Monday 31 December 2012

War was always the goal (6)

JUDE WANNISKI. "Memo To: Don Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense: Fire Paul Wolfowitz." October 9th 2001. http://polyconomics.com/showarticle.asp?articleid=1668
"In case you have not noticed, Don, your deputy at the Pentagon, Paul Wolfowitz, has promoted himself and is now the Defense Secretary, and you are his deputy. We still see you quoted here and there, but Paul has already wrested policymaking from your hands and is making it himself. It is almost as if you have become his press secretary. 
He was bored with Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden long before the strikes began Sunday, as he is maniacally determined to cut to the chase, ‘finishing the war against Saddam Hussein,’ as his many followers in the pundit community put it… Do you realize that Wolfowitz, and his pal Richard Perle who chairs your Defense Policy Board, have been calling all their friends in the press corps, urging them to beat the drums for war with Iraq? 
Perle actually signed the ‘famous’ letter of 41 drafted by Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, who is Perle’s mouthpiece in Washington. (Bill Safire of the NYTimes is of course Perle’s mouthpiece in New York) It is incomprehensible to me that you would allow Perle to remain at that post, where he is permitted to read all the most sensitive secret traffic flowing through the Pentagon. Not that he wouldn’t see it anyway, courtesy of Wolfowitz… 
Why is Wolfowitz so maniacal about Iraq? Remember that in 1991 he was the senior member of the network created by the late Albert Wohlstetter in the Bush administration, working for then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. It was Wohlstetter to whom I introduced you in 1975 when Albert was masterminding the strategic victory over the USSR from his office at the RAND corporation in Santa Monica and his seat at the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. In 1991, the more senior Perle had left the government tomake megabucks as a consultant to foreign governments, so Wohlstetter gave Wolfowitz, next in line, the assignment of persuading Cheney to not only kick Saddam out of Kuwait, but also to chase him all the way to Baghdad, slaughtering the Republican Guard on the way. 
Thank God Wolfowitz failed in his assignment!!… Iraq was the least radical of all the Islamic states, the most civilized and modern and hospitable to Jews and multiculturalism... which is why the Iran/Iraq war was fought, with Saddam doing our killing for us, at times with the chemical weapons the CIA supplied him with. 
After the war, our State Department gave Saddam its passive assent to grab the Kuwaiti oilfields, but when he did, Maggie Thatcher and the Wohlstetter boys persuaded Bush to kick him out. Okay. Reluctantly I went along, after swallowing some whoppers about Saddam planning to invade Saudi Arabia. But Bush also announced that we would not lift the embargo as long as Saddam was in power and Nixon agreed that was the thing to do. Bin Laden DOES speak for the entire Islamic world in noting that at least a million Iraqi civilians have died as a result of that policy. 
There would have been no attack on the WTC if we had dealt honestly and responsibly with Iraq. The reason Jack Kemp did not sign the Perle/Kristol letter is that I forced him to confront all these facts, which I dug out on my own. He actually assigned a researcher to check my facts because they seemed diametrically opposite of what the American people were being told. Jack met with Nizar Hamdoon when Hamdoon was Iraqi ambassador and was seriously considering a trip to Baghdad with Sam Nunn, endorsed by Jimmy Carter. 
But the Perle crowd was always a step ahead of any diplomatic solution, pushing the Clinton team and Mad Madeleine into expansions of the illegal no-fly zone and target-practice on Iraqi civilians. The Democrats went along with all this because the American-Israel Political Action Committee thinks it's a good idea to keep Saddam ‘contained.’… 
If Bush gives the world the finger and turns on Iraq, there is no way the Pakistani government will survive, and Osama will have the Islamic bomb. Wolfowitz should be fired. He is a menace and one of the most dangerous men in the world as long as you let him play Defense Secretary. He must be fired!"
BOB WOODWARD. "Bush at War." 2002. As early as the day after the attacks, Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld 'raised the question of attacking Iraq,' adding:
"Why shouldn't we go against Iraq, not just al Qaeda? he asked. Rumsfeld was speaking not only for himself when he raised the question. His deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz was committed to a policy that would make Iraq a principal target of the first round in the war on terrorism...
On September 15, (2001) Wolfowitz put forth military arguments to justify a US attack on Iraq rather than Afghanistan. Wolfowitz expressed the view that 'attacking Afghanistan would be uncertain.' He voiced the fear that American troops would be 'bogged down in mountain fighting... In contrast, Iraq, was a brittle, oppressive regime that might break easily. It was doable."
HUGO YOUNG. "Guardian Unlimited." December 3rd 2002.
"In Washington, as well as Europe, Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary at the Pentagon, is regarded as the most awesome of hawks in his appetite for a war to overthrow Saddam Hussein. 
A Republican senator I interviewed on a recent visit saw him as a weirdo whose views were so dogmatic as to put him outside the realms of normal debate. In Bob Woodward's new book, ‘Bush at War,’ an essential revelatory text, Wolfowitz is reported as arguing from the start that the right response to 9/11 would be an attack on Iraq, ‘… a brittle, oppressive regime that might break easily,’ rather than an invasion of Afghanistan risking 100,000 US troops in unwinnable mountain combat’… The secretary was here to give a lecture, whose main substance changed the subject from Iraq to Washington's urgent request to the Europeans to bring Turkey into the EU. 
Turkey is a key ally in any war coalition against Saddam, but the American purpose is wider, namely to secure the absorption of a moderate Muslim state into the political organisation of western Christendom, which is one reason why France, Germany and Spain, to name but three, are unenthusiastic, though Britain, as ever, is taking the American view… 
The issue he did not address in detail was how the Iraqi threat connected with the war on existing terrorism as experienced in New York, Bali and Mombasa… Wolfowitz is leader of the school that says the link between Saddam and al-Qaida justifies a war if and when the inspection process fails, yet he produced no evidence of a connection even after 15 months to find it…  
When I asked Paul Wolfowitz whether we should be preparing for a war the UN did not bless, he avoided the question. He said, as per routine, that there was an outside chance Saddam would see the light, and let inspection lead to the peaceful dismembering of his weaponry. But he doesn't believe it is going to happen. Nor does any American I've met anywhere near the administration. They are going through the necessary motions of peace."
THE GUARDIAN. September 26th 2001. "Washington's hawk trains sights on Iraq." http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,558276,00.html
"Paul Wolfowitz's admirers and detractors agree on one thing – ‘hawk’ is too timid a description of the outspoken deputy Defence secretary trying to persuade President Bush to bomb Iraq. ‘Hawk doesn't do him justice,’ said one awed former colleague from academia. ‘What about velociraptor?’  
In Washington, deputy Defence secretaries rarely play starring roles, but Mr Wolfowitz, due to put the US case to Nato Defence ministers in Brussels today, was an exception even before the September 11 terrorist attacks. Since that disastrous morning, he has been a major player, often overshadowing his boss, Donald Rumsfeld, as the leading proponent of a wider war against suspected state sponsors of terrorism, particularly Iraq. 
Three days after the attack, Mr Wolfowitz described the US military mission to journalists as follows: ‘It's not just a matter of capturing people and holding them accountable, but removing the sanctuaries, removing the support systems, ending states who sponsor terrorism.’ Foreign policy specialists who heard those remarks had few doubts over which state the 57-year-old military strategist wanted to end.
As a Pentagon official in the first Bush administration, he pressed for US-led troops to pursue the routed Iraqi forces all the way to Baghdad and topple Saddam Hussein. During the Clinton years, as the Dean of the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University, he advocated military intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo. He also pressed his argument that not only was Saddam a suspected sponsor of terrorism, he was also likely to be a willing supplier of weapons of mass destruction… 
From his academic perch, Mr Wolfowitz vigorously argued for the arming Iraqi opposition groups and even using US troops to carve out and protect a mini-state inside Iraq for the rebels to operate from. In the wake of the suicide attacks on New York and Washington, Mr Wolfowitz has emerged as the loudest voice calling for a comprehensive multi-front war on terrorism which would include strikes on suspected WMD production and storage sites… 
Mr Wolfowitz, a native of Brooklyn, is untroubled by shyness. Soon after his appointment, he interrupted a ‘New York Times’ interviewer to remind her that in Indonesia, where he was once ambassador, ‘I am a major international figure.’ Indonesians, he pointed out 'still have my picture on the walls.’  
Mr Wolfowitz's mindset was honed at the University of Chicago, where the mathematician's son was the protege of Albert Wohlstetter, the father of hardline conservative strategic thinking. The pupil became a leading Cold Warrior in his own right. At one point during the Soviet Union's collapse, he advocated using US troops to guarantee Lithuanian territory against Russian invasion. Pentagon insiders say it would be a mistake to underestimate Mr Wolfowitz's influence.  
Apart from Mr Rumsfeld, he is the only Defence official trusted to speak to the press about the current operation. He gives occasional briefings in the Pentagon corridors. His appointment was opposed in vain by Mr Powell, and Mr Wolfowitz now has important allies in senior roles in both the Pentagon and the vice president's office. He no longer talks publicly in terms of ‘ending states’ but no one who knows him doubts he is still pushing the case for an attack on Saddam."
GEORGIE ANNE GEYER. "Pro-Israeli, Anti-Arab Campaigns Could Isolate America." October 25th 2001. http.www.uexpress.com/georgieannegeyer/index.cfm?uc_full_date=20011025&uc_comic=gg&uc_daction=X
"The ‘Get Iraq’ campaign ... started within days of the September bombings. ... It emerged first and particularly from pro-Israeli hard-liners in the Pentagon such as Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and adviser Richard Perle, but also from hard-line neoconservatives, and some journalists and congressmen. Soon it became clear that many, although not all, were in the group that is commonly called in diplomatic and political circles the ''Israeli-firsters,'' meaning that they would always put Israeli policy, or even their perception of it, above anything else."
MICHELE STEINBERG. Executive Intelligence Review." 26th October, 2001. http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2001/2841Wolfowitz.html
"Here we will name the names of the fanatics in this anti-Iraq grouping who have become known as the "Wolfowitz Cabal," named after Assistant Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz. According to the ‘New York Times,’ which published a leak about their activities on Oct. 12, this grouping wants an immediate war with Iraq, believing that the targetting of Afghanistan, already an impoverished wasteland, falls far short of the global war that they are hoping for. But Iraq is just another stepping stone to turning the anti-terrorist "war" into a full-blown: ‘Clash of Civilizations,’ where the Islamic religion would become the ‘enemy image’ in a ‘new Cold War.’ 
The ‘Clash of Civilizations’ theory, developed by Harvard professor-turned President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski… defined the Arab and Islamic world as an ‘arc of Crisis’ from the Middle East to the Islamic countries of Central Asia in the then-Soviet Union. Brzezinski wanted to use the ‘Islamic card’ against the Soviet Union, and in so doing, began the policy of promoting Islamic fundamentalists against moderate and pro-Western Arab and Islamic governments. 
After the end of the Cold War, the Brzezinski/Huntington crowd updated their ‘arc of crisis,’ declaring that the Islamic religion is the enemy, in a new war in which religions, rather than political systems, inevitably battle each other. However, trained by British and US special intelligence services and the CIA, and armed by Israeli military networks, the very terrorist drug-runners in the Islamic world who were launched by Brzezinski and ‘adopted’ by the Iran-Contra networks run by Lt. Col. Oliver North, under the elder George Bush's Executive Order 12333, have become the main suspects in terrorist attacks against the United States. 
The adherents of the so-called ‘Wolfowitz Cabal,’ pushing the ‘Clash of Civilizations’ theory, are nothing less than ‘an enemy within’ the United States, a network that cuts across the Defence Department, the State Department, the White House, and the National Security Council. This report is not a ‘good guys’ versus ‘bad guys’ description of the Bush Administration; rather it is a warning that this cabal is a close-knit rogue network that is trying to hijack US policy, and turn the current Afghanistan mess into a global war. 
The cabal bears a dangerous resemblance to the ‘secret parallel government’ of North and General Richard Secord's ‘Project Democracy’ operation that ran Iran-Contra. In fact, some of the cabal members now in the Bush Administration are convicted criminals as a result of their activity in North's ‘Enterprise’! 
On Oct. 12, the ‘New York Times’ revealed deep divisions in the Bush Administration, describing how the cabal plots policy behind the back of Cabinet officials, such as Secretary of State Colin Powell, in the name of the US government. The group wants to obliterate Iraq, put Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority on the terrorism list (if not the obituary list), and declare war on nation-states. 
The ‘Times’ revealed that a key section of the ‘Wolfowitz Cabal,’ is the 18-member Defence Policy Board, which met for more than 19 hours on Sept. 19-20 to ‘make the case’ against Saddam Hussein. The meeting pushed for a renewed war against Iraq as soon as the war against Afghanistan had concluded its initial phase. It discussed overthrowing Saddam Hussein, partitioning Iraq into mini-states led by US-funded dissidents who would steal the proceeds from the Basra oil revenues for their quisling government. The meeting discussed how to manipulate information so as to pin the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States on Saddam Hussein… 
On Sept. 22, President George Bush rejected the Policy Board's recommendation to declare war against Iraq. But to the ‘Wolfowitz Cabal,’ Bush's decision didn't really matter, senior members of the Policy Board had been selected for their broad international connections, especially to the United Kingdom and Israel, allowing them to force changes in US policy through an ‘outside-inside’ operation. 
If unable to change policy through advising, the network could also run covert operations as a ‘government within a government,’ as they had manoeuvered during Iran-Contra. The chairman of the Defence Policy Board is Richard Perle, the former Reagan Assistant Secretary of Defence for International Security Affairs, now based at the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute. Perle, nicknamed ‘The Prince of Darkness’ because of his nuclear Armageddon views during the Cold War, is, more importantly, an asset of Conrad Black's Hollinger International, Inc., which grew out of British Empire Security Coordinator William Stephenson's efforts to secure arms for Britain during World War II. 
