A Look Back At Israel's Role In Selling The Iraq War.

With Israel Pushing For A New War With Iran, It Is A Good Time To Look Back At The Previous Major War They Helped Sell.

Trump is soon about to have his latest meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, and according to NBC news, “Netanyahu is expected to make the case to Trump that Iran’s expansion of its ballistic missile program poses a threat that could necessitate swift action” and “the Israeli leader is expected to present Trump with options for the US to join or assist in any new military operations.”

With Netanyahu pushing for a new American war in the Middle East for Israel, it is worth looking back at his and Israel’s previous role in pushing for the disastrous and criminal invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Israel’s Motive For Pushing For The Iraq War.

In 1996, Israel lobbyists and neo-con- many of whom, such as Richard Perle and David Wurmser,ended up in the Bush administration- wrote a document to Benjamin Netanyahu, who had first gotten into power in Israel which called for him to abandon a two state solution and instead take out all of Israel’s enemies in the region, including Saddam Hussien in Iraq.

The document, titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” called for the newly elected Netanyahu to “make a clean break” from the Oslo Accords and “focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right”.

David Wurmser, one of the authors of the document who went on to become the Middle East Adviser to former US Vice President Dick Cheney, has recently attempted to dispel the fact that the Iraq war was- at least in part- launched to benefit Israel, but ended up admitting that part of the justification for the war was because, “In terms of Israel, we wanted Yasser Arafat not to have the cavalry over the horizon in terms of Saddam”.

The idea was to replace Saddam Hussein- who was viewed as too sympathetic to Palestinians- with U.S. asset Ahmed Chalabi who - as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt noted in their study of the Israel lobby- “had pledged to foster good relations with Israel once he gained power”.

Philip Zelikow, a former aide to George W. Bush later admitted that, “the real threat (from Iraq) (is) the threat against Israel” and “this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don’t care deeply about that threat” adding, “The American government doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell”.

Israel’s Role in Cooking Up The WMD Deception.

For this reason, Israeli intelligence and Israeli politicians, both in and out of power, played a large role in pushing for the war and selling the WMD hoax used to justify it.

Journalist Bob Dreyfuss, reported in the Nation in 2003 that much of the intelligence used to cook up the WMD deception came from, the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans (OSP), which, “funneled information, unchallenged, from Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress (INC) to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, who in turn passed it on to the White House, suggesting that Iraqis would welcome the American invaders.”

However, along with this, Dreyfuss noted that, “According to the former official, also feeding information to the Office of Special Plans was a secret, rump unit established last year in the office of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel. This unit … which has not previously been reported–prepared intelligence reports on Iraq in English (not Hebrew) and forwarded them to the Office of Special Plans.”

Dreyfuss reported that, “it was created in Sharon’s office,” adding that, “This secretive unit,… may well have been the source of the forged documents purporting to show that Iraq tried to purchase yellowcake uranium for weapons from Niger in West Africa, according to the former official.”

The Guardian reported at the time that, “the OSP also sucked in countless tips from the Iraqi National Congress and other opposition groups, which were viewed with far more scepticism by the CIA and the state department,” adding that, “The OSP was an open and largely unfiltered conduit to the White House not only for the Iraqi opposition. It also forged close ties to a parallel, ad hoc intelligence operation inside Ariel Sharon’s office in Israel, specifically to bypass Mossad and provide the Bush administration with more alarmist reports on Saddam’s Iraq than Mossad was prepared to authorise.”

The article noted, “‘None of the Israelis who came were cleared into the Pentagon through normal channels,’ said one source familiar with the visits”.

The Guardian also noted that, “The Israeli influence was revealed most clearly by a story floated by unnamed senior US officials in the American press, suggesting the reason that no banned weapons had been found in Iraq was that they had been smuggled into Syria. Intelligence sources say that the story came from the office of the Israeli prime minister.”

John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt noted that, the Office of Special Plans “reported directly to Douglas Feith” who the authors note, “is deeply committed to Israel” and “also has long-term ties to Likud” noting that he “wrote articles in the 1990s supporting the settlements and arguing that Israel should retain the Occupied Territories” and that he, “wrote the famous ‘Clean Break’ report in June 1996 for Netanyahu, who had just become prime minister.”

It also noted that inside the Office of Special Plans-which was tasked to cook up the WMD deception- “its ranks included recruits from pro-Israel think tanks”.

