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Letter: To All Those Who Should Know...
12 September 2004
Letter: To all those who
should know and should speak out
Dear [________],
I
find it odd and a bit disturbing that the ongoing back and forth in the
media and among politicians over the war in Iraq is still operating on the
premise that WMD were the sincere motive for the war -- more than a year
after Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz stated plainly that WMD
were chosen as the prime pretext mainly for bureaucratic reasons:
"we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was
weapons of mass destruction," and later: "I'm not concerned about
weapons of mass destruction." Everyone in Washington and in the media
know this, yet the discussion goes on as if there is no dispute.
Consider:
Philip
Zelikow, executive director of the National Commission on Terrorist
Attacks Upon the United States and former member of the President's
Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, spoke before an audience at the
University of Virginia, where he teaches history, on September 10, 2002.
There he stated: "Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons
against us? I'll tell you what I think the real threat [is] and actually
has been since 1990 - it's the threat against Israel." "And this is
the threat that dare not speak its name." "[T]he American
government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is
not a popular sell."
General Anthony Zinni (Ret.) was
Commander of the United States Central Command from 1997 to 2001, in
charge of all American troops in the Middle East. This is the position
formerly held by General Norman Schwarzkopf and until recently by General
Tommy Franks. Following his retirement, the Bush administration appointed
Zinni special envoy to the Middle East. In a recent interview
with CBS News, Zinni stated: "I think it's the worst kept secret in
Washington. That everybody - everybody I talk to in Washington has known
and fully knows what their agenda was and what they were trying to
do." "[In] one article, because I mentioned the neo-conservatives
who describe themselves as neo-conservatives, I was called anti-Semitic. I
mean, you know, unbelievable that that's the kind of personal attacks that
are run when you criticize a strategy and those who propose it." "I
know what strategy they promoted. And openly. And for a number of years.
And what they have convinced the president and the secretary to do. And I
don't believe there is any serious political leader, military leader,
diplomat in Washington that doesn't know where it came from." The
officials Zinni mentioned were Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz,
Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith, former chairman of the Defense
Policy Board Richard Perle, National Security Council member Elliott
Abrams, and Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff.
According to Zinni, they pushed the war against Iraq because they saw it
as a way to "strengthen the position of Israel."
Senator
Ernst Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina) announced on August 4th, 2003 that
he would not be seeking reelection to the Senate. Hollings, 81, had spent
50 years in public life. He graduated from the Citadel in Charston in 1942
and served in the army during WW2. He was elected to the South Carolina
House of Representatives at age 26, elected governor in 1958 at age 36,
and has worked in the United States Senate since 1966, achieving seniority
in 2003 following the death of Senator Strom Thurmond. On May 6th, 2004
Hollings issued an editorial to The Charleston Post and Courier, in
which he stated that there was in fact no threat to the United States from
Iraq, and that the attack was in reality "President Bush's policy to
secure Israel." Hollings named "Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and
Charles Krauthammer" as the architects of this policy, and stated
that: "[George W. Bush] started laying the groundwork to invade Iraq
days after inauguration. And, without any Iraq connection to 9/11, within
weeks he had the Pentagon outlining a plan to invade Iraq." Following
his editorial, the Anti-Defamation League responded with accusations of
anti-Semitism and demands for an apology. Hollings fired back: "I won't
apologize for this column; I want them to apologize to me."
"Talking about 'anti-Semitic.' They're not getting by with it." In
a follow-up piece published in The Slate on June 23rd, Hollings explained:
"In 1996, a task force was formed in Jerusalem including Richard Perle,
Douglas Feith and David Wurmser. They submitted a plan for Israel to
incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Clean Break [A New
Strategy For Securing the Realm] . . . Saddam Hussein was to be removed in
Iraq and replaced with a Hashemite ruler favorable to Israel." (This
possibility was recently discussed on Hardball with Chris Matthews
(11/16/03) by James Woolsey. Woolsey is a former director of the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), is a member of the Policy Advisory Board to the
Secretary of Defense, and is on the board of The
Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.) Hollings: "The
plan was rejected by Netanyahu, so Perle started working for a similar
approach to the Mideast for the United States. Taking on the support of
Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Stephen Cambone, Scooter Libby, Donald
Rumsfeld et al., he enlisted the support of the Project for the New
American Century. The plan hit paydirt with the election of George W.
Bush. Perle took on the Defense Policy Board. Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and
Feith became one, two and three at the Defense Department, and Cheney as
vice president took Scooter Libby and David Wurmser as his deputies. Clean
Break was streamlined to go directly into Iraq."
Rep. James
Moran (D) of Virginia spoke before a gathering at an antiwar forum in
Reston, Virginia on March 3, 2003. He told the audience: "If it were
not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq,
we would not be doing this." "The leaders of the Jewish community
are influential enough that they could change the direction of where this
is going, and I think they should." Moran immediately came under fire
for his comments, with condemnations from Jewish groups and fellow
lawmakers on the hill. Despite national efforts to oust him, however, he
recently defeated well-funded primary challenger Andrew Rosenberg and
expects to be elected to his eighth term in November.
