Introduction

After suffering major military and political defeats in bloody ground wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, failing to buttress long-standing clients in Yemen, Egypt and Tunisia and witnessing the disintegration of puppet regimes in Somalia and South Sudan, the Obama regime has learned nothing: Instead he has turned toward greater military confrontation with global powers, namely Russia and China. Obama has adopted a provocative offensive military strategy right on the frontiers of both China and Russia.

After going from defeat to defeat on the periphery of world power and not satisfied with running treasury-busting deficits in pursuit of empire building against economically weak countries, Obama has embraced a policy of encirclement and provocations against China, the world's second largest economy and the US's most important creditor, and Russia, the European Union's principle oil and gas provider and the world's second most powerful nuclear weapons power.

This paper addresses the Obama regime's highly irrational and world-threatening escalation of imperial militarism. We examine the global military, economic and domestic political context that gives rise to these policies. We then examine the multiple points of conflict and intervention in which Washington is engaged, from Pakistan, Iran, Libya, Venezuela, Cuba and beyond. We will then analyze the rationale for military escalation against Russia and China as part of a new offensive moving beyond the Arab world (Syria, Libya) and in the face of the declining economic position of the EU and the US in the global economy. We will then outline the strategies of a declining empire, nurtured on perpetual wars, facing global economic decline, domestic discredit and a working population reeling from the long-term, large-scale dismantling of its basic social programs.

The Turn from Militarism in the Periphery to Global Military Confrontation

November 2011 is a moment of great historical import: Obama declared two major policy positions, both having tremendous strategic consequences affecting competing world powers.

Obama pronounced a policy of military encirclement of China based on stationing a maritime and aerial armada facing the Chinese coast – an overt policy designed to weaken and disrupt China's access to raw materials and commercial and financial ties in Asia. Obama's declaration that Asia is the priority region for US military expansion, base-building and economic alliances was directed against China, challenging Beijing in its own backyard. Obama's iron fist policy statement, addressed to the Australian Parliament, was crystal clear in defining US imperial goals.

"Our enduring interests in the region [Asia Pacific] demands our enduring presence in this region ... The United States is a Pacific power and we are here to stay ... As we end today's wars [i.e. the defeats and retreats from Iraq and Afghanistan]... I have directed my national security team to make our presence and missions in the Asia Pacific a top priority ... As a result, reduction in US defense spending will not ... come at the expense of the Asia Pacific" (CNN.com, Nov. 16, 2011).

The precise nature of what Obama called our "presence and mission" was underlined by the new military agreement with Australia to dispatch warships, warplanes and 2500 marines to the northern most city of Australia (Darwin) directed at China. Secretary of State Clinton has spent the better part of 2011 making highly provocative overtures to Asian countries that have maritime border conflicts with China. Clinton has forcibly injected the US into these disputes, encouraging and exacerbating the demands of Vietnam, Philippines, and Brunei in the South China Sea. Even more seriously, Washington is bolstering its military ties and sales with Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea, as well as increasing the presence of battleships, nuclear submarines and over flights of war planes along China's coastal waters. In line with the policy of military encirclement and provocation, the Obama-Clinton regime is promoting Asian multi-lateral trade agreements that exclude China and privilege US multi-national corporations, bankers and exporters, dubbed the "Trans-Pacific Partnership". It currently includes mostly smaller countries, but Obama has hopes of enticing Japan and Canada to join ...

Obama's presence at the APEC meeting of East Asian leader and his visit to Indonesia in November 2011 all revolve around efforts to secure US hegemony. Obama-Clinton hope to counter the relative decline of US economic links in the face of the geometrical growth of trade and investment ties between East Asia and China.

A most recent example of Obama-Clinton's delusional, but destructive, efforts to deliberately disrupt China's economic ties in Asia, is taking place in Myanmar (Burma). Clinton's December 2011 visit to Myanmar was preceded by a decision by the Thein Sein regime to suspend a China Power Investment-funded dam project in the north of the country. According to official confidential documents released by WikiLeaks the "Burmese NGO's, which organized and led the campaign against the dam, were heavily funded by the US government"(Financial Times, Dec. 2, 2011, p. 2). This and other provocative activity and Clinton's speeches condemning Chinese "tied aid" pale in comparison with the long-term, large-scale interests which link Myanmar with China. China is Myanmar's biggest trading partner and investor, including six other dam projects. Chinese companies are building new highways and rail lines across the country, opening southwestern China up for Burmese products and China is constructing oil pipelines and ports. There is a powerful dynamic of mutual economic interests that will not be disturbed by one dispute (FT, December 2, 2011, p.2). Clinton's critique of China's billion-dollar investments in Myanmar's infrastructure is one of the most bizarre in world history, coming in the aftermath of Washington's brutal eight-year military presence in Iraq which destroyed $500 billion dollars of Iraqi infrastructure, according to Baghdad official estimates. Only a delusional administration could imagine that rhetorical flourishes, a three day visit and the bankrolling of an NGO is an adequate counter-weight to deep economic ties linking Myanmar to China. The same delusional posture underlies the entire repertoire of policies informing the Obama regime's efforts to displace China's predominant role in Asia.

While any one policy adopted by the Obama regime does not, in itself, present an immediate threat to peace, the cumulative impact of all these policy pronouncements and the projections of military power add up to an all out comprehensive effort to isolate, intimidate and degrade China's rise as a regional and global power. Military encirclement and alliances, exclusion of China in proposed regional economic associations, partisan intervention in regional maritime disputes and positioning technologically advanced warplanes, are all aimed to undermine China's competitiveness and to compensate for US economic inferiority via closed political and economic networks.

Clearly White House military and economic moves and US Congressional anti-China demagogy are aimed at weakening China's trading position and forcing its business-minded leaders into privileging US banking and business interests over and above their own enterprises. Pushed to its limits, Obama's prioritizing a big military push could lead to a catastrophic rupture in US-Chinese economic relations. This would result in dire consequences, especially but not exclusively, on the US economy and particularly its financial system. China holds over $1.5 trillion dollars in US debt, mainly Treasury Notes, and each year purchases from $200 to $300 billion in new issues, a vital source in financing the US deficit. If Obama provokes a serious threat to China's security interests and Beijing is forced to respond, it will not be military but economic retaliation: the sell-off of a few hundred billion dollars in T-notes and the curtailment of new purchases of US debt. The US deficit will skyrocket, its credit ratings will descend to 'junk', and the financial system will 'tremble onto collapse'. Interest rates to attract new buyers of US debt will approach double digits. Chinese exports to the US will suffer and losses will incur due to the devaluation of the T-notes in Chinese hands. China has been diversifying its markets around the world and its huge domestic market could probably absorb most of what China loses abroad in the course of a pull-back from the US market.

While Obama strays across the Pacific to announce his military threats to China and strives to economically isolate China from the rest of Asia, the US economic presence is fast fading in what used to be its "backyard": Quoting one Financial Times journalist, "China is the only show [in town] for Latin America" (Financial Times, Nov. 23, 2011, p.6). China has displaced the US and the EU as Latin America's principle trading partner; Beijing has poured billions in new investments and provides low interest loans.

China's trade with India, Indonesia, Japan, Pakistan and Vietnam is increasing at a far faster rate than that of the US. The US effort to build an imperial-centered security alliance in Asia is based on fragile economic foundations. Even Australia, the anchor and linchpin of the US military thrust in Asia, is heavily dependent on mineral exports to China. Any military interruption would send the Australian economy into a tailspin.

The US economy is in no condition to replace China as a market for Asian or Australian commodity and manufacturing exports. The Asian countries must be acutely aware that there is no future advantage in tying themselves to a declining, highly militarized, empire. Obama and Clinton deceive themselves if they think they can entice Asia into a long-term alliance. The Asian's are simply using the Obama regime's friendly overtures as a 'tactical device', a negotiating ploy, to leverage better terms in securing maritime and territorial boundaries with China.

Washington is delusional if it believes that it can convince Asia to break long-term large-scale lucrative economic ties to China in order to join an exclusive economic association with such dubious prospects. Any 'reorientation' of Asia, from China to the US, would require more than the presence of an American naval and airborne armada pointed at China. It would require the total restructuring of the Asian countries' economies, class structure and political and military elite. The most powerful economic entrepreneurial groups in Asia have deep and growing ties with China/Hong Kong, especially among the dynamic transnational Chinese business elites in the region. A turn toward Washington entails a massive counter-revolution, which substitutes colonial 'traders' (compradors) for established entrepreneurs. A turn to the US would require a dictatorial elite willing to cut strategic trading and investment linkages, displacing millions of workers and professionals. As much as some US-trained Asian military officers, economists and former Wall Street financiers and billionaires might seek to 'balance' a US military presence with Chinese economic power, they must realize that ultimately advantage resides in working out an Asian solution.

The age of Asian "comprador capitalists", willing to sell out national industry and sovereignty in exchange for privileged access to US markets, is ancient history. Whatever the boundless enthusiasm for conspicuous consumerism and Western lifestyles, which Asia and China's new rich mindlessly celebrate, whatever the embrace of inequalities and savage capitalist exploitation of labor, there is recognition that the past history of US and European dominance precluded the growth and enrichment of an indigenous bourgeoisie and middle class. The speeches and pronouncements of Obama and Clinton reek of nostalgia for a past of neo-colonial overseers and comprador collaborators – a mindless delusion. Their attempts at political realism, in finally recognizing Asia as the economic pivot of the present world order, takes a bizarre turn in imagining that military posturing and projections of armed force will reduce China to a marginal player in the region.

Obama's Escalation of Confrontation with Russia

The Obama regime has launched a major frontal military thrust on Russia's borders. The US has moved forward missile sites and Air Force bases in Poland, Rumania, Turkey, Spain, Czech Republic and Bulgaria: Patriot PAC-3 anti-aircraft missile complexes in Poland; advanced radar AN/TPY-2 in Turkey; and several missile (SM-3 IA) loaded warships in Spain are among the prominent weapons encircling Russia, most only minutes away from it strategic heartland. Secondly, the Obama regime has mounted an all-out effort to secure and expand US military bases in Central Asia among former Soviet republics. Thirdly, Washington, via NATO, has launched major economic and military operations against Russia's major trading partners in North Africa and the Middle East. The NATO war against Libya, which ousted the Gadhafi regime, has paralyzed or nullified multi-billion dollar Russian oil and gas investments, arms sales and substituted a NATO puppet for the former Russia-friendly regime.

The UN-NATO economic sanctions and US-Israeli clandestine terrorist activity aimed at Iran has undermined Russia's lucrative billion-dollar nuclear trade and joint oil ventures. NATO, including Turkey, backed by the Gulf monarchical dictatorships, has implemented harsh sanctions and funded terrorist assaults on Syria, Russia's last remaining ally in the region and where it has a sole naval facility (Tartus) on the Mediterranean Sea. Russia's previous collaboration with NATO in weakening its own economic and security position is a product of the monumental misreading of NATO and especially Obama's imperial policies. Russian President Medvedev and his Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov mistakenly assumed (like Gorbachev and Yeltsin before them) that backing US-NATO policies against Russia's trading partners would result in some sort of "reciprocity": US dismantling its offensive "missile shield" on its frontiers and support for Russia's admission into the World Trade Organization. Medvedev, following his liberal pro-western illusions, fell into line and backed US-Israeli sanctions against Iran, believing the tales of a "nuclear weapons programs". Then Lavrov fell for the NATO line of "no fly zones to protect Libyan civilian lives" and voted in favor, only to feebly "protest", much too late, that NATO was "exceeding its mandate" by bombing Libya into the Middle Ages and installing a pro-NATO puppet regime of rogues and fundamentalists. Finally when the US aimed a cleaver at Russia's heartland by pushing ahead with an all-out effort to install missile launch sites 5 minutes by air from Moscow while organizing mass and armed assaults on Syria, did the Medvedev-Lavrov duet awake from its stupor and oppose UN sanctions. Medvedev threatened to abandon the nuclear missile reduction treaty (START) and to place medium-range missiles with 5 minute launch-time from Berlin, Paris and London.

Medvedev-Lavrov's policy of consolidation and co-operation based on Obama's rhetoric of "resetting relations" invited aggressive empire building: Each capitulation led to a further aggression. As a result, Russia is surrounded by missiles on its western frontier; it has suffered losses among its major trading partners in the Middle East and faces US bases in southwest and Central Asia.

