Michael Lind, "Israel Lobby Distorts U.S. Foreign
Policy," Prospect Magazine, April 2002
"Whose War? Israel's Say Jewish Writers," The
Wisdom Fund, March 12, 2003
[But the argument [installing a new regime in Iraq will foster the spread of
democracy] has been pushed hardest by a group of officials and advisors who
have been the leading proponents of going to war with Iraq. Prominent among
them are Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, and Richard Perle,
--Greg Miller, "Democracy Domino Theory 'Not
Credible'," Los Angeles Times, March 14, 2003]
[Woolsey, one of the most high-profile hawks in the war against Iraq and a
key member of the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board, is a director of the
Washington-based private equity firm Paladin Capital. . . .
An influential member of the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board, Perle is
managing partner of venture capital company Trireme, which invests in
companies dealing in products of value to homeland security.--Antony Barnett
and Solomon Hughes, "Bush ally set to profit from the war on terror," Guardian, May 11,
2003
Bernard Weiner, "How We Got Into This Imperial
Pickle: A PNAC Primer," Information Clearing House, May 28, 2003
Simon English, "Cheney had Iraq in sights
two years ago," Telegraph (UK), July 22, 2003
Jack Shafer, "The Times
Scoops That Melted: Cataloging the wretched reporting of Judith
Miller," Slate, July 25, 2003
Jerry Kroth, "Who Forged the
Letters that Sucked Us into War? Israel, Yellowcake and the
Media," CounterPunch, August 2, 2003
William Pierce, "Mossad and the
Jewish Problem," National Alliance, August 2003
[The Office of Special Plans (OSP), which worked alongside the Near East
and South Asia (NESA) bureau in Feith's domain, was originally created by
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to
review raw information collected by the official U.S. intelligence agencies
for connections between Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.
Retired intelligence officials from the State Department, the Defense
Intelligence Agency (DIA), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have
long charged that the two offices exaggerated and manipulated intelligence
about Iraq before passing it along to the White House.
But key personnel who worked in both NESA and OSP were part of a broader
network of neo-conservative ideologues and activists who worked with other
Bush political appointees scattered around the national-security bureaucracy
to move the country to war, according to retired Lt Col Karen Kwiatkowski,
who was assigned to NESA from May 2002 through February 2003.--Jim Lobe, "Pentagon Office
Home to Neo-Con Network," Inter Press Service, August 7, 2003]
[Most neocons share unwavering support for Israel, . . . The
original neocons were a small group of mostly Jewish liberal
intellectuals . . .--"Neocon
101," Christian Science Monitor, August 27, 2003]
[IILG appears to be part of a carefully-constructed network aimed at
channelling business into Iraq.
Interestingly, the firm's website is not registered in Salem Chalabi's
(nephew of Ahmed Chalabi) name but in the name of Marc Zell, whose address
is given as Suite 716, 1800 K Street, Washington. That is the address of the
Washington office of Zell, Goldberg &Co, which claims to be "one of Israel's
fastest-growing business-oriented law firms", and the related FANDZ
International Law Group.
The unusual name "FANDZ" was concocted from "F and Z", the Z being Marc Zell
and the F being Douglas Feith. The two men were law partners until 2001, when
Feith took up his Pentagon post as undersecretary of defence for
policy.--Brian Whitaker, "Friends
of the family," Guardian, September 24, 2003]
Sidney Blumenthal, "Bush
and Blair - the betrayal," Guardian, November 14, 2003
"General: Israelis exaggerated Iraq threat,"
AP, December 4, 2003
Julian Borger, "Israel
trains US assassination squads in Iraq," Guardian (UK), December 9, 2003
VIDEO: "The
Lie Factory - How the Neocons & the Office of Special Plans
Pushed Disinformation and Bogus Intelligence on Iraq," Democracy
Now, December 18, 2003
Mark Thompson, "Paul
Wolfowitz: The godfather of the Iraq war," Time, December 21, 2003
[The liberation of Iraq, in the neocon scenario, would be followed by a
democratic Iraq that would quickly recognize Israel. This, in turn, would
"snowball" - the analogy only works in the Cedar Mountains of Lebanon -
through the region, bringing democracy from Syria to Egypt and to the
sheikhdoms, emirates and monarchies of the Gulf.