At present, Hollinger owns the British Tory Party-linked ‘Telegraph’ PLC, whose International Advisory Board is headed by former British Prime Minister, now Lady Margaret Thatcher. Hollinger also owns the ‘Jerusalem Post,’ another war-mongering press outlet. The ‘heavy hitters’ on the Defence Policy Board are the worst of the Anglo-American-Israeli geopolitical fanatics from the last several decades, including: former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, who is also a member of Hollinger's International Advisory Board; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich; former Clinton Administration Director of Central Intelligence R. James Woolsey; former Deputy Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. David E. Jeremiah; former Vice President Dan Quayle; former Defence and Energy Secretary James R. Schlesinger; and former President Carter's Defence Secretary Harold Brown. Though Perle was only recently appointed to head the Defence Policy Board, he and Wolfowitz have been collaborators for more than two decades, as agents-of-influence of the right-wing Israeli war faction. 
In 1985, when it was clear that Jonathan Jay Pollard, an American convicted that year of spying for Israel, could not have been working alone in stealing such high-level US secrets for Israel to sell to the Soviet Union, top-level intelligence officials told EIR that an entire ‘X Committee’ of high-level US officials, was being investigated.Wolfowitz and Perle were on the list of ‘X Committee’ suspects, and Israeli spying against the United States was so thick that investigators told EIR they had found ‘not moles, but entire molehills.’ 
Pollard and his Israeli defenders later claimed that Pollard ‘had to’ spy against the United States because the Americans were soft on Iraq and other Arab countries. The ‘Wolfowitz Cabal’ is determined to push the United States in the direction of the most dangerous Israeli right-wing policy, including a possible Israeli nuclear attack on an Arab state… 
The ‘Wolfowitz Cabal’ is out to destroy any potential for a Middle East peace, and simultaneously is determined to crush Eurasian economic development centered around co-operation among Europe, Russia, and China. After being rebuffed after the marathon Defence Policy Board meetings, the Wolfowitz Cabal set various operations in motion to plant propaganda stories, falsify reports of US policy, and carry out other manoeuvers, whereby the tail would ‘wag the dog.’ 
Unapproved statements are made by cabal members, interviews misrepresenting US policy are planted around the globe, and intelligence reports are altered or manufactured to further the policy goals. In the first such instance, shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, Wolfowitz declared that the United States will ‘end states harboring terrorism,’ and insisted that under the principle of self-defence, the United States could act alone, without the United Nations, or co-operation from any other country. He wanted to establish the ‘doctrine’ that the United States would hit a country ‘anywhere, anytime’ based on secret evidence… 
In the same vein, on Oct. 7, the day the Afghanistan bombings began, the cabal again attempted to provoke a rift between the United States and members of the UN Security Council, especially Russia and China, by altering the text of a letter from US Ambassador to the UN John D. Negroponte. (Not coincidentally, Negroponte was a notorious insider in the Iran-Contra operation, who was accused of collaborating with narcotics-linked military death squads in Honduras in the 1980s) 
The changes in the letter were made without notifying Negroponte's boss, Secretary of State Powell. In the letter, Negroponte echoed Wolfowitz's so-called gaffe, writing: ‘We may find that our self-defence requires further action with respect to other organizations and states.’ The statement implicitly targeted Iraq, Syria, and Sudan, all countries which are on the State Department's list of countries that support terrorism. 
The statement violated promises the United States had made, that it would limit ‘coalition’ action to redressing the attack of Sept. 11. Upon learning of the statement, from the press, Powell reportedly ‘hit the roof.’ The insertion was drafted by Stephen J. Hadley, who is the Deputy Adviser to the National Security Council. 
The stunt may have been planned at the Defence Policy Board meetings. Then there's the case of former CIA director R. James Woolsey, whose defined role is as the Defense Policy Board member member who is most public in demanding the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. 
The Knight-Ridder newspaper chain reported on Oct. 11, that Woolsey had been authorized the prior month to fly to London on a US government plane, accompanied by Justice and Defence Department officials, on a secret mission to gather evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11 attack. 
In a Sept. 18 press conference by ‘Defence Week,’ Woolsey called for creating a ‘no-fly and no-drive zone’ in the north and south of Iraq, so that the Kurds and the Shi'ites, respectively, could better fight Saddam. ‘The watchword of the day,’ Woolsey said, is, ‘It's the Regimes, Stupid!’ Since the Oct. 5 death from anthrax of Bob Stevens, the Sun tabloid photo editor, from anthrax, Woolsey has been the world's leading finger-pointer at Saddam as being behind the anthrax attack. His so-called evidence is dated, prejudiced, and completely unreliable. 
It was no accident that Woolsey role-played a prominent character, CIA Director, in the New York Council on Foreign Relations 1999-2000 scenario the previous year, ‘The Next Financial Crisis: Warning Signs, Damage Control, and Impact,’ that acted out a virtual coup d'état coming on the heels of a combined financial crisis and terrorist attack. 
In the Council On Foreign Relations war-game, the US President would be taken out of the picture, leaving the country under the control of a crisis management dictatorship. Also dispatched to London to propagandize for a ‘rolling war’ that would attack Afghanistan, then Iraq, then country after country until revenge is exacted, was fellow Policy Board member Newt Gingrich. 
Talking to the London ‘Times,’ owned by top British-Israeli propagandist Rupert Murdoch, Gingrich said that the United States is ‘at war’ with: ‘… organized, systematic extensions of terror, supported by nation-states.’ He said that targeting the Afghan Taliban without defeating Iraq would be: ‘… like defeating Imperial Japan and leaving the Nazis alone.’ 
Gingrich threatened that countries judged not cooperative against terrorism would face the consequences: ‘The US and the coalition forces will assist your own people in removing you.’ Setting the pace for his team, Perle was the joint initiator with neo-con William Kristol of the Rupert Murdoch-funded ‘Weekly Standard,’ of an open letter to President Bush, that, while ostensibly supporting the President in the war against terrorism, was, in fact, an ultimatum to support a ‘Clash of Civilizations’ Thirty Years' War in the Middle East. Among the non-negotiable demands set forth in that letter was the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, ‘even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the [Sept. 11] attack.’ 
There is no doubt that the Wolfowitz/Perle duo is at the heart of the network that can use Israel in the ‘breakaway ally scenario.’ Indeed, Wolfowitz is one of great hopes of right-wing extremists in Israel, including among the radical settlers movement, who are demanding the assassination of Arafat and the expulsion of all Palestinians from the Occupied Territories. But, Wolfowitz and Perle are not ‘Israeli agents.’ Rather, they are second-generation operatives both mentored by the RAND Corp.'s Albert Wohlstetter, a former Trotskyite communist turned nuclear strategist. 
Nor are the cabal war-mongers Seven Days in May militarists. A key member of the cabal is Richard Armitage, the number-two man in the US State Department, who was investigated in the Iran-Contra scandal, and who is a longtime collaborator of Wolfowitz in the targetting of Iraq. The cabal also has high-level operatives at the National Security Council (NSC): General Wayne Downing, former Commander in Chief of the Special Operations Command, was just appointed as Director of Combating Terrorism for the Homeland Defence Board, headed by former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge. 
In 1997-98, Downing drew up a military plan to overthrow Saddam, by assassination, if necessary. The plan hinged on heavily arming dissident gangs of Iraqi Shi'ites in the south of Iraq, and Kurdish fighters in the north. Invasion by US Special Forces ground troops was not ruled out. The promoter of the neo-Conservative yahoos in Congress and the think-tanks was Wolfowitz, then head of the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. 
Unable to ram this plan through the Clinton Administration, Wolfowitz shopped the plan to Perle, an expert in ‘chain-letter’ pressure politics, who garnered signatures. Now at the NSC, Downing has the ready-made plan to hit Iraq. Richard Clarke, Adviser to the President for Cyberspace Warfare. Clarke, who was originally with the State Department during the elder Bush's Administration, was demoted for covering up Israeli violations of the Arms Exporting laws. 
In August 1998, Clarke was one of the key figures who planted false information about Sudan's involvement in the East Africa US Embassy bombings, which led to US cruise missile attacks on a Sudanese pharmaceutical company in Khartoum. Clarke shopped in disinformation from British-Israeli covert operations stringer Yosef Bodansky that targeted Sudan. 
Elliott Abrams, NSC staff. Abrams, who was convicted in the Iran-Contra scandal, was quietly placed on the NSC as a specialist in ‘religion and human rights.’ He is a long-time member of the right-wing Zionist networks that infiltrated the US security establishment. He worked closely with Secord and North in Central America, also providing a link to the Israeli gun-running networks that delivered arms to Khomeini's Iran."
REUEL MARC GERECHT. Former Middle East specialist in the Central Intelligence Agency from 1985 to 1994. Member of the American Enterprise Institute. Director of the Middle East Initiative for the Project for the New American Century.
"To really put Mr. bin Laden out of business, America must shut down his operations inside Afghanistan… Since America's counter-terrorist forces cannot unilaterally reach inside Afghanistan, we have only one option. Play realpolitik the old-fashioned way. Taliban leaders truly fear only one thing: the possibility that Afghanistan's many tribes will put aside their differences and unite to topple them from power. They've launched numerous offensives against Ahmed Shah Massoud, the strongest of the anti-Soviet Afghan commanders. His troops are the only ones still seriously contesting Taliban rule… 
Mr. Massoud, a devout Muslim, is unquestionably one of the greatest guerrilla commanders of our era… Pakistan has long loathed him and supported the Taliban… it is not too late for the United States to play hardball. The Bush administration could give a small slice of the multibillion-dollar counterterrorist budget to Mr. Massoud. 
That might bring Mullah Omar down to earth. He and his supporters, particularly the Pakistanis, might reconsider the unthinkable, shutting down Mr. bin Laden's operations, if the alternative were the dissipation, and perhaps the destruction, of Taliban rule." ("The New York Times." March 8th 2001) 
"The Bush administration has continued and actually surpassed its predecessor’s display of timidity in the Middle East… Are we a great power or not? If we are, then what in the world are we doing running from men whose mission in life it is to make us flee? If Marines and men-of-war cannot hold their own against the specter of a Saudi terrorist, how will our friends, let alone our enemies, in the macho Middle East measure us against real heavyweights like Saddam Hussein or the clerics of Iran?… 
We need to take bin Laden’s men apart psychologically… Israel’s most determined enemies—Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Iran’s mollahs, the Palestinian fundamentalists in Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and Yasser Arafat’s protégés in his security and intelligence services, constantly underscore Israel’s decision to withdraw unilaterally from southern Lebanon in their clarion calls for more martyrs. 
This Israeli action, widely applauded in the West as strategically astute and morally estimable, was seen in the Middle East as an astonishing retreat by a once seemingly unbeatable Western power. Israeli weakness, not Israeli ‘intransigence,’ is what heats the militant’s death-wish dreams red-hot… 
For bin Laden’s ‘sleepers’ agents already outside of Afghanistan awaiting the right moment to strike an American target, the situation is probably little better… These are bad days for America in the Middle East. Ali Khamenei, Iran’s clerical overlord, isn’t alone in seeing the United States on the defensive throughout the region. American policy toward the Israeli-Arab confrontation, keep trading Israeli-held land for the promise of Arab peace, is naive. 
Yet the Israeli Left adopted this policy and kicked it into overdrive, and now the inevitable dénouement is at hand: a real war between the Israelis and Palestinians. Seemingly endless Israeli concessions, always applauded by the Clinton administration, have undermined America’s standing in the Middle East. 
The Bush administration… has compounded the problem by endorsing the Mitchell Report, which puts forth the odd, very secular notion that Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, comprising less than 2 percent of the land, have provoked Palestinian young men to blow themselves to bits. 
The White House and Foggy Bottom are desperate to ‘stop the cycle of violence.’ But only violence, Israeli violence, if prime minister Ariel Sharon still has the stamina and insight at last to unleash it, may recoup the damage that the Labor party, Bill Clinton, and the Near East Bureau of the State Department have done to America’s standing in the region. Farther east, the situation is even worse. 
From the spring of 1996, the Clinton administration’s Iraq policy was in meltdown; under the Bush administration, it has completely liquefied. The administration’s retargeted ‘smart sanctions’ are clearly a huge retreat… in the case of Jordan, a weak kingdom always inclined to appease Saddam Hussein, to bear the burden and responsibility for our failure to confront directly the Iraqi dictator. 
Does anyone in the Bush administration remember Madeleine Albright, Sandy Berger, and their minions spinning themselves dizzy trying to deny that Saddam Hussein had outwaited and outplayed Washington? It would be better to see the administration start explaining how we will live with Saddam and his nuclear weapons than to see senior Bush officials, in the manner of the Clintonites, fib to themselves and the public. 
In any case, in Middle Eastern eyes, the Butcher of Baghdad has checked, if not checkmated, the United States. Only against this backdrop can we properly assess the threat bin Laden poses. The Saudi militant is unquestionably going to come at us again… the Bush administration will have to make a defining decision. 
Will President Bush continue the Clinton administration’s preference for putting terrorist strikes into the FBI’s investigative hands and, forensic evidence willing, into the courts, thereby avoiding the diplomatically messy question of retaliation?… Deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage recently warned that the United States would hold the Taliban responsible for future attacks by Al Qaeda… 
The Taliban chieftain Mullah Omar ought to discover that dead Americans mean cruise missiles coming through his bedroom window and cluster bombs all over his frontline troops." ("A Cowering Superpower." "The Weekly Standard." July 30th 2001) 
"A war against Iraq will reinforce, not weaken, whatever collective spirit has developed among intelligence and security agencies working against Islamic radicals. Indeed, without the war to remove Saddam, it is likely that the counterterrorist efforts of "allied" intelligence and security services in the Muslim world will diminish, if not end entirely. And it shouldn't be that hard to understand why. Self-interest and fear of American power, not feelings of fraternity and common purpose, are what will glue together any lasting international effort against terrorism... 
Although the Europeans have generally been somewhat hesitant to embrace publicly America's ‘war on terrorism,’ and have been overtly hostile to the Bush administration's bellicosity towards Iraq, European intelligence and security services are stuck with the fact that roughly 14 to 17 million Muslims now live within the European Union… With the possible exceptions of the Belgians and the Dutch, the West Europeans have reacted as vigorously as the Americans, if not more so… 
