Posted on 03/30/2004 2:23:35 PM PST by rogueleader
Iraq under Saddam Hussein did not pose a threat to the United States but it did to Israel, which is one reason why Washington invaded the Arab country, according to a speech made by a member of a top-level White House intelligence group.
IPS uncovered the remarks by Philip Zelikow, who is now the executive director of the body set up to investigate the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001--the 9/11 commission--in which he suggests a prime motive for the invasion just over one year ago was to eliminate a threat to Israel, a staunch U.S. ally in the Middle East.
Zelikow's casting of the attack on Iraq as one launched to protect Israel appears at odds with the public position of President Bush (news - web sites) and his administration, which has never overtly drawn the link between its war on the regime of former president Hussein and its concern for Israel's security.
The administration has instead insisted it launched the war to liberate the Iraqi people, destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and to protect the United States.
Zelikow made his statements about "the unstated threat" during his tenure on a highly knowledgeable and well-connected body known as the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), which reports directly to the president.
He served on the board between 2001 and 2003.
"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," Zelikow told a crowd at the University of Virginia on Sep. 10, 2002, speaking on a panel of foreign policy experts assessing the impact of 9/11 and the future of the war on the al-Qaeda terrorist organisation.
"And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don't care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell," said Zelikow.
The statements are the first to surface from a source closely linked to the Bush administration acknowledging that the war, which has so far cost the lives of nearly 600 U.S. troops and thousands of Iraqis, was motivated by Washington's desire to defend the Jewish state.
The administration, which is surrounded by staunch pro-Israel, neo-conservative hawks, is currently fighting an extensive campaign to ward off accusations that it derailed the "war on terrorism" it launched after 9/11 by taking a detour to Iraq, which appears to have posed no direct threat to the United States.
Israel is Washington's biggest ally in the Middle East, receiving annual direct aid of $3-to-4 billion.
Even though members of the 16-person PFIAB come from outside government, they enjoy the confidence of the president and have access to all information related to foreign intelligence that they need to play their vital advisory role.
Known in intelligence circles as "Piffy-ab," the board is supposed to evaluate the nation's intelligence agencies and probe any mistakes they make.
The unpaid appointees on the board require a security clearance known as "code word" that is higher than top secret.
The national security adviser to former President George H.W. Bush (1989-93) Brent Scowcroft, currently chairs the board in its work overseeing a number of intelligence bodies, including the Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites) (CIA (news - web sites)), the various military intelligence groups and the Pentagon (news - web sites)'s National Reconnaissance Office.
Neither Scowcroft nor Zelikow returned phone calls or email messages from IPS for this story.
Zelikow has long-established ties to the Bush administration.
Before his appointment to PFIAB in October 2001, he was part of the current president's transition team in January 2001.
In that capacity, Zelikow drafted a memo for National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) on reorganising and restructuring the National Security Council (NSC) and prioritising its work.
Richard A. Clarke, who was counter-terrorism coordinator for Bush's predecessor President Bill Clinton (news - web sites) (1993-2001) also worked for Bush senior, and has recently accused the current administration of not heeding his terrorism warnings, said Zelikow was among those he briefed about the urgent threat from al-Qaeda in December 2000.
Rice herself had served in the NSC during the first Bush administration, and subsequently teamed up with Zelikow on a 1995 book about the unification of Germany.
Zelikow had ties with another senior Bush administration official--Robert Zoellick, the current trade representative. The two wrote three books together, including one in 1998 on the United States and the Muslim Middle East.
Aside from his position at the 9/11 commission, Zelikow is now also director of the Miller Centre of Public Affairs and White Burkett Miller Professor of History at the University of Virginia.
His close ties to the administration prompted accusations of a conflict of interest in 2002 from families of victims of the 9/11 attacks, who protested his appointment to the investigative body.
In his university speech, Zelikow, who strongly backed attacking the Iraqi dictator, also explained the threat to Israel by arguing that Baghdad was preparing in 1990-91 to spend huge amounts of "scarce hard currency" to harness "communications against electromagnetic pulse," a side-effect of a nuclear explosion that could sever radio, electronic and electrical communications.
That was "a perfectly absurd expenditure unless you were going to ride out a nuclear exchange--they (Iraqi officials) were not preparing to ride out a nuclear exchange with us. Those were preparations to ride out a nuclear exchange with the Israelis," according to Zelikow.
He also suggested that the danger of biological weapons falling into the hands of the anti-Israeli Islamic Resistance Movement, known by its Arabic acronym Hamas, would threaten Israel rather than the United States, and that those weapons could have been developed to the point where they could deter Washington from attacking Hamas.
