Congress Barters Lives for Cash?

[AlicetheKurious]

All links in original.


WHAT IS THE PRICE
FOR YOUR CHILD'S LIFE?

Michael Rivero

No, seriously, how much would you charge me to let me kill your kid? I'll make up a whole batch of comfortable lies about it so you can assuage your guilt when your kid comes home in a cheap box with a cheaper flag draped over it, but, c'mon, let's talk money here. How much?

No?

Ummm, okay, how much will you charge me to let someone else's kids get killed? Better deal, huh? You don't have to know them, and I'll try to make sure you don't have to see them.

...

I know the above sounds absurd, but this deal has indeed been made. In exchange for money, a certain group of people have agreed to let your kids be killed. That group is the United States Congress. And for the last several years, many of them have been accepting money from AIPAC, a supposed lobbying group that stands exposed as a spy operation for a foreign government, in order to promote that foreign government's agenda, which includes war in the Mideast, waged against that foreign government's enemies.

This selling of America's children to a foreign government to be that government's mercenaries has to rank as the greatest single betrayal of a people by their government in all of history. So, let is take it one step at a time.

First off, let us follow the money. There is no question that US Congressmen have been accepting money from pro-Israel lobbyists, AIPAC chief among them. This is beyond doubt, as even the Congressional financial disclosure records record the amounts given and accepted.

There is no doubt that AIPAC exerts control over the US Government. Indeed back in 1992, the then-head of AIPAC, David Steiner, boasted that he had influence over who would be the next Secretary of State, and had already "cut a deal" with Baker for more aid to Israel. When the scandal became public, Steiner was forced to resign.

Despite this scandal, and despite the fact that the current AIPAC spy investigation has been going on for more than two years, US Representatives and Senators continued to accept money from an organization they knew was under investigation for espionage against the United States.

How does that money influence the US Government?

Let us look at what Israel wants.

Israel says US will attack Iraq in May

Israel Says War on Iraq Would Benefit the Region

Attack Iraq soon, Sharon aide says

Israel Urges US to Attack Iraq: "Sooner, Rather than Later"

Israel To U.S.: Don't Delay Iraq Attack

Cheney Admits US will attack Iraq 'for Israel's sake'

AIPAC is pushing for the USA to attack Iran for Israel

AIPAC is pushing for the USA to attack Iran for Israel

AIPAC spurring Congress to pass sanctions bill against Iran

Israel says Iran close to having a nuclear bomb

Israel warns on Iranian "nightmare"

Iran the next nuclear threat

Sharon stirs up conflict with Syria and Iran

Iran, Libya, Syria are next?

Israel instructs America to attack Iran and Syria

ISRAEL DEMANDS IRAN BE ATTACKED NEXT AFTER IRAQ

Syria's Next

US Assures Israel That Syria And Iran Are Next

War is not in U.S. interest

Sharon Recruits US Mercenaries Against Syria

Sharon Wants U.S. Action Against Syria

Iraqi WMD 'possibly in Syria'

Syria rejects Iraqi weapons claims

Sharon Says US Should Also Disarm Iran, Libya and Syria

Israel urges harder int'l line towards Iran

Israeli foreign minister calls for international action against Iran in light of elections

Israelis urge U.S. to stop Iran's nuke goals

It would be a “catastrophe” for the United States to pull out of Iraq, a leading Israeli legislator warned.

'Israel will take out Iran's nuke facilities if US does not'

According to al-Watan, Israel made it clear that it would only be able to wait until a certain date next year and would strike at Iran if no progress is made by that time.

Israel says Syria regime change in world's interest

Israeli officials call for changes in Syrian rule

Israeli leaders call for regime change in Syria after assassination report

Sharon blasts Syria-Iran 'axis of evil'

Israeli Says Rockets Shipped to Hezbollah

Israeli Says Iran Nuclear Race Reaches Point of No Return

Sharon: Israel will not accept nuclear Iran

Sharon: Iran nukes may require military response

IDF chief: Diplomatic pressure on Iran unlikely to succeed

Israel expands war arsenal to deal with Iranian nuclear threat

Israeli Aides Warn U.S. Not To Drop Ball on Iran

Zionists pressures Bush Administration to attack Iran's nuclear facilities

MK: Iran to have nuclear capability within 2 years

Israel Wants West to Deal More Urgently With Iran

Iran must be stopped before it develops nuclear weapons

Israel tries to make Russia approve sanctions against Iran

ISRAEL: Iran is world's most serious threat since WWII

ISRAEL: US not doing enough to stop Iran

Israel Says US Should Take Lead in Dealing With Iran's Nuclear Program

From the above, it is obvious that Israel wants war in the Mideast, a war that someone else will have to fight for them.

Is that why we are in Iraq? Because Israel wanted it?

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, speaking through his creation Sherlock Holmes, said, "When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however unlikely, must be the truth.

So, let us take a closer look at the current war in Iraq, a war we were told was fought over weapons of mass destruction, to avenge 9-11, and to punish Saddam for supporting Al Qaeda.

First off, there never were any weapons of mass destruction. Bush and his Neocon (i.e. pro-Israeli) advisors openly admit that now, and try to claim it was all an honest mistake. Yet the recently leaked Downing Street Memo makes it clear that Bush simply issued an order to go to war, and (as the memo put it) "fixed" the intelligence around that decision. So, the war in Iraq is not about weapons of mass destruction. There weren't any. Saddam was not in defiance of United Nations Resolutions. The claim that he was was a lie.

