@@ Jew spin on Israeli spy affair @@
Arash
September 3, 2004
Policy Wars And Real Wars
By Caroline Glick
From what has been reported over the past week on the FBI's spy probe into
the activities of senior AIPAC lobbyists, Israeli diplomats, and a mid-level
Iran analyst named Larry Franklin who hails from the neoconservative
stronghold of Douglas Feith's policy shop in the Pentagon, it is hard to
escape the impression that the story is more of a smear campaign than an
espionage investigation.
It is true that it is still early and perhaps the press-crazed FBI will seek
indictments of one or more of the suspected bad guys on some charge or
another before this story is quietly filed away like the loud and groundless
investigations of CIA employee Adam Ciralsky and US Army civilian engineer
David Tenebaum in the late 1990s. Both men, who were accused of spying for
Israel, are currently suing the US government for discrimination, claiming
they were placed under investigation simply because they are Jews.
But even if nothing comes from the story, the obvious target of the leak has
been hit. That target is not specifically AIPAC. Nor is it Douglas Feith or
Paul Wolfowitz. And the target is also not the Israeli Embassy or Israel per
se. The target of the leak is a policy direction, and the leaked story,
regardless of its as-yet-amorphous legal grounding, has dealt that policy
direction a below-the-belt punch.
In Washington today, the central issue of debate in policy circles is Iran.
Iran, which, with its documented ties to al-Qaida and its sponsorship of
Hizbullah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah, as well as Muqtada al-Sadr and
his forces in Iraq and other terrorist militias in Afghanistan, is today the
epicenter of global terrorism. [Fucking Jew forgot to blame Iran for Santa
Claus disappearance, Global Warming, Ozone layer depletionn, pollution in
the oceans, deforastaion of Amazon basin, extinction of species, etc. ...]
And Iran, with its now all-but-declared pursuit of nuclear weapons, its
proven ballistic missile capabilities, and its long suspected chemical and
biological weapons arsenal, is both an active enemy and a looming threat to
US national security and of course to the physical existence of Israel,
which is a major non-NATO ally of the US.
And yet, as a US government source involved in the policy debate on Iran
told The New York Times on Thursday, "We [the US] have an ad hoc policy [on
Iran] that we're making up as we go along." Which is why policy directions
become so important. The Pentagon, along with Israel and AIPAC, is the
leading proponent of a view that says Iran cannot be contained and cannot be
appeased. On the other side, the CIA, the State Department, and the
Democratic Party, as well as Germany, France and Britain, believe that it
can be contained and appeased.
The most recent attempt to articulate the US's policy toward Iran was made
on August 17 by Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International
Security John Bolton in an address at the Hudson Institute. After spelling
out specifically why the US believes that Iran is actively pursuing nuclear
weapons, Bolton explained that the US believes that it is necessary to
isolate rather than engage Iran. As a result, the US is working to convince
the EU and members of the International Atomic Energy Agency's board of
directors to refer the issue of the Iranian nuclear program to the UN
Security Council.
There are only two problems with the so-enunciated US policy on Iran:
First, the US has almost no chance of success in moving the issue to the
Security Council.
Second, even if it were successful in moving the Iranian nuclear program to
the Security Council, which it will not be, it is quite certain that the
Council would take no action that would in any way dissuade Iran or prevent
it from continuing its nuclear weapons program.
In the wake of the US campaign in recent weeks to have the Iranian nuclear
program referred to the Security Council, IAEA spokespeople and German,
French and British officials engaged in the issue have all claimed that
there is no reason to do so. In Amman this past Sunday, German Foreign
Minister Joschka Fischer said Germany, France and Britain were working to
reach an understanding with the Iranians whereby in exchange for nuclear
energy technology the Iranians would agree to cease their uranium enrichment
activities. The same plan is also being touted by Democratic presidential
candidate John Kerry. It cannot have escaped the Iranians' attention that
North Korea exploited a similar deal to develop its own nuclear arsenal.
And in the unlikely event that the US is successful in having the Iranian
nuclear program referred to the Security Council, why should there be any
expectation that Iran would come under sanctions? Russia built the nuclear
reactor at Bushehr. China has reportedly supplied Iran with nuclear
technologies through the Pakistanis. France, Britain and Germany, as well as
Japan and China, are all actively courting the Iranians for oil contracts
and business opportunities.
