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War Summit - Bush, Sharon
Meet To Plan Iran Attack
ThermoNuclear Armed Israeli Leader To Visit Bush at Ranch
Rattled CIA Types Now Sounding The Alarm About Israel
MER MiddleEast.org
3-25-5



"In my view, our first president's words apply only too aptly to this administration's lash-up with the Sharon government. As responsible citizens we need to overcome our timidity about addressing this issue, lest our fellow Americans continue to be denied important information neglected or distorted in our domesticated media." - former Senior CIA Agent
 
"It's not too much of a stretch to say that along with one of Sharon's top Ministers, Natan Sharansky, Ariel Sharon is, however incongruous to many, one of the guilding spirits for Bush and his largely Jewish Zionist Neocon minions."
 
---
 
As for the above quote which concludes long-time CIA-man Ray McGovern's article below, we could say something like "Gee CIA guys, where have you been all these years and why are you only speaking out like this now after the Neocons have shafted you. It's pretty late in the day!"
 
Having had that important say, we'll quickly escalate to the present and the future, though always cognizant of the past.
 
After considerable delay another face-to-face meeting between Ariel Sharon and George Bush is on the calendar, one which had been put off 'for political reasons' for some time, though of course Sharon and Bush are in constant contact all the time in many ways. Indeed, it's not too much of a stretch to say that along with one of Sharon's top Ministers, Natan Sharansky, Ariel Sharon is, however incongruous to many, one of the guilding spirits for Bush and his largely Jewish Zionist Neocon minions.
 
These two crusading warriors, however different in background, were already friends before they each took in their own countries; and they at first met rather often face-to-facet, at least 9 times.
 
Indeed, well-aware George Jr. was being groomed for power Ariel Sharon personally gave him a helicopter tour of Jerusalem and the West Bank years ago when they could only have dreamed of being so much in control of world affairs so jointly.
 
But even so political imagery takes on different imperatives at different times. It was best for Bush during the worst of the Intifada years that their policies brought about, during the height of the invasion years about which they jointly conspired, and then during the election year now history, that he not appear so intimately connected to Sharon personally and not so co-conspiratorial with Israel. But of course this is another case where imagery did not conform to reality.
 
They are an odd couple indeed. One a born-again Jesus-loving American corporate evangelist whom non other than Billy Graham showed the way and the light. The other a hard-driving secular Zionist of the Jabotinsky neo-fascist mold who has been a ruthlessly cunning and killing soldier and strategist his whole long life.
 
But now at this critical historical time they are each using each other for their own purposes as the New World Order Crusade (from now on we dub it NWOC) proceeds masked with escalating deceptive mind-numbing terminology of 'freedom' and 'democracy'.
 
Soon they and their top lieutenants will gather at the Texas Ranch to further plan the current and upcoming wars, especially the disarming (or destruction) through carefully coordinated strategic, political, economic, and military policies of Israel's enemies in the Middle East, especially Iran and associated Islamic movements their own policies have done so much to create and to enrage.
 
* Israel, U.S. begin military exercises eyeing Iran*
 
* Israeli Defense Forces and anti-aircraft units from the U.S. army started extensive joint air-defense exercises in Israel on Thursday. *
 
Israeli security sources said that the operation is aimed at preparing the Jewish State to defend itself against possible Iranian aerial attacks.
 
The month-long operation, codenamed Juniper Cobra, will test the extent of coordination between U.S. and Israeli forces in several attack scenarios.
 
It will also examine air defense systems at different heights, with Israel's Arrow II missile-killer system providing protection at great heights and the U.S.-made Patriot missiles at lower heights.
 
Israeli and U.S. officials described the exercise as a routine operation.
 
"There is absolutely no connection with this exercise and any event in the region," U.S. Army spokeswoman Connie Summers told the U.S. military newspaper Stars and Stripes.
 
But Israeli security sources said that the operation is aimed at tackling Iran's most advanced Shahab-3 missiles, which they say could reach anywhere inside Israel.
 
"These war games always take a real enemy into consideration," said a source. "Last time, it was Iraq's Scud missiles. This time around, it's the Iranian Shahabs."
 
