by Radhika Marya

More Saudi Arabian women drove their cars in the streets of capital Riyadh Wednesday, continuing a campaign - largely rooted in social media - to push the kingdom into overturning a ban on female drivers. At the same time, one of the European Union's top diplomats sent a long-requested message of support for their campaign.

The drivers were Sara Al-Khalidi, who was accompanied by her mother, and Azza Al-Shamasi, who was accompanied and filmed by blogger Eman Al Nafjan. The group was also filmed by Saudi media group Rotana.

http://youtu.be/4uTTyUpout0

Al Nafjan also filmed another drive on June 17, the original day the Women2Drive movement called for Saudi women with international licenses, or licenses issued by foreign countries, to drive their own cars. According to an email from Change.org Human Rights Editor Benjamin Joffe-Walt, someone later broke the car's glass and left a note in English that said, "Don't drive again, Bitch."

"This could have been a Saudi man or a hired driver worried about losing [his] job," Joffe-Walt says.

A note is placed next to the shattered side-view mirror of a car belonging to Saudi Iman al-Nafjan's family which the family says was put as a warning after she drove in Riyadh on June 22, 2011. Fayez Nureldine / AFP - Getty Images

The Saudi driving ban on women is not based on any written law, but religious rulings enforced by police have prevented most women - Saudi and foreign - from driving. This has caused Saudi women to rely on live-in drivers or male relatives for transportation, leading to the Women2Drive movement, which began picking up momentum on social media sites around two months ago.

Women did go driving on the designated date of June 17, even though key organizer Manal al-Sherif was arrested and jailed for a few days in May after posting a video of herself driving on YouTube. Some women, like the ones who ventured out Wednesday, are also driving on later dates. According to most reports so far, women stopped by the police have only been briefly detained since they began driving June 17. At least one woman, Twitter user @Maha1410, received a ticket.

Al-Shamasi says she feels the campaign is moving slowly. But Al-Khalidi says she thinks it's starting to move in a big way, adding that she's even heard some positive feedback from the more conservative members of Saudi society.

"It seems that a lot of people are appreciating what's happening," Al-Khalidi says. "We are not against anyone. We are not trying to provoke anyone." She does know of some women who have heard negative feedback, while she herself hasn't received any.

Meanwhile, even Al-Shamasi thinks the campaign might pick up speed. "I think more people are going to drive soon, and we can see that through YouTube," she says.

International Support

Women2Drive continues receiving attention outside Saudi Arabia. The latest message of support comes from Catherine Ashton, the European Union's high representative for foreign affairs and security policy. On Wednesday, a spokesperson for Ashton released a statement describing the women's movement as "courageous."

"The EU supports people who stand up for their right to equal treatment, wherever they are," the statement reads. "The Saudi women who are taking to the road are exercising their right to demand that equality. They are courageous and have the High Representative's support."

The message came after more than 7,000 people signed a Change.org petition asking Ashton for a public declaration of support, and just one day after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton voiced her support during a news conference.

Source: mashable.com

Cartoon by Jeremy Nell "Jerm", The New Age, South Africa

By Fidel Castro | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Oil has become the principal wealth in the hands of the great Yankee transnationals; through this energy source they had an instrument that considerably expanded their political power in the world.  It was their main weapon when they decided to easily liquidate the Cuban Revolution as soon as the first just and sovereign laws were passed in our Homeland: depriving it of oil.

Upon this energy source today’s civilization was developed.  Venezuela was the nation in this hemisphere that paid the highest price.  The United States became the lord and master of the huge oil fields that Mother Nature had bestowed upon that sister country.

At the end of the last World War, it started to extract greater amounts of oil from the oil fields of Iran, as well as those in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the Arab countries located around them.  These became the main suppliers.  World consumption progressively increased to the fabulous figure of approximately 80 million barrels a day, including those being extracted on United States territory, to which later gas, hydro and nuclear energies were added.  Until the beginning of the twentieth century, coal had been the basic source of energy that made industrial development possible, before billions of automobiles and engines consuming the liquid fuel were produced.

The squandering of oil and gas is associated with one of the greatest tragedies, not in the least resolved, which is suffered by humankind: climate change.

When our Revolution arose, Algeria, Libya and Egypt were not yet oil producers and a great part of the abundant reserves of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran and the United Arab Emirates were still to be discovered.

In December of 1951, Libya becomes the first African country to attain its independence after WW II, during which its territory was the stage for important battles between the troops of Germany and the United Kingdom, conferring fame and glory on Generals Erwin Rommel and Bernard L. Montgomery.

Ninety-five percent of its territory is completely made up of desert.  Technology permitted the discovery of vital oilfields of excellent quality light oil that today reach one million 800 thousand barrels a day along with abundant deposits of natural gas.  Such riches allowed it to reach life expectancy that is almost at 75 years of age and the highest per capita income in Africa.  Its harsh desert is located over an enormous lake of fossil waters, equivalent to more than three times the land area of Cuba; this has made it possible to construct a broad network of pipelines of fresh water that stretch from one end of the country to the other.

Libya, which had a million inhabitants when it attained independence, today has somewhat more than 6 million.

The Libyan Revolution took place in the month of September of the year 1969. Its main leader was Muammar al-Gaddafi, a soldier of Bedouin origin who, in his early years, was inspired by the ideas of the Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser.  Without any doubt, many of his decisions are associated with the changes that were produced when, as in Egypt, a weak and corrupt monarchy was overthrown in Libya.

The inhabitants of that country have age-old warrior traditions.  It is said that ancient Libyans were a part of Hannibal’s army when he was at the point of destroying Ancient Rome with the troops that crossed the Alps.

One can agree with Gaddafi or not.  The world has been invaded with all kinds of news, especially using the mass media.  One has to wait the necessary length of time in order to learn precisely what is the truth and what are lies, or a mixture of events of every kind that, in the midst of chaos, were produced in Libya.  For me, what is absolutely clear is that the government of the United States is not in the least worried about peace in Libya and it will not hesitate in giving NATO the order to invade that rich country, perhaps in a matter of hours or a few short days.

Those who with perfidious intentions invented the lie that Gaddafi was headed for Venezuela, just as they did yesterday afternoon on  Sunday the 20th of February, today received an fitting response from Foreign Affairs Minister  Nicolás Maduro when he literally stated that he was “wishing that the Libyan people would find, in the exercise of their sovereignty, a peaceful solution to their difficulties, that would preserve the integrity of the Libyan people and nation, without the interference of imperialism...”

As for me, I cannot imagine that the Libyan leader would abandon his country; escaping the responsibilities he is charged with, whether or not they are partially or totally false.

An honest person shall always be against any injustice being committed against any people in the world, and the worst of all, at this moment, would be to remain silent in the face of the crime that NATO is getting ready to commit against the Libyan people.

The leadership of that war-mongering organization has to do it.  We must condemn it!

Fidel Castro Ruz

February 21, 2011
10:14 p.m.

Illustration by Carlos Latuff

By Mohamed Khodr* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Ghaddafi Will Go: 3 Down-19 to Go

In a few days, or less, Libya will be free from the 42 year rule of the mentally unstable, psychotic, arrogant, divisive, condescending, megalomaniacal leader and self proclaimed "King of Africa." –Muammar Al-Ghaddafi.

Unlike the deposed Tunisian and Egyptian leaders, Al Ghaddafi is despised by all other Arab tyrants. thus he'll have no home outside of Libya unless some African nation has pity on this butcher of his people. In just 5 days he's killed more than 300 civilians using snipers, secret police, Arab and African mercenaries, even his air force to bomb unarmed peaceful protesters

His son, Saif Al Islam, took to the airwaves on Sunday to give the most arrogant, incoherent, rambling and condescending speech---like father, like son.

In it he blamed outside agitators, Islamists, drugged men and children, drunkards, those taking hallucinogens. the Arab media, Facebook, emails, thugs hired by millionaire businessmen, and anything else he could think of on the spur of the moment. All Arab tyrants when faced with opposition use these lies to explain the protests and justify their murderous crackdown.

He said the army had to defend itself against these mobs and thus killed a few Libyans, much less than was reported.

He warned of a civil war and a division of Libya. Incredibly he gave credit to American oil companies for the unity of Libya. "American Oil Companies played a big part in unifying Libya. Who will manage this oil?"

He warned of Neo-Colonialism in Libya if an Islamic Government takes over (the bogeyman that frightens the West):

"The British FM called me. Be ready for a new colonial period from America and Britain. You think they will accept an Islamic Emirate here"

The West will come and occupy you. Europe & the West will not agree to chaos in Libya, to export chaos and drugs so they will occupy us."

But true to the family's tradition of eliminating and killing any opposition he threatened the Libyan people with this dire warning.

"Now comes the role of the National Guard and the Army...We will flight to the last man and woman and bullet. We will not lose Libya. We will not let Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya and BBC trick us."

This is a desperation speech. Al Gaddafi has lost Eastern Libya (Benghazi) with some military units joining the protesters. The largest tribe in Libya has supported his downfall and other tribes have cut off oil pipelines. Libyans by the tens of thousands are protesting in the capitol, Tripoli braving the bullets.

Shockingly but not unexpectedly, the U.S. and Europe took a few days to utter the mildest of comments against the slaughter of hundreds of Libyans and the injured thousands. They simply asked for "restraint" to avoid more deaths.

If one Israeli soldier was hit by a stone in his America paid boot thrown by an elderly women who just lost her seven children to an Israeli missile you can depend on Obama at 3 a.m. to come out to the Rose Garden and issue this statement:

"Let me be clear. Palestinian terrorism against innocent Israeli soldiers who are simply defending themselves and their lives against horrendous attacks must be condemned yesterday, today, and tomorrow. There is no room for such violence and terrorism at a time when Prime Minister Netanyahu and I are working hard to restart the Peace Process which unfortunately the Palestinians are refusing using the excuse that I vetoed a simple U.N. Security Council Resolution against "illegal" settlements, when in fact they are not "illegal", but as I've said all along, are "illegitimate". As our Ambassador to the U.N. Dr. Susan Rice so eloquently stated, passing such a Resolution would have led to more "illegitimate" settlements being built. Thank You."

Of Blood and Oil

With so many European and American oil companies doing business in Libya; Al Gadaffi can kill with impunity.

Ever since Oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Persian Gulf the region has endured European colonialism, Cold War competition, and finally total American hegemony of the region since 1956.

Oil is the life blood of the entire world but none more so historically than in Europe and the U.S. .Both are willing to launch wars and massacre millions if necessary to obtain cheap oil for their factories, transportation system, and personal vehicles. Without oil America's economy will die adding more fuel to the already bankrupt nation.

America has and will spill precious Arab blood to extract the oil from under their feet and sand dunes. That's what American Presidents since Franklin D. Roosevelt established as America's premiere "national interest" in the region.

President Roosevelt met with King Abdul Aziz bin Saud of Saudi Arabia in February 14, 1945 aboard the USS Quncy in the Red Sea to come to a simple agreement: You give us cheap oil, we'll protect your monarchy and we won't interfere in the Palestinian issue.

Later, President Jimmy Carter established The Carter Doctrine which declared the Persian Gulf and its oil fields of vital interest to the United States, and that any outside attempt to gain control in the area would be "repelled by use of any means necessary, including military force."

President Reagan established regional CENTCOM's (Central Commands around the world, renaming Carter's initial "Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force: RDJTF).

Today CENTCOM is based in Qatar while the Fifth Fleet is based in Bahrain with military bases in the United Arab Emirates and Oman, among other nations.

The main purpose of CENTCOM, other than prosecuting the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, is to protect the oil flow out of the Persian Gulf, 30% of the world's oil, and to contain any Iranian threat, even if it means the launching of an Israeli driven third American war.

Bottom Line:

America will protect its Oil Dictatorships even if it means the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Arabs. As former Secretary Madeleine Albright said in an interview with Leslie Stahl on the American TV Program "60 minutes" when asked about the death toll of Iraqi sanctions.

Lesley Stahl: "We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?"

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it." (60 Minutes (5/12/96)

To America the premiere policy in the MidEast is not establishing democracy but supporting and stabilizing the Status Quo.

American policy has always been short sighted, counter-productive, and frankly stupid in the Arab world.

Its umbilical cord ties to Israel where money and weapons flow from the American mother to the Israeli child has cost it dearly for 62 years.

Israel can do no wrong and American politicians are the most cowardly men and women in world politics, unable to even utter the word "no" to Israel as it unleashes American weapons into the hearts and brains of Palestinian children.

America's long term support of Arab dictators resides on the simpleton principle: As long as you give us cheap oil, allow our military bases in your lands, and fight "Islamic Fundamentalism", you may annihilate the entire population for all we care.

The revolutions sweeping the Arab world, and shortly the Muslim world, starting with Pakistan, are a direct result of such American political stupidity and imperialism in the region.

Submitting to Israel and its genocidal policies and providing protection to murderous Arab tyrants if not changed will be the undoing of American interests in the region.

Given America's political history it's not hopeful that America will change its policy in the near future, but once the Arab monarchies in the Persian Gulf and Saudi Arabia fall, America will be the biggest loser of these revolutions and it will pay the heaviest price for its blind subservience to Israel.

America, make room for China, India, Russia, Brazil, and Japan, which will rapidly dump you as fast as you dump your dictators once they're usefulness ends, in exchange for Arab oil and its economic survival.

Future beleaguered America generations will look upon this history and damn the day Israel occupied America and its lobby and Neocons ran its foreign policy.

"And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;"
--Star Spangled Banner, America's National Anthem

The Rockets and Bombs must end, our relation with Israel and dictators must end, and we must start a respectful mutually beneficial relationship with 1.6 billion Muslims yearning for freedom and peace, and who in unity will end all Muslim terroristic groups.

You're choice. Change now or forever hold your tongue and bombs. Time is running out.

* Mohamed Khodr is a political activist who frequently writes on the plight of Palestinians living under the brutal occupation of Israel, U.S. Foreign Policy, Islam, and Arab politics.

Cartoon by Cameron (Cam) Cardow, Canada

Until the very last moment, the Israeli leadership tried to keep Hosni Mubarak in power.

It was hopeless. Even the mighty United States was impotent when faced with this tsunami of popular outrage.

In the end it settled for second best: a pro-Western military dictatorship. But will this really be the outcome?

The right instincts

When confronted with a new situation, Obama’s first response is generally admirable.

Then, it seems, second thoughts set in. And third. And fourth. The end result is a 180 degree turn.

When the masses started to gather in Tahrir Square, he reacted exactly like most decent people in the US and, indeed, throughout the world. There was unbounded admiration for those brave young men and women who faced the dreaded mukhabarat secret police, demanding democracy and human rights.

How could one not admire them? They were non-violent, their demands were reasonable, their actions were spontaneous, they obviously expressed the feelings of the vast majority of the people. Without any organization to speak of, without leadership, they said and did all the right things.

Such a sight is rare in history. No sans-culottes screaming for blood, no cold-minded Bolsheviks lurking in the shadows, no ayatollahs dictating their actions in the name of God.

So Obama loved it. He did not hide his feelings. He practically called on the dictator to give up and go away.

If Obama had stayed this course, the result would have been historic. From being the most hated power in the Arab world, the US would have electrified the Arab masses, the Muslim region, indeed much of the Third World. It could have been the beginning of a completely new era.

I believe that Obama sensed this. His first instincts are always right. In such a situation, a real leader – that rarest of all animals – stands out.

Enter the small people – and the Israel lobby

But then came the second thoughts. Small people started to work on him. Politicians, generals, “security experts”, diplomats, pundits, lobbyists, business leaders, all the “experienced” people – experienced in routine affairs – started to weigh in. And, of course, the hugely powerful Israel lobby.

“Are you crazy?”, they admonished him. To forsake a dictator who happens to be our son-of-a-bitch? To tell all our client dictators around the world that we shall forsake them in their hour of need?

How naïve can you get? Democracy in an Arab country? Don’t make us laugh! We know the Arabs! You show them democracy on a platter and they would not know it from baked beans! They always need a dictator to keep them in shape! Especially these Egyptians! Ask the British!

The whole thing is really a conspiracy of the Muslim Brotherhood. Look them up on Google! They are the only alternative. It’s either Mubarak or them. They are the Egyptian Taliban, worse, the Egyptian Al-Qaeda. Help the well-meaning democrats to overthrow the regime, and before you know it you will have a second Iran, with an Egyptian Ahmadinejad on Israel’s southern border, hooking up with Hezbollah and Hamas. The dominos will begin to fall, starting with Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Faced with all these experts, Obama caved in. Again.

Of course, every single one of these arguments can easily be refuted.

Spurious arguments

Let’s start with Iran. The naïve Americans, so the story goes, forsook the Shah and his dreaded Israeli-trained secret police in order to promote democracy, but the revolution was taken over by the ayatollahs. A cruel dictatorship was replaced by an even crueller one. This is what Binyamin Netanyahu said this week, warning that the same is inevitably bound to happen in Egypt.

But the true Iranian story is quite different.

In 1951, a patriotic politician named Mohammad Mossadegh was elected in democratic elections – the first of their kind in Iran. Mossadegh, neither a communist nor even a socialist, instituted sweeping social reforms, freed the peasants and worked mightily to turn backward Iran into a modern, democratic, secular state. In order to make this possible, he nationalized the oil industry, which was owned by a rapacious British company which paid Iran miniscule royalties. Huge demonstrations in Tehran supported Mossadegh.

The British reaction was swift and decisive. Winston Churchill convinced President Dwight Eisenhower that Mossadegh’s course would lead to communism. In 1953 the CIA engineered a coup, Mossadegh was arrested and kept in isolation until his death 14 years later, the British got the oil back. The Shah, who had fled, was put back on his throne again. His reign of terror lasted until the Khomeini revolution, 26 years later.

Without this American intervention, Iran would probably have developed into a secular, liberal democracy. No Khomeini. No Ahmadinejad. No talk about nuclear bombs.

Netanyahu’s warnings of the inevitable takeover of Egypt by the fanatical Muslim Brotherhood, if democratic elections were held, sound logical, but they are similarly based on willful ignorance.

Would the Muslim Brothers take over? Are they Taliban-like fanatics?

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded 80 years ago, long before Obama and Netanyahu were born. They have settled down and matured, with a strong moderate wing, much like the moderate, democratic Islamic party that is governing Turkey so well, and which they are trying to emulate. In a democratic Egypt, they would constitute a legitimate party playing its part in the democratic process. (This, by the way, would have happened in Palestine, too, when Hamas was elected – if the Americans, under Israeli guidance, had not toppled the unity government and set Hamas on a different course.)

The majority of Egyptians are religious, but their Islam is far removed from the radical kind. There are no indications that the bulk of the people, represented by the youngsters in Tahrir Square, would tolerate a radical regime. The Islamic bogeyman is just that – a bogeyman.

Obama’s volte-face

So what did Obama do? His moves were pathetic, to say the least.

After turning against Mubarak, he suddenly opined that he must stay in power, in order to carry out democratic reforms. As his representative, he sent to Egypt a retired diplomat whose current employer is a law firm that represents the Mubarak family (much as Bill Clinton used to send committed Jewish Zionists to “mediate” between Israel and the Palestinians.)

So the detested dictator was supposed to institute democracy, enact a new liberal constitution, work together with the very people he had thrown into prison and systematically tortured.

Mubarak’s pathetic speech on 10 February was the straw that broke the back of the Egyptian camel. It showed that he had lost contact with reality or, worse, is mentally deranged. But even an unbalanced dictator would not have made such an atrocious speech had he not believed that America was still on his side. The howls of outrage in the square while Mubarak’s recorded speech was still being aired was Egypt’s answer. That needed no interpreters.

But America had already moved. Its main instrument in Egypt is the army. It is the army that holds the key to the immediate future. When the Armed Forces Supreme Council convened on 10 February, just before that scandalous speech, and issued a “Communique No. 1”, hope was mingled with foreboding.