Belatedly Russian officials have moved to replace the delusional Medvedev for the realist Putin, as next President. This shift to a political realist has predictably evoked a wave of hostility toward Putin in all the Western media. Obama's aggressive policy to isolate Russia by undermining independent regimes has, however, not affected Russia's status as a nuclear weapons power. It has only heightened tensions in Europe and perhaps ended any future chance of peaceful nuclear weapons reduction or efforts to secure a UN Security Council consensus on issues of peaceful conflict resolution. Washington, under Obama-Clinton, has turned Russia from a pliant client to a major adversary.

Putin looks to deepening and expanding ties with the East, namely China, in the face of threats from the West. The combination of Russian advanced weapons technology and energy resources and Chinese dynamic manufacturing and industrial growth are more than a match for crisis-ridden EU-USA economies wallowing in stagnation.

Obama's military confrontation toward Russia will greatly prejudice access to Russian raw materials and definitively foreclose any long-term strategic security agreement, which would be useful in lowering the deficit and reviving the US economy.

Between Realism and Delusion: Obama's Strategic Realignment

Obama's recognition that the present and future center of political and economic power is moving inexorably to Asia, was a flash of political realism. After a lost decade of pouring hundreds of billions of dollars in military adventures on the margins and periphery of world politics, Washington has finally discovered that is not where the fate of nations, especially Great Powers, will be decided, except in a negative sense – of bleeding resources over lost causes. Obama's new realism and priorities apparently are now focused on Southeast and Northeast Asia, where dynamic economies flourish, markets are growing at a double digit rate, investors are ploughing tens of billions in productive activity and trade is expanding at three times the rate of the US and the EU.

But Obama's 'New Realism' is blighted by entirely delusional assumptions, which undermine any serious effort to realign US policy.

In the first place Obama's effort to 'enter' into Asia is via a military build-up and not through a sharpening and upgrading of US economic competitiveness. What does the US produce for the Asian countries that will enhance its market share? Apart from arms, airplanes and agriculture, the US has few competitive industries. The US would have to comprehensively re-orient its economy, upgrade skilled labor, and transfer billions from "security" and militarism to applied innovations. But Obama works within the current military-Zionist-financial complex: He knows no other and is incapable of breaking with it.

Secondly, Obama-Clinton operate under the delusion that the US can exclude China or minimize its role in Asia, a policy that is undercut by the huge and growing investment and presence of all the major US multi-national corporations in China, who use it as an export platform to Asia and the rest of the world.

The US military build-up and policy of intimidation will only force China to downgrade its role as creditor financing the US debt, a policy China can pursue because the US market, while still important, is declining, as China expands its presence in its domestic, Asian, Latin American and European markets.

What once appeared to be New Realism is now revealed to be the recycling of Old Delusions: The notion that the US can return to being the supreme Pacific Power it was after World War Two. The US attempts to return to Pacific dominance under Obama-Clinton with a crippled economy, with the overhang of an over-militarized economy, and with major strategic handicaps: Over the past decade the United States foreign policy has been at the beck and call of Israel's fifth column (the Israel "lobby"). The entire US political class is devoid of common, practical sense and national purpose. They are immersed in troglodyte debates over "indefinite detentions" and "mass immigrant expulsions". Worse, all are on the payrolls of private corporations who sell in the US and invest in China.

Why would Obama abjure costly wars in the unprofitable periphery and then promote the same military metaphysics at the dynamic center of the world economic universe? Does Barack Obama and his advisers believe he is the Second Coming of Admiral Commodore Perry, whose 19^th century warships and blockades forced Asia open to Western trade? Does he believe that military alliances will be the first stage to a subsequent period of privileged economic entry?

Does Obama believe that his regime can blockade China, as Washington did to Japan in the lead up to World War Two? It's too late. China is much more central to the world economy, too vital even to the financing of the US debt, too bonded up with the Forbes Five Hundred multi-national corporations. To provoke China, to even fantasize about economic "exclusion" to bring down China, is to pursue policies that will totally disrupt the world economy, first and foremost the US economy!

Conclusion

Obama's 'crackpot realism', his shift from wars in the Muslim world to military confrontation in Asia, has no intrinsic worth and poses extraordinary extrinsic costs. The military methods and economic goals are totally incompatible and beyond the capacity of the US, as it is currently constituted. Washington's policies will not 'weaken' Russia or China, even less intimidate them. Instead it will encourage both to adopt more adversarial positions, making it less likely that they lend a hand to Obama's sequential wars on behalf of Israel. Already Russia has sent warships to its Syrian port, refused to support an arms embargo against Syria and Iran and (in retrospect) criticized the NATO war against Libya. China and Russia have far too many strategic ties with the world economy to suffer any great losses from a series of US military outposts and "exclusive" alliances. Russia can aim just as many deadly nuclear missiles at the West as the US can mount from its bases in Eastern Europe.

In other words, Obama's military escalation will not change the nuclear balance of power, but will bring Russia and China into a closer and deeper alliance. Gone are the days of Kissinger-Nixon's "divide and conquer" strategy pitting US-Chinese trade agreements against Russian arms. Washington has a totally exaggerated significance of the current maritime spats between China and its neighbors. What unites them in economic terms is far more important in the medium and long-run. China's Asian economic ties will erode any tenuous military links to the US.

Obama's "crackpot realism", views the world market through military lenses. Military arrogance toward Asia has led to a rupture with Pakistan, its most compliant client regime in South Asia. NATO deliberately slaughtered 24 Pakistani soldiers and thumbed their nose at the Pakistani generals, while China and Russia condemned the attack and gained influence.

In the end, the military and exclusionary posture to China will fail. Washington will overplay its hand and frighten its business-oriented erstwhile Asian partners, who only want to play-off a US military presence to gain tactical economic advantage. They certainly do not want a new US instigated 'Cold War' dividing and weakening the dynamic intra-Asian trade and investment. Obama and his minions will quickly learn that Asia's current leaders do not have permanent allies - only permanent interests. In the final analysis, China figures prominently in configuring a new Asia-centric world economy. Washington may claim to have a 'permanent Pacific presence' but until it demonstrates it can take care of its "basic business at home", like arranging its own finances and balancing its current account deficits, the US Naval command may end up renting its naval facilities to Asian exporters and shippers, transporting goods for them, and protecting them by pursuing pirates, contrabandists and narco-traffickers. Come to think about it, Obama might reduce the US trade deficit with Asia by renting out the Seventh Fleet to patrol the Straits, instead of wasting US taxpayer money bullying successful Asian economic powers.

* James Petras is the author of more than 62 books published in 29 languages, and over 600 articles in professional journals. Petras' latest books, Global Depression and Regional Wars (Atlanta, Clarity Press, 2009) is the third in a series, including Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US Power (Atlanta, Clarity Press 2008) and The Power of Israel in the United States (Atlanta, Clarity Press 2006), analyzing the influence of militarism and Zionism in American foreign policy.

"Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world." --Arthur Schopenhauer

Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong. --James Bryce

Americans won't like this. Practically everyone else will: Americans simply can never admit they were wrong.

Ill-begotten wars--from Vietnam to Afghanistan have accomplished nothing but increasing enemies toward American arrogance.

Nothing could have been more misguided than the Iraq war, based on a mythical collection of WMDs. The lie, the war and the occupation cost the lives of 4,801 Americans plus 179 UK lives and the death of 1,455,590 Iraqis. The WMD's never existed.

Instead of an admission that the Iraq debacle was wrong, the fraudsters made lame excuses in attempts to exonerate themselves. Past Vice President Dick Cheney, the strongest defender of the Iraq misadventure continues his vain attempts to justify the unjustifiable.

"There is nothing less to our credit than our neglect of the foreigner and his children, unless it be the arrogance most of us betray when we set out to 'Americanize' him," wrote American sociologist Charles Horton Cooley.

On November 28th, a NATO air attack killed at least two dozen Pakistani soldiers. Instead of admitting that they were wrong, the US military suggested that the Pakistanis shot first.

Said Fred Branfman about the incident, "Short-sighted U.S. policy is creating a national security disaster in Pakistan." Instead of apologizing and admitting to a mistake, Branfman concludes:

"The U.S. policy of trying to win in tiny Afghanistan by extending its war-making into giant, nuclear-armed Pakistan--including drone strikes, cross-border raids, illegal U.S. ground assassination... threatens the greatest U.S. foreign policy disaster...."

American arrogance has clearly found several avenues for acrimony. More than 1,000 American military bases around the world has often been an unwelcome embodiment of American military power.

Next, not only do Americans display a belief in their superiority over other countries, their leaders' actions reveal an arrogant pre-eminence over the masses of the American public.

In an earlier article, "Ruled by Arrogance", I commented on an American tendency to discredit others' opinions with forcefulness aimed at dominating those considered weaker or less important.

Texas governor and Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry faulted a mixture of arrogance and audacity in the Obama administration:

This administration in Washington...clearly believes that government is not only the answer to every need but it's the most qualified to make essential decisions for every American in every area. That mix of arrogance and audacity that guides the Obama administration is an affront to every freedom-loving American.

That's the same Rick Perry who arrogantly boasts about how great Texas has been with his governorship. In America, the pot (Rick Perry) is expected to call the kettle (Barack Obama) black.

Paradoxically, another American presidential candidate, Rick Santorum criticized President Obama for looking apologetic rather than being arrogant:

Watching President Obama apologize last week for America's arrogance before a French audience that owes its freedom to the sacrifices of Americans--helped convince me that he has a deep-seated antipathy toward American values and traditions.

What American values and traditions does Santorum believe become belittled by an apology uttered by an American president? American arrogance!

Earlier, in April 2009, a number of Republicans castigated President Obama for bowing before Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah. Though the White House denied it, the video of the meeting provided enough fodder for Obama's critics.

The arrogance of Obama's predecessor established a standard of American presidential behaviour that those following the Bush administration should not deviate from.

America has a history of arrogance reflected in racial and gender supremacy. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) provides an example of a superior white attitude reflected in American slavery.

In a country full of misogyny, it's ironic that Americans now belittle countries whose men treat women as lesser creatures.

If it's difficult to convince most Americans that they are guided by undeserved arrogance, those who know it seem undisturbed by it.

As I mentioned in an earlier article, "Look closely enough and you'll find groups in any country who believe they are superior to all others."

When the political elite assume they are superior to others, and when the media elite behave as if America is better than others, they flaunt a dangerously endemic model of arrogant behaviour.

The problems come when the "others" resist being disadvantaged.

* Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. He's a weekly Op-Ed columnist for the Gulf Daily News. Dr. Balles is also Editorial Consultant for Red House Marketing and a regular contributor to Bahrain This Month.

Is Israel Preparing to Attack Iran?

By Neve Gordon*

Skimming the newspapers as I rushed to get my children ready for school, I suddenly understood that Israel might actually be preparing for a military attack against Iran. "[United States Secretary of Defence Leon] Panetta Demanded Commitment to Coordinate Action in Iran" read one headline, and "A Bomb at Arm's Length" read another.

Feeding this hype were a series of military events that had been planned months in advance yet mysteriously coincided with the publication of the International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran's efforts to produce a nuclear bomb. For four days straight all of the major television channels repeatedly showed images of Israel preparing for war.

It began with a report on Israel's testing of a long-range ballistic missile, which emphasised the missile's capacity to carry nuclear warheads. This was followed by interviews with pilots who were part of a comprehensive Israeli Air Force drill on long-range attacks carried out at an Italian NATO air base. Archival images of a missile being launched from an Israeli submarine were also shown. Ha'aretz readers were told that the submarine was important because it would enable Israel to carry out a second strike in case of a nuclear war.

These images of offensive arrangements were followed by images of Israel's defence preparations. On November 3rd, the three major news channels dedicated several minutes of air time to covering a drill simulating an attack on central Israel; these clips showed people being carried on stretchers and soldiers treating casualties who had been hit by chemical weapons. A day later, Ha'aretz reported that the military preparations against Iran had indeed been upgraded.

Iran with nuclear capabilities has been continuously presented as an existential threat to Israel. On October 31, in the opening speech of the Knesset's winter session Prime Minister Netanyahu noted that a "nuclearised Iran will constitute a serious threat to the Middle East and to the whole world and obviously also a direct and serious threat against us," adding that Israel's security conception cannot be based on defence alone but must also include "offensive capabilities which serve as the basis for deterrence."

Analysts repeatedly mentioned that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust denier and Reuven Barko from Yisrael Hayom even compared Iran to Nazi Germany. One cannot underestimate the impact of this analogy on the collective psyche of Jewish Israelis.

Barko went on to connect Hamlet's phrase "to be or not to be" to Israel's current situation, while posing the existing dilemma confronting the State as "to hit or not to hit". President Shimon Peres claimed that Iran is the only country in the world "that threatens the existence of another country", but neglected to mention that for generations, the Palestinians have been deprived of their right to self-determination.