The Arrow is the only system capable of intercepting missiles at high levels, a capability considered crucial to prevent devastating fallout from non-conventional warheads.
 
In the 1991 Gulf war, Iraq fired 39 Scuds with conventional warheads at Israel, killing one person but causing extensive damage in residential areas mainly on the Mediterranean coast.
 
Patriot missiles in Israel were not effective in intercepting the Scuds at the time but now they are more developed.
 
Experts estimate the Arrow's effectiveness at 95 percent but some say that it might not succeed in facing the Shahab-3s, which are four times faster than the Scuds.
Fears of military attacks between Israel and Iran have risen in recent months.
 
Israel and the United States accuse Iran of covertly developing an atomic weapons program and want to refer its nuclear file to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions.
 
Both countries didn't rule out using force against Iran, which insists that its nuclear program is strictly for the peaceful generation of electricity.
 
The Islamic republic also insists that the Shahab would only be used as a deterrent, especially against Israel's atomic arsenal.
 
Iranian officials vowed to retaliate if the U.S. or Israel attack its nuclear facilities.
 
Last week, the chief of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards warned that the 190,000 American forces based in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan will be targeted if his country is attacked.
-- Aljazeera - 3/10/2005
_____
 
Attacking Iran - I Know It Sounds Crazy, But...
 
By Ray McGovern*
Former Top CIA Analyst
 
*Why Would Iran Want Nukes?
 
So why would Iran think it has to acquire nuclear weapons? Sen. Richard Lugar, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was asked this on a Sunday talk show a few months ago. Apparently having a senior moment, he failed to give the normal answer. Instead, he replied, "Well, you know, Israel has..." At that point, he caught himself and abruptly stopped.
 
Recovering quickly and realizing that he could not just leave the word "Israel" hanging there, Lugar began again: "Well, Israel is alleged to have a nuclear capability."
 
Is alleged to have? Lugar is chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and yet he doesn't know that Israel has, by most estimates, a major nuclear arsenal, consisting of several hundred nuclear weapons? (Mainstream newspapers are allergic to dwelling on this topic, but it is mentioned every now and then, usually buried in obscurity on an inside page.)
 
Just imagine how the Iranians and Syrians would react to Lugar's disingenuousness. Small wonder our highest officials and lawmakers -- and Lugar, remember, is one of the most decent among them -- are widely seen abroad as hypocritical. Our media, of course, ignore the hypocrisy. This is standard operating procedure when the word "Israel" is spoken in this or other unflattering contexts. And the objections of those appealing for a more balanced approach are quashed.
 
If the truth be told, Iran fears Israel at least as much as Israel fears the internal security threat posed by the thugs supported by Tehran. Iran's apprehension is partly fear that Israel (with at least tacit support from the Bush administration) will send its aircraft to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities, just as American-built Israeli bombers destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak in 1981. As part of the current war of nerves, recent statements by the president and vice president can be read as giving a green light to Israel to do just that; while Israeli Air Force commander Major General Eliezer Shakedi told reporters on February 21 that Israel must be prepared for an air strike on Iran "in light of its nuclear activity."
 
US-Israel Nexus
 
The Iranians also remember how Israel was able to acquire and keep its nuclear technology. Much of it was stolen from the United States by spies for Israel. As early as the late-1950s, Washington knew Israel was building the bomb and could have aborted the project. Instead, American officials decided to turn a blind eye and let the Israelis go ahead. Now Israel's nuclear capability is truly formidable. Still, it is a fact of strategic life that a formidable nuclear arsenal can be deterred by a far more modest one, if an adversary has the means to deliver it. (Look at North Korea's success with, at best, a few nuclear weapons and questionable means of delivery in deterring the "sole remaining superpower in the world.") And Iran already has missiles with the range to hit Israel.
 
Israeli Prime Minister Sharon has for some time appeared eager to enlist Washington's support for an early "pre-emptive" strike on Iran. Indeed, American defense officials have told reporters that visiting Israeli officials have been pressing the issue for the past year and a half. And the Israelis are now claiming publicly that Iran could have a nuclear weapon within six months -- years earlier than the Defense Intelligence Agency estimate mentioned above.
 