“Communique No. 1” is a term well known in history. It generally means that a military junta has assumed power, promising democracy, early elections, prosperity and heaven on earth. In very rare instances, the officers indeed fulfill these promises. Generally, what ensues is a military dictatorship of the worst kind.

This time, the communique said nothing at all. It just showed on live TV that they were there – all the leading generals, minus Mubarak and his stooge, Omar Suleiman.

Now they have assumed power. Quietly, without bloodshed. For the second time within 60 years.

It is worthwhile recalling the first time. After a period of turmoil against the British occupiers, a group of young officers, veterans of the 1948 Israeli-Arab war, hiding behind an elderly general, carried out a coup. The despised ruler, King Farouk, was literally sent packing. He put to sea on his yacht from Alexandria. Not a drop of blood was shed.

The people were jubilant. They loved the army and the coup. But it was a revolution from above. No crowds in Tahrir Square.

The army tried first to govern through civilian politicians. They soon lost patience with that. A charismatic young lieutenant-colonel, Gamal Abd-al-Nasser, emerged as the leader, instituted wide-ranging reforms, restored the honour of Egypt and the entire Arab world – and founded the dictatorship which expired on 11 February 2011.

Will the army follow this example, or will it do what the Turkish army has done several times: assume power and turn it over to an elected civilian government?

Much will depend on Obama. Will he support the move to democracy, as his inclination will undoubtedly suggest, or will he listen to the “experts”, Israelis included, who will urge him to rely on a military dictatorship, as American presidents have done for so long?

But the chance of the United States of America, and of Barack Obama personally, leading the world by shining statesmanship at a historic moment 19 days ago has been wasted. The beautiful words have evaporated.

For Israel there is another lesson. When the Free Officers made their revolution in 1952, in the whole of Israel only one single voice was raised (that of Haolam Hazeh, the news magazine I was editing) calling upon the Israeli government to come out in support. The government did the opposite, and a historic chance to show solidarity with the Egyptian people was lost.

Now, I am afraid, this mistake will be repeated. The tsunami is being viewed in Israel as a terrifying natural catastrophe, not as the wonderful opportunity it is.

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

Emad Hajjaj, Al-Ghad Newspaper, Amman, Jordan

By Mohamed Khodr* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

"Truly, God does not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves." (Quran 13:11)

"When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right."
--Victor Hugo

FREEDOM!!! Yes, the Arabs have finally awakened and found their voice to utter their God given right to live in Freedom and their democratic right to choose their leaders. Every human being is born free but may not live free depending on the political powers that shape, dominate, and oppress his or her life.

Young Egyptians continue their quest for freedom from Mubarak's regime. They have shed their blood and are risking their lives and livelihood to achieve their aims of a Mubarak free zone including from his spymaster torturer treasonous Vice President Omar Suleiman and the other military junta of a Prime Minister and Minister of Defense. Only in America and Europe does freedom for Egypt mean replacing a murderous brutal military dictator with his similarly murderous military lapdogs.

To hold on to power Mubarak has adopted several strategies: Kill, injure, and imprison protesters; unleash his secret police and hired thugs to attack peaceful protesters on horseback and camels; launch Pro Mubarak protests that led to clashes and can ultimately lead to civil war; adopt a media strategic public relations campaign on state television that broadcast nationalist and patriotic programs and music, show the concessions of his regime and the rejection of these lawless thugs in Liberation Square; use his hired Muslim and Christian leaders and scholars to denounce the protests as unreligious and divisive, and show his lackey Omar Suleiman sitting with unknown young people discussing the movement forward while keeping Mubarak president.

The foundational sign of Mubarak's allegiance to America and Israel is his unconscionable dismissal of his own people's demands and his negotiation with the United States on the future of Egypt.

That's where the allegiance of all Arab tyrants lies, never with the basic needs of their people but meeting the need of America for cheap oil and Israel's demand to eliminate all "Islamist" opposition to its decades long choking and murder of millions of Palestinian civilians: A brutality supported by the American and European freedom loving democracies.

But the young protesters are unrelenting and demand Mubarak's ouster a man whose family according to the Guardian has amassed a $70 Billion fortune while 40% of the population lives under poverty making less than $2 a day (World Bank).

Mubarak with the support of the American financed, trained, and bribed military is able to hold on to power thus far by the thread of America's schizophrenic foreign policy that on one hand espouses and supports democracy and on the other hand supports the stability of the status quo. This dual hypocritical and contradictory foreign policy has been a historical hallmark of U.S. foreign policy from Latin America, to the Middle East, Asia, to the Philippines. Only when the populace opposition reaches a critical tipping point does America finally withdraw its carpet from under these dictators and declares that all long its been supportive of the populace demand for freedom.

The Obama's administration displays this contradiction when Obama's envoy to Mubarak, Frank G. Wisner (Jewish), a former Ambassador to Egypt,

Former Pro-Egyptian lobbyist and Board member of a major Egyptian bank, proclaimed that Mubarak "should stay", only to be contradicted by the State Department that this is his personal not official view. Obama's vague declaration for an "orderly transition" embodies a policy that embraces this hypocritical duality of supporting a dictator while giving some semblance of support for regime change.

Thus America's and Europe's call for the spread of democracy in "failed" states means a nation can have a democracy but only with a winner acceptable to their interests. Hence the appropriate motto for these "freedom" loving civilized nations is: YOU VOTE, BUT WE DECIDE.

Given that there is no chance of the United States losing cheap oil from Arab States, its policy in the region hinges on two factors. It's blind outrageous support for the Apartheid, racist, genocidal nation of Israel, -and the total ignorant and unhealthy opposition to the so called "Islamist" countries like Iran or political parties such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hezbollah, and Hamas. Although Syria is a secular state America considers it an enemy state because it opposes Israel's illegal occupation of its land, the Golan Heights, and its ethnic cleansing and daily murder of innocent Palestinians, including children.

No greater example of western hypocrisy and double standards exists than the 2006 Palestinian free and democratic elections certified by the Carter Center and U.N. international observers that led to Hamas' victory in the election. Although these elections were demanded by Israel, the U.S., and the E.U. hoping that their client Palestinian Authority would win, the outcome of Hamas' victory shocked them and deemed unacceptable. Thus the troika besieged Gaza, with Mubarak's active involvement, and its 1.5 million people for the last four years giving Israel the green light to commit several genocidal attacks upon an imprisoned concentration camp.

Mubarak, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the Gulf States were supportive of killing Gazans to eliminate Hamas and of Israel's 2006 destruction of Lebanon to eliminate Hezbollah. Hezbollah and Hamas are stronger than ever.

Is it any surprise that Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinian Authority support Mubarak's regime, damn with the long suffering Egyptians.

We've seen the consequences of the Bush Blair spread of democracy in Iraq that led to an illegal invasion, genocide, and total destruction of a sovereign nation that eight years later has no democracy but instability and daily carnage.

Here are a few comments supportive of Mubarak by western leaders--for Israel's sake, opportunity to bomb Iran, and conservative's fear mongering that the Muslim Brotherhood has already infiltrated the Obama administration. :

• Dick Cheney: "Mubarak is a good friend and U.S. ally"
• Tony Blair: Mubarak is "immensely courageous, and a force for good." (Blair is the Quartet's Peace Envoy to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Wikileak Cables shows his strong Pro Israel Bias, what a surprise from the butcher of Baghdad)
• Senator John McCain: called the Egyptian populist movement a "virus" that threatens Israel.
• State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley:

"We respect what Egypt contributes to the region, it is a stabilizing force, it has made its own peace with Israel, and is pursuing normal relations with Israel, we think that's important, we think that's a model that the region should adopt broadly." (Interview on Al Jazeera English: January 26, 2011:
(The State Department supported Democracy for Tunis but not for Egypt due to its potential impact on Israel)

• Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John: Bolton: Defends Mubarak pointing out "substantial economic growth" under his rule and warned that his downfall would "speed" the need to attack Iran.

He further said: "I think the fall of the Egyptian government committed to the Israeli peace agreement will almost certainly speed that timetable up."

• Israel: "Shocked by Obama's Betrayal of Mubarak "(Reuters: January 31, 2011)
• Frank Gaffney, former Reagan Assistant Secretary of Defense and leading Neoconservative says: Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood Has 'Infiltrated' The Federal Government. He identifies Federal Government officials who do the bidding of "stealth jihadists." As--John Brennan, Obama's Chief Counterterrorism Advisor, Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano: (ThinkProgress, February 1, 2011)

In simple terms America's foreign policy in the Arab world has stupidly adopted and wholly swallowed Israel's propaganda garbage that:
What's good for Israel is good for America.

Today the U.S. is paying heavily for this stupidly incredulous Nazi inspired Zionist propaganda.

America's only remaining alternative to salvage its presence and credibility in the Arab Muslim world is to break the Israeli chains around it political, economic, and military institutions.

While Arabs seek to overthrow their tyrants, Americans must overthrow the chokehold of the Israeli tyrant in Washington D.C. This journey has begun.

The main obstacle facing the courageous protesters is that their protest is spontaneous and leaderless. They are Christians and Muslims from all walks of life who responded to an internet and social media call to overcome their fear and launch a freedom popular uprising. But tragically they are not organized and have no spokespersons. The established political parties have split on whether to negotiate with the neo-tyrant Omar Suleiman or not on concession crumbs to end the protest and leave Mubarak in his tyrannical chair.

You must organize and coalesce behind a spokesman or adopt a political party or parties to speak on their behalf. You must not accept Mubarak to remain in power in any shape or form. You must reject the military thug rule of the Vice President, Prime Minister, and Minister of Defense. You must never allow the military to enter politics or rule again. You must demand the dissolution of Mubarak's parliament, develop a new constitution, demand a total amnesty for all protesters, human rights activists, journalists, and release all political and prisoners of conscience.

This is a difficult undertaking but one that must be taken lest the protest fizzle and Mubarak wins. This is a test of wills between those who demand freedom and the tyranny of the American and Israeli military regime.

You must never give up, never, never, and tell Mubarak and his backers that Egypt is no longer for sale but is the land of an independent population to choose their leaders democratically and adopt policies in their own national interest even if it means tearing up the peace treaty with the Zionist killing machine.

They must read, adopt, and shout the following poem by the Tunisian poet Abu Al Qasim -Al-Shabi:

"To the Tyrants of the World"

"Oppressive tyrant, lover of darkness, enemy of life

You have ridiculed the size of the weak people

Your palm is soaked with their blood

You have deformed the magic of existence

And planted the seeds of sorrow in the fields

Beware, for below the ash there is fire

And he who grows thorns reaps wounds

Look there, for I have harvested the heads of mankind

And the flowers of hope

And I have watered the heart of the earth with blood

I soaked it with tears until it was drunk

The river of blood will sweep you

And the fiery storm will devour you

If one day, a people desires to live, then fate will answer their call;

And their night will then begin to fade, and their chains break and fall."

Muslims don't hate us for our freedoms; they hate us for our lack of freedom from Israel's control and domination.

May God support your efforts, Oh Beautiful Egyptians, and may He grant you victory over the oppressors in Egypt and abroad.

Allah Akbar

* Mohamed Khodr is a political activist who frequently writes on the plight of Palestinians living under the brutal occupation of Israel, U.S. Foreign Policy, Islam, and Arab politics.

By Lawrence Davidson * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Cartoon by Frederick Deligne, Nice-Matin, Nice, France

Mr. Mubarak suffers from the same syndrome as did Louis XVI just prior to the French Revolution. Louis lived in the royal complex of Versailles. He rarely visited Paris, which was just 25 miles away, and knew almost nothing of the daily lives of his non-noble subjects. Like Louis, Hosni too lives in isolation from the people who go about their business beyond the walls of his presidential palace. Thus, when Mubarak says he loves Egypt and will never run away from his country, he is talking about a place as distant from that of the ordinary citizen as the moon.

A sure sign of this disconnect came with the February 3rd report of an interview he gave with ABC's Christiane Amanpour. According to the correspondent, Mubarak said he was "fed up with being president and would like to leave office now, but cannot, he says, for fear that the country would sink into chaos." This is surely a sign that the Egypt he knows is not the Egypt commonly recognized by his people or the rest of the world. From outside the presidential palace it is starkly clear that a sort of popular chaos is what already besets Egypt and the only way to calm it is for Mubarak to leave office and probably the country as well. The vast majority of Egyptians can see that this is so. President Obama can see this is so and has probably emphasized the fact to Mubarak. Even the King of Saudi Arabia can see what is happening and has offered Mubarak asylum in his country. So why can't Hosni Mubarak see it?

Along with the isolation that rulers, and especially dictators, experience comes the phenomenon of "groupthink." In his book Victims of Groupthink (Houghton Mifflin, 1972), Irving L. Janis shows how governing political elites create self-reinforcing decision making circles. In other words, in the last 30 years Mubarak has surrounded himself with like minded advisers and aides. These are people who have a vested interest in his regime. They constantly reinforce his world view and second his decisions. There are no devil's advocates here. Being a military dictator also probably drives the groupthink outlook. Generals give orders, they do not normally take them. And, all too often, it is the orders given that are meant to shape reality and not the other way around. It is assumed that whatever deviation there is between the two can be swept away by force.

Up till now this has been the Egyptian dictator's expectation. His choice of vice president, Omar Suleiman, is a product of Mubarak's artificial groupthink world and no doubt selected to keep that world intact. Therefore, Suleiman's initial impulse was to reflect his master's preferences. Days and days of demonstrations by tens of thousands of Egyptians demanding Mubarak's immediate departure were deemed impractical and disrespectful of a man who has so long "served his country." But Suleiman, until recently head of the regime's intelligence services, now appears to have his doubts. Making reality match Mr. Mubarak's fantasy will almost certainly require such force as to guarantee the radicalization of the protest movement.

Most of the conservative talking heads both in the U.S. and in Israel fear the potential of an Iranian style outcome for Egypt. That is why everyone from Glenn Beck to Benjamin Netanyahu have called on Mubarak to get tough lest we end up with ayatollahs on the Nile. But Egypt is not like Iran, neither the Iran of 1979 nor 2011. There is no rational reason to believe that the Muslim Brotherhood will suddenly turn into the Sunni version of a Republican Guard. However, if the Egyptian government does "get tough" and ends up applying force, there is yet another scenario that presents itself, and that is the recent history of Algeria. Back in 1991-1992 the Algerian military crushed the country's Islamic political movement, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), just at the moment when it had won democratically conducted national elections. A military dictatorship was established which proceeded to arrest or kill all the moderate FIS leaders (those who had "worked within the system"), thus opening up the movement to much more violent factions. Indeed, these factions were ready to be as violent as was the country's military. The result was decades of vicious civil war.

One assumes that Omar Suleiman knows of the Algerian experience, and one assumes that someone from the State Department has filled in Barack Obama. Maybe they are both hoping that all the Egyptian protestors will just get tired and go home now that negotiations are said to be underway. This is unlikely to happen. With thousands of protestors still in the streets the opposition is most likely telling Suleiman that their reality is much more real than that of his dictator boss. If Suleiman is wise he will get the message and make it crystal clear to Mr. Mubarak that he has quite suddenly become a liability his nation can no longer afford. For unless Mubarak can shake off the groupthink, Egypt risks spelling liability, A l g e r i a. Now that will be chaos for you.

* 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.

By Paul J. Balles * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

"Arrogance diminishes wisdom" --Arabic proverb

Last month, Joseph A Klein wrote an article for the Canada Free Press criticising the Obama administration for joining the UN Human Rights Council.

The Council had met and found fault with a number of human rights violations by America. For this, Klein verbally bashed the Council. Klein is author of the book Global Deception: The UN's Stealth Assault on America's Freedom."

Having "studied the United Nations for many years" Klein says he "watched it degenerate into an anti-Western echo chamber that does more harm than good."

The point of Klein's writing is that the UN is wrong because of its criticism of the US and Israel.

The US and Israel share two shameful traits: both abhor criticism, and both divert attention from their own faults when criticised by levelling the same criticism at others.

"In my new book, Lethal Engagement," says Klein, "I focus on the perfect storm revolving around the increasing Islamicization of key UN bodies – particularly the ones that produce influential international norms."

In short, criticise Israel for any of its misdeeds--destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure, imprisoning thousands of Palestinians, starving and slaughtering Gazans--and Klein will shift to an unrelated issue.

Klein complains that "Obama wants to engage with our enemies like Iran and Syria while coming down hard on one of our closest allies, Israel."

Thus, Klein (and others) will criticize Obama, but to find fault with America or Israelis is to be dubbed unpatriotic, Islamic extremist, or anti-Semitic.

While most people's ire is aroused by criticism from outsiders (aliens, expats, foreigners) there are often good reasons for outsiders to be critical.

Attorney, commentator and author of How Would a Patriot Act, Glenn Greenwald pointed to several understandable reasons for external criticism in his books and articles.

"We systematically torture Muslims and then cover it up and protect our torturers while preaching accountability and the rule of law; we condemn deprivations of due process while maintaining and expanding lawless prison systems for Muslims..."

That being factually accurate, it's understandable why those who have suffered under our double standards denigrate their abusers.

Greenwald notes how our critics react predictably to our hypocrisy:

"We demand adherence to U.N. dictates and international law while blocking investigations into U.N. reports of war crimes and possible 'crimes against humanity' by our allies;..."

If that weren't enough, Greenwald reminds us that

"we righteously oppose aggression while invading and simultaneously occupying numerous countries, while threatening to attack still more, and arming countries like Israel to the teeth to wage still other attacks...."

Americans think that any criticism of America is unjustified, primarily because much of the evidence fails to make it to the media and because they rebel at criticism.

To resist criticism and denigrate honest critics is a sign of impending downfall from the pollution of conceit.

English actress Ellen Terry appropriately observed that "conceit is an insuperable obstacle to all progress."

To return to Joseph A. Klein's gripe, he bemoaned the members of the Human Rights Council including, "among its own proud roster of members, such countries as China, Cuba, Libya and Saudi Arabia."

Then, to shift the focus from American abuses, Klein groaned that "These serial human rights abusers exploit the UPR process to heap praise on each other and whitewash their own abysmal records, while scoring propaganda points against Western democracies for falling short of perfection."

In making that comment, he just did what he complained that members of the Human Rights Council do. Heaping praise on America, he attempts to score propaganda points by denigrating others.

* 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.

By Carlos Latuff

By Jim Lobe and Ali Gharib

Gleeful Israeli leaders and their neoconservative supporters here have spent much of the past week insisting that the State Department cables published by WikiLeaks prove that Sunni Arab leaders in the Middle East are far more preoccupied with the threat posed by an ascendant and possibly nuclear Iran than with a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But a closer look at the relevant cables shows a far more consistent message to Washington coming from its Arab allies: that curbing Iran and resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are inextricably linked and that the most effective way of achieving the former is make tangible progress on the latter.

Indeed endorsements of "linkage" - the notion, accepted at the highest levels of the U.S. military, that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will help promote U.S. strategic interests in the Middle East - emerges as a recurring theme in previously confidential discussions with Arab leaders and U.S. diplomats on how best to counter Iran's growing regional power and deter Tehran's nuclear program.

That's not the message, of course, that Israel and its backers have been touting since the first batch of 220 documents was released Nov. 29 by WikiLeaks.

Indeed, none other than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately seized on purported anti-Iranian comments by the Arab leaders quoted prominently in the New York Times as vindication of Israel's position.

"[T]here is a gap between what is said by leaders in private and what they say in public, especially in our region, because our region is hostage to a narrative, and that narrative is the result of nearly 60 years of propaganda," he told a media conference in Tel Aviv immediately after the initial WikiLeaks release. "In this narrative, the single greatest threat to regional peace and to the region's future is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Israel's alleged aggression."

"However, the reality is that leaders understand that this narrative is bankrupt. The reality is that there is a new understanding that there is a new threat here," he declared, suggesting the existence of a de facto consensus between Israel and Sunni Arab states that Tehran must be prevented from achieving a nuclear-weapons capacity by any means necessary.

