Posted on 01/15/2003 1:45:12 PM PST by Dallas
Israel is embarking upon a more aggressive approach to the war on terror that will include staging targeted killings in the United States and other friendly countries, former Israeli intelligence officials told United Press International.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has forbidden the practice until now, these sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The Israeli statements were confirmed by more than a half dozen U.S. foreign policy and intelligence officials in interviews with UPI.
With the appointment of Meir Dagan, the new director Israel's Mossad secret intelligence service, Sharon is also preparing "a huge budget" increase for the spy agency as part of "a tougher stance in fighting global jihad (or holy war)," one Israeli official said.
Since Sharon became Israeli prime minister, Tel Aviv has mainly limited its practice of targeted killings to the West Bank and Gaza because "no one wanted such operations on their territory," a former Israeli intelligence official said.
Another former Israeli government official said that under Sharon, "diplomatic constraints have prevented the Mossad from carrying out 'preventive operations' (targeted killings) on the soil of friendly countries until now."
He said Sharon is "reversing that policy, even if it risks complications to Israel's bilateral relations."
A former Israeli military intelligence source agreed: "What Sharon wants is a much more extensive and tough approach to global terrorism, and this includes greater operational maneuverability."
Does this mean assassinations on the soil of allies?
"It does," he said.
"Mossad is definitely being beefed up," a U.S. government official said of the Israeli agency's budget increase. He declined to comment on the Tel Aviv's geographic expansion of targeted killings.
An FBI spokesman also declined to comment, saying: "This is a policy matter. We only enforce federal laws."
A congressional staff member with deep knowledge of intelligence matters said, "I don't know on what basis we would be able to protest Israel's actions." He referred to the recent killing of Qaed Salim Sinan al Harethi, a top al Qaida leader, in Yemen by a remotely controlled CIA drone.
"That was done on the soil of a friendly ally," the staffer said.
But the complications posed by Israel's new policy are real.
"Israel does not have a good record at doing this sort of thing," said former CIA counter-terrorism official Larry Johnson.
He cited the 1997 fiasco where two Mossad agents were captured after they tried to assassinate Khaled Mashaal, a Hamas political leader, by injecting him with poison.
According to Johnson, the attempt, made in Amman, Jordan, caused a political crisis in Israeli-Jordan relations. In addition, because the Israeli agents carried Canadian passports, Canada withdrew its ambassador in protest, he said. Jordan is one of two Arab nations to recognize Israel. The other is Egypt.
At the time, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said, "I have no intention of stopping the activities of this government against terror," according to a CNN report.
Former CIA officials say Israel was forced to free jailed Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and 70 other Jordanian and Palestinian prisoner being held in Israeli jails to secure the release of the two would-be Mossad assassins.
Phil Stoddard, former director of the Middle East Institute, cited a botched plot to kill Ali Hassan Salemeh, the mastermind of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. The 1974 attempt severely embarrassed Mossad when the Israeli hit team mistakenly assassinated a Moroccan waiter in Lillehammer, Norway.
Salemeh, later a CIA asset, was killed in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1976 by a car bomb placed by an Israeli assassination team, former U.S. intelligence officials said.
"Israel knew Salemeh was providing us with preventive intelligence on the Palestinians and his being killed pissed off a lot of people," said a former senior CIA official.
But some Israeli operations have been successful.
Gerald Bull, an Ontario-born U.S. citizen and designer of the Iraqi supergun -- a massive artillery system capable of launching satellites into orbit, and of delivering nuclear chemical or biological payloads from Baghdad to Israel -- was killed in Belgium in March 1990. The killing is still unsolved, but former CIA officials said a Mossad hit team is the most likely suspect.
Bull worked on the supergun design -- codenamed Project Babylon -- for 10 years, and helped the Iraqis develop many smaller artillery systems. He was found with five bullets in his head outside his Brussels apartment.
Israeli hit teams, which consist of units or squadrons of the Kidon, a sub-unit for Mossad's highly secret Metsada department, would stage the operations, former Israeli intelligence sources said. Kidon is a Hebrew word meaning "bayonet," one former Israeli intelligence source said.