In the past, President Bush has chosen to dismiss unwelcome intelligence estimates as "guesses" -- especially when they threatened to complicate decisions to implement the neoconservative agenda. It is worth noting that several of the leading neocons - Richard Perle, chair of the Defense Policy Board (2001-03); Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy; and David Wurmser, Middle East adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney -- actually wrote policy papers for the Israeli government during the 1990s. They have consistently had great difficulty distinguishing between the strategic interests of Israel and those of the US -- at least as they imagine them.
 
As for President Bush, over the past four years he has amply demonstrated his preference for the counsel of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who, as Gen. Scowcroft said publicly, has the president "wrapped around his little finger." (As Chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board until he was unceremoniously removed at the turn of the year, Scowcroft was in a position to know.) If Scowcroft is correct in also saying that the president has been "mesmerized" by Sharon, it seems possible that the Israelis already have successfully argued for an attack on Iran.
 
When "Regime Change" Meant Overthrow For Oil
 
To remember why the United States is no favorite in Tehran, one needs to go back at least to 1953 when the U.S. and Great Britain overthrew Iran's democratically elected Premier Mohammad Mossadeq as part of a plan to insure access to Iranian oil. They then emplaced the young Shah in power who, with his notorious secret police, proved second to none in cruelty. The Shah ruled from 1953 to 1979. Much resentment can build up over a whole generation. His regime fell like a house of cards, when supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini rose up to do some regime change of their own.
 
Iranians also remember Washington's strong support for Saddam Hussein's Iraq after it decided to make war on Iran in 1980. U.S. support for Iraq (which included crucial intelligence support for the war and an implicit condoning of Saddam's use of chemical weapons) was perhaps the crucial factor in staving off an Iranian victory. Imagine then, the threat Iranians see, should the Bush administration succeed in establishing up to 14 permanent military bases in neighboring Iraq. Any Iranian can look at a map of the Middle East (including occupied Iraq) and conclude that this administration might indeed be willing to pay the necessary price in blood and treasure to influence what happens to the black gold under Iranian as well as Iraqi sands. And with four more years to play with, a lot can be done along those lines. The obvious question is: How to deter it? Well, once again, Iran can hardly be blind to the fact that a small nation like North Korea has so far deterred U.S. action by producing, or at least claiming to have produced, nuclear weapons.
 
Nuclear Is the Nub
 
The nuclear issue is indeed paramount, and we would do well to imagine and craft fresh approaches to the nub of the problem. As a start, I'll bet if you made a survey, only 20% of Americans would answer "yes" to the question, "Does Israel have nuclear weapons?" That is key, it seems to me, because at their core Americans are still fair-minded people.
 
On the other hand, I'll bet that 95% of the Iranian population would answer, "Of course Israel has nuclear weapons; that's why we Iranians need them" -- which was, of course, the unmentionable calculation that Senator Lugar almost conceded. "And we also need them," many Iranians would probably say, "in order to deter 'the crazies' in Washington. It seems to be working for the North Koreans, who, after all, are the other remaining point on President Bush's 'axis of evil.'"
 
The ideal approach would, of course, be to destroy all nuclear weapons in the world and ban them for the future, with a very intrusive global inspection regime to verify compliance. A total ban is worth holding up as an ideal, and I think we must. But this approach seems unlikely to bear fruit over the next four years. So what then?
 
A Nuclear-Free Middle East
 
How about a nuclear-free Middle East? Could the US make that happen? We could if we had moral clarity -- the underpinning necessary to bring it about. Each time this proposal is raised, the Syrians, for example, clap their hands in feigned joyful anticipation, saying, "Of course such a pact would include Israel, right?" The issue is then dropped from all discussion by U.S. policymakers. Required: not only moral clarity but also what Thomas Aquinas labeled the precondition for all virtue, courage. In this context, courage would include a refusal to be intimidated by inevitable charges of anti-Semitism.
 