As for 9-11, no evidence has surfaced linking Saddam to 9-11. Even if one accepts the official story of 9-11, none of the named suspects were Iraqi or had links to Iraq. So, the war in Iraq is not about 9-11. It never was.

Was it necessary to invade Iraq to punish Saddam for supporting Al Qaeda? In point of fact, Al Qaeda and Saddam were political enemies, with Al Qaeda favoring theocratic rule while Saddam's was a secular government. And, at least some of Al Qaeda are really Mossad agents playing deception games. So, the war in Iraq had nothing to do with Saddam's supposed links to Al Qaeda.

Was it oil? A very popular theory is that Iraq is an oil war, brought about by declining supplies and the inability of the US to meet rising prices (having lost much of its manufacturing capability over the last 30 years). Yet this explanation for Iraq is also deeply flawed, for Bush is spending $10 billion a month in Iraq to extract out only $150 million in oil. Were oil the true objective, it would have been far cheaper to simply buy it from Iraq.

So, what is left? We have eliminated the impossible, Dr. Watson! What is left? Look above the statements made by Israel's supporters! Who wanted this war?

According to Philip Zelikov, a senior Bush aide, the war in Iraq was fought for Israel. That was the real reason all along. A foreign government wanted the US Government to send YOUR children off to fight in the deserts of Iraq. And the US Government agreed to, and worse, still does!

Recently, representatives Abercrombie and Kucinich introduced legislation into the US Congress to set an end for the Iraq war. One would assume that with the official reasons for the war lying in tatters that such legislation would pass immediately, but in a quite revealing move, the US House of Representatives voted down the measure, voting in essence to continue the war in Iraq which has cost so many lives. Why? What could motivate them to continue a war whose official reasons for being have been so thoroughly discredited?

Perhaps the following might prove enlightening. It is a list of many of the representatives who voted against ending the Iraq war, paired with the amount of money they have accepted from pro-Israeli PACS, including AIPAC, the group at the heart of the Israeli spy scandal.

Aderholt 13,500
Alexander 7,500
Andrews 35,250
Bachus 12,500
Bean 1,000
Berkley 201,455
Bishop (NY) 2,000
Bishop (UT) 2,500
Blunt 30,850
Boehlert 6,500
Bonilla 5,000
Brown,
Corrine 8,600
Brown-Waite,
Ginny 2,300
Burton (IN) 70,000
Cantor 74,980
Capito 4,250
Cardoza 16,000
Case 2,000
Chandler 13,500
Chocola 8,000
Cole (OK) 5,000
Costa 1,000
Cramer 44,800
Crowley 41,500
Culberson 1,500
Cunningham Davis (AL) 68,067
Davis (CA) 8,163
Davis (FL) 3,600
Davis (TN) 3,000
Davis, Tom 16,000
DeLauro 43,400
DeLay 81,050
Dent 5,000
Diaz-Balart, L. 10,000
Dicks 23,850
Edwards 18,350
Engel 137,918
Everett 15,000
Feeney 1,000
Ferguson 4,500
Fitzpatrick (PA)
Forbes 2,000
Ford 10,000
Frelinghuysen 6,250
Graves 5,000
Harman 1,000
Herseth 12,900
Holden 9,500
Hoyer 92,275
Hunter 36,350
Israel 17,000
Jindal 1,500
Johnson (IL) 4,500
Kanjorski 16,600
Keller 5,000
Kennedy (MN) 67,120
Kirk 42,068
Knollenberg 23,750
Kolbe 43,000
Langevin 10,500
Lantos 107,250
Larsen (WA) 8,500
Levin 113,727
Lowey 109,738
Lucas 11,000
Mack 1,000
Marshall 8,000
Matheson 19,000
McCotter 10,000
Meek (FL) 7,000
Miller (FL) 2,500
Moore (KS) 26,176
Murphy 1,000
Pelosi 57,450
Putnam 4,500
Rehberg 1,500
Reichert Renzi Reyes Reynolds Rogers (AL) 8,000
Rogers (KY) 7,500
Rogers (MI) 2,250
Ros-Lehtinen 73,490
Ross 14,000
Ruppersberger 8,750
Sanchez, Loretta 36,700
Saxton 71,900
Schiff 23,417
Sessions 2,000
Shays 10,850
Sherwood 2,250
Simmons 14,500
Skelton 65,450
Smith (NJ) 51,750
Sweeney 2,000
Udall (CO) 11,250
Walsh 15,550
Wamp 2,000
Weller 26,400
Wilson (NM) 15,500

Now, to be honest, not everyone who voted against ending the war received money from pro-israel lobbying groups. Some voted out of party loyalty to Bush, and it may be assumed that some engaged in "log rolling", a practice whereby legislators will trade votes on legislation to avoid embarrassing vote records. Still others may be blackmailed. It should be noted that some of the representatives are first-term members for whom contribution data has not yet been collected together.

But it should be obvious that pro-Israeli PAC money has been spent on Congressmen in enough quantity to control the ultimate outcome, and each and every member of Congress who accepted money from AIPAC and then voted against ending the war has taken money from an organization that is spying for a foreign government, to sell YOUR children to fight and die in a war that foreign government desired.