"Play out those scenarios," he told his audience, "and I will tell you, people have thought about that, but they are just not talking very much about it."
Don't look at the links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, but then ask yourself the question, 'Gee, is Iraq tied to Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the people who are carrying out suicide bombings in Israel'? Easy question to answer; the evidence is abundant.
To date, the possibility of the United States attacking Iraq to protect Israel has been only timidly raised by some intellectuals and writers, with few public acknowledgements from sources close to the administration.
Analysts who reviewed Zelikow's statements said they are concrete evidence of one factor in the rationale for going to war, which has been hushed up.
"Those of us speaking about it sort of routinely referred to the protection of Israel as a component," said Phyllis Bennis of the Washington-based Institute of Policy Studies. "But this is a very good piece of evidence of that."
Others say the administration should be blamed for not making known to the public its true intentions and real motives for invading Iraq.
"They (the administration) made a decision to invade Iraq, and then started to search for a policy to justify it. It was a decision in search of a policy and because of the odd way they went about it, people are trying to read something into it," said Nathan Brown, professor of political science at George Washington University and an expert on the Middle East.
But he downplayed the Israel link. "In terms of securing Israel, it doesn't make sense to me because the Israelis are probably more concerned about Iran than they were about Iraq in terms of the long-term strategic threat," he said.
Still, Brown says Zelikow's words carried weight.
"Certainly his position would allow him to speak with a little bit more expertise about the thinking of the Bush administration, but it doesn't strike me that he is any more authoritative than Wolfowitz, or Rice or Powell or anybody else. All of them were sort of fishing about for justification for a decision that has already been made," Brown said.
The allegation is that Zelikow, a former Bush advisor, has a conflict of interest
But the media does. Once this story breaks, we need a response.How about this one: Shut up, stupid.
RTA.
Zelikow made his statements about "the unstated threat" during his tenure on a highly knowledgeable and well-connected body known as the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), which reports directly to the president.
He made the statement on September 10, 2002.
It's stupid to deny that Israel was not a factor in our decision to go to war. As a person who is an extremely hawkish Israel supporter, and a supporter of the Iraq war, and a person who is going to vote for GWB, I don't think it's wise to abandon history.
Remember that a key argument made for how Saddam supported terrorism was his $25,000 bounty to every suidicde bomber's family that successfully struck Israel.
Remember that the WMD debate referenced the missile strikes on Israel in 1991.
The response to the charge is this: yes, Israel was a factor in why we went to war. It was not, however, a determining factor. The determining factors were first, the threat to the US, including our no-fly zone pilots (thank you vbmoneyspender), but also our strategic plan for victory in the War on Terrorism. Ultimately, we could not have defeated terrorism if Saddam Hussein remained in power in Iraq. Since we are serious about defeating terrorism, we had to be serious about defeating Saddam. The sanctions and the no-fly zones were in effect a stalemate. We had a stalemate situation in Iraq, and now we have victory. Ergo, the victory over Saddam is key to winning the war and ergo key to long-term US national security.
Here's one: So what?
In terms of pronunciation, shouldn't it be Jooz?
The objectivity of these two men was compromised from the first day they set foot in the Bush administration, in light of their call for a regime change in Iraq in 1996. Calling for a regime change itself wasn't the problem. The real concern was that they did so in a paper they presented to the Netanyahu government in Israel, entitled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Security the Realm." In case anyone still doesn't know this by now, the "realm" they were talking about was Israel, not the United States.
Perle's nebulous role as an "unpaid advisor" to the Bush administration on the Defense Policy Board has raised serious warning flags in my mind from the beginning, and I don't consider myself to be a raving lunatic of any kind, either. These concerns have been reinforced by the manner in which Perle quietly disappeared from the scene last year, once it became apparent that the President's silly show on the deck of the aircraft carrier last May wasn't the defining moment it was intended to be.
I certainly wasn't surprised to learn that Mr. Perle was working as a lobbyist for Global Crossing, lobbying on their behalf to get the U.S. government to approve the sale of some of the company's fiber-optic assets to a telecommunications giant in Red China.
Why the Bush administration insisted on having this bastard play any role whatsoever in this country's foreign policy decisions over the last few years is something I'll never understand.
And their views differ much from Clinton, Gore, the ILA, etc. etc. pushing for the liberation of Iraq and getting our troops out of Saudi how?
And all the papers written on behalf of the Saudis, Kuwaitis, Kurds, even Iraqis to get rid of Saddam - should we attribute conspiracy to them?
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