That message was immediately echoed by neoconservative backers of Netanyahu's Likud Party here for much of the past week.

"Obama has taken his eye off the real ball, placed friendly Arab states in a precarious situation, and misrepresented to the American people and the world that the non-peace talks are necessary to curb the Iranian threat," asserted Jennifer Rubin in Commentary magazine's Contentions blog.

"Governments in the region do not in fact care very much about the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. They are transfixed by Iran." wrote David Frum, a former George W. Bush speechwriter on his FrumForum blog and in Canada's National Post. "If the Palestinian issue is so unimportant to the Middle East, why is it so important to us?"

While that line has since been repeated continuously by neoconservative bloggers, columnists, and publications, they find little echo in the cables themselves.

"[T]he key to containing Iran revolves around progress in the Israel/Palestine issue," Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan told visiting U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner during a Jul. 15, 2009 meeting, according to one cable dated five days later.

"To win [over Arab public opinion], the U.S. should quickly bring about a two-state solution over the objections of the Netanyahu government," added bin Nayef, whose bristling hostility toward Iran was made plain by his comparison – highlighted by the Times – of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Adolf Hitler.

Five months later, in a Dec. 9, 2009 meeting with Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman, bin Zayed returned to that theme. He "emphasized the strategic importance of creating a Palestinian State (i.e., resolving the Israeli- Palestinian conflict) as the way to create genuine Middle Eastern unity on the question of Iran's nuclear program and regional ambitions," the cable's author reported.

A May 27, 2008 cable describes a conversation between Rep. Jeff Fortenberry with Gamal Mubarak, son and heir apparent of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Asked by the congressman how best to counter Iran's nuclear program, Mubarak replied, "Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as well as Jordan, are the 'heavyweights' that can counter Iran."

The cable goes on to describe Mubarak as "advocat[ing] movement on the Israeli/Palestinian track to remove a prime issue that Iran can use as a pretext."

"Speaking to PolOffs [political officers] in early February 2009, immediately after the Gaza War, Director of the Jordanian Prime Minister's Political Office Khaled Al-Qadi noted that the Gaza crisis had allowed Iranian interference in inter-Arab relations to reach unprecedented levels," according to a cable from the U.S. Embassy in Amman shortly after the three-week Gaza War between Israel and Hamas ended in January 2009.

Jordan's government also depicted the ongoing Israeli- Palestinian conflict as a key factor in the expansion of Iran's regional influence, according to the Apr. 2, 2009 cable.

"Jordanian leaders have argued that the only way to pull the rug out from under Hezbollah - and by extension their Iranian patrons - would be for Israel to hand over the disputed Sheba'a Farms to Lebanon," it went on. "With Hezbollah lacking the 'resistance to occupation' rationale for continued confrontation with Israel, it would lose its raison d'etre and probably domestic support."

During a Feb. 14, 2010 meeting with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, Qatar Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani suggested that Israel's efforts to rally U.S. and Arab support for a more confrontational policy toward Iran was really related to the Israel-Palestine conflict. "[T]he Israelis," he is reported as telling his guest, are "...using Iran's quest for nuclear weapons as a diversion from settling matters with the Palestinians."

Three days later, according to a cable sent Feb. 22, 2010, UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nayan warned another Congressional delegation led by Nita Lowey, a strong Israel supporter in the House of Representatives, against a military attack on Iran. According to the cable, the minister ended the meeting with a "soliloquy on the importance of a successful peace process between Israel and its neighbors as perhaps the best way of reducing Iran's regional influence."

The fact that the Arab leaders placed so much emphasis on the importance of making progress in resolving the Palestinian-Israeli dispute clearly did not come as any surprise to U.S. regional experts; nor would it be surprising to them if Israeli leaders and their neo- conservative backers have worked hard – as they have for the past week - to ignore or obscure that message.

Already in a January 2007 cable released by WikiLeaks, the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv was warning Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the Israeli government was "deeply concerned that Israeli-Palestinian issues not become linked in American minds to creating a more propitious regional environment for whatever steps we decide to take to address the deteriorating situation in Iraq" which at the time appeared to be disintegrating into sectarian civil war.

That concern was prompted by the publication the previous November of a report by the Iraq Study Group headed by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Rep. Lee Hamilton which, among other findings, bluntly concluded that "the United States will not be able to achieve its goals in the Middle East unless the United States deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict."

(Inter Press Service)

By Jeff Gates * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

The U.S. is under attack by an enemy within. Skilled at game theory warfare, this foe targets the most sensitive realm of U.S. national security: its relations with other nations.

The online publication of a quarter-million documents chronicling diplomatic exchanges is notable both for what’s omitted and what’s included. To determine whether this latest release was a form of espionage, analysts need only examine how this treasure trove of trivia was peppered with documents certain to damage U.S. relations.

To identify its origins, analysts must answer a key question: Cui Bono? To whose benefit?

One clue: the release of degrading and insulting language about Turkish leaders soon after they insisted in late October that the U.S. no longer share Turkish intelligence with Tel Aviv.

That request from a valued ally marks a critical step in isolating Israel by requiring that the U.S. shut down Israeli operations inside its 16 intelligence agencies, the White House and the Intelligence Committees in both the House and Senate. Tel Aviv was not pleased.

Turks remain outraged at the lack of accountability for the execution-style killing by Israel Defense Forces of nine Turkish citizens aboard a humanitarian ship that was boarded in international waters while sailing to Gaza with provisions to relieve an Israeli siege.

Was this release a tit-for-tat, Tel Aviv style? Is WikiLeaks the visible face of an Israeli disinformation campaign? Whose interests were served by disrupting U.S.-Turkish relations?

Intent is Determinative

A leak on this scale is only a leak if it is a random data dump. If items were purposely included or excluded based on their intended effect, it’s an intelligence operation. Former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski points out how this release is “seeded” with information that is “surprisingly pointed.”

Take for example the cables indicating that Chinese leaders are inclined to cooperate with the U.S. in reunifying North and South Korea under the leadership of the south. That information was guaranteed to embarrass China’s leaders, damage U.S. relations with Beijing and make reunification more difficult.

From a game theory perspective, that damaging result was fully foreseeable. With the U.S. economy teetering on a meltdown, the creation of a rift with America’s largest trading partner was also an assault on the economic strength required for the U.S. to sustain a viable defense.

Similarly, the pointed references to Arab leaders were destined to weaken their political credibility at home while complicating relations abroad. By exposing Arab displeasure with Iran, this operation also sharpened the divide between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, a source of ongoing tensions and a key barrier to forming a viable government in Iraq.

The effect was certain to complicate U.S. disengagement and raise America’s costs in both blood and treasure.

The cables involving Saudi leaders were released soon after Washington agreed to allow Riyadh to purchase $60 billion in U.S. aircraft and armaments over a multi-year period. Tel Aviv was not pleased.

By targeting the credibility of both Saudi Arabia and the U.S., this operation targeted the two nations pressing hardest for an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

Transparency is the Biggest Threat

Has Tel Aviv panicked? After more than six decades of nonstop provocations while routinely portraying itself as the perennial victim, has Israel’s storyline lost traction?

Zionism faces an existential threat though not from Iran or those Tel Aviv portrays as “Islamo-fascists.” The threat lurks in the fast-emerging transparency that confirms pro-Israelis as the source of the intelligence that took the U.S. to war on false premises.

A critical mass of disinformation persuaded the U.S. to wage war in pursuit of an agenda long sought by Zionist extremists.

Steve Rosen, a former employee of the Israel lobby, has promised to testify on the lobby’s routine receipt of classified U.S. intelligence. Is this massive release of classified materials meant to make the lobby’s intelligence-gathering operation appear routine?

What’s included in the WikiLeaks release is pointed. What’s excluded is even more so: the lack of facts chronicling the role that Israel has long played in undermining U.S. interests.

Israel has escaped accountability for more than six decades. Was the WikiLeaks release “seeded” to discredit the U.S. at this time-critical juncture? The evidence suggests that what we see is not a data dump but a disinformation operation.

Last week, Israeli resistance to a peace plan was front-page news. This week the news is all about war with Iran. The Jerusalem Post immediately crowed that WikiLeaks “vindicated Israel” by citing Arab leaders’ concerns about Iran.

These latest releases even enabled Tel Aviv to suggest that if U.S. intelligence was flawed on a nuclear-armed North Korea, how can anyone trust America to contain a nuclear Iran?

To whom should this release be attributed? Who benefited?

* Jeff Gates is a widely acclaimed author, attorney, investment banker, educator and consultant to government, corporate and union leaders worldwide, Jeff Gates' latest book is Guilt by Association -How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War (2008) his first release in the Criminal State series. His previous books include Democracy At Risk and The Ownership Solution. See his website Criminal State

By Jeff Gates * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

"The United States is the real victim of WikiLeaks. It's an action aimed at discrediting them."
--Franco Frattini, Foreign Minister of Italy

The impact of the WikiLeaks release of diplomatic cables fits the behavior profile of those well versed in game theory warfare.

When Israeli mathematician Robert J. Aumann received the 2005 Nobel Prize in economic science for his work on game theory, he conceded, "the entire school of thought that we have developed here in Israel" has turned "Israel into the leading authority in this field."

The candor of this Israeli-American offered a rare insight into an enclave long known for waging war from the shadows. Israel's most notable success to date was "fixing" the intelligence that induced the U.S. to invade Iraq in pursuit of a geopolitical agenda long sought by Tel Aviv

When waging intelligence wars, timing is often the critical factor for game-theory war planners. The outcome of the WikiLeaks release suggests a psy-ops directed at the U.S.

Why now? Tel Aviv was feeling pressure to end its six-decade occupation of Palestine. With this release, its foot-dragging on the peace process was displaced with talk of an attack on Iran.

While the U.S. bore the brunt of the damage, the target was global public opinion. To maintain the plausibility of The Clash of Civilizations, a focus must be maintained on Iran as a credible Evil Doer.

With fast-emerging transparency, Israel and pro-Israelis have been identified as the source of the intelligence that took coalition forces to war in Iraq. Thus the need to shift attention off Tel Aviv.

WikiLeaks may yet succeed in that mission.

Foreseeable Futures

Game theory war planning aims to create outcomes that are predictable-within an acceptable range of probabilities. That's why Israeli war planners focus on gaining traction for a plausible narrative and then advancing that storyline step by gradual step.

For the Zionist state to succeed with its expansionist agenda, Iran must remain at center stage as an essential villain in a geopolitical morality play pitting the West against Islamo Fascists.

To displace facts with false beliefs-as with belief in the intelligence that induced the invasion of Iraq-momentum must be maintained for the storyline. Lose the plot (The Clash) and peace might break out. And those deceived may identify the deceiver.

Thus the timing of this latest WikiLeaks release. Its goal: to have us believe that it is not Tel Aviv but Washington that is the forefront of geopolitical duplicity and a source of Evil Doing.

Intelligence wars rely on mathematical models to anticipate the response of those targeted. With game theory algorithms, reactions become foreseeable-within an acceptable range of probabilities.

Control enough of the variables and outcomes become a mathematical inevitability.

The WikiLeaks Motive

Was the reaction to this latest WikiLeaks foreseeable? With exquisite timing, the U.S. was discredited with an array of revelations that called into question U.S. motives and put in jeopardy U.S. relations worldwide.

As the Italian Foreign Minister summarized: "The news released by WikiLeaks will change diplomatic relations between countries."

The hard-earned trust of the Pakistanis disappeared overnight. Attempts to engage Iran were set back. The overall effect advanced The Clash storyline. If Washington could so badly misread North Korean intentions, then why is the U.S. to be trusted when it comes to a nuclear Iran?

This Wiki-catalyzed storyline pushed Israel off the front page in favor of Iran.

Even U.S. detainees at Guantanamo are again at issue, reigniting that shameful spectacle as a provocation for extremism and terror. U.S. diplomats will now be suspected of spying and lying. What nation can now trust Americans to maintain confidences?

In short, the risks increased for everyone.

Except Israel.

Should Israel launch an attack on Iran, Tel Aviv can cite WikiLeaks as its rationale. Though an attack would be calamitous from a human, economic and financial perspective, even that foreseeable outcome would be dwarfed by the enduring hatred that would ensue.

That too is foreseeable-from a game theory perspective of those marketing The Clash.

The effect of the U.S. invasion of Iraq was predictable. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia foresaw it, noting simply that the U.S. invasion would "give Iraq to Iran as a gift on a golden platter."

With the elimination of Sunni leader Saddam Hussein, the numerically dominant Shiites of Iraq were drawn into the political orbit of the Shiite-dominant Iran.

Game theorists focus their manipulation of affairs on their control of key variables. Then events take on a life all their own. The impact of this discrediting release was wide-ranging and fully foreseeable.

A Mossad case officer explained Israel's success at waging war by way of deception: "Once the orchestra starts to play, we just hum along."

These, after all, are the leading authorities in the field.

* Jeff Gates is a widely acclaimed author, attorney, investment banker, educator and consultant to government, corporate and union leaders worldwide, Jeff Gates' latest book is Guilt by Association -How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War (2008) his first release in the Criminal State series. His previous books include Democracy At Risk and The Ownership Solution. See his website Criminal State

SEE IT COMING AND STOP IT, EVEN IF IT COSTS YOU EVERYTHING

By Gordon Duff * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

CAMOUFLAGED TANKS AS SEEN BY MILITARY SATELLITE

“The 2010 election had one purpose, war with Iran, even if the risk is world conflict and the real loser, no matter what happens on the battlefield is the United States.”

Plans are in motion for a “false flag” attack on America. Iran will be blamed, everyone knows that and Iran will be totally innocent. This is the last thing Iran would ever want. The most likely scenario is a nuclear attack. Two bombs are missing, bombs built by Israel in South Africa and lost long ago. These were supposedly Saddam’s bombs. Now we are told Iran has them. Israel has had them all along and the fear, they may be inside the United States already.

The Israeli game with these weapons is one of the worst kept secrets in the world and has already cost the deaths of many. It will take nothing short of the detonation of one of this Hiroshima sized Israeli nukes to push America into Israel’s war with Iran, much as hunting for these nukes which Israel informed President Bush were in Iraq, led “the decider” to making one of the many blunders of his career. Our next 9/11 will be nuclear.

The purpose will be to push America into a 20 year war that will destroy Iran and Pakistan, take oil to over $300 per barrel and collapse the dollar and Euro. Iran isn’t Iraq of 2003, toothless and starving. This will be America’s last military adventure, and the end of America’s place in the world as we know it. We know the details of the proposed military campaign and the military and political leaders who support it are the worst imaginable incompetents and traitors.

Invading Iran is an impossible task for America. Other than there be no reason whatsoever to engage in such folly, something that, of recent years, seems to concern fewer and fewer Americans. Turn on the TV, if the “rodeo clown” says “wipe ‘em out” then we do it.

Invading Iran is an impossibility for America. Going to the moon was easier. No matter how senseless, how impossible, the decision has been made, more in Tel Aviv than Washington, for sure, but one that will be obeyed.

There are only two scenarios that can fulfill the nightmare Israel and her shiny new congress have in store with us. One is a preemptive nuclear attack on Iran and the other full scale total war with up to 500,000 Americans being drafted into the military.

RACE HATRED, AMERICAN KRYPTONITE

FAILURE OF THE “VOLUNTEER ARMY”…..AS ISRAEL SEES IT

Forcing America to return to a draft and begin a major war, one America can never really win as with Iraq and Afghanistan and, let us not forget Vietnam, is something absolutely vital to hang around the neck of a Democrat, especially one of African American ancestry. Anyone who doesn’t think the real heart of American politics has always been racism is a liar. Family values means “white” family values. African Americans know shame at the relief they have felt seeing Muslims targeted for persecution. Every political position in today’s America is derived from institutionalized racism, be it immigration, health care or “constitution.”

When a return to the “constitution” is brought up, by people who wouldn’t know the document from a Croatian take-out menu, the reality is always race, fear, hate and envy, the glue that holds American society prisoner. Decades ago, and even more recently during our last presidential election, African Americans were represented as animals, “goyim” to the Jews. Now we play “Kill the camel jockey.” Is this why the Christianized army we sent to Afghanistan murders innocent civilians for sport?

An America in total economic collapse will require another “decider” and more “Patriot Acts,” even more totalitarian and vicious than the last, that and an end to the even farcical elections that are now inundated with drug money and cash from US based foreign corporations.

This is the plan and a criminal gang in America, some in government and the military but more behind the scenes, “banksters” and media moguls, many with ties to Israel, are working feverishly to bring it about. However clever the planners may think they are, their mechanations can be tracked through the media, the army of “Wolf Blitzers” that “work” the American people with the subtlety of carny shills.

WHY DO THEY HATE US SO MUCH?

Why would anyone want to destroy America, kill millions, leave the nation that has been there to save the world over and over a virtual wasteland? If you think America’s castrated government or the military, now relegated to acting as virtual mercenaries for drug lords, oil cartels and bizarre Zionist plots, have the will or ability to stop what has already begun, you have not been paying attention for some time. While the “circus of deception” went on, the utterly phony “war on terror,” imaginary enemies, the 9/11 disaster, orchestrated by Israel and its puppets,

Israel has decided that America is going to war with Iran. The new congress, the one Israel openly boasts is under their total control, will make it happen, it was why they were put there. The upcoming war will leave the United States crippled, castrated, a “third world” nuclear power like the old Soviet Union. The plot isn’t against Iran and Pakistan, that’s just an excuse. The real enemy is what is left of a free and democratic America.

The real goal is to end America’s leadership role in the world.

Israel has plans for Russia, China and India, especially India, to rule the world with them pulling the strings. America had been their “milk cow” for some time, now that cow is going to slaughter.

HOW IT BEGINS

SCRATCH ONE SUPERTANKER OR DESTROYER

This is how it is going to play out. The news media has gotten their orders, Wikileaks is part of it. From now on, key members of congress will, on cue, begin harping about the threat of Iran. Governments in the Middle East that are under the total control of Israel and the American military will aid in every way possible. Thus far, of all the Islamic nations in the world, only Syria and Afghanistan are not taking orders from Tel Aviv.

The next step will be to replace key military staff as was done prior to 9/11, with “Israel friendly” third stringers, “dominionists” and “Israeli firsters” who place “end times” religious mythology over the welfare, safety and sovereignty of the United States. This group has been infiltrating the American military for years and has gained control of every service but the Marine Corps, starting with the United States Air Force.

The military pundits, with their laundered payoffs and free trips to Israel and the dozens of propaganda websites have already begun. If you have a computer, you can check this easily. Simply go into your email, it will be filled with warnings of Iran and nuclear terrorism. An Israeli teenager paid dearly to bring you that message, spending a difficult night in a hotel with one of our political or military “pro-Zionists.”

Our newly elected “Tea Party’ gang will be visiting Israel soon, watch and see, there is a “Monica Lewinsky” in their future. This is how it works, how it has worked for a long time and why we have sunk so low.

Anyone who talks about “liberal” media is part of it. A cursory check of who owns the media, “liberal” or any other media is easy. Israel owns our media, all of it. The stories will start with tales of Iran controlling the Shiite government of Iraq. Then you will hear of them controlling Karzai’s government in Afghanistan.

STEP ONE

Then the stories will start, Iran has to be tied to terrorist attacks on American troops. Watch for this. Americans will start dying and Iran will be blamed. Wikileaks started this with their fanciful stories about Iranians training Iraq in making explosives. A few years ago, we invaded Iraq because we believed they were building nuclear weapons, or so we were misinformed, now they can’t build pipe bombs without Iranian help? Wikileaks is a clear demonstration at how childish, how outlandish the lies are going to be. Wikileaks is prestaging terror attacks on Americans as much as if they made the bombs themselves, no question about that.

Every media outlet that, under specific directions, carries the “party line” on Wikileaks and the rest of it, no matter how absurd, carries these fabrications without question or embarrassment, should be considered a terrorist organization and their employees enemy combatants.