We know that this is true because there is no other reason for the war. There were no WMDs. Iraq was neither linked to Al Qaeda nor linked to 9-11. The oil does not make economic sense. What is left?

What is left?

Now, you think about that as US politicians start to try to sell you a new war in Iran. Your kids, your brothers, your husbands, are a commodity that the US Congress (whose own family members are safe) are selling for campaign cash. That is slavery. That is NOT what our young men and women signed up to join the military to be; chattel to be bartered around the globe.

Is that not the ultimate betrayal?

Link

Netanyahu to prioritize Iran issue at Obama meeting

Sources busy consolidating data for prime minister's upcoming visit to Washington say Palestinian issue secondary to threat of nuclear Tehran...

Roni Sofer
Published: 05.03.09, 09:47 / Israel News


"The Obama Administration will put forth new peace initiatives only if Israel wants it to...Believe me, America accepts all our decisions."

- Avigdor Lieberman, until 10 years ago a Moldavian nightclub bouncer, today Israel's Foreign Minister.

[AlicetheKurious]

Related piece by Sibel Edmonds: "Congress Rotten At Its Core"

[hava1]

alice, good to see you back and hoping all is well with you and yours.

i left the internet...appears to me now as the latest version of active, ritualisticly dangerous idolatry. anyway, i sometimes browse, and happy to see you alive and kicking.

yes, apropos aipac etc. - its all rotten to its core. waste of good time.

appears that my little adventure in sinai a few months back, was a shamanic pathfinding... egypt and israel, rather mubarack and israeli gov are on a honeymoon ever since.

come visit us here in israel

[stefano]

Bush is spending $10 billion a month in Iraq to extract out only $150 million in oil. Were oil the true objective, it would have been far cheaper to simply buy it from Iraq.

What a stupid thing to say. The $10 bn a month flows from the US Treasury (theoretically taxpayers' money), through the military, to private contractors, companies that have as much heft in Washington as AIPAC. "Bush" wasn't paying, nor was "Bush" making margins on the oil extraction. His friends, however, were raking it in on both sides of the deal.

Not unrelated is the fact that a whole chunk of US aid to Israel ultimately gets spent on products from US companies.

[AlicetheKurious]

What a stupid thing to say. The $10 bn a month flows from the US Treasury (theoretically taxpayers' money), through the military, to private contractors, companies that have as much heft in Washington as AIPAC.

Well, whether the contractors have "as much heft in Washington as AIPAC" is highly doubtful. It would be interesting to see if you can offer any evidence to support that assessment. Also,

It is important to note that the Israel lobby is much more than AIPAC (American-Israel Public Affairs Committee), which primarily focuses on Congress and directs funding from Jewish PACs and individuals to those politicians it considers to be deserving. Its other more visible components are the biggest Jewish organizations, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and the American Jewish Congress, but there are also a number of others, not the least of which is the extreme right wing Zionist Organization of America, which at the moment is extremely influential in Washington.

All of these organizations form part of the Council of Presidents of Major Jewish American Organizations, whose current president is Mortimer Zuckerman, owner of the NY Daily News and US News and World Report. Its job is to lobby the President. At the grass-roots you have hundreds of local Jewish federations and councils that cultivate the support of city councilors and supervisors and select the more promising among them to run for Congress, assured that they will be solid votes for Israel.

While not officially part of the lobby, since the establishment of Israel in 1948, the AFL-CIO has been one of its most solid cornerstones. It has provided millions of dollars for pro-Israel Democrats; it has blocked all international efforts to punish Israel for its exploitation and abuse of Palestinian workers, and it has encouraged its member unions to invest millions of dollars of their pension funds in State of Israel Bonds, thereby linking their members’ retirement to the health of the Israeli economy. Over the past year, the lobby has cemented ties with the Christian evangelical right, which gives it clout in states where there are few Jews and access to hundreds of thousands of new donors to Israel’s cause.

– Jeffrey Blankfort Link


On May 2 the Senate, in a vote of 94 to 2, and the House, 352 to 21, expressed unqualified support for Israel in its recent military actions against the Palestinians. The resolutions were so strong that the Bush Administration--hardly a slouch when it comes to supporting Israel--attempted to soften its language so as to have more room in getting peace talks going. But its pleas were rejected, and members of Congress from Joe Lieberman to Tom DeLay competed to heap praise on Ariel Sharon and disdain on Yasir Arafat. Reporting on the vote, the New York Times noted that one of the few dissenters, Senator Ernest Hollings of South Carolina, "suggested that many senators were after campaign contributions."

Aside from that brief reference, however, the Times made no mention of the role that money, or lobbying in general, may have played in the lopsided vote. More specifically, the Times made no mention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. It's a remarkable oversight. AIPAC is widely regarded as the most powerful foreign-policy lobby in Washington. Its 60,000 members shower millions of dollars on hundreds of members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. It also maintains a network of wealthy and influential citizens around the country, whom it can regularly mobilize to support its main goal, which is making sure there is "no daylight" between the policies of Israel and of the United States.

