September 2002 when he lied through his teeth about the intelligence community's evidence of Iraqi links to terrorism being "bulletproof" [46]. (Speaking of Cheney, fondnesses for violence, and solid evidence, it's a pity Harry Whittington wasn't "bulletproof" when Dick shot him in the face. [47]) The ziocon media blitz was quite successful, as evidenced by the roughly 50% of Americans that still believe Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with Bin Laden vis a vis 9/11 [48]. With a public that ignorant and misinformed [49], it's disheartening to ponder how long it's likely to take before a critical mass majority awakens to the fact that Bin Laden wasn't behind the attacks in the first place.

    War For Israel

    The relentless propaganda campaign against Iraq continued through the zionist-controlled mainstream media [50] even as the cluster-bombs dropped on the innocent population of Afghanistan [51] [52], in a war justified by the attacks of 9/11 but planned months beforehand [53]. The ostensible reasons for the invasion were to capture Osama Bin Laden, who denied being involved with 9/11 [54], and to overthrow the Taliban regime, but neither of those objectives have been achieved [55]. All the U.S. has managed to do is install an ineffectual puppet regime led by prime minister Hamid Kharzai, assist in a 657% increase in opium cultivation [56] which became the West's primary source of heroin [57] [58], and kill thousands of innocent people. Last year alone, an estimated 700 civilians were killed (government data, so the figures are likely to be much higher), and over 100,000 people displaced in the southern provinces alone, who have fled their homes to escape the conflict [59].



    Another thing that's been achieved is what's looking like a permanent U.S. military presence in Afghanistan [60], one of whose neighbouring countries is Iran. Rabid zionist John McCain [61] is one neocon who has called publicly for permanent bases in Afghanistan [62]. Ramtanu Maitra wrote for Asia Times Online:

    On February 23 [2005], the day after McCain called for "permanent bases" in Afghanistan, a senior political analyst and chief editor of the Kabul Journal, Mohammad Hassan Wulasmal, said, "The US wants to dominate Iran, Uzbekistan and China by using Afghanistan as a military base."

    [...] US-run logistical centers in Afghanistan include Kandahar Air Field, or "KAF", in southern Afghanistan and Shindand Air Field in the western province of Herat. Shindand is about 100 kilometers from the border with Iran, a location that makes it controversial. Moreover, according to the US-based think-tank Global Security, Shindand is the largest air base in Afghanistan.

    The US is spending US$83 million to upgrade its bases at Bagram and Kandahar. [...]

    The proximity of Shindand to Iran could give Tehran cause for concern, says Paul Beaver, an independent defense analyst based in London. Beaver points out that with US ships in the Persian Gulf and Shindand sitting next to Iran, Tehran has a reason to claim that Washington is in the process of encircling Iran. But the US plays down the potential of Shindand, saying it will not remain with the US for long. Still, it has not been lost on Iranian strategists that the base in the province of Herat is a link in a formidable chain of new facilities the US is in the process of drawing around their country.
    [63]


    The ziocons are working hard to establish hegemony in the Middle East for the security of Israel, and permanent bases in Afghanistan are just one way they seek to gain a foothold for the eventual implementation of their plan to eliminate Iran and whoever else they believe poses a threat to their beloved ziostan.

    On the 3rd of April 2002, seizing the opportunity to capitalise on the 9/11 attacks, the PNAC neocons sent another letter, this time to Bush, urging him to support Israel and wage war with Iraq:

    Dear Mr. President:

    We write to thank you for your courageous leadership in the war on terrorism and to offer our full support as you continue to protect the security and well-being of Americans and all freedom-loving peoples around the world.

    In particular, we want to commend you for your strong stance in support of the Israeli government as it engages in the present campaign to fight terrorism. As a liberal democracy under repeated attack by murderers who target civilians, Israel now needs and deserves steadfast support. This support, moreover, is essential to Israel’s continued survival as a free and democratic nation, for only the United States has the power and influence to provide meaningful assistance to our besieged ally. And with the memory of the terrorist attack of September 11 still seared in our minds and hearts, we Americans ought to be especially eager to show our solidarity in word and deed with a fellow victim of terrorist violence.