It will be Israel doing the killing just as with 9/11 and the USS Liberty and, frankly, so many other times Americans have died, like the Marines killed in Beirut, an attack Israel admitted knowing of in advance. More and more, we are finding everything was “known” in advance, “known” because those who knew planned it.

Getting the scene set, all the assets in place, buying or blackmailing congress, keeping the president surrounded by Israeli advisors as he is today, silencing voices of reason in the military, all this is going on right now.

Years have been spent branding Iran and Pakistan as dangerous, the press continually ignoring reports that Iran has no nuclear program or endlessly repeating outrageous rumors that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are almost in the hands approaching “Taliban” forces. With Karzai’s government Afghanistan openly negotiating with the Taliban after American forces, 9 years of fighting, have only managed to secure 3% of the country, building a case for war tied to Iranian “interference” in that conflict is going to be unmarketable.

This leaves Pakistan. Drone attacks in Pakistan have brought about considerable destabilization and an increase in terrorism in Pakistan. They have, as seemingly planned, worked to harm American interests in the region while attempting to bring about the dissolution of Pakistan. Continual reports of American contractors in Pakistan, working for the CIA and State Department, aiding terrorists, go unreported in the American media. Even when caught with weapons and explosives inside Pakistan, such reports are suppressed.

Increasingly, evidence is showing that the Mumbai attack, the massive terror assault on India blamed on Pakistan, was orchestrated by one of these American groups.

THE MONEY ISN’T THERE, AND WE KNOW IT

However, considering the financial collapse engineered though Bush era deregulation frauds combined with unstable tax policies and massive increase in government spending, combined with cost of two failed wars, America’s options are limited. There is simply no revenue to pay the current military without rollbacks or sustain moderate capabilities and readiness. America is too broke, not just to fight a new war but to continue the two that are going or even maintain a fully peacetime force at near current levels.

In fact, our military expenditures need to be cut by 30% or more, as studies being reviewed by the Department of Defense and congress are showing. We have the choice of cutting back now or dealing with consequences later, including, not only cuts in military and veterans health care but substantial cuts in pensions and disability compensation as well.

Another war, and there is no question that another war is planned, will push American debt to $20 trillion or more, half being military expenditures, always a combination of pork, payoffs and “misplaced” weaponry and the rest looted from the economy by the planned massive manipulation of oil prices made possible by the shutoff of world petroleum supplies.

HOW IRAN CONTROLS THE WORLD'S OIL SUPPLY, 8000 MISSILES

“IRAN WILL SHUT DOWN HORMUZ AND WORLD OIL IN ONE HOUR”

In March, 2010, a Chinese built missile factory opened in Iran. The plant builds a variety of missiles, primarily anti-ship, with ranges from 100 to 300 miles or more. These are advanced weapons that can be launched from hardened facilities along Iran’s rugged coastline, from aircraft, both fixed and rotary, from patrol boats, from nearly anything. One of these missiles can sink a frigate, perhaps even a destroyer. Several can disable an aircraft carrier. Approaching Iran from sea is impossible.

Iran controls Hormuz, not just with missiles but patrol boats as well, and not just from their own shore but from the islands in the gulf, some of which were seized 30 years ago and are still held.

The government of the United Arab Emirates has discussed, from time to time, a canal bypassing the strait, through to Oman and into the Persian Gulf. However, the cost would be outrageous as a ridge of hills would have to be crossed, something difficult to manage with a lock system capable of handing the largest ships in the world, oil supertankers.

The missiles, the torpedo boats and the almost impossible network of islands and swamps along the coast would make suppressing Iran’s capabilities impossible. The strait would close, oil would stop, Iraq, Iran certainly, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. In days, currencies would collapse, stock markets shut down, gas lines would form and gas rationing would be required around the world. All western economies would disappear overnight.

Iranian Facilities at Hormuz

WHY PAKISTAN HAS TO FALL

There is simply no way into Iran by land. We can barely keep American troops in Afghanistan supplied with many routes being hundreds of miles long, narrow roads from the Port of Karachi in Pakistan. Recently we found how easily this supply line could be cut off. Agreements with Iran, not to mention religious affiliations between Shiites in Iraq, the majority there and the Shiite based government in Iran, make an approach through Iraq impossible.

We could also consider that our existing forces in Iraq and the entire Persian Gulf could be cut off by Iran with no resupply by sea possible for, not only Iraq but Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Iraq. These nations and the US forces there would be immediately isolated. The only way in to Iran, restricted because of the topography, is through the province of Baluchistan, a remote area of Pakistan that borders Iran.

NEW YORK TO DENVER, ALL MOUNTAINS, NO ROADS

BALOCHISTAN

This isolated region has become the staging area for attacks against Iran, supposedly by Jundallah “rebels” but actually orchestrated by the Mossad and CIA. There are two independence movements wanting to break Baluchistan from Pakistan. One of the leaders I met in Islamabad while he was recovering from gunshot wounds. The other lives in Israel, surprise-surprise.

Tiny port, dirt roads, narrow gauge rail only

Because of the topography of Iran, the only way to approach Tehran is over more than a thousand miles of valleys. They can only be approached through Pakistan and there is only one port that serves that region. The only way to resupply other than through this small Chinese built port, Gwadar, is to truck into Kandahar, hundreds of miles, then back down into Pakistan, following the 500,000 man army into Iran in something closely akin to Napoleon’s ill fated invasion of Russia, but even worse if that is possible.

The military analogies are inescapable, Dien Bien Phu and Stalingrad are two that come to mind. Though the government of Pakistan lacks strong civilian leadership and is largely dependent on US aid, the use of Pakistan’s territory for another aggressive war in the Middle East that will perceived by almost all the world’s population, not just Muslims, as a sign of Israel’s control of the United States and its ability to get America to commit any crime, will not be acceptable to the people of Pakistan. It is also highly unlikely that even Karzai’s government in Afghanistan would abide such an action.

Thus, America could become beset, not just from Pakistan but by its own allies in Afghanistan and, quite possibly, the newly trained and surprisingly effective army in Iraq as well.

America would become a rogue state, even if purporting to respond to a devastating terrorist attack. In the aftermath of 9/11, America lacks any credibility. The second a disaster strikes inside America, the world will immediately assume the worst, Israel has deemed such an act necessary to push America to war. No rational person could assume otherwise.

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

In order to stabilize the situation with our allies, those likely to become enemies, it will likely necessitate the decapitation of several regimes, Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan initially. Others will quickly fall into line though some will be directly under the control of Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, in particular. They will become indefensible except through massive airlift, resources that will be needed elsewhere. Half the troops needed to secure America’s lines of supply left military service after multiple deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq for nearly a decade. Many are sick, some are homeless and hundreds of thousands are simply “fed up.”

This leaves the new citizen army, the one America had to turn to because of a “9/11 – Pearl Harbor” disaster fewer and fewer believe the cover story on as days go by. Even in America, despite what Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu thinks, you can only fool people so many times. The most glaring example of the lack of foresight some of our “War College” grads have can be seen in the Gwadar Port facilities, the only place American can use for supplies for the most difficult invasion in history, with, perhaps, the exception of Okinawa.

TWO CRANES, TWO CRANES, TWO CRANES...COUNT THEM AGAIN, IT WILL STILL ONLY BE TWO CRANES

ECONOMIC BELT TIGHTENING AT HOME

The 2010 election paid for a war, there is no question of that. Many of the puppets in America’s government had to be replaced as there was fear some of them might object to something as obscene as what is in the planning. Lies, fear mongering and childish rhetoric had never reached the levels seen in 2010. Never had a nation, since Germany in 1932, gone over to the “darkside” as clearly as America has done, a rejection of decency and common sense.

When the bill becomes due, and it most certainly will, that “smaller government” so many thought they would get will most certainly come true. What won’t happen is a return to constitutional rule, that will be gone forever. Habeas Corpus won’t be missed so much in a country where those without the cash to buy their way out of military service, yes, that great American tradition, will be one step ahead of the press gangs working to keep the military training camps filled to capacity. America may, quite likely, have bitten off a bit too much, a world war, and this time, no allies, none, not a chance.

LESS GOVERNMENT, THE DREAM OF AMERICA’S “RIGHT”

• SOCIAL SECURITY: Plans for less government have always been around, we have seen attempts to put these plans in place many times, starting with attempts to have Social Security declared unconstitutional back in the 1930s. This will be first to go, Social Security. Getting rid of Social Security has long been a dream of the GOP, either through outlawing it as “Socialism,” or “borrowing” the trust fund to cover war expenses or, more recently “privatization.” Now, none of those will be needed. The money will simply disappear overnight, not to pay war expenses, not hardly. It will be split up and stashed in Swiss bank accounts the same place the “bail out” money went, the same place every 401k in America went, the same place the assets of our largest banks went.
• MEDICARE/MEDIAID: They will be the next to go. States will be asked to pay fund this themselves. There won’t be any more questions about illegal aliens using our medical care, there won’t be any, not for them, not for the poor or not for the senior citizens who paid into medicare all their lives. Just because it was paid for doesn’t mean the government can’t simply break its promise, there are loyalties more powerful and more important that our government has than to the people. 9/11 proved that to any rational person.

TAX INCREASES: The time for borrowing, counterfeit money, the “Federal Reserve System” and selling T -Bills will be over. China and Iran are close. China will be finished with us, India too and no more Arab money. The dollar, the instrument we use to buy oil, fertilizer, metals and so many other things, will be worthless. We are going to have to invent a new form of monopoly money or go on the barter system. The dollar, as a world currency, will disappear.

• SCHOOLS SHUT DOWN: One good thing, schools will shut down. Thus, America’s inferior education system will no longer do the damage it once did. Along with that, mothers will be home to take care of children, a “blast from the past.” The downside, of course, the mothers will have lost their jobs, the homes will be unheated, some with no electricity, more with no water, all eventually repossessed and, unless the government starts giving out food as it had in the past, we will see starvation. The money that financed Food Stamps will be long gone.
• MILITARY AND VETERANS PENSIONS HALVED: Long seen as “freeloaders,” veterans and military retirees will be cut off. Pensions once seen as a “promise” have long been referred to as “entitlements.” Any entitlement can be “unentitled” and these will.
• MILITARY PAY CUT: Troops in Vietnam were paid $30 dollars a week. We are going to see that again.

THIS IS THE INEXORABLE FUTURE, BOUGHT AND PAID FOR

The draft, worthless money, gas lines, martial law, metal detectors in supermarkets, cameras everywhere, everything filmed, recorded, everyone every day, biometrics, face recognition, these things will be part of our lives from now on. These are the plans and putting this machinery in place, much of it “designed” in Israel, is what Americans voted for, this and the invasion of Iran, part of a war where only Americans will fight and die.

No one cares about Iran. No knowledgeable person ever thought they had nuclear weapons or wanted them. It was never about them. They were never a target, they were never a threat. The threat, the target, was always the United States. We were the danger, a free people.

Free people can’t be trusted, can’t be managed.

The plans are in place to bring that to an end. How many Americans will continue to be a part of it?

* Gordon Duff is senior editor of Veterans Today.

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

In 1982, Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs senior advisor Oded Yinon published a revealing document for regional conquest and dominance. Still relevant today, it's titled "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s, translated, edited, and retitled "The Zionist Plan for the Middle East" (read document below) by distinguished Professor Israel Shahak (1933 - 2001), longtime activist, analyst, and outspoken Israeli critic.

Its publisher, the Association of Arab-American University Graduates called it "the most explicit, detailed and unambiguous statement to date of the Zionist strategy in the Middle East....Its importance....lies not in its historical value but in the nightmare which it represents," what thereafter continued to unfold.

Its two essential premises include:

• to survive, Israel must dominate the region and become a world power, and
• succeeding requires dividing Arab nations into small states - Balkanizing them along ethnic and sectarian lines as Israeli satellites, controllable satraps, the idea modeled after the Ottoman Empire's Millet (or nation) system under which local authorities governed confessional communities with separate ethnic identities.

Israel's 1967 Golan seizure and 1978 and 1982 Lebanon invasions followed the plan, Yinon noting "far-reaching opportunities for the first time since 1967, (created by the) very stormy situation surround(ing) Israel," resurrected whenever Israel wishes. Its method involves preemptive belligerence against Palestinians and regional states, making them all eventual targets to be weakened, fragmented, divided, and reconfigured under Israeli control.

In 1982, it included dividing Iraq into Shi'ite, Sunni, and Kurdish areas, what, in fact, unfolded after 2003, Shahak noting that:

"The plan follows faithfully the geopolitical ideas current in Germany of 1890 - 1933, which were swallowed whole by Hitler and the Nazi movement, and determined their aims for East Europe." They were then implemented from 1939 - 1941, "and only (a global alliance) prevented their consolidation for a period of time."

Citing the "early stages of a new epoch," Yinon said "The existence, prosperity and steadfastness of (Israel) depend(s) upon its ability to adopt a new framework for its domestic and foreign affairs," based on securing its material needs through winnable resource wars and Arab world divisions.

"All the Arab States east of Israel are torn apart, broken up and riddled with inner conflicts even more than those of the Maghreb" (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania, and Western Sahara). All the Gulf states are "built upon a delicate house of sand in which there is only oil." Jordan is in reality Palestine, Amman the same as Nablus.

Other Muslim states are similar. Half of Iran's population is Persian speaking, the rest ethnically Turkish. Turkey is half Sunni Muslim, the rest Shi'ite Alawis and Sunni Kurds. Today, Afghanistan's divisions are clearer, including Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks, Turkmen, and others. Pakistan also is comprised of Punjabis, Pashtuns, Sindhis, Seraikis, Muhajirs, Balochs and others.

From Morocco to India, Somalia to Turkey, stability is absent, "point(ing) to....a rapid degeneration in the entire region" to be exploited to Israel's advantage. Throughout the Middle East, depravation, including hunger and unemployment affect millions, potentially explosive problems only security forces can contain, giving Israel "far-reaching opportunities for the first time since 1967."

The Six Day War's strategic error was failing to give Jordan to the Palestinians, thereby "neutralizing" today's problem by removing them. "Today, we suddenly face immense opportunities for transforming the situation thoroughly and this we must do in the coming decade, otherwise we shall not survive as a state."

He recommended far-reaching foreign and domestic political and economic changes. He also called Israel's peace agreement with Egypt a mistake, said its economy depends on acquiring oil resources without which it could be destroyed, and named two ways to get them:

• directly by breaking the treaty; or
• regaining control of the Sinai indirectly, Egypt no military obstacle because of its internal conflicts.

In 1956, its myth as the Arab world's strong leader was revealed, reiterated in 1967. Its economy is also in crisis, making foreign help essential. Israel's strategic aim is to weaken it further by breaking it into distinct geographical regions. If accomplished, other countries may follow, including Libya and Sudan.

"The vision of a Christian Coptic State in Upper Egypt alongside a number of weak states with very localized power (and none centrally) is the key to a historical development which was only set back by the peace agreement but which seems inevitable in the long run."

Lebanon's division into five provinces is a precedent for the entire Arab world, including Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and the Arabian peninsula. Syria will divide into a Shi'ite Alawi coastal state, an Aleppo area Sunni one, another in Damascus, and the Druzes will set up their own. This outcome will guarantee peace and security in the long run, "and that aim is already within our reach today."

Oil rich/internally torn Iraq is a "guaranteed" Israeli target, more important than Syria. In the short run, it's Israel's greatest threat. A war with Iran will tear it apart, lead to its downfall, and perhaps fragment Iran, separating its oil rich Arab speaking province from the rest of the country. Confrontations elsewhere will cause further dissolutions.

Because of internal and external pressure, the entire Arabian peninsula is vulnerable, especially Saudi Arabia. Jordan won't threaten in the long run after dissolution. "There is no chance that (it) will continue to exist in its present structure for a long time." Thus, Israel's policy should be transferring Jordanian power to Palestinians, hastened by Occupied Territory emigration, resulting in "Arabs to Jordan and the Jews to the areas west of the river. Genuine coexistence and peace will reign over the land only when Arabs understand that without Jewish rule between Jordan and the sea they will have neither existence nor security." Jordan is their only alternative, giving Israel more land cleansed of Arabs.

Otherwise,

"we shall cease to exist within any borders. Judea, Samaria (the West Bank and Jerusalem) and the Galilee are our sole guarantee for national existence....Rebalancing the country demographically, strategically and economically is the highest and most central aim today."

Changes transforming world Jewry make Israel the only existential option. "Our existence is certain." Nothing can "remove us (either) forcefully or by treachery (Sadat's method)."

Three important points are stressed:

First, Israel's military alone can't occupy more territory. The solution - rule by "Haddad forces" or "Village Associations," controllable local authorities, dissociated from their populations, Israeli garrisons strategically positioned between the mini states. Making it feasible depends on keeping Arabs divided.

Second, Yinon's plan was published to win over Israeli society, especially its elites able to influence others. Problems about Arabs awareness are minimal, given their divisions and inability to understand Israeli society.

Neither is America of concern, its pro-Israeli media assumes "good intentions" regardless of policy, and the Israeli Lobby does the rest. As a result, Israel operates freely "because the world wants to close its eyes."

In 1985, Israeli President and Labor Party leader Chaim Herzog echoed the views of hardline extremists like Sharon and Netanyahu:

"We are certainly not willing to make partners of the Palestinians in any way in a land that was holy to our people for thousands of years. There can be no partner with the Jews of this land," leaving resettlement (expulsion) the only option, a favored policy today, the same one revisionist leader Ze've Jabotinsky advocated, including in a 1939 letter, saying:

"There is no choice: The Arabs must make room for the Jews in Eretz Israel. It was possible to transfer the Baltic peoples, it is also possible to move the Palestinian Arabs." Most was accomplished in Israel's 1948 "War of Independence," again in the 1967 Six Day War. Thereafter it continued, supported and funded by Israel's Washington paymaster/partner in crime. As a result, Palestinians have been on their own resisting for over six decades, their courage and determination unreported in the West, but global support builds and offers hope.

* 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.

The Zionist Plan for the Middle East

By Andrew Gavin Marshall* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Introduction

As the 9th anniversary of 9/11 nears, and the war on terror continues to be waged and grows in ferocity and geography, it seems all the more imperative to return to the events of that fateful September morning and re-examine the reasons for war and the nature of the stated culprit, Al-Qaeda.

The events of 9/11 pervade the American and indeed the world imagination as an historical myth. The events of that day and those leading up to it remain largely unknown and little understood by the general public, apart from the disturbing images repeated ad nauseam in the media. The facts and troubled truths of that day are lost in the folklore of the 9/11 myth: that the largest attack carried out on American ground was orchestrated by 19 Muslims armed with box cutters and urged on by religious fundamentalism, all under the direction of Osama bin Laden, the leader of a global terrorist network called al-Qaeda, based out of a cave in Afghanistan.

The myth sweeps aside the facts and complex nature of terror, al-Qaeda, the American empire and literally defies the laws of physics. As John F. Kennedy once said, "The greatest enemy of the truth is not the lie - deliberate, contrived, and dishonest - but the myth - persistent, pervasive, and unrealistic."

This three-part series on "The Imperial Anatomy of Al-Qaeda" examines the geopolitical historical origins and nature of what we today know as al-Qaeda, which is in fact an Anglo-American intelligence network of terrorist assets used to advance American and NATO imperial objectives in various regions around the world.

Part 1 examines the origins of the intelligence network known as the Safari Club, which financed and organized an international conglomerate of terrorists, the CIA's role in the global drug trade, the emergence of the Taliban and the origins of al-Qaeda.

The Safari Club

Following Nixon's resignation as President, Gerald Ford became the new US President in 1974. Henry Kissinger remained as Secretary of State and Ford brought into his administration two names that would come to play important roles in the future of the American Empire: Donald Rumsfeld as Ford's Chief of Staff, and Dick Cheney, as Deputy Assistant to the President. The Vice President was Nelson Rockefeller, David Rockefeller's brother. When Donald Rumsfeld was promoted to Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney was promoted to Chief of Staff. Ford had also appointed a man named George H.W. Bush as CIA Director.