On the day when the International Atomic Energy Agency report was finally published practically all Israeli media outlets described it as a "smoking gun". The report, according to the media, provides concrete evidence that Iran's nuclear programme is also aimed at producing weapons. Zvi Yechezkeli from Channel Ten described it as "the end of the era of Iranian ambiguousness", but failed, of course, to remark that Israel's own ambiguity regarding its nuclear capacities continues unhindered; Roni Daniel from Channel Two declared that "we are relieved" by the report, suggesting that Israel's claims have now been corroborated and that the report can serve to justify both the imposition of harsher sanctions against Iran and even an attack.

Notwithstanding the endless war mongering, most Israeli commentators claimed that the frenzy was no more than a "nuclear spin". The majority of political analysts tended to agree that the media campaign, which presented Israel as seriously preparing to attack Iran, was orchestrated just in order to pressure the international community to impose harsher sanctions against Iran. Channel Ten's Or Heller put it succinctly when he said: "It appears that neither Iran nor the Israeli public is the target of what is going on here, but first and foremost it is the international community, the Americans, the British."

The commentators also noted that there is wall-to-wall opposition to an Israeli assault, including the US, Europe, Russia and China. Alex Fishman summed up the international sentiment when he wrote:

"If someone in Israel thinks that there is a green or a yellow light coming from Washington for a military attack against Iran - this person has no inkling whatsoever of what is going on; the light remains the same, a glaring red."

The portrayal of Israel as a neighbourhood bully who feigns a rage attack while calling out to his friends to hold him back is not particularly reassuring, however.

After 10 days of media frenzy, Defence Minister Ehud Barak tried to calm the public by saying that "not even 500 people would be killed" in the event of an attack - but he failed to say that there would be no attack.

Yossi Verter from Ha'aretz explained that the media hype serves Barak's interests. "A successful attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities under his ministerial leadership can rehabilitate his personal status, and help him recover the public's trust." Verter cites a leading member of the political system, who claims that "Barak is convinced that only a person of his security stature can lead perhaps the most fateful battle in Israel's history since the War of Independence."

Regardless of whether Netanyahu and Barak are already set on launching an assault, the media hype and the portrayal of Iran as constituting an existential threat to Israel surely help to produce the necessary conditions for a military campaign.

What is remarkable about this saber rattling is its abstraction. Not a single analyst noted that entering war is easy but ending it is far more difficult, particularly if on the other side stands a regional power with vast resources and a well-trained military (unlike Hamas or Hezbollah). And, of course, no one really talked about the likelihood of a gory future or what kind of life we were planning for our children. This kind of abstraction makes war palatable, providing a great service to the war machine.

* Neve Gordon is an Israeli activist and the author of Israel's Occupation and author of (University of California Press, 2008). He can be contacted through his website www.israelsoccupation.info

Here's a story to think about:

A bouncer at a night club doesn't like the looks of one of the customers. What makes matter worse is that the customer is loud-mouthed and vilifying night club bouncers, saying that they are the ones who should be kicked out of the club.

The bouncer takes a night stick that he has for just such an occasion, walks over to the table where the noisy customer is ranting and raving.

Then, without further warning, the bouncer bashes the noisy customer's head with the night stick. The customer falls to the floor, dead.

People who see what had happened ask the bouncer why he beat the customer to death.

"Shut up," shouts the bouncer, "He was armed, and I had to stop him before he destroyed us."

"Why didn't you stop him at the door if you thought he was a danger?" asks one of the club's patrons?

"I did," argues the bouncer. "When I accused him of having a weapon, he denied it."

The patron is flummoxed. "Why didn't you search him?"

The bouncer, becoming impatient with the sceptical crowd, proclaims, "I told him to prove he didn't have a weapon."

"Eh?" questions another patron, "You asked him to prove that he didn't have what he didn't have?"

The bouncer insists, "That's right, it's called 'pre-emptive' challenges, leading to pre-emptive strikes, leading to pre-emptive elimination of pre-emptive dangers."

Another patron chimes in, "Now that you've eliminated the pre-emptive danger, where's the weapon that led to your pre-emptive strike?"

Becoming even more upset with the challenging questions of the patrons, the bouncer declares, "It doesn't matter. He has a bad reputation for using weapons, and he could do it again in the future."

Tell us who's the bouncer with the clever justification for pre-emptive action by insisting that one must prove that he doesn't have what he doesn't have?

My friend, there are many bouncers. One of them, Condoleezza Rice appeared on Jon Stewart's show a week or so ago and tried to convince an audience of dunces that the bouncer rationale was justification for the war on Iraq.

Hers was an echo of many cunning leaders who have used the same bouncer self-justification for the most heinous crimes. The list includes insidious leaders like George W Bush, Tony Blair, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

Feeding these treacherous leaders have been duplicitous Israeli firsters pretending to be American patriots, including figures like Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith.

Iraq wasn't enough for the pre-emptive strikers. The next target using the same disingenuous arguments is Iran.

America knows that Iran does not have nuclear weapons; but the bouncers want to destroy all of Iran's nuclear facilities so that no weapons will ever be made.

America has already made the bouncer's demand, saying to Saddam Hussein: prove that you don't have what you say you don't have--an impossible demand, used only to provide an excuse for bouncers.

According to Mark Amstutz, "Pre-emptive attack is morally justified when three conditions are fulfilled: The existence of an intention to injure, the undertaking of military preparations that increase the level of danger, and the need to act immediately because of a higher degree of risk."

The advocates of pre-emptive attack are attempting to meet those conditions with the flimsiest evidence and erroneous assumptions. Though Iran hasn't attacked anyone for more than a hundred years, their detractors argue that Iran wants Israel driven into the sea.

If that's not enough, stories have been fabricated about Iran's purchase of material that can only have military use, attempting to give the lie to Iran's stated objectives for nuclear energy.

Iran's "undertaking of military preparations" has been no greater than those of any other developing military, and much less than any nuclear power. To assert that test firing a few rockets amounts to unacceptable military preparation completely ignores the vast superiority of Israel's military might, including 200 to 400 nuclear bombs.

"The need to act immediately because of a higher degree of risk," is a spurious argument that applies to all countries, Record pre-emptive strikes (in Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq and Syria), as well as colonial occupation and destruction of Palestine, makes Israel the consummate high degree of risk.

Meanwhile, Benjamin Netanyahu tries to rally cabinet support for an attack on Iran. Israel's defence minister Ehud Barak and foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman are among those backing a pre-emptive strike to neutralise what the Israeli hawks dub Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Of course Lieberman would encourage a pre-emptive strike. His preparation for the foreign minister's role? He was formerly a night club bouncer!

* Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. He's a weekly Op-Ed columnist for the Gulf Daily News. Dr. Balles is also Editorial Consultant for Red House Marketing and a regular contributor to Bahrain This Month.

I. Victims

Glenn Greenwald recently posted a short piece about "The Human Toll of the U.S. Drone Campaign." Greenwald noted that the population of the United States is kept in the dark about the civilian victims of the drone campaign by a government that "refuses to disclose anything about these attacks and media outlets [which] virtually never report on [its] victims." What the U.S. public does get from both of these sources is a picture of the Middle East "as a cauldron of sub-human demons."

Greenwald’s article references a BBC program about a Pakistani "jirga" or gathering of tribal leaders. The leaders were from the Warziristan region of the country but the gathering took place in the capital of Islamabad. Warziristan has been the site of many drone attacks and the leaders brought with them some of the maimed survivors so they could be seen and their stories told. The picture that came through is that there are now rapidly growing numbers of innocent victims of these attacks: children, teenagers, adults and the elderly–essentially anyone in the neighborhood of an intended target. The number of those actually targeted who have been killed is impossible to know because the government will claim such kills even if the only verifiable victims are "half-blinded, double-amputee teenagers."

II. Visibility

Greenwald correctly observes that "it is easy to cheer for a leader when the victims of his on-going violence remain invisible." However, the question remains, how is this invisible status maintained in a country with a "free press"? Here are some relevant points that might shed light on this issue:

1. The "news business" in America is infinitely more interested in profit than it is in journalistic excellence. Much of that profit comes from advertisers who have no wish to underwrite what might appear to be unpatriotic investigations into unwarranted wars and foreign interventions. This makes the business oriented boards and stockholders of media outlets very conservative and also encourages a "make no waves" cooperative attitude toward the government and its preferred storylines.

2. Most citizens do not care about all this. In the U.S., and elsewhere, the majority are apolitical. They focus on the local and other people are "real" relative to their geographic and relational distance. As you move further away from the average person’s focal center, victims of accident or injustice become more abstract.

3. Being apolitical does not mean that the average citizen cannot be scared out of his or her wits. Deliver the same media message over and over again, consistently and with the right amount of emotion and you can create a nationwide consensus based on nothing but a sales pitch. Among other things you can sell the population an enemy (Viet Nam, Iraq, Iran or any state you chose) to the point where almost an entire nation will support invasion and slaughter. This is what I call a "thought collective." And, as our own recent history reveals, you can create this sort of group-think repeatedly over a relatively short period of time.

III. Distorted Vision

Greenwald’s piece is an indicator that, when it comes to the Middle East, the United States has long been steeped in a thought collective that distorts the vision of both the common folk and the elites alike. The 9/11 attacks raised this national mind set to the point of near hysteria. In the immediate aftermath of that disaster anyone who suggested that U.S. foreign policy might have helped motivate the terrorists (an obvious fact for anyone who had read the speeches of Osama bin Laden) was likely to be labeled unpatriotic, maybe even a traitor, lose their job, maybe even their friends, and refused admittance into the arena of national mourning. When in early October 2001 Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal gave the city of New York a check for $10 million to help with recovery efforts, Mayor Giuliani rejected the offer out of hand. It seems the Prince had suggested that now was a good time for the U.S. to rethink its Middle East foreign policy.

Only in the last year or so have their been signs of small cracks in the thought collective. Growing numbers of ordinary citizens, to the extent that they think about these things at all, want the U.S. out of the Middle East. They are even starting to question the $3 billion a year that goes to Israel. And, it may be that Islamophobia has peaked as a popular topic of national concern. More and more, this bit of paranoia is being identified with fringe factions of the conservative right.

Unfortunately, these cracks are visible only outside the beltway. Inside the beltway, that is in Washington DC, nothing has really changed. The thought collective is, if anything, stronger than ever. This is because the formulation of policy is strongly influenced by special interests whose power over the politicians and the political parties is financially decisive. It will stay that way until millions of Americans decide change in our foreign policy is important enough to be a voting issue.

Because the thought collective within the government has not changed, foreign policies and actions have not changed. Violent intervention is still the mainstay of policy as can be seen in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Pakistan (with perhaps Iran in the wings). Greenwald notes at the end of his piece that while Americans "hear almost nothing" about the victims of U.S. aggression, "the people in that part of the world hear a lot about it and that explains much about the vast discrepancy between the two regions."

IV. The Verdict

And what might that continuing discrepancy mean for the future of the United States? Well, it means the U.S. will almost certainly lose the war in Afghanistan, just as it lost the war in Iraq. You see, in Afghanistan as in Iraq, there are just too many people who really hold a fearsome dislike for the U.S., its government and its soldiers, to make likely successful conquest and pacification. A more general victory in the war of terror is equally unlikely. Here the applicable logic is rather simple. There were a set of conditions that led up to the 9/11 attacks and the attacks themselves created a precedent. America’s contribution to those conditions (our policies and our behavior) have held constant. Whatever damage we have caused al-Qaida can, and probably will, be repaired and other equally dangerous groups are likely to spring up in the foreseeable future.

So what then is the answer to the question that serves as the title of this short essay? The honest answer is that if there continues to be no change in U.S. policies and behavior in the Middle East, it is more likely than not that another attack of the magnitude of 9/11 will occur within the next ten years. The time line is guesswork, but the rest of the answer is not.

* Lawrence Davidson is professor of history at West Chester University. He is the author of numerous books, including Islamic Fundamentalism and America's Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood.

What a spectacle they make of themselves, whooping and stomping to the frenzied beat of Tel Aviv's drum, their dumb-ass chant getting ever shriller.

You can read about it on a British government website.

"The UK and many other countries have serious concerns about the Iranian Government's policies," says the Foreign Office, "its failure to address serious international concerns about its nuclear programme; its support for terrorism and promotion of instability in its region; and its continued denial of human rights..."