    No one should doubt that the United States and Israel share a common enemy. We are both targets of what you have correctly called an “Axis of Evil.” Israel is targeted in part because it is our friend, and in part because it is an island of liberal, democratic principles -- American principles -- in a sea of tyranny, intolerance, and hatred. As Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld has pointed out, Iran, Iraq, and Syria are all engaged in “inspiring and financing a culture of political murder and suicide bombing” against Israel, just as they have aided campaigns of terrorism against the United States over the past two decades. You have declared war on international terrorism, Mr. President. Israel is fighting the same war.

    [...]

    Furthermore, Mr. President, we urge you to accelerate plans for removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. As you have said, every day that Saddam Hussein remains in power brings closer the day when terrorists will have not just airplanes with which to attack us, but chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, as well. It is now common knowledge that Saddam, along with Iran, is a funder and supporter of terrorism against Israel. Iraq has harbored terrorists such as Abu Nidal in the past, and it maintains links to the Al Qaeda network. If we do not move against Saddam Hussein and his regime, the damage our Israeli friends and we have suffered until now may someday appear but a prelude to much greater horrors. Moreover, we believe that the surest path to peace in the Middle East lies not through the appeasement of Saddam and other local tyrants, but through a renewed commitment on our part, as you suggested in your State of the Union address, to the birth of freedom and democratic government in the Islamic world.

    [...]

    Israel’s fight against terrorism is our fight. Israel’s victory is an important part of our victory. For reasons both moral and strategic, we need to stand with Israel in its fight against terrorism.


    In concert with their American counterparts, the Israeli political elite were heavily promoting the same war agenda, as noted by accomplished journalist and editor Dr. Scott McConnell:

    Netanyahu warned Washington Post editors of Saddam’s supposed nuclear-weapons program in April 2002, and Sharon’s spokesman Raanan Gissen touted the Saddam nuclear threat a week later. The following month, Shimon Peres said on CNN that Saddam was as “dangerous as Bin Laden” and told Americans they “cannot sit and wait.” Later that spring, Ehud Barak warned Washington Post readers to remove Saddam “first of all,” and in August, Sharon told the Knesset that Saddam was “the greatest danger facing Israel.” When Vice President Cheney kicked off the go-to-war campaign in August of that year, many newspapers reported that Israel was urging America not to delay. Peres repeated the “don’t delay” message on CNN later that month.

    Meanwhile, American networks reported that “Israeli intelligence” was warning that Saddam was “speeding up” his WMD programs. In the run-up to the war, Prime Minister Sharon stated, “Strategic coordination between Israel and the U.S. has reached unprecedented dimensions.” In September, Barak told
    New York Times readers that the United States needed to hurry up with the war, adding, “I believe I speak for the overwhelming majority of Israelis in supporting a pre-emptive strike against Saddam’s regime.” In the winter of 2003, the press was full of reports of Israeli concern that diplomacy might delay the attacks. While mass antiwar protests broke out across Europe, there were none in Israel, where 77.5 percent of Israeli Jews said they wanted the United States to invade Iraq. The Israeli columnist Gideon Levy concluded, “Israel is the only country in the West whose leaders support the war unreservedly and where no alternative opinion is voiced.”


    Further, he observes that:

    When Israelis talk, Americans listen. When Israelis want to circulate their views, they have an access to the opinion pages of elite newspapers and slots on network news shows that leaders of no other foreign country can dream of. Several of America’s European and Arab allies objected cogently and clearly to the idea of attacking Iraq. If Israeli leaders had voiced similar sentiments, it is inconceivable the invasion would have taken place.


    When the neocons got their way in March 2003 with the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, it was on the back of a whole heap of lies and disinformation. Paul Wolfowitz, Israeli dual national and "architect" of the Iraq war, had created in 2001 along with fellow ziocons Douglas Feith and Donald Rumsfeld the "Office of Special Plans" (OSP), an ultra-secretive group whose purpose, at least officially, was to "review" data gathered by various intelligence agencies vis a vis Saddam's 'links-to-Al-Qaeda', and later, when it became clear there were none, his being in possession of WMDs (which there were none of either). The OSP was answerable only to itself as an independent entity, subject to no Congressional oversight and not on the official government payroll [64], which afforded the ziocons the opportunity to tamper with the data and decide for themselves what did and did not constitute evidence against Saddam. Cheney was of course right in there too, conspiring with the rest of them to magically produce the kind of damning assessment required to suit their propaganda purposes, the kind they knew the CIA and the other intel agencies wouldn't provide them with. From a Washington Post article:

    [Colin] Powell felt Cheney and his allies -- his chief aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby; Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz; and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith and what Powell called Feith's "Gestapo" office -- had established what amounted to a separate government. [65]


    Working parallel and in conjunction with that operation in the Pentagon was the "Policy Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group" (PCTEG) [66], also headed by Douglas Feith, along with David Wurmser and one of Richard Perle's former aides, F. Michael Maloof. The whole thing was a gigantic scam, pulled off by the Clean Break/RAD crew, who liased regularly with an intelligence unit from inside the office of Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon. It was Sharon's team that was later fingered by unnamed U.S. senior officials as being the source of bogus reports that said the reason no WMDs were found in Iraq was because they were smuggled into Syria. Under the authority of Douglas Feith, the Israelis from Sharon's office were allowed to come and go as they pleased [67]. This is an excerpt from an article by Jim Lobe:

    [Retired Lt Col Karen Kwiatkowski] recounts one incident in which she helped escort a group of half a dozen Israelis, including several generals, from the first floor reception area to Feith's office. "We just followed them, because they knew exactly where they were going and moving fast".

    When the group arrived, she noted the book which all visitors are required to sign under special regulations that took effect after the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks. "I asked his secretary, 'Do you want these guys to sign in'? She said, 'No, these guys don't have to sign in' ". It occurred to her, she said, that the office may have deliberately not wanted to maintain a record of the meeting.
    [68]


    At this point, let's be very clear about one thing: the people plotting the Iraq war from inside the OSP were not colluding with oil executives or any other corporate interests at that time - they were in collusion with Sharon's Likud government. In fact, everyone who worked to create the case for war against Iraq shared one common interest: an undying loyalty to the state of Israel.


  • Neocon lackey Ahmed Chalabi, the lying criminal [69] who was convicted and sentenced by the Jordanian authorities for embezzlement and bank fraud in his absence (he fled the country before the police got their hands on him), and who provided most of the information that the ziocons used as "evidence" of Saddam having 'links-to-Al-Qaeda' and WMDs [70], was a long-time friend of 10th Dan Grandmaster ziocon Richard Perle [71], co-author of A Clean Break which cited the removal of Saddam Hussein as the key to the beginning of a securer Israel;

  • The Niger documents [72] forged to make it look like Saddam's regime had tried to acquire yellowcake uranium from Africa came from Israeli dual national ziocon Michael Ledeen [73] [74] who came under the scrutiny of the FBI for that very reason but will probably (definitely) get away with it;

  • Paul Wolfowitz, "architect" of the Iraq war and the man who pushed hardest for it is an Israeli dual national and a spy for Israel, having forwarded to an Israeli government official a classified U.S. document back in 1978, and has a sister living in Israel; [75] From The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, a scholarly paper authored by Stephen Walt of Harvard University and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago:

    Wolfowitz is ... committed to Israel. The Forward once described him as "the most hawkishly pro‐Israel voice in the Administration," and selected him in 2002 as the first among fifty notables who "have consciously pursued Jewish activism." At about the same time, JINSA gave Wolfowitz its Henry M. Jackson Distinguished Service Award for promoting a strong partnership between Israel and the United States, and the Jerusalem Post, describing him as "devoutly pro‐Israel," named him "Man of the Year" in 2003. [76]


    Not surprising, considering Richard Perle is director of it;

  • Lewis "Scooter" Libby, another OSP operative, Cheney's chief of staff, and Israeli dual national, credited with pushing Cheney to go public about Saddam's supposed ties to Al Qaeda and 9/11 and pushing Colin Powell to include the fake reports about Mohammed Atta's ties to Iraqi intelligence in his famous 2003 speech to the U.N. [77], was responsible for the outing of Valerie Plame as a CIA agent to punish her husband, Joseph Wilson, for exposing the Niger documents as fraudulent [78]. He was sentenced to 2 ½ years in prison but was later pardoned by Bush; [79]