An Anglo-American invasion of Iraq would in no way diminish the self-defensive reflex that propelled all of the Continental Europeans to monitor their Muslim populations more closely and seek maximum cooperation from American intelligence and security agencies. European public opinion may fear the war in Iraq, European elites may loathe the moralizing, over-muscled, ‘unilateral’ American approach to foreign policy, but European statesmen and policemen, first and foremost, want to protect their own. They know there is no neutral option in this war against terrorism; they can't make a behind-the-scenes deal with holy warriors, as some Europeans made pacts in the past with more secular Middle Eastern terrorists. 
The father of modern Middle Eastern terrorism, Yasser Arafat, may have converted himself into an object of European tiers-mondiste sympathy, but Osama bin Laden and his not-so-merry men never will… Irrespective of any European bitterness or fury about Washington's ‘hubris’ in the Middle East, U.S.-European intelligence cooperation against young Muslim males who live to incinerate themselves has just begun to blossom. Indeed, it is likely that the specter of Islamic terrorism will draw Western intelligence and national security agencies closer together than did the Cold War… 
Quite contrary to the common depiction of the Middle East as the principal fissure between America and Europe, the region, especially to the degree it embodies an Islamist threat to the United States and Europe, will likely be the one unbreakable bond between otherwise increasingly distant family members. In the Middle East and Pakistan, we will see a somewhat different dynamic at work. 
Fear of America, not fear of bin Ladenism, is what primarily binds Washington and these friends. If the United States does not go to war against Iraq, it is most probable that the pre-9/11 status quo will return to U.S.-Middle Eastern and U.S.-Pakistani relations. Without a militant America to inspire (and worry) them, foreign liaison services will act in their rulers' best interests… 
In 1996, when terrorists blew up a U.S. military barracks at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 servicemen, the ultra-conservative and anti-American Saudi interior ministry under Prince Nayef shut down the FBI's investigation. FBI director Louis Freeh, and by extension President Clinton, looked weak in Saudi eyes for allowing Nayef to set the rules. This was an egregious example of kowtowing, one of many over the years that have encouraged Saudis to believe they can have the upper hand in U.S.-Saudi relations. 
So why should the Saudis, who have spent decades developing international missionary networks that encourage a virulently anti-American Islamic gospel--forthrightly aid Washington in dismantling the Saudi-funded Wahhabi organizations that have done so much to draw recruits into Islamic militancy and into al Qaeda? Has any Bush administration official flown to Riyadh to instruct Crown Prince Abdullah in the tenuous nature of power, as Secretary Powell did with Musharraf?… 
Washington should do unto Riyadh as it does unto others. Whatever our intelligence take is from the Saudis, and Saudi intelligence was in the best position of any Arab service to penetrate al Qaeda before its bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa, attack on the USS Cole, and 9/11, adherence to this ‘golden rule’ could only make the relationship better… 
However Washington conducts itself toward individual Arab states, it should be obvious that if the Bush administration now fails to go to war against Saddam Hussein, we will lose enormous face throughout the region. President Bush has defined himself and America by his axis-of-evil, regime-change policy toward Iraq. Without a successful war to remove Saddam, we will return to the pre-9/11 pattern of timidity that Osama bin Laden so effectively underscored in his writings and speeches." ("The Weekly Standard." 21st October, 2002)
NORMAN PODHORETZ. Long-time Editor of ‘Commentary,’ the neo-conservative magazine published by the American Jewish Committee. Draft dodger during the Vietnam War.
"The regimes that richly deserve to be overthrown and replaced are not confined to the three singled-out members of the axis of evil. At a minimum, this axis should extend to Syria and Lebanon and Libya, as well as ‘friends’ of America like the Saudi Royal family and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, along with the Palestinian Authority, whether headed by Arafat or one of his henchmen." ("Commentary")  
"A transformed, or, more precisely, a transfigured, George W. Bush appeared before us. In an earlier article in these pages, I suggested, perhaps presumptuously, that out of the blackness of smoke and fiery death let loose by September 11, a kind of revelation, blazing with a very different fire of its own, lit up the recesses of Bush's mind and heart and soul. Which is to say that, having previously been unsure as to why he should have been chosen to become President of the United States, George W. Bush now knew that the God to whom, as a born-again Christian, he had earlier committed himself had put him in the Oval Office for a purpose. He had put him there to lead a war against the evil of terrorism… 
The regimes that richly deserve to be overthrown and replaced are not confined to the three singled-out members of the axis of evil. At a minimum, this axis should extend to Syria and Lebanon and Libya, as well as 'friends' of America like the Saudi royal family and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, along with the Palestinian Authority, whether headed by Arafat or one of his henchmen… 
There is a policy that can head it off provided that we then have the stomach to impose a new political culture on the defeated parties. This is what we did directly and unapologetically in Germany and Japan after winning World War II." ("In Praise of the Bush Doctrine." "Commentary." September, 2002. http://www.ourjerusalem.com/opinion/story/opinion20020904a.html
"What would finishing the job in the war against terrorism mean? The President himself defined it from the start in very broad terms. Our aim was not merely to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and wipe out the al Qaeda terrorists under his direct leadership in Afghanistan. Bush vowed that we would also uproot and destroy the entire network of interconnected terrorist organizations and cells ‘with global reach’ that existed in as many as 50 or 60 countries. 
No longer would we treat the members of these groups as criminals to be arrested by the police, read their Miranda rights, and brought to trial. From now on, they were to be regarded as the irregular troops of a military alliance at war with the United States, and indeed the civilized world as a whole. Furthermore, the governments that gave terrorists help of any kind of sanctuary, money, arms, diplomatic and logistical support, training facilities, would either join us in getting rid of them or would also be regarded as in a state of war with the United States. 
Bush was unequivocal. These governments, he repeated over and over again, were either with us in the war against terrorism, or they were against us: there was to be no middle or neutral ground. In defining the war and the enemy in such terms, the President, seconded by both major parties and a vast majority of the American people, was acknowledging the rightness of those who had been stubbornly insisting against the sceptical and the craven alike that terrorism posed a serious threat and that it could not be fought by the police and the courts. 
Perhaps most important of all was the corollary of such an analysis: that, with rare exceptions, terrorists were not individual psychotics acting on their own but agents of organizations that depended on the sponsorship of various governments. Not that this analysis of terrorism had exactly been a secret. The State Department itself had a list of seven state sponsors of terrorism (all but two of which, Cuba and North Korea, were predominantly Muslim) and it regularly issued reports on terrorist incidents throughout the world. 
But aside from the previously mentioned token lobbing of a cruise missile or two, the application of diplomatic and/or economic sanctions that were themselves inconsistently and even perfunctorily enforced, and a number of covert operations, the law-enforcement approach still prevailed. September 11 changed much, if not yet all of that… 
Before going into Afghanistan, the President went around courting and wooing countries throughout the Middle East, some of which were on the State Department's own list of state sponsors of terrorism, or had given houseroom to terrorists without for some reason making it onto this roll of dishonor. Under the doctrine the President himself had promulgated in describing his war aims, these countries should have been seen not as potential allies but as enemies. 
The absurdity of, in effect, asking them to join with us in a war against themselves was well captured by Richard Lowry, the editor of ‘National Review,’ who remarked that it was silly to expect the leaders of the states sponsoring terrorism to bone up on the United Nations Charter and then change their ways. 
To add to the absurdity, none of these countries could or would provide us with assistance of any great value. Nor, for that matter, were our great friends, the ‘moderate’ Middle Eastern governments like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, willing to give us much, if any, help… 
Worse yet, and even leaving aside the awkward detail that fifteen of the nineteen hijackers on September 11 carried Saudi passports, we had the greatest difficulty getting the Saudi rulers to freeze the assets being sent by private ‘charities’ in their own country to al Qaeda, or to make available the passenger lists of flights coming from there to the United States so that they might be screened in advance by our customs officials. Even Kuwait, the country we had liberated from Saddam Hussein a decade earlier, refused our request for such lists, thus setting a new world record for chutzpah. 
Then there was Egypt, whose official government newspapers continued spewing out viciously anti-American diatribes, while its president, Hosni Mubarak, not lacking in chutzpah himself, pretended that there was nothing he could do about this… Like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, too, had a population sympathetic to Osama bin Laden… Most of these other countries clucked their tongues sympathetically over what had been done to us on September 11, and declared themselves members of our coalition. But then_after we had begun bombing Afghanistan in earnest_their contribution to our war effort consisted of urging us to prevent the Israelis from retaliating against terrorist attacks by Palestinians, and to suspend our own military operations during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan… 
If the coalition was unnecessary both from a political and from a military point of view, and if the inclusion within it of states harboring terrorists undermined and obfuscated the moral clarity of the war we were determined to wage, why did the administration devote so much energy to assembling it? The explanation is that getting a minimal endorsement from as many predominantly Muslim states as possible helped create the impression that our war was not against Islam but against terrorism… 
With Afghanistan gradually fading from attention, the focus is now on phase two of the war, and the main issue is whether or not Iraq should be next. Some commentators are convinced that Saddam Hussein had a hand in September 11, as well as in the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, and that Iraq was the original source of the anthrax sent through the mails to several congressional leaders… 
Anyway, it is by now no longer necessary to prove that Saddam is a sponsor of terrorism in order to consider Iraq a target of the war against it, since the President has already established a rationale in stating that: ‘If you develop weapons of mass destruction [with which] you want to terrorize the world, you'll be held accountable’… 
Whether or not Iraq becomes the second front in the war against terrorism, one thing is certain: there can be no victory in this war if it ends with Saddam Hussein still in power… … big wars… invariably end by reshaping the world. The war of September 11 will be just such a big one, if, as I hope, President Bush is serious about pursuing it to the end… … in the Wall Street Journal, Eliot Cohen has also proposed that we look upon this as World War IV, the immediate successor to the cold war, which he rightly characterizes as World War III… 
The real enemy in this war, Cohen argues as Daniel Pipes has also so persistently and authoritatively done at greater length, is not the generalized abstraction ‘terrorism,’ but rather ‘militant Islam.’ Militant Islam today represents a revival of the expansionism by the sword that carried the new religion from its birthplace in Arabia in the 7th century c.e. through North Africa, the Balkans, Spain, and as far West as the gates of Vienna in the 1680's. 
In the East, it swept through, among other countries, India, Iran, Afghanistan, and Indonesia, and also penetrated southward into the African lands that became Nigeria and Sudan. Never in any of those places did Islam undergo anything resembling the various forms of modernization and reform that took place within Christianity and Judaism… 
Big wars, to say it again, usually end with the world being reshaped in forms unanticipated when they begin. The Middle East is itself a case in point… As it happens, most of the states in question were conjured into existence less than a hundred years ago out of the ruins of the defeated Ottoman empire in World War I. Their boundaries were drawn by the victorious British and French with the stroke of an often arbitrary pen, and their hapless peoples were handed over in due course to one tyrant after another. There is thus no warrant to assume that these states will last forever in their present forms, or that the only alternatives to them are necessarily worse... 
In the aftermath of World War II, the United States managed in a few short years to transform both Nazi Germany and imperial Japan into capitalist democracies. And thanks to our victory in World War III, (the "Cold War") something similar seems to be happening on its own steam in Central and Eastern Europe, and even in the old heartland of the evil empire itself. Why should the Islamic world eternally remain an exception?… 
The campaign against al Qaeda required us to topple the Taliban regime, and we may willy-nilly find ourselves forced by the same political and military logic to topple five or six or seven more tyrannies in the Islamic world (including that other sponsor of terrorism, Yasir Arafat's Palestinian Authority). I can even go along with David Pryce-Jones in imagining the turmoil of this war leading to some new species of an imperial mission for America, whose purpose would be to oversee the emergence of successor governments in the region more amenable to reform and modernization than the despotisms now in place. 
Like Pryce-Jones, I can also envisage the establishment of some kind of American protectorate over the oil fields of Saudi Arabia… … thinking about our long record of inattention and passivity toward terrorism, I fear a relapse into appeasement, diplomatic evasion, and ineffectual damage control… 
The world in general, will look very different by the time this war is over. Very different, and very much better for the vast majority of people everywhere. Unless, that is, the United States is held back by its coalition from moving all the way forward, or the President breaks the promise he made, in his magnificent speech to Congress on September 20, not to waver or falter or tire or lose patience until victory is achieved, a victory that would leave us not with ‘an age of terror’ but with ‘an age of liberty’ here and across the world." ("How to Win World War IV." February, 2002. http://www.counterpunch.org/pipermail/counterpunch-list/2002-February/018053.html)
ELLIOTT ABRAMS. National Security Council advisor and Director of Middle Eastern Affairs in George Bush minor’s administration. CFR member. President of the Ethics & Public Policy Center. Former Assistant Secretary of State in the Reagan Adminstration. Chairman of the Commission on International Religious Freedom. Draft dodger during the Vietnam War. His excuse was "a bad back."

