Israel has a LOT of nukes. The official numbers are crap.
I place Israel as the number 3 nuclear power - ahead of Britain or France.
And of all the people on earth likely to use them - they have this
psychobabbel about 1000 goyem not worth one of their hangnails. If anyone has
the us - them psychosis working overtime it is Israel.
Then we have our resident psychotic giving them the green light.
Very very bad my friends.
Perhaps some iodine tabs in the medicine cabinet are a good idea.
If anyone will turn the desert to glass it is the narcisstic twits we have
as a ruling class.
Kirk
Keith Addison <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/02/09/helping_israel_die.php
TomPaine.com -
Helping Israel Die
Ray McGovern
February 09, 2007
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the
ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C. He was a CIA
analyst for 27 years and is on the Steering Group of Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are
unwittingly playing Dr. Jack Kevorkian in helping the state of Israel
commit suicide. For this is the inevitable consequence of the planned
air and missile attack on Iran. The pockmarked, littered landscape in
Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan and the endless applicant queues at
al-Qaeda and other terrorist recruiting stations testify eloquently
to the unintended consequences of myopic policymakers in Washington
and Tel Aviv.
Mesmerized. Sadly, this is the best word to describe those of us
awake to the inexorable march of folly to war with Iran and the
growing danger to Israel's security, especially over the medium and
long term. An American and/or Israeli attack on Iran will let slip
the dogs of war. Those dogs never went to obedience school. They will
not be denied their chance to bite, and Israel's arsenal of nuclear
weapons will be powerless to muzzle them.
In my view, not since 1948 has the very existence of Israel hung so
much in the balance. Can Bush/Cheney and the Israeli leaders not see
it? Pity that no one seems to have read our first president's warning
on the noxious effects of entangling alliances. The supreme irony is
that in their fervor to help, as well as use, Israel, Bush and Cheney
seem blissfully unaware that they are leading it down a garden path
and off a cliff.
Provoke and Pre-empt
Whether it is putting the kibosh on direct talks with Iran or between
Israel and Syria, the influence and motives of the vice president are
more transparent than those of Bush. Sure, Cheney told CNN's Wolf
Blitzer recently that the administration's Iraq policy would be "an
enormous success story," but do not believe those who dismiss Cheney
as "delusional." He and his neoconservative friends are crazy like a
fox. They have been pushing for confrontation with Iran for many
years, and saw the invasion of Iraq in that context. Alluding to
recent U.S. military moves, Robert Dreyfuss rightly describes the
neocons as "crossing their fingers in the hope that Iran will respond
provocatively, making what is now a low-grade cold war inexorably
heat up."
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/02/01/bushs_trash_talk_about_iran.php
But what about the president? How to explain his fixation with fixing
Iran's wagon? Cheney's influence over Bush has been shown to be
considerable ever since the one-man search committee for the 2000
vice presidential candidate picked Cheney. The vice president can
play Bush like a violin. But what strings is he using here? Where is
the resonance?
Experience has shown the president to be an impressionable sort with
a roulette penchant for putting great premium on initial impressions
and latching onto people believed to be kindred souls-be it Russian
President Vladimir Putin (trust at first sight), hail-fellow-well-met
CIA director George Tenet or oozing-testosterone-from-every-pore
former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Of particular concern was
his relationship with Sharon. Retired Gen. Brent Scowcroft, a master
of discretion with the media, saw fit to tell London's Financial
Times two and a half years ago that Sharon had Bush "mesmerized" and
"wrapped around his little finger."
As chair of the prestigious President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory
Board under George W. Bush and national security adviser to his
father, Scowcroft was uniquely positioned to know-and to draw
comparisons. He was summarily fired after making the comments about
Sharon and is now persona non grata at the White House.
Compassion Deficit Disorder
George W. Bush first met Sharon in 1998, when the Texas governor was
taken on a tour of the Middle East by Matthew Brooks, then executive
director of the Republican Jewish Coalition. Sharon was foreign
minister and took Bush on a helicopter tour over the Israeli occupied
territories. An Aug. 3, 2006 McClatchy wire story by Ron Hutcheson
quotes Matthew Brooks:
>If there's a starting point for George W. Bush's attachment to
>Israel, it's the day in late 1998, when he stood on a hilltop where
>Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount, and, with eyes brimming
>with tears, read aloud from his favorite hymn, 'Amazing Grace.' He
>was very emotional. It was a tear-filled experience. He brought
>Israel back home with him in his heart. I think he came away
>profoundly moved.