So, when Congress votes so decisively in support of Israel, it's no accident. Yet, surveying US newspaper coverage of the Middle East in recent months, I found next to nothing about AIPAC and its influence. The one account of any substance appeared in the Washington Post, in late April. Reporting on AIPAC's annual conference, correspondent Mike Allen noted that the attendees included half the Senate, ninety members of the House and thirteen senior Administration officials, including White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, who drew a standing ovation when he declared in Hebrew, "The people of Israel live." Showing its "clout," Allen wrote, AIPAC held "a lively roll call of the hundreds of dignitaries, with individual cheers for each." Even this article, however, failed to probe beneath the surface and examine the lobbying and fundraising techniques AIPAC uses to lock up support in Congress.

AIPAC is not the only pro-Israel organization to escape scrutiny. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, though little known to the general public, has tremendous influence in Washington, especially with the executive branch. Based in New York, the conference is supposed to give voice to the fifty-two Jewish organizations that sit on its board, but in reality it tends to reflect the views of its executive vice chairman, Malcolm Hoenlein.

Hoenlein has long had close ties to Israel's Likud Party. In the 1990s he helped raise money for settlers' groups on the West Bank, and today he regularly refers to that region as "Judea and Samaria," a biblically inspired catch phrase used by conservatives to justify the presence of Jewish settlers there. A skilled and articulate operative, Hoenlein uses his access to the State Department, Pentagon and National Security Council to push for a strong Israel. He's so effective at it that the Jewish newspaper the Forward, in its annual list of the fifty most important American Jews, has ranked Hoenlein first.

Hoenlein showed his organizing skills in April, when he helped convene the large pro-Israel rally on Capitol Hill. While the event itself was widely covered, Hoenlein, and the conference, remained invisible. An informal survey of recent coverage turned up not a single in-depth piece about Hoenlein and how he has used the Presidents Conference to keep the Bush Administration from putting too much pressure on the Sharon government. ...

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020610/massing


There are also powerful individual donors whose sole focus is "what is good for Israel", led by Chaim Saban:

Israeli billionaire Saban biggest donor to US politicians

Communications tycoon has donated at least USD 13 million to American politicians. As a close friend of the Clintons he contributed to the Democrats, but President Bush has not been deprived either

Itamar Eichner
Published: 01.23.07, 10:07 / Israel Money

Israeli billionaire and media mogul Haim Saban is at the top of the list of donors to political campaigns in the US.

Fox Network revealed over the weekend that Saban has donated approximately USD 13 million to various candidates.

According to the report, Saban, a close friend of the Clintons, is one of the major donors to the Democratic Party, though he has also
contributed to republican candidates, including President George Bush and Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger. ...

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/1,7340 ... 86,00.html



Why is all that money being paid by Israeli agents to U.S. politicians?

AIPAC devotes so much of its activity to support of candidates for Congress that it has become known simply as “The Lobby” on Capitol Hill. This is a tribute not only to its seemingly unlimited financial resources, but also to its effective focus on a single issue, Israel. Most of all, AIPAC has acquired its reputation as the most formidable special interest lobby on the Hill by the remarkable manner in which it has organized itself to re-elect incumbent members of Congress who follow its voting recommendations, and to punish those who don’t by funding an electable opponent from the same party in the primaries and, if that is not successful, an electable opponent from the opposing party in the general election.

http://www.ameu.org/page.asp?iid=97&aid=134&pg=9

Is it a coincidence that U.S. policy just happens to be whatever Israel wants it to be?


On July 18 [2006], the Senate unanimously approved a nonbinding resolution "condemning Hamas and Hezbollah and their state sponsors and supporting Israel's exercise of its right to self-defense." After House majority leader John Boehner removed language from the bill urging "all sides to protect innocent civilian life and infrastructure," the House version passed by a landslide, 410 to 8.

AIPAC not only lobbied for the resolution; it had written it. "They [Congress] were given a resolution by AIPAC," said former Carter Administration National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who addressed the House Democratic Caucus on July 19. "They didn't prepare one."

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060814/aipacs_hold


Look at the list of headlines in my previous post. Why does Israel get away with dictating to the American people and to the American government what their interests are, and what their foreign policy objectives should be?

Is there any other country that could get away with practically ordering America to go to war, and supplying a hit-list? Even drafting bills to be passed by Congress?

From a PBS interview with then-candidate Mike Gravel, in 2007:

RAY SUAREZ: You're saying that the national legislature of this country, rather than doing the will of the citizens of the United States, passed that Iran resolution, sanctioning the Republican Guard, because of the American- Israeli Political Action Committee?

MIKE GRAVEL: Wait a second. They'll be some information coming out about how this thing was drafted. So the answer is yes, the short answer.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics ... 10-01.html

Private contractors presumably don't much care where they make money, as long as they make money. If private contractors were indeed shaping America's foreign policy, how likely is it that this foreign policy would just happen to coincide exactly with zionist objectives?

YOU may not know who really calls the shots in American politics, but your president sure does:

It's a Mitzvah

The presumptive Democratic nominee wowed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

A bisel of pandering on Israel? Yes, he can. (Nikki Kahn - The Washington Post)

By Dana Milbank
Thursday, June 5, 2008; Page A03

Now, here's a change we can believe in.

A mere 12 hours after claiming the Democratic presidential nomination, Barack Obama appeared before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee yesterday -- and changed himself into an Israel hard-liner.

He promised $30 billion in military assistance for Israel. He declared that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force has "rightly been labeled a terrorist organization." He used terms such as "false prophets of extremism" and "corrupt" while discussing Palestinians. And he promised that "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided."

