US diplomats launch Bush attack

The BBC ^ | 4 May 2004 | Staff

[fdsa2]

Around 50 retired US diplomats have written to US President George Bush to complain about America's policy towards the Middle East. The letter is similar to one written by 52 former British diplomats to UK Prime Minister Tony Blair last week.

The former US diplomats complained that President Bush's approach is losing the US "credibility, prestige and friends".

They criticised what they say is Washington's unabashed support for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

The American diplomats said they were deeply concerned by Mr Bush's endorsement last month of Mr Sharon's plan to withdraw unilaterally from Gaza.

'Great danger'

They were planning a press conference on Tuesday to go public with their opposition, according to the American Educational Trust (AET), a foundation where some of the former diplomats are based.

"Early responses are staggering," the AET said on Monday, adding "signatories are united by their belief that the US government is heading toward great danger."

"Our hope is that both political parties will take heed and listen to the voices of experienced diplomats," it said.

"Your unabashed support of Sharon's extra-judicial assassinations, Israel's Berlin-Wall-like barrier, its harsh military measures in occupied territories and now your endorsement of Sharon's unilateral plans are costing our country its credibility, prestige and friends," the letter warned.

We're not the good guys any more... We are viewed as hypocritical.

Former diplomat William Rogers

Israel says it has no choice but to kill militants planning to carry out suicide attacks, and that its West Bank barrier is for security only.

The signatories praised their British counterparts who went public over their concerns last month.

"We former diplomats applaud our 52 British colleagues who recently sent a letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair criticising his Middle East policy and calling on Britain to exert more influence over the United States," the US letter begins.

The organiser of the American missive, Andrew Killgore, who served as US ambassador to Qatar from 1977 to 1980, told the BBC: "We thought American diplomats were as unhappy as British diplomats were over what the president did."

He called for President Bush to withdraw his support for the disengagement plan, which Mr Sharon may have to modify after failing to gain the support of his Likud party.

He said Mr Bush should not "take away the right of the Palestinians to return, or give Sharon the right to take settlement blocks in the West Bank which will hardly leave the Palestinians any contiguous territory".

'Torpedo'

"It seems to torpedo the idea of a separate Palestinian state," he added.

Mr Killgore said the letter was mainly about policy towards Israel and the Palestinians, but it touched on Iraq too.

"If anything Iraq is worse," he said.

William Rogers, who was under-secretary of state for economic affairs in the mid-1970s, has not decided whether to sign the letter yet, but said: "We're not the good guys any more and our foreign relations have been and are being damaged. We are viewed as hypocritical."

The BBC's Jon Leyne in Washington said those in the Bush administration who do support Mr Sharon might well point out that the state department has always been a sceptical supporter of Israel.

Mr Sharon himself has always made a point of dealing directly with the White House.

There has been no response yet from the White House, our correspondent says, though in the past, the administration has been quick to savage its critics.

[swilhelm73]

AH HA! Their y2k donor list includes The Egyptian Embassy;

http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/042000/0004113.html

The problem is who knows who all those anonymous names represent...

[KMAJ2]

AET is an arab friendly, UN pandering group founded by two former Jimmy Carter diplomats and a former British soldier.

Here is from their website:

The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs is a 140-page magazine published 10 times per year in Washington, DC, that focuses on news and analysis from and about the Middle East and U.S. policy in that region.

The Washington Report is published by the American Educational Trust (AET), a non-profit foundation incorporated in Washington, DC by retired U.S. foreign service officers to provide the American public with balanced and accurate information concerning U.S. relations with Middle Eastern states.

AET's Foreign Policy Committee has included former U.S. ambassadors, government officials, and members of Congress, including the late Democratic Senator J. William Fulbright, and Republican Senator Charles Percy, both former chairmen of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Members of AET's Board of Directors and advisory committees receive no fees for their services.

The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs does not take partisan domestic political positions. As a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli dispute, it endorses U.N. Security Council Resolution 242´s land-for-peace formula, supported by seven successive U.S. presidents.

In general, the Washington Report supports Middle East solutions which it judges to be consistent with the charter of the United Nations and traditional American support for human rights, self-determination, and fair play.

Material from the printed version of the Washington Report, and from this web site, may be reprinted without charge as long as articles are not changed in any way and are credited to the author and the magazine. [This release does not apply to any of the photographs or graphic designs in the printed magazine or this web site.]

http://www.wrmea.com/html/about.html

The American Educational Trust was founded in Washington, DC in January, 1982. Its founding chairman was Edward Firth Henderson, a British Army Officer during World War II who served in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.

Co-founders were Andrew I. Killgore, AET's first president, who was U.S. Ambassador to the State of Qatar when he retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in 1980; and Richard H. Curtiss, AET's first executive director, who was chief inspector of the U.S. Information Agency when he retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in 1980.

