     A War for Israel?

    By Jeffrey Blankfort

    When Malaysian Prime Minister Mathahir Mohammed declared at an
    international Islamic Conference in Kuala Lumpur in mid-October that
    "today the Jews rule the world by proxy [and] They get others to fight
    and die for them,"1 the reactions in the U.S. and the West
    were predictable.

    It was "a speech that was taken right out of the Protocols of Zion,"
    according to one Israeli commentator 2 and Mathahir would be
    accused of imitating Hitler and insuring that "Muslims around the world
    are similarly being fed a regular diet of classic big lies about Jewish
    power." 3

    Big lies? Given Israel’s unchecked dominion over the Palestinians and
    its Arab neighbors over the past half century, supported in every way
    possible by the United States, one can assume that Muslims, not to
    mention intelligent non-Muslims, have no need for additional instruction
    as to the extent of Jewish power. As further proof of its existence, if
    such were needed, there would be no attempt to measure the Malaysian
    prime minister’s words against the reality of the times to determine if
    there was anything accurate in his assessment.

    If Mathahir could be accused of anything, it would be of being sloppy
    historically and using too broad a brush. The Jews, as such, control
    nothing. A segment of American Jewry, however, has been able, with few
    exceptions, to shape U.S. Middle East policy since the mid-Sixties.
    Given America’s position as a major world power, and now its only
    superpower, that is not a small achievement.

    Over the years, that segment, the organized American Jewish
    community--in short, the Israel lobby--has amassed unparalleled
    political power through skillfully combining the wealth of its members
    4 with its extraordinary organizational skills to achieve
    what amounts to a corporate takeover of the U.S. Congress plus veto
    power over the presidency.

    There is virtually no sector of the American body politic that has been
    immune to the lobby’s penetration. That its primary goal has not been to
    improve the security and well being of the United States or the American
    people, but to advance the interests of a foreign country, namely
    Israel, may be debated, but it was acknowledged, in part, more than a
    dozen years ago by Sen. Howard Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) who complained to an
    annual conference of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory
    Council that "There’s only one issue members [of Congress] think is
    important to American Jews-Israel." 5

    It was no secret that Israel had long been interested in eliminating the
    regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and redrawing the map of the Middle
    East to enhance its power in the region. 6 Initiating that
    undertaking became a task for key individuals in and around the White
    House with deep roots in right wing Israeli politics. The attack on the
    World Trade Center supplied the opportunity. That Iraq had nothing to do
    with it was immaterial. The lobby’s propaganda apparatus would make the
    American people believe otherwise.

    The first step has been completed. Saddam Hussein has been removed, not
    by Israel, but by the U.S. and its "coalition of the willing." From the
    perspective of the Israelis and one must assume, the lobby, it is better
    that American and foreign soldiers do the shedding of blood, Iraqis and
    their own, rather than those of Israel, the world’s fourth ranked
    military power. Such an accusation will most assuredly draw cries of
    "Blood libel" from the likes of the Anti-Defamation League, but it is a
    conclusion that one can readily draw from the facts. The degree to which
    the present Iraq situation, as well as the first Gulf War, can be
    attributed to efforts of key individuals and the major Jewish
    organizations that constitute the lobby is what this article will
    examine. The lobby’s existence and power well predate its alliance with
    what may be called its Christian fundamentalist auxiliary which has
    given it unprecedented influence over both Congress and the White House.

    ***

    On March 13th, 2003, during a House appropriations subcommittee hearing
    on foreign aid, of which Israel has long been the dominant recipient
    7, Secretary of State Colin Powell took the extraordinary
    step of assuring members of Congress that a "small cabal" of pro-Israeli
    American Jews was not orchestrating President George W. Bush's drive
    toward war.

    "The strategy with respect to Iraq has derived from our interest in the
    region and our support of U.N. resolutions over time," Powell said, in
    response to a question from the subcommittee's Republican chairman,
    Arizona Rep. Jim Kolbe.

    "It is not driven by any small cabal that is buried away somewhere, that
    is telling President Bush or me or Vice President Cheney or [National
    Security Adviser Condoleeza] Rice or other members of the administration
    what our policies should be." 8

    In fact, there is a cabal that has been driving U.S. foreign policy
    under the Bush administration, and some of its members, notably Elliot
    Abrams and Michael Ledeeen, were part of the last cabal that operated in
    Washington under the Reagan administration, the one that brought us the
    Iran-Contra scandal. This one, however, is not nearly as secretive.
    Ironically, Powell has been and remains one of its favorite targets and
    his frequent public humiliations at the cabal’s hands have led seasoned
    observers to wonder why he hasn’t resigned.

    On this occasion as he had on others, Powell played the loyal soldier,
    joining in what Ha’aretz’s Nathan Guttman described as the Bush
    Administration’s "every effort to play down Israel's role in the future
    military conflict...to remove any suspicion that the decision to go to
    war with Iraq is a pro-Israeli...step.

    "But, as hard as the administration tries," he wrote, "the voices
    linking Israel to the war are getting louder and louder. It is claimed
    the desire to help Israel is the major reason for President George Bush
    sending American soldiers to a superfluous war in the Gulf."
    9

    The loudest among them may have been the free-swinging old line
    "conservative," Pat Buchanan who charged "that a cabal of polemicists
    and public officials seek to ensnare our country in a series of wars
    that are not in America's interests... What these neoconservatives seek
    is to conscript American blood to make the world safe for Israel,"
    Buchanan wrote in the March 24 issue of the magazine he edits, the
    American Conservative. Because of his history of advocating right-wing
    causes, his comments were largely ignored by the forces mobilizing
    against the war.

    Another of those voices was syndicated columnist Robert Novak who
    several months earlier had written that "in private conversation with...
    members of Congress, the former general [Sharon] leaves no doubt that
    the greatest U.S. assistance to Israel would be to overthrow Saddam
    Hussein's Iraqi regime. That view is widely shared inside the Bush
    administration, and is a major reason why U.S. forces today are
    assembling for war." 10

    Support for a U.S. attack on Iraq was not limited to Sharon or his Likud
    Party:

    In a September 12 dialogue with Rabbi William Berkowitz at

    the Center for Jewish History, former Israeli Labor prime minister and
    then foreign minister Shimon Peres was asked what he thought of the
    administration’s response to Iraq. Peres, likening the situation to the
    next world war, replied:

    "Why speak about an attack when you are defending freedom as you did in
    World War I, World War II and now in [World War] III?.....I don't think
    this is a campaign against Iraq, neither their people nor the land, but
    against a terrible killer, a dictator who already initiated two
    aggressive wars - one against Muslim Iran for seven years at a cost of 1
    million [lives] and against an Arab Kuwait..... Who saved Kuwait? The
    Arab League? You gave Japan an improved Japan, and you gave Germany a
    better Germany and the Marshall Plan. I believe the strength of freedom
    is equal to the strength of the United States. I don't see anybody doing
    the job. So I justify the American position fully. The president speaks
    loud and clear." 11

    One may speculate whether Powell would have raised the issue had he not
    been asked but apparently he felt the need to clear the air following an
    uproar that occurred ten days earlier when Virginia Democratic
    Congressman Jim Moran claimed that: "If it were not for the strong
    support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we wouldn't be
    doing this." 12

    As could be expected, his comment was condemned by the White House and
    congressional Democratic leaders including Senate Minority leader Tom
    Daschle and Democratic House Whip Nancy Pelosi, two long-time loyal
    devotees of the Israeli cause. Six local rabbis and Washington Post
    columnist Marc Fisher called on him to resign, with the latter comparing
    the congressman's remarks to a speech Adolf Hitler delivered to the
    German parliament in 1939, accusing "Jewish financiers" of plunging
    Europe into a world war. 13

    "Moran is symptomatic of a problem that we have been watching for
    several weeks and months," lamented Abraham Foxman, national director of
    the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), "and that is that the charge that the
    Jews are instigators and advocators of military action has moved from
    the extreme into the mainstream," This shift, he added, is emboldening
    people such as Moran to "have the chutzpah to say such things."

    "It's out there and therefore we are concerned," Foxman said. "If, God
    forbid, the war is not successful and the body bags come back, who's to
    blame?" 14

    Fueling such anxieties, the Jewish weekly Forward noted, was "the
    increasing media focus on the White House’s concern with protecting
    Israel and the views of Jewish hawks within the administration."
    15

    While the mainstream press condemned Moran’s remarks, columnist Michael
    Kinsley 16 pointed out that "The thunderous rush of
    politicians of all stripes to denounce Moran's remarks as complete
    nonsense might suggest to the suspicious mind that they are not complete
    nonsense" and that Jewish organizations were being hypocritical since
    they were posting comments on their own web sites lauding the Israel
    lobby's ability to get things done. Wrote Kinsley:

    .... Moran is not the only one publicly exaggerating the power and
    influence of the Zionist lobby these days. It is my sad duty to report
    that this form of anti-Semitism seems to have infected one of the most
    prominent and respected-one might even say influential-organizations in
    Washington. This organization claims that "America's pro-Israel
    lobby"-and we all know what "pro-Israel" is a euphemism for-has
    tentacles at every level of government and society.