Vowing to stop Tehran from getting a nuclear weapon, the newly minted nominee apparent added: "I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally, Israel. Do not be confused."

How could they be confused? As a pandering performance, it was the full Monty by a candidate who, during the primary, had positioned himself to Hillary Clinton's left on matters such as Iran. Yesterday, Obama, who has generally declined to wear an American-flag lapel pin, wore a joint U.S.-Israeli pin, and even tried a Hebrew phrase on the crowd.

Obama even outdid President Bush in his pro-Israel sentiments. On the very day that Obama vowed to protect Jerusalem as Israel's capital -- drawing a furious denunciation from the Palestinian Authority -- Bush announced that he was suspending a move of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.

The transformation -- mostly in tone, but occasionally in substance -- might qualify as what Obama likes to call the same old Washington "okey-doke." And the candidate is uncomfortable with such things, as evidenced by his struggle to pronounce the name of the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It came out as "Mahmoud . . . Ahmin -- Ahmeninejad."
...
He got right to the "provocative e-mails" that have been spreading lies about him being a Muslim plant and other such things. "Let me know if you see this guy named Barack Obama, because he sounds pretty scary," the candidate said, reassuring the crowd that he is "a true friend of Israel."

Indeed, he almost sounded as if he were Jewish. "I had grown up without a sense of roots," he explained. "I understood the Zionist idea, that there is always a homeland at the center of our story." [Note that this is an AMERICAN presidential candidate, speaking to AMERICAN voters, yet implying that their "homeland" is elsewhere -- Alice]
...
Israel's military action last year "was entirely justified," Obama said, to knock out Syria's "weapons of mass destruction" program. "The danger from Iran is grave, it is real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat," he added.

The Superman music soon returned, and the man with the Star of David on his lapel left the dais in a shower of hugs and kisses from the AIPAC officers.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 03508.html

While it's true that American private contractors are opportunists who profit from America's subservience to zionist warmongers, it is not true that the former "have as much heft in Washington as AIPAC", let alone the other components of the zionist lobby. Again, I would welcome any evidence to the contrary.

[AlicetheKurious]

...mubarack and israeli gov are on a honeymoon ever since.

I wouldn't exactly call it a honeymoon. Unless this is a love scene:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gLN3QoN ... re=related

come visit us here in israel

I don't think so. I've been campaigning for us to go to Taba, though -- close enough. Maybe we can work something out, if you're free.

BTW, Nuweiba's had a big oil spill from foreign tankers -- lots of dead fish, coral reefs destroyed, tarry beaches...horrible. But they're doing everything possible to clean it up.

[stefano]

Alice, I wasn't arguing with Rivero's central thesis, or yours, that the Israel lobby has massive influence on US foreign policy. If you'd read what I've posted here you'd know that, but I don't think you have if you think I'm American (?).

I said it's stupid to say "Bush is spending $10 billion a month in Iraq to extract out only $150 million in oil. Were oil the true objective, it would have been far cheaper to simply buy it from Iraq […] the oil does not make economic sense," and it is stupid. I'll get to my other point about the war profiteers below, but let's just dwell on this bullshit for a few minutes.

Firstly, and most obviously, Bush wasn't spending his pocket money. He was spending Treasury money, and if Rivero can't tell the difference he has no business running a site called "What really happened".

Secondly, it's not $150 million. In March 2009 Iraq exported 56.3 million barrels of oil, that's just under two and a half billion dollars, at current low prices. Exports for July 2008, when the price spiked, were worth 6.7 bnUSD. So, not quite the figure Rivero gives, in fact he got it wrong by a factor of twenty (confusing days and months, perhaps). Let's assume that extraction costs in Basra, where most of the oil comes from, are the same as in Kuwait right next door. In Kuwait the break-even price for oil is 17 dollars a barrel. Let's make it 20, so that's gross profit (on the extraction business only) of 16 bnUSD a year for the oil companies extracting Iraq's oil, equal to a quarter of BP's gross profit for 2008. I don't even know if that calculation is generous enough, since Michael Schwartz in the piece I link to below reckons Iraqi oil can be extracted at $1.50 a barrel. And it's not only about current oil fields; there is every reason to believe more oil will be discovered in Iraq in the future. You might remember a proposed (i.e. prescribed) oil law for Iraq in 2007 that gave extraction rights to US and UK oil companies. Talk of that has vanished and I don't know what the current situation is (the Iraqi Oil Ministry's "Tender Results" page is "under construction"), but you aren't going to convince me that Cheney's oil cronies weren't slavering over that oil. And I don't see why anyone would think otherwise, except those conditioned to believe in America's altruism and those trying too hard to simplify the narrative, like Rivero.

Click on this link for a very good 2007 summary of oil obsession in Washington since Carter, revving up nicely when Bush, Cheney and Rice got into government at the same time, just before 9/11 provided the casus belli, and an overview of how much money there is to be made from oil in Iraq. I'm not going to paste the entire thing here, but oil is definitely a central reason for the invasion.

Thirdly, "cheaper" is by no means the preferred solution from the point of view of American decision-makers, quite the opposite. In fact that's what irritates me about the quote, and the reason I brought up defence companies. It's the kind of statement that superficially seems to make sense, but actually doesn't. The idea that oil is important contradicts Rivero's main thesis, so he makes up a number and throws out a confusing sentence that conflates at least three distinct entities under the name of "Bush", before assuming the mantle of Sherlock Holmes. Pfff.