In addition to the three founding directors, other initial directors of the American Educational Trust were prof. John Ruedy, director of studies at Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies; former Democratic Member of Congress Thomas Rees of Los Angeles; John Law, Middle East correspondent for U.S. News & World Report for some 20 years before he founded Mideast Markets, a publication of the Chase Manhattan Bank; and Dr. John Duke Anthony, president and chief executive officer of the National Council on U.S. Arab Relations.

Subsequent board chairmen have included Dr. John Davies, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Agriculture and director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), and the current chairman, the Reverend Dr. L. Humphrey Walz, former associate executive of the Presbyterian synod of the Northeast.

http://www.wrmea.com/html/founders.html

We've maintained since our founding, in January 1982, that real stability in the Middle East and real security for both Arabs and Israelis, must start with an Arab-Israeli land-for-peace settlement based upon U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, including full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, Gaza, southern Lebanon and the Golan Heights, and equal rights for all of the Muslim, Christian and Jewish residents of a shared Jerusalem.

We also have suggested that the dispute is not between Arabs and Israelis, but rather moderates versus extremists in each camp. Now we include the objective of fair and free elections to choose Palestinian leaders to finalize a peace agreement with Israel. Our goal, therefore, has been the fine-tuning of U.S. Middle East policies to support the moderates in Israel, in the Arab States, and in the rest of the Islamic world.

These proposals for bettering U.S. relations with all Middle Eastern countries have been characterized as "Arabist" or "Israel bashing" by partisans of special interests in the Middle East. But they provided the underpinning for the principles of peace signed Sept. 13, 1993, and the Cairo, Oslo II and Wye Plantation implementation agreements that followed.

http://www.wrmea.com/html/stand.html

[kcvl]

Founders
The American Educational Trust was founded in Washington, DC in January, 1982. Its founding chairman was Edward Firth Henderson, a British Army Officer during World War II who served in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.

Co-founders were Andrew I. Killgore, AET's first president, who was U.S. Ambassador to the State of Qatar when he retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in 1980; and Richard H. Curtiss, AET's first executive director, who was chief inspector of the U.S. Information Agency when he retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in 1980.

In addition to the three founding directors, other initial directors of the American Educational Trust were Prof. John Ruedy, director of studies at Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies; former Democratic Member of Congress Thomas Rees of Los Angeles; John Law, Middle East correspondent for U.S. News & World Report for some 20 years before he founded Mideast Markets, a publication of the Chase Manhattan Bank; and Dr. John Duke Anthony, president and chief executive officer of the National Council on U.S. Arab Relations.

Subsequent board chairmen have included Dr. John Davies, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Agriculture and director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), and the current chairman, the Reverend Dr. L. Humphrey Walz, former associate executive of the Presbyterian synod of the Northeast.

Masthead
Publisher: Andrew I. Killgore
Executive Editor: Richard H. Curtiss
Managing Editor: Janet McMahon
News Editor: Delinda C. Hanley
Advertising Director: Asma Yousef
Book Club Director: Hugh Galford
Administrative Director: Sara R. Powell
Editorial Assistant: Laila Al-Arian
Art Director: Ralph U. Scherer

[swilhelm73]

Yep, this is another Joe Wilson/MEI type Saudi Arabian front;

http://www.danielpipes.org/article/17

A number of former ambassadors to the Arab countries are on the Saudi payroll. Mr. Emerson documents that one of them, Andrew I. Killgore, said in public that his company did not do public relations work for Saudi Arabia when in fact it did. Offered a chance to respond, Mr. Killgore did not deny the charge. Instead he accused me of wishing to "silence" him.

[binger]

If these state department guys were voted in by the senate, this senator probably voted for every one of them!

[MEG33]

Robert,McCarthy chaired hearings in the Senate.

The commies and sympathizers wrongly changed the name of the House Committee on Un American Activities to make the name sound like the Committee was unAmerican.

I believe we have lost our ability to do investigations such as these anymore..a pity.McCarthy was right,we did have communists working in the government.

The House investigation outed communism in Hollywood,as did a California State committee.The studios did the blacklisting,not the government.

[swilhelm73]

And apparently the two founders Curtiss and Kilgore have spoken at the Liberty Lobby - the leading anti-semitic organization in America...

[piasa]

very interesting stuff on this thread so far

[MEG33]

Some info was posted about them today ..wish I knew which thread.

[MEG33]

I see the information now..interesting.

[swilhelm73]

And they've also taken to publishing borderline Holocaust denial in their little news mag.

Note the one article not available via the internet here;

http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0598/index.htm

Finding said article we find;

http://www.mideastfacts.com/pius_hughes.html

Meanwhile, the Washington Times revealed in a shocking article (07/17/90), that only one million Jews had died at Auschwitz, a Nazi death camp situated in Poland, and not the four million as originally claimed by the Zionists. Three hundred thousand non-Jews also perished there. Researchers at Israel's Yad Vashem memorial admitted the new Polish figures were correct. This new evidence would cut in half the Zionist's original claim that six million Jews had died under the Nazi regime. It would also raise the question, "Why did the Zionists grossly exaggerate the original numbers of Jewish victims?"