This Israeli government source explained that in the past Israel has not staged targeted killings in friendly countries because "no one wanted such operations on their territory."
This has become irrelevant, he said.
Dagan, the new hard-driving director of Mossad, will implement the new changes, former Israeli government officials said.
Dagan, nicknamed "the gun," was Sharon's adviser on counter-terrorism during the government of Netanyahu in 1996, former Israeli government officials say. A former military man, Dagan has also undertaken extremely sensitive diplomatic missions for several of Israel's prime ministers, former Israeli government sources said.
Former Israel Defense Forces Lt. Col. Gal Luft, who served under Dagan, described him as an "extremely creative individual -- creative to the point of recklessness."
A former CIA official who knows Dagan said the new Mossad director knows "his foreign affairs inside and out," and has a "real killer instinct."
Dagan is also "an intelligence natural" who has "a superb analyst not afraid to act on gut instinct," the former CIA official said.
Dagan has already removed Mossad officials whom he regards as "being too conservative or too cautious" and is building up "a constituency of senior people of the same mentality," one former long-time Israeli operative said.
Dagan is also urging that Mossad operatives rely less on secret sources and rely more on open information that is so plentifully provided on the Internet and newspapers.
"It's a cultural thing," one former Israeli intelligence operative explained. "Mossad in the past has put its emphasis on Humint (human intelligence) and secret operations and has neglected the whole field of open media, which has become extremely important."
Regarding Mossad's new policy and budget increase, Kim Farber an Israeli Embassy official said, "There is so little information available on this, there is nothing I can add."
And what do you suppose that means? That means A LARGE NUMBER.
1. An army.
2. A great number.
3. A multitude.
4. Multitude synonyms:
- The condition or quality of being numerous.
- A very great number.
multitude, host, legion, army These nouns all denote a very great number of people or things. Multitude is the most general term: a multitude of reasons. Host and legion both stress impressively, sometimes countlessly large numbers: a host of ideas; a legion of complaints. Army emphasizes order and often purposeful association: an army of ants.
The point I'm trying to make here is that it would have been perfectly possible for you to make the above assertion without making unwarranted assumptions about "krodriguezdc"'s ethnic background or calling him a "sowbug."
It would. However, my assumptions are not entirely unwarranted, and I have no excess patience with people given to Cairo street, Riyadh street or Baghdad street sloganeering.
But I think we can all agree that stirring racist rhetoric into the mix here lowers
Very true. It's sad that so much bizarre, racist propaganda emanates from the Arab world. It is even sadder that so much of that racist propaganda is picked up by factions calling themselves "Libertarian" - in fact, I have over the last couple of years come to the conclusion that there are almost no real Libertarians out there.
It would.
Nice to see you admit it.
However, my assumptions are not entirely unwarranted,
Are you sure about that? "Rodriguez" sounds like a hispanic name to me, not an arabic one. Not that that should even matter! Or are all of those brown-skinned people the same to you?
It's sad that so much bizarre, racist propaganda emanates from the Arab world.
I am aware that much of the arab press is EXTREMELY racist and anti-semitic, but the point that I am trying to make to you, Cachelot, is that it is possible for YOU to debate people without stooping to that same level!
For example, when you try to guess people's ethnicities and then link these guesses rhetorically to various dehumanizing labels (eg, sowbug, vermin, etc) how is this qualitatively different from the anti-semitic rhetoric of the Arab press or the Third Reich? When you accuse people of belonging to "stormfront" on even the slightest pretext (eg., they disagreed with you about some trivial semantic point) how is this different from racists who accuse their ideological opponents of being "undercover zionists"?
Answer: it isn't & it isn't. You are guilty of using the exact same rhetorical tactics as the very worst anti-semites out there. The container is different but the content is the same! And it's a shame, because I get the impression you're probably intelligent enough to see through your own rhetoric too. It really makes me wonder what you're trying to accomplish here.