All these new democracies would then embrace Israel and hitch their
backward economies to the Jewish state's advanced technology.--Arnaud de
Borchgrave, "Iraq
and the Gulf of Tonkin," Washington Times, February 12, 2004]
[In 1996, in a strategy paper crafted for Israel's Bibi Netanyahu, Richard
Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser urged him to "focus on removing
Saddam Hussein from power" as an "Israeli strategic objective." Perle,
Feith, Wurmser were all on Bush's foreign policy team on 9-11.
- In 1998, eight members of Bush's future team, including Perle, Wolfowitz
and Rumsfeld, wrote Clinton urging upon him a strategy that "should aim,
above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein."
- On Jan. 1, 2001, nine months before 9-11, Wurmser called for U.S.-Israeli
attacks "to broaden the (Middle East) conflict to strike fatally ... the
regimes of Damascus, Baghdad, Tripoli, Teheran and Gaza ... to establish the
recognition that fighting with either the United States or Israel is
suicidal."
"Crises can be opportunities," added Wurmser.
On Sept. 11, opportunity struck.
On Sept. 15, according to author Bob Woodward, Paul Wolfowitz spoke up in
the War Cabinet to urge that Afghanistan be put on a back burner and an
attack be mounted at once on Iraq, though Iraq had had nothing to do with
9-11. Why Iraq? Said Wolfowitz, because it is "doable."
On Sept. 20, 40 neoconservatives in an open letter demanded that Bush remove
Saddam from power, "even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the
(9-11) attack." Failure to do so, they warned the president, "would
constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on
international terrorism."--Patrick J. Buchanan, "Have the Neocons Killed a
Presidency?," Antiwar.com, February 16, 2004]
"Pentagon offices
face probe on Iraq claims," Reuters, February 19, 2004
[The fact that so many of the authors of this war are Jewish is not
important. That they uncritically fit the alien shroud of Israeli far-right
expansionist policy over American security policy is. They supported Chalabi
so recklessly because he promised to immediately open relations between Iraq
and Israel and begin piping oil to Israel.--Georgie Anne Geyer, "THE
TRUTH ALWAYS COMES OUT IN THE WASH," Universal Press Syndicate, February
20, 2004]
[They wanted to put in a government friendly to the U.S., and they wanted
permanent basing in Iraq. . . .
Almost a billion dollars has been spent - a billion dollars! - by David
Kay's group to search for these WMD, a total whitewash effort. They didn't
find anything, they didn't expect to find anything. . . .
The last reason is the conversion, the switch Saddam Hussein made in the
Food for Oil program, from the dollar to the euro. He did this, by the way,
long before 9/11, in November 2000 - selling his oil for euros.--Marc
Cooper, "Soldier
for the Truth: Exposing Bush's talking-points war," L.A. Weekly,
February 20 - 26, 2004]
Stephen Green, "Serving
Two Flags : Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Administration," CounterPunch,
February 28, 2004
[It has been important ever since Bush took office in January 2001 for the
administration to downplay any connection between Israel and the war
against Iraq. Obfuscating the "Israeli motive" of the war was almost
certainly one of the reasons the administration so transparently
exaggerated first Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction and, more
recently, Washington's desire for democracy in Iraq.--Bill Christison, "Faltering
Neo-Cons Still Dangerous," CounterPunch, March 5, 2004]
Ed Blanche, "Neocons at work:
Israel gets its 1st slice of Iraqi pie," The Daily Star, March 17, 2004
Emad Mekay, "9/11
Commission Director: Iraq War Launched to Protect Israel," Antiwar.com,
March 30, 2004
[Powell felt Cheney and his allies - his chief aide, I. Lewis "Scooter"
Libby, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of
Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith and what Powell called Feith's "Gestapo"
office - had established what amounted to a separate government -- William
Hamilton, "
Bush began to plan war three months after 9/11," Washington Post, April
17, 2004]
[A U.S. senator's charge that Israel is behind the
Bush administrations's decision to invade Iraq has rattled American
Jewish leaders.--"Senator spoke for many
on Hill when he blamed Israel for war," WorldTribune.com, May 20, 2004]
Justin Raimondo, "Senator
Hollings Is Right: It's all about Israel," CounterPunch, May 21, 2004
[Zinni is talking about a group of policymakers within the administration
known as "the neo-conservatives" who saw the invasion of Iraq as a way to
stabilize American interests in the region and strengthen the position of
Israel. They include Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; Undersecretary
of Defense Douglas Feith; Former Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle;
National Security Council member Eliot Abrams; and Vice President Cheney's
chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby. --"Gen.