    On its Web site, this organization paints a lurid picture of Zionists
    spreading their party line and even indoctrinating children. And yes,
    this organization claims that the influence of the Zionist lobby is
    essential to explaining the pro-Israel tilt of U.S. policy in the Middle
    East. It asserts that the top item on the Zionist "agenda" is curbing
    the power of Saddam Hussein. (emphasis added) The Web site also contains
    a shocking collection of Moran-type remarks from leading American
    politicians. 17

    The site he was referring to is that of AIPAC, the American-Israel
    Public Affairs Committee, Israel’s official Washington lobbying arm
    that, which, in testament to its power, is generally referred to in the
    halls of Congress simply as "the lobby."

    From a one-man office when it was founded 50 years ago, AIPAC has grown
    into an organization of 85,000 members with activists in every Jewish
    community in the United States. Each Spring it holds a national
    three-day conference in Washington. "It’s climatic Congressional Dinner
    attracts hundreds of congress members and dozens of foreign
    ambassadors," writes Forward editor J.J. Goldberg "all of them eager to
    curry good will with AIPAC and the Jewish community. Lest the point be
    lost, the dinner chairperson always reads a ‘roll call’ naming every
    senator, every representative, and ambassador present in the hall...
    followed by private receptions by lawmakers courting Jewish campaign
    support." 18 The organization does not contribute money to
    candidates directly but advises numerous Jewish PACs and wealthy Jewish
    donors as to the campaigns where their money might be the most useful to
    Israel.

    AIPAC holds similar conferences, but on a smaller scale, around the
    country in the winter, with local officials from the respective regions
    being honored as invited guests.

    It so happened that AIPAC’s annual conference last year followed the
    Iraq invasion by a week. Since " AIPAC is wont to support whatever is
    good for Israel, and so long as Israel supports the war," wrote
    Ha’aretz's Guttmann, "so too do the thousands of the AIPAC lobbyists who
    convened in the American capital." 19

    The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank did not go quite that far, but noted
    that the meeting put a spotlight on the Bush administration's "delicate
    dance with Israel and the Jewish state's friends over the attack on
    Iraq". While, "officially," he wrote, AIPAC had no position on the
    merits of a war against Iraq before it started, as delegates were
    heading to town, the group put a headline on its Web site proclaiming:
    "Israeli Weapons Utilized By Coalition Forces Against Iraq." The item
    featured a photograph of a drone with the caption saying the
    "Israeli-made Hunter Unmanned Aerial Vehicle" is being used "by U.S.
    soldiers in Iraq." 20

    A parade of Israeli as well as top Bush administration officials
    --Powell, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, political director
    Kenneth Mehlman, Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton, one of the rare
    non-Jewish neocons, and Assistant Secretary of State William Burns --
    appeared before the AIPAC audience. The meeting, attended by about 5,000
    people, according to Milbank, including half the Senate and a third of
    the House -- was reportedly planned long before it became clear it would
    coincide with hostilities in Iraq. "This is not about Iraq," AIPAC
    spokesman Josh Block insisted. "This is about going to Congress and
    lobbying for the Israeli aid package." 21

    House Whip Pelosi, who had reversed her early tepid opposition to the
    war and was now on the bandwagon, made a point of condemning anyone who
    sought "to place responsibility for this conflict on the American Jewish
    community." In her speech to AIPAC, she expressed America’s "unshakable
    bond" with Israel in a variety of ways at least a dozen times. Echoing
    the neocon agenda, she condemned "Syria’s and Iran’s bankrolling of
    terror and the development of weapons of mass destruction" which she
    declared to be "a clear and present danger." 22

    There was déjà vu atmosphere about the AIPAC gathering. A dozen years
    earlier, following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, AIPAC leaders acknowledged
    that the lobby "had worked in tandem with the [first] Bush
    administration to win passage of a resolution authorizing the president
    to commit U.S. troops to combat." A Wall Street Journal article at the
    time noted that the "behind-the-scenes campaign avoided AIPAC’s
    customary high profile in the Capitol and relied on activists-calling
    sometimes from Israel itself-to contact lawmakers and build on public
    endorsements by major Jewish organizations."

    "Yes, we were active," AIPAC’s director Tom Dine, told the paper. "These
    are the great issues of our time. If you sit on the sidelines you have
    no voice." 23

    And, to be sure, money had its role with Democrats who had benefited
    from large contributions form pro-Israel PACs being among the swing
    votes. Having "pro-Israel liberals behind the resolution made it easier
    to hold moderate Republicans as well." 24

    While the U.S. Congress was divided over going to war in 1990, "there is
    one place in the world which is longing for war, said retired Major
    General Matti Peled, a former Knesset Member and, before his death, a
    leader of the Israeli peace camp, "and that is Israel... Every
    commentator finds it his duty to join the party of the war-mongers.
    Arrogant statements about the slowness of the Americans are heard every
    day." 25

    Anti-war activists paid no attention to such statements or to the
    activities of the Israel lobby then nor have they since. 26,
    While they chanted "No Blood for Oil!," in national protests on October
    25th, Kinsley, a mainstream liberal, described the situation as "the
    proverbial elephant in the room....Everybody sees it, no one mentions
    it." 27

    A month before the war, the Forward’s Ami Eden, commenting on Kinsley’s
    piece noted that what was "once only whispered in back rooms... [was]
    lately splashed in bold characters across the mainstream media, over
    Jewish and Israeli influence in shaping American foreign policy."

    "In recent weeks," he wrote, "the Israeli-Jewish elephant has been on a
    rampage, trampling across the airwaves and front pages of respected
    media outlets, including the Washington Post, The New York Times, the
    American Prospect, the Washington Times, the Economist, the New York
    Review of Books, CNN and MSNBC.

    "For its encore," he added, "the proverbial pachyderm plopped itself...
    smack in the middle of "Meet the Press," NBC's top-rated Sunday morning
    news program." 28

    It occurred on February 23, when host Tim Russert read from a February
    14 column by veteran journalist Arnaud de Borchgrave, editor at large of
    the Washington Times, who argued that the "strategic objective" of
    senior Bush administration officials was to secure Israel's borders by
    launching a crusade against its enemies in the Arab world. One of
    Russert’s guests was Richard Perle, at the time, chairman of the Defense
    Policy Board, a key advisory panel to the Pentagon, as well as a fellow
    of the influential pro-Israel, American Enterprise Institute. Of,
    perhaps, even more significance, Perle had been a founder of JINSA, the
    Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs, a little known neo-con
    think tank that will be examined later in the article. Russert turned to
    Perle and addressed the question: "Can you assure American viewers
    across our country that we're in this situation against Saddam Hussein
    and his removal for American security interests?" And then came the
    bombshell: "And what would be the link in terms of Israel?" Both Perle
    and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, who has family in
    Israel, have been routinely described in the press as the "architects"
    of the war on Iraq, so the question was addressed to the right person.

    Clearly Perle was not prepared. Squirming slightly he replied: "Well,
    first of all, the answer is absolutely yes. Those of us who believe that
    we should take this action if Saddam doesn't disarm -- and I doubt that
    he's going to-- believe it's in the best interests of the United States.
    I don't see what would be wrong with surrounding Israel with
    democracies; indeed, if the whole world were democratic, we'd live in a
    much safer international security system because democracies do not wage
    aggressive wars."

    I’ll leave that contradiction for another time and note, as did the
    Forward’s Eden, that:

    "...it was a startling question, especially when directed at Perle, the
    poster boy- along with Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and
    Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith - for anti-semitic critics who
    insist the United States is being pulled into war by pro-Likud Jewish
    advisers on orders from Jerusalem.

    But Russert is no David Duke, nor even a Patrick Buchanan. If Russert is
    asking the question on national television, then the toothpaste is out
    of the tube: The question has entered the discourse in elite Washington
    circles and is now a legitimate query to be floated in polite company."

    29

    In a length front page story, the Washington Post’s Robert Kaiser
    described what appeared to be an unprecedented political partnership
    between Ariel Sharon and George W. Bush, headlined "Bush and Sharon
    Nearly Identical On Mideast Policy."

