ZGram - 9/10/2002 - "Bush is intent on painting allies and enemies in the Middle East as evil"

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

September 10, 2002

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

As war hysteria is being fanned by strategically positioned Israeli 
lobbyists inside and outside of government, in the media, in the 
think tanks and the tax exempt foundations of America, the Voices of 
Reason are dimmed.  The male and female Monica Lewinskys and Chandra 
Levys in the back rooms and offices of various congressmen and 
senators and moles inside America's vast state bureaucracies nudge, 
push and shove this lumbering country into yet one more war - a war 
America cannot afford.

If Sharon and his zealots want to exercise their religious mania, let 
them fight on their own.  Eretz Israel is their goal - that is hardly 
an American strategic interest!

Has America not learned from two world wars?  Why fight a third - to 
pull the chestnuts out of the fire once more for Israel?

Reporter Robert Fisk is another Voice of Reason, an on-the-ground 
Middle East expert who has traveled widely and interviewed all the 
major political players in every country:

[START]

Bush is intent on painting allies and enemies in the Middle East as evil

By Robert Fisk

10 September 2002

Just as Americans are recovering from the harrowing television 
re-runs of the 11 September attacks, their President is going to 
launch the biggest reshaping of the Middle East since the British and 
French parcelled out the Arab lands after the 1914-18 war. When he 
addresses the United Nations on Thursday, George Bush will be 
threatening not only Iraq - which had absolutely nothing to do with 
the crimes against humanity in New York and Washington - but Syria, 
Iran and, by extension, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

The Syrian Accountability Act, which accuses Damascus of supporting 
"terrorism", will come into force as President Bush is speaking and 
will follow only days after the State Department branded the Lebanese 
Hizbollah as the "A-team of terrorism", more dangerous even than 
Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida. Like Iraq, the Hizbollah had nothing to 
do with the 11 September attacks - indeed, they were among the first 
to condemn them - but the White House now seems set on painting 
allies and enemies alike in the Middle East as a focus of evil.

Only The Nation among all of America's newspapers and magazines has 
dared to point out that a large number of former Israeli lobbyists 
are now working within the American administration and the Bush plans 
for the Middle East - which could cause a massive political upheaval 
in the Arab world - fit perfectly into Israel's own dreams for the 
region. The magazine listed Vice-President Dick Cheney - the 
arch-hawk in the US administration - and John Bolton, now 
under-secretary of state for Arms Control, with Douglas Feith, the 
third most senior executive at the Pentagon, as members of the 
advisory board of the pro-Israeli Jewish Institute for National 
Security Affairs (Jinsa) before joining the Bush government. Richard 
Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board, is still an 
adviser on the institute, as is the former CIA director James Woolsey.

Michael Ledeen, described by The Nation as "one of the most 
influential 'Jinsans' in Washington" has been calling for "total war" 
against "terror" - with "regime change" for Syria, Iran, Iraq, Saudi 
Arabia and the Palestinian Authority. Mr Perle advises the Defence 
Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld - who refers to the West Bank and Gaza as 
"the so-called occupied territories" - and arranged the anti-Saudi 
"kernel of evil" briefing by Laurent Murawiec that so outraged the 
Saudi royal family last month. The Saudi regime may itself be in 
great danger as the princes of the House of Saud attempt to seize 
more power for themselves in advance of the depart-ure of the dying 
King Fahd.

Jinsa's website says it exists to "inform the American defence and 
foreign affairs community about the important role Israel can and 
does play in bolstering democratic interests in the Mediterranean and 
the Middle East". Next month, Michael Rubin of the right-wing and 
pro-Israeli American Enterprise Institute - who referred to the 
outgoing UN human rights commissioner Mary Robinson as an abettor of 
"terrorism" - joins the US Defence Department as an Iran-Iraq 
"expert".

According to The Nation, Irving Moskovitz, the California bingo 
magnate who has funded settlements in the Israeli-occupied 
territories, is a donor as well as a director of Jinsa.

President Bush, of course, will not be talking about the influence of 
these pro-Israeli lobbyists when he presents his vision of the Middle 
East at the United Nations on Thursday.

Nor will he give the slightest indication that the region is, in the 
words of its own kings and dictators, a powder keg of resentment and 
anger. The tectonic plates of the Arab world are now grinding with 
increasing violence. Into this political earthquake zone, Mr Bush now 
seems intent on leading his country, with his loyal British ally.

Most of today's Arab nations were fashioned out of the ruins of the 
Ottoman Empire by Britain and France in the aftermath of the First 
World War - and Palestinians still blame Britain today for supporting 
the formation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

Both European nations stationed tens of thousands of troops across 
the region, suppressing Arab revolts in Palestine, Syria and Lebanon 
- itself created by the French at the request of its Christian 
Maronite community. The whole colonial framework led to the loss of 
tens of thousands of lives before both the British and French 
retreated from the Middle East.

Now President Bush seems set on following the colonial powers into 
the region for another military and political adventure - ostensibly 
to spread "democracy" among those nations it most despises (Iraq, 
Palestine and Iran) but in fact more likely to increase American 
control of an increasingly anti-Western Arab world.

The Arabs themselves warn that this will lead to massive instability 
and widespread violence. The Israelis - and their allies in the US 
administration - are hell bent on the whole shebang.

[END]

(Source: 
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=332011)