  • Douglas Feith, dual citizenship ziocon who worked out of both the OSP and PCTEG to bring us the Iraq war was also investigated by the FBI for spying for Israel and forced to leave the National Security Council (NSC) for his double-dealing [80];

  • Larry Franklin, Feith's deputy who worked under him at the OSP in the Pentagon [81] was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison [82] for leaking documents to Israel in the AIPAC spy scandal; [83]

  • Harold Rhode [84], Feith's Middle East Specialist and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy was investigated by the FBI over passing on classified information to Israel:

    An UPI report said another under-investigation official Mr Rhode "practically lived out of (Ahmad) Chalabi's office". Intelligence sources said that CIA operatives observed Mr Rhode as being constantly on his cell phone to Israel, discussing US plans, military deployments, political projects and a discussion of Iraq assets. [85]


  • William (or Bill) Luti [86], Chief of the OSP and another of Feith's men, having worked under Feith and Cheney before Bush wasn't elected, was subject to the same FBI investigation, for the same reason.



    Thus, the casus belli for the Iraq war was put together by Israeli spies and zionist agents, and derived from what's come to be known as "Feith-based intelligence" [87], or in other words, complete bullshit from the bowels of the ziocon Lie Factory [88], served on the silver platter of mainstream media to the American public and the people of the world who swallowed it whole for Eretz Israel [89]. Even so, most of the treachery that led to the Iraq war will go unpunished. It's usually a pretty sure thing that if you're a senior official in the U.S. government and you're caught spying for Israel, your treason will be dealt with leniently, or not at all. From an article by Laura Rozen and Jason Vest:

    Since the Pollard case [90], U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement sources have revealed to the Prospect that at least six sealed indictments have been issued against individuals for espionage on Israel's behalf. It's a testament to the unique relationship between the United States and Israel that those cases were never prosecuted; according to the same sources, both governments ultimately addressed them through diplomatic and intelligence channels rather than air the dirty laundry. A number of career Justice Department and intelligence officials who have worked on Israeli counterespionage told the Prospect of long-standing frustration among investigators and prosecutors who feel that cases that could have been made successfully against Israeli spies were never brought to trial, or that the investigations were shut down prematurely. [91]


    More War For Israel: Iran In The Crosshairs

    The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which lobbies the U.S. government on behalf of Israel, was instrumental in pushing for the Iraq war. Its policy was to keep a low profile with regard to its public position on Iraq, but behind the scenes it was a very different story. Democratic congressman Jim Moran agrees:

    "AIPAC is the most powerful lobby and has pushed this war from the beginning. Because they are so well organized, and their members are extraordinarily powerful -- most of them are quite wealthy -- they have been able to exert power." [92]


    Documents leaked to Israel by the aforementioned criminal zionist cabal member Larry Franklin went through two employees of AIPAC, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, who are now awaiting trial over charges relating to violating provisions of the Espionage Act. [93]. Franklin is a former Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) analyst who moved into the Pentagon to work for Bull Luti and Douglas Feith as their Iran expert, and while he's apparently not Jewish, he's long been associated with the ziocons and a good friend of Paul Wolfowitz. The documents he passed on to Rosen and Weissman, the AIPAC staffers, included a National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD), concerning U.S. policy toward Iran [94] [95]. James Petras says in his article, AIPAC on Trial:

    The Franklin-AIPAC-Israeli investigation was more than a spy case. It involved the future of US-Middle East relations and more specifically whether the "neo-cons" would be able to push the US into a military confrontation with Iran. Franklin was a top Pentagon analyst on Iran, with access to all the executive branch deliberations on Iran. AIPAC lobbying and information gathering was aggressively directed toward pushing the Israeli agenda on a US-Iranian confrontation against strong opposition in the State Department, CIA, military intelligence and field commanders. [96]


    The notion of attacking Iran and ideas about how to go about it were being bandied about in the Office of Special Plans since its very inception, but the ziocons had put too much on the U.S. public's plate with Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, all indications are that they're finally ready to try to push us into a war with Iran [97] [98] [99], in keeping with the plan they've had in mind all along; the plan to reorder the Middle East as outlined in A Clean Break with what Juan Cole [100] called a "one-two punch":