Abrams lied to three congressional committees about his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal. Pleaded guilty in 1991 to two misdemeanours and was sentenced to a year's probation and 100 hours of community service. Bush major later granted Abrams a full pardon.

Abrams advocates the removal of Yasser Arafat and has stated that Israel should be allowed to deal forcefully with ‘terrorism.’ He has in the past expressed strong opposition to the lifting of American trade sanctions against Islamic Sudan.

Abrams’ wife is the daughter of Midge Decter, a leading light within the majority of Neoconservative think tanks pushing for WWIII over the last few years. Decter’s second husband is Norman Podhoretz, the long-time editor of ‘Commentary,’ the neo-conservative magazine published by the American Jewish Committee.
"The statement issued by their recent ‘Ecumenical Delegation to Jerusalem' is unwaveringly hostile to the State of Israel… balance and moderation have never characterized the mainline denominations when it comes to Israel. They have almost always been anti-Israel, pro-PLO stalwarts. 
The most recent evidence is in a December 12th statement by the ‘Ecumenical Delegation to Jerusalem’ from mainline churches, representing views from such groups as the Episcopal Church, the National Council of Churches, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, the Presbyterian Church USA, the United Methodist Church, and the United Church of Christ, often represented at the very highest levels. 
The statement is incredibly one-sided and biased… It is an unattractive record of bias, and it raises one obvious question: Why? Why the relentless assaults on Israel?… Mainline church officials do not take literally the Old Testament promises of a land for Israel. But mostly it is political. Israel is a Western-style democracy supported by the United States. The Palestinians and other Arabs are perceived as oppressed Third World peoples still struggling against Western imperialism. 
Had Israel aligned itself with the Soviet Union 50 years ago rather than the US, the mainline churches' attitude today might be different. Mainline church officials reserve their sympathies entirely for the Palestinians as a designated 'victim' group… 
Some of the mainline churches have a presence, including missionaries, in Arab countries. This may make them more sympathetic to the Arab cause… The NCC also includes Christian Arab churches, and some of these may be pro-Palestinian as well. And one cannot overlook another explanation, painful though it may be: anti-Semitism, now disguised as anti-Israel feeling… The lesson for Jews is that such statements must be protested strongly. 
This ‘Ecumenical Delegation’ was no peace commission, no study group, no goodwill tour, but an expression of anti-Israel bias." ("Beliefnet.com." "Mainline Protestants: Anti-Israel, Pro-PLO." 20th February, 2001. http://www.eppc.org/publications/xq/ASP/pubsID.257/qx/pubs_viewdetail.htm) 
"Tomorrow’s America will look very different from the country of Protestants, Catholics and Jews that the sociologist Will Herberg described in 1955, or even of the America of the 2000 elections. Its largest minority will be Hispanic. It will contain millions of Hindus and Buddhists, and as many Muslims as Jews. How will Jewish interests be protected in the political system reflecting that demographic reality?" ("The Wall Street Journal." March, 2001) 
"We go into a situation where we recognize that military action in Iraq, if it is necessary, could have adverse humanitarian consequences. And we've been planning, therefore, over the last several months, an inter-agency effort to prevent or at least to mitigate any such consequences… 
We also know that conflict can have a number of humanitarian effects. It can increase the number of displaced persons. It can interrupt the Oil For Food distribution of food. It can disrupt electricity supplies. It can lead UN and NGO workers to evacuate. Some have already evacuated. We believe that the International Red Cross will not evacuate, and stay during the conflict… 
We recognize the potential for Saddam Hussein to target his own civilian population, he certainly has in the past, and campaign planning has aimed, to the extent possible, to deny him that capability… We have been stockpiling blankets, water, ladders, shelter supplies, medicines, other relief items at this point to serve about a million people, the material in question worth about $12 million. And we're trying to forward-deploy those stockpiles into the region… And we are preparing to undertake immediate rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts to deliver essential services to the Iraqi people. " (White House press briefing. February 24th 2003) 
"I think we have made an enormous mistake in our policy in the (Middle east) region in the last ten or twenty years, and it is to forget about democracy. We have not pressed the democratization of the Palestinian areas… I think that America still is a very powerful melting pot, and no ethnicity is really surviving. 
The strength of Irish or Italian ethnicity in America which was so strong 50 or 100 years ago, is declining, disappearing. The older immigrations, like the Norwegians, the Scandinavians, they're gone as ethnic groups now. I think that's happening to the Jews too, because you can't do it in America, the culture is too powerful. So the question for Jews who are concerned about continuity as survival is, what's the glue then, what's the identity, if it isn't ethnic. 
I think as the immigrant generations disappear, as Jews now become two, three, four, five, six generations removed from immigration, the ethnicity disappears and there's nothing left, I think, either, literally nothing left, or there's religion. And so I'm arguing that the only Jewish identity that can survive in America, the only differential identity of any kind that can survive, is religion… Jewish efforts for continuity should be built around religion… 
I think more and more Jews, Jewish organizations, Jewish leaders, are coming to the conclusion that religious identity is the only kind of separate identity that can survive in America." ("WDCR News" Interview. July 25th 2000. http://www.angelfire.com/nh/emhi/Abrams_wdcr.html) 
On 7 December 2002, Steven R. weisman said this in The New York Times:  
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/07/world/abrams-back-in-capital-fray-at-center-of-mideast-battle.html
"Elliott Abrams, a pugnacious conservative and passionate advocate of Israel, is no stranger to Washington's policy wars. But Mr. Abrams's selection this week as President Bush's director of Middle Eastern affairs at the White House plunged him into one of the sharpest disputes in the nation's capital, the one in the administration over how to deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Mr. Abrams's appointment thrilled those who had criticized the administration for being too tough on Israel and too deferential to the Palestinians. 
But it dismayed those, especially at the State Department, who want Israel to ease its crackdown in the West Bank and Gaza. An administration official said Mr. Abrams's ascension had created ‘serious consternation’ at the State Department. It was seen there, he said, as likely to impede the efforts of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to work with European nations to press Israel and the Palestinians to adopt a staged timetable leading to creation of a Palestinian state in three years. 
The timetable, known as a ‘road map,’ has been criticized by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, though he endorsed it in principle this week. Supporters of Israel in Congress, who had also criticized the road map approach, welcomed the appointment of Mr. Abrams. ‘There are two foreign policy teams in this administration on a lot of issues,’ said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, who went to Harvard with Mr. Abrams in the 1960's. ‘Clearly Elliott is coming out of the hard-line team. But that is where Bush's heart is.' 
Mr. Abrams comes to his new job trailed by a cloud of controversy, most of it having to do with his pleading guilty in 1987 to the charge that he withheld information from Congress on the Reagan administration's efforts to assist anti-government guerrillas in Nicaragua. He was pardoned by the first President Bush in December 1992. 
At the time, plenty of people around Washington said Mr. Abrams would never be back as a policy maker. Now, not only is Mr. Abrams back… but a raft of figures involved in the battles over the Nicaragua guerrillas, known as the contras, are back, as well. John M. Poindexter, a national security adviser to President Reagan who was convicted in 1990 of five felony counts… is directing a Pentagon project that would assemble information on suspected terrorists. John D. Negroponte, who was ambassador to Honduras during the time that the contras were being given aid through that country in defiance of a law barring such aid, is ambassador to the United Nations. And (former prisoner) Otto J. Reich, who was charged with running a covert domestic propaganda campaign against the Nicaragua government, is a special envoy for western hemisphere affairs at the State Department. 
Administration officials say Mr. Abrams was picked for the Middle East and North Africa portfolio under Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, because a strong manager was needed and the previous director, Zalmay Khalilzad, had been preoccupied with the reconstruction of Afghanistan… 
Two officials critical of Mr. Abrams said his role was to make sure that Secretary Powell did not make too many concessions to the Europeans on the resolution's wording, pressing a hard-line view that was shared by Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Andrew Card, the White House chief of staff. 
For associates and acquaintances, Mr. Abrams's new responsibilities reflect the intensity of his ambitions and political passions. Like many so-called neoconservatives, he began life as a liberal Democrat on many issues but became disenchanted with the left, and especially in his case by student protests at Harvard… 
Mr. Reagan appointed him to various positions in the State Department in the 1980's… Mr. Abrams also has family ties to the neoconservative movement. His wife's mother is Midge Decter, and her stepfather is Norman Podhoretz. Both are leading members of the neoconservative pantheon and stern critics of liberal cultural attitudes. 
Five years ago, Mr. Abrams wrote a book, "Faith or Fear: How Jews Can Survive in Christian America," which argues against the loss of religious faith among Jews and criticizes intermarriage as a danger to their survival in America. He also urged Jews to make greater common cause with evangelical Christians in rallying support for Israel. 
He was a fierce opponent of the Oslo peace negotiations between Israel and Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, even while they seemed to bear fruit. He wrote in the 1990's that it was a mistake for Mr. Clinton to trust Mr. Arafat. He advocated that position from the start of this Bush administration, until it became Mr. Bush's position last June. 
With the Middle East consumed by the spiral of suicide bombings and Israeli retaliations, Mr. Abrams is certain to be among those advocating that Israel be given wide latitude to battle terrorism. Associates say he is also considered likely to side with pro-Israel Americans who say that the road map pressed by Secretary Powell does not make it sufficiently clear that Mr. Arafat must be removed, and that terrorism must cease entirely, before Israel makes any irretrievable concessions on withdrawal from Palestinian territories. 
Israel is also critical of the role being played in the drafting of the road map by Europe, Russia and the United Nations, as well as by Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Critics say that these nations and groups are unlikely to support removal of Mr. Arafat as a precondition of peace, as Mr. Bush does. 
Longtime advocates of an aggressive American effort to support Middle East peace negotiations say the administration appears to have pulled back from pressing the road map, out of sensitivity to Mr. Sharon's objections.. ‘It does seem that the White House has decided to back off,’ said Martin Indyk, a former adviser to Mr. Clinton. ‘If the administration were preparing for a new push on the road map, this would be an unusual appointment,’ he said, referring to Mr. Abrams."
TERRY J. ALLEN. "In These Times." August, 2001. www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zeroes/Elliot_Abrams2.html
"Public Serpent: Iran-contra villain Elliott Abrams is back in action." A nursing home aide earning minimum wage caring for Alzheimer's patients is an unskilled laborer. A grade school teacher pulling down $25,000 a year in a crumbling inner-city school is barely a professional. But a politician reaping power, pay, perks and retirement packages is a public servant. 
Calling George W. Bush and Jesse Helms ‘public servants’ is like calling Iran-contra criminal Elliott Abrams an ‘outstanding diplomat,’ which is precisely what White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer did when he announced Abrams' appointment as senior director of the National Security Council's Office for Democracy, Human Rights and International Operations. 
Fleischer conveyed Bush's faith-based assertion that Abrams is ‘the best person to do the job,’ which, happily for the appointee, does not require Senate confirmation. For those who don't remember, Abrams was one of the most odious participants in a particularly shameful chapter of U.S. history. In the '80s, he was Ronald Reagan's assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs and later the assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs. 
In that post, Abrams, in his own words, ‘supervised U.S. policy in Latin America and the Caribbean.’ That policy included backing the contras-a surrogate army dedicated to overthrowing the democratically elected Sandinista government of Nicaragua. It also involved funding the military thugocracy of El Salvador and supervising its war against a popular leftist rebellion. In his role as public servant, Abrams found time to cover up the genocidal policies of the Guatemalan government and embrace the government of Honduras while it perpetrated serial human rights abuses through Battalion 3-16, a U.S.-trained ‘intelligence unit’ turned death squad. 
Thick as thieves with Oliver North, Abrams helped evade congressional restrictions on aid to the contras. When Congress-spurred on by protests and embarrassing press disclosures-grew wary of the Central American wars, the Reaganites sought other avenues for funding them. Ever eager to serve, Abrams flew to London under the alias ‘Mr. Kenilworth’ to solicit a $10 million contribution from the Sultan of Brunei. In the congressional investigations that followed disclosure of the Iran-contra conspiracies, Abrams was never held accountable for the human rights violations backed, hidden and funded by the Reagan administration. Instead Abrams was accused of withholding information from Congress, a Washington euphemism for bald-face Iying. In 1991, he copped to two counts of withholding information from Congress (and was granted a Christmas Eve pardon a year later by President George Bush). 
Abrams was none too pleased, even with this slap on the wrist. According to a May 30, 1994 article in ‘Legal Times,’ he called his prosecutors ‘filthy bastards,’ the proceedings against him ‘Kafkaesque,’ and members of the Senate Intelligence Committee ‘pious clowns’ whose raison d'etre was to ask him ‘abysmally stupid’ questions. (In the spirit of full disclosure: Abrams once called me a ‘rotten bitch’ after I tactlessly noted that much of the world considers him a war criminal)… 
In any case, as Fleischer said of Abrams' transgressions, ‘the president thinks that's a matter of the past and was dealt with at the time.’ Loved ones of the thousand unarmed Salvadoran peasants, including 139 children, killed by U.S.-trained contra troops in the 1981 El Mozote massacre may be less inclined to let bygones be bygones. 
Abrams has been a consistent massacre denier, even calling Washington's policy in El Salvador a ‘fabulous achievement.’ He told Congress that the reports carried in the ‘New York; Times’ and ‘Washington Post’ a month after El Mozote were Communist propaganda. In 1993, members of a Salvadoran Truth commission testified about the massacre in a congressional hearing of the House Western Hemisphere subcommittee. 
Chairman Robert G. Torricelli (D-New Jersey) vowed to review for possible perjury ‘every word uttered by every Reagan administration official’ in congressional testimony on El Salvador. Abrams denounced Torricelli's words as ‘McCarthyite crap.’ 
Eventually documentation emerged proving that the Reagan administration had known about El Mozote and other human rights violations all along. Abrams, however, carefully denied knowledge of the assassination m of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, committed shortly after the cleric denounced government terror. ‘Anybody who thinks you're going to find a cable that says that Roberto d'Aubuisson murdered the archbishop is a fool,’ Abrams was quoted in a March 21, 1993 article in the ‘Washington Post.’ 
In fact, the ‘Post’ notes, the U.S. embassy in San Salvador sent at least two such cables to Washington nailing d'Aubuisson, the right-wing politician who was the chief architect of the plot against Romero. The December 21, 1981 cable notes: ‘A meeting, chaired by Maj. Roberto d'Aubuisson, during which the murder of Archbishop Romero was planned. During the meeting, some of the participants drew lots for the privilege of killing the archbishop.’ 