The reality is that, except for Israel, the Middle East is nuclear free. But the discussion cannot stop there. It is not difficult to understand why the first leaders of Israel, with the Holocaust experience written indelibly on their hearts and minds, and feeling surrounded by perceived threats to the fledgling state's existence, wanted the bomb. And so, before the Syrians or Iranians, for example, get carried away with self-serving applause for the nuclear-free Middle East proposal, they will have to understand that for any such negotiation to succeed it must have as a concomitant aim the guarantee of an Israel able to live in peace and protect itself behind secure borders. That guarantee has got to be part of the deal.
 
That the obstacles to any such agreement are formidable is no excuse not trying. But the approach would have to be new and everything would have to be on the table. Persisting in a state of denial about Israel's nuclear weapons is dangerously shortsighted; it does nothing but aggravate fears among the Arabs and create further incentive for them to acquire nuclear weapons of their own.
 
A sensible approach would also have to include a willingness to engage the Iranians directly, attempt to understand their perspective, and discern what the United States and Israel could do to alleviate their concerns.
 
Preaching to Iran and others about not acquiring nuclear weapons is, indeed, like the village drunk preaching sobriety -- the more so as our government keeps developing new genres of nuclear weapons and keeps looking the other way as Israel enhances its own nuclear arsenal. Not a pretty moral picture, that. Indeed, it reminds me of the Scripture passage about taking the plank out of your own eye before insisting that the speck be removed from another's.
 
Lessons from the Past...Like Mutual Deterrence
 
Has everyone forgotten that deterrence worked for some 40 years, while for most of those years the U.S. and the USSR had not by any means lost their lust for ever-enhanced nuclear weapons? The point is simply that, while engaging the Iranians bilaterally and searching for more imaginative nuclear-free proposals, the U.S. might adopt a more patient interim attitude regarding the striving of other nation states to acquire nuclear weapons -- bearing in mind that the Bush administration's policies of "preemption" and "regime change" themselves create powerful incentives for exactly such striving. As was the case with Iraq two years ago, there is no imminent Iranian strategic threat to Americans -- or, in reality, to anyone. Even if Iran acquired a nuclear capability, there is no reason to believe that it would risk a suicidal first strike on Israel. That, after all, is what mutual deterrence is all about; it works both ways.
 
It is nonetheless clear that the Israelis' sense of insecurity -- however exaggerated it may seem to those of us thousands of miles away -- is not synthetic but real. The Sharon government appears to regard its nuclear monopoly in the region as the only effective "deterrence insurance" it can buy. It is determined to prevent its neighbors from acquiring the kind of capability that could infringe on the freedom it now enjoys to carry out military and other actions in the area. Government officials have said that Israel will not let Iran acquire a nuclear weapon; it would be folly to dismiss this as bravado. The Israelis have laid down a marker and mean to follow through -- unless the Bush administration assumes the attitude that "preemption" is an acceptable course for the United States but not for Israel. It seems unlikely that the neoconservatives would take that line. Rather
 
"Israel Is Our Ally"
 
Or so said our president before the cameras on February 17, 2005. But I didn't think we had a treaty of alliance with Israel; I don't remember the Senate approving one. Did I miss something?
 
Clearly, the longstanding U.S.-Israeli friendship and the ideals we share dictate continuing support for Israel's defense and security. It is quite another thing, though, to suggest the existence of formal treaty obligations that our country does not have. To all intents and purposes, our policymakers -- from the president on down -- seem to speak and behave on the assumption that we do have such obligations toward Israel. A former colleague CIA analyst, Michael Scheuer, author of Imperial Hubris, has put it this way: "The Israelis have succeeded in lacing tight the ropes binding the American Gulliver to Israel and its policies."
 
An earlier American warned:
 
"A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation facilitates the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, infuses into one the enmities of the other, and betrays the former into participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification.... It also gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens, who devote themselves to the favorite nation, facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country." -George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796
 
In my view, our first president's words apply only too aptly to this administration's lash-up with the Sharon government. As responsible citizens we need to overcome our timidity about addressing this issue, lest our fellow Americans continue to be denied important information neglected or distorted in our domesticated media.
 
Ray McGovern served as a CIA analyst for 27 years -- from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. During the early 1980s, he was one of the writers/editors of the President's Daily Brief and briefed it one-on-one to the president's most senior advisers. He also chaired National Intelligence Estimates. In January 2003, he and four former colleagues founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
 
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