    "Over the past dozen years or more,." Kaiser wrote, "supporters of
    Sharon's Likud Party have moved into leadership roles in most of the
    American Jewish organizations that provide financial and political
    support for Israel." 30 *

    The leadership does not necessarily reflect overall Jewish opinion. A
    poll to gauge Jewish opinions on the war - conducted a month before it
    broke out - found that 56 percent of Jews were supportive of the war
    which corresponded to that of the general public. The rate was said to
    be even higher immediately afterward, corresponding to increased support
    for the war among the American populace in general. 31

    Concern about appearances, however, had earlier led members of the
    Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish American Organizations, a
    Jewish umbrella group with 52 member organizations, to refrain from
    taking a bellicose stand.

    "Just as we have not issued a public statement, we do not think it's the
    right time for the Presidents Conference to issue a public statement
    either," American Jewish Committee executive director David Harris told
    the Forward in October of 2002. "Our interest here is to not be out
    ahead of the administration." (Emphasis added)

    In contrast, the liberal American Jewish Congress had no such
    reservations. "The final statement ought to be crystal clear in backing
    the president having to take unilateral action if necessary against Iraq
    to eliminate weapons of mass destruction," Jack Rosen, president of the
    American Jewish Congress, told the paper. The AJCongress had already
    issued its own position supporting the "U.S. administration in its
    stated position to intervene in Iraq to ensure that Iraq is no longer a
    threat." 32

    But already, in March of 2002, Mortimer Zuckerman, the chair of the
    Jewish President’s conference and editor publisher of U.S. News and
    World Report and the N.Y. Daily News, had made his position clear, He
    was supporting the administration’s budding plan to remove Saddam:

    The next target in the war’s phase, clearly, will be Iraq. The West’s
    lackluster efforts at nonproliferation have done little more than delay
    the inevitable-a Baghdad with nuclear weapons...The United States is
    prepared to take the risks, and is right to do so, in forcing a change
    in Iraq. 33

    By late October, he was eager to get it on:

    The only way to force Iraq to get rid of its terrible weapons is to rid
    the country of the regime that builds them. Washington must not pause...
    in its push to depose Saddam... We are in a war against terrorism, and
    we must fight that war in a time and place of our choosing. The war’s
    next phase, clearly, is Iraq. 34

    Zuckerman would write six more editorials in the weeks leading up to the
    war, each more emphatic than the one before in calling for Saddam’s
    head. If Zuckerman’s opinions carried unusual weight, it was because the
    Conference of Presidents is the Jewish body whose task it is to lobby
    the White House and the Executive branch while AIPAC focuses on
    Congress.

    As could be expected, accusations that Israel and its supporters within
    the government were orchestrating U.S. policy towards Iraq led to
    accusations of anti-semitism and raised questions as to what extent
    criticism of Israel, American Jews and Jewish officials working in the
    White House would be tolerated. Lawrence Kaplan, senior editor of the
    New Republic, declared that references to Jewish and Israeli pro-war
    pressure were reminiscent of Buchanan's claims in 1990 that only
    soldiers with non-Jewish names would be killed in a war being pushed
    solely by Israel and its American "amen corner." 35 The ADL’s
    Foxman told the Forward that while it was legitimate to raise questions
    concerning the pro-Israel leanings of certain administration officials
    it was obligatory to note that not all the hawks were Jewish and it was
    most definitely not kosher to portray these individuals and Jewish
    organizations as composing "a shadowy Jewish conspiracy that controls
    American foreign policy." "It is an old canard that Jews control America
    and American foreign policy," Foxman said. "During both world wars,
    anti-semites said that Jews manipulated America into war. So when you
    begin to hear it again, there is good reason for us to be aware of it
    and sensitive to it." 36 Foxman was correct regarding the
    world wars but this time there seems to be more than enough proof that a
    significant number of Jewish aficionados of Israel played a decisive
    part in getting the U.S. to invade and occupy Iraq.

    Retired General Anthony Zinni, former head of the military’s Central
    Command which includes the Middle East, appeared to be on the same page
    as Mathahir. Zinni first raised questions about attacking Iraq in 1998,
    suggesting that a "fragmented, chaotic Iraq... could happen if this
    isn't done carefully [which] is more dangerous in the long run than a
    contained Saddam is now," a warning that caused Wolfowitz, then a dean
    at Johns Hopkins, but active behind the scenes, to attack him in print.

    Zinni was simply reiterating what had been the policy of the first Bush
    administration and that prior to the attack on Saddam had been repeated
    not only by former members of the elder Bush’s cabinet such as Secretary
    of State James Baker, and National Security Advisor Brent Snowcroft, but
    by the elder Bush himself.

    (This is worth noting because the first Bush and members of his
    administration had strong ties to the oil producing countries and the
    industry and had this truly been "a war for oil" they could have been
    expected to support it. As it happened, those who insisted that it was
    about oil, ignored this apparent flaw in their argument.)

    As the Washington Post reported, "The more he listened to Wolfowitz and
    other administration officials talk about Iraq, the more Zinni became
    convinced that interventionist "neoconservative" ideologues were
    plunging the nation into a war in a part of the world they didn't
    understand.

    I think the American people were conned into this... I don't know where
    the neocons came from -- that wasn't the platform they ran on...
    Somehow, the neocons captured the president. They captured the vice
    president. 37

    Zinni is a harder target for the U.S. media than Mathahir so most of the
    pro-war shills in the mainstream media chose to ignore him. Not,
    however, Joel Mowbray, a right-wing ideologue from the National Review
    whose attack on Zinni appeared on line:

    Discussing the Iraq war with the Washington Post last week, former
    General Anthony Zinni took the path chosen by so many anti-Semites: he
    blamed it on the Jews...

    "Technically, the former head of the Central Command in the Middle East
    didn’t say ‘Jews.’ He instead used a term that has become a new favorite
    for anti-Semites: ‘neoconservatives.’ As the name implies,
    ‘neoconservative’ was originally meant to denote someone who is a
    newcomer to the right. In the 90’s, many people self-identified
    themselves as ‘neocons,’ but today that term has become synonymous with
    ‘Jews.’ 38

    Despite Mowbray’s assertion that to criticize the neo-cons is thinly
    disguised anti-semitism, he is correct in noting that the term has
    become synonymous with a certain group of Jews. The miniscule handful
    that are not, such as former CIA chief James Woolsey, long-time
    Washington insider Frank Gaffney, former Congressman Newt Gingrich and
    Undersecretary of State John Bolton, are unabashed Israeliophiles.

    Russian-born Max Boot, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and
    a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard, a veritable neocon house
    organ, did not wait for Zinni’s comments to realize that the inevitable
    criticism of the neocons’ role in producing the Iraq quagmire had to be
    stopped.

    It is a "malicious myth," that the "Bush administration is pursuing a
    neoconservative foreign policy." Boot wrote in Foreign Affairs. "If only
    it were true!" Showing contempt for the intelligence of his readers, he
    trotted out one of the weaker argument the neocons have used in their
    defense, that while their numbers in the Bush administration "seems
    impressive, it also reveals that the neocons have no representatives in
    the administration's top tier." 39(Bush advisor Karl Rove is technically
    not there either, but no one would argue that he carries no clout with
    the president).

    "The contention that the neocon faction gained the upper hand in the
    White House has a superficial plausibility," wrote Boot, "because the
    Bush administration toppled Saddam Hussein and embraced democracy
    promotion [sic] in the Middle East," but these policies, he would have
    us believe, are not the result of neocon cajoling, but rather an
    outgrowth of the September 11 attacks and the decision by Bush that the
    U.S. "no longer could afford a 'humble' foreign policy." That’s their
    spin. Let’s see how well it holds up in the light of the facts.

    The neocon movement arose during the early 1970s among a small group of
    disgruntled liberals and former Trotskyists, some of whom had studied
    under Professor Leo Strauss at the University of Chicago. The group was
    almost exclusively Jewish, and was defined by "their attachment to
    Israel [and to] the Reaganite right's hard-line anti-communism,
    commitment to American military strength, and willingness to intervene
    politically and militarily in the affairs of other nations to promote
    democratic [sic] values (and American interests)," all of which "would
    guarantee Israel's security." 40

    They were opposed as well to the Nixon administration's policy of
    détente and the easing of tensions with the Soviet Union which meant
    U.S. acquiescence to its influence over the East Bloc states. The
    neocons wanted to challenge the Soviets through a massive build-up of
    this country's military strength and a willingness to use American power
    to further America’s hegemonic interests, not dissimilar, as we shall
    see, to the agenda of the Project for a New American Century.