In 1976, a coalition of intelligence agencies was formed, which was called the Safari Club. This marked the discreet and highly covert coordination among various intelligence agencies, which would last for decades. It formed at a time when the CIA was embroiled in domestic scrutiny over the Watergate scandal and a Congressional investigation into covert CIA activities, forcing the CIA to become more covert in its activities.

In 2002, the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Turki bin Faisal gave a speech in which he stated that in response to the CIA's need for more discretion, "a group of countries got together in the hope of fighting Communism and established what was called the Safari Club. The Safari Club included France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Iran [under the Shah]."[1] However, "The Safari Club needed a network of banks to finance its intelligence operations. With the official blessing of George H.W. Bush as the head of the CIA," Saudi intelligence chief, Kamal Adham, "transformed a small Pakistani merchant bank, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), into a world-wide money-laundering machine, buying banks around the world to create the biggest clandestine money network in history."[2]

As CIA director, George H.W. Bush "cemented strong relations with the intelligence services of both Saudi Arabia and the Shah of Iran. He worked closely with Kamal Adham, the head of Saudi intelligence, brother-in-law of King Faisal and an early BCCI insider." Adham had previously acted as a "channel between [Henry] Kissinger and [Egyptian President] Anwar Sadat" in 1972. In 1976, Iran, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia formed the Safari Club "to conduct through their own intelligence agencies operations that were now difficult for the CIA," which was largely organized by the head of French intelligence, Alexandre de Marenches.[3]

The "Arc of Crisis" and the Iranian Revolution

When Jimmy Carter became President in 1977, he appointed over two-dozen members of the Trilateral Commission to his administration, which was an international think tank formed by Zbigniew Brzezinski and David Rockefeller in 1973. Brzezinski had invited Carter to join the Trilateral Commission, and when Carter became President, Brzezinski became National Security Adviser; Cyrus Vance, also a member of the Commission, became Secretary of State; and Samuel Huntington, another Commission member, became Coordinator of National Security and Deputy to Brzezinski. Author and researcher Peter Dale Scott deserves much credit for his comprehensive analysis of the events leading up to and during the Iranian Revolution in his book, "The Road to 9/11",** which provides much of the information below.

Samuel Huntington and Zbigniew Brzezinski were to determine the US policy position in the Cold War, and the US-Soviet policy they created was termed, "Cooperation and Competition," in which Brzezinski would press for "Cooperation" when talking to the press, yet, privately push for "competition." So, while Secretary of State Cyrus Vance was pursuing détente with the Soviet Union, Brzezinski was pushing for American supremacy over the Soviet Union. Brzezinski and Vance would come to disagree on almost every issue.[4]

In 1978, Zbigniew Brzezinski gave a speech in which he stated, "An arc of crisis stretches along the shores of the Indian Ocean, with fragile social and political structures in a region of vital importance to us threatened with fragmentation. The resulting political chaos could well be filled by elements hostile to our values and sympathetic to our adversaries." The Arc of Crisis stretched from Indochina to southern Africa, although, more specifically, the particular area of focus was "the nations that stretch across the southern flank of the Soviet Union from the Indian subcontinent to Turkey, and southward through the Arabian Peninsula to the Horn of Africa." Further, the "center of gravity of this arc is Iran, the world's fourth largest oil producer and for more than two decades a citadel of U.S. military and economic strength in the Middle East. Now it appears that the 37-year reign of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi is almost over, ended by months of rising civil unrest and revolution."[5]

With rising discontent in the region, "There was this idea that the Islamic forces could be used against the Soviet Union. The theory was, there was an arc of crisis, and so an arc of Islam could be mobilized to contain the Soviets. It was a Brzezinski concept."[6] A month prior to Brzezinski's speech, in November of 1978, "President Carter named the Bilderberg group's George Ball, another member of the Trilateral Commission, to head a special White House Iran task force under the National Security Council's Brzezinski." Further, "Ball recommended that Washington drop support for the Shah of Iran and support the fundamentalist Islamic opposition of Ayatollah Khomeini."[7] George Ball's visit to Iran was a secret mission.[8]

Throughout 1978, the Shah was under the impression that "the Carter administration was plotting to topple his regime." In 1978, the Queen and Shah's wife, told Manouchehr Ganji, a minister in the Shah's government, that, "I wanted to tell you that the Americans are maneuvering to bring down the Shah," and she continued saying that she believed "they even want to topple the regime."[9] The US Ambassador to Iran, William Sullivan, thought that the revolution would succeed, and told this to Ramsey Clark, former US Attorney General under the Johnson administration, as well as professor Richard Falk, when they were visiting Sullivan in Iran in 1978. Clark and Falk then went from Iran to Paris, to visit Khomeini, who was there in exile. James Bill, a Carter adviser, felt that, "a religious movement brought about with the United States' assistance would be a natural friend of the United States."[10]

Also interesting is the fact that the British BBC broadcast pro-Khomeini Persian-language programs daily in Iran, as a subtle form of propaganda, which "gave credibility to the perception of United States and British support of Khomeini."[11] The BBC refused to give the Shah a platform to respond, and "[r]epeated personal appeals from the Shah to the BBC yielded no result."[12]

In the May 1979 meeting of the Bilderberg Group, Bernard Lewis, a British historian of great influence (hence, the Bilderberg membership), presented a British-American strategy which, "endorsed the radical Muslim Brotherhood movement behind Khomeini, in order to promote balkanization of the entire Muslim Near East along tribal and religious lines. Lewis argued that the West should encourage autonomous groups such as the Kurds, Armenians, Lebanese Maronites, Ethiopian Copts, Azerbaijani Turks, and so forth. The chaos would spread in what he termed an 'Arc of Crisis,' which would spill over into the Muslim regions of the Soviet Union."[13] Further, it would prevent Soviet influence from entering the Middle East, as the Soviet Union was viewed as an empire of atheism and godlessness: essentially a secular and immoral empire, which would seek to impose secularism across Muslim countries. So supporting radical Islamic groups would mean that the Soviet Union would be less likely to have any influence or relations with Middle Eastern countries, making the US a more acceptable candidate for developing relations.

A 1979 article in Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, described the Arc of Crisis, saying that, "The Middle East constitutes its central core. Its strategic position is unequalled: it is the last major region of the Free World directly adjacent to the Soviet Union, it holds in its subsoil about three-fourths of the proven and estimated world oil reserves, and it is the locus of one of the most intractable conflicts of the twentieth century: that of Zionism versus Arab nationalism." It went on to explain that post-war US policy in the region was focused on "containment" of the Soviet Union, as well as access to the regions oil.[14] The article continued, explaining that the most "obvious division" within the Middle East is, "that which separates the Northern Tier (Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan) from the Arab core," and that, "After World War II, Turkey and Iran were the two countries most immediately threatened by Soviet territorial expansionism and political subversion."[15] Ultimately, "the Northern Tier was assured of a serious and sustained American commitment to save it from sharing the fate of Eastern Europe."[16]

While Khomeini was in Paris prior to the Revolution, a representative of the French President organized a meeting between Khomeini and "current world powers," in which Khomeini made certain demands, such as, "the shah's removal from Iran and help in avoiding a coup d'état by the Iranian Army." The Western powers, however, "were worried about the Soviet Union's empowerment and penetration and a disruption in Iran's oil supply to the west. Khomeini gave the necessary guarantees. These meetings and contacts were taking place in January of 1979, just a few days before the Islamic Revolution in February 1979."[17] In February of 1979, Khomeini was flown out of Paris on an Air France flight, to return to Iran, "with the blessing of Jimmy Carter."[18] Ayatollah Khomeini named Mehdi Bazargan as prime minister of the Provisional Revolutionary Government on February 4, 1979. As Khomeini had demanded during his Paris meeting in January 1979, that western powers must help in avoiding a coup by the Iranian Army; in that same month, the Carter administration, under the direction of Brzezinski, had begun planning a military coup.[19]

Could this have been planned in the event that Khomeini was overthrown, the US would quickly reinstate order, perhaps even place Khomeini back in power? Interestingly, in January of 1979, "as the Shah was about to leave the country, the American Deputy Commander in NATO, General Huyser, arrived and over a period of a month conferred constantly with Iranian military leaders. His influence may have been substantial on the military's decision not to attempt a coup and eventually to yield to the Khomeini forces, especially if press reports are accurate that he or others threatened to withhold military supplies if a coup were attempted."[20] No coup was subsequently undertaken, and Khomeini came to power as the Ayatollah of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

As tensions increased among the population within Iran, the US sent "security advisers" to Iran to pressure the Shah's SAVAK (secret police) to implement "a policy of ever more brutal repression, in a manner calculated to maximize popular antipathy to the Shah." The Carter administration also began publicly criticizing the Shah's human rights abuses.[21] On September 6, 1978, the Shah banned demonstrations, and the following day, between 700 and 2000 demonstrators were gunned down, following "advice from Brzezinski to be firm."[22]

The US Ambassador to the UN, Andrew Young, a Trilateral Commission member, said that, "Khomeini will eventually be hailed as a saint," and the US Ambassador to Iran, William Sullivan, said, "Khomeini is a Gandhi-like figure," while Carter's adviser, James Bill, said that Khomeini was a man of "impeccable integrity and honesty."[23]

The Shah was also very sick in late 1978 and early 1979. So the Shah fled Iran in January of 1979 to the Bahamas, allowing for the revolution to take place. It is especially interesting to understand the relationship between David Rockefeller and the Shah of Iran. David Rockefeller's personal assistant, Joseph V. Reed, had been "assigned to handle the shah's finances and his personal needs;" Robert Armao, who worked for Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, was sent to "act as the shah's public relations agent and lobbyist;" and Benjamin H. Kean, "a longtime associate of Chase Manhattan Bank chairman David Rockefeller," and David Rockefeller's "personal physician," who was sent to Mexico when the shah was there, and advised that he "be treated at an American hospital."[24]

It is important to note that Rockefeller interests "had directed U.S. policy in Iran since the CIA coup of 1953."[25] Following the Shah's flight from Iran, there were increased pressures within the United States by a handful of powerful people to have the Shah admitted to the United States. These individuals were Zbigniew Brzezinski, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, John J. McCloy, former statesman and senior member of the Bilderberg Group, Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations, who was also a lawyer for Chase Manhattan, and of course, David Rockefeller.[26]

Chase Manhattan Bank had more interests in Iran than any other US bank. In fact, the Shah had "ordered that all his government's major operating accounts be held at Chase and that letters of credit for the purchase of oil be handled exclusively through Chase. The bank also became the agent and lead manager for many of the loans to Iran. In short, Iran became the crown jewel of Chase's international banking portfolio."[27]

The Iranian interim government, headed by Prime Minister Bazargan, collapsed in November of 1979, when Iranian hostages seized the US Embassy in Teheran. However, there is much more to this event than meets the eye. During the time of the interim government (February, 1979 to November, 1979), several actions were undertaken which threatened some very powerful interests who had helped the Ayatollah into power.

Chase Manhattan Bank faced a liquidity crisis as there had been billions in questionable loans to Iran funneled through Chase.[28] Several of Chase's loans were "possibly illegal under the Iranian constitution."[29] Further, in February of 1979, once the interim government was put in power, it began to take "steps to market its oil independently of the Western oil majors." Also, the interim government "wanted Chase Manhattan to return Iranian assets, which Rockefeller put at more than $1 billion in 1978, although some estimates ran much higher," which could have "created a liquidity crisis for the bank which already was coping with financial troubles."[30]

With the seizure of the American Embassy in Iran, President Carter took moves to freeze Iranian financial assets. As David Rockefeller wrote in his book, "Carter's 'freeze' of official Iranian assets protected our [Chase Manhattan's] position, but no one at Chase played a role in convincing the administration to institute it."[31]

In February of 1979, Iran had been taking "steps to market its oil independently of the Western oil majors. In 1979, as in 1953, a freeze of Iranian assets made this action more difficult."[32] This was significant for Chase Manhattan not simply because of the close interlocking of the board with those of oil companies, not to mention Rockefeller himself, who is patriarch of the family whose name is synonymous with oil, but also because Chase exclusively handled all the letters of credit for the purchase of Iranian oil.[33]

The Shah being accepted into the United States, under public pressure from Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski and David Rockefeller, precipitated the hostage crisis, which occurred on November 4. Ten days later, Carter froze all Iranian assets in US banks, on the advice of his Treasury Secretary, William Miller. Miller just happened to have ties to Chase Manhattan Bank.[34]

Although Chase Manhattan directly benefited from the seizure of Iranian assets, the reasoning behind the seizure as well as the events leading up to it, such as a hidden role for the Anglo-Americans behind the Iranian Revolution, bringing the Shah to America, which precipitated the hostage crisis, cannot simply be relegated to personal benefit for Chase. There were larger designs behind this crisis. So the 1979 crises in Iran cannot simply be pawned off as a spur of the moment undertaking, but rather should be seen as quick actions taken upon a perceived opportunity. The opportunity was the rising discontent within Iran at the Shah; the quick actions were in covertly pushing the country into Revolution.

In 1979, "effectively restricting the access of Iran to the global oil market, the Iranian assets freeze became a major factor in the huge oil price increases of 1979 and 1981."[35] Added to this, in 1979, British Petroleum cancelled major oil contracts for oil supply, which along with cancellations taken by Royal Dutch Shell, drove the price of oil up higher.[36] With the first major oil price rises in 1973 (urged on by US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger), the Third World was forced to borrow heavily from US and European banks to finance development. With the second oil price shocks of 1979, the US Federal Reserve, with Paul Volcker as its new Chairman, (himself having served a career under David Rockefeller at Chase Manhattan), dramatically raised interest rates from 2% in the late 70s to 18% in the early 80s. Developing nations could not afford to pay such interest on their loans, and thus the 1980s debt crisis spread throughout the Third World, with the IMF and World Bank coming to the "rescue" with their Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs), which ensured western control over the developing world's economies.[37]

Covertly, the United States helped a radical Islamist government come to power in Iran, "the center of the Arc of Crisis," and then immediately stirred up conflict and war in the region. Five months before Iraq invaded Iran, in April of 1980, Zbigniew Brzezinski openly declared the willingness of the US to work closely with Iraq. Two months before the war, Brzezinski met with Saddam Hussein in Jordan, where he gave support for the destabilization of Iran.[38] While Saddam was in Jordan, he also met with three senior CIA agents, which was arranged by King Hussein of Jordan. He then went to meet with King Fahd in Saudi Arabia, informing him of his plans to invade Iran, and then met with the Emir of Kuwait to inform him of the same thing. He gained support from America, and financial and arms support from the Arab oil producing countries. Arms to Iraq were funneled through Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.[39] The war lasted until 1988 and resulted in over a million deaths.

This was the emergence of the "strategy of tension" in the "Arc of Crisis," in particular, the covert support (whether in arming, training, or financing) of radical Islamic elements to foment violence and conflict in a region. It was the old imperial tactic of 'divide and conquer': pit the people against each other so that they cannot join forces against the imperial power. This violence and radical Islamism would further provide the pretext for which the US and its imperial allies could then engage in war and occupation within the region, all the while securing its vast economic and strategic interests.

The "Arc of Crisis" in Afghanistan: The Safari Club in Action

In 1978, the progressive Taraki government in Afghanistan managed to incur the anger of the United States due to "its egalitarian and collectivist economic policies."[40] The Afghan government was widely portrayed in the West as "Communist" and thus, a threat to US national security. The government, did, however, undertake friendly policies and engagement with the Soviet Union, but was not a Communist government.

In 1978, as the new government came to power, almost immediately the US began covertly funding rebel groups through the CIA.[41] In 1979, Zbigniew Brzezinski worked closely with his aid from the CIA, Robert Gates (who is currently Secretary of Defense), in shifting President Carter's Islamic policy. As Brzezinski said in a 1998 interview with a French publication:

According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.[42]

Brzezinski elaborated, saying he "Knowingly increased the probability that [the Soviets] would invade," and he recalled writing to Carter on the day of the Soviet invasion that, "We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire." When asked about the repercussions for such support in fostering the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, Brzezinski responded, "What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?"[43]

As author Peter Dale Scott pointed out in, The Road to 9/11:**

For generations in both Afghanistan and the Soviet Muslim Republics the dominant form of Islam had been local and largely Sufi. The decision to work with the Saudi and Pakistani secret services meant that billions of CIA and Saudi dollars would ultimately be spent in programs that would help enhance the globalistic and Wahhabistic jihadism that are associated today with al Qaeda.[44]

Hafizullah Amin, a top official in Taraki's government, who many believed to be a CIA asset, orchestrated a coup in September of 1979, and "executed Taraki, halted the reforms, and murdered, jailed, or exiled thousands of Taraki supporters as he moved toward establishing a fundamentalist Islamic state. But within two months, he was overthrown by PDP remnants including elements within the military."[45] The Soviets also intervened in order to replace Amin, who was seen as "unpredictable and extremist" with "the more moderate Barbak Karmal."[46]

The Soviet invasion thus prompted the US national security establishment to undertake the largest covert operation in history. When Ronald Reagan replaced Jimmy Carter in 1981, the covert assistance to the Afghan Mujahideen not only continued on the path set by Brzezinski but it rapidly accelerated, as did the overall strategy in the "Arc of Crisis." When Reagan became President, his Vice President became George H.W. Bush, who, as CIA director during the Ford administration, had helped establish the Safari Club intelligence network and the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) in Pakistan. In the "campaign to aid the Afghan rebels ... BCCI clearly emerged as a U.S. intelligence asset," and CIA Director "Casey began to use the outside - the Saudis, the Pakistanis, BCCI - to run what they couldn't get through Congress. [BCCI president] Abedi had the money to help," and the CIA director had "met repeatedly" with the president of BCCI.[47]

Thus, in 1981, Director Casey of the CIA worked with Saudi Prince Turki bin Faisal who ran the Saudi intelligence agency GID, and the Pakistani ISI "to create a foreign legion of jihadi Muslims or so-called Arab Afghans." This idea had "originated in the elite Safari Club that had been created by French intelligence chief Alexandre de Marenches."[48]

In 1986, the CIA backed a plan by the Pakistani ISI "to recruit people from around the world to join the Afghan jihad." Subsequently:

More than 100,000 Islamic militants were trained in Pakistan between 1986 and 1992, in camps overseen by CIA and MI6, with the SAS [British Special Forces] training future al-Qaida and Taliban fighters in bomb-making and other black arts. Their leaders were trained at a CIA camp in Virginia. This was called Operation Cyclone and continued long after the Soviets had withdrawn in 1989.[49]

CIA funding for the operations "was funneled through General Zia and the ISI in Pakistan."[50]

Interestingly, Robert Gates, who previously served as assistant to Brzezinski in the National Security Council, stayed on in the Reagan-Bush administration as executive assistant to CIA director Casey, and who is currently Secretary of Defense.

The Global Drug Trade and the CIA

As a central facet of the covert financing and training of the Afghan Mujahideen, the role of the drug trade became invaluable. The global drug trade has long been used by empires for fueling and financing conflict with the aim of facilitating imperial domination.