First, your handle doesn't really matter much, does it? I mean, you don't really think I live underwater?
Second, as I said, this fellows statements fall neatly into a kind of propaganda that you really only see originating in the press of a few Arab countries. It sometimes gets carried around by others, but the origin seems always to be Arabic. Examples:
There's less than half a dozen nations possessing serious nuclear arsenals (Israel being one of them), but "A host of countries are going to nuke Israel".
Or "Interstellar Space Jews are controlling Western Leaders by mind control beams from an orbit around Venus".
Or "The Mossad flew airliners into the WTC using remote control from an underground bunker in NY, with the collaboration of Bush, on the direct order of the Illuminati".
Or "The Bali bombing was really a nuclear blast, says Australian military nuclear expert who was fifty yards from it".
All these axamples are actually factual and documentable, believe it or not. Of course, this critter may be just one of the mindless ones who carry the Jihadist message. It doesn't really matter, does it? He's home where his delusions come from.
is that it is possible for YOU to debate people without stooping to that same level!
Why would I be interested in "debating" the followers of Jihad? I think they get entirely enough airing of their views, mosty irrational as they are, already :).
There's less than half a dozen nations possessing serious nuclear arsenals (Israel being one of them), but "A host of countries are going to nuke Israel".
What he actually said was "china and russia and a host of others will most certainly nuke israel first chance they get..." So what? Many dispensationalist Christians (eg., Hal Lindsey) make essentially the same claim, and they are ardent Zionists to boot.
Why would I be interested in "debating" the followers of Jihad? I think they get entirely enough airing of their views, mosty irrational as they are, already :).
You haven't shown that this guy is a "arab," a "sowbug," or a follower of "Jihad." You have shown that you disagree with him, but that isn't the same thing!
Again, instead of indulging in racist propaganda techniques such as dehumanizing metaphors (eg, "sowbug"), allusions to imagined ethnicity (eg, "arab") or accusations of unsavory political affiliations (eg, "scurry on back to stormfront"), why don't you just respond to arguments on their own merits?
If it is not the case that "china and russia and a host of others will most certainly nuke israel first chance they get...," then why not?
Tell me, as a disiniterested observer, why you believe that scenario is so outlandish as to be comparable to "Interstellar Space Jews are controlling Western Leaders by mind control beams from an orbit around Venus".
To me it sounds quite plausible that Russia & China both pose a nuclear threat to Israel (and the US & the UK for that matter) but if you have good reasons to think they are not, then please share.
It matters to me.
China might pose a nuclear threat if they weren't actually a "nuclear pygmy", and if they tipped over into the kind of irrationality you might find in a few other places. Russia? No. Large arsenal, but not suicidal.
Basically, you'll never see a nuclear exhange between the significant nuclear powers, for the simple reason that it would be too destructive. And strange as it may seem, Israel has the wherewithal to inflict unacceptable damage on any attacker if the conflict goes nuclear.
Put another way, the US is supposed to end up with something like 1300 warheads when all is said and done regarding armament levels, Russia about the same. Both of these arsenals are deemed to be large enough to effectively kill the rest of the world. China, in comparison, is a dwarf - far less capable than Israel which has at least 400 warheads, or something around 30% of the clout packed by the two "big ones".
Bottom line: you'd not nuke any of the major nuclear powers if you wanted your country (and your people) to go on existing.
Of course, none of the big league would want to nuke Israel anyhow, so the point is really moot. But running this kind of scenario with a "host" of countries lobbing nukes is actually at least as outlandish as the space alien cr*p :)).
So? Enlighten me. What's the significance of your handle?
And remember that whatever you say, it doesn't really matter. You could be anyone, anywhere, truthful or not, and unless someone put work into checking, absolutely unverifiable ;).
Well, you learn something new everyday!
Thanks, Cachelot.
I can't imagine a more ignorant or uninformed assumption than that one, but amazement never ceases. Still serving, by the way...
My apologies. You have no respect for the sovereignty of the country you serve. You should be even more ashamed.
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