Now Bush II has given Abrams a post that rewards his special experience. In the proud ranks of America's public servants, he will join other Iran-contra vets: Secretary of State Colin Powell; Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage; Otto Reich, assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs; and presumably John Negroponte, awaiting confirmation as U.N. ambassador. And who says you can't get help like you used to?"
  CENTRAL AMERICAN/MEXICO REPORT. July, 2001. http://www.rtfcam.org/report/volume_21/No_3/article_3.htm
"Controversial figures associated with the contra aid scandals of the 1980s keep resurfacing. First it was John Negroponte, US ambassador to Honduras from 1981-1985, who helped smooth the route for weapons and other supplies for the Nicaraguan contras then based in that country. President George Bush has nominated him for the post of US ambassador to the United Nations where human rights issues will be high on the agenda.
Then it was Otto Juan Reich who headed up a public diplomacy office in the Reagan White House, carrying out public relations efforts for the contra political cause, at tax-payers' expense. He is Bush's choice for Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere… Now comes the re-emergence of Elliott Abrams to a policy-making position in the executive branch. Abrams has been named senior director for Democracy, Human Rights and International Operations at the National Security Council. 
Veterans of the contra war political battles remember Abrams well as one of the principal firebrands of the Reagan administration in its crusade to crush the Sandinista Front for National Liberation in Nicaragua which had come to power after the fall of the US-backed Somoza dictatorship in 1979. The US financed and trained former members of Somoza's notorious National Guard who, along with other anti-Sandinista political leaders and beneficiaries of Somoza patronage, forged a counterrevolutionary ‘movement’ that waged a brutal war largely against the civilian population of Nicaragua for nearly a decade… 
Indeed, ten years of savage warfare that took the lives of tens of thousands of Nicaraguans and bitterly divided many communities in areas of conflict, along with a unilaterally imposed US embargo, finally accomplished the goals of the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Senior… 
Abrams started out in the Reagan administration first as Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs in 1981. In December of that year, he was named Assistant Secretary for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs. 
That same month in El Salvador, the Salvadoran army perpetrated one of the most infamous massacres during that country's 12-year civil war, the massacre at El Mozote. Several hundred civilians were slaughtered, including children, women and elderly over the course of several days. As news leaked out in the following weeks, the official position of the Reagan administration was to deny the massacre took place. 
Despite the effort at damage control, stories about the massacre finally reached the ‘New York Times’ and ‘Washington Post’… Still US officials denied it, implying that guerrillas of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front were using the story for propaganda purposes. On February 8 Abrams told a Senate committee that reports of hundreds of deaths at El Mozote ‘were not credible. It appears to be an incident that is at least being significantly misused, at the very best, by the guerrillas,’ he said. Of course, the massacre turned out to be all-too-real, and the implications of US support for the Salvadoran army grew more disturbing as it was discovered that the unit carrying out the massacre was the elite US-trained Atlacatl Battalion. 
Abrams' less-than-truthful testimony was an indication of things to come. In July, 1985, Abrams was named Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, putting him in the position of overseeing administration policy in Latin America and the Caribbean… 
Over the next few years, Abrams would be at the core of a contra resupply operation that broke US law and ultimately led to Congressional investigations, the naming of a special prosecutor, and criminal indictments. In the report issued by Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters, Lawrence Walsh, on August 4, 1993, Abrams is described as ‘the Reagan Administration's chief advocate on Capitol Hill for US aid to the contra rebels in Nicaragua.’ As the Walsh investigation would ultimately show, Abrams' advocacy included lying to Congress and actively supporting an illegal contra re-supply operation carried out by Lt. Col. Oliver North. 
North was on the NSC staff at the time, working closely with Alan Fiers, chief of the CIA's Central American Task Force. With Abrams, the three ‘comprised the principal members of a Restricted Inter-Agency Group, which worked on Central American issues for the Reagan Administration,’ according to the Walsh report. Abrams chaired the group, which included representatives of the CIA, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Department of Defense and the NSC. 
In October 1984, before Abrams took his new job, Congress had passed the Boland Amendment which prohibited aid to the contras. By that time, the war had become the most controversial foreign policy issue of the day and increasing numbers of US citizens, and members of Congress, were appalled at the brutal tactics of the contras. 
This growing opposition led to the 1984 vote. But North, rather than accepting the law, began looking for alternative funding sources for the contras. The illegal operation, which included soliciting funds from foreign governments, broke into a storm of controversy when it was later discovered that the Reagan administration had sold weapons to Iran and used the profits to finance the contras… 
According to the Walsh report, Abrams was aware by September 1985 of allegations that North was ‘soliciting funds for the contras and assisting in providing lethal aid… In the course of his work, Abram's became aware of North's efforts to assist the contras militarily, despite the Boland prohibition on US aid. Abrams was also directly involved in secretly seeking third-country contributions to the contras’... 
Under enormous pressure from the administration, in August 1985 Congress put a huge loophole in the Boland amendment by appropriating $27 million in ‘humanitarian assistance’ to the contras… According to the Walsh report: ‘In early 1986, the NHAO re-supply operation at Ilopango became merged with the North-Secord operation there in supplying weapons to the contras. The same flight crews that delivered the NHAO humanitarian aid also flew the lethal re-supply flights. The same aircraft were used, and the US government-sponsored humanitarian supplies were stored in the same warehouse as the weapons at the Ilopango airport.’ 
Meanwhile, Abrams, ever the lobbyist for the cause, continued to push Congress for $100 million in military aid. He lost another close vote in 1986 amidst a growing nation-wide protest movement supported and mobilized by virtually every mainstream religious denomination in the country, solidarity groups, human rights and public policy organizations, and even such traditionally unlikely allies on foreign policy issues as Common Cause. Things were really heating up in 1986. 
One firestorm that Abrams helped to squelch involved a secret contra airstrip in Costa Rica, where the US was trying to open a ‘southern front’ in the war against the Sandinista government. In 1985 the new US ambassador to Costa Rica, Lewis Tambs, met with Joseph Fernandez, the CIA station chief, to discuss the matter. The Costa Rican government did not want contras operating in their country, but then-President Luis Alberto Monge was open to allowing a secret airstrip to ensure resupply of contras once they were back in Nicaragua. 
Evidence cited in the Walsh report indicates that Abrams was briefed on the airstrip in August. In 1986 the scheme ran into trouble with the election of a new Costa Rican president, Oscar Arias. After being briefed on the matter, Arias: ‘… was outraged and directed that it not be used for contra re-supply. 
On September 6, 1986, in a series of late night phone calls, Fernandez informed North and Fiers that the Costa Rican security minister planned to hold a press conference the following day and make public the Udall Corporation's role with the Point West airstrip, alleging violations of Costa Rican laws by Udall, North, Secord and others. North discussed this impending crisis in conference calls with Abrams, Tambs and Fiers. 
They discussed whether to tell Arias that he would never set foot in the White House and that he would never get five cents of the $80 million promised to him by the US Agency for International Development if the airstrip were revealed.’ 
Tambs sent the message to Arias and the press conference was cancelled. According to a declassified note from North to Reagan's National Security Adviser John Poindexter dated Sept.6: ‘Tambs then called Arias... and confirmed what I said and suggested that Arias talk to Elliott for further confirmation. Arias then got the same word from Elliott.’ The following month, North's illegal operation received a singular blow. 
On Oct. 5 a C-123 airplane carrying weapons and other supplies for the contras was shot down over Nicaragua. The two US pilots and a Latin American were killed in the crash. A third US crew member, Eugene Hasenfus, managed to parachute out of the aircraft and was quickly captured by Nicaraguans… 
The downed plane was linked to Southern Air Transport operating out of Miami which had been ‘contracted to service the resupply network's airplanes and to perform other duties. Fiers was concerned because SAT had been used for the NHAO delivery of humanitarian assistance to the contras’… 
Four days after the downing of the aircraft, Hasenfus admitted that: ‘… he had made10 trips to supply the contras -- six out of Ilopango airfield in El Salvador, and had worked with 'Max Gomez' and 'Ramon Medina,' whom he alleged were CIA employees... 
On the same day, Nicaraguan officials claimed that one of the crew members of the aircraft carried cards issued by the Salvadoran Air Force, identifying them as US advisers. They said that one of the crew members had carried a business card of a NHAO official.’ 
Abrams was called to testify before congressional committees three times in the following days, but asserted that, while there clearly was a resupply operation underway, the US government was not involved. In a closed session before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Oct. 10, Abrams said: ‘It is not our supply system. It is one that grew up after we were forbidden from supplying the resistance, and we have been kind of careful not to get closely involved with it and to stay away from it.’ 
Four days later, he appeared before a closed session of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Chairman Lee Hamilton asked him directly: ‘Can anybody assure us that the United States Government was not involved, indirectly or directly, in any way in supply of the contras?’ 
Abrams responded: ‘I believe we have already done that, that is, I think, the President has done it, the secretary has done it, and I have done it. 
Hamliton: ‘So the answer is the United States Government was not involved in any way.’ 
Abrams: ‘Now again, this normal intelligence monitoring is there, but the answer to your question is yes.’ 
Abrams repeated his denials the following day in a public House subcommittee hearing. According to the Walsh report: ‘Abrams was not truthful with the congressional committee. He was aware that North was encouraging, coordinating and directing the activities of the contra re-supply operation and that North was in contact with the private citizens who were behind the lethal resupply flights. 
Additionally, Abrams did not inform Congress of his knowledge of the activities of the US Embassy in Costa Rica to help construct a secret contra re-supply airstrip in Costa Rica.’ 
In news articles on Oct. 11, 12, 13, 1986, according to the Walsh report: ‘Unidentified sources were cited stating that Rodriguez reported his activities to Vice President Bush and Bush approved of them. On Oct. 14, The Washington Post quoted Vice President Bush stating three days earlier in Charleston, South Carolina, as stating that Rodriguez (CIA officer who set up the original operation to supply the Contras with arms) was a US counter-insurgency adviser working directly with the Salvadoran government. 
The article stated that Salvadoran officials denied this.’ In response to queries on the matter, Bush would only say that he had met Rodriguez two or three times, ‘but refused to state what their relationship was.’ 
Abrams also denied to Congress that he knew anything about foreign government support for the contras. But it was Abrams, according to the Walsh report, who suggested to Sec. Shultz that they approach the Sultan of Brunei, an oil-rich southeast Asian country obscure enough to the US public not to draw too much attention. Brunei contributed $10 million to the contra cause. 
In its criminal investigation of Abrams, the Independent Counsel focused on his sworn testimony before Congress, rather than his alleged involvement in the illegal re-supply operations. North didn't help him any, testifying in the summer of 1987 that: ‘Abrams was aware of his 'full service operation' to the contras and that he discussed many of his contra-related activities within the RIG.’ 
Fiers pleaded guilty to charges against him in July 1991 and then supplied ‘additional facts about the extent of Abrams' knowledge of North's involvement in the re-supply effort and Elliott Abrams ' knowledge about the Embassy involvement in the Costa Rican airstrip.’ 
Independent Counsel was prepared to present a multi-count felony indictment against Abrams to the Grand Jury for its consideration in early October 1991. Abrams, through his counsel, was invited to consider a plea of guilty. Before an indictment was presented, Abrams entered into a plea agreement on Oct. 7, 1991, and pleaded guilty to two counts of withholding information from Congress. He pleaded guilty to unlawfully withholding material information concerning North's contact with and encouragement of the people supplying the contras from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Oct. 10, 1986. Additionally, he pleaded guilty to unlawfully withholding material information from HPSCI on Oct. 14, 1986, concerning his participation in the Brunei solicitation and his expectation, as of Oct. 14, that the $10 million from the Sultan of Brunei was on its way to the Swiss bank account he had provided.’ 
Abrams received a sentence of two years probation and 100 hours of community service. … on Christmas Eve 1992, in the final weeks of his administration, having lost the November election to Bill Clinton, then President George Bush, Sr., used the power of his office to pardon the following officials involved in the contra scandal: Abrams, Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger, CIA counter-terrorism chief Duane Clarridge, Fiers, CIA Deputy Director for Operations Clair George, and Reagan's National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane… 
Bush said of the pardons: ‘The common denominator of their motivation, whether their actions were right or wrong, was patriotism.’ Now that same president's son is in the White House. The Sandinistas are leading in the polls in Nicaragua and could well be voted back into office in November. The US Embassy in Managua has warned of dire consequences if this is the result -- and if the FSLN has not ‘reformed’ itself to the likings of the US. And next door to the White House, in the NSC offices, sits Elliott Abrams, and at State, in the Western Hemisphere office, possibly, Otto Reich
What has Abrams been doing since these contra days? From 1990-1996 he was a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute. In July 1996, in what might be considered somewhat ironic, Abrams was appointed president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. In 1998, he became a member of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom created by Congress earlier that year, and was later appointed chairman. 
The Washington Office on Latin America noted recently that in 2000 Abrams: ‘… was an unexpected and effective ally in forging a broad coalition to press for democracy in Peru.’… His appointment is not subject to Senate confirmation and so will pass without the harsh scrutiny expected in the Negroponte and Reich Senate hearings."
J. J. GOLDBERG. US Journalist. In the Republican administration's White House State Department, in 1991, seven of 19 assistant secretaries were Jewish. 
"It is one of the worst-kept secrets in American Jewish politics that the campaign contribution is a major key to Jewish power... Almost none of those involved in the process of Jewish campaign funding ... donors, fundraisers, candidates, monitors ... are willing to talk about it on the record ... 
Jews fear that discussing Jewish money will encourage anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Non-Jews fear that talking about it will leave them open to charges of anti-Semitism. But it is a fact… 
The most notorious use of Jewish campaign money is not to support candidates who have been friendly, but to oppose those who have been unfriendly… The tiny world of Democratic political consulting and fundraising is a world that is dominated by Jews. Many of them are former employees of AIPAC and the UJA." ["Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment," pp. 266, 269 and 275. 1996)