    It is an echo of the one-two punch secretly planned by the pro-Likud faction in the Department of Defense. First, the United States would take out Iraq, and then Iran. David Wurmser, a key member of the group, also wanted Syria included. These pro-Likud intellectuals concluded that 9/11 would give them carte blanche to use the Pentagon as Israel's Gurkha regiment, fighting elective wars on behalf of Tel Aviv (not wars that really needed to be fought, but wars that the Likud coalition thought it would be nice to see fought so as to increase Israel's ability to annex land and act aggressively, especially if someone else's boys did the dying). [101]


    What's being called the "Iran Group" or the Iranian Directorate was set up last year in the Pentagon to manage the Iranian 'threat'. It's looking very much like the old OSP, which was dismantled once its job of putting together the massive 'links-to-Al-Qaeda'/WMD disinfo campaign was complete and the Iraq war underway. Some of the same people who worked with the OSP and/or had a hand in lying us into the Iraq war are now working at the Iranian Directorate. Here are just a few:

  • Abram N. Shulsky, heads the Iranian Directorate, former OSP director, a member of PNAC, and an ardent devotee of Jewish neo-conservative icon Leo Strauss [102], who believed that the truth was for the elite to keep from the clueless masses for their own (not so) good. In a 1999 paper he co-authored with Gary Schmitt of the AEI called Leo Strauss and the World of Intelligence, Shulsky writes

    "Strauss's view certainly alerts one to the possibility that political life may be closely linked to deception. Indeed, it suggests that deception is the norm in political life, and the hope, to say nothing of the expectation, of establishing a politics that can dispense with it is the exception." [103]


  • John Trigilio, a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) analyst and former OSP staffer;

  • Ladan Archin, an Iran specialist, OSP staffer who worked with Larry Franklin and the other zio-spies, studied with Paul Wolfowitz; [104] [105]

  • Elliot Abrams, Israeli dual national and son-in-law of arch-neocon Norman Podhoretz, founding member of PNAC, convicted on charges relating to the Iran Contra scandal, worked with Perle and Feith since the mid-70's; [106]

  • Michael Ledeen, Israeli dual national, OSP ziocon, most likely candidate for culpability in the Niger document forgery;

  • David Wurmser, wrote the Clean Break paper along with Perle and Feith, accused of spying for Israel, connected to the outing of Valerie Plame, etc etc.

    So it's all happening again - a feverish campaign for war being staged by the same PNAC/Clean Break/Iraq war/9-11 zionists that got us into the mess we're in now. All of those people helped sell us the Iraq war, but of course there are many more shady characters involved than the ones listed above - Dick Cheney's still there, for instance. A media blitz is currently underway to sensationalise Iran's perfectly legitimate [107] nuclear development program, proliferate dubious claims [108] about Iranian weapons being smuggled into Iraq, and demonise president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad [109], all sourced from information coming out of the Iran Group set up to make a new case for war by manipulating, cherry-picking, and fabricating intelligence [110] [110b], set up in the policy shop area of the Pentagon which housed its predecessor, the OSP [111].

    Dying For Zion

    When asked by reporters about civilian deaths during the Afghanistan campaign, General Tommy Franks said "we don't do body counts". Thankfully, others do.

    The official death toll total for U.S. soldiers and civilians (government stats as of October 16, 2007 [112.pdf] ) stands at 3,824 in Iraq and 446 in Afghanistan. The figure for those wounded and not returned to duty (WIA not RTD) within 72 hours stands at 12,672 for Iraq and 1,023 for Afghanistan. Military contractors are not included in those figures. There have been less British deaths, mainly due to the fact that there are less of them, and the Australian death toll is almost negligible, if there is such a thing as a negligible death toll - only two soldiers [113] and six contractors so far. [114]

    Dahr Jamail quotes Dr. Evan Kanter, president elect of Physicians for Social Responsibility:

    We know that the death tally in combat is more than 4,000, represented by the headstones we see around this hall. What we do not know is that these do not include suicides or post evacuation deaths induced by lethal wounds received in combat, nor even the deaths of over 1,000 private contractors. If we include all the wounded, the injured and the medically ill, we have a total of over 70,000, but the military intentionally camouflages and segregates the numbers in three categories that are extremely difficult to access.