I really thought they were talking about Israel and had got the names muddled up. But no... "On Iran's nuclear programme, we are actively seeking a solution through diplomatic engagement and sanctions to encourage compliance by Iran with the requirements of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and six UN Security Council resolutions."

Wow, does this means that Israel, which Iran is supposed to be threatening, is an innocent victim of Iranian aggression, is a menace to no-one, is suddenly co-operating with the IAEA and is now in full compliance with all those UN resolutions?

This is hot news!

The Foreign Office goes further: "Iran's backing of Hizbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and other Palestinian Rejectionist Groups..."

Just a minute. What exactly is a "rejectionist group"? I had to look it up in the Oxford dictionary. A rejectionist, it says, is a person who rejects a proposed policy, especially an Arab who refuses to accept a negotiated peace with Israel.

Ah. So what are we supposed to call an Israeli who rejects a perfectly reasonable Arab peace deal... like "get off our land and there'll be no trouble"? What do we call an Israeli who defies international law and denies the human rights of others? An Israeli who treats UN resolutions with contempt?

"Rejectionist" Israel

Rejectionism is an Israeli thing; it's what they do, they specialise in it. Israel, let's face it, is king of the rejectionist business.

All this sabre-rattling and talk of pre-emptive strikes against Iran is getting on everyone's nerves. Iran, after all, is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and Israel is not. What does that tell us?

The Treaty dates back to 1970 so Israel has had more than enough time to show good faith and come on board with the other 189 State parties. The NPT has more signatories than any other treaty of its kind. The only refuseniks - OK, let's stay with the Foreign Office's new buzzword - the only rejectionists are India, Israel and Pakistan.

The British government says the international community must be prepared to "respond robustly" when a country withdraws from the NPT... "The NPT is not like any other treaty and the risks associated with its abuse are uniquely dangerous. We recommend immediate discussions at the UN Security Council if a country announces its intention to withdraw. The IAEA should be required to report immediately on the nuclear activities of that country."

It's common sense really. So what about countries, like Israel, that have stacks of nukes and refused to sign up to the NPT in the first place? What about the "uniquely dangerous risks" in Israel's case? Where's the robust response? Is the UNSC addressing Israel's rejectionism? Has the IAEA reported on Israel's nuclear activities?

As a matter of fact the IAEA is quite bothered about Israel. The BBC reported yesterday:

"On 18 September 2009, the IAEA called on Israel to join the NPT and open its nuclear facilities to inspection. The resolution said that the IAEA 'expresses concern about the Israeli nuclear capabilities, and calls upon Israel to accede to the NPT and place all its nuclear facilities under comprehensive IAEA safeguards'...

"Israel refuses to join the NPT or allow inspections. It is reckoned to have up to 400 warheads but refuses to confirm or deny this."

I've seen the 400 "deliverable" nukes figure before - it's nearly twice Britain's arsenal - also that European cities were targeted.

Israel is the third or fourth largest nuclear force in the world and the only one in the Middle East. A 2006/7 report by the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission says:

"Most unofficial estimates claim that Israel possesses a nuclear arsenal numbering in the hundreds, possibly larger than the British stockpile. Israel is widely believed to possess both fission and fusion bombs. It has an unsafeguarded plutonium production reactor and reprocessing capability and possibly some uranium enrichment capability, along with various other uranium-processing facilities."

It is the only state in the region that is not a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It has signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. As regards biological and chemical weapons, Israel has not signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. It has signed but not ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention.

So why is the focus on Iran and not rejectionist Israel? Israel's incessant foaming at the mouth over Iran has nothing to do with the alleged remark by Mr Ahmadinejad to "wipe Israel off the map" - a remark he never made anyway. Long before that, back in 2002 and 2004 Israel was urging the international community to target Iran as soon as it had finished in Iraq and to strip Iran of WMD.

Are we expected to believe that Israel's leaders, given their lawless and belligerent track record, are saner than Iran's Ahmadinejad? Washington and London may believe such tosh but I doubt if anyone in the Middle East would. Or anyone else in Europe for that matter. A European Commission survey finds that the public believe Israel to be the biggest threat to world peace, greater than North Korea, Afghanistan or Iran.

Eighty per cent of Conservative MPs preach that Israel's enemies are our enemies but who is listening?

War-war not jaw-jaw

Perhaps the looniest thing I have heard lately is the passage through Congress of the ''Iran Threat Reduction Act of 2011''. Hidden away where it wouldn't be noticed, under "General Provisions - Denial of Visas for Certain Persons of the Government of Iran" (Section 601), is this gem...

(c) RESTRICTION ON CONTACT. -- No person employed with the United States Government may contact in an official or unofficial capacity any person that -- (1) is an agent, instrumentality, or official of, is affiliated with, or is serving as a representative of the Government of Iran; and (2) presents a threat to the United States or is affiliated with terrorist organizations. (d) WAIVER. -- The President may waive the requirements of subsection (c) if the President determines and so reports to the appropriate congressional committees 15 days prior to the exercise of waiver authority that failure to exercise such waiver authority would pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the vital national security interests of the United States.

It effectively bans diplomacy with Iran. Neither the President himself nor the Secretary of State nor any US diplomat or emissary is allowed to engage in negotiations or diplomacy with Iran unless the President can convince the "appropriate Congressional committees" (e.g. the House Foreign Affairs Committee whose strings are pulled by AIPAC) that not doing so would present "an unusual and extraordinary threat to the vital national security interests of the United States".

War-war is preferred to jaw-jaw. And it's no surprise to discover that this nonsense was cooked up by Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Howard Berman (D-CA), who both lead the Foreign Affairs Committee.

How clever is it to abandon all the channels of normal diplomacy? Those who support the measure must be desperate for more bloodshed - as long as they personally don't have to act as cannon-fodder. Who can forget the chicken-hawks who casually ordered troops into Iraq and Afghanistan but would never dream of donning uniform and picking up a rifle themselves?

The preamble to this junk piece of legislation states:

In the 2006 State of the Union Address, President Bush stated that ''The Iranian government is defying the world with its nuclear ambitions, and the nations of the world must not permit the Iranian regime to gain nuclear weapons. America will continue to rally the world to confront these threats..." In February 2009, President Obama committed the Administration to ''developing a strategy to use all elements of American power to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon... Iran is a major threat to United States national security interests."

Is it really?

Circulating in the background for years have been rumours speculating on the whereabouts of nuclear warheads dumped by a US B-52 which crashed in 1991. Did freelancers salvage them? Was the nuke exploded by North Korea in 2006 one of these? Does Iran have some? Is this what the panic's about?

Many people are quite sure that if the increasingly unhinged Israeli leadership, with finger on the nuke button, believed their unlawful ambitions in the Middle East were permanently thwarted, they would think nothing of taking the rest of the world to hell with them.

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart.

By Philip A. Farruggio * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Seven Days in May - original film poster

What really happened on that day, now nearly 10 years ago? So many books and theories have been brought forth, yet our mainstream media, controlled by ...you guessed it, seems to discount most if not all of those theories. The purpose of this column is not to go down that road. Google 9/11 Truth or David Ray Griffin and check out the myriad of resource material available. The bottom line is that the Military Industrial Complex and the Cabal of nameless individuals made lots of money and extended our American empire because of that day. The coup that occurred on November 22, 1963 helped pave the way for it. There is a fine book, JFK and the Unspeakable, which came out last year. Read it! Oliver Stone, who was vilified after he made his JFK film, was hitting home with some powerful truths. The critics who trashed it simply took the few times that Stone used artistic license to mislead the public away from the historical facts. Those facts were that we did have a Coup d'e tat in 1963, and that we have never, as a nation, been able to counteract it.

On September 11, 2011, we will see and hear a slew of remembrances for the fallen. I say rightly so that we Americans remember the civilians killed in the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and in those planes. I would hope (and pray) that we Americans also reflect upon our need to finally have closure on what really may have gone down that day. The 9/11 Commission was partly a 'whitewash 'and completely a cop-out! The effect of that dastardly day was first the Patriot Act, whereupon the Bill of Rights was trashed. Then we had our Congress, more concerned about the upcoming elections than our Constitution, who overwhelmingly gave up its own exclusive right to declare war. Finally, we had an empire, really on its last legs, which needed to show force and Shock and Awe innocent people to death. There will be no ceremonies on September 11^th for those hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead, or the 4000+ young Americans killed in that hornet's nest... Our hornet's nest!

All of a sudden American foreign policy trumpets the need to 'Bring democracy to the world.' And now, they change the faces and the political ornaments, these masters behind the Military Industrial Complex curtains. Back at home, we have a 2 Party con job that will not allow for any real ideas of needed change, whether they are economic or political. Sadly, as our nation falls deeper into a depression ( financially and emotionally ) few seem to challenge the Military Industrial Complex that even Cold War warrior President Eisenhower chose to warn us about... much too late! No, the hypocrites who wear those Republican, Democrat and Tea Party buttons on their election cycle lapels only care about serving the empire. Who is this empire? Who makes bundles of money from phony wars, illegal invasions and occupations? Who earns profits from those fantastic up and down swings of the S& P? Yet, they still pull the strings and watch the obedient lemmings march to the edge of the cliff of reason. Swim anyone?

* Philip A. Farruggio is son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen. He is a small businessman, activist leader and free lance columnist. Philip is an advocate for the 25% Solution to cut military spending to save our state and city budget shortfalls. Since the 2000 elections, he has written over 250 columns, many posted on various sites worldwide. Philip can be reached at paf1222@bellsouth.net.

By Noam Chomsky * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

This is the 10th anniversary of the horrendous atrocities of Sept. 11, 2001, which, it is commonly held, changed the world.

The impact of the attacks is not in doubt. Just keeping to western and central Asia: Afghanistan is barely surviving, Iraq has been devastated and Pakistan is edging closer to a disaster that could be catastrophic.
On May 1, 2011, the presumed mastermind of the crime, Osama bin Laden, was assassinated in Pakistan. The most immediate significant consequences have also occurred in Pakistan. There has been much discussion of Washington’s anger that Pakistan didn’t turn over bin Laden. Less has been said about the fury among Pakistanis that the U.S. invaded their territory to carry out a political assassination. Anti-American fervor had already intensified in Pakistan, and these events have stoked it further.

One of the leading specialists on Pakistan, British military historian Anatol Lieven, wrote in The National Interest in February that the war in Afghanistan is “destabilizing and radicalizing Pakistan, risking a geopolitical catastrophe for the United States – and the world – which would dwarf anything that could possibly occur in Afghanistan.”

At every level of society, Lieven writes, Pakistanis overwhelmingly sympathize with the Afghan Taliban, not because they like them but because “the Taliban are seen as a legitimate force of resistance against an alien occupation of the country,” much as the Afghan mujahedeen were perceived when they resisted the Russian occupation in the 1980s.

These feelings are shared by Pakistan’s military leaders, who bitterly resent U.S. pressures to sacrifice themselves in Washington’s war against the Taliban. Further bitterness comes from the terror attacks (drone warfare) by the U.S. within Pakistan, the frequency of which was sharply accelerated by President Obama; and from U.S. demands that the Pakistani army carry Washington’s war into tribal areas of Pakistan that had been pretty much left on their own, even under British rule.

The military is the stable institution in Pakistan, holding the country together. U.S. actions might “provoke a mutiny of parts of the military,” Lieven writes, in which case “the Pakistani state would collapse very quickly indeed, with all the disasters that this would entail.”

The potential disasters are drastically heightened by Pakistan’s huge, rapidly growing nuclear weapons arsenal, and by the country’s substantial jihadi movement.

Both of these are legacies of the Reagan administration. Reagan officials pretended they did not know that Zia ul-Haq, the most vicious of Pakistan’s military dictators and a Washington favorite, was developing nuclear weapons and carrying out a program of radical Islamization of Pakistan with Saudi funding.

The catastrophe lurking in the background is that these two legacies might combine, with fissile materials leaking into the hands of jihadis. Thus we might see nuclear weapons, most likely “dirty bombs,” exploding in London and New York.

Lieven summarizes: “U.S. and British soldiers are in effect dying in Afghanistan in order to make the world more dangerous for American and British peoples.”

Surely Washington understands that U.S. operations in what has been christened “Afpak” – Afghanistan-Pakistan – might destabilize and radicalize Pakistan.

The most significant WikiLeaks documents to have been released so far are the cables from U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson in Islamabad, who supports U.S. actions in Afpak but warns that they “risk destabilizing the Pakistani state, alienating both the civilian government and military leadership, and provoking a broader governance crisis in Pakistan â(euro) .125.”