In 1773, the British colonial governor in Bengal "established a colonial monopoly on the sale of opium." As Alfred W. McCoy explained in his masterful book, "The Politics of Heroin":

As the East India Company expanded production, opium became India's main export. [. . . ] Over the next 130 years, Britain actively promoted the export of Indian opium to China, defying Chinese drug laws and fighting two wars to open China's opium market for its merchants. Using its military and mercantile power, Britain played a central role in making China a vast drug market and in accelerating opium cultivation throughout China. By 1900 China had 13.5 million addicts consuming 39,000 tons of opium.[51]

In Indochina in the 1940s and 50s, the French intelligence services "enabled the opium trade to survive government suppression efforts," and subsequently, "CIA activities in Burma helped transform the Shan states from a relatively minor poppy-cultivating area into the largest opium-growing region in the world."[52] The CIA did this by supporting the Kuomintang (KMT) army in Burma for an invasion of China, and facilitated its monopolization and expansion of the opium trade, allowing the KMT to remain in Burma until a coup in 1961, when they were driven into Laos and Thailand.[53] The CIA subsequently played a very large role in the facilitation of the drugs trade in Laos and Vietnam throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s.[54]

It was during the 1980s that "the CIA's covert war in Afghanistan transformed Central Asia from a self-contained opium zone into a major supplier of heroin for the world market," as:

Until the late 1970s, tribal farmers in the highlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan grew limited quantities of opium and sold it to merchant caravans bound west for Iran and east to India. In its decade of covert warfare against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the CIA's operations provided the political protection and logistics linkages that joined Afghanistan's poppy fields to heroin markets in Europe and America.[55]

In 1977, General Zia Ul Haq in Pakistan launched a military coup, "imposed a harsh martial-law regime," and executed former President Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto (father to Benazir Bhutto). When Zia came to power, the Pakistani ISI was a "minor military intelligence unit," but, under the "advice and assistance of the CIA," General Zia transformed the ISI "into a powerful covert unit and made it the strong arm of his martial-law regime."[56]

The CIA and Saudi money flowed not only to weapons and training for the Mujahideen, but also into the drug trade. Pakistani President Zia-ul-Haq appointed General Fazle Haq as the military governor of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), who would "consult with Brzezinski on developing an Afghan resistance program," and who became a CIA asset. When CIA Director Casey or Vice President George H.W. Bush reviewed the CIA Afghan operation, they went to see Haq; who by 1982, was considered by Interpol to be an international narcotics trafficker. Haq moved much of the narcotics money through the BCCI.[57]

In May of 1979, prior to the December invasion of the Soviet Union into Afghanistan, a CIA envoy met with Afghan resistance leaders in a meeting organized by the ISI. The ISI "offered the CIA envoy an alliance with its own Afghan client, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar," who led a small guerilla group. The CIA accepted, and over the following decade, half of the CIA's aid went to Hekmatyar's guerillas.[58] Hekmatyar became Afghanistan's leading mujahideen drug lord, and developed a "complex of six heroin labs in an ISI-controlled area of Baluchistan (Pakistan)."[59]

The US subsequently, through the 1980s, in conjunction with Saudi Arabia, gave Hekmatyar more than $1 billion in armaments. Immediately, heroin began flowing from Afghanistan to America. By 1980, drug-related deaths in New York City rose 77% since 1979.[60] By 1981, the drug lords in Pakistan and Afghanistan supplied 60% of America's heroin. Trucks going into Afghanistan with CIA arms from Pakistan would return with heroin "protected by ISI papers from police search."[61]

Haq, the CIA asset in Pakistan, "was also running the drug trade," of which the bank BCCI "was completely involved." In the 1980s, the CIA insisted that the ISI create "a special cell for the use of heroin for covert actions." Elaborating:

This cell promoted the cultivation of opium and the extraction of heroin in Pakistani territory as well as in the Afghan territory under Mujahideen control for being smuggled into Soviet controlled areas in order to make the Soviet troops heroin addicts.[62]

This plan apparently originated at the suggestion of French intelligence chief and founder of the Safari Club, Alexandre de Marenches, who recommended it to CIA Director Casey.[63]

In the 1980s, one program undertaken by the United States was to finance Mujahideen propaganda in textbooks for Afghan schools. The US gave the Mujahideen $43 million in "non-lethal" aid for the textbook project alone, which was given by USAID: "The U.S. Agency for International Development, [USAID] coordinated its work with the CIA, which ran the weapons program," and "The U.S. government told the AID to let the Afghan war chiefs decide the school curriculum and the content of the textbooks."[64]

The textbooks were "filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings," and "were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines." Even since the covert war of the 1980s, the textbooks "have served since then as the Afghan school system's core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books." The books were developed through a USAID grant to the "University of Nebraska-Omaha and its Center for Afghanistan Studies," and when the books were smuggled into Afghanistan through regional military leaders, "Children were taught to count with illustrations showing tanks, missiles and land mines." USAID stopped this funding in 1994.[65]

The Rise of the Taliban

When the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, the fighting continued between the Afghan government backed by the USSR and the Mujahideen backed by the US, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, so too did its aid to the Afghan government, which itself was overthrown in 1992. However, fighting almost immediately broke out between rival factions vying for power, including Hekmatyar.

In the early 1990s, an obscure group of "Pashtun country folk" had become a powerful military and political force in Afghanistan, known as the Taliban.[66] The Taliban "surfaced as a small militia force operating near Kandahar city during the spring and summer of 1994, carrying out vigilante attacks against minor warlords." As growing discontent with the warlords grew, so too did the reputation of the Taliban.[67]

The Taliban acquired an alliance with the ISI in 1994, and throughout 1995, the relationship between the Taliban and the ISI accelerated and "became more and more of a direct military alliance." The Taliban ultimately became "an asset of the ISI" and "a client of the Pakistan army."[68] Further, "Between 1994 and 1996, the USA supported the Taliban politically through its allies Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, essentially because Washington viewed the Taliban as anti-Iranian, anti-Shia, and pro-Western."[69]

Selig Harrison, a scholar with the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars and "a leading US expert on South Asia," said at a conference in India that the CIA worked with Pakistan to create the Taliban. Harrison has "extensive contact" with the CIA, as "he had meetings with CIA leaders at the time when Islamic forces were being strengthened in Afghanistan," while he was a senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. As he further revealed in 2001, "The CIA still has close links with the ISI."[70] By 1996, the Taliban had control of Kandahar, but still fighting and instability continued in the country.

Osama and Al-Qaeda

Between 1980 and 1989, roughly $600 million was passed through Osama bin Laden's charity front organizations, specifically the Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK), also known as Al-Kifah. The money mostly originated with wealthy donors in Saudi Arabia and other areas in the Persian Gulf, and was funneled through his charity fronts to arm and fund the mujahideen in Afghanistan.[71]

In the 1980s, the British Special Forces (SAS) were training mujahideen in Afghanistan, as well as in secret camps in Scotland, and the SAS is largely taking orders from the CIA. The CIA also indirectly begins to arm Osama bin Laden.[72] Osama bin Laden's front charity, the MAK, "was nurtured" by the Pakistani ISI.[73]

Osama bin Laden was reported to have been personally recruited by the CIA in 1979 in Istanbul. He had the close support of Prince Turki bin Faisal, his friend and head of Saudi intelligence, and also developed ties with Hekmatyar in Afghanistan,[74] both of whom were pivotal figures in the CIA-Safari Club network. General Akhtar Abdul Rahman, the head of the Pakistani ISI from 1980 to 1987, would meet regularly with Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, and they formed a partnership in demanding a tax on the opium trade from warlords so that by 1985, bin Laden and the ISI were splitting the profits of over $100 million per year.[75] In 1985, Osama bin Laden's brother, Salem, stated that Osama was "the liaison between the US, the Saudi government, and the Afghan rebels."[76]

In 1988, Bin Laden discussed "the establishment of a new military group," which would come to be known as Al-Qaeda.[77] Osama bin Laden's charity front, the MAK, (eventually to form Al-Qaeda) founded the al-Kifah Center in Brooklyn, New York, to recruit Muslims for the jihad against the Soviets. The al-Kifah Center was founded in the late 1980s with the support of the U.S. government, which provided visas for known terrorists associated with the organization, including Ali Mohamed, the "blind sheik" Omar Abdel Rahman and possibly the lead 9/11 hijacker, Mohamed Atta.[78]

This coincided with the creation of Al-Qaeda, of which the al-Kifah Center was a recruiting front. Foot soldiers for Al-Qaeda were "admitted to the United States for training under a special visa program." The FBI had been surveilling the training of terrorists, however, "it terminated this surveillance in the fall of 1989." In 1990, the CIA granted Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman a visa to come run the al-Kifah Center, who was considered an "untouchable" as he was "being protected by no fewer than three agencies," including the State Department, the National Security Agency (NSA) and the CIA.[79]

Robin Cook, a former British MP and Minister of Foreign Affairs wrote that Al-Qaeda, "literally 'the database', was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians."[80] Thus, "Al-Qaeda" was born as an instrument of western intelligence agencies. This account of al-Qaeda was further corroborated by a former French military intelligence agent, who stated that, "In the mid-1980s, Al Qaeda was a database," and that it remained as such into the 1990s. He contended that, "Al Qaeda was neither a terrorist group nor Osama bin Laden's personal property," and further:

The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaida. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity representing the 'devil' only in order to drive the 'TV watcher' to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the US and the lobbyists for the US war on terrorism are only interested in making money.[81]

The creation of Al-Qaeda was thus facilitated by the CIA and allied intelligence networks, the purpose of which was to maintain this "database" of Mujahideen to be used as intelligence assets to achieve US foreign policy objectives, throughout both the Cold War, and into the post-Cold War era of the 'new world order'.

Part II of "The Imperial Anatomy of al-Qaeda" takes the reader through an examination of the new imperial strategy laid out by American geopolitical strategists at the end of the Cold War, designed for America to maintain control over the world's resources and prevent the rise of competitive powers. Covertly, the "database" (al-Qaeda) became central to this process, being used to advance imperial aims in various regions, such as in the dismantling of Yugoslavia. Part 2 further examines the exact nature of 'al-Qaeda', its origins, terms, training, arming, financing, and expansion. In particular, the roles of western intelligence agencies in the evolution and expansion of al-Qaeda is a central focus. Finally, an analysis of the preparations for the war in Afghanistan is undertaken to shed light on the geopolitical ambitions behind the conflict that has now been waging for nearly nine years.

Part III of "The Imperial Anatomy of al-Qaeda" takes the reader through 9/11 and America's Secret Terror Campaign.

* Andrew Gavin Marshall is a Research Associate with the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is co-editor, with Michel Chossudovsky, of the recent book, "The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century," available to order at Globalresearch.ca.

** [Note on the research: For a comprehensive analysis of the history, origins and nature of al-Qaeda, see: Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire and the Future of America, which provided much of the research in the above article.]

Notes

[1] Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America. University of California Press: 2007: page 62

[2] Ibid, page 63.

[3] Ibid, page 62.

[4] Ibid, pages 66-67.

[5] HP-Time, The Crescent of Crisis. Time Magazine: January 15, 1979:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,919995-1,00.html

[6] Peter Dale Scott, op. cit., page 67.

[7] F. William Engdahl, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order. London: Pluto Press, 2004: page 171

[8] Manouchehr Ganji, Defying the Iranian Revolution: From a Minister to the Shah to a Leader of Resistance. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002: page 41

[9] Ibid, page 39.

[10] Ibid, page 41.

[11] Ibid.

[12] F. William Engdahl, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order. London: Pluto Press, 2004: page 172

[13] Ibid, page 171.

[14] George Lenczowski, The Arc of Crisis: It's Central Sector. Foreign Affairs: Summer, 1979: page 796

[15] Ibid, page 797.

[16] Ibid, page 798.

[17] IPS, Q&A: Iran's Islamic Revolution Had Western Blessing. Inter-Press Service: July 26, 2008:
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43328

[18] Michael D. Evans, Father of the Iranian revolution. The Jerusalem Post: June 20, 2007:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1181813077590&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull

[19] Peter Dale Scott, op cit., page 89.

[20] George Lenczowski, The Arc of Crisis: It's Central Sector. Foreign Affairs: Summer, 1979: page 810

[21] F. William Engdahl, op cit., page 172.

[22] Peter Dale Scott, op cit., page 81.

[23] Michael D. Evans, Father of the Iranian revolution. The Jerusalem Post: June 20, 2007:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1181813077590&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull

[24] Peter Dale Scott, op cit., page 83.

[25] Ibid, page 84.

[26] Ibid, page 81.

[27] Ibid, pages 85-86.

[28] Ibid.

[29] Ibid, page 87.

[30] Ibid, pages 88-89.

[31] Ibid.

[32] Ibid, pages 87-88.

[33] Ibid, page 85.

[34] Ibid, page 86.

[35] Ibid, page 88.

[36] F. William Engdahl, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order. London: Pluto Press, 2004: page 173

[37] Andrew Gavin Marshall, Controlling the Global Economy: Bilderberg, the Trilateral Commission and the Federal Reserve. Global Research: August 3, 2009:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14614

[38] Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America. University of California Press: 2007: page 89

[39] PBS, Secrets of His Life and Leadership: An Interview with Said K. Aburish. PBS Frontline:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/saddam/interviews/aburish.html

[40] Michael Parenti, Afghanistan, Another Untold Story. Global Research: December 4, 2008:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11279

[41] Oleg Kalugin, How We Invaded Afghanistan. Foreign Policy: December 11, 2009:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/12/11/how_we_invaded_afghanistan

[42] ''Le Nouvel Observateur' (France), Jan 15-21, 1998, p. 76:
http://www.ucc.ie/acad/appsoc/tmp_store/mia/Library/history/afghanistan/archive/brzezinski/1998/interview.htm

[43] Ibid.

[44] Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America. University of California Press: 2007: page 73

[45] Michael Parenti, Afghanistan, Another Untold Story. Global Research: December 4, 2008:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11279

[46] Peter Dale Scott, op cit., page 78.

[47] Ibid, page 116.

[48] Ibid, page 122.

[49] Ibid, page 123.

[50] Ibid,.

[51] Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade. (Lawrence Hill Books: Chicago, 2003), page 80

[52] Ibid, page 162.

[53] Ibid.

[54] Ibid, pages 283-386.

[55] Ibid, page 466.

[56] Ibid, page 474.

[57] Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America. University of California Press: 2007: page 73

[58] Alfred W. McCoy, op cit., page 475.

[59] Peter Dale Scott, op cit., page 74.

[60] Ibid, pages 75-76.

[61] Ibid, page 124.

[62] Ibid, pages 75-76.

[63] Ibid, page 124.

[64] Carol Off, Back to school in Afghanistan. CBC: May 6, 2002:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/afghanistan/schools.html

[65] Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway, From U.S., the ABC's of Jihad. The Washington Post: March 23, 2002:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5339-2002Mar22?language=printer

[66] Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, From the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. Penguin Books, New York, 2004: Page 328

[67] Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, From the Soviet Invasion to September 11, 2001. (London: Penguin, 2005), page 285

[68] Steve Coll, "Steve Coll" Interview with PBS Frontline. PBS Frontline: October 3, 2006:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/taliban/interviews/coll.html

[69] Robert Dreyfuss, Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam. (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2005), page 326

[70] ToI, "CIA worked in tandem with Pak to create Taliban". The Times of India: March 7, 2001:
http://www.multiline.com.au/~johnm/taliban.htm

[71] Robert Dreyfuss, Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam. (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2005), pages 279-280

[72] Simon Reeve, The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden, and the Future of Terrorism. (London: André Deutsch Ltd, 1999), page 168

[73] Michael Moran, Bin Laden comes home to roost. MSNBC: August 24, 1998:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3340101/

[74] Veronique Maurus and Marc Rock, The Most Dreaded Man of the United States, Controlled a Long Time by the CIA. Le Monde Diplomatique: September 14, 2001: http://www.wanttoknow.info/010914lemonde

[75] Gerald Posner, Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11. (New York: Random House, 2003), page 29

[76] Steve Coll, The Bin Ladens. (New York: Penguin, 2008), pages 7-9

[77] AP, Al Qaeda Financing Documents Turn Up in Bosnia Raid. Fox News: February 19, 2003:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,78937,00.html

[78] Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America. University of California Press: 2007: pages 140-141

[79] Ibid, page 141.

[80] Robin Cook, The struggle against terrorism cannot be won by military means. The Guardian: July 8, 2005:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/jul/08/july7.development

[81] Pierre-Henri Bunel, Al Qaeda - the Database. Global Research: November 20, 2005:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=BUN20051120&articleId=1291

Remarks to staff of the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and, separately, to members of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs

Ambassador Charles W. ("Chas") Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.)*
1 September 2010, Oslo, Norway

Charles W. Freeman, Jr.: United States Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. In office 15 June 1989 – 13 August 1992

You have asked me to speak to current American policies in the Middle East, with an emphasis on the prospects for peace in the Holy Land. You have further suggested that I touch on the relationship of the Gulf Arabs, especially Saudi Arabia, to this. It is both an honor and a challenge to address this subject in this capital / at this ministry.

The declaration of principles worked out in Oslo seventeen years ago was the last direct negotiation between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs to reach consequential, positive results. The Oslo accords were a real step toward peace, not another deceptive pseudo-event in an endlessly unproductive, so-called "peace process." And if that one step forward in Oslo in 1993 was followed by several steps backwards, there is a great deal to be learned from how and why that happened.

There can be no doubt about the importance of today's topic. The ongoing conflict in the Holy Land increasingly disturbs the world's conscience as well as its tranquility. The Israel-Palestine issue began as a struggle in the context of European colonialism. In the post-colonial era, tension between Israelis and the Palestinians they dispossessed became, by degrees, the principal source of radicalization and instability in the Arab East and then the Arab world as a whole. It stimulated escalating terrorism against Israelis at home and their allies abroad. Since the end of the Cold War, the interaction between Israel and its captive Palestinian population has emerged as the fountainhead of global strife. It is increasingly difficult to distinguish this strife from a war of religions or a conflict of civilizations.

For better or ill, my own country, the United States has played and continues to play the key international part in this contest. American policies, more than those of any other external actor, have the capacity to stoke or stifle the hatreds in the Middle East and to spread or reverse their infection of the wider world. American policies and actions in the Middle East thus affect much more than that region.

Yet, as I will argue, the United States has been obsessed with process rather than substance. It has failed to involve parties who are essential to peace. It has acted on Israel's behalf to preempt rather than enlist international and regional support for peace. It has defined the issues in ways that preclude rather than promote progress. Its concept of a "peace process" has therefore become the handmaiden of Israeli expansionism rather than a driver for peace. There are alternatives to tomorrow's diplomatic peace pageant on the Potomac. And, as Norway has shown, there is a role for powers other than America in crafting peace in the Holy Land.

Over thirty years ago, at Camp David, Jimmy Carter pushed Israel through the door to peace that Egypt's Anwar Sadat had opened. Twenty years ago, the first Bush administration pressed Israel to the negotiating table with Palestinian leaders, setting the stage for their clandestine meetings in Oslo. The capacity of the United States to rally other governments behind a cause that it espouses may have atrophied, but American power remains far greater than that of any other nation. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Middle East.

For more than four decades, Israel has been able to rely on aid from the United States to dominate its region militarily and to sustain its economic prosperity. It has counted on its leverage in American politics to block the application of international law and to protect itself from the political repercussions of its policies and actions. Unquestioning American support has enabled Israel to put the seizure of ever more land ahead of the achievement of a modus vivendi with the Palestinians or other Arabs. Neither violent resistance from the dispossessed nor objections from abroad have brought successive Israeli governments to question, let alone alter the priority they assign to land over peace.

Ironically, Palestinians too have developed a dependency relationship with America. This has locked them into a political framework over which Israel exercises decisive influence. They have been powerless to end occupation, pogroms, ethnic cleansing, and other humiliations by Jewish soldiers and settlers. Nor have they been able to prevent their progressive confinement in checkpoint-encircled ghettos on the West Bank and the great open-air prison of Gaza.

Despite this appalling record of failure, the American monopoly on the management of the search for peace in Palestine remains unchallenged. Since the end of the Cold War, Russia - once a contender for countervailing influence in the region - has lapsed into impotence. The former colonial powers of the European Union, having earlier laid the basis for conflict in the region, have largely sat on their hands while ringing them, content to let America take the lead. China, India, and other Asian powers have prudently kept their political and military distance. In the region itself, Iran has postured and exploited the Palestinian cause without doing anything to advance it. Until recently, Turkey remained aloof.