    The neocons became in effect the intellectual arm of the Reagan
    administration...[Elliot] Abrams, as undersecretary of state for Latin
    American affairs, was a key figure in the effort to counter the
    Sandinistas in Nicaragua..., Perle... spearheaded the drive to deploy
    Pershing missiles in Western Europe [and] the overall guru formulating
    these policies was Paul Wolfowitz.

    Well, the same team is back guiding the decisions of the Bush
    administration in its war against terrorism and in challenging Iraq to
    give up its weapons of mass destruction. Judging by his past record,
    Abrams can be expected to be a strong advocate for linking Israel's war
    against terrorism to America's war in muscular terms made familiar by
    the neocons. 41

    Quite a different appraisal than that offered by Boot.

    There is probably no more appropriate place to begin our probe of the
    neocons than with Perle who came to be known as "The Prince of Darkness"
    while serving as Deputy Secretary of Defense in the Reagan
    administration and who has been described by Joshua Micah Marshall as
    the neocons’ eminence grise," whose "acolytes..are also Jewish,
    passionately pro-Israel, and pro-Likud. And all are united by a shared
    idea: that America should be unafraid to use its military power early
    and often to advance its interest and values." 42

    Since the invasion of Iraq, Perle has been involved in several scandals,
    including a conflict of interest situation which caused him to resign as
    chair of the Defense Policy Board, but remain as a member. I will,
    however, limit this article to examining his role in fomenting the
    present war in Iraq.

    To do so, we need to go back to 1975 and the administration of Gerald
    Ford. In that year, Ford, like Richard Nixon before him, tried his hand
    at achieving a Middle East peace settlement and was confronted with an
    intransigent Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin, then in his first tour
    of office.

    In March of that year, exasperated with Israel’s behavior, Ford had made
    a speech calling for a "reassessment" of U.S. policy towards Israel On
    the advice of his secretary of state, none other than Henry Kissinger,
    Ford "conspicuously delayed delivery of weapons to Israel, including the
    F-15 fighter plane [and] suspended negotiations for pending financial
    and military aid to Israel" 43

    Within White House circles, a consensus for a peace plan was emerging
    that "looked very much like UN Resolution 242 and the Rogers Plan" that
    would have required Israel to return to its pre-1967 borders, with
    provisions that its security would be guaranteed. The idea was for
    President Ford to make a major speech, spelling out America’s basic
    interests in the Middle East and those interests required Israel’s
    withdrawal. 44

    It was not to be. As J.J. Goldberg noted in his book, Jewish Power,
    "Rabin and his aides entered the Kissinger negotiations as hard
    bargainers with a clear sense of the bottom line...And one of the most
    potent weapons at their disposal was the American Jewish community..."
    45

    Two years before, after the end of what the Israelis describe as the Yom
    Kippur War, with an Arab oil embargo causing gasoline shortages and
    widespread resentment around the country, the General Assembly of the
    Council of Jewish Federations voted to launch an emergency
    public-relations campaign in behalf of Israel. It would be endowed with
    a $3 million emergency public-relations fund and administered by a
    special task force on Israel. The campaign would combine the "national
    clout and know-how of the major [Jewish] agencies with the local
    resources of the federations and community-relations councils"
    46

    As Goldberg describes it, "President Ford was the first to taste its
    power, when he spoke about his ‘reassessment’ of U.S.-Israel relations.
    Within six weeks, Ford gave up the idea after 76 senators signed a
    letter, drafted by AIPAC, demanding that he "back off." 47
    The letter’s key paragraph put the president on notice that:

    within the next several weeks, the Congress expects to receive your
    foreign aid requests for fiscal year 1976. We trust that your
    recommendations will be responsive to Israel’s urgent military and
    economic needs. We urge you to make it clear, as we do, that the United
    States acting in its own national interests stands firmly with Israel in
    search for peace in future negotiations and that this premise is the
    basis of the current reassessment of U.S. policy in the Middle East.
    48

    Senator Charles Mathias, (R-MD) acknowledged that due to lobbying
    pressure, "Seventy-six of us promptly affixed our signatures although no
    hearings had been held, no debate conducted, nor had the administration
    been invited to present its views. Mathias added that "as a result of
    the activities of the [Israel[ lobby, congressional conviction has been
    measurably reinforced by the knowledge that political sanctions will be
    applied by any who fail to deliver." 49

    Despite their victory in this situation, certain Jewish supporters of
    Israel in Washington were determined that such a potential crisis in
    U.S.-Israel relations would not to be allowed to happen again. Enter
    Perle and JINSA, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.

    As a staffer for Democratic Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson in 1972, Perle
    had been working with others in Washington to draft a law linking
    U.S.-Soviet trade relations to the right of Jews to emigrate from the
    Soviet Union. 50

    Much to the displeasure of President Nixon and Secretary of State
    Kissinger 51 who saw the resulting Jackson-Vanik amendment as
    interference in the president’s ability to determine foreign policy,
    their effort would ultimately prove successful. Now, in 1976, it appears
    that Perle had a larger goal: to insure that the maintenance of the
    military power and security of Israel would become an integral part of
    U.S. foreign policy.

    JINSA’s actual origins are as murky as the activities it carries out,
    but the organization that Perle established together with Max Kampelman,
    "an arms control negotiator whose old law firm is a U.S. agent for
    Israeli government military interests." 52 was the precursor
    of the more well known Project for a New American Century and the well
    from which has emerged the collection of Jewish neocons and their fellow
    travelers whose signatures and thumb prints are all over America’s
    current adventure in Iraq as well as its threats against Syria and Iran.

    According to its web site, JINSA has a two-fold mandate:

    1. To educate the American public about the importance of an effective
    defense capability so that our vital interests as Americans can be
    safeguarded and

    2. To inform the American defense and foreign affairs community about
    the important role Israel can and does play in bolstering democratic
    interests in the Mediterranean and the Middle East.

    Its activities in behalf of the first mandate it has done out of the
    public’s view. Other than the Wall Street Journal article in 1992,
    JINSA’s existence was virtually unknown even to the political left until
    an article by Jason Vest appeared in the Nation in September, 2002.
    53

    It is JINSA’s second mandate that demands our attention. "Under a
    program called "Send a General to Israel," hundreds of thousands of
    dollars of tax-deductible contributions bankroll an annual tour of
    Israel by retired U.S. generals and admirals." 54 Judging
    from a look at JINSA’s board of advisers, at least 25 of these
    ex-generals and retired admirals have subsequently been recruited into
    the organization as have executives from a number of the major arms
    manufacturers. Consequently, it was no surprise when a JINSA protégé,
    former General Jay Garner, was named the first U.S. pro-consul in Iraq
    following the fall of the regime.

    As Vest noted:

    "almost every retired officer who sits on JINSA's board of advisers or
    has participated in its Israel trips or signed a JINSA letter works or
    has worked with military contractors who do business with the Pentagon
    and Israel. While some keep a low profile as self-employed 'consultants'
    and avoid mention of their clients, others are less shy about their
    associations." 55

    In other words, what JINSA represents can best be described as the
    Military-Industrial-Israeli complex.

    Sitting on its board, in addition, are such public figures as former UN
    ambassador Jean Kirkpatrick, former CIA chief James Woolsey , former
    Congressman Jack Kemp, Michael Ledeen, an un-indicted co-conspirator in
    the Iran-Contra affair and former Congressman Stephen Solarz, a very
    important player who we will look at later in the article, and, of
    course, Perle.

    Of all those recruited into the ranks of JINSA, none would be prove to
    be more important than Dick Cheney, the former congressman who served as
    Secretary of Defense in the first Bush administration.

    Looking towards the future, JINSA makes sure it is not just generals and
    admirals who get the grand tour. It also provides a study program in
    Israel for cadets and midshipmen from the Naval Academy, West Point and
    the Air Force Academy, from whose ranks will come the next generation of
    generals and admirals.

    It should be noted that both of these programs are in keeping with the
    practice of Jewish organizations and federations across the country that
    routinely send public officials, such as mayors, supervisors, city
    councilors, police chiefs, etc.--the pool from which future members of
    Congress are likely to arise-on all expense paid trips to Israel,
    thereby virtually assuring their support for the Jewish statee in the
    future. No base is left uncovered.

    JINSA has been "industrious and persistent," writes Vest, and has
    "managed to weave a number of issues -- support for national missile
    defense, opposition to arms control treaties, championing of wasteful
    weapons systems, arms aid to Turkey and American unilateralism in
    general -- into a hard line, with support for the Israeli right at its
    core."

    On no issue, he points out is the organization’s "hard line more evident
    than in its relentless campaign for war -- not just with Iraq, but
    ‘total war,’ as Ledeen, one of the most influential JINSAns in
    Washington, put it [in 2001]. For this crew, "’regime change’ by any
    means necessary in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian
    Authority is an urgent imperative." 56

    Interviewed for David Horowitz’s Front Page web site at the year’s end
    Ledeen’s message had not changed.