Patterson writes of the possibility that “someone working in (Pakistani government) facilities could gradually smuggle enough fissile material out to eventually make a weapon,” a danger enhanced by “the vulnerability of weapons in transit.”

A number of analysts have observed that bin Laden won some major successes in his war against the United States.

As Eric S. Margolis writes in The American Conservative in May, “(bin Laden) repeatedly asserted that the only way to drive the U.S. from the Muslim world and defeat its satraps was by drawing Americans into a series of small but expensive wars that would ultimately bankrupt them.”

That Washington seemed bent on fulfilling bin Laden’s wishes was evident immediately after the 9/11 attacks.

In his 2004 book “Imperial Hubris,” Michael Scheuer, a senior CIA analyst who had tracked Osama bin Laden since 1996, explains: “Bin Laden has been precise in telling America the reasons he is waging war on us. (He) is out to drastically alter U.S. and Western policies toward the Islamic world,” and largely achieved his goal.

He continues: “U.S. forces and policies are completing the radicalization of the Islamic world, something Osama bin Laden has been trying to do with substantial but incomplete success since the early 1990s. As a result, I think it is fair to conclude that the United States of America remains bin Laden’s only indispensable ally.” And arguably remains so, even after his death.

The succession of horrors across the past decade leads to the question: Was there an alternative to the West’s response to the 9/11 attacks?

The jihadi movement, much of it highly critical of bin Laden, could have been split and undermined after 9/11, if the “crime against humanity,” as the attacks were rightly called, had been approached as a crime, with an international operation to apprehend the suspects. That was recognized at the time, but no such idea was even considered in the rush to war. It is worth adding that bin Laden was condemned in much of the Arab world for his part in the attacks.

By the time of his death, bin Laden had long been a fading presence, and in the previous months was eclipsed by the Arab Spring. His significance in the Arab world is captured by the headline in a New York Times article by Middle East specialist Gilles Kepel: “Bin Laden Was Dead Already.”

That headline might have been dated far earlier, had the U.S. not mobilized the jihadi movement with retaliatory attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq.
Within the jihadi movement, bin Laden was doubtless a venerated symbol but apparently didn’t play much more of a role for al-Qaida, this “network of networks,” as analysts call it, which undertake mostly independent operations.

Even the most obvious and elementary facts about the decade lead to bleak reflections when we consider 9/11 and its consequences, and what they portend for the future.

* Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and pressor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Techonology. Chomsky is well known in the academic and scientific communities as one of the fathers of modern linguistics, and a major figure of analytic philosophy. Chomsky is the author of more than 150 books and has received worldwide attention for his views.

Palestinian workers put the finishing touches on a chair covered with embroidered blue upholstery featuring a Palestinian flag and the word "Palestine". Palestinian activists would take the chair on an international tour to dramatize the Palestinian Authority's quest for U.N. recognition of a Palestinian state. (AP Photo/Mohammed Ballas)

By Stephen Lendman* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Ahead of the General Assembly's likely granting Palestine statehood recognition and full de jure UN membership in September or early October, Israel is preparing its army and arming settlers for disruptive protests.

Law Professor and former PLO legal counsel Francis Boyle explains that a simple two-thirds majority of states present and voting are needed. Abstentions and no-shows don't count. "Palestine has those votes for admission," he says! "The Israelis and the Americans know it."

Aside from Washington's illegal planned veto, if a Security Council resolution is introduced, Netanyahu apparently abandoned plan A, replacing it with a disruptive plan B.

On August 30, Haaretz writer Chaim Levinson headlined, "IDF training Israeli settlers ahead of 'mass disorder' expected in September," saying:

Settlement-by-settlement "red line(s)" were determined for "when soldiers will be ordered to shoot at the feet of Palestinian protesters if the line is crossed."

Arming settlers with tear gas, stun grenades, and perhaps other weapons is also planned, allegedly "as part of the defense operation."

Called Operation Summer Seeds, its "purpose is to ready the army (and settlers) for September and the possibility of confrontations with Palestinians following the expected" General Assembly granting them statehood and full de jure membership.

A document leaked to Haaretz stated a "working assumption" that "a public uprising" will follow Palestinian independence "which will mainly include mass disorder."

In fact, celebratory demonstrations are likely, not disturbances unless Israel and settlers incite them. Apparently, that's what's planned, again blaming victims of Israeli violence to maintain hardline occupation.

This time, however, it will be against a sovereign internationally recognized independent state, able to file a formal State to State complaint against Israeli officials.

In addition, as Boyle explains, it "can ratify the Genocide Convention and sue Israel for Genocide at the World Court, pursuant to" previous advice he gave Arafat and Abbas.

Moreover, it can "get a temporary restraining order" against Israel, requiring either Security Council enforcement approval, or if Washington vetoes it, to the General Assembly under the 1950 Uniting for Peace Resolution overriding it.

In addition, it can use this procedure to halt settlement construction once and for all and perhaps regain lost land.

These prospects frighten Israel and its Washington paymaster/partner. So they're are pulling out all the stops to prevent Palestinian statehood or at least disrupt it if achieved to maintain hardline policies, claiming they're in self-defense.

The Israeli document contends disorder will include "marches toward main junctions, Israeli communities, and education centers; efforts at damaging (Israeli) symbols of government."

"Also, there may be more extreme cases like shooting from within the demonstrations or even terrorist incidents. In all these scenarios, there is readiness to deal with incidents near the fences and the borders of the State of Israel."

In fact, Israel is the only nation without fixed borders, because of its longstanding plan to seize Palestinian land, as well as more from neighboring states for a Greater Israel. It's indeterminate in size depending on how much it can steal.

Israel's army has been holding training sessions near its Shiloh military installation. It's also trained settlement squads at its Lachish base, used as a command training center for that purpose.

In addition, two virtual defense lines for each settlement were established. If Palestinians cross the first one, they'll face settlers using tear gas and other disruptive measures.

If line two is breached, soldiers will use live fire at their legs.

In other words, Israel plans disruptions. Rules of engagement were established to unleash them. A heightened state of readiness exists. Palestinians will be blamed like always. Injuries and perhaps deaths may result.

Instead of recognizing the UN's new member, Israel plans hostile acts short of war, perhaps planned later as more naked aggression.

As a result, Peace Now's Hagit Ofran expressed alarm, saying:

"We hope the army is making clear that nonviolent protests (and celebratory marches are) legitimate, and no settlers (or IDF personnel) should use any violence against unarmed demonstrators."

Rabbis for Human Rights' Arik Ascherman raised "serious questions and problems" with regard to settlers acting illegally, saying:

"We're very concerned that (Israeli forces) will not reduce conflict but increase it."

In fact, more at issue is instigating it as Israel commonly does, blaming its violence on Palestinian to shift responsibility.

Notably in early August, Israeli Foreign Minister/Deputy Prime Minister Avigdor Lieberman outrageously claimed Palestinians are preparing for "bloodshed the likes of which we've never seen before," so when Israel sheds it they can be blamed.

Palestinian spokesman Ghassan Khatib accurately said Israel's "trying to fuel a fake picture of what will happen in September. These Israeli predictions of violence aren't true."

Palestinian Statehood and De Jure UN Membership Issues

A previous article explained Francis Boyle's work as PLO legal advisor to assure all Palestinians worldwide automatically become citizens of the State of Palestine if granted by the upcoming General Assembly vote.

On August 30, Ma'an News published his assessment and International and Comparative Law Professor John Quigley's concurring, saying:

The Palestinians' "initiative" to be introduced in the General Assembly "is no threat" to their rights, and "will only improve their standing. This is because as a matter of international law, states must ensure that human rights are not being violated."

As a sovereign state, Palestine will be "interacting" with others, "and this is a much stronger position. It can pursue remedies at the diplomatic level in its capacity as a state. It will do favors for other states. It can demand (them) in return. It can also pursue prosecutions of Israeli officials for war crimes," including illegal settlements, applying greater pressure available to sovereign states.

Moreover, "(r)ather than posing a threat to the refugees, (they'll), in fact, be in a much stronger position. Legally, while people might leave states, if the refugees are nationals then the state cannot refuse to allow them to return."

In 1988, the General Assembly accepted the PLO "as the sole representative of the Palestinian people." It's precisely what it's likely to do "in September if asked to accept Palestine as a state."

A Final Comment

The Virtual Jerusalem web site headlined, "Let Your Voice Be Heard," stating:

"Say No to Palestinian Statehood."

The pro-Israeli group accuses the PA of including "terrorist(s)....whose stated mission is 'the elimination of Israel," no matter that saying so is a bald-faced lie.

Nonetheless, it accused Hamas of hundreds of terrorists attacks, calling self-defense against Israeli violence "terrorism," what scoundrels always say.

It falsely said the PA lacks "vital aspects of modern statehood, such as freedom, respect for human rights, and a functioning democracy. Palestinian statehood," it adds, "will make peace negotiations with Israel impossible."

In fact, they've been stillborn for decades because Israel and Washington promote violence, not peace, a notion they find intolerable.

Virtual Jerusalem doesn't even lie well, adding that Palestinian statehood "will be gravely detrimental to Israel's security and the safety of the Israeli people."

"Stand with Israel and make your voice heard," it says. Tell Obama to support Israel against Palestine. Of course, he, like past presidents since Lyndon Johnson, have done it throughout their tenure.

It's time more responsible world leaders recognized rule of law responsibilities by voting to grant Palestinian statehood and full de jure UN membership.

Why? Because it's the right thing to do!

* Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon.

So far, reports via Twitter claim that "people are celebrating ... still lots of gunfire ... but reports from here in Libya still unconfirmed."

Follow the tweets at #Libya - here's a sampling:

By Uri Avnery* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Illustration by Carlos Latuff

"Can two walk together, except they be agreed?" asked the prophet Amos (3:3). Well, seems they can.

This was proved again this week.

AT THE beginning of the week, Binyamin Netanyahu was desperately looking for a way out of an escalating internal crisis. The social protest movement was gathering momentum and posing a growing danger to his government.

The struggle was going on, but the protest had already made a huge difference. The whole content of the public discourse had changed beyond recognition.

Social ideas were taking over, pushing aside the hackneyed talk about "security". TV talk show panels, previously full of used generals, were now packed with social workers and professors of economics. One of the consequences was that women were also much more prominent.

And then it happened. A small extremist Islamist group in the Gaza Strip sent a detachment into the Egyptian Sinai desert, from where it easily crossed the undefended Israeli border and created havoc. Several fighters (or terrorists, depends who is talking) succeeded in killing eight Israeli soldiers and civilians, before some of them were killed. Another four of their comrades were killed on the Egyptian side of the border. The aim seems to have been to capture another Israeli soldier, to strengthen the case for a prisoner exchange on their terms.

In a jiffy, the economics professors vanished from the TV screens, and their place was taken by the old gang of exes – ex-generals, ex-secret-service chiefs, ex-policemen, all male, of course, accompanied by their entourage of obsequious military correspondents and far-right politicians.

With a sigh of relief, Netanyahu returned to his usual stance. Here he was, surrounded by generals, the he-man, the resolute fighter, the Defender of Israel.

IT WAS, for him and his government, an incredible stroke of luck.

It can be compared to what happened in 1982. Ariel Sharon, then Minister of Defense, had decided to attack the Palestinians and Syrians in Lebanon, He flew to Washington to obtain the necessary American agreement. Alexander Haig told him that the US could not agree, unless there was a "credible provocation".

A few days later, the most extreme Palestinian group, led by Abu Nidal, Yasser Arafat's mortal enemy, made an attempt on the life of the Israeli ambassador in London, paralyzing him irreversibly. That was certainly a "credible provocation". Lebanon War I was on its way.

This week's attack was also an answer to a prayer. Seems that God loves Netanyahu and the military establishment. The incident not only wiped the protest off the screen, it also put an end to any serious chance of taking billions off the huge military budget in order to strengthen the social services. On the contrary, the event proved that we need a sophisticated electronic fence along the 150 miles of our desert border with Sinai. More, not less, billions for the military.

BEFORE THIS miracle occurred, it looked as if the protest movement was unstoppable.

Whatever Netanyahu did was too little, too late, and just wrong.

In the first days, Netanyahu treated the whole thing as a childish prank, unworthy of the attention of responsible adults. When he realized that this movement was serious, he mumbled some vague proposals for lowering the price of apartments, but by then the protest had already moved far beyond the original demand for "affordable housing". The slogan was now "The People Want Social Justice"

After the huge 250,000-strong demonstration in Tel Aviv, the protest leaders were facing a dilemma: how to proceed? Yet another mass protest in Tel Aviv might mean falling attendance. The solution was sheer genius: not another big demonstration in Tel Aviv, but smaller demonstrations all over the country. This disarmed the reproach that the protesters are spoiled Tel Aviv brats, "sushi eaters and water-pipe smokers" as one minister put it. It also brought the protest to the masses of disadvantaged Oriental Jewish inhabitants of the "periphery", from Afula in the North to Beer Sheva in the South, most of them the traditional voters of Likud. It became a love-fest of fraternization.