Zinni: 'They've Screwed Up'," CBS News May 21, 2004]
[Israeli intelligence and military operatives are now quietly at work in
Kurdistan, providing training for Kurdish commando units and, most important
in Israel's view, running covert operations inside Kurdish areas of Iran and
Syria. Israel feels particularly threatened by Iran, whose position in the
region has been strengthened by the war. The Israeli operatives include
members of the Mossad, Israel's clandestine foreign-intelligence service,
who work undercover in Kurdistan as businessmen and, in some cases, do not
carry Israeli passports.--Seymour M. Hersh, "As June 30th
approaches, Israel looks to the Kurds," The New Yorker, June 21, 2004]
Peter Bergen, "Did one
woman's obsession take America to war?," Guardian, July 5, 2004
[Mr Feith's cell undermined the credibility of CIA judgments on Iraq's
alleged al-Qa'eda links within the highest levels of the Bush
administration.
The cell appears to have been set up by Mr Feith as an adjunct to the Office
of Special Plans, a Pentagon intelligence-gathering operation established in
the wake of 9/11 with the authority of Paul Wolfowitz.--Julian Coman, "Fury over Pentagon cell
that briefed White House on Iraq's 'imaginary' al-Qaeda links,"
Telegraph (UK), July 11, 2004]
[Cooperation between Israel and the United States helped produce a series of
intelligence failures in the lead up to the Iraq war, according to separate
reports issued by members of the Senate and the Knesset.--Ori Nir, "Senate
Report on Iraq Intel Points to Role of Jerusalem," The Forward, July 14,
2004]
Ray McGovern, "The Iraq War and Israel: How 9/11 Report
Soft-Pedaled Root Causes," CounterPunch, July 28, 2004
Patrick J. Buchanan, "Where the Right Went Wrong: How Neoconservatives
Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency," Thomas
Dunne Books (September 1, 2004)
Bob Drogin and Greg Miller, "Israel Has Long Spied on U.S., Say
Officials," Los Angeles Times, September 3, 2004
Eric Margolis, "FBI painting ugly picture," Toronto Sun, September 5, 2004
[Retired general Anthony Zinni, a former chief of the U.S. Central Command
and presidential Middle East envoy, told CBS in May that "the worst-kept
secret in Washington" was that the neoconservatives pushed the war in Iraq
for Israel's benefit.--Marc Perelman, "Neocons Blast Bush's Inaction On 'Spy'
Affair," The Forward, September 10, 2004]
[The weapons of mass destruction disinformation that was fed to the
president and to the American public came directly from Shulsky's
shop. . . .
Wurmser, Perle and Feith were the principal authors of the 1996 100-day
policy plan for incoming Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. None ever
registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act for this
work.