    When asked about the Israel-Palestine conflict, Ledeen disingenuously
    replied:

    "I don't follow it, as you know," then added that "I don't think it is
    possible for anyone to do anything meaningful about it until we have
    defeated the terror masters in Tehran, Damascus and Riyadh, because the
    terrorism against Israel gets a lot of support from those evil people.
    In other words, you can't solve it in situ, it's part of a regional war.
    Maybe, once we have liberated the Middle East and the peoples have a
    chance to make their own decisions, it will be easier." 57

    Those in government who dissent and who insist that differences may
    exist between the security interests of the United States and those of
    Israel can expect to be publicly trashed and called on the carpet by an
    Israeli-friendly Congressional committee - whether it is Powell or
    someone from the State Department, from the CIA or the military or
    ex-military as in the case of General Zinni.

    If there was a single "smoking gun" that led to accusations against the
    neocons that the attack on Iraq was a war for Israel, it was the
    revelation that in 1996, Perle directed a task force that included two
    other high ranking American Jewish neocons, current Undersecretary of
    Defense Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser, senior adviser to John Bolton,
    Under-Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, that
    produced a white paper for then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
    Netanyahu. It was entitled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing
    the Realm" and the name referred to putting an end to Israel’s
    negotiating with the Palestinians and the concept of trading land for
    peace.

    The paper, which might have been lifted from JINSA’s web site, advocated
    the overthrow by Israel of Saddam Hussein as the beginning of an Israeli
    policy to redraw the map of the Middle East in Israel’s favor, a task
    that is now, apparently being carried out by U.S. soldiers in Israel’s
    behalf. This effort, it said, "can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from
    power in Iraq... Iraq's future could affect the strategic balance in the
    Middle East profoundly."

    "Whoever inherits Iraq dominates the entire Levant strategically," said
    the paper, which was commissioned by the Jerusalem-based Institute for
    Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS), where Wurmser was
    working at the time. Presumably Israel was to have a say as to who would
    do the dominating.

    Well before 9-11 and before the junior Bush could even formulate the
    thought, the paper called for "reestablishing the principle of
    preemption."

    It didn’t stop there. "Israel can shape its strategic environment...by
    weakening, containing and even rolling back Syria by sponsoring proxy
    attacks in Lebanon and striking at selected targets in Syria. "Given the
    nature of the regime in Damascus," the paper argued, "it is both natural
    and moral that Israel abandon the slogan "comprehensive peace" and move
    to contain Syria, drawing attention to its weapons of mass destruction
    program, and rejecting "land for peace" deals on the Golan Heights."

    But what surely must raise the question of "dual loyalties," a charge
    which quickly subjects the questioner to accusations of "anti-semitism"
    from Jewish organizations are statements such as this that appear in the
    text:

    "We have for four years pursued peace based on a New Middle East. We in
    Israel cannot play innocents abroad in a world that is not innocent.
    Peace depends on the character and behavior of our foes. We live in a
    dangerous neighborhood, with fragile states and bitter rivalries.
    Displaying moral ambivalence between the effort to build a Jewish
    state and the desire to annihilate it by trading 'land for peace'
    will not secure 'peace now'. Our claim to the land -to which we
    have clung for hope for 2000 years--is legitimate and noble. It is not
    within our own power, no matter how much we concede, to make
    peace unilaterally. Only the unconditional acceptance by Arabs of
    our rights, especially in their territorial dimension, 'peace
    for peace', is a solid basis for the future." (Emphasis in original)
    58

    In 1999, Wurmser would publish a book (with a foreword by Perle) called
    "Tyranny's Ally: America's Failure to Defeat Saddam

    Hussein." It provides a detailed description of a dramatically improved
    Middle East, from the hawk point of view, after regime change in Iraq.

    With the invasion of Iraq, it became apparent to some in Israel, that
    the U.S. had adopted the Clean Break crew’s agenda. Within a week of the
    invasion, former Israeli Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz, now his country’s
    Defense Minister, was calling for the U.S. to neutralize all those
    countries in the region with whom Israel had not signed a peace treaty.
    59

    Two weeks later, Mofaz was still singing that tune, as Ha’aretz’s Brad
    Burston wrote:

    "That while Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld took on Syria in an
    oratorical shock and awe campaign this week, Israel gave signs of what
    it would like to see Washington do to bring Damascus to heel, and what
    the Jewish state could gain from the effort. The Americans have taken
    out a 'yellow card' on them, and were right to do so." 60

    Mofaz was referring to a soccer referee's warning card for players who
    have broken the rules of the game, and, if infractions continue, may be
    expelled.

    According to Burston, Mofaz "set out a long list of demands he said the
    [U.S.] administration would be asked to press on Syria."

    Mofaz’s statements attracted the attention of the Financial Times of
    London which reported that even: "Before the war against Iraq was
    launched, members of Israel's rightwing government had been open in
    expressing their hope that the U.S. would next turn its attention to
    Syria, saying it harbors anti-Israeli militant groups, and also to Iran,
    for providing weapons and military support to such groups."
    61

    The article quoted from an interview that Mofaz had given to the Israeli
    daily Maariv in which he said, "We have a long list of issues that we
    are thinking of demanding of the Syrians and it is proper that it should
    be done through the Americans."

    "It starts from removing the Hezbollah threat from southern Lebanon."
    and for "an end to Iranian aid to Hezbollah through Syrian ports."

    The headlines in the Israeli press made no effort to hide the
    government’s agenda, nor the Sharon government’s arrogance in expressing
    it.

    Mofaz was not just speaking for himself. Less than a month into the
    invasion of Iraq, beneath the headline, "Israel to U.S.: Now deal with
    Syria and Iran," Ha’aretz’s Aluf Benn, wrote:

    "Two of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's senior aides will go to Washington
    for separate talks this week and suggest that the United States also
    take care of Iran and Syria because of their support for terror and
    pursuit of weapons of mass destruction." 62

    They must have been buoyed when in the week following the invasion,
    Secretary of State Powell announced to delegates at AIPAC’s annual
    conference, that Syria and Iran are "supporting terror groups" and will
    have to "face the consequences."

    Was it any wonder then that Israel’s first air raid on Syria in 30 years
    was greeted sympathetically by both the president and members of
    Congress? While "ostensibly, it was retaliation for an atrocious
    Palestinian suicide bombing;" in journalist David Hirst’s view, "it was
    also a blatant attempt by Israel to recast itself as an operational ally
    of the U.S. in ‘reshaping’ the region, and in punishing an autocratic
    regime in Damascus that, in the neocons’ view, was next for treatment."
    63

    So it is hardly a surprise that 2004 dawned with Syria in Washington’s
    cross-hairs. In what can only be described as a Pavlovian response to
    Israel’s wish list, both houses of Congress last year approved the
    Orwellian Syrian Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration
    Act.

    While technically calling for the Bush administration to apply sanctions
    against Syria if it does not cease support for what Israel and
    Washington consider to be terrorist organizations, eliminate what they
    allege to be its weapons of mass destruction, and end its occupation of
    part of Lebanon, the act essentially gives both Israel and the
    administration the go-ahead to do whatever either government wants to a
    country that has never attacked or ever posed a threat to the U.S. The
    votes, 389-4 in the House, and 89-4 in the Senate, should be an
    embarrassment to any country that pretends to be a democracy. And yet in
    the climate of an American election season, the significance of those
    votes has been almost completely ignored.

    Not only did passage of this act represent another major victory for the
    neocons it also served notice that their agenda had been adopted by the
    leading American Jewish organizations. Those that had any questions
    about it were content to keep them within the community.

    Without the presence of Cheney in the White House, the neocons’ road to
    power would have been far more difficult, and this is where his
    recruitment into JINSA paid off.

    In 1991, the organization had given him its "Distinguished Service
    Award" and he was declared to be "excellent" on issues of U.S.-Israeli
    security cooperation, according to JINSA’s director of special projects
    Shoshana Bryen. 64

    If he was a neocon at the time, he failed to show it, telling the Senate
    Budget Committee in February of 1990, "America should continue to anchor
    its strategy to the still-valid doctrines of flexible response, forward
    defense [and] security alliances... Even the extraordinary events of
    1989 do not mean that America should abandon this strategic foundation,"
    certainly a statement more Powell than Perle. 65

    By the time he became the Veep, however, he was firmly on board and
    feeling impregnable. News of Wurmser’s participation in the Clean Break
    project and questions raised in the press didn’t stop Cheney from adding
    him to his security staff last September, joining a team led by another
    Jewish neocon, national security adviser, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

    Wurmser, described in the Forward 66 as "a neoconservative
    scholar known for his close ties to the Israeli right... boasts a
    complex network of relationships to a variety of pro-Likud think tanks
    and activist groups [and] has frequently written articles arguing for a
    joint American-Israeli effort to undermine the Syrian regime."