    At any rate, coalition casualties seem to be incredibly low compared to that of the other side. The respected British polling firm ORB released the results of their poll in September of 2007, showing that 22% of Iraqi households had lost a family member, which equates to more than 1.2 million dead Iraqis.

    Given that from the 2005 census there are a total of 4,050,597 households this data suggests a total of 1,220,580 deaths since the invasion in 2003. Calculating the affect from the margin of error we believe that the range is a minimum of 733,158 to a maximum of 1,446,063. [115]


    In February of 2007 a BBC poll came up with the figure of 17% for the same thing, so the findings roughly corroborate eachother. According to Professor Gilbert Burnham and Professor Les Roberts,

    "There are now two polls and three scientific surveys all suggesting the official figures and media-based estimates in Iraq have missed 70-95% of all deaths. The evidence suggests that the extent of under-reporting by the media is only increasing with time." [116]


    Dr Gideon Polya points out that even those figures are inaccurate, because they are the stats for violent deaths only and don't include the nonviolent deaths that have occurred as an indirect result of the invasions, such as the infant mortality rate amongst other things. She includes in her analysis U.N. agency data of excess non-violent post-invasion deaths, to reach a more accurate figure of the total human cost of military intervention in the Middle East.

    The following analysis reveals that the total violent and non-violent post-invasion Iraqi excess deaths now total 1.5-2.0 million and that the total excess deaths in the Bush I and Bush II Asian Wars now total 8 million. Mainstream media ignoring of this horrendous, ongoing mass murdering of ethnically or culturally Semitic indigenous peoples amounts to near-comprehensive anti-Semitic Holocaust Denial. [117]


    Eight million is a staggering figure if you think about it. That's about 850,000 more people than the current total population of Israel [118], which is, as the evidence suggests, the prime mover behind all this bloodshed in the first place - we're out there killing and dying for zion.

    The U.S. oil industry strongly opposed the embargo on Iraq, because it kept them away from Iraqi oil and prevented them from doing business in that country, and when Bush took the presidency in 2001 they worked hard to lobby against the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act of 1996, signed by Bill Clinton [119] [120]. But of course, the ziocons, intent on war, would have none of it.

    Furthermore, it simply doesn't make sense for a country to spend $300 million per day at a total cost of $1.2 trillion (and possibly as much as three trillion [121]) on wars that won't pay for themselves in oil. It does, however, make sense for treasonous pro-Israel zionists to hijack America and use its military might and the lives of its sons and daughters to secure a future for Israel. Of course, the fact that we're killing for Israel and dying for zion doesn't necessarily mean that it's not about oil - it just means it's not about America's oil.



    Before 1948 when the state of Israel was created [122], there was an oil pipeline running from Iraq to Palestine, into the area now called Haifa in Israel, but when the zionists stole Palestine, Iraq re-routed the pipeline to Syria. Israel is a tiny little country with practically no oil resources of its own, and without oil, Israel ceases to exist. Israel's oil problem is another one of its "existential threats". Israel being Israel, the waspish, nasty, racist [124] little country that it is, it's not on good terms with its oil rich Arab neighbours, so it has to import oil from countries like Angola, Columbia and Mexico. It's for this reason, among others, that removing Saddam was a key strategic goal for Israel, because Israel would very much like to see the old pipeline from Iraq to Haifa reopened [125] [126]. From an April 2003 Guardian article:

    Plans to build a pipeline to siphon oil from newly conquered Iraq to Israel are being discussed between Washington, Tel Aviv and potential future government figures in Baghdad.

    The plan envisages the reconstruction of an old pipeline, inactive since the end of the British mandate in Palestine in 1948, when the flow from Iraq's northern oilfields to Palestine was re-directed to Syria.

    Now, its resurrection would transform economic power in the region, bringing revenue to the new US-dominated Iraq, cutting out Syria and solving Israel's energy crisis at a stroke.