On rare occasions, as in the case of the 1973 Arab oil embargo, the Arabs have backed their verbal opposition to Israel with action. Egypt and Jordan have settled into an unpopular coexistence with Israel that is now sustained only by U.S. subventions. Saudi Arabia has twice taken the initiative to offer Israel diplomatic concessions if it were to conclude arrangements for peaceful coexistence with the Palestinians. But, overall, Arab governments have earned the contempt of the Palestinians and their own people for their lack of serious engagement. For the most part, Arab leaders have timorously demanded that America solve the Israel-Palestine problem for them, while obsequiously courting American protection against Israel, each other, Iran, and - in some cases - their own increasingly frustrated and angry subjects and citizens.

Islam charges rulers with the duty to defend the faithful and to uphold justice. It demands that they embody righteousness. The resentment of mostly Muslim Arabs at their governing elites' failure to meet these standards generates sympathy for terrorism directed not just at Israel but at both the United States and Arab governments associated with it.

The perpetrators of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the United States saw it in part as reprisal for American complicity in Israeli cruelties to Palestinians and other Arabs. They justified it as a strike against Washington's protection of Arab governments willing to overlook American contributions to Muslim suffering. Washington's response to the attack included suspending its efforts to make peace in the Holy Land as well as invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq. All three actions inadvertently strengthened the terrorist case for further attacks on America and its allies. The armed struggle between Americans and Muslim radicals has already spilled over to Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and other countries. Authoritative voices in Israel now call for adding Iran to the list of countries at war with America. They are echoed by Zionist and neo-conservative spokesmen in the United States.

The widening involvement of Americans in combat in Muslim lands has inflamed anti-American passions and catalyzed a metastasis of terrorism. It has caused a growing majority of the world's 1.6 billion Muslims to see the United States as a menace to their faith, their way of life, their homelands, and their personal security. American populists and European xenophobes have meanwhile undercut liberal and centrist Muslim arguments against the intolerance that empowers terrorism by equating terrorism and its extremist advocates with Islam and its followers. The current outburst of bigoted demagoguery over the construction of an Islamic cultural center and mosque in New York is merely the most recent illustration of this. It suggests that the blatant racism and Islamophobia of contemporary Israeli politics is contagious. It rules out the global alliances against religious extremists that are essential to encompass their political defeat.

President Obama's inability to break this pattern must be an enormous personal disappointment to him. He came into office committed to crafting a new relationship with the Arab and Muslim worlds. His first interview with the international media was with Arab satellite television. He reached out publicly and privately to Iran. He addressed the Turkish parliament with persuasive empathy. He traveled to a great center of Islamic learning in Cairo to deliver a remarkably eloquent message of conciliation to Muslims everywhere. He made it clear that he understood the centrality of injustices in the Holy Land to Muslim estrangement from the West. He promised a responsible withdrawal from Iraq and a judicious recrafting of strategy in Afghanistan. Few doubt Mr. Obama's sincerity. Yet none of his initiatives has led to policy change anyone can detect, let alone believe in.

It is not for me to analyze or explain the wide gaps between rhetoric and achievement in the Obama Administration's stewardship of so many aspects of my country's affairs. American voters will render their first formal verdict on this two months from tomorrow, on the 2^nd of November. The situation in the Holy Land, Iraq, Afghanistan, and adjacent areas is only part of what they will consider as they do so. But I do think it worthwhile briefly to examine some of the changes in the situation that ensure that many policies that once helped us to get by in the Middle East will no longer do this.

Let me begin with the "peace process," a hardy perennial of America's diplomatic repertoire that the Obama Administration will put back on public display tomorrow. In the Cold War, the appearance of an earnest and "even-handed" American search for peace in the Holy Land was the price of U.S. access and influence in the Middle East. It provided political cover for conservative Arab governments to set aside their anger at American backing of Israel so as to stand with America and the Western bloc against Soviet Communism. It kept American relations with Israel and the Arabs from becoming a zero-sum game. It mobilized domestic Jewish support for incumbent presidents. Of course, there hasn't been an American-led "peace process" in the Middle East for at least a decade. Still the conceit of a "peace process" became an essential political convenience for all concerned. No one could bear to admit that the "peace process" had expired. It therefore lived on in phantom form.

Even when there was no "peace process," the possibility of resurrecting one provided hope to the gullible, cover to the guileful, beguilement for the press, an excuse for doing nothing to those gaining from the status quo, and - last but far from least - lifetime employment for career "peace processors." The perpetual processing of peace without the requirement to produce it has been especially appreciated by Israeli leaders. It has enabled them to behave like magicians, riveting foreign attention on meaningless distractions as they systematically removed Palestinians from their homes, settled half a million or more Jews in newly vacated areas of the occupied territories, and annexed a widening swath of land to a Jerusalem they insist belongs only to Israel.

Palestinian leaders with legitimacy problems have also had reason to collaborate in the search for a "peace process." It's not just that there has been no obviously better way to end their people's suffering. Playing "peace process" charades justifies the international patronage and Israeli backing these leaders need to retain their status in the occupied territories. It ensures that they have media access and high-level visiting rights in Washington. Meanwhile, for American leaders, engagement in some sort of Middle East "peace process" has been essential to credibility in the Arab and Islamic worlds, as well as with the ever-generous American Jewish community. Polls show that most American Jews are impatient for peace. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, they are eager to believe in the willingness of the government of Israel to trade land for it.

Previous "peace processes" have exploited all these impulses. In practice, however, these diplomatic distractions have served to obscure Israeli actions and evasions that were more often prejudicial to peace than helpful in achieving it. Behind all the blather, the rumble of bulldozers has never stopped. Given this history, it has taken a year and a half of relentless effort by U.S. Special Envoy George Mitchell to persuade the parties even to meet directly to talk about talks as they first did here in Oslo, seventeen years ago. When the curtain goes up on the diplomatic show in Washington tomorrow, will the players put on a different skit? There are many reasons to doubt that they will.

One is that the Obama administration has engaged the same aging impresarios who staged all the previously failed "peace processes" to produce and direct this one with no agreed script. The last time these guys staged such an ill-prepared meeting, at Camp David in 2000, it cost both heads of delegation, Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat, their political authority. It led not to peace but to escalating violence. The parties are showing up this time to minimize President Obama's political embarrassment in advance of midterm elections in the United States, not to address his agenda - still less to address each other's agendas. These are indeed difficulties. But the problems with this latest - and possibly final - iteration of the perpetually ineffectual "peace process" are more fundamental.

The Likud Party charter flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan River and stipulates that: "The Palestinians can run their lives freely in the framework of self-rule, but not as an independent and sovereign state." This Israeli government is committed to that charter as well as to the Jewish holy war for land in Palestine. It has no interest in trading land it covets for a peace that might thwart further territorial expansion. It considers itself unbound by the applicable UN resolutions, agreements from past peace talks, the "Roadmap," or the premise of the "two-state solution."

The Palestinians are desperate for the dignity and security that only the end of the Israeli occupation can provide. But the authority of Palestinian negotiators to negotiate rests on their recognition by Israel and the United States, not on their standing in the occupied territories, Gaza, or the Palestinian diaspora. Fatah is the ruling faction in part of Palestine. Its authority to govern was repudiated by voters in the last Palestinian elections. The Mahmoud Abbas administration retains power by grace of the Israeli occupation authorities and the United States, which prefer it to the government empowered by the Palestinian people at the polls. Mr. Abbas's constitutional term of office has long since expired. He presides over a parliament whose most influential members are locked up in Israeli jails. It is not clear for whom he, his faction, or his administration can now speak.

So the talks that begin tomorrow promise to be a case of the disinterested going through the motions of negotiating with the mandate-less. The parties to these talks seek to mollify an America that has severely lessened international credibility. The United States government had to borrow the modest reputations for objectivity of others - the EU, Russia, and the UN - to be able to convene this discussion. It will be held under the auspices of an American president who was publicly humiliated by Israel's prime minister on the issue that is at the center of the Israel-Palestine dispute - Israel's continuing seizure and colonization of Arab land.

Vague promises of a Palestinian state within a year now waft through the air. But the "peace process" has always sneered at deadlines, even much, much firmer ones. A more definitive promise of an independent Palestine within a year was made at Annapolis three years ago. Analogous promises of Palestinian self-determination have preceded or resulted from previous meetings over the decades, beginning with the Camp David accords of 1979. Many in this audience will recall the five-year deadline fixed at Oslo. The talks about talks that begin tomorrow can yield concrete results only if the international community is prepared this time to insist on the one-year deadline put forward for recognizing a Palestinian state. Even then there will be no peace unless long-neglected issues are addressed.

Peace is a pattern of stability acceptable to those with the capacity to disturb it by violence. It is almost impossible to impose. It cannot become a reality, still less be sustained, if those who must accept it are excluded from it. This reality directs our attention to who is not at this gathering in Washington and what must be done to remedy the problems these absences create.

Obviously, the party that won the democratically expressed mandate of the Palestinian people to represent them - Hamas - is not there. Yet there can be no peace without its buy-in. Egypt and Jordan have been invited as observers. Yet they have nothing to add to the separate peace agreements each long ago made with Israel. (Both these agreements were explicitly premised on grudging Israeli undertakings to accept Palestinian self-determination. The Jewish state quickly finessed both.) Activists from the Jewish diaspora disproportionately staff the American delegation. A failure to reconcile either American Jews or the Palestine diaspora to peace would doom any accord. But the Palestinian diaspora will be represented in Washington only in tenuous theory, not in fact.

Other Arabs, including the Arab League and the author of its peace initiative, Saudi Arabia, will not be at the talks tomorrow. The reasons for this are both simple and complex. At one level they reflect both a conviction that this latest installment of the "peace process" is just another in a long series of public entertainments for the American electorate and also a lack of confidence in the authenticity of the Palestinian delegation. At another level, they result from the way the United States has defined the problems to be solved and the indifference to Arab interests and views this definition evidences. Then too, they reflect disconnects in political culture and negotiating style between Israelis, Arabs, and Americans.

To begin with, neither Israel nor the conveners of this proposed new "peace process" have officially acknowledged or responded to the Arab peace initiative of 2002. This offered normalization of relations with the Jewish state, should Israel make peace with the Palestinians. Instead, the United States and the Quartet have seemed to pocket the Arab offer, ignore its precondition that Israelis come to terms with Palestinians, and gone on to levy new demands.

In this connection, making Arab recognition of Israel's "right to exist" the central purpose of the "peace process" offends Arabs on many levels. In framing the issue this way, Israel and the United States appear to be asking for something well beyond pragmatic accommodation of the reality of a Jewish state in the Middle East. To the Arabs, Americans now seem to be insisting on Arab endorsement of the idea of the state of Israel, the means by which that state was established, and the manner in which it has comported itself. Must Arabs really embrace Zionism before Israel can cease expansion and accept peace?

Arabs and Muslims familiar with European history can accept that European anti-Semitism justified the establishment of a homeland for traumatized European Jews. But asking them even implicitly to agree that the forcible eviction of Palestinian Arabs was a morally appropriate means to this end is both a nonstarter and seriously off-putting. So is asking them to affirm that resistance to such displacement was and is sinful. Similarly, the Arabs see the demand that they recognize a Jewish state with no fixed borders as a clever attempt to extract their endorsement of Israel's unilateral expansion at Palestinian expense.

The lack of appeal in this approach has been compounded by a longstanding American habit of treating Arab concerns about Israel as a form of anti-Semitism and tuning them out. Instead of hearing out and addressing Arab views, U.S. peace processors have repeatedly focused on soliciting Arab acts of kindness toward Israel. They argue that gestures of acceptance can help Israelis overcome their Holocaust-inspired political neuroses and take risks for peace.

Each time this notion of Arab diplomacy as psychotherapy for Israelis has been trotted out, it has been met with incredulity. To most in the region, it encapsulates the contrast between Washington's sympathy and solicitude for Israelis and its condescendingly exploitative view of Arabs. Some see it as a barely disguised appeal for a policy of appeasement of Israel. Still others suspect an attempt to construct a "peace process" in which Arabs begin to supply Israel with gifts of carrots so that Americans can continue to avoid applying sticks to it.

The effort to encourage Arab generosity as an offset to American political pusillanimity vis-à-vis Israel is ludicrously unpersuasive. It has failed so many times that it should be obvious that it will not work. Yet it was a central element of George Mitchell's mandate for "peace process" diplomacy. And it appears to have resurfaced as part of the proposed follow-up to tomorrow's meeting between the parties in Washington. It should be no puzzle why the Saudis and other Arabs could not be persuaded to join this gathering.

As a last thought before turning to what must be done, let me make a quick comment on a relevant cultural factor. Arabic has two quite different words that are both translated as "negotiation," making a distinction that doesn't exist in either English or Hebrew. One word, "musaawama," refers to the no-holds-barred bargaining process that takes place in bazaars between strangers who may never see each other again and who therefore feel no obligation not to scam each other. Another, "mufaawadhat," describes the dignified formal discussions about matters of honor and high principle that take place on a basis of mutual respect and equality between statesmen who seek a continuing relationship.

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's travel to Jerusalem was a grand act of statesmanship to initiate a process of mufaawadhat - relationship-building between leaders and their polities. So was the Arab peace initiative of 2002. It called for a response in kind. The West muttered approvingly but did not act. After a while, Israel responded with intermittent, somewhat oblique suggestions of willingness to haggle over terms. But an offer to bicker over the terms on which a grand gesture has been granted is, not surprisingly, seen as insultingly unresponsive.

I cite this not to suggest that non-Arabs should adopt Arabic canons of thought, but to make a point about diplomatic effectiveness. To move a negotiating partner in a desired direction, one must understand how that partner understands things and help him to see a way forward that will bring him to an end he has been persuaded to want. One of the reasons we can't seem to move things as we desire in the Middle East is that we don't make much effort to understand how others reason and how they rank their interests. In the case of the Israel-Palestine conundrum, we Americans are long on empathy and expertise about Israel and very, very short on these for the various Arab parties. The essential militarism of U.S. policies in the Middle East adds to our difficulties. We have become skilled at killing Arabs. We have forgotten how to listen to them or persuade them.

I am not myself an "Arabist," but I am old enough to remember when there were more than a few such people in the American diplomatic service. These were officers who had devoted themselves to the cultivation of understanding and empathy with Arab leaders so as to be able to convince these leaders that it was in their own interest to do things we saw as in our interest. If we still have such people, we are hiding them well; we are certainly not applying their skills in our Middle East diplomacy.

This brings me to a few thoughts about the Western and Arab interests at stake in the Holy Land and their implications for what must be done.

In foreign affairs, interests are the measure of all things. My assumption is that Americans and Norwegians, indeed Europeans in general, share common interests that require peace in the Holy Land. To my mind, these interests include - but are, of course, not limited to - gaining security and acceptance for a democratic state of Israel; eliminating the gross injustices and daily humiliations that foster Arab terrorism against Israel and its foreign allies and supporters, as well as friendly Arab regimes; and reversing the global spread of religious strife and prejudice, including, very likely, a revival of anti-Semitism in the West if current trends are not arrested. None of these aspirations can be fulfilled without an end to the Israeli occupation and freedom for Palestinians.

Arab states, like Saudi Arabia, also have compelling reasons to want relief from occupation as well as self-determination for Palestinians. They may not be concerned to preserve Israel's democracy, as we are, but they share an urgent interest in ending the radicalization of their own populations, curbing the spread of Islamist terrorism, and eliminating the tensions with the West that the conflict in the Holy Land fuels. These are the concerns that have driven them to propose peace, as they very clearly did eight years ago. For related reasons, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has made inter-faith dialogue and the promotion of religious tolerance a main focus of his domestic and international policy.

As the custodian of two of Islam's three sacred places of pilgrimage - Mecca and Medina - Saudi Arabia has long transcended its own notorious religious narrow-mindedness to hold the holy places in its charge open to Muslims of all sects and persuasions. This experience, joined with Islamic piety, reinforces a Saudi insistence on the exemption of religious pilgrimage to Jerusalem from political interference or manipulation. The Ottoman Turks were careful to ensure freedom of access for worship to adherents of the three Abrahamic faiths when they administered the city. It is an interest that Jews, Christians, and Muslims share.

There is, in short, far greater congruity between Western and Arab interests affecting the Israel-Palestine dispute than is generally recognized. This can be the basis for creative diplomacy. The fact that this has not occurred reflects pathologies of political life in the United States that paralyze the American diplomatic imagination. Tomorrow's meeting may well demonstrate that, the election of Barack Obama notwithstanding, the United States is still unfit to manage the achievement of peace between Israel and the Arabs. If so, it is in the American interest as well as everyone else's that others become the path-breakers, enlisting the United States as best they can in support of what they achieve, but not expecting America to overcome its incapacity to lead.

Here, I think, there is a lesson to be drawn from the Norwegian experience in the 1990s. The Clinton Administration was happy to organize the public relations for the Oslo accords but did not take ownership of them. It did little to protect them from subversion and overthrow, and nothing to insist on their implementation. Only a peace process that is protected from Israel's ability to manipulate American politics can succeed.

This brings me to how Europeans and Arabs might work together to realize the objectives both share with most Americans: establishing internationally recognized borders for Israel, securing freedom for the Palestinians, and ending the stimulus to terrorism in the region and beyond it that strife in the Holy Land entails. I have only four suggestions to present today. I expect that more ideas will emerge from the discussion period. A serious effort to cooperate with the Arabs of the sort that Norway is uniquely capable of contriving could lead to the development of still more options for joint or parallel action on behalf of peace.

Now to my suggestions, presented in ascending order of difficulty, from the least to the most controversial.

First, get behind the Arab peace initiative. Saudi Arab culture frowns on self-promotion and the Kingdom is less gifted than most at public diplomacy. Political factors inhibit official Arab access to the Israeli press. The Israeli media have published some - mostly dismissive - commentary on the Arab peace initiative but left most Israelis ignorant of its contents and unfamiliar with its text. Why not buy space in the Israeli media to give Israelis a chance to read the Arab League declaration and consider the opportunities it presents? I suspect the Saudis, as well as other members of the Arab League, would consider it constructive for an outside party to do this. It might facilitate other sorts of cooperation with them in which European capabilities can also compensate for Arab reticence. The Turks and other non-Arab Muslims should be brought in as full participants in any such efforts. This wouldn't be bad for Europe's relations with both. By the way, given the U.S. media's notorious one-sidedness and American ignorance about the Arab peace plan, a well-targeted advertising campaign in the United States might not be a bad idea either.

Second, help create a Palestinian partner for peace. There can be no peace with Israel unless there are officials who are empowered by the Palestinian people to negotiate and ratify it. Israel has worked hard to divide the Palestinians so as to consolidate its conquest of their homeland. Saudi Arabia has several times sought to create a Palestinian peace partner for Israel by bringing Fatah, Hamas, and other factions together. On each occasion, Israel, with U.S. support, has acted to preclude this. Active organization of non-American Western support for diplomacy aimed at restoring a unity government to the Palestinian Authority could make a big difference. The Obama Administration would be under strong domestic political pressure to join Israel in blocking a joint European-Arab effort to accomplish this. Under some circumstances, however, it might welcome being put to this test.

Third, reaffirm and enforce international law. The UN Security Council is charged with enforcing the rule of law internationally. In the case of the Middle East, however, the Council's position at the apex of the international system has served to erode and subvert the ideal of a rule-bound international order. Almost forty American vetoes have prevented the application to the Israeli occupying authorities of the Geneva Conventions, the Nuremberg precedents, human rights conventions, and relevant Security Council directives. American diplomacy on behalf of the Jewish state has silenced the collective voice of the international community as Israel has illegally colonized and annexed broad swaths of occupied territory, administered collective punishment to a captive people, assassinated their political leaders, massacred civilians, barred UN investigators, defied mandatory Security Council resolutions, and otherwise engaged in scofflaw behavior, usually with only the flimsiest of legally irrelevant excuses.

