@@ Foreign influence the bane of republics @@
Arash
November 11, 2005
Foreign Influence
By Charley Reese
I don't share the president's high opinion of Irv Lewis "Scooter" Libby, now under
indictment for obstruction of justice, making false statements and committing
perjury.
He was, after all, the lawyer who for years represented Marc Rich
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Rich), the fugitive billionaire who renounced his
own country. It was Lewis Libby who arranged the last-minute presidential pardon of
Marc Rich issued by Bill Clinton — a pardon that stank to high heaven. Marc Rich,
along with a number of Russian oligarchs the Russian government would like to get its
hands on, is now an Israeli citizen.
Lewis Libby (http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/libby/libby.php) was also part of the
trio of neoconservatives who pushed the phony intelligence in order to get the U.S.
to go to war. Another member of that trio, John Hannah
(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=John_Hannah), has now replaced Lewis
Libby as Vice President Dick Cheney's national-security adviser. As described by Juan
Cole in an excellent article at Salon.com. "Most of the members of Cheney's inner
circle were neoconservative ideologues, who combined hawkish American triumphalism
with an obsession with Israel".
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/802d8922e9609257
Lewis Libby was an early protege of Paul Wolfowitz
(http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/wolfowitz/wolfowitz.php), now president of the
World Bank but who has been called the architect of the war against Iraq. Libby and
Wolfowitz co-authored a paper in the first Bush's administration advocating removal
of Saddam, and Libby was later a founding member of the Project for a New American
Century (http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/pnac.php), an outfit advocating that
America forcibly police the world.
John Hannah comes from the belligerently pro-Israel think tank Washington Institute
for Near East Policy (http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/winep.php). It was founded
with the help of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee
(http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/aipac.php), the powerful pro-Israel lobby that
seems to dominate Congress. It was to John Hannah that Ahmad Chalabi funneled a lot
of the phony intelligence on Saddam's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction.
Another Cheney adviser is David Wurmser
(http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/wurmser_d/wurmser-d.php), another alumnus of
WINEP. He co-authored with Richard Perle
(http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/perle/perle.php), Douglas Feith
(http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/feith/feith.php) and others a policy paper for
then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that called not only for going to war
with Iraq, but also for scrapping the Oslo Peace Plan. It was a stupid paper.
David Wurmser's wife is Meyrav Wurmser
(http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/wurmser_m/wurmser-m.php), who was listed as a
co-author of the paper. She and Israeli colonel Yigal Carmon
(http://rothman.house.gov/PhotoGallery/photo_gallery_052305_MEMRI.htm) formed the
MEMRI (http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/memri.php) translation service, which
cherry-picks Arabic newspapers for their most outrageous articles and translates them
in a continuing program to depict the Arab world in the worst possible light.
David Wurmser was chosen by fellow neoconservative Feith to be part of the Office of
Special Plans in the Pentagon (http://rightweb.irc-online.org/govt/osp.php). OSP was
set up to go around conventional intelligence agencies to better push the propaganda
for war. It was most likely through this outfit that the forged business of the
nuclear-weapons program ended up in the president's now-infamous State of the Union
speech of 2003. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030128-19.html
As some of you might have concluded, many, though not all, of these neocons are
Jewish. Mentioning that, of course, gets you called an anti-Semite, but what is
relevant here is not that they are Jews, but that they are people who are unusually
ardent supporters of Israel.
Clearly, their passionate support of Israel influenced their policy positions
vis-a-vis Iraq, Syria and Iran. According to Cole's article — which is excellent, as
is his blog — Chalabi won over the neocons by promising that if he came to power in
Iraq, he would "recognize" Israel.
George Washington could have been talking about these pro-Israel neocons when he said
this in his Farewell Address about attachment to foreign countries: "Such attachments
are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent Patriot. How many
opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts
of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils".
He called foreign influence the bane of republics. It certainly is.
* Charley Reese has been a journalist for 49 years. He was an editor, assistant to
the publisher, and columnist for the Orlando Sentinel. He now writes a syndicated
column three times a week for King Features, which is carried on Antiwar.com. Reese
served two years active duty in the U.S. Army as a tank gunner.
http://www.antiwar.com/reese
Coalition for Democracy in Iran (CDI)
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/analysis/2004/0410cdi.php
The Pentagon Neocons Who Brought You the War in Iraq Have a New Target
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/analysis/2004/0410isirannext.php