MICHAEL GERSON. George W. Bush’s chief speechwriter. In conversation with David Frum, December, 2001. "The Guardian." January 28th 2003. 
"Here's an assignment. Can you sum up in a sentence or two our best case for going after Iraq?"
David Frum thought up the phrase "axis of hatred." Gerson changed it to "axis of evil."

DAVID FRUM. Assistant speechwriter for George W. Bush. 

"No country on Earth more closely resembled one of the old Axis powers than present-day Iraq. And just as FDR saw in Pearl Harbor a premonition of even more terrible attacks from Nazi Germany, so Sept. 11 had delivered an urgent warning of what Saddam Hussein could and almost certainly would do with nuclear and biological weapons… 
The Axis powers disliked and distrusted one another. They shared only one thing: resentment of the power of the West and contempt for democracy." (Notes taken by Frum before in the process of creating the "axis of hatred" root, which went on to become "axis of evil." "Los Angeles Times." January 21st 2003) 
"When I heard that speech, I thought it was one of the great moments in American history. I thought it was magnificent. Even though I know I shouldn't be surprised by Bush, I am always surprised. Up until the last, he looks like he might compromise and do the small thing. And then he does the big thing… 
Bush was a sharp exception to the White House code of niceness. In private, he was not the easy, genial man he was in public. Close up, one saw a man keeping a tight grip on himself. In that hour, Bush had settled one thing in my mind: I could never again take seriously the theory that somebody else was running this administration ... but where was he leading us all to?" (Commenting upon Bush’s "State of the Union Adress" in 2002. "The Guardian." January 28th 2003) 

Frum's wife sent an e-mail to friends saying that her husband was the author of President Bush's 'axis of evil' speech. He lost his job shortly afterwards.

JAY LEFKOWITZ. Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. Former law partner of Kenneth W. Starr, the lawyer who conducted Clinton’s impeachment trial. 

Although he was brought up in the US, Lefkowitz, the son of New York-born Zionist parents, was taught Hebrew as his first language. In a 1996 speech, Lefkowitz said that the Jewish community was 'disintegrating' because of its 'embrace of the assimilationist ideal endorsed by the liberal Democratic Party.' (ricardolee@netzero.com) 
"The spirit of the Maccabees continues to inspire Jews all over the world even today, especially among the Jews in Israel. Chanukah also reminds us of how Jews released themselves from bondage and rebuilt the Holy Temple, and so too it will be in our time." ("Jewish Press.com." 4th December 2002. http://www.thejewishpress.com/news_article.asp?article=1833) 
WASHINGTON POST. Page A17 April 30th 2002.
"When Lefkowitz represented General Motors Corp. several years ago, the car company's executives called him ‘Viper’ because of his unrelenting style. Now he's the president's Viper."
MICHAEL CHERTOFF. US Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Criminal Division. The Justice Department's "top counterterrorism tactician."

Chertoff is, more than anyone else, the individual responsible for creating the "Patriotism Act." This act, purportedly designed to combat foreign terrorists in the US, has already been used against the indigenous population, several of whom have already been indicted, tried and imprisoned on the most spurious of charges.

Chertoff was responsible for spiriting back to Israel the 200 Israeli spies who were arrested and then released on Chertoff's orders, in the wake of the terror attacks on 9/11. They had been tracking the terrorists involved in the attacks but did not bother to warn non-Jewish Americans of their activities.

In 1992, Chertoff was awarded the Anti-Defamation League's Distinguished Public Service Award. Chertoff’s wife is a member of the Executive Board of the Anti-Defamation League of New Jersey. Chertoff means "devil" in Russian.
"As of Sept. 10th, each of us knew everything we needed to know to tell us there was a possibilityof what happened on Sept. 11th… We knew the World Trade Center was a target… We knew an airplane could be used as a weapon." ("Speech to Seton Hall Law School graduates. "Associated Press," via "CNN Online." June 1st 2002) 
"We in law enforcement must… eradicate the forces of terrorism in our country and around the world… We will direct every resource at our command, every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war, to the destruction and to the defeat of the global terror network." (Before the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, United States Senate) 
"There's no point in having a vibrant banking system if the bankers are getting killed." ("ABC News.com" 23rd October, 2002) 
"Anybody who is out there who is part of this, that we don't have in custody or who isn't dead, is a threat." ("Milwaukee Journal Sentinel." March 9th 2002) 
TIME MAGAZINE. April 1st 2002. According to 'Time,' Chertoff 'can usually be found at Attorney General John Ashcroft's elbow.'