If ethnic cleansing, settlement activity, and the like are not just "unhelpful" but illegal, the international community should find a way to say so, even if the UN Security Council cannot. Otherwise, the most valuable legacy of Atlantic civilization - its vision of the rule of law - will be lost. When one side to a dispute is routinely exempted from principles, all exempt themselves, and the law of the jungle prevails. The international community needs collectively to affirm that Israel, both as occupier and as regional military hegemon, is legally accountable internationally for its actions. If the UN General Assembly cannot "unite for peace" to do what an incapacitated Security Council cannot, member states should not shrink from working in conference outside the UN framework. All sides in the murder and mayhem in the Holy Land and beyond need to understand that they are not above the law. If this message is firmly delivered and enforced, there will be a better chance for peace.

Fourth, set a deadline linked to an ultimatum. Accept that the United States will frustrate any attempt by the UN Security Council to address the continuing impasse between Israel and the Palestinians. Organize a global conference outside the UN system to coordinate a decision to inform the parties to the dispute that if they cannot reach agreement in a year, one of two solutions will be imposed. Schedule a follow-up conference for a year later. The second conference would consider whether to recommend universal recognition of a Palestinian state in the area beyond Israel's 1967 borders or recognition of Israel's achievement of de jure as well as de facto sovereignty throughout Palestine (requiring Israel to grant all governed by it citizenship and equal rights at pain of international sanctions, boycott, and disinvestment). Either formula would force the parties to make a serious effort to strike a deal or to face the consequences of their recalcitrance. Either formula could be implemented directly by the states members of the international community. Admittedly, any serious deadline would provoke a political crisis in Israel and lead to diplomatic confrontation with the United States as well as Israel, despite the Obama Administration itself having proclaimed a one-year deadline in order to entice the Palestinians to tomorrow's talks. Yet both Israel and the United States would benefit immensely from peace with the Palestinians.

Time is running out. The two-state solution may already have been overtaken by Israeli land grabs and settlement activity. Another cycle of violence is likely in the offing. If so, it will not be local or regional, but global in its reach. Israel's actions are delegitimizing and isolating it even as they multiply the numbers of those in the region and beyond who are determined to destroy it. Palestinian suffering is a reproach to all humanity that posturing alone cannot begin to alleviate. It has become a cancer on the Islamic body politic. It is infecting every extremity of the globe with the rage against injustice that incites terrorism.

It is time to try new approaches. That is why the question of whether there is a basis for expanded diplomatic cooperation between Europeans and Arabs is such a timely one. And it is why I was pleased as well as honored to have been asked to set the stage for a discussion of this issue.

* Charles W. ("Chas") Freeman, Jr. (born 1943) is an American diplomat, author, and writer. He has served for the State and Defense Departments in many different capacities in the past thirty years, with the non-partisan Washington Report on Middle East Affairs calling his career "remarkably varied". He most notably worked as the main interpreter for Richard Nixon in his 1972 China visit and as the United States Ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1989 to 1992, where he dealt with issues related to the Gulf War. He is a past president of the Middle East Policy Council, co-chair of the U.S. China Policy Foundation, and vice-chair of the Atlantic Council. In February 2009, unnamed sources leaked to the news media, initially to The Politico, that Freeman was Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair's choice to chair the National Intelligence Council in the Barack Obama administration. After several weeks of shrieking criticisms, he angrily withdrew his name from the nomination, and he then charged the Israeli lobby for what he saw as a smear campaign against him.

By Michel Chossudovsky* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Humanity is at a dangerous crossroads. War preparations to attack Iran are in "an advanced state of readiness". Hi tech weapons systems including nuclear warheads are fully deployed.

This military adventure has been on the Pentagon's drawing board since the mid-1990s. First Iraq, then Iran according to a declassified 1995 US Central Command document.

Escalation is part of the military agenda. While Iran, is the next target together with Syria and Lebanon, this strategic military deployment also threatens North Korea, China and Russia.

Since 2005, the US and its allies, including America's NATO partners and Israel, have been involved in the extensive deployment and stockpiling of advanced weapons systems. The air defense systems of the US, NATO member countries and Israel are fully integrated.

This is a coordinated endeavor of the Pentagon, NATO, Israel's Defense Force (IDF), with the active military involvement of several non-NATO partner countries including the frontline Arab states (members of NATO's Mediterranean Dialogue and the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative), Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea, India, Indonesia, Singapore, Australia, among others. (NATO consists of 28 NATO member states Another 21 countries are members of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC), The Mediterranean Dialogue and the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative include ten Arab countries plus Israel.)

The roles of Egypt, the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia (within the extended military alliance) is of particular relevance. Egypt controls the transit of war ships and oil tankers through the Suez Canal. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States occupy the South Western coastlines of the Persian Gulf, the Straits of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman. In early June, "Egypt reportedly allowed one Israeli and eleven U.S. ships to pass through the Suez Canal in ....an apparent signal to Iran. ... On June 12, regional press outlets reported that the Saudis had granted Israel the right to fly over its airspace..." (Muriel Mirak Weissbach, Israel's Insane War on Iran Must Be Prevented., Global Research, July 31, 2010)

In post 9/11 military doctrine, this massive deployment of military hardware has been defined as part of the so-called "Global War on Terrorism", targeting "non-State" terrorist organizations including al Qaeda and so-called "State sponsors of terrorism",. including Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan.

The setting up of new US military bases, the stockpiling of advanced weapons systems including tactical nuclear weapons, etc. were implemented as part of the pre-emptive defensive military doctrine under the umbrella of the "Global War on Terrorism".

War and the Economic Crisis

The broader implications of a US-NATO Israel attack on Iran are far-reaching. The war and the economic crisis are intimately related. The war economy is financed by Wall Street, which stands as the creditor of the US administration. The US weapons producers are the recipients of the US Department of Defense multibillion dollar procurement contracts for advanced weapons systems. In turn, "the battle for oil" in the Middle East and Central Asia directly serves the interests of the Anglo-American oil giants.

The US and its allies are "beating the drums of war" at the height of a Worldwide economic depression, not to mention the most serious environmental catastrophe in World history. In a bitter twist, one of the major players (BP) on the Middle East Central Asia geopolitical chessboard, formerly known as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, is the instigator of the ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

Media Disinformation

Public opinion, swayed by media hype is tacitly supportive, indifferent or ignorant as to the likely impacts of what is upheld as an ad hoc "punitive" operation directed against Iran's nuclear facilities rather than an all out war. War preparations include the deployment of US and Israeli produced nuclear weapons. In this context, the devastating consequences of a nuclear war are either trivialised or simply not mentioned.

The "real crisis" threatening humanity, according to the media and the governments, is not war but global warming. The media will fabricate a crisis where there is no crisis: "a global scare" -- the H1N1 global pandemic-- but nobody seems to fear a US sponsored nuclear war.

The war on Iran is presented to public opinion as an issue among others. It is not viewed as a threat to "Mother Earth" as in the case of global warming. It is not front-page news. The fact that an attack on Iran could lead to escalation and potentially unleash a "global war" is not a matter of concern.

The Cult of Killing and Destruction

The global killing machine is also sustained by an imbedded cult of killing and destruction which pervades Hollywood movies, not to mention the prime time war and crime TV series on network television. This cult of killing is endorsed by the CIA and the Pentagon which also support (finance) Hollywood productions as an instrument of war propaganda:

"Ex-CIA agent Bob Baer told us, "There's a symbiosis between the CIA and Hollywood" and revealed that former CIA director George Tenet is currently, "out in Hollywood, talking to studios." (Matthew Alford and Robbie Graham, Lights, Camera... Covert Action: The Deep Politics of Hollywood, Global Research, January 31, 2009).

The killing machine is deployed at a global level, within the framework of the unified combat command structure. It is routinely upheld by the institutions of government, the corporate media and the mandarins and intellectuals of the New World Order in Washington's think tanks and strategic studies research institutes, as an unquestioned instrument of peace and global prosperity.

A culture of killing and violence has become imbedded in human consciousness.

War is broadly accepted as part of a societal process: The Homeland needs to be "defended" and protected.

"Legitimized violence" and extrajudicial killings directed against "terrorists" are upheld in western democracies, as necessary instruments of national security.

A "humanitarian war" is upheld by the so-called international community. It is not condemned as a criminal act. Its main architects are rewarded for their contributions to world peace.

With regard to Iran, what is unfolding is the outright legitimization of war in the name of an illusive notion of global security.

A "Pre-emptive" Aerial attack directed against Iran would lead to Escalation

At present there are three separate Middle East Central Asia war theaters: Iraq, Af-Pak, and Palestine.

Were Iran to be the object of a "pre-emptive" aerial attack by allied forces, the entire region, from the Eastern Mediterranean to China's Western frontier with Afghanistan and Pakistan, would flare up, leading us potentially into a World War III scenario.

The war would also extend into Lebanon and Syria.

It is highly unlikely that the bombings, if they were to be implemented, would be circumscribed to Iran's nuclear facilities as claimed by US-NATO official statements. What is more probable is an all out air attack on both military and civilian infrastructure, transport systems, factories, public buildings.

Iran, with an an estimated ten percent of global oil and gas reserves, ranks third after Saudi Arabia (25 %) and Iraq (11 %) in the size of its reserves. In comparison, the US possesses less than 2.8 % of global oil reserves. The oil reserves of the U.S. are estimated at less than 20 billion barrels. The broader region of the Middle East and Central Asia have oil reserves which are more than thirty times those of the U.S, representing more than 60% of the World's total reserves. (See Eric Waddell, The Battle for Oil, Global Research, December 2004).

Of significance is the recent discovery in Iran of the second largest known reserves of natural gas at Soumar and Halgan estimated at 12.4 trillion cubic feet.

Targeting Iran consists not only in reclaiming Anglo-American control over Iran's oil and gas economy, including pipeline routes, it also challenges the presence and influence of China and Russia in the region.

The planned attack on Iran is part of a coordinated global military road map. It is part of the Pentagon's "long war", a profit driven war without borders, a project of World domination, a sequence of military operations.

US-NATO military planners have envisaged various scenarios of military escalation. They are also acutely aware of the geopolitical implications, namely that the war could extend beyond the Middle East Central Asia region. The economic impacts on the oil markets, etc. have also been analyzed.

While Iran, Syria and Lebanon are the immediate targets, China, Russia, North Korea, not to mention Venezuela and Cuba are also the object of US threats.

At stake is the structure of military alliances. US-NATO-Israel military deployments including military exercises and drills conducted on Russia and China's immediate borders bear a direct relationship to the proposed war on Iran. These veiled threats, including their timing, constitute an obvious hint to the former powers of the Cold War era not to intervene in any way which could encroach upon a US-led attack on Iran.

Global Warfare

The medium term strategic objective is to target Iran and neutralize Iran's allies, through gunboat diplomacy. The longer term military objective is to directly target China and Russia.

While Iran is the immediate target, military deployment is by no means limited to the Middle East and Central Asia. A global military agenda has been formulated.

The deployment of coalition troops and advanced weapons systems by the US, NATO and its partners is occurring simultaneously in all major regions of the World.

The recent actions of the US military off the coast of North Korea including the conduct of war games are part of a global design.

Directed primarily against Russia and China, US, NATO and allied military exercises, war drills, weapons deployments, etc. are being conducted simultaneously in major geopolitical hotspots.

-The Korean Peninsula, the Sea of Japan, the Taiwan Straits, the South China Sea threatening China.

-The deployment of Patriot missiles in Poland, the early warning center in the Czech republic threatening Russia.

-Naval deployments in Bulgaria, Romania on the Black Sea, threatening Russia.

- US and NATO troops deployments in Georgia.

- A formidable naval deployment in the Persian Gulf including Israeli submarines directed against Iran.

Concurrently the Eastern Mediterranean, the Black Sea, the Caribbean, Central America and the Andean region of South America are areas of ongoing militarization. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the threats are directed against Venezuela and Cuba.

US "Military Aid"

In turn, large scale weapons transfers have been undertaken under the banner of US "military aid" to selected countries, including a 5 billion dollar arms deal with India which is intended to build India's capabilities directed against China. (Huge U.S.-India Arms Deal To Contain China, Global Times, July 13, 2010).

"[The] arms sales will improve ties between Washington and New Delhi, and, intentionally or not, will have the effect of containing China's influence in the region." quoted in Rick Rozoff, Confronting both China and Russia: U.S. Risks Military Clash With China In Yellow Sea, Global Research, July 16, 2010)

The US has military cooperation agreements with a number of South East Asian countries including Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia, involving "military aid" as well as the participation in U.S.-led war games in the Pacific Rim (July -August 2010). These agreements are supportive of weapons deployments directed against The People's Republic of China. (See Rick Rozoff, Confronting both China and Russia: U.S. Risks Military Clash With China In Yellow Sea, Global Research, July 16, 2010).

Similarly and more directly related to the planned attack on Iran, the US is arming the Gulf States (Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates) with land-based interceptor missiles, Patriot Advanced Capability-3 and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) as well as sea-based Standard Missile-3 interceptors installed on Aegis class warships in the Persian Gulf. (See Rick Rozoff, NATO's Role In The Military Encirclement Of Iran, Global Research, February 10, 2010).

The Timetable of Military Stockpiling and Deployment

What is crucial in regards to US weapons transfers to partner countries and allies is the actual timing of delivery and deployment. The launch of a US sponsored military operation would normally occur once these weapons systems are in place, effectively deployed with the implementation of personnel training. (e.g India).

What we are dealing with is a carefully coordinated global military design controlled by the Pentagon, involving the combined armed forces of more than forty countries. This global multinational military deployment is by far the largest display of advanced weapons systems in World history.

In turn, the US and its allies have established new military bases in different parts of the world. "The Surface of the Earth is Structured as a Wide Battlefield". (See Jules Dufour, The Worldwide Network of US Military Bases , Global Research, July 1, 2007).

The Unified Command structure divided up into geographic Combatant Commands is predicated on a strategy of militarization at the global level. "The US Military has bases in 63 countries. Brand new military bases have been built since September 11, 2001 in seven countries. In total, there are 255,065 US military personnel deployed Worldwide." (See Jules Dufour, The Worldwide Network of US Military Bases , Global Research, July 1, 2007.

Source: DefenseLINK-Unified Command Plan. (Click to enlarge)

World War III Scenario

"The World Commanders' Areas of Responsibility" (See Map above) defines the Pentagon's global military design, which is one of World conquest. This military deployment is occurring in several regions simultaneously under the coordination of the regional US Commands, involving the stockpiling of US made weapons systems by US forces and partner countries, some of which are former enemies, including Vietnam and Japan.

The present context is characterised by a global military build-up controlled by one World superpower, which is using its numerous allies to trigger regional wars.

In contrast, the Second World War was a conjunction of separate regional war theaters. Given the communications technologies and weapons systems of the 1940s, there was no strategic "real time" coordination in military actions between broad geographic regions

Global warfare is based on the coordinated deployment of a single dominant military power, which oversees the actions of its allies and partners.

With the exception of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Second World War was characterized by the use of conventional weapons. The planning of a global war relies on the militarization of outer space. Were a war directed against Iran to be launched, it would not only use nuclear weapons, the entire gamut of new advanced weapons systems, including Electrometric Weapons and Environmental Modification Techniques (ENMOD) would be used.

The United Nations Security Council

The UN Security Council adopted in early June a fourth round of sweeping sanctions against The Islamic Republic of Iran, which included an expanded arms embargo as well "tougher financial controls". In a bitter irony, this resolution was passed within days of the United Nations Secrity Council's outright refusal to adopt a motion condemning Israel for its attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in international waters.

Both China and Russia, pressured by the US, have endorsed the UNSC sanctions' regime, to their own detriment. Their decision within the UNSC contributes to weakening their own military alliance, the Shanghai Cooperation organization (SCO), in which Iran has observer status. The Security Council resolution freezes China and Russia's respective bilateral military cooperation and trade agreements with Iran. It has serious repercussions on Iran's air defense system which in part depends on Russian technology and expertise.

The Security Council resolution grants a de facto "green light" to wage a pre-emptive war against Iran.

The American Inquisition: Building a Political Consensus for War

In chorus, the Western media has branded Iran as a threat to global security in view of its alleged (non-existent) nuclear weapons program. Echoing official statements, the media is now demanding the implementation of punitive bombings directed against Iran so as to safeguard Israel's security.

The Western media is beating the drums of war. The purpose is to tacitly instil, through repeated media reports, ad nauseam, within people's inner consciousness, the notion that the Iranian threat is real and that the Islamic Republic should be "taken out".

A consensus building process to wage war is similar to the Spanish inquisition. It requires and demands submission to the notion that war is a humanitarian endeavor.

Known and documented, the real threat to global security emanates from the US-NATO-Israel alliance, yet realities in an inquisitorial environment are turned upside down: the warmongers are committed to peace, the victims of war are presented as the protagonists of war. Whereas in 2006, almost two thirds of Americans were opposed to military action against Iran, a recent Reuter-Zogby February 2010 poll suggests that 56 % of Americans favor a US-NATO military action against Iran.

Building a political consensus which is based on an outright lie cannot, however, rely solely on the official position of those who are the source of the lie.

The antiwar movement in the US, which has in part been infiltrated and co-opted, has taken on a weak stance with regard to Iran. The antiwar movement is divided. The emphasis has been on wars which have already occurred (Afghanistan, Iraq) rather than forcefully opposing wars which are being prepared and which are currently on the Pentagon's drawing board. Since the inauguration of the Obama administration, the antiwar movement has lost some of its impetus.

Moreover, those who actively oppose the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, do not necessarily oppose the conduct of "punitive bombings" directed Iran, nor do they categorize these bombings as an act of war, which could potentially be a prelude to World War III.

The scale of antiwar protest in relation to Iran has been minimal in comparison to the mass demonstrations which preceded the 2003 bombing and invasion of Iraq.

The real threat to global security emanates from the US-NATO-Israel alliance.

The Iran operation is not being opposed in the diplomatic arena by China and Russia; it has the support of the governments of the frontline Arab states which are integrated into the NATO sponsored Mediterranean dialogue. It also has the tacit support of Western public opinion.

We call upon people across the land, in America, Western Europe, Israel, Turkey and around the world to rise up against this military project, against their governments which are supportive of military action against Iran, against the media which serves to camouflage the devastating implications of a war against Iran.

The military agenda support a profit driven destructive global economic system which impoverishes large sectors of the world population.

This war is sheer madness.

World War III is terminal. Albert Einstein understood the perils of nuclear war and the extinction of life on earth, which has already started with the radioactive contamination resulting from depleted uranium. "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

The media, the intellectuals, the scientists and the politicians, in chorus, obfuscate the untold truth, namely that war using nuclear warheads destroys humanity, and that this complex process of gradual destruction has already commenced.

When the lie becomes the truth there is no turning backwards.

When war is upheld as a humanitarian endeavor, Justice and the entire international legal system are turned upside down: pacifism and the antiwar movement are criminalized. Opposing the war becomes a criminal act.

The Lie must be exposed for what it is and what it does.

It sanctions the indiscriminate killing of men, women and children.

It destroys families and people. It destroys the commitment of people towards their fellow human beings.

It prevents people from expressing their solidarity for those who suffer. It upholds war and the police state as the sole avenue.

It destroys both nationalism and internationalism.

Breaking the lie means breaking a criminal project of global destruction, in which the quest for profit is the overriding force.

This profit driven military agenda destroys human values and transforms people into unconscious zombies.

Let us reverse the tide.

Challenge the war criminals in high office and the powerful corproate lobby groups wich support them

Break the American inquisition.

Undermine the US-NATO-Israel military crusade.

Close down the weapons factories and the military bases.

Bring home the troops.

Members of the armed forces should disobey orders and refuse to participate in a criminal war.

Part II of this essay published here.

Towards a World War III Scenario? The Role of Israel in Triggering an Attack on Iran (Part II The Military Road Map)

* Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal. He is the author of The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003) and America's "War on Terrorism" (2005). He is also a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His writings have been published in more than twenty languages.