Bush made gratuitous but revealing reference to that trip at the
first meeting of his National Security Council (NSC) on Jan. 30,
2001. After announcing he would abandon the decades-long role of
honest broker between Israelis and Palestinians and would tilt
pronouncedly toward Israel, Bush said he would let Sharon resolve the
dispute however he saw fit. At that point he brought up his trip to
Israel with the Republican Jewish Coalition and the flight over
Palestinian camps, but there was no sense of concern for the lot of
the Palestinians. In A Pretext for War James Bamford quotes Bush:
"Looked real bad down there," he said with a frown. Then he said it
was time to end America's efforts in the region. "I don't see much we
can do over there at this point," he said.
So much for the Sermon on the Mount. The version I read puts a
premium on actively working for justice. There is no suggestion that
tears suffice.
Then-Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill, who was at the NSC
meeting, reported that Colin Powell, the newly-minted but nominal
secretary of state, was taken completely by surprise at this
nonchalant jettisoning of longstanding policy. Powell demurred,
warning that this would unleash Sharon and "the consequences could be
dire, especially for the Palestinians." But according to O'Neill,
Bush just shrugged, saying, "Sometimes a show of strength by one side
can really clarify things." O'Neill says that Powell seemed
"startled." It is a safe bet that the vice president was in no way
startled.
A similar account reflecting Bush's compassion deficit disorder leaps
from the pages of Ron Susskind's The One Percent Doctrine . Crown
Prince Abdullah, Saudi Arabia's de facto leader was in high dudgeon
in April 2002 when he arrived in Crawford to take issue with Bush's
decision to tilt toward Israel and scrap the American role of honest
broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. With Bush's freshly
bestowed "man-of-peace" epithet for Sharon still ringing in his ear,
Abdullah began by insisting that the president and his aides watch a
15-minute video. It showed the mayhem on the West Bank, American-made
tanks, bloodied and dead children, screaming mothers. Then, still
wordless, they all filed into another room where the Saudis proceeded
to make specific demands, but Bush appeared distracted and was
non-responsive. After a few minutes, the president turned to Abdullah
and said, "Let's go for a drive. Just you and me. I'll show you the
ranch."
Bush was so obviously unprepared to discuss substance with his Saudi
guests that some of the president's aides checked into what had
happened. The briefing packet for the president had been diverted to
Cheney's office. Bush never got it, so he was totally unaware of what
the Saudis hoped to accomplish in making the trip to Crawford. (There
is little doubt that this has been a common experience over the past
six years and that there are, in effect, two "deciders" in the White
House, one of them controlling the paper flow.)
Not that Bush was starved for background briefings. Indeed, he showed
a preference to get them from Prime Minister Sharon who, with his
senior military aide, Gen. Yoav Galant, briefed the president both in
Crawford (in 2005) and the Oval Office (in 2003) on Iran's "nuclear
weapons program." Sorry if I find that odd. That used to be our job
at the CIA. I'll bet Sharon and Galant packed a bigger punch.
There is, no doubt, more at play in Bush's attitude and behavior
regarding Israel and Palestine. One need not be a psychologist to see
ample evidence of oedipal tendencies. It is no secret that the
president has been privately critical of what he perceives to be his
father's mistakes. Susskind notes, for example, that Bush defended
his tilt toward Israel by telling an old foreign policy hand, "I'm
not going to be supportive of my father and all his Arab buddies!"
And it seems certain that Ariel Sharon gave the young Bush an earful
about the efforts of James Baker, his father's secretary of state, to
do the unthinkable; i.e., crank Arab grievances into deals he tried
to broker between Israel and the Palestinians. It seems clear that
this is one reason the Baker-Hamilton report was dead on arrival.
With Friends Like This...
George W. Bush may have the best of intentions in his zeal to defend
Israel, but he and Cheney have the most myopic of policies. Israeli
leaders risk much if they take reassurance from the president's
rhetoric, particularly vis-à-vis Iran. I am constantly amazed to
find, as I speak around the country, that the vast majority of
educated Americans believe we have a defense treaty with Israel. We
don't, but one can readily see how it is they are misled. Listen to
the president exactly two years ago:
>Clearly, if I was the leader of Israel and I'd listened to some of
>the statements by the Iranian ayatollahs that regarded the security
>of my country, I'd be concerned about Iran having a nuclear weapon
>as well. And, in that Israel is our ally [sic]-and in that we've
>made a very strong commitment to support Israel-we will support
>Israel if her security is threatened.
We do no favors for Israeli leaders in giving them the impression
they have carte blanche in their neighborhood-especially as
regards Iran-and that we will bail them out, no matter what. Have
they learned nothing from the recent past? Far from enhancing
Israel's security, the U.S. invasion of Iraq and Washington's
encouragement of Israel's feckless attack on Lebanon last summer
resulted in more breeding ground for terrorist activity against
Israel. This will seem child's play compared to what would be in
store, should the US and/or Israel bomb Iran.
Bottom line: there is a growing threat to Israel from suicide
bombers. The most dangerous two work in the White House.
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