ELIOT COHEN. Johns Hopkins University "expert" on military strategy. Harvard Professor. Chairman of PNAC. Member of the Defence Policy Board. Draft dodger during the Vietnam War. 
"More and more people are making parts of this argument, and a few all of it… Saudi Arabia used to have lots of apologists in this country… Now there are very few, and most of those with substantial economic interests or long-standing ties there… 
The deal that they cut with fundamentalism is most definitely a threat, so I would say that Saudi Arabia is a huge problem for us." ("Washington Post," p. A01. August 6th 2002) 
"The enemy in this war is not 'terrorism’... but militant Islam... Afghanistan constitutes just one front in World War IV, and the battles there just one.' Cohen called for the US to attack Iraq and for the destruction of the Iranian regime, which: "… would be no less important a victory in this war than the annihilation of bin Laden." ("Wall Street Journal." November 20th 2001. "World War IV." http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=95001493)  
"The expertise of generals lies chiefly in the operational, not the strategic sphere, how to wage war, not whether it should be fought… There is no evidence that generals as a class make wiser national security policy makers than civilians… Being a veteran is no guarantee of strategic wisdom … in matters of war and peace veterans should receive no special consideration for their views." ("Washington Post." September, 2002. http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14070) "Make War: Not Justice." (Title of a Cohen article in "New Republic." http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14070)
FRANK GAFFNEY. Director of the Centre for Security Policy. Defence Policy Board member Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for Nuclear Forces. Former aid to Richard Perle. Draft dodger during the Vietnam War. "National Review." Online. February 21st 2001. http://www.nationalreview.com/contributors/Gaffney022101.shtml 
"The best chance of stabilizing, and reversing, the seriously deteriorating situation vis a vis Saddam, i.e., his resuscitated weapons-of-mass-destruction programs, and his regional ambitions, is to adopt a dramatically different approach to Bill Clinton's hapless policy of ‘containing’ Saddam Hussein. 
The new strategy should be explicitly aimed at ending Saddam's misrule and the threat it poses to his own long-suffering people and others beyond his borders. Fortunately, the senior ranks of the incoming Bush-Cheney administration are being increasingly populated by individuals who have, in the past, endorsed such an alternative approach Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defence-designate Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of State-designate Richard Armitage, Under Secretary of State-designate John Bolton, Under Secretary of Defence-designate (Rabbi) Dov Zakheim, and a number of others said to be under consideration for top posts (including Zalmay Khalilzad, Jeffrey Gedmin, and Douglas Feith) were among those who, on February 19th 1998, offered a blueprint for liberating Iraq in an Open Letter to the President." 
Gaffney is too modest to mention that he, himself, helped draft and co-signed the letter. In their open letter to President Clinton, the members in waiting of the Bush-Cheney administration made it clear that: 
"It will not be easy, and the course of action we favor is not without its problems and perils. But we believe the vital national interests of our country require the United States to [adopt such a strategy]."
Gaffney said:
"It is a tragedy for the people of Iraq, and a potential nightmare for the rest of us, that Mr. Clinton failed to act on this sound advice. We can only hope that Mr. Bush and his team will do so without any further delay."
RICHARD HAASS. Director of Policy Planning at the State Department. Director of National Security Programs, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. National Security Council member in the Bush major Administration. Consistent advocate of war against Iraq. Member of the Defense Department's National Security Study Group, at the Pentagon.
 "That's when the phone rang. And it was Bob on the line for Scowcroft saying: ‘… we've just heard from our people in Kuwait, shooting has started. This war, whatever it is, has begun.’… People call Saddam Hussein irrational. I don't think he's irrational. I think it was probably quite an intelligent move… Kuwait was extremely wealthy, it had a pile of more than a hundred billion dollars sitting there getting invested. 
It was extremely weak militarily. Saddam probably figured he could do it quickly, as he could militarily, and the Arab world and the world at large would bitch and moan for a couple of days, and then people would get used to it. And the world would essentially learn to live with it. And the United States, which had left Lebanon a decade before and so forth was not going to do anything. And even if the United States wanted to do something, the local Arabs would never do anything, they would never work with the United States and stand up to Saddam. I think Saddam took the pretty intelligent decision that he could proably get away with it." (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/oral/haass/1.html) 
"The United States and the world community will continue to face an Iraq headed by Saddam Hussein who possesses some weapons of mass destruction. What should be done? For the immediate future, we should take advantage of the fact that US military presence in the Gulf region is at a post-Desert Storm high. 
The United States should test Saddam's willingness to live up to his latest agreement… No more warnings are required or warranted... even a clean bill of health from the United Nations would not constitute a guarantee that Saddam possessed no weapons of mass destruction. Nor would it preclude his threatening his neighbors with conventional military attack or terrorism or violating any of his many other commitments. 
As a result, the question arises: What should constitute the long-term policy of the United States toward Saddam Hussein and Iraq? … containing Saddam is likely to prove difficult, eliminating his weapons of mass destruction virtually impossible. 
In principle, roll-back solves the problem of contemporary Iraq by getting rid of the person who is at its core… More realistic than this indirect… form of roll-back would be occupying Iraq with ground forces, akin to what we did in Germany and Japan after World War II… such ‘nation building’ in Iraq could well take years… 
There would little appetite here at home for a course of action that would almost certainly prove expensive in both financial and human terms. Nor would there be any more support in the region for such a policy, one that would seem to many to constitute an unacceptable form of ‘neo-colonialism.’… Any use of military force should be large and sustained if Iraq again seeks to block UN weapons inspectors or if it masses forces against or attacks one of its neighbors… 
To make this possible, the United States should maintain an augmented military capacity in the region on an open-ended basis." (House Committee on International Relations Hearing on "US Options in Confronting Iraq." February 25th 1998) 
"On Iraq, the administration's policy was marked by a confusion of purpose and an inadequacy of means. By late 1998, years of Iraqi refusals to meet U.N. Security Council requirements governing its weapons of mass destruction meant that forceful measures by the United States and its allies were long overdue. 
Yet instead of attacking Iraq for a purpose, to coerce compliance or even prod Iraqi defense forces to turn on Saddam Hussein, the Clinton administration dropped bombs for an arbitrary period of four days during Operation Desert Fox and then stopped. The result was greater latitude for Saddam to build and hide biological and other weapons without having to worry about credible international monitoring and inspections…U.S. foreign relations are increasingly influenced by special interests rather than any general interest. 
And they are increasingly dominated by symbolic gestures, such as economic sanctions or paper commitments, that substitute for the hard work of… building a support base for necessary but unpopular actions. If the current era of American primacy comes to a premature close and is followed by a time of greater violence and less prosperity, it will be more because of U.S. folly than the rise of a foe." ("Foreign Affairs." The magazine of the Council on Foreign Relations. May/June, 2000) 
"Muslims cannot blame the United States for their lack of democracy. Still, the United States does play a large role on the world stage, and our efforts to promote democracy throughout the Muslim world have sometimes been halting and incomplete… 
At times, the United States has avoided scrutinizing the internal workings of countries in the interests of ensuring a steady flow of oil , containing Soviet, Iraqi and Iranian expansionism, addressing issues related to the Arab-Israeli conflict, resisting communism in East Asia, or securing basing rights for our military… People might well question the timing and indeed our motives for raising this issue right now. Some will point to the fact that my talk tonight comes amidst heightened international efforts to bring Iraq into compliance with United Nations Security Council resolutions. 
Others might see talk of democratization either as an effort to disguise our interest in regime change in Iraq, or as indicative of American hostility towards the people of the Muslim world. Indeed, some will go so far to as to argue that American talk of democratization is designed to overthrow regimes throughout the Middle East or to be used as a punitive action against those who are perceived to be anti-American… … there is no hidden agenda here. America's rationale in promoting democratization in the Muslim world is both altruistic and self-interested… 
The United States will work more energetically than ever before to promote democracy in partnership with the peoples and governments of the Muslim world… Independent and responsible media are essential. The media has a critical role to play as a key element of civil society. In democracies, the media is free, and is not under the state's control… The best protection against the media promulgating views that people do not agree with is the proliferation of more perspectives, not the squelching of voices… Market-based economic modernization helps usher in elements of democracy: the rule of law, transparent decision-making, the free exchange of ideas. Yet it is just as true that these elements of democracy sustain and accelerate economic growth." (Testimony before the Council on Foreign Relations. December, 2002) 
"What you're seeing from this Administration is the emergence of a new principle or body of ideas about what you might call the limits of sovereignty. Sovereignty entails obligations. One is not to massacre your own people. Another is not to support terrorism in any way. If a government fails to meet these obligations, then it forfeits some of the normal advantages of sovereignty, including the right to be left alone inside your own territory. 
Other governments, including the United States, gain the right to intervene. In the case of terrorism, this can even lead to a right of preventive, or peremptory, self-defense. You essentially can act in anticipation if you have grounds to think it's a question of when, and not if, you're going to be attacked… Is there a successor idea to containment? I think there is. It is the idea of integration. 
The goal of US foreign policy should be to persuade the other major powers to sign on to certain key ideas as to how the world should operate: opposition to terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, support for free trade, democracy, markets. Integration is about locking them into these policies and then building institutions that lock them in even more." ("The Next World Order." "The New Yorker." 1st April, 2002)
FRED C. IKLE. Former Undersecretary of Defence in the Reagan adminstration. Defence Policy Board member. "Eminence Grise" in the Pentagon. Ikle was implicated in the Iran/Contra affair. His cousin, Elizabeth Kopp, is the former Justice Minister of Switzerland, who resigned in 1988 after it was discovered that she had informed her husband of a Drug Enforcement Administration narcotics money-laundering investigation involving him. Statement before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. March 23rd 2000. http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2000/03/ikle.html
"What do we do when an arms control treaty has been violated? Usually we turn the other cheek and politely invite the violator to sign another treaty. In the 1980s, Saddam Hussein used poison gas against Iraq's own people and against Iran, thus violating the venerable 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibiting the use of poison gas. 
Did we condemn Iraq or apply punitive sanctions? No, the arms control diplomats instead gathered in Pads and resolutely resolved to negotiate another treaty prohibiting chemical weapons, this time a treaty that would allegedly verify compliance. Even though these diplomats had all seen the photographs of gassed Iranian soldiers and Kurds, not a single one had the courage to stand up and shout: ‘we have verified Iraq's use of poison gas; we don't need. more verification, we need punishment!’ 
The same blithe disregard for enforcement occurred when North Korea violated the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to which it had adhered in 1985. What was the penalty North Korea had to suffer? For promising, once more. not to build nuclear bombs, the North Korean dictatorship received the US promise of donated fuel supplies, food, plus two brand-new large reactors. What is this telling India and Pakistan about our earnestness on non-proliferation?"
CONDOLEEZZA RICE. Bush minor’s National Security Advisor. Former Director of the oil company Chevron. "CBS." "Face the Nation." "New York Times." August 5th 2001. Explaining why George Bush would not sign the Kyoto 'global warming' protocol. 

"The president of the United States was not elected to sign treaties that are not in America’s interest."