So what does a run-of-the-mill politician do in such a situation? Well, of course, he appoints a committee. So Netanyahu told a respectable professor with a good reputation to set up a committee which would, in cooperation with nine ministers, no less, come up with a set of solutions. He even told him that he was ready to completely change his own convictions.

(He did already change one of his convictions when he announced in 2009 that he now advocates the Two-State Solution. But after that momentous about-face, absolutely nothing changed on the ground.)

The youngsters in the tents joked that "Bibi" could not change his opinions, because he has none. But that is a mistake – he does indeed have very definite opinions on both the national and the social levels: "the whole of Eretz Israel" on the one, and Reagan-Thatcher economic orthodoxy on the other.

The young tent leaders countered the appointment of the establishment committee with an unexpected move: they appointed a 60-strong advisory council of their own, composed of some of the most prominent university professors, including an Arab female professor and a moderate rabbi, and headed by a former deputy governor of the Bank of Israel.

The government committee has already made it clear that it will not deal with middle class problems but concentrate on those of the lowest socio-economic groups. Netanyahu has added that he will not automatically adopt their (future) recommendations, but weight them against the economic possibilities. In other words, he does not trust his own nominees to understand the economic facts of life.

AT THAT point, Netanyahu and his aides pinned their hopes on two dates: September and November 2011.

In November, the rainy season usually sets in. No drop of rain before that. But when it starts to rain cats and dogs, it was hoped in Netanyahu's office, the spoiled Tel Aviv kids will run for shelter. End of the Rothschild tent city.

Well, I remember spending some miserable weeks in the winter of the 1948 war in worse tents, in the midst of a sea of mud and water. I don't think that the rain will make the tent-dwellers give up their struggle, even if Netanyahu's religious partners send the most fervent Jewish prayers for rain to the high heavens.

But before that, in September, just a few weeks away, the Palestinians – it was hoped - would start a crisis that will divert attention. This week they already submitted to the UN General Assembly a request to recognize the State of Palestine. The Assembly will most probably accede. Avigdor Lieberman has already enthusiastically assured us that the Palestinians are planning a "bloodbath" at that time. Young Israelis will have to exchange their tents in Tel Aviv for the tents in the West Bank army camps.

It's a nice dream (for the Liebermans), but Palestinians had so far showed no inclination to violence.

All that changed this week.

FROM NOW on, Netanyahu and his colleagues can direct events as they wish.

They have already "liquidated" the chiefs of the group which carried out the attack, called "the Popular Resistance Committees". This happened while the fire-fight along the border was still going on. The army had been forewarned and was ready. The fact that the attackers succeeded nevertheless in crossing the border and shooting at vehicles was ascribed to an operational failure.

What now? The group in Gaza will fire rockets in retaliation. Netanyahu can – if he so wishes – kill more Palestinian leaders, military and civilian. This can easily set off a vicious circle of retaliation and counter-retaliation, leading to a full-scale Molten Lead-style war. Thousands of rockets on Israel, thousands of bombs on the Gaza Strip. One ex-military fool already argued that the entire Gaza Strip will have to be re-occupied.

In other words, Netanyahu has his hand on the tap of violence, and he can raise or lower the flames at will.

His desire to put an end to the social protest movement may well play a role in his decisions.

THIS BRINGS us back to the big question of the protest movement: can one bring about real change, as distinct from forcing some grudging concessions from the government, without becoming a political force?

Can this movement succeed as long as there is a government which has the power to start - or deepen - a "security crisis" at any time?

And the related question: can one talk about social justice without talking about peace?

A few days ago, while strolling among the tents on Rothschild Boulevard, I was asked by an internal radio station to give an interview and address the tent-dwellers. I said: "You don't want to talk about peace, because you want to avoid being branded as 'leftists". I respect that. But social justice and peace are two sides of the same coin, they cannot be separated. Not only because they are based on the same moral principles, but also because in practice they depend on each other."

When I said that, I could not have imagined how clearly this would be demonstrated only two days later.

REAL CHANGE means replacing this government with a new and very different political set up.

Here and there people in the tents are already talking about a new party. But elections are two years away, and for the time being there is no sign of a real crack in the right-wing coalition that might bring the elections closer. Will the protest be able to keep up its momentum for two whole years?

Israeli governments have yielded in the past to mass demonstrations and public uprisings. The formidable Golda Meir resigned in the face of mass demonstrations blaming her for the omissions that led to the fiasco at the start of the Yom Kippur War. The government coalitions of both Netanyahu and Ehud Barak in the 1990s broke under the pressure of an indignant public opinion.

Can this happen now? In view of the military flare-up this week, it does not look likely. But stranger things have happened between heaven and earth, especially in Israel, the land of limited impossibilities.

* Uri Avnery is an Israeli journalist, writer and peace activist. Author of 1948: A Soldier's Tale - The Bloody Road to Jerusalem.

By Ray McGovern* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

With few exceptions, like some salacious rumor about the Kennedy family, the mainstream U.S. news media has shown little interest in stories that throw light on history - even recent, very relevant history. So it comes as no surprise that, when a former White House counter-terrorism czar accuses an ex-CIA director of sitting on information that could have prevented a 9/11 attack, the story gets neither ink nor air.

Bulletin for those of you who get your information only from the New York Times, the Washington Post and other outlets of the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM): Former White House director for counterterrorism Richard Clarke has accused former CIA Director George Tenet of denying him and others access to intelligence that could have thwarted the attack on the Pentagon on 9/11.

Deliberately withholding critical intelligence from those who need it, and can act on it, is - at the least - gross dereliction of duty. The more so if keeping the White House promptly and fully informed is at the top of your job jar, as it was for Director of Central Intelligence Tenet. And yet that is precisely the charge Clarke has leveled at the former DCI.

In an interview aired on Aug. 11 on a local PBS affiliate in Colorado, Clarke charges that Tenet and two other senior CIA officials, Cofer Black and Richard Blee, deliberately withheld information about two of the hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77 - al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar. The two had entered the United States more than a year before the 9/11 attacks.

Clarke adds that the CIA then covered it all up by keeping relevant information away from Congress and the 9/11 Commission.

Lying by senior officials is bad enough, and there is now plenty of evidence that former CIA Director George Tenet and his closest agency associates are serial offenders. Think for a minute about the falsehoods spread regarding Iraq's non-existent "weapons of mass destruction" stockpiles.

But withholding intelligence on two of the 9/11 hijackers would have been particularly unconscionable - the epitome of malfeasance, not just misfeasance. That's why Richard Clarke's conclusion that he should have received information from CIA about al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar, "unless somebody intervened to stop the normal automatic distribution" amounts, in my view, to a criminal charge, given the eventual role of the two in the hijacking on 9/11 of AA-77, the plane that struck the Pentagon.

Tenet has denied that the information on the two hijackers was "intentionally withheld" from Clarke, and he has enlisted the other two former CIA operatives, Cofer Black (more recently a senior official of Blackwater) and Richard Blee (an even more shadowy figure), to concur in saying, Not us; we didn't withhold.

Whom to believe? To me, it's a no-brainer. One would have to have been born yesterday to regard the "George is right" testimony from Black and Blee as corroborative.

Tenet's Dubious Credibility

Tenet is the same fellow who provided the "slam dunk" on the existence of "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq, as well as the "artist renderings" of equally non-existent mobile laboratories for developing biological warfare agents, based on unconfirmed information from the impostor code-named (appropriately) "Curveball."

It was Tenet who, under orders from President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, ordered up and disseminated a fraudulent National Intelligence Estimate on WMD in Iraq, the purpose of which was to deceive our elected representatives out of their constitutional prerogative to authorize war. No small lies.

After a five-year investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee, Chairman Jay Rockefeller described the intelligence adduced under Tenet to "justify" attacking Iraq as "uncorroborated, contradicted, and non-existent." Good enough to win Tenet the Presidential Medal of Freedom, though. The corruption of intelligence worked just fine for the purposes of Bush and Cheney, thank you very much.

It is a actually a matter of record that Tenet lies a lot - on occasion, displaying what I would call chutzpah on steroids. Recall, for example, Tenet in April 2007 snarling at Scott Pelley on "60 Minutes" - five times, in five consecutive sentences - "We do not torture people."

Even Under Oath

Tenet has lied about 9/11, too. The joint statement from Tenet, Black and Blee – orchestrated by former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow – concludes: "We testified under oath about what we did, what we knew and what we didn't know. We stand by that testimony."

Almost made me laugh ... almost.

In his sworn testimony to the 9/11 Commission on April 14, 2004, Tenet said he had not spoken to Bush - even on the telephone - during the entire month of August 2001.

But Tenet did fly down to see the President in Crawford - not once, but twice during August 2001, and briefed Bush again in Washington on the 31st.

After the TV cameras at the 9/11 Commission hearing were shut off, Bill Harlow phoned the commission staff to say, Oops, sorry, Tenet misspoke. Even then, Harlow admitted only to Tenet's Aug. 17 visit to Crawford (and to the briefing on the 31st).

How do we know Tenet was again in Crawford, on Aug. 24? From a White House press release quoting President Bush to that effect - information somehow completely missed by our vigilant Fawning Corporate Media.

Funny, too, how Tenet could have forgotten his first visit to Crawford on Aug. 17. In his memoir, At the Center of the Storm, Tenet waxes eloquent about the "president graciously driving me around the spread in his pickup and me trying to make small talk about the flora and the fauna." But the visit was not limited to small talk.

In his book Tenet writes: "A few weeks after the August 6 PDB was delivered, I followed it to Crawford to make sure the president stayed current on events." The Aug. 6, 2001, President's Daily Brief contained the article "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US." According to Ron Suskind's The One-Percent Doctrine, the president reacted by telling the CIA briefer, "All right, you've covered your ass now."

If, as Tenet says in his memoir, it was the Aug. 6, 2001, PDB that prompted his visit on Aug. 17, what might have brought him back on Aug. 24? I believe the answer can be found in court documents released at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the fledgling pilot in Minnesota interested in learning to steer a plane but indifferent as to how to land it.

Those documents show that on Aug. 23, 2001, Tenet was given an alarming briefing focusing on Moussaoui, titled "Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly." Tenet was told that Moussaoui was training to fly a 747 and, among other suspicion-arousing data, had paid for the training in cash.

It is an open question - if a key one - whether Tenet told Bush about the two hijackers, al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar, while keeping that key information from the person who most needed it - White House counter-terrorist czar Richard Clarke. Clarke finds the only plausible explanation in his surmise that Tenet was personally responsible. Clarke says:

"For me to this day, it is inexplicable, when I had every other detail about everything related to terrorism, that the director didn't tell me, that the director of the counterterrorism center didn't tell me, that the other 48 people inside CIA that knew about it never mentioned it to me or anyone in my staff in a period of over 12 months."

Enter Harlow

But Tenet's aide-de-camp Bill Harlow has branded Clarke's statements "absurd and patently false." And the statement Harlow shepherded for Tenet, Black and Blee adds "reckless and profoundly wrong ... baseless ... belied by the record ... unworthy of serious consideration."

And Harlow never lies? Right. I'm reminded of Harlow's reaction to Newsweek's publication on Feb. 24, 2003, of the intelligence information provided by Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Hussein Kamel when he defected to Jordan in 1995. Kamel brought with him a treasure trove of documents and unique knowledge of Iraq's putative "weapons of mass destruction."

Most significantly, he told his U.S. debriefers there were no WMD in Iraq. He knew. He had been in charge of Iraq's chemical, biological, nuclear and missile programs for almost a decade, and he ordered what weapons existed destroyed before the U.N. inspectors could discover them after the war in 1991. In his words:

"I ordered the destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons - biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed."

He told the U.S. much more, and the information that could be checked out was confirmed. But Kamel's information didn't fit with the Bush administration's propaganda regarding its certainty that Iraq did have WMD stockpiles and was defying United Nations demands that the WMD be destroyed.

Those pushing the Iraq War juggernaut in early 2003 almost had a conniption when Newsweek acquired a transcript of Kamel's debriefing and published this potentially explosive story barely three weeks before the invasion.

