Posted on 03/30/2004 2:23:35 PM PST by rogueleader
Iraq under Saddam Hussein did not pose a threat to the United States but it did to Israel, which is one reason why Washington invaded the Arab country, according to a speech made by a member of a top-level White House intelligence group.
IPS uncovered the remarks by Philip Zelikow, who is now the executive director of the body set up to investigate the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001--the 9/11 commission--in which he suggests a prime motive for the invasion just over one year ago was to eliminate a threat to Israel, a staunch U.S. ally in the Middle East.
Zelikow's casting of the attack on Iraq as one launched to protect Israel appears at odds with the public position of President Bush (news - web sites) and his administration, which has never overtly drawn the link between its war on the regime of former president Hussein and its concern for Israel's security.
The administration has instead insisted it launched the war to liberate the Iraqi people, destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and to protect the United States.
Zelikow made his statements about "the unstated threat" during his tenure on a highly knowledgeable and well-connected body known as the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), which reports directly to the president.
He served on the board between 2001 and 2003.
"Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I'll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990--it's the threat against Israel," Zelikow told a crowd at the University of Virginia on Sep. 10, 2002, speaking on a panel of foreign policy experts assessing the impact of 9/11 and the future of the war on the al-Qaeda terrorist organisation.
"And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don't care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell," said Zelikow.
The statements are the first to surface from a source closely linked to the Bush administration acknowledging that the war, which has so far cost the lives of nearly 600 U.S. troops and thousands of Iraqis, was motivated by Washington's desire to defend the Jewish state.
The administration, which is surrounded by staunch pro-Israel, neo-conservative hawks, is currently fighting an extensive campaign to ward off accusations that it derailed the "war on terrorism" it launched after 9/11 by taking a detour to Iraq, which appears to have posed no direct threat to the United States.
Israel is Washington's biggest ally in the Middle East, receiving annual direct aid of $3-to-4 billion.
Even though members of the 16-person PFIAB come from outside government, they enjoy the confidence of the president and have access to all information related to foreign intelligence that they need to play their vital advisory role.
Known in intelligence circles as "Piffy-ab," the board is supposed to evaluate the nation's intelligence agencies and probe any mistakes they make.
The unpaid appointees on the board require a security clearance known as "code word" that is higher than top secret.
The national security adviser to former President George H.W. Bush (1989-93) Brent Scowcroft, currently chairs the board in its work overseeing a number of intelligence bodies, including the Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites) (CIA (news - web sites)), the various military intelligence groups and the Pentagon (news - web sites)'s National Reconnaissance Office.
Neither Scowcroft nor Zelikow returned phone calls or email messages from IPS for this story.
Zelikow has long-established ties to the Bush administration.
Before his appointment to PFIAB in October 2001, he was part of the current president's transition team in January 2001.
In that capacity, Zelikow drafted a memo for National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) on reorganising and restructuring the National Security Council (NSC) and prioritising its work.
Richard A. Clarke, who was counter-terrorism coordinator for Bush's predecessor President Bill Clinton (news - web sites) (1993-2001) also worked for Bush senior, and has recently accused the current administration of not heeding his terrorism warnings, said Zelikow was among those he briefed about the urgent threat from al-Qaeda in December 2000.
Rice herself had served in the NSC during the first Bush administration, and subsequently teamed up with Zelikow on a 1995 book about the unification of Germany.
Zelikow had ties with another senior Bush administration official--Robert Zoellick, the current trade representative. The two wrote three books together, including one in 1998 on the United States and the Muslim Middle East.
Aside from his position at the 9/11 commission, Zelikow is now also director of the Miller Centre of Public Affairs and White Burkett Miller Professor of History at the University of Virginia.
His close ties to the administration prompted accusations of a conflict of interest in 2002 from families of victims of the 9/11 attacks, who protested his appointment to the investigative body.
In his university speech, Zelikow, who strongly backed attacking the Iraqi dictator, also explained the threat to Israel by arguing that Baghdad was preparing in 1990-91 to spend huge amounts of "scarce hard currency" to harness "communications against electromagnetic pulse," a side-effect of a nuclear explosion that could sever radio, electronic and electrical communications.
That was "a perfectly absurd expenditure unless you were going to ride out a nuclear exchange--they (Iraqi officials) were not preparing to ride out a nuclear exchange with us. Those were preparations to ride out a nuclear exchange with the Israelis," according to Zelikow.
He also suggested that the danger of biological weapons falling into the hands of the anti-Israeli Islamic Resistance Movement, known by its Arabic acronym Hamas, would threaten Israel rather than the United States, and that those weapons could have been developed to the point where they could deter Washington from attacking Hamas.
"Play out those scenarios," he told his audience, "and I will tell you, people have thought about that, but they are just not talking very much about it."
Don't look at the links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, but then ask yourself the question, 'Gee, is Iraq tied to Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the people who are carrying out suicide bombings in Israel'? Easy question to answer; the evidence is abundant.
To date, the possibility of the United States attacking Iraq to protect Israel has been only timidly raised by some intellectuals and writers, with few public acknowledgements from sources close to the administration.
Analysts who reviewed Zelikow's statements said they are concrete evidence of one factor in the rationale for going to war, which has been hushed up.
"Those of us speaking about it sort of routinely referred to the protection of Israel as a component," said Phyllis Bennis of the Washington-based Institute of Policy Studies. "But this is a very good piece of evidence of that."
