Sidney Blumenthal of Salon.com reported yesterday on efforts by the Cheney cabal to use the Israel-Hezbollah conflict to execute the "Clean Break" strategy. "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," was authored in 1996 by, among others, neoconservative luminaries Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser. Written at the request of then incoming Likud Party Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, "A Clean Break" proposed rejection of the Oslo agreements and "weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria."
The neocon "core," eager to apply military force against Syria and Iran, has lambasted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's attempts at diplomacy in the Middle East, accusing her of being "incompetent" and of having "reversed the administration's national security and foreign policy agenda."
One has to wonder if this attack on Rice isn't part of a greater neoconservative stratagem. I certainly agree that she's hapless--at least from appearances--but she's hapless in a way that's channeling events in the Middle East in the direction the neocons want it to go: toward an expansion of the present hostilities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon into a full blown regional conflict.
She's made unreasonable demands of Iran, telling the country the U.S. won't negotiate with it until it halts its energy uranium enrichment program, something it has an "inalienable right" to do under the UN Non-Proliferation Treaty. And her handling of the Israel-Hezbollah situation has been a non-stop string of stumbles and fumbles. She doesn't want a cease-fire one minute, she does want a cease-fire the next. We want Syria to do something about Hezbollah, but we refuse to talk directly to the Syrians about what exactly we want them to do. Rice tries to present herself as an "honest broker" in the Israel-Hezbollah negotiations even though the government she represents has been backing Israel by re-supplying it with precision guided bombs and signal intelligence from the National Security Agency.
But who's really calling the shots on the cease-fire conditions? Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told British Prime Minister Tony Blair that he won't consider a cease-fire until an international peacekeeping force deploys along the Israel-Lebanon and Lebanon-Syria borders. Jean-Marc de La Sabliere, France's ambassador to the UN, has balked at that idea, as well he should have. Putting a peacekeeping force in place before all belligerents concerned have agreed to a cease-fire is textbook insanity. Despite his lack of military experience, Olmert should know that. So should Condi Rice. So should John Bolton. So should Dick Cheney and Richard Perle and Tony Blair and the rest of them.
Once again, we're seeing peace being "negotiated" around impossible conditions.
Conclusion? The people driving the bus are unforgivably incompetent or they're bound and determined to ensure peace doesn't happen. And just maybe they're using Condi Rice, along with Syria and Iran, as the fall guys and gal they can point the finger at when they say, "See? We tried diplomacy and it didn't work."
Lurking at the bottom of the oracle's bowl is the story--one that apparently originated in Aljazeera--that the go ahead for the Israeli operation against Hezbollah was agreed upon by Netenyahu, Likud Knesset member Natan Sharansky and Dick Cheney at an American Enterprise Institute conference held in mid-June.
Speaking of oracle's bowls, Wayne Madsen of Global Research and other media outlets says:
Our Washington sources claim that the U.S.-supported invasions of Gaza and Lebanon and the impending attacks on Syria and Iran represent the suspected event" predicted to take place prior to the November election in the United States and is an attempt to rally the American public around the Bush-Cheney regime during a time of wider war.
I don't know who Wayne Madsen's "Washington sources" are, or if they're any more credible than Sidney Blumenthal's sources. But I do know that what they're telling Madsen and Blumenthal fits in with the rest of the "neo-connect the dots" picture.
I just hope Madsen and Blumenthal aren't being used as part of a broader disinformation campaign. That would fit in with the neo-connect the dots picture too.
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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.
Ironically I'm listening to Dire Straits...hmmm.
ReplyDelete"they're bound and determined to ensure peace doesn't happen." inspite of logical outcomes to the contrary and at the peril of many innocent and unsuspecting lives.
Yep.
ReplyDeleteAnd the real sad part is that I'm more inclined to believe Madsen and AJ than I am to believe anything that comes out of Israel or the Bush administration.
No peace. Peace bad.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=background.view&backgroundid=00114
"Fundamentalists do not want a humanely constructed peace; many, indeed, regard the UN as the abode of the Antichrist. The willingness of the U.S. to turn a blind eye to the suffering of innocent people in Lebanon will certainly fuel the rage of the extremists and lead to further acts of terror. We can only hope that it does not take us all the way to Armageddon."
P.S. A.C. is for sissies. ;)
Kerstin
Hey, we just had a two minute power outage here, and the dogs and I almost went into colvulsions!
ReplyDeleteI saw somewhere today that one of the things the protestors were saying and displaying in Bagdhad was this "Saddam and Bush, two faces of the same coin."
ReplyDeleteDo you think the neo-conartists would get that?
Why would they start "getting it" now? ;-)
ReplyDeleteCmdr,
ReplyDeleteThis is treason plain and simple on the part of our unelected officals and their cabal. Lining Cheney and the rest of his scum up against a wall with a firing squad would be too good for them. Then publicly burning their gasoline soaked bodies in 55 gal drums would still be too good for these bastards.
Netenyahu sabotaged the Wye River accords by demanding the unconditional release of their spy Jonathan Pollard who had given the Israelis our top secret missle targeting coordinates of Russian targets. The Israelis then turned around and gave this info to the Soviets in exchange for more Russian Jews to be allowed to emigrate to Israel. They then set up more settlements in Israeli occupied territory that they were supposed to be withdrawing from.
The neocons in the US and Israel do not want to even think about any kind of a reasonable peace and it is evident they never have.. The fact that the government of this country is willingly allowing itself to be whored and stolen blind by a foreign government is treason. Flat out treason.
Buzz Meeks
The GOP- Selling Out America One Day at a Time
Buzz,
ReplyDeleteThe thing that frustrates me is that I can't tell how much of the Cheney-Netenyahu story is true. We've got something of a credibility difference, I think, between Blumenthal and Madsen, and yet their stories seem to support each other.
The money quote is Blumenthal's last line:
ReplyDelete"Secretly devising a scheme that might thrust Israel into a ring of fire cannot be construed as a blunder. It is a deliberate, calculated and methodical plot."
The neoconjobs will not be satisfied until the entire world erupts in a conflagration beyond our wildest imagination.
Some people look at the planet and see beauty and joy and a miracle of life, while others see only bombing targets and populations to be subjugated and money to be extracted. We have placed all power into the hands of the second group, so what other outcome can we expect?
I agree, Kathleen. The "world as a target set."
ReplyDeletethe zero sum ante
ReplyDelete