In comments
to Vanity Fair magazine in April 2003, Veteran British Labor
Parliamentarian Tam Dalyell, Father of the House of Commons and an MP for
41 years, the longest serving MP, accused Prime Minister Tony Blair of
being unduly influenced in his Middle East policy by a number of close
Jewish advisors, including Lord Levy, Blair's Middle East envoy, Foreign
Secretary Jack Straw, and Peter Mandelson, who he alleged were "skewing
British foreign policy on the Middle East in favour of the Israeli
Government." Dalyell stated: "Blair and Straw have become far too
close to these people and Lord Levy, who is an unaccountable ambassador in
the Middle East, is part of this group. They are acting on an extremely
Zionist, Likud-nik agenda. In particular I am concerned that some of them
are pushing for an attack on Syria, for reasons of Israeli security."
"I am worried about my country being led up the garden path on a
Likudnik, Sharon agenda," adding that "Straw, Mandelson and co"
were leading "a tremendous drive to sort out the Middle East."
Blair, Dalyell claimed, was also indirectly influenced by figures in the
Bush administration, including Richard Perle, a Pentagon advisor and
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. "It is an enormously
sensitive issue and that's why very many of us have been extremely
reticent about it, because we don't want to be seen as anti-Semitic."
"I am fully aware that one is treading on cut glass on this issue and
no one wants to be accused of anti-Semitism but, if it is a question of
launching an assault on Syria or Iran . . . then one has to be
candid." Dalyell mentioned seven advisers to President George Bush --
six of them Jewish -- as urging a strike against Syria. "They very much
have captured the ear of the President of the United States. I said I
thought that Blair was very sympathetic to them. I cannot understand
why." "It's the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs . .
. I think a lot of it is Likudnik, Mr. Sharon's agenda, and when it comes
to an attack on Syria this is a very serious matter." "I am not
going to be labelled anti-Semitic. My children worked on a kibbutz. But
the time has come for candour." In his 1989 book, They Dare to
Speak Out, Rep. Paul Findley (R-Illinois) writes: "An FBI summary
of a 1970 wiretap recorded [Richard] Perle discussing classified
information with someone at the Israeli embassy. He came under fire in
1983 when newspapers reported he received substantial payments to
represent the interests of an Israeli weapons company. Perle denied
conflict of interest, insisting that, although he received payment for
these services after he had assumed his position in the Defense
Department, he was between government jobs when he worked for the Israeli
firm." Perle headed the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board until March
2003, when he was forced to resign amid allegations of unethical business
practices. The New
York Times reported: "Even as he advises the Pentagon on war
matters, Richard N. Perle, chairman of the influential Defense Policy
Board, has been retained by the telecommunications company Global Crossing
to help overcome Defense Department resistance to its proposed sale to a
foreign firm . . . [Perle] is close to many senior officials, including
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who appointed him to lead the policy
board in 2001. Though the board does not pay its members and is
technically not a government agency, it wields tremendous influence in
policy circles. And its chairman is considered a "special government
employee," subject to federal ethics rules, including one that bars anyone
from using public office for private gain."
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Lest you be inclined to attribute these statements to
"anti-Semitism," consider the following statements by Jewish writers.
Joe Klein, February 5, 2003, Time
Magazine
"A stronger Israel is very much embedded
in the rationale for war with Iraq. It is a part of the argument that dare
not speak its name, a fantasy quietly cherished by the neo-conservative
faction in the Bush Administration and by many leaders of the American
Jewish community. The fantasy involves a domino theory. The destruction of
Saddam's Iraq will not only remove an enemy of long-standing but will also
change the basic power equation in the region."
Ari Shavit,
April 5, 2003 Haaretz
News Service (Israel)
"The war in Iraq was conceived by
25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish, who are pushing
President Bush to change the course of history.
In the course of
the past year, a new belief has emerged in the town (Washington): the
belief in war against Iraq. That ardent faith was disseminated by a small
group of 25 or 30 neoconservatives, almost all of them Jewish, almost all
of them intellectuals (a partial list: Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz,
Douglas Feith, William Kristol, Eliot Abrams, Charles Krauthammer), people
who are mutual friends and cultivate one another and are convinced that
political ideas are a major driving force of history."
James Rosen, April 6, 2003 The Sacramento Bee
(California)
"In 1996, as Likud Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu prepared to take office, eight Jewish neoconservative leaders
sent him a six-page memo outlining an aggressive vision of government. At
the top of their list was overthrowing Saddam and replacing him with a
monarch under the control of Jordan. The neoconservatives sketched out a
kind of domino theory in which the governments of Syria and other Arab
countries might later fall or be replaced in the wake of Saddam's ouster.
Lead writer of the memo was Perle. Other signatories were Feith,
now Undersecretary of Defense, and Wurmser, a senior adviser to John
Bolton, Undersecretary of State. Fred Donner, a professor of Near Eastern
history at the University of Chicago, said he was struck by the
similarities between the ideas in the memo and ideas now at the forefront
of Bush's foreign policy."
Thomas Friedman, April 4, 2003
New
York Times, Columnist
"I could give you the names of 25
people (all of whom are at this moment within a five-block radius of this
office) who, if you had exiled them to a desert island a year and a half
ago, the Iraq war would not have happened."
Dr. Henry
Makow, Ph.D., February 10, 2003, Writer, Inventor of board game
"Scruples"
"Everybody knows that:
The only country
that fears Iraq's WMD's is Israel;
American-Jewish
neo-conservatives on the Defence Policy Board (Richard Perle, Paul
Wolfowitz) planned this war in 1998 and made it Bush Administration
policy;
The purpose of the war is to change the balance of power
in the Middle East."
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Don't say you didn't know.
Weightedly,
The
White men and women of this country
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