Others say the administration should be blamed for not making known to the public its true intentions and real motives for invading Iraq.
"They (the administration) made a decision to invade Iraq, and then started to search for a policy to justify it. It was a decision in search of a policy and because of the odd way they went about it, people are trying to read something into it," said Nathan Brown, professor of political science at George Washington University and an expert on the Middle East.
But he downplayed the Israel link. "In terms of securing Israel, it doesn't make sense to me because the Israelis are probably more concerned about Iran than they were about Iraq in terms of the long-term strategic threat," he said.
Still, Brown says Zelikow's words carried weight.
"Certainly his position would allow him to speak with a little bit more expertise about the thinking of the Bush administration, but it doesn't strike me that he is any more authoritative than Wolfowitz, or Rice or Powell or anybody else. All of them were sort of fishing about for justification for a decision that has already been made," Brown said.
How does that square with Zelikow's claim that the administration believed Iraq's WMD were a formidable threat to Israel's security?
But some of Washington's points are definitely applicable to the modern U.S. In fact, many of the items I highlighted seem to be a remarkably accurate description of many of the folks who roam about inside the Beltway pursuing agendas that are not in the best interests of the United States.
Certainly Washington and Hamilton would not have any problem with President Bush's actions in defending freedom.
Please spare me all that sentimental crap. I have yet to see a concrete instance of anyone "defending freedom" in any way -- at least insofar as the United States is concerned. I stopped buying into that hoax during the first Gulf War, when U.S. military personnel were: 1) sent to the Middle East to restore a royal family to a throne in Kuwait; and 2) were ordered to refrain from openly displaying religious symbols so as not to offend the very people they were supposed to be protecting. Put those two points together in your mind, and ask yourself if George Washington would even recognize what this country has become.
We are both on the front lines of a titanic struggle between civilization and Islamic lunacy.
No, we are not. Israel has its own problem maintaining order in its borders as a result of a long-standing dispute with Palestinians. The U.S. has its own problem doing business with all these quasi-nations (including Israel) that are the remnants of the British Empire.
Richard Perle resigned from his position as head of the Defense Policy Board soon after the war in Iraq began last March, when even his most ardent supporters realized that his blatant conflict of interest in the Global Crossing case was going to be an albatross around the neck of the Bush administration.
Perle remained on the Defense Policy Board as a member, and eventually resigned that post in February of this year. But not before uttering this quote for the ages after David Kay admitted that the intelligence community had clearly been incorrect about its characterization of the threat of WMDs in Iraq:
"I have always thought our intelligence in the Gulf has been woefully inadequate."
Now how's that for utter arrogance, and utter bullsh!t on the part of Perle. If what Perle said was true, then he was lying his @ss off during the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, when he and every other lackey in the Bush administration was running around claiming that our intelligence was accurate, and these WMDs posed an imminent threat to the U.S.
There's no question in my mind that the Bush administration is now looking at the CIA as the dupe in this whole affair -- to serve as the scapegoat for "inaccurate information" that led up to the war (the fact that nobody will pay a price for this "blunder" is a clear sign to me that this has been orchestrated from the start). In this respect, the "pre-war intelligence" fiasco will be forgotten just as quickly as we've forgotten about that disgraceful propaganda campaign before Gulf War I -- when those poor Kuwaiti women testified about all those alleged atrocities committed by Iraqi troops in Kuwait (their stories were fabricated, and it was later learned that these women were all family members of Kuwaiti embassy staff in Washington).
--- U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel (R), Nebraska
Are you going to tell me that Chuck Hagel is an "anti-Bush" RAT ally," too?
Hagel, for the record, served in Vietnam as a volunteer.
Let's go back and look at the military record of Admiral Jeremiah A. Denton, Jr. I post these whenever his name comes up because I am utterly in awe of his service record -- he makes John Kerry look like a child in comparison:
Combat Action Ribbon
Purple Hearts (2)
Air Medals (2)
Bronze Stars (5)
Silver Stars (3)
Distinguished Flying Cross
Navy Distinguished Service Medal
Dept. of Defense Distinguished Service Medal
Navy Cross
I'm starting to see a trend here. I'll tell you exactly what drives people like Hagel and Denton crazy: They are sick and tired of having U.S. military affairs dictated by these Ivy League policy-wonk hacks who would sooner eat a dump truck full of sh!t than put on a military uniform.
Let me guess . . . George Will is an anti-Bush RAT, too?
Inspiration has many sources.
I've generally found that posts that include phrases like "damned Canuck," "socialist pinko from the north," etc. are remarkably devoid of any serious thought.
You probably agree with me on most issues -- I just have a very direct way of expressing my thoughts on controversial issues.
P.S. I am an American, and I'll stack my patriotism up against anyone else here on FR. ;-)
Whoa now mom. There ain't nothin' more American than driving the western slope in the middle of the night with a trailer full of horses, a bottle of Jack in the passenger seat and Ian Tyson blaring at 90 decibles. Alberta's Child ain't no ferriner. He should be happy he didn't pick my favorite for his moniker, Some Kind of Fool
In terms of pronunciation, shouldn't it be Jooz?
Serious question. On other threads I've seen some freepers get chastised for using the term Jooz or Joos. You apparently don't see it a perjorative term yet others seem to. What is your take on it?
Ian Tyson fans come to the defense of their own.
Martial Monk nows firmly occupies the #2 spot on my list of favorite people -- after Ian Tyson, of course. LOL!!
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