    In light of all the available information and news reports about the Israeli government's keen interest in reopening the old pipeline, suddenly an illegal $3 trillion U.S. invasion of Iraq planned by fat, white collar, dual citizenship Israel-firsters in the U.S. executive branch, and fought by impressionable young British and American pawns to steal Iraq's national oil reserves makes sense. Theoretically it'll solve the ziostani oil crisis and make Israel more secure, without risking a single Israeli life. "Special relationship" indeed.

    So as notable blogger and American patriot Qrswave points out: yes, the war is for oil, and the oil is for Israel [127]. Therefore, the war is for Israel - but you won't hear anything about it in the zionist-friendly mainstream media.

    General Wesley Clark, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander admitted that the Iraq war was all about Israel in an interview with the Guardian in August of 2002:

    "Those who favor this attack now will tell you candidly, and privately, that it is probably true that Saddam Hussein is no threat to the United States. But they are afraid at some point he might decide if he had a nuclear weapon to use it against Israel." [128]


    Former U.S. Rep. John Hostettler spilt the beans in a self-published book entitled Nothing for the Nation: Who Got What Out of Iraq, claiming that Iraq was invaded to help secure Israel. He writes:

    "It cannot be debated that toppling Saddam was accomplished by means of a 'private compact' with political appointees and their underlings in the Pentagon to support the ideals of partisans . . . dedicated to another cause."


    The fact that Hostettler had to wait until retirement to reveal this information is testament to the power of the Israel lobby, which effectively forces politicians into self-censorship. You either voice your undying loyalty to Israel or forget about it.

    Distinguished academics Stephen Walt [129] and John Mearsheimer [130] pointed it out in their paper, the aforementioned The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, which has now been expanded upon and turned into a book: [131]

    Pressure from Israel and the Lobby was not the only factor behind the U.S. decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was a critical element. Some Americans believe that this was a "war for oil," but there is hardly any direct evidence to support this claim. Instead, the war was motivated in good part by a desire to make Israel more secure. According to Philip Zelikow [132], a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (2001‐2003), executive director of the 9/11 Commission, and now Counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the "real threat" from Iraq was not a threat to the United States. The "unstated threat" was the "threat against Israel," Zelikow told a University of Virginia audience in September 2002, noting further that "the American government doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell." [133]




    Mark Weber writes in his article Iraq: A War For Israel:

    Whatever the secondary reasons for the war, the crucial factor in President Bush’s decision to attack was to help Israel. With support from Israel and America’s Jewish-Zionist lobby, and prodded by Jewish "neo-conservatives" holding high-level positions in his administration, President Bush – who was already fervently com­mitted to Israel – resolved to invade and subdue one of Israel’s chief regional enemies.

    This is so widely understood in Washington that US Senator Ernest Hollings was moved in May 2004 to acknowledge that the US invaded Iraq "to secure Israel," and "everybody" knows it. He also identified three of the influential pro-Israel Jews in Washington who played an important role in prodding the US into war: Richard Perle, chair of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board; Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Defense Secretary; and Charles Krauthammer, columnist and author.


    And further down:

    In Britain, a veteran member of Britain’s House of Commons bluntly declared in May 2003 that Jews had taken control of America’s foreign policy, and had succeeded in pushing the US into war. "A Jewish cabal have taken over the government in the United States and formed an unholy alliance with fundamentalist Christians," said Tam Dalyell, a Labour party deputy and the longest-serving House member. "There is far too much Jewish influence in the United States," he added. [134]


    What's unfortunate is that the idea of a zionist conspiracy and Jewish control of the government and media is seen to be an antisemitic cliche and therefore one of the most repugnant ideas imaginable, because nobody likes racism - but it's the absolute truth of the matter [135]. It's an awkward situation, but that's our predicament. The societal taboo of talking about these things, embedded into our cultural reality over the decades by zionist organisations like the ADL and other lobby groups has resulted in a human collective that largely self-regulates with regard to discussion about it, and some even regulate their own thinking of it. We have a situation whereby there are people who charge themselves with enlightening the rest of us with the truth, but feel as though it's necessary to compromise and censor themselves in order to make that task viable, and fit for mainstream consumption. The truth is that Jewish agents have been manipulating the U.S. into war (26 of the top 50 neocons who advocated for war with Iraq are Jewish), but those honest and conscientious enough to make it their message are seen to be peddling hate, being insensitive and holding extremist views. Too bad. When the truth is ugly and the problem extreme, taking anything less than an honest position is useless.

    Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh was frank about Jewish influence in Washington in a recent interview with Amy Goodman:

    SEYMOUR HERSH: Money. A lot of the Jewish money from New York. Come on, let's not kid about it. A significant percentage of Jewish money, and many leading American Jews support the Israeli position that Iran is an existential threat. And I think it’s as simple as that. When you’re from New York and from New York City, you take the view of -- right now, when you’re running a campaign, you follow that line. And there’s no other explanation for it, because [Hilary Clinton is] smart enough to know the downside.

    AMY GOODMAN: And Obama and Edwards?

    SEYMOUR HERSH: I -- you know, it’s shocking. It’s really surprising and shocking, but there we are. That’s American politics circa 2007.
    [136]


    I don't hate Jews, or anybody else, but I despise zionism, because it's a racist ideology [137] and a threat to world peace. The natural desire to act in defense of your planet, your country, your family and your fellow human beings arises out of love, not hate. But given our predicament, those of us that call for a mass awakening to these uncomfortable truths will be chastised by a culture of fear and for the most part, misunderstood. The louder the message, the more intense the reactions from those that stand to lose by it. Personal attacks and smears from zionist factions with endless resources and the wrath of a complicit media is often the end for those who are really successful at getting the word out [138] [139] [140], but it's essential that we speak out, in order to put a stop to the insanity of endless war for Israel.


    more:

    The Israeli Origins of the Iraq War

    Whose War?

    Jeffrey Blankfort: A War For Israel

    Are They Really Oil Wars?

    Yinon's Prophecy: Is the US Waging Israel's Wars?

    Attacking Iran for Israel? by Ray McGovern

    The War On Iraq: Conceived In Israel

    Haaretz: 'War in Iraq Conceived by 25 Jewish Intellectuals'

    Israel's Proxy War?

    Yes, The War is For Oil - and the Oil is For Israel

    Iraqi Oil To Be Shipped To Israel

    Voice of the White House: Oil From Iraq To Israel

    Israel Eyes Iraqi Pipeline Project

    Israeli Pipedreams

    Oil and the Israel Lobby

    Iraq: A War For Israel

    Invading Iraq: Converging U.S. and Israeli Agendas

    The Agenda Behind the Hoax: What the Iraq War is About

    The Zionist Plan For The Middle East

    Hindsight is 20/20 - How Israel Duped U.S. Into Fighting Their Wars

    The Night After

    Who Is Sending Your Children To War?

    Office of Special Plans

    The Bomb Iran Faction

    Zion-power and War: From Iraq to Iran

    James Petras: US Military versus Israel Firsters

    Not Oil But Israel

    Cloak and Swagger: The Larry Franklin Spy Case

    Serving Two Flags: Neocons, Israel and the Bush Administration

    The Spies Who Pushed For War

    Dual Citizenship: Loyal To Whom?

    Dual Loyalties: The Neocons and Israel

    US Gave Classified Iraq Information to Israel

    Israeli Spying Case Expands: Fomenting War With Iran

    Pentagon Office Home to Neocon Network

    Zionist Thinktanks Give Lessons in US Foreign Policy

    How the Zionists Subverted the American Antiwar Movement

    The Secret Relationship Between Israel and Oil

    The Lie Factory

    The Men From JINSA and CSP

    The Zionists Who Dominate the White House

    AIPAC's Overt and Covert Ops

    It's Not About Oil Stupid, But Flattening Arab Countries

    Zelikow: Iraq War Launched to Protect Israel

    U.S. Rep. John Hostettler: Iraq was invaded to help secure Israel

    Democratic Congressman Jim Moran: AIPAC Pushed Iraq War

    Cheney Says U.S. Will Attack Iraq "For Israel's Sake"

    Chief Rabbi Thanks Bush for War Against Iraq

    Israel Is Pushing The U.S. To Attack Iran

    Richard Perle, Ex-Patriot

    The Pentagon's Dynamic Duo: Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz

    Real Crimes of Wolfowitz Ignored

    Serving Two Flags: Neocons, Israel and the Bush Administration

    Iran: The Neocons' Next War