    "The vice president undoubtedly chooses staff whose views are compatible
    with the policies of the administration," wrote Judith Kipper, a Middle
    East scholar with the Council on Foreign Relations, in an e-mail to the
    Forward. "The question is, how does the vice president's [national
    security staff] function in relation to the president's national
    security staff and how important policy decisions are made in the White
    House. While the vice president has a critical role to play, the secrecy
    surrounding his unusually large foreign-policy staff raises many
    questions which the American public needs answered." 67

    To this date, they haven’t been.

    Not only did Cheney bring Wurmser as well as Feith into the
    administration, "It was Cheney's choices [as opposed to Powell’s] that
    prevailed in the appointment of both cabinet and sub-cabinet
    national-security officials," as Jim Lobe has pointed out, including
    securing the Deputy Defense Secretary position for "his own protégé,
    Paul Wolfowitz. 68

    Libby, "a Wolfowitz protégé, is considered a far more skilled and
    experienced bureaucratic and political operator than [Condaleeza]Rice,"
    writes Lobe. "With several of his political allies on Rice's own staff -
    including deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley and Middle
    East director Elliott Abrams - Libby "is able to run circles around
    Condi," according to a former NSC official cited by Lobe.

    As former CIA agents Bill and Kathy Christison summed it, up "the Bush
    administration... is peppered with people who have long records of
    activism on behalf of Israel in the United States, of policy advocacy in
    Israel, and of promoting an agenda for Israel often at odds with
    existing U.S. policy. These people, who can fairly be called Israeli
    loyalists, are now at all levels of government, from desk officers at
    the Defense Department to the deputy secretary level at both State and
    Defense, as well as on the National Security Council staff and in the
    vice president's office." 69

    As noted earlier, Israel loyalists, outfitted as lobbyists, worked
    behind the scenes to drum up public and Congressional support for the
    first Gulf War and were happy when the U.S. started bombing Iraq in
    1991. They weren’t pleased with the results. Like their friends in
    Jerusalem, they had wanted Saddam taken out completely and the sanctions
    did not meet their standard of what was required. They did not spend
    their time writing letters to the editor.

    He has been called "Wolfowitz of Arabia" in jest by the New York Times’
    Maureen Dowd, 70 and, with respect, "the intellectual
    godfather of the war...its heart and soul" by Time’s Mark Thompson.
    71 If the war on Iraq is anybody’s war it is Paul
    Wolfowitz’s.

    Wolfowitz is also no stranger to Israel or to Israelis. As a teenager he
    lived briefly in Israel, his sister is married to an Israeli, and "he is
    friendly with Israel's generals and diplomats." 72 He is also
    "something of a hero to the heavily Jewish neoconservative movement" and
    a close friend of Perle’s. 73

    In 1992, as Under Secretary of Defense for policy in the Clinton
    administration, he supervised the drafting of the Defense Policy
    Guidance document. Having objected to what he considered the premature
    ending of the war, his new document, contained plans for further
    intervention in Iraq as an action necessary to assure "access to vital
    raw material, primarily Persian Gulf oil" and to prevent the
    proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and threats from terrorism.

    It called for preemptive attacks and since "collective action cannot be
    orchestrated," the U.S. should be ready to act alone. The primary goal
    of U.S. policy would be to prevent the rise of any nation that could
    challenge U.S. supremacy. The document was leaked to the New York Times,
    which condemned it as extreme and it was supposed to have been
    rewritten. As we will see, the original concepts are now part of the
    current National Security Strategy. 74

    In 1996, as noted above, the scene shifted to Israel and we had Perle,
    Feith and Wurmser preparing the Clean Break paper for Netanyahu when
    Bush Junior was four years from arriving in office.

    Then in September of 2002, during the buildup to the invasion, the
    Glasgow Sunday Herald reported that it had discovered "A secret
    blueprint for U.S. global domination [which] reveals that President Bush
    and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure
    regime change even before he took power in January 2001." 75
    What it was describing was the Project for a New American Century (PNAC)
    and it even had a web site which spelled out its plans until they were
    subsequently removed. That it was discovered by a Scottish newspaper was
    another telling commentary on the state of American journalism.

    Founded in June of 1997, following the Clean Break by a year, part of
    PNAC’s plan was for the U.S. to take control of the Gulf region with
    overwhelming and deadly military force. "While the unresolved conflict
    with Iraq provides the immediate justification," the PNAC document
    explains, "the need for a substantial American force presence in the
    Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."
    76

    As information about PNAC made its way slowly into the mainstream media,
    ABC Nightline’s Ted Koppel could no longer avoid it. On March 5th, he
    told his audience, that "Back in 1997, a group of Washington
    heavyweights, almost all of them neo-conservatives, formed an
    organization called the Project for the New American Century.

    They did what former government officials and politicians frequently do
    when they're out of power, they began formulating a strategy, in this
    case, a foreign policy strategy, that might bring influence to bear on
    the administration then in power, headed by President Clinton. Or
    failing that, on a new administration that might someday come to power.

    They were pushing for the elimination of Saddam Hussein. And proposing
    the establishment of a strong U.S. military presence in the Persian
    Gulf, linked to a willingness to use force to protect vital American
    interests in the Gulf.

    All of that might be of purely academic interest were it not for the
    fact that among the men behind that campaign were such names as, Dick
    Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz. What was, back in 1997,
    merely a theory, is now, in 2003, U.S. policy. Hardly a conspiracy, the
    proposal was out there for anyone to see. But certainly an interesting
    case study of how columnists, commentators, and think-tank intellectuals
    can, with time and the election of a sympathetic president, change the
    course of American foreign policy."

    There was something different about this operation, however. Politicians
    out of power may plot how to return to power, but this group was more
    than that. It had been organized and was largely being run by the Jewish
    neocons whose activities we have been following, plus neocon journalists
    and neocon think-tank members with a long history of connections to the
    Israeli right wing and whose faces and opinions dominate the TV screens
    when issues of U.S foreign policy are under discussion. And as indicated
    above it had the support of the leading American Jewish lobbying
    organizations.

    Heading up PNAC was William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, the
    leading journal of the neocons and Robert Kagan, a columnist for the
    magazine as well as for the Washington Post whose columns in the Post
    and whose joint columns with Kristol in the Weekly Standard have
    maintained a steady drumbeat for Washington to send more U.S. troops to
    Iraq and keep to its original unilateralist position.

    Asked by Koppell if "part of the, larger vision that you and your
    colleagues had, or have to this day, is the, removal, either by force or
    otherwise, of the current power structure in Iran?," Kristol replied :

    "I think that would be great. I hope we can do it otherwise. And I think
    we can do it otherwise than by force. I think getting, rid of Saddam
    would help there. But, no, we will have to leave American troops in that
    region, I think in Iraq for quite a while... It's a good investment. I
    think it helps keep stability in the area. And it helps strengthen the
    forces of freedom in the area..."

    In February of 1998, PNAC wanted to let President Clinton and the
    American public know its position on Iraq, but since, despite Koppel’s
    statement to the contrary, the group and its plans had not yet come to
    the public’s attention, it used the letterhead of the Committee for
    Peace and Security in the Gulf, a largely paper organization that had
    been put together in 1990 "to support President Bush's policy of
    expelling Saddam Hussein from Kuwait." It read, in part:

    "Seven years later, Saddam Hussein is still in power in Baghdad. And
    despite his defeat in the Gulf War, continuing sanctions, and the
    determined effort of UN inspectors to fetter out and destroy his weapons
    of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein has been able to develop biological
    and chemical munitions. To underscore the threat posed by these deadly
    devices, the Secretaries of State and Defense have said that these
    weapons could be used against our own people. And you have said that
    this issue is about "the challenges of the 21st Century.

    Iraq's position is unacceptable. While Iraq is not unique in possessing
    these weapons, it is the only country which has used them -- not just
    against its enemies, but its own people as well. We must assume that
    Saddam is prepared to use them again. This poses a danger to our
    friends, our allies, and to our nation.

    It is clear that this danger cannot be eliminated as long as our
    objective is simply "containment," and the means of achieving it are
    limited to sanctions and exhortations... Saddam must be overpowered; he
    will not be brought down by a coup d'etat..." 77

    The letter called on the president to "recognize a provisional
    government of Iraq based on the principles and leaders of the Iraqi
    National Congress (INC) that is representative of all the peoples of
    Iraq" (presumably incorporated in the person of their favorite, Ahmed
    Chalabi)...and providing it with the "logistical support to succeed.