As for the influence that "defence" contractors have, here's a nice piece of research called The Politics of Contracting that explains the "revolving door" relationship between the people buying weapons and the people selling them. This is also very good: The Ties That Bind. It's good stuff, I've found it very illuminating. Maybe a bit old now, but the pattern has been in place at least since 1917, when Dupont eased America's entry into the war in Europe.

Lockheed Martin received an astounding $21.9 billion in Pentagon contracts in 2003, a $4.9 billion increase from 2002, and $7.2 billion increase from 2001. To put this in perspective, Lockheed's increase in contracts for 2003 was more than Halliburton's total Pentagon contracts for the year. Lockheed reported a 41% rise in profits as arms spending continues to rise around the world. Boeing maintained its #2 spot on the Pentagon's contractor list, raking in $17.3 billion in defense contracts, up $4 billion from 2001. Boeing said net income grew 78% to $456 million, from $256 million in the year-earlier quarter. Northrop Grumman saw its contracts more than double in 2003 to $11.1 billion, up from $5.2 billion in 2001.

32 members of the first Bush administration had links with weapons contractors. Among many examples: Secretary of the Navy Gordon England used to be vice president of General Dynamics, Secretary of the Air Force James Roche was a former Northrop Grumman executive, and Edward C. Aldridge was Under Secretary of Defence until he joined Lockheed as a director. As for direct financial contributions, OpenSecrets reckons the total donations from defence companies for the 2008 cycle was $25 648 314, while donations from what it calls pro-Israel groups totalled $11 556 795. I don't think the figures really matter, and before you paste another 5 000 words at me let me hasten to say you may be right that the Israel lobby has more heft. That's not really what we're arguing about though, is it? I can't think of a case where the interests of the Israel lobby and those of the arms people would be opposed. The point of my post was that Michael Rivero is wrong about oil and his explanation is pretty pathetic.

If private contractors were indeed shaping America's foreign policy, how likely is it that this foreign policy would just happen to coincide exactly with zionist objectives?

Well, since Zionism is all about war, how could they not? And there are aspects of US foreign policy that have no relation to Zionist objectives, like NATO's expansion to the borders of Russia, or the famous "missile shield" in Eastern Europe. "It's all about Zionism" also fails to explain the US military's consistent preference for expensive, hi-tech kit when it's unnecessary to fight wars.

Having said that, there was a shift of influence in Washington when Paulson entered office, and which accelerated with Obama's inauguration, away from Texas (oil and engineering) and toward New York (finance and insurance), which is far more familiar territory for Jewish gangsters with links to Israel, as you know.

[AlicetheKurious]

Stefano, nobody's questioning the greed of oil company executives, nor that the Iraq war was promoted as a "war for oil" (remember the original name for the invasion? "Operation Iraqi Liberation"? O.I.L. Get it? Wink, nudge, nudge.) It's a claim that has been repeated over and over, by prominent opinion-shapers across the spectrum from the so-called Left to the Right -- from leaders of the anti-war movement to Kissinger and Alan Greenspan. Even Bush, while officially denying that the invasion was motivated by greed for Iraq's oil, was careful to imply it, repeatedly.

But I think you're confusing a selling-point that was used to market the war in certain sectors, for the genuine motive.

First, Saddam Hussein was a CIA asset long before he was installed with American backing as the president of Iraq. His regime had excellent relations with the U.S., to the extent that within a year of taking sole control in Iraq, he launched a ruinous and bloody war of aggression against Iran at the instigation of his American bosses. This is the man who asked for and received American permission before invading Kuwait. Both conflicts severely damaged Iraq's oil industry infrastructure and lowered its capacity for production, which some claim benefited the oil companies by keeping supplies low and driving prices higher, although Iraq's capacity to impact global oil prices all by itself is very doubtful. Though it could also be argued that the 2nd Gulf War benefited American oil companies by introducing a large permanent U.S. military presence in the Gulf, this argument does not hold for the subsequent invasion and occupation of Iraq, something that was well-known by the "oil lobby", which did not at all support the 2003 war.

Though Saddam Hussein's regime enjoyed overall excellent relations with American oil companies and with successive American administrations prior to 1991, he refused to budge on two issues: recognition and normalization of relations with Israel, and reactivating the oil pipeline that had carried petroleum exports from Kirkuk to Haifa prior to 1948. It makes far more sense that his intransigence towards the zionist state, not "oil" (at least not "American oil"), and certainly not any danger he represented for the U.S. or its interests, that led to the trap that was laid for him, and his subsequent downfall.

Moreover, U.S. imperialists could hardly have wished for anything more than the unipolar hegemony they already enjoyed prior to the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, in whose quagmire the American empire is now fast sinking -- an outcome that was totally predictable and articulated, notably by Dick Cheney himself among others, as early as the mid-90s.

Finally, the current national, social, cultural, economic and military disintegration of Iraq are not accidental by-products of the 2003 invasion, but a deliberate, long-premeditated objective of its planners. This objective was quite unambiguously spelled out more than a quarter-century ago by Oded Yinon, an Israeli Foreign Ministry official writing for the journal of the World Zionist Organization back in 1982:

A sad and very stormy situation surrounds Israel and creates challenges for it, problems, risks but also far-reaching opportunities for the first time since 1967. Chances are that opportunities missed at that time will become achievable in the Eighties to an extent and along dimensions which we cannot even imagine today. ...

Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel's targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi'ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north. It is possible that the present Iranian-Iraqi confrontation will deepen this polarization.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.inf ... 20East.pdf

The idea certainly did not originate with Yinon, however. Seven years earlier, in 1975, a very similar plan was articulated by Kissinger writing under a pseudonym, and later taken up by a group of zionist ideologues closely aligned with the then newly-formed Likud Party in Israel, who later became known as "neocons":

At a stroke, by taking control of Iraq, the Bush administration can solidify a long-running strategic design. "It's the Kissinger plan," says James Akins, a former U.S. diplomat. "I thought it had been killed, but it's back."

Akins learned a hard lesson about the politics of oil when he served as a U.S. envoy in Kuwait and Iraq, and ultimately as ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the oil crisis of 1973 and '74. At his home in Washington, D.C., shelves filled with Middle Eastern pottery and other memorabilia cover the walls, souvenirs of his years in the Foreign Service. Nearly three decades later, he still gets worked up while recalling his first encounter with the idea that the United States should be prepared to occupy Arab oil-producing countries.

In 1975, while Akins was ambassador in Saudi Arabia, an article headlined "Seizing Arab Oil" appeared in Harper's. The author, who used the pseudonym Miles Ignotus, was identified as "a Washington-based professor and defense consultant with intimate links to high-level U.S. policymakers." The article outlined, as Akins puts it, "how we could solve all our economic and political problems by taking over the Arab oil fields [and] bringing in Texans and Oklahomans to operate them."

Simultaneously, a rash of similar stories appeared in other magazines and newspapers. "I knew that it had to have been the result of a deep background briefing," Akins says. "You don't have eight people coming up with the same screwy idea at the same time, independently.

"Then I made a fatal mistake," Akins continues. "I said on television that anyone who would propose that is either a madman, a criminal, or an agent of the Soviet Union." Soon afterward, he says, he learned that the background briefing had been conducted by his boss, then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Akins was fired later that year.

Kissinger has never acknowledged having planted the seeds for the article. But in an interview with Business Week that same year, he delivered a thinly veiled threat to the Saudis, musing about bringing oil prices down through "massive political warfare against countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran to make them risk their political stability and maybe their security if they did not cooperate."

In the 1970s, America's military presence in the Gulf was virtually nil, so the idea of seizing control of its oil was a pipe dream. Still, starting with the Miles Ignotus article, and a parallel one by conservative strategist and Johns Hopkins University professor Robert W. Tucker in Commentary, the idea began to gain favor among a feisty group of hardline, pro-Israeli thinkers, especially the hawkish circle aligned with Democratic senators Henry Jackson of Washington and Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York.

Eventually, this amalgam of strategists came to be known as "neoconservatives," and they played important roles in President Reagan's Defense Department and at think tanks and academic policy centers in the 1980s. Led by Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's influential Defense Policy Board, and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, they now occupy several dozen key posts in the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department. At the top, they are closest to Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who have been closely aligned since both men served in the White House under President Ford in the mid-1970s. They also clustered around Cheney when he served as secretary of defense during the Gulf War in 1991.

http://www.themodernreligion.com/terror ... -itch.html

Look, this is already a 500-word essay (probably more), so I'll wind it up: there is no lack of explanations for why America invaded Iraq, in the specific way it did. The question is which one makes more sense, given who pushed for the war, how the war was conducted, and who ultimately reaped the rewards, including what is referred to as the "Military-Industrial Complex", but which Jeffrey Blankfort more accurately describe as the "Military-Industrial-Israel Complex" -- which not only drives the Israeli economy, but provides an important wedge for Israel's growing influence on the world stage.

Given the long-standing relationship between Saddam Hussein's regime and the U.S., including American oil companies, controlling Iraqi oil did not necessitate the annihilation of Iraq as a nation, as a people, or as a unified state. On the contrary, American oil companies have yet to secure a single oil field in Iraq; ironically, one result of the U.S. invasion is that Iraqi oil fields are falling increasingly under Iranian control. Furthermore, the modern-day Iraqi state was itself carved out by the British precisely to benefit their imperial oil interests. Throughout the 20th century, it performed this function admirably, with the exception of a few minor incidents that were quickly dealt with by first the British, then the Americans.

In contrast, influential zionist ideologues and strategists perceived the continued existence of a unified Iraq as an important threat to be eradicated. To believe that it's merely coincidental that this goal, consistently advocated by zionist strategists closely associated with Israel's Likud at least since the mid-70s, throughout the 1980's, 90's and finally implemented when they were catapulted to the driver's seat in Washington by JINSA board member and U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, is to carry coincidence theory too far. Suddenly, they were in a position to execute their plan, and they did. It's really that simple.

Actually, not quite. Of course, oil is a major interest for Israel, too. Not only the actual oil, but control over the "spigot" is a crucial element of the next phase of Israel's evolution from a regional to a global hegemonic power. American power is the vehicle for that shift. As the highly influential neocon strategist Norman Podhoretz rather coyly put it back in 1979, American global militarism is a necessary prerequisite for Israel's "security":

There was, to be sure, one thing that many of even the most passionately committed American Zionists were reluctant to do, and that was to face up to the fact that continued American support for Israel depended upon continued American involvement in international affairs-- from which it followed that an American withdrawal into the kind of isolationist mood that prevailed most recently between the two world wars, and that now looked as though it might soon prevail again, represented a direct threat to the security of Israel.

quoted here

I'll leave that discussion for another time, though.