Newsweek noted gingerly that this information "raises questions about whether the WMD stockpiles attributed to Iraq still exist." It was, in fact, the kind of impeccably sourced documentary evidence after which intelligence analysts and lawyers lust.

But this was not at all what Bush, Cheney, and - by sycophantic extension - Tenet wanted Newsweek readers, or the rest of us, to learn less than a month before the U.S./U.K. attack on Iraq ostensibly to find and destroy those non-existent weapons.

Bill Harlow to the rescue: he told the FCM in no uncertain terms that the Newsweek story was, "incorrect, bogus, wrong, untrue." And the media cheerleaders for war breathed a sigh of relief, saying, Gosh, thanks for telling us, and then dropped the story like a hot potato.

By all indications, Harlow is still able to work his fraudulent magic on the FCM, which have virtually ignored this major Clarke v. Tenet story since it broke six days ago.

If Harlow says it's not true ... and hurls still more pejorative epithets and adjectives, in a crude attempt to discredit the very serious charge Clarke has made ... well, I guess we'll have to leave it there, as the FCM is so fond of saying.

No matter Clarke's well-deserved reputation for honesty and professionalism - and Tenet's for the opposite. And so it goes.

* Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. As a CIA analyst, he served under seven presidents and nine CIA directors; he is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

By Adam Keller * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

By Carlos Latuff

It had been a difficult month for Prime Minister Netanyahu – truly, a very hard month. A Prime Minister under siege, caught in a bind. Tent encampments and more tent encampments sprouting up all over the country, demonstrations and protests and more demonstrations. The demands for affordable housing and for Social Justice and for a Welfare State occupy the center stage, and the Free Market economics which Netanyahu had worked so hard to foster since he was Finance Minister are suddenly cast into doubt. What did he not try? He used sticks and he used carrots, he tried to entice the protesters with committees and benefits and rabbits drawn from the hat and he tried to castigate them as Leftists and pampered sushi-eaters, and they went on to protest and demonstrate and extend ever further the tent encampments and get their rallies to the peak of three hundred thousands in Tel Aviv. Just yesterday morning, the protesters arrived at the home of Eyal Gabbai, Nethanyahu's Chef de Bureau, and he spoke forthrightly and made it clear to them that the Free Market system will not change, and there will be no taxation on the rich and there will be no Welfare State in Israel. And these cheeky youths did not accept these clear clarifications from their government, and just announced that they will increase ever more their protests and demonstrations.

How, how to change the focus and move the public agenda in a different direction? Perhaps finally September will come and the Palestinians will go to the UN and demand to have their state and thus help to distract public opinion in Israel? But the big show at the UN is only due on September 20, how to get through another month until then? Besides, would even that change the tendency of public opinion? What if the Palestinians hold mass demonstrations in late September, without any violence, and demand to have some Social Justice, to be free in their country and no longer live under occupation – would this be enough to change the agenda? It might even get a bit of sympathy among Israelis.

But not all is lost, and relief for the harassed Netanyahu came from the usual quarter, out of the deserts of Sinai came the dramatic initiative to change the Israeli public agenda. And it so happened that Israel's fine security services had long since prepared a plan to liquidate Gazan leaders which just needed to be put into operation, and now put into operation it was forthwith, and all at once Israel's Air Force took off for Rafah and made the hit, an instant and huge success, and immediately afterwards could the Prime Minister make a full-blooded patriotic Address to the Nation people over all channels and offer congratulations to the brave soldiers and the valiant pilots and the diligent security operatives and deliver a stern warning to the Palestinians and offer condolences to the bereaved and wish the injured a speedy recovery and how great it felt at last to make a long speech without a single word about social problems, just like in the good old days. And of course, as soon as Gaza was hit, Israelis all over the South knew that the time has come to seek shelter and expect the worst, and indeed the Qassam and Grad rockets were not slow in coming, naturally prompting the Air Force to counter-attack on more Gaza targets and bring on more missiles on Israel the escalation is mutually escalating - and who would now dare demand a cut the in the defense budget in order to promote social causes?

But what the social protest activists do now in their tent encampments? Would they quietly yield to the changed agenda and meekly disappear from the scene? If that's what Netanyahu is counting on, he should think again.

I would like to give the floor to Social Protest activists, with a selection of messages posted in the past twenty-four hours on the Official Housing Protest Facebook Page.

Voices from the grassroots field

Yigal Cohen: We will not let terrorism beat us!

Ittai Hertzberg: I just read this piece of news:
Deputy Minister Ayoub Kara calls upon demonstrators to dismantle their tents and call off their protest, in solidarity with the wounded in the attack, as "it's time to be united in the struggle against terrorism".
Ayoub Kara, don't you have another appointment scheduled with neo-Nazis in Austria?

Arnon Shaked: How sad, Bibi and his government got a terrorist attack just in the nick of time. There is only needed a small military operation to make him happy. That's what they think about human life, it's like a game to them.

Yossi Levy: This protest cannot stop, this protest will not stop. We must continue to protest, we must continue to protest. This protest will not stop! [modeled on a well-known Israeli song].

Friends, do not have to bow down low, we can prove that we can go on. Express our respect for the victims, with quiet rallies, go on going out to protest. Let the wounded heal and recover and rise up from their beds as patients in a better health system!
Let the soldiers on discharge find a better higher education system.
And a better Israel for all citizens.
Continue! Continue!

Tamar Aviyah: We undertake to continue the protest even if military action starts. Protests throughout the country.

Avi Hevroni: Finally, we will have to learn to go on demonstrating even after such events. There is no choice. It can not be stopped. This may sound insensitive but it's not. There is no other way you can keep this issue alive in a country where there is no certainty of tranquility and security.

Avishai E. Edenburg: Now is perhaps the most crucial moment for this movement. We all had this cynical thought, that we would fold everything down and go home like good children, when security issues come to the fore. No. We will not fold down, not until our needs are seriously addressed.

Shlomo Ohana: Friends, let's have a moment of silence for the Housing Protest. It was nice while it lasted, but now it's over.

Bikosh Bik: Well, Shlomo, speak for yourself. If you feel OK with the situation as it is, good for you... But you can't decide for others what is good for them and what they will do or not do.

Eshkar Eldan Cohen: Continue the protest, full steam ahead!
What happened today is a tragedy for the families of those killed and wounded. But it also a tragedy when men and women die from illness because of difficulty in purchasing drugs, or when people's health is damaged because they could not buy proper food, and when disabled people lack what they urgently need, and when people are discharged from hospital prematurely due to shortage of beds in rehabilitation, and when children go to school when their parents could not afford to buy textbooks, when people die because there were no beds free in Intensive Care – all these are tragedies. The military and government failure in their role to defend the border leads to tragedy. Also their failure to take care of daily needs. So the protest must go on, for those who manage to survive and want to go on living.

Meir Ben-Or: Mr. Prime Minister:
After the attack in the south, probably you will probably send out call-up orders also to the leftists who live in tents and eat sushi, just as you will send them the rightists and the settlers. You will sent us into action in Gaza which would probably be followed by overall war, and who knows where it would end. I just ask you, Mr. Netanyahu, for one small favor. Just remember us who will go away to fight for you and for Sarah and for all your distinguished colleagues, and to eat dust (instead of sushi). Of course, if we do not come back from this war, then all bets are off and you are exempt from all obligations...

Ashkar Alden Cohen: Do not go to this delirious war. You do not have to!

Neora Barak: Do not stop the protest in any situation. We are not indifferent. We are consistent and determined, we have patience and we will see who blinks!
Human pain and identification with the families of the victims does not mean giving up the momentum already created. We must not create a dangerous precedent of stopping the demand for social justice. Like it did not contradict the demand for release of Gilead Shalit. Suddenly the government sent a negotiator to Egypt to get him. That was only because the protests put some pepper up their ass.
We should not give up, there is a silent majority looking up with hope at this protest. Do not forget this!

Elad Shechter: The government wants protest forgotten. They asked the Jerusalem encampment to cancel the demonstrations (which shows how much the government thinks only of its own interests ). So it is important to manifest our presence and show that with all the sorrow and the pain, citizens are struggling also to live in a better country!

Not only does the protest not divide the people - it unites them for the first time in decades. The tents strengthen us against enemies from outside as well as inside. There is no contradiction between defending the country and improving it: before '48 we were able to struggle to formulate an ideology and therefore there is no reason we can't do it today. This is our War of Independence.
If the protest organizers cancel the scheduled actions, we would go on without them!

Sivan Wolchinsky: That's right! In Kiryat Shmona there will be a march ending with a rally. Certainly one thing does not come at the expense of the other. You have to remember that in the aftermath of such terrorist attacks the state often defaults on its responsibility to provide aid to the wounded, to give them benefits for disability (physical and mental...). Social Security payments could be very hard for them to get, for no justified reason! This is the real test – now more than ever, get to the streets!

Charles Arthur James: I would like to propose a "middle of the road" solution. Both mourning and a protest. On Saturday night we will not hold mass demonstrations. Events will take place in tents, circles of study, lighting candles in memory of those killed and writing letters of support to the wounded, holding hands and creating a human chain along Rothschild Boulevard, and more activities like this. In this we will show that we are united in pain, but do not let terrorism destroy our struggle for a better quality of life here.

Eyal Ap: The occupation and the settlements are part of what creates such situations, in which we cannot just go on with "a normal protest" that does not touch upon the conflict. That's why we must demand an end to conflict, demand true security which only peace can give.

Bikosh Bik: Eyal, this is not necessarily .. It is also possible to adopt a protest policy that says that the social and economic situation is no less important than the security situation ... without going into the unresolved debate about the conflict.

Matan Bar: We all feel pain and grieving over the deaths of innocents. Our outcry will be the continuation of the protest, despite all. For us, for the dead, and for the mourners. Another "Cast Lead" operation in Gaza? Again an enshrining of the khaki uniforms? Talking of security and silencing the voices on education, equality, welfare? We grieve for and and honor the victims, but we also continue the protest whose hope they also shared. Will will not cooperate with the war drive of Bibi - Barak - Lieberman! We will not run again to kill and die in Gaza under the outworn banner of 'state security'. We will walk in silence at the rally Saturday night, we will remember the dead, and will continue to press our demands upon the ministers and the prime minister!

The protest organizers announce:

We march in silence - the pain of all, the protest of all

On Saturday, August 20 at 9:00 pm, we all march together with the entire Israeli people, from Habima Square to the Charles Clore Garden. It would be a peaceful march with torches and candles, designed to remind the Prime Minister that even in these difficult times, he is still responsible for welfare and health just as he is responsible for security. When the march gets to its destination in the Charles Clore Garden on the Tel Aviv coast, we will all sit on the grass in wide circles or intimate discussion, talk, discuss, argue and sing – everything quietly, in silent respect for and solidarity with the victims of the criminal terrorist attacks.

This is the pain of all, this is the protest of all of us.

Quietly, but firmly. Because the people which demonstrates is the same people which is hit by the fire of our enemies. And their determined demand for a deep change in the order of economic priorities and for comprehensive social justice does not at all come at the expense of fighting terrorism - on the contrary. A people whose members are responsible for each other, struggle together for the future and strength of the State of Israel, are a strong people who can stand up to all their enemies.

Together with in the circles, honoring us with their presence, will be the best of Israel's artists, their voice devoid of the help of microphones, their guitars not connected to any amplifier. They will sing with us in pain and hope, for all of us have no other country - except the State of Israel.

Millie Duluoz: There is no such thing as a silent protest.

Ori Milstein: That's exactly what they want. Be quiet. We're good kids. God forbid that we should demand defense budget cuts. A silent protest is an oxymoron. Like was said here before, there is no need to apologize, no need to reduce our force.
I'm personally going to cry out when I get there. Otherwise it will simply be a surrender, a nail in the protest's coffin. If they manage to silence us now, what would happen if riots break out in September?

Hila V Goldstein: Dear firebrands! People were killed today. In the South there is a kind of war. A silent protest is the best now.

Bar Hefetz: It should not be silent and not be in Tel Aviv, it's time to express social solidarity, go the Gaza border communities and cry out that we're not afraid, not afraid of Hamas, and also not afraid of this evil government which is just trying to scare us and silence us. No, don't be silent!

David Bochris: We undertake to continue the protest even if military operations begin. Protest all over the country!

Ido Daniel: TV stopped talking about the incident and broadcast a miserable program on cooking ..... And the football games have a moment of silence and the players put on a black band to honor the dead, and then go on playing... Power is in the continuity, must show that we are continuing!