That plan, "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," published
by Israel's Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, has
served as the guiding road map for the neocons both in Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon's office and in the Bush administration.--Anonymous,
"The State
Department's extreme makeover," Salon, October 4, 2004]
[It was nice to see the White House finally pull the plug on the transparent
scheme of the neo-cons to smear U.N. General Secretary Kofi Annan over the
alleged "oil-for-food scandal."--Jude Wanniski, "Another
Neo-Con Imperial Plot," Wanniski.com, December 8, 2004]
[The neocons would have you believe that having a nuclear power plant - even
one whose operation is subject to IAEA Safeguards, like Iran's - is
tantamount to having a plutonium-239 implosion nuke.--Gordon Prather, "Virtual Nukes,"
Antiwar.com, December 11, 2004]
[In 1996, some of the people in Perl's circle had begun to think about what
it would mean for Saddam Hussein to be removed from the Middle East scene.
They concluded that it would be very good for Israel. . . . the group was
pleased enough with its work to send the paper to the newly elected Israeli
primime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. "A Clean Break: A new Strategy for
Securing the Realm" called for Israel to free itself both from socialist
economic policies and the burdens of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
Instead of retreating from occupied lands in exchange for dubious promises
of peace, Wurmser wrote, Israel should take the fight to the Palestinians
and their Arab backers--George Paker, "The
Assassins Gate: America in Iraq," Farrar, Straus and Giroux (October 15,
2005) p. 30]
[Libby was among those associated with the Project for a New American
Century, a think tank that publicly urged President Clinton to use military
force to remove Hussein from power.--Bryan Bender, "Indictments put focus on
neoconservatives," Boston Globe, October 29, 2005]
[Republican elder statesman, Gen Brent Scowcroft, national security advisor
to Bush's father, accused Bush Jr of being 'wrapped around the little
finger' of Israel's PM Ariel Sharon.--Eric Margolis, "AMERICANS
ARE RUNNING OUT OF PATIENCE WITH THEIR 'WAR PRESIDENT'," ericmargolis.com,
November 14, 2005]
[Mylroie had been pushing for an all-out war against Iraq for a
decade. In the run-up to the first Gulf war, Mylroie, along with the
recently fired New York Times reporter Judith Miller, wrote a book titled,
"Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf."--Evelyn J. Pringle, "Laurie Mylroie's
War: Bush Gang Swore Saddam was Behind 9/11 in Lawsuit,"
counterpunch.org, November 16, 2005]
Gary Leupp, "A
Neocon Plan to Plant WMDs?," counterpunch.org, January 14, 2006
[Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no
lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would
suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US interests and
those of the other country Ð in this case, Israel Ð are essentially
identical.--John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, "The Israel Lobby
and U.S. Foreign Policy," London Review of Books, March 23, 2006]
[Khaled Salih, a spokesman for the Kurdistan Regional Government, says: "These are
not new allegations for us. Back in the sixties and seventies we were called
'the second Israel' in the region and we were supposed to be eliminated by
Islamist nationalist and now Islamist groups.--Mark Urban, "Kurdish soldiers trained by
Israelis," BBC Newsnight, september 19, 2006]
[ . . . they were out at Kennebunkport, and Bush Jr. says, "Can I ask you a
question? What's a neocon?" And the father says, "Do you want names or a
description?" The President says, "I'll take a description." He says, "I'll
give it to you in one word: Israel,"--Andrew Cockburn, "Donald
Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy," democracynow.org,
March 7, 2007]
[I discovered that Michaels and his associates were part of an effort by the
Kurds and their allies to lobby the West for greater power in Iraq, and
greater clout in Washington, and at the same time, by a group of Israeli ex
security officials to rekindle good relations with their historical allies
the Kurds through joint infrastructure, economic development, and security
projects.--Laura Rozen, "Kurdistan's Covert Back-Channels: How an ex-Mossad chief, a German uberspy,
and a gaggle of top-dollar GOP lobbyists helped Kurdistan snag 15 tons of
$100 bills," Mother Jones, April 12, 2007]
[Bush's "war on terror" is a hoax that serves to cover U.S. intervention in
the Middle East on behalf of "greater Israel."--Paul Craig Roberts, "What the Iraq War
Is About," antiwar.com, April 23, 2008]
"THE
ARCHITECTS OF WAR: WHERE ARE THEY NOW?," thinkprogress.org