Indeed, three years of attempts to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat
through diplomatic means have not brought the international community even a
half-step closer to taking issue with Iran's nuclear program or, for that
matter, its active support for international terrorism.
In the meantime, the Iranian government has in recent months taken to
issuing apocalyptic threats of nuclear destruction against Israel on almost
a daily basis.
The Iranians have begun to issue similar threats against the US mainland and
against US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In just one recent example, a newspaper associated with Iran's supreme
leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei published an editorial on July 6 threatening,
"The White House's 80 years of exclusive rule are likely to become 80
seconds of hell that will burn to ashes That very day, those who resist
[Iran] will be struck from directions they never expected. The heartbeat of
the crisis is undoubtedly [dictated by] the hand of Iran." And on the
ground, the latest IAEA report states that Iran plans to conduct a test of a
plant that converts raw uranium into nuclear fuel. Nuclear experts have
claimed that the amount of raw uranium that Iran plans to enrich will be
sufficient to make five nuclear bombs.
The Times quotes a former Bush administration official who claims that all
discussion of a military option against Iran had proved sterile. In his
words, "There's no military option." This statement leads to the inevitable
question of why. Given Iran's refusal to reach any accommodation on either
its support for international terrorism or its nuclear program, why hasn't a
directive been given to the responsible authorities to put together a plan
for action against Iran's nuclear installations? No doubt, with US forces
now bordering Iran in both Iraq and Afghanistan, there is no military option
because no one has been given instructions or even permission to develop
one.
And now, in the aftermath of the leak of the spy probe that has reportedly
been going on for two years and has led thus far to zero indictments,
chances of developing such options are even smaller than they were last
Thursday before the story was leaked.
After all, a victory for the Pentagon (which now stands officially accused
of working for Israel) on the issue of Iran policy would make the job of
those claiming that the US policy is dictated from Jerusalem all the easier.
It is hard to shake the impression that leaking or making groundless
allegations against administration hawks through their foreign counterparts
has become the tactic of choice by their opponents in the policy debate. The
spy probe story calls to mind similar allegations against another Pentagon
favorite, Ahmed Chalabi.
On Wednesday, at the same time as the Israeli spy probe began fizzling out,
counterfeiting charges against Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National
Congress, were dropped. Murder charges against his nephew Salam Chalabi, who
is building the war crimes case against Saddam Hussein, were also dropped.
The arrest warrants for the Chalabis, which were issued with great fanfare
by US-appointed judge Zuhair al-Maliky last month, were viewed by many as a
further attempt by Chalabi's enemies in the CIA and State Department to
discredit a man known to all as the Iraqi point man for the Pentagon's
hawks. The initial attempt was made in early June when Chalabi was accused
of spying for Iran. Those charges, which like the allegations against
Franklin made little sense to begin with, have never been substantiated. But
in the meantime, the allegations themselves, like the arrest warrants, have
worked to discredit Chalabi and his Pentagon associates in the eyes of the
American public and the media.
It may be that given the damage now wrought on the reputations of apparently
the only forces in Washington who may be willing to admit that the US
non-policy towards Iran, in all its permutations, is a colossal failure,
means that the US will not take any action against Iran's nuclear
installations. If this is the case, Israel may quite simply be forced into a
position of having to ignore America for now and do what needs to be done.
If, as a result of the prominence of the appeasers in US policy circles and
their fast and dirty tactics, the US is no longer able to take military
action against threats to its national security that happen to constitute
even larger threats to Israel's national security, then going it alone, and
as quickly as possible, may be Israel's only option. Israel can simply not
afford to be paralyzed by American policies on Iran that have already failed
or by spy scandals that make no sense.
Snakehawk
> Jerusalem Post
> September 3, 2004
>
>
> Policy Wars And Real Wars
>
>
> By Caroline Glick
>
>
> been hit. That target is not specifically AIPAC. Nor is it Douglas Feith or
> Paul Wolfowitz. And the target is also not the Israeli Embassy or Israel per
> se. The target of the leak is a policy direction, and the leaked story,
> regardless of its as-yet-amorphous legal grounding, has dealt that policy
> direction a below-the-belt punch.
>
That can't be true. That would mean that someone in the U.S.
Justice Department is actually looking out for the interest of the
United States.