[kcvl]

Washington Report’s senior staff have also associated themselves with the previously-mentioned Liberty Lobby, the nation’s leading Holocaust deniers. In 1987 both the Report’s publisher, Andrew Killgore, and its editor, Richard Curtiss, spoke at the Liberty Lobby’s Board of Policy Convention. Prior to this, Killgore visited the offices of the Liberty Lobby to be interviewed by its weekly newspaper, The Spotlight (“Expert on Mideast Tells Inside Story, Dec. 17, 1984). Killgore and Curtiss, both retired Foreign Service officials who served in the Arab world, still lead the magazine.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

***The former US diplomats complained that President Bush's approach is losing the US "credibility, prestige and friends". ***

What would we do without diplomats. I think they should be renamed doormats. These Leftists "expert" groups that keep coming out with anti-American bs are nicely identifying themselves.

Kerry's World: Father Knows Best [Excerpt] But, for all the neatness this narrative provides, it overlooks an entire chapter in Kerry's intellectual history: his childhood. In fact, Kerry's foreign policy worldview, characterized by a steadfast belief in international institutions and a suspicion of U.S. hard power, had fallen into place long before he ever enlisted. As Kerry's biographer, the historian Douglas Brinkley, told me, "So much of his foreign policy worldview comes straight from Richard Kerry."

.........[Earlier in article] "Americans," he [John Kerry's father, Richard] writes, "are inclined to see the world and foreign affairs in black and white." They celebrate their own form of government and denigrate all others, making them guilty of what he calls "ethnocentric accommodation -- everyone ought to be like us." As a result, America has committed the "fatal error" of "propagating democracy" and fallen prey to "the siren's song of promoting human rights," falsely assuming that our values and institutions are a good fit in the Third World. And, just as Americans exaggerate their own goodness, they exaggerate their enemies' badness. The Soviet Union wasn't nearly as imperialistic as American politicians warned, Kerry argues. "Seeing the Soviet Union as the aggressor in every instance, and the U.S. as only reacting defensively, relieves an American observer from the need to see any parallel between our use of military power in distant parts of the world, and the Soviet use of military power outside the Soviet Union," he writes. He further claims that "Third world Marxist movements were autonomous national movements" -- outside Moscow's orbit. The book culminates in a plea for a hardheaded, realist foreign policy that removes any pretense of U.S. moral superiority. [End Excerpt]

[Asclepius]

... though in the past, the administration has been quick to savage its critics ...

No editorial bias here. Oh, no. Just the facts.

[kcvl]

Andrew Killgore and Richard Curtiss are likely the staunchest allies Saudi Arabia has in the US. The two run a virulently anti-Israel, anti-Jewish magazine called "The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs." It is believed that the Saudis finance them.

Last year Richard Curtiss wrote an article praising Louis Farrakhan. He said that Jews only hate Farrakhan because of his criticism of Israel. Those who have a grasp of recent history know Farrakhan does much more than criticize Israel. In fact, the Nation of Islam leader has called Judaism a "gutter religion" and has incited Jew-hatred amongst his followers for decades.

In 1986 Curtiss and Killgore spoke to Willis Carto's rabidly Jew-hating Liberty Lobby. Carto was also the founder of the Institute for Historical Review, the notorious Holocaust denial movement. Carto has stated that "Israel is a bastard state," that "the defeat of Hitler was the defeat of the West" and that "Jews are public enemy number one."

The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs prints anti-Jewish cartoons. They are taciturn when it comes to Arab Muslims burning down synagogues in France and Britain. They have written articles in which Killgore has claimed that the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, might have killed President John F. Kennedy. They print letters from Holocaust deniers. They publish pieces proclaiming there are "Zionist" conspiracies against Christians. They heap praise on every Arab and Muslim nation, while consistently vilifying Israel. They remained silent on Osama Bin Laden until two months after September 11. They have said that Israel knew in advance of the attack, yet Killgore and Curtiss have offered no proof to substantiate that bogus claim. They have defended the Libyans convicted of blowing up Pan Am 103. They also have a relationship with the Holy Land Foundation, an Islamic organization recently shut down by the FBI. Rather than imprison innocent Jews, perhaps the FBI should turn its attention to the conduct of Killgore and Curtiss. They are lapdogs and whores for the Saudi Royal family.

[kcvl]

Others include (in the letter) John Brady Kiesling, one of at least three US diplomats who resigned last year in protest against the war on Iraq, and Greg Thielmann, until recently a senior State Department intelligence analyst who has accused the Bush administration of twisting intelligence on Iraq's weapons programmes and alleged ties with terrorist groups.

I wonder why Killgore & Curtiss don't want to release their information on contributions to politicians from their lobbyist clients?

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Indeed!

[AmericanVictory]

Ah, the angst of the Arabists on both sides of the Ocean.