GARY SCHMITT. Minority staff director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence from 1982-1984 I Ronald reagan’s administration. From 1984 to 1988, he was the executive director of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Consultant to the Department of Defence in every US administratation since that time. Adjunct professor at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. Executive Director of the Project for the New American Century." Secretary of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. June 17th 1998.
"Whatever window dressing the UN and the administration put on the current policy, we are now headed toward a result in which Saddam Hussein will have all the weapons necessary to terrorize neighboring states and deter the U.S. from exercising effective leadership in the region. Containment, in the case of Saddam Hussein, will inevitably lead to policies of accommodation by both the U.S. and its allies. 
By ceding leadership on Iraq to the UN, the Clinton Administration has put us on a road that will undermine American credibility and power in the region, and increase our exposure to the most dangerous weapons known to man. As we pointed out in our letter to President Clinton in January and, more recently, to the Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, the only lasting and effective solution to the problem presented by Saddam Hussein is his removal and the destruction of his regime. 
But time is getting short. Unless Congress forces the administration's hand, it will continue to go along with the UN's game plan and leave the U.S. and its allies facing a Saddam powerful at home and in the region, and bent on avenging his previous losses." 
"The United States has a fundamental choice to make in confronting rogue states, dictators developing weapons of mass destruction, and global terrorism: Either we act aggressively to shape the world and change regimes where necessary, or we accept living in a world in which our very existence is contingent on the whims of unstable tyrants." (With William Kristol. http://www.grunt.com/newsletters/ACNewsletter/october31_2002acnews.htm)
JEFFREY GEDMIN & GARY SCHMITT. "New York Times." August 5th 2001. 
"Perhaps no president in recent memory has invoked the phrase ‘in the American interest’ so often and so early as George W. Bush. Mr. Bush’s rhetoric represents a reaction, fierce among conservatives, to what they view as the fuzzy-minded, multinational foreign policy of Bill Clinton… Yes, the Clinton administration had, at times, a remarkably vague and misguided understanding of the American national interest. But now President Bush could be accused of defining the national interest in the most narrow and parochial of ways. By doing so he risks exactly what his administration claims to treasure: America’s leadership role in the world… 
How does the administration expect to convince the French to forgo lucrative oil contracts with Iraq, for example, if France’s own benchmark is such a narrow definition of national interest? How will Mr. Bush persuade the Germans, who are owed billions by Iran, to take a hard line with Tehran for the cause of international security?"
JEFFREY GEDMIN. Director of the Aspen Institute, Executive Director, New Atlantic Initiative; Research Fellow, American Enterprise Institute "National Review Online." October 22nd 2001.
"Europeans are back to an idea that had begun to dissipate the moment the Berlin Wall fell 12 years ago: namely that their security link to America is not merely desirable, but indispensable… If the United States proves unable to defend itself against the terrorism threat, how safe are the Eiffel Tower, the Reichstag in Berlin, or London's theater or financial districts?... 
When the little Belgians tried recently to create some distance between Europe and America, Belgium currently holds the rotating EU presidency, Brussels was simply squished by the others… Germany's Green foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, supports the Bush administration, attacks those in his party who support a bombing pause, and wants German troops to stand by the Americans in Afghanistan… 
After Afghanistan what's next? They know that Saddam Hussein, for example, was likely involved in the first attack on the World Trade Center, when six were killed and more than 1,000 injured. Ramzi Yousef, who now serves two life sentences in Colorado for the 1993 attack, is believed to be an Iraqi agent. Abdul Rahman Yasin, another central figure, an indicted fugitive, finds safe haven in Iraq today. 
One of the perpetrators in last month's attacks had met with Iraqi agents on more than one occasion. Whether conclusive evidence of Saddam's culpability emerges, Europeans also know that the Iraqi dictator is a threat; that he kicked UN arms inspectors out of Iraq three years ago and continues to develops weapons of mass destruction; and that he has motive to harm the US and its allies. Yes, of course, some will squirm, they will complain… 
But if America makes the case, they will come along, just as in the Cold War, because they understand that it is in their interest to do so… When the Europeans say yes, Russia will not wish to be isolated. And that's a coalition. Which means when Afghanistan is finished, is America ready to lead? Or will misguided ideas of ‘leadership by consensus’ squander the biggest foreign-policy opportunity the US has had in a decade?" 
Now that’s what you call chutzpah. Or heavyweight spin. Churchill once said that the truth was so important that it must have a bodyguard of lies. The above suggests to me that Rodmin thinks that lies are so important that they must have a bodyguard of bullshit. Excuse my French. As regards the obstinacy Schroeder and Germany are exhibiting in their desire not to join the US coalition against Iraq, Gedmin said three factors were at work: 
"A rise in German nationalism in the post-Cold War period; a strong sense of pacifism among a large segment of the public; A growing resentment of the United States, which has emerged as the world's lone superpower… It feeds an inferiority complex many Germans have." ("USA Today." 29th September, 2002) 
BRAD BLAKEMAN. New York lawyer, Bush minor speechwriter and White House Director of Scheduling.
"The election may have ended, but the campaign hasn't. It would be disingenuous to say this isn't part of the campaign. When Bill Clinton came to office, he instituted the never-ending campaign, and this is the next logical step in that progression." ("Time.com." November 26th 2000) 
"This is the new Republican Party, sir! We're not going to take it anymore!" (As Bush minor’s campaign director, into a foghorn thus disrupting a CNN correspondent interviewing a Democratic congressman. http://www.cabbagehead.org/d_consolidateds/2002/8/6.shtml) 
GEORGE TENET. Director of the US Central Intelligence Agency.
"Iraq probably has not given up its nuclear ambitions despite a decade of sanctions and inspections... Iran or Iraq could quickly advance their nuclear aspirations through covert acquisition of fissile material or relevant technology. " ("Global Realities of Our National Security." (March 21st 2000) 
"We believe Saddam never abandoned his nuclear weapons program. Iraq retains a significant number of nuclear scientists, program documentation and probably some dual-use manufacturing infrastructure that could support a reinvigorated nuclear weapons program. Baghdad’s access to foreign expertise could support a rejuvenated program, but our major near-term concern is the possibility that Saddam might gain access to fissile material." ("Worldwide Threat - Converging Dangers in a Post 9/11 World." February 6th 2002) 
"Although we think the chances of Saddam initiating a WMD attack at this moment are low, in part because it would constitute an admission that the possesses WMD, there is no question that the likelihood of Saddam using WMD against the United States or our allies in the region for blackmail, deterrence, or otherwise grows as his arsenal continues to build. His past use of WMD against civilian and military targets shows that he produces those weapons to use not just to deter." (October 8th 2002. "Congressional Record," p. S10154. October 9th 2002) 
CIA REPORT. October, 2002. http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14585.
"Saddam Hussein probably doesn't have sufficient material to make any [nuclear weapons]… he remains intent on acquiring them… Iraq is unlikely to produce indigenously enough weapons-grade material for a deliverable nuclear weapon until the last half of this decade. Baghdad could produce a nuclear weapon within a year if it were able to procure weapons-grade fissile material abroad."
INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY. UN agency responsible for inspections and disarmament of Iraq's nuclear programs from 1991 to 1998. http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14585.
"Nothing indicated that Iraq had produced more than a few grams of weapons-grade nuclear material through its indigenous enrichment processes, or that Iraq had secretly acquired weapons-usable material from external sources." 
On the 18th of February, 2003, George Bush said:
"I owe it to the American people to secure this country. I will do so… Evidently some in the world don't view Saddam as a risk to peace. I respectfully disagree."
ARI FLEISCHER. White House Press Spokesman. Holds US and Israeli citizenship.
"If Saddam Hussein has no intention of disarming, doubling the inspectors just means there's double number of people for Saddam Hussein to deceive." ("The Atlanta Journal-Constitution." 13th February, 2003) 
On the 18th of February 2003, commenting on the world-wide protests and rallies against the looming war in Iraq, Fleischer said:
"He (Bush) thinks that their position is wrong, that the real threat to peace is Saddam Hussein and his possession of weapons of mass destruction...
We continue to consult with allies about the exact moment that is most propitious to move forward. It could be this week; it could be next." President Bush has stated that the United States will be committed to the long-term stability of Iraq, and that we will stay in Iraq as long as necessary… As long as necessary to make certain that the transition in Iraq is a transition to a unified and peaceful Iraq. 
The costs of leaving Saddam Hussein in power far exceed the cost of anything that might involve the disarmament and the reconstruction of Iraq. I don't think it will be very long down the road when Iraq does settle in its place as a different type of nation, a nation without sanctions and a nation that can become a harbinger of good things in the Middle East". 
"Every time he's under pressure he tries to relieve the pressure by disarming just a touch, just a little; playing the game, playing the deception. And the's why, as I said to you, when you sum up what Iraq is, and you sum up the actions they take, the Iraqi actions are propaganda, wrapped in a lie, inside a falsehood." (February 28th 2003) 
"North Korea does have a history that they've repeated numerous times in numerous ways of using strident rhetoric as a way to blackmail other nations into providing economic or other benefits to the North Koreans… 
Make no mistake, the President of the United States has stated that the United States will be committed to the long-term stability of Iraq, and that we will stay in Iraq as long as necessary -- not one day longer, but as long as necessary to make certain that the transition in Iraq is a transition to a unified and peaceful Iraq. 
The costs of leaving Saddam Hussein in power far exceed the cost of anything that might involve the disarmament and the reconstruction of Iraq. I don't think it will be very long down the road when Iraq does settle in its place as a different type of nation, a nation without sanctions." 
"The President condemns in the strongest terms today's attack on innocents in Israel. The President stands strongly with the people of Israel in fighting terrorism. His message to the terrorists is their efforts will not be successful. He will continue to pursue the path to peace in the Middle East and he urges all to condemn today's attack… 
They asked the President why does he feel so strongly about the need to use force, if it comes to that, to disarm Saddam Hussein. And the answer from the President was that, given the fact that the world changed on September 11th, the threat to the American people was brought immediately to our home and to our shores and to our families, the President thinks it is in the interest of peace to make certain that Saddam Hussein does not have weapons of mass destruction which he can use against us, either by transferring them to terrorists or using them himself… 
You don't have to make a direct linkage between Saddam Hussein and 9/11 to know that others who are planning can try to do it again, Saddam Hussein included… As we've seen, there are umpteen conditions Iraq keeps inventing and putting on the inspectors; umpteen restrictions, including bugging the inspectors, they keep imposing. They said it's the final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligation. 
Final opportunity. It didn't say penultimate. It didn't say third last chance. It said final. It said it's binding on Iraq. It didn't say it's for discussion or negotiation; it said binding. And finally, it said Iraq would face serious consequences as a result of continued violations. As we all know, they have continued to violate…   
One thing is for certain with Saddam Hussein, he is brutal. When you talk about human rights and killing Iraqis, you can look first to Saddam Hussein as the world's worst human rights violator, one of the world's worst human rights violators, who has killed his own people. 
Today, for example, when the President meets with the Commissioner on Human Rights, I anticipate one of the topics the President will raise is the horrendous treatment of the Iraqi people, the repression of the Iraqi people by Saddam Hussein, which includes killing those who would have any disagreement with him." (March 5th 2003)
RABBI DOV ZAKHEIM. Former Deputy Undersecretary of Defence. Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Chief Financial Officer for the Department of Defence in Bush minor’s administration. Zakheim became an ordained, Orthodox Jewish Rabbi in 1973. "NewsMax.com Wires." March 28th 2002. http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/3/27/164052.shtml
"The Pentagon will ask Congress within 60 days for new powers to punish employees who abuse government-issued credit cards… The issue is not to eliminate the cards. What we have got to do is prevent misuse… The kind of money that gets lost this way is money lost on bombs, bullets, and readiness."
JEWISH WEEK. p. 3. 27th June, 1986. In 1985, Ronald Reagan appointed an ordained rabbi, Dov S. Zakheim, as the Pentagon's under-secretary for planning and resources.
"Zakheim ... is not alone as a Jew in a sensitive position dealing with US-Israel matters. Whether in the Pentagon, the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, the White House, the National Security Council, the Justice Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the Congress, there is no shortage of Jews working in very senior and extremely sensitive positions." 
With George W. Bush's presidential victory in 2000, he would appoint Zakheim 'an ordained, and meticulously observant, Orthodox rabbi, as Under-secretary of Defence and Comptroller of the Pentagon ... Paul Wolfowitz, became deputy Secretary of Defence, the number two position at the Pentagon.'

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK. (Nemerovsky) Former military head of NATO and military supremo at the time of the NATO attacks upon Yugoslavia and Kosovo. Clark’s father was a Russian Jew. His grandfather had left Russia with the name Jacob Nemerovsky and got into the United States with a forged passport, using the name "Kanne."
"There is no place in modern Europe for ethnically pure states. That’s a 19th century idea, and we’re trying to transition into the 21st century, and we’re going to do it with multi-ethnic states." (July 5th, 2000. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) 
"Saddam Hussein: he is not only malevolent and violent, but also unpredictable. He retains his chemical and biological warfare capabilities and is actively pursuing nuclear capabilities. Were he to acquire such capabilities, we and our friends in the region would face greatly increased risks. Saddam might use such weapons as a deterrent while launching attacks against Israel… 
He might threaten American forces in the region, he might strike directly against Israel, or Israel, weighing the possibilities of nuclear blackmail or aggression, might feel compelled to strike Iraq first… Iraq is not a problem that can be indefinitely postponed… 
The problem of Iraq is only an element of the broader security challenges facing our country… The United States diplomacy in the United Nations will be further strengthened if the Congress can adopt a resolution expressing US determination to act if the United Nations will not. The use of force must remain a US option under active consideration… 
In the near term… we should endeavor to use the UN if at all possible. This may require a period of time for inspections or even the development of a more intrusive inspection program, if necessary backed by force. This is foremost an effort to gain world-wide legitimacy for US concerns and possible later action… 
Force should be used as the last resort… This action should not be categorized as ‘preemptive.’ … there are no guarantees. The war is unpredictable and could be difficult and costly. And what is at risk in the aftermath is an open-ended American ground commitment in Iraq." (Before The House Armed Services Committee. United States House Of Representatives. September 26th 2002) 
Clark described a war in Iraq war as 'inevitable' and an operation was called for 'like elective surgery.'
"This will put us in a colonial position in the Middle East – a huge change for the United States." ("NewsMax.com" February 17th 2003. "Meet the Press," interview. 16th February, 2003) 
"Those who favor this attack now 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." (August, 2002. http://www.grecoreport.com/world_war_iv.htm)
WILLIAM SAFIRE. Influential "New York Times," staffwriter. "The Sage of US journalism." "Richard Perle’s mouthpiece in New York."
"The Iraqi trails the Asian [Pol Pot] in the number slaughtered only because his nuclear capability was curtailed by the Israelis." ("New York Times." September 1st 1988) "Iraqgate is uniquely horrendous: a scandal about the systematic abuse of power by misguided leaders of three democratic nations [US, Britain and Italy] to secretly finance the arms buildup of a dictator." ("New York Times." December 7th 1992) 
"Iraqi scientists today working feverishly in hidden biological laboratories and underground nuclear facilities who would, if undisturbed, enable the hate-driven, power-crazed Saddam to kill millions. That capability would transform him from a boxed-in bully into a rampant world power." (http://www.embargos.de/irak/post1109/english/ultimate_enemy_nyt.htm) 
"Last year, politicians opposing an attack on Saddam claimed it would somehow interfere with our global war on al-Qaida. This year a new excuse for delay is being advanced: 
The nuclear threat from North Korean Stalinists is more immediate, and therefore we should seek an accommodation with them before taking on Saddam. In sum, the doves' rationale for inaction everywhere is that our plate is too full… This push toward paralysis is a result of the long ‘phony war’ against Iraq… Instead of merely going to the United Nations for bold finger-wagging, President Bush should order a drawdown of U.S. troops in South Korea, where they are now reviled and serve only as hostages to the North… 
He should then lay it on the line to China's new leader: Beijing cannot escape responsibility for tolerating North Korea's decision to build long-range missiles with nuclear warheads, to be used for blackmailing the United States or for sale to terrorist nations or groups. China's silence is assent. Do China and Russia want to see Japan, driven by fear of atomic attack, become a nuclear power? 
Do Beijing and Moscow want to leave it to the United States alone to deal diplomatically, perhaps too trustingly, with Pyongyang -- especially when we have a couple of wars on our hands? Bush should tell China's Hu, Russia's Putin and South Korea's Roh that… if they want to protect their own nations, it is up to them to follow our lead against terrorists, stay out of our way in Iraq and take the lead in straightening out North Korea." ("Salt Lake Tribune." January 5th 2003) 
"How should free people feel… about launching a pre-emptive strike? Note that we are not ‘starting a war’ with Iraq. That was begun by Saddam more than a decade ago. We won the first battle, but he has since been secretly violating the terms of surrender. Either we will allow him to become capable of inflicting horrendous casualties in our cities tomorrow - or we must inflict and accept far fewer casualties in his cities today…  
We will now get on with it. We will not… suppress our sadness at the pictures of Iraqi civilians Saddam will thrust into the line of fire as human shields. But we should by no means feel guilty about doing our duty. War cannot be waged apologetically. Rather than wring our hands, Americans and our allies are required to gird our loins - that is, to fight to win with the conviction that our cause is just.  
We have ample reason to believe that Saddam's gangster government is an evil to be destroyed before it gains the power to destroy us. It is futile to try to reason with passionate marchers waving signs proclaiming that America's motives are to conquer the world and expend blood for oil. Nor should we waste more precious time trying to beg or buy moral approval from France or Russia… Nor should we indulge in placing second thoughts first: 
How much will it cost? How many will be killed? How long will it take?.. Our task now, as citizens of nations burdened with the dirtiest work of mankind - a pre-emptive attack to finish a suspended war - is to call up the national spirit and determined attitude needed to sustain a great effort…
We are launching this attack, already too long delayed, primarily to defend ourselves…  
We know Saddam is developing terror weapons and is bound on vengeance; we know he has ties to terror organisations eager to use those weapons for more mass murder; we know he can bamboozle the UN inspectors again; we know Americans are terror's prime targets. That's plenty of reason to take him out. Wilsonian idealists have found a soulmate in President Bush, who surprised us all with his challenging vision - not merely a ‘vision thing’ - for the coming generation...  
The liberation of 23 million Arabs and Kurds… followed by a transition to a Confederation… may just make it possible for a rudimentary democracy to take root in major Muslim nation. Such a birth of freedom in Iraq, a land of oil wealth and a literate population, may just spread to its neighbours and co-religionists." ("The Guardian." March 7th 2003)
Next section...

No comments:

Post a Comment