    The signatories acknowledged that:

    "In the present climate in Washington, some may misunderstand and
    misinterpret strong American action against Iraq as having ulterior
    political motives. (My emphasis). We believe, on the contrary, that
    strong American action against Saddam is overwhelmingly in the national
    interest, that it must be supported, and that it must succeed... We urge
    you to provide the leadership necessary to save ourselves and the world
    from the scourge of Saddam and the weapons of mass destruction that he
    refuses to relinquish."

    Heading the list of over 40 signatures, and were its authors, Stephen
    Solarz and Perle with the rest, beginning with Elliot Abrams, following
    alphabetically. Among the others were both Feith and Wurmser, who at the
    time was heading the Middle East desk at the American Enterprise
    Institute. It included most of the board of JINSA and Wolfowitz, as well
    as soon to be Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld who must have become
    aware of the direction in which the center of power was moving and what
    opportunities it would provide.

    For those who believe the Iraq invasion was launched in Israel’s behalf,
    Solarz could well compete with the Clean Break Three to be the war’s
    poster-boy, given his record in Congress.

    Representing Brooklyn in 1980, Solarz sent a newsletter to his Jewish
    constituents, headlined "Delivering for Israel," in which he boasted how
    he was able to obtain an additional $660 million in aid for Israel under
    difficult circumstances. "It is a story," in Solarz’s own words, "of how
    legislative maneuvering and political persistence managed to prevail
    over fiscal constraints and bureaucratic resistance."

    What were the "fiscal restraints?" Solarz acknowledged that it was "a
    time of double digit inflation, with all sorts of domestic programs
    facing severe cutbacks in spending." After describing the ins and outs
    of his successful maneuvering, he reminded his constituents of his
    devotion to Israel:

    When I was first elected to Congress six years ago (1974) I deliberately
    sought an assignment on the Foreign Affairs Committee precisely because
    I wanted to be in a position to be helpful to Israel... it is only the
    members of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the House, and the Foreign
    Relations Committee in the Senate who are really in a position to make a
    difference where it counts-in the area of foreign aid upon which Israel
    is so dependent. 78

    For Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign, PNAC assembled a book, edited by
    Kristol and Kagan which seems to have been adopted as the agenda for the
    Bush administration. It as entitled "Present Dangers: Crisis and
    Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy" and among its
    contributors were the now familiar names of Perle, Wolfowitz, and
    Abrams. 79

    In his chapter on the Middle East, Abrams laid out the "peace through
    strength" concept and argues that U.S. military strength and its
    willingness to sue it will remain "a key factor in our ability to
    promote peace." He called for a pre-emptive toppling of Saddam, as did
    other contributors.

    "Strengthening our major ally in the region, Israel, should be the base
    of U.S. Middle East policy," wrote Abrams, "and we should not permit the
    establishment of a Palestinian state that does not explicitly uphold
    U.S. policy in the region."

    In their introductory chapter, on Regime Change, Kristol and Kagan
    selected Iraq, Iran, North Korea as well as China countries that needed
    to be confronted. They concluded that the U.S. will have to intervene
    abroad "even when we cannot prove that a narrowly construed 'vital
    interest' of the U.S. is at stake."

    In an op-ed piece in the New York Times, two years earlier Kristol and
    Kagan had argued that "Saddam Hussein must go" and to insure "that the
    Iraqi leader never again uses weapons of mass destruction, the only way
    to achieve that goal is to remove Mr. Hussein and his regime from
    power." According to Kristol and Kagan, the air strikes carried out by
    the Clinton administration under the "Iraq Liberation Act" were not
    enough to protect "our interests." 80 Whose interests they
    were referring to is open to question.

    As the San Francisco Bay Guardian’s Camille Taiara put it, "These
    interests were defined nine months later," when in another article in
    the Weekly Standard entitled "A Way to Oust Saddam", Kagan cited those
    incentives: the protection of "the safety of Israel, of modern Arab
    states and of the energy resources on which the United States and its
    allies depend." 81

    Ten days after the attack on the World Trade Center, an event that
    conveniently met the description of a "Pearl Harbor like attack" that
    PNAC said was needed to launch "the New American Century," the group
    issued an open letter to President Bush. What he needed to do, the
    letter said, was to take the anti-terror war beyond Afghanistan by
    removing Saddam Hussein, breaking ties with the Palestinian Authority,
    and to gear for action against Syria, Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The
    41 signatories on that letter included were largely the same as those
    who signed the letter to Clinton three years earlier, minus those who
    were now in the government.

    PNAC made no secret of its affinity for Israel. In a letter to Bush on
    April 3, 2002, he was commended for his:

    "..strong stance in support of the Israeli government as it engages in
    the present campaign to fight terrorism...no one should doubt that the
    U.S. and Israel share a common enemy. We are both targets of what you
    have correctly called an 'Axis of Evil.' [a term coined by Canadian
    Jewish neocon David Frum] Israel is targeted in part because it is our
    friend, and in part because it is an island of liberal democratic
    principles - American principles - in a sea of tyranny, intolerance and
    hatred. As Secretary of State [sic] Donald Rumsfeld has pointed out,
    Iran, Iraq and Syria are all engaged in 'inspiring and financing a
    culture of political murder and suicide bombing' against Israel, just as
    they have aided campaigns of terrorism against the U.S. over the past
    two decades...

    ...the U.S. should lend its full support to Israel as it seeks to root
    out the terrorist network that daily threatens the lives of Israeli
    citizens."

    The letter also urged Bush to accelerate plans for removing Saddam
    Hussein from power in Iraq. It had 34 signatories including the familiar
    neocons such as Perle, but this time there was the name of Norman
    Podhoretz, one of the godfathers of the movement. Also signing were
    Reagan appointee Ken Adelman, Kagan, Daniel Pipes, and former CIA
    director Woolsey.

    That letter came at a particularly critical moment as the Sharon
    government was receiving widespread international criticism for the
    Israeli army’s barbarous assault on the Palestinian refugee camp of
    Jenin and its destruction of the old city of Nablus. Under pressure from
    US allies, Bush was compelled to tell the Israeli prime minister,
    "Enough is enough" and to withdraw his troops. 82 The PNAC
    letter, however, combined with critical columns from long time
    Republican mainstays, William Safire and George Will, led the president
    to back down and to describe Sharon as "a man of peace" despite the
    prime minister’s refusal to pull out his forces. 83

    The last document in the neocons theoretical armor during the
    pre-assault period was "The National Security Strategy of the United
    States of America." "Wolfowitz's influence has been felt most keenly in
    President Bush's report" on the security strategy wrote Murray Friedman
    in the Forward. The report which was released on September 17, 2002

    in tone, specificity and gravity... echoes Wolfowitz's controversial
    recommendations in a 1992 "Defense Planning Guidance" draft leaked to
    the press and disavowed by the first Bush administration.

    As Friedman admiringly describes it,

    The national security strategy introduces as a primary tool and policy
    preemptory strikes, with international support when possible but without
    it when necessary. It carefully lays out the legal basis for preemption.

    The document unabashedly calls for American hegemony but simultaneously
    has a Wilsonian flavor in seeking to make this country a resource for
    human freedom in the world. The document clearly pulls out all the stops
    on the neoconservative internationalist argument from the days when it
    was first formulated. 84

    By then the neocons had already gone beyond putting words on paper. In
    the very first meeting of the Bush national-security team in January
    2001 after the president took the oath of office, Wolfowitz, the newly
    appointed deputy secretary of Defense reportedly raised the issue of
    invading Iraq, and officials all the way down the line started to get
    the message.

    In the days immediately following 9/11,as if it was preplanned,
    Wolfowitz quietly initiated a new operation in the Pentagon that was
    designated the Office of Special Plans (OSP). As exposed by Seymour
    Hersh, the group of policy advisers and analysts called themselves,
    "self-mockingly, the Cabal." 85

    Their goal was to produce "a skein of intelligence reviews that would
    help "to shape public opinion and American policy toward Iraq." While
    using data gathered by other intelligence agencies they heavily weighted
    information provided by the Iraqi National Congress, the exile group
    headed by Ahmad Chalabi, now of the leading power brokers in the
    American-appointed "Iraqi Governing Council".

    By the Fall of 2002, the operation rivaled the C.I.A. and the Pentagon’s
    own Defense Intelligence Agency, the D.I.A., as President Bush’s main
    source of intelligence regarding Iraq’s possible possession of weapons
    of mass destruction and connection with Al Queda.

