Norman Podhoretz: “Bush to Bomb Iran Before Leaving Office” |
Powerful Cabal of Israel First Warmongers Praying for Nuclear Strike Against Iran
By Michael Collins Piper
EVEN AS THE DEBACLE IN Iraq grows worse by the day—with both Iraqi civilian deaths and U.S. military deaths escalating—the strongest proponents of the initial American invasion of Iraq—the hard-line pro-Israel “neo-conservatives” (civilian war hawks all, none of whom ever served in the military)—are banging the drum more loudly for American military action against Iran.
But the good news is that there are growing voices daring to point out that Israel and its American adherents are behind the push for war.
The most vociferous demands for an American war against Iran are coming from a nest of Zionist hard-liners in the office of Vice President Dick Cheney. Ironically, these boisterous troublemakers are screaming for war just at the time when Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, is facing 30 months in prison after being convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice, crimes committed amidst a cover-up of misdeeds relating to the Bush- Cheney drive (orchestrated by the neo-conservatives) to get the United States embroiled in Iraq.
While Libby himself was the actual “head of the octopus” among the Zionist war agitators inside the administration, his role has been picked up by the insidious team of Elliot Abrams and David Wurmser, two disturbing characters indeed.
According to Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), an outspoken critic of the Bush war policies, Abrams, the deputy national security advisor for global democracy strategy (and the son-in-law of ill-famed Marxist Trotskyite-turned- neo-conservative publicist Norman Podhoretz of the American Jewish Committee) is perceived to be running the administration’s Middle East policies. This is not a good sign, since Abrams—another “former” Trotskyite himself—is considered an all-out pro-Zionist fanatic, in keeping with his family’s agenda.
Abrams’s father-in-law, Podhoretz, recently penned the lead article in the June 2007 issue of Commentary, the longtime voice of the American Jewish Committee, entitled “The Case for Bombing Iran.” This amazing article was followed by yet another essay entitled “How China and Russia Threaten the World.” And yet another essay in that same issue, one written by Israeli writer Hillel Halkin, candidly asserted that Israel has no serious intentions about giving up any land to the Palestinians or granting Palestinians any right of return to their native land. Halkin’s essay said, in no uncertain terms, that virtually any Israeli concession to the native Christian and Muslim Palestinians would be a threat to Israel’s survival.
Meanwhile, Abrams’s partner in intrigue inside the Bush-Cheney regime—David Wurmser, the principal deputy assistant to Cheney for national security affairs—is equally enmeshed in the same warhawk circles as Abrams.
A Swiss-American dual citizen—whose wife Meyrav is a partner with former Israeli Mossad official Yigan Carmon in the Middle East Media Research Institute, an Israeli propaganda outlet—Wurmser is known to have been a public relations and political strategy advisor to former (and possibly future) Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, another intimate relationship demonstrating the clout Israeli interests have in the Bush-Cheney policymaking apparatus.
On Capitol Hill, the most strident and certainly best known voice for war against Iran is Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.)—often touted by the mass media as “the conscience of the Senate”—who has pulled no punches in loudly calling for a U.S. attack on Iran.
Although grassroots Democrats in his home state kicked Lieberman out of the Democratic Party for his warmongering, Democrats all across the United States— who reveled in their party’s massive victory in the 2006 congressional elections, largely a repudiation of the Bush war in Iraq—are now feeling the sting of repudiation by their own party leaders in Congress who have essentially surrendered to Bush on the issue of Iraq.
What many grassroots Democrats do not understand is that their party leaders—at the highest levels—are on the receiving end (just as are Republicans) of vast amounts of campaign money from pro-Israel political action committees and those whom former Gen. Wesley Clark candidly described as “the New York money people” who are sympathetic to the interests of Israel. Since Israel demanded the U.S. attack Iraq, congressional Democrats voted in favor of the war and then, when it became politically convenient and expedient to denounce the war (at election time), they did so.
However, in the end, when the issue has come to a vote on the floor of Congress, those Democrats have returned to the fold of their money masters and have effectively continued to endorse the war in Iraq (and done nothing to stop the ongoing push for war against Iran).
That simple reality escapes the conception of most Democrats, who are confused and angry at the betrayal by their leaders. Few are willing to publicly point the finger at the power of the Israeli lobby as the driving force behind that betrayal.
But many military voices in opposition to what is undeniably the Zionist influence on U.S. foreign policy are continuing to speak out. For example, on May 27, 2007, writing in The Washington Post, yet another former military officer, retired Army Col. Andrew Bacevich—a West Point graduate who served in Vietnam and who is now a professor of international relations at Boston University—restated his long-standing opposition to the war in Iraq in a poignant commentary reflecting on the fact that his son had recently been killed there.
Noting that although the November 2006 elections “signified an unambiguous repudiation of the policies that landed us in our present predicament” Bacevich pointed out that while “the people have spoken . . . nothing of substance has changed [and] half a year later, the war continues with no end in sight.”
Instead, he said, “by sending more troops to Iraq (and by extending the tours of those, like my son, who were already there), Bush has signaled his complete disregard for what was once quaintly referred to as ‘the will of the people.’” But Bacevich also places the blame for the ongoing war on the Democratic Party leadership, who—during the month of May 2007—continued to effectively support the war, despite all of their partisan rhetoric in opposition to the war. Bacevich wrote:
To be fair, responsibility for the war’s continuation now rests no less with the Democrats who control Congress than with the president and his party. After my son’s death, my state’s senators, Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry, telephoned to express their condolences. Stephen F. Lynch, our congressman, attended my son’s wake. Kerry was present for the funeral Mass.
My family and I greatly appreciated such gestures. But when I suggested to each of them the necessity of ending the war, I got the brush-off. More accurately, after ever so briefly pretending to listen, each treated me to a convoluted explanation that said in essence: “Don’t blame me.”
To whom do Kennedy, Kerry and Lynch listen? We know the answer: to the same people who have the ear of George W. Bush and Karl Rove—namely, wealthy individuals and institutions.
When Bacevich was making reference to “wealthy individuals and institutions,” there can be no doubt that Bacevich was referring to the people and institutions— wealthy all—that make up the powerful Israeli lobby. His further comments drove home that point:
Money buys access and influence. Money greases the process that will yield us a new president in 2008. When it comes to Iraq, money ensures that the concerns of big business, big oil, bellicose evangelicals and Middle East allies gain a hearing.
When Bacevich mentioned “bellicose evangelicals and Middle East allies,” this was obviously a reference to Israel’s Christian fundamentalist supporters and to Israel, since the only Middle East “ally” of the United States that favored U.S. intervention in Iraq was Israel. To drive home his point about the domination of the American system by all of these well-heeled interests, Bacevich added further:
Money maintains the Republican/Democratic duopoly of trivialized politics. It confines the debate over U.S. policy to well-hewn channels. It preserves intact the cliches of 1933-45 about isolationism, appeasement and the nation’s call to “global leadership.” It inhibits any serious accounting of exactly how much our misadventure in Iraq is costing. It ignores completely the question of who actually pays. It negates democracy, rendering free speech little more than a means of recording dissent.
Undoubtedly cognizant of the fact that for having made such comments, he may well be accused of being a “conspiracy theorist,” even an “anti-Semitic” one, Bacevich concludes: “This is not some great conspiracy. It’s the way our system works.”
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(Issue #26, June 25, 2007, AMERICAN FREE PRESS)
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