[AlicetheKurious]

Speaking of Congress and AIPAC, this video is so damn scary:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4MPwezc5rE

Watching this, I was reminded of the recent thread here, entitled "Are Jews Smarter?" -- based on the slow, simple way they're addressing their audience and the content of their speeches, Meyer and Cantor don't think so. And judging by the applause, they're right, at least concerning the AIPAC delegates.

By the way, note how the figure's gone up to "six and a half million". (6:45 into the vid).

Do I hear a seven? And-a-one! And-a-two!

[American Dream]

I honestly can't say that I find this very convincing proof that Israel controlled and directed the United States in its attacks on Iraq.

There were many, many elite forces who supported the aggression, and many who profited from it as well. Certainly Israel is in the mix, but is it really believable that they are the primary, or even sole force, behind U.S. foreign policy?

One could focus on quite a few sectors of the power elite that supported these attacks, and also many that have reaped a benefit from them in one way or another. So why shouldn't acts of U.S. imperialism like this be considered as representing a convergence of elite interests rather than being all the work of one player within that elite?

[AlicetheKurious]

One could focus on quite a few sectors of the power elite that supported these attacks, and also many that have reaped a benefit from them in one way or another.

"One could" but "one" hasn't. Saying that 'quite a few sectors of the power elite...supported these attacks' or benefited is hardly convincing proof, or even "convincing". It would help if you named names, and provided supporting evidence.

So why shouldn't acts of U.S. imperialism like this be considered as representing a convergence of elite interests rather than being all the work of one player within that elite?

Uh, because it's not true? One could convincingly argue that many elite interests were actually harmed through the policies pushed by the 'Likudniks'. Though there were individual opportunists who gladly hopped on the bandwagon, or dupes, the catalyzing event was not some vague "convergence" of vague "elite interests", but the perfect opportunity to finally implement plans that were made decades before, when their proponents came to power in 2000.

Looking at Oded Yinon's A Strategy for Israel in the 1980's (mentioned above), the neocons' Project for a New American Century, or A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm it's hard to avoid noticing that they almost eerily describe American foreign policy since 2000.

If you're aware of similarly prophetic documents that point in another direction, I'd love to learn about them.

[American Dream]

I am obviously not asserting that I know exactly how the decision to attack Iraq was made- neither exactly by which parties, nor when and where, nor with what degree of relative power by each participant in that decision.

I am saying that the case that Israel was the primary or sole cause of the invasion is very, very weak. What we are seeing here is a very selective argument, one that gleans out only those facts that support its thesis and ignores the rest. It "proves" nothing...

[stefano]

What we are seeing here is a very selective argument, one that gleans out only those facts that support its thesis and ignores the rest.

Quite. Michael Rivero does it very obviously in the article in the OP with his half-arsed dismissal of the oil.

One could convincingly argue that many elite interests were actually harmed through the policies pushed by the 'Likudniks'.

Now you're the one not naming names. Like what? Can you show that Zionists have been able to shape US policy in a direction harmful to the interests of the more established mighty? I'd be surprised. The oil and arms lobbyists in particular aren't just crucial to politicians' advancement, the way the Israel lobbyists are. The are in every way the same people: they share rooms at Ivy League universities, marry into each others' families and belong to the same strictly WASP clubs. Those ties go deeper than money.

Also, why is Pakistan the current target instead of, say, Syria? What does Israel get out of NATO expansion?

None of this is rhetorical, I like reading what you post and I'm curious.

[AlicetheKurious]

One could convincingly argue that many elite interests were actually harmed through the policies pushed by the 'Likudniks'.

Now you're the one not naming names. Like what? Can you show that Zionists have been able to shape US policy in a direction harmful to the interests of the more established mighty? I'd be surprised. The oil and arms lobbyists in particular aren't just crucial to politicians' advancement, the way the Israel lobbyists are. The are in every way the same people: they share rooms at Ivy League universities, marry into each others' families and belong to the same strictly WASP clubs. Those ties go deeper than money.

Also, why is Pakistan the current target instead of, say, Syria? What does Israel get out of NATO expansion?

None of this is rhetorical, I like reading what you post and I'm curious.

Stefano, I think you hold a very old-fashioned stereotype of just who make up the political and economic elite in the U.S. today. Do you think that zionist ideologues and agents don't go to Ivy League universities, intermarry with other members of the elite and belong to the most exclusive clubs? If so, you need to update your information.

It's your second question about Pakistan and NATO that has kept me hesitating all this time. First, it's not directly relevant to this specific thread, and second, it's a big topic to write about and research all by myself in response to a casual question.

If you're really interested, I'll start another thread with your question, and then others can help to explore this subject.

[lightningBugout]

Thanks for the scary video Alice. I'm afraid its a nearly perfect object lesson in the strategic rhetorical use of the Holocaust to censor Israel's critics today. I fucking hate AIPAC. And on a more petty note - what in the world is up with that lady. She presents herself like the queen in Alice in Wonderland - so bizarre her mannerisms.