    The director of the Special Plans operation is another neocon Abraham
    Shulsky, who Hersh describes as "a scholarly expert in the works of the
    political philosopher Leo Strauss." Shulsky had spent three decades
    working in the government on foreign policy issues, including a stint in
    the early Eighties under Perle in the Reagan Administration.

    The overall chief of the OSP is Under-Secretary of Defense William Luti,
    a retired Navy captain who was also an early advocate of military action
    against Iraq.

    Besides convincing the public that Iraq possessed weapons of mass
    destruction, a critical task of the neocons was to convince the American
    public that there was a link between Al Queda and Saddam. Their
    colleagues among the nation’s major syndicated columnists such as
    Safire, Will, Tom Friedman, Charles Krauthammer, Jeff Jacoby, and Paul
    Greenberg were all too willing accomplices. By the time, the U.S.
    launched its invasion, more than half of the public was convinced that
    Saddam had been behind the attacks.

    Typical was the comment of the New York Times’ Safire, who frequently
    brags of his close friendship with Sharon. Criticizing Powell for saying
    that "President Bush ‘has not worked out what he might do in later
    stages,’", Safire wrote, just two weeks after 9/11, "Now is the time to
    work out how to strike down terrorism’s boss of all bosses. "’Later’ may
    be a stage too late." 86

    When they weren’t writing, these longtime supporters of Israel and the
    government neocons became the talking heads for warmongering pro-Israel
    hosts of CNN, Fox News, as well as ABC, CBS and NBC. Under this
    onslaught the critics would eventually be submerged.

    Israel’s vaunted intelligence service, meanwhile, was doing its part,
    according to reports that appeared in the world press in December.

    "Israel was a "full partner" in U.S. and British intelligence failures
    that exaggerated former president Saddam Hussein's nuclear, chemical and
    biological weapons programs before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq," the
    Washington Post’s Molly Moore reported from Jerusalem. 87

    "The failures of this war indicate weaknesses and inherent flaws within
    Israeli intelligence and among Israeli decision-makers," Brig. Gen.
    Shlomo Brom wrote in an analysis for Tel Aviv University's Jaffee Center
    for Strategic Studies.

    Brom, a former deputy commander of the Israeli military's planning
    division accused Israeli intelligence services and political leaders of
    providing "an exaggerated assessment of Iraqi capabilities," raising
    "the possibility that the intelligence picture was manipulated."

    The report did not pull its punches. "A critical question to be answered
    is whether governmental bodies falsely manipulated the intelligence
    information in order to gain support for their decision to go to war in
    Iraq, while the real reasons for this decision were obfuscated or
    concealed." 88.

    Did that report feed into the opinion of Israeli officials regarding the
    U.S. going to war?

    On August 17, 2002, Fox News presented an example of the "big lie" that
    General Brom was referring to when it reported that: "Israeli
    intelligence officials have gathered evidence that Iraq is speeding up
    efforts to produce biological and chemical weapons".

    Fox News also quoted Ranaan Gissin, a long time adviser to Prime
    Minister Sharon who told the notoriously pro-Israel network that "Any
    postponement of an attack on Iraq at this stage will serve no purpose.
    It will only give him [Saddam] more of an opportunity to accelerate his
    program of weapons of mass destruction."

    "As evidence of Iraq's weapons building activities," Fox reported,
    "Israel points to an order Saddam gave to Iraq's Atomic Energy
    Commission last week to speed up its work."

    The network presented no evidence presented to back up what was an
    apparent fabrication.

    Was this a war fought by the U.S. for Israel?

    On March, a week before the invasion, Chemi Shalev reported in the
    Forward that "Most senior strategists here believe Israel would emerge
    in a stronger position after a war. A changed regime in Baghdad is
    widely expected to create new opportunities for Israel vis-à-vis the
    Palestinians... Israeli intelligence officials, in both the Mossad and
    Military Intelligence, believe a quick and decisive American victory
    against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein would send positive shock-waves
    throughout the East, convincing hard-line and terrorist-supporting
    regimes to mend their ways for the better." 89

    A year later, those assessments have proved to be more accurate than
    were their assessments of Saddam’s inventory of WMDs. And they have paid
    off.

    "With the assault on Iraq," wrote the distinguished historian, David
    Hirst, " the U.S. was not merely adopting Israel’s long-established
    methods-of initiative, offense and pre-emption-it was also adopting
    Israel’s adversaries as its own...

    "To where this Israel-American, neo-conservative blueprint for the
    Middle East will lead is impossible to forecast. What can be said for
    sure is that it could easily turn out to be as calamitous in its
    consequences for the region, America and Israel, as it is preposterously
    partisan in motivation, fantastically ambitious in design and terribly
    risky in practice." 90

    One immediate and invaluable benefit for Israel was to have the army of
    its primary benefactor become a fellow occupier of Arab land and to have
    turned to Israel for instructions on how to suppress the armed
    resistance to its presence. 91 The effect of this was
    predictable. As the Israel’s occupying forces escalated their attacks on
    Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, even the usual token slap on the
    wrist by U.S. officials was missing.

    Well before the end of the year American forces were blowing up the
    homes of suspected "terrorists," bombing some from the air and
    bulldozing others to obtain clear "fields of fire." Their checkpoints in
    the Sunni area were identical to their Israeli counterparts and by the
    end of the year, the US was already holding more than 9,000 Iraqis in
    detention. Moreover, following the pattern of the Israelis, they had set
    up assassination teams to target resistance leaders. 92

    While the neocons were convinced that both the war and the occupation
    would be relatively risk free, it is likely that the Sharon and his
    military cadre were aware that with or without Saddam, segments of the
    Iraqi public would resist the occupation. Was getting the US mired down
    in Iraq one of their goals? Perhaps, and it seemed as the first
    anniversary of the war approached as well as the 2004 election season,
    that President Bush, at least, was beginning to have second thoughts.

    "It may take four or five months to take shape," wrote Jim Lobe, "but a
    new scenario could be unfolding, a shifting balance of power within the
    Bush administration, a reconfiguration in the interests of realism - and
    aimed at a Bush re-election victory." 93

    The first sign of what appeared to be a shift in Bush’s thinking was the
    appointment of James Baker, Secretary of State in his father’s
    administration and a long-time family friend, to be his personal envoy
    to the nations holding Iraq’s massive debt. Assigned to the goal of
    persuading them to forgive the tens of billions of dollars owed by
    Saddam’s regime, Baker immediately found himself sabotaged by Wolfowitz
    who declared that the allies that are owed most of that debt would not
    be permitted to bid on the US$18.6 billion in reconstruction contracts
    since they had opposed the US war effort.

    That Wolfowitz’s policy was soon watered down was an indication that the
    neocons influence, at least for the moment, was waning. Ironically,
    being named the Jerusalem Post’s Man of the Year for 2003, 94
    may have been his last hurrah.

    How much Baker will become involved in other aspects of the
    administration’s agenda remains to be seen, but as Lobe pointed out,
    "the fact that he is now in the White House

    and dealing directly with all of Washington's major allies in Europe,
    Asia and the Middle East on the future of Iraq, if not the entire
    region, places him in the thick of the administration's foreign policy,
    to put it mildly. From now on, very little is likely to be decided on
    anything

    that affects Iraq or US alliances without his input." 95

    If true, this is not good news for either the neocons or Israel. Like
    most of the officials of the first Bush administration, Baker opposed
    the present Gulf War, believing it would destabilize the oil-rich
    region, but more than that, his relations with Israel and the Israel
    lobby while Secretary of State were, at times, openly
    hostile.96

    Even without the appointment of Baker, the neocons were taking nothing
    for granted. In January, Perle and former Bush speechwriter David Frum
    came out with a book, appropriately entitled, "An End to Evil: How to
    Win the War on Terror" 97 which calls for duplicating the
    Iraq experience, if necessary, anywhere on the globe but with a
    particular focus on Syria, Iran and Hizbollah which, as we have seen,
    just happens to match Israel’s enemies list. For good measure, they are
    against a Palestinian state.

    A press release for the book claims that it "will define the
    conservative point of view [they don’t like the term, neo-cons] on
    foreign policy for a new generation - and shape the agenda for the 2004
    presidential-election year and beyond."

    The younger Bush has an affinity to Baker, who helped him secure
    Florida's electoral votes in 2000 following the state’s contested
    balloting, but he also is aware of what happened to his father in 1992
    when, backed by Baker, the senior Bush boldly challenged Israel and the
    lobby over Israel’s request for $10 billion in loan guarantees, which
    many observers believe may have cost him the election.98

    Given that background, the contest of wills within the Bush
    administration in the coming months may be at least as interesting, and,
    perhaps, as significant as the 2004 election itself.

    If the past is prologue, however, expect the lobby to come out on top.

    jblankfort@earthlink.net