Gil Orlev: I understand all who are angry that it is to be a silent rally (why quiet? One terrorist attack. Life goes on, including all the junk programs on TV). I want to say on record that I much more sympathize with you than with the other side to the debate. Yet we must not ignore all the people who feel uncomfortable with a shouting rally when such things happen. Do not argue with feelings. There are situations where it is impossible to please everybody. I think the organizers deserve credit for trying to think of everybody and find a creative solution. There is room for two voices. We have a silent action, demanding peace and social justice.

Einat Doz'ovni: I have the experience of a quiet walk with only 200 people, which had a mesmerizing intensity. There is no need to shout in order to be heard.

Star Rajuan: I live in Gan Yavne, I was woken up twice this night by the sound of sirens. I they to keep optimistic also under air raid alarms, I hope you do too. We will continue to cry out - loudly or silently, each in their own way. To demand both justice and peace.
Peace will mean that fewer people would be killed. And justice will mean that fewer people will die because they do not have money for medications, treatments or food.

* Adam Keller is an Israeli peace activist who was among the founders of Gush Shalom, of which he is a spokesperson.

By Khalid Amayreh * in occupied Jerusalem | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

According to recent reports from Washington, the Obama administration is proposing a trade-off to reach a breakthrough in the stalled Palestinian-Israeli talks.

The new formula, which the U.S. tried (but failed) to sell to other members of the Quartet, proposes a Palestinian recognition of the "Jewishness" of Israel in exchange for an American endorsement of a Palestinian "state" on unspecific parts of the West Bank in addition to a few scattered neighborhoods of occupied East Jerusalem.

The United States has already approached some Arab states, asking them to endorse the American ideas and pressure the weak Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership to do likewise.

Unfortunately, the notoriously obsequious PA is yet to utter a clarion and unequivocal "NO" in response to increasingly daring Israeli and American efforts to force the Palestinian leadership to commit a historic adultery with Palestinian honor, legitimate rights and future, since recognizing the "Jewishness" of Israel would be a historic obscenity exceeding any other obscenity.

Some shallow-minded Palestinian officials seem unable to grasp the actual and potential gravity of the issue at hand. These people must be asked to shut up, or get lost, as they have no right whatsoever to sacrifice the rights of future Palestinian generations to freedom, dignity, and equality.

Russia has had the decency to reject the obscene American demand. This fact should at least silence and embarrass some of the defeatist elements within the PA who go by the adage "feed me today, kill me tomorrow."

In addition to that, a compromising attitude by the likes of Mahmoud Abbas and Yasser Abed Rabbo would really force our friends and allies into a very difficult position. Some of them would argue rather bitterly "we can't be more Catholic than the Pope, we can't be more Palestinian than the Palestinians themselves."

There are those whose tongues function much more swiftly than their brains do, who argue that the issue is merely symbolic and that Israel is already a Jewish state.

Well, things are not that simple and Israeli leaders such as the arch-racist prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu and his terrorist cohorts know exactly what they really have in mind when they speak of a Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.

Netanyahu knows, but doesn't say so, that a Jewish state means institutionalized Jewish racism, sanctioned by the law of the land and recognized as legitimate and legal by no other than Israel's victims.

In other words, upon receiving a Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, Israel would not only legally decapitate the paramount right of return for millions of Palestinian refugees, but would also adopt all sorts of draconian and manifestly fascist measures against the sizeable Palestinian community in Israel.

Such measures would range from brazen religious and cultural discrimination to brash ethnic cleansing, and Israel would do all of this perfectly legally because Israel is recognized as an exclusively Jewish state. In other words, the right of Israel to maintain itself as a predominantly Jewish overrides Israel's non-Jewish citizens' right to equality, dignity and basic human rights and civil liberties.

In fact, Israel has already embarked on measures that could be viewed as ominous harbingers for a full-fledged fascism. For example, Israel has unearthed ancient Muslim cemeteries in Jerusalem, ordered mosques to tone down the timeless call for prayers and imposed stringent restrictions on Muslim and Christian access to religious shrines in East Jerusalem.

Moreover, with the Israeli justice system slowly but definitely transformed into a legal body of Talmud-based anti-Gentile system that is reminiscent of history's darkest ages, and with the Israeli Jewish society moving decidedly toward Jewish religious fanaticism and national jingoism, one can only imagine the kind of treatment non-Jews, especially Palestinians, would receive in Israel several years from now.

A few months ago, I spoke with a liberal Jewish intellectual who told me that Israel wouldn't necessarily take dramatic measures to drive Arabs away from Israel.

"Israel would make their daily life unbearable through the promulgation of clearly discriminatory laws and other ostensibly "legal" measures." In a sort of defensive reflex, I reminded him that Israel claimed to be a democratic state. "You know this is for propaganda and for international public opinion consumption, it is not for real."

Israel has already started introducing racist laws in an effort to enforce "the Jewish identity" of the state, just as Nazi Germany started enforcing the German identity in the early and mid 1930s.!

For example, the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, has proposed a new law which would make it mandatory for all Israeli (Arab and Jewish) kindergartens to sing the Jewish national anthem at least once a week.

This means that the nearly two million Arabs living in Israel would be forced to glorify the symbol of their Nakba. It would be akin to the Third Reich forcing Jewish kids to sing the Nazi anthem.

In any case, forcing the children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of the tens of thousands of Palestinians, who were murdered, savaged, and violently ethnically cleansed by genocidal Zionist terrorists when Israel was created in 1948, to sing hatikva, would be a small detail once Arabs and other non-Jews were forced to pledge loyalty to Israel as a Jewish state.

Finally, recognizing Israel as it is would be a huge betrayal for the Palestinian people, their legitimate rights, aspirations, struggle, suffering and grievances. But recognizing Israel as a Jewish state would be a real crime against humanity, since saying "yes" to the Jewishness of Israel means and implies consent to Jewish racism, fascism and even Nazism. It is nothing less than grand blaspheme and apostasy.

* Khalid Amayreh a journalist based in the Occupied Palestinian town of Dura. He obtained his MA in journalism from the University of Southern Illinois in 1983.

By Grant Smith * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Former AIPAC staffer Keith Weissman, indicted in 2005 under the Espionage Act alongside colleague Steven J. Rosen and Defense Department employee Col. Lawrence Franklin, is desperately worried. In a lengthy, rambling monologue delivered to independent reporter Robert Dreyfuss, Weissman breaks a long silence to declare he’s “concerned that if a confrontation between the United States, Israel, and Iran leads to war, it will be a disaster—one that Weissman fears will be blamed on the American Jews.” It is telling, but unsurprising, that Weissman—through misrepresentations and false dichotomy—exhibits little concern for the broader potential consequence of war. Fortunately, his tired arguments are in a final lap toward oblivion.

AIPAC, in the business of advancing Israeli government policies in the United States ever since its founder left the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1951, has long portrayed itself as the sole distillery of Jewish policy needs to politicians eager to tap the Israel lobby’s seemingly limitless barrels of campaign donations. But AIPAC’s brand has recently sprung a leak as growing numbers of youthful, creative, and noisy organizations challenge its tired claims of representation and even legitimacy. Weissman’s actual concern is that AIPAC and its creaky constellation of affiliates will be blamed if the United States is successfully goaded or tripwired into an unnecessary war with Iran. Accountability has always been anathema for an organization operating more like a foreign intelligence agency than a tax-exempt social-welfare organization.

AIPAC has long brushed its footprints away from trapping pits into which it has successfully lured American taxpayers. The Los Angeles Times has lauded its “donor secrecy,” while Fortune called AIPAC “calculatedly quiet.” One anonymous AIPAC official even confided to The National Journal that “there is no question that we exert a policy impact, but working behind the scenes and taking care not to leave fingerprints, that impact is not always traceable to us.” According to the interview:

[Support for regime change] was the personal opinion of many people in AIPAC, but it never uttered the words “regime change.” And I think my efforts were part of the reason why they never did. … How would it look anyway? This is what makes it so stupid! The American Jewish community choosing the next government of Iran? Helping to change the next government of Iran? How can that government have any legitimacy? It’s completely ridiculous. And I think the arguments that I raised against it convinced AIPAC, no matter what they personally thought, they realized that what I was saying was right.

Weissman’s overblown claims that he was a lone progressive hero fending off the Israel lobby’s push for regime change from AIPAC’s Iran desk must be evaluated against the actual record. Dreyfuss notes that Weissman was indicted under the Espionage Act over AIPAC’s covert attempts to influence Iran policy, but he writes, “Perhaps the full story of the Rosen-Weissman case, Franklin’s involvement, and what role was played by AIPAC and by Israel will never be known.” Fortunately for readers, enough is now publicly known to discount Weissman’s version, thanks to documents filed in Superior Court during a defamation suit last year.

According to court documents, Rosen and Weissman were both on a key phone call passing U.S. government classified information and spin to Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler in 2004. Rosen colorfully told Kessler that based on that information Iran was undeniably engaged in “total war” against the United States. Though AIPAC’s version of U.S. Iran assessments wasn’t true at the time, and isn’t true now, AIPAC’s motive for advancing it was clear—to trigger U.S. military operations against Iran by stirring up American outrage through the establishment press. Weissman said nothing to deter Kessler from propagating the false threat.

Then, as now, Rosen and Weissman’s operational concern was that they not suffer any consequences for shoveling tainted classified information—and that AIPAC not be implicated in the deed. Rosen told Kessler (with Weissman still on the line) that he was concerned about “not getting into trouble” [.pdf], meaning, as court documents reveal, “Rosen and Weissman could get in trouble because the information is classified.” Rosen later reflected that FBI wiretaps of the “total war” phone call to the Washington Post made them look “very sinister” and “portrayed him as a secret agent rather than a lobbyist.” It didn’t help that Rosen later fled to meet with Israeli embassy officials after the FBI told him to get a lawyer. The historical record is very clear that the Rosen and Weissman tag team was conscientiously setting tripwires for regime change.

Dreyfuss chronicles Weissman’s self-serving evaluation of the Israel lobby along a left-right spectrum, with FBI crackdowns on its neoconservative wing as driving the 2005 AIPAC espionage indictments. “So what does Weissman think was going on? He believes that U.S. law enforcement officials, including the FBI, and CIA officials were so angry over the role of neoconservatives in backing the war in Iraq that they launched an investigation that sought to link Wolfowitz, Feith, and other Jewish Pentagon officials to Israeli intelligence, AIPAC, and a panoply of neocons at the American Enterprise Institute, the Hudson Institute, and other think tanks in Washington.”

Weissman’s self-portrayal is that of a progressive hero reining in AIPAC as its liaison to Palestinian and progressive groups while trundling around in a car with a “Free Palestine” bumper sticker. But AIPAC’s skillful use of Weissman—who readily admits that his greatest attachment to AIPAC was a string of generous paychecks—to access progressive and Palestinian groups is really no mystery. The lobby has always monitored even its weakest opposition closely, all the better to achieve an unopposed string of stunning successes for Israel, at great cost to America.

But the only frame more absurd than AIPAC’s claim to represent “the American Jewish community” is analyzing the Israel lobby from a “right-left” perspective. While AIPAC delights in creating an ongoing Democratic/Republican race for candidates to trot out their “pro-Israel” credentials, American taxpayers and voters are always the losers. Founder Isaiah L. Kenen gloated about roping The Nation Magazine Associates into his earliest Israel propaganda campaigns. There’s been even more noise of late as various progressive pundits and policy posers rush to carve out new positions in front of growing crowds of Americans outraged about the Israel lobby—now that it’s been fully flushed out in the open by Mearsheimer and Walt. But many progressive policy barkers continue to flog their skeptical acolytes with expired brands of snake oil—that everything of importance is really just a big left-right battle for influence over Israel and Mideast policy.

It’s not and never has been.

The overarching problem is the Israel lobby’s subversion of American governance through election fraud, the evasion of tax regulations and laws regulating foreign lobbies, and the systematized, ongoing infiltration of operatives into key government posts to advance the interests of a foreign state. Unfortunately for AIPAC, the Americans gathering to challenge it cross party lines. Whether they wear American flag pins on their suit lapels or Birkenstocks over wool socks is of ever declining significance. Weissman and his fellow travelers can try to outrun opponents by pulling an old horse’s head from right to left. Weissman clearly wants to tell his side of the story. But Weissman and Rosen will only reemerge as legitimate jockeys astride America’s policy circuits when they again register as AIPAC’s agents of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

* Grant F. Smith is the author of the Spy Trade: How Israel's Lobby Undermines America's Economy. He is a frequent contributor to Radio France Internationale and Voice of America's Foro Interamericano. Smith has also appeared on BBC News, CNN, and C-SPAN. He is currently director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington, D.C.