In the run-up to the war, CBS News reported that, “Israel is urging U.S. officials not to delay a military strike against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, an aide to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said” adding that:

Israeli intelligence officials have gathered evidence that Iraq is speeding up efforts to produce biological and chemical weapons, said Sharon aide Ranaan Gissin.

‘Any postponement of an attack on Iraq at this stage will serve no purpose,’ Gissin said. ‘It will only give him (Saddam) more of an opportunity to accelerate his program of weapons of mass destruction.’

Tony Blair, during the British Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war, even said that during his, “meeting with George W Bush in Crawford, Texas, back in April 2002” where they made the decision to invade Iraq, “there may have been conversations that we had even with Israelis, the two of us, whilst we were there”.

Mearsheimer and Walt noted that, “Israeli intelligence officials had given Washington a variety of alarming reports about Iraq’s WMD programmes. As one retired Israeli general later put it, ‘Israeli intelligence was a full partner to the picture presented by American and British intelligence regarding Iraq’s non-conventional capabilities.’”

The LA Times in 2005 reported that, “A former senior Israeli military intelligence official asserted Thursday that the nation’s spy agencies were a ‘full partner’ to the United States and Britain in producing flawed prewar assessments of Iraq’s ability to mount attacks with weapons of mass destruction” and noted that Shlomo Brom, a brigadier general in the army reserves said that, “intelligence produced by Israel played a significant role in augmenting the case for toppling Hussein”.

In 2004, Yossi Sarid, a member of the foreign affairs and defence committee in Israel, admitted that Israel “knew claims that Saddam Hussein was capable of swiftly launching weapons of mass destruction were wrong but withheld the information from Washington”.

Israel Lobbies For War With Iraq.

Along with its role in cooking up the WMD deception, Israel played a huge role in lobbying for the Iraq war.

John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, in their aforementioned study on the Israel lobby, noted that, “Pressure from Israel and the Lobby was not the only factor behind the decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was critical”.

They noted that:

leaders of the Lobby’s major organisations lent their voices to the campaign. ‘As President Bush attempted to sell the ... war in Iraq,’ the Forward reported, ‘America’s most important Jewish organisations rallied as one to his defence. In statement after statement community leaders stressed the need to rid the world of Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction.’

A now deleted “‘briefing book’ for AIPAC’s membership and Congressional offices… in snapshots from December, 22, 2001, until December 2004 — the period in which the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution was approved by Congress and the Iraq War” shows the pro-Iraq war talking points given to AIPAC’s lobbyists, including, “As long as Saddam Hussein is in power, any containment of Iraq will only be temporary until the next crisis or act of aggression” and “Iraq remains a long-term threat to Israel’s security”.

Responsible statecraft noted that, “AIPAC’s newsletter, Near East Report, led with a lengthy ‘editor’s comments’ on October 7, 2002, repeating the George W. Bush administration’s erroneous claim that Saddam Hussein was in league with al Qaeda and is ‘maintaining contact with the vile perpetrators of 9/11.’”

It also noted that, “FDD (Foundation for Defense of Democracies) was founded in April 2001 as EMET (Hebrew for ‘truth’) ‘to provide education to enhance Israel’s image in North America and the public’s understanding of issues affecting Israeli-Arab relations.’ Clifford May, its founder, quickly went about pushing for war. In April 2002, he described Iran and Iraq as ‘terrorist-sponsoring regimes attempting to develop weapons of mass destruction.’”

John Mearsheimer noted in Responsible Statecraft that, “AIPAC’s executive director, Howard Kohr, said that ‘quietly lobbying Congress to approve the use of force in Iraq’ was one of ‘AIPAC’s successes over the past year.’”

The Atlantic reported in 2007 that, “In September 2002, before Congress had begun considering the administration’s proposal authorizing force with Iraq, Rebecca Needler, a spokeswoman for AIPAC, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, ‘If the president asks Congress to support action in Iraq, AIPAC would lobby members of Congress to support him.’”

The U.S. representative Jim Moran said in 2007, that AIPAC, “has pushed [the Iraq war] from the beginning. I don’t think they represent the mainstream of American Jewish thinking at all, but because they are so well organized, and their members are extraordinarily powerful—most of them are quite wealthy—they have been able to exert power”.

Israeli political figures also lobbied heavily for the Iraq war.

Chief amongst them was the current Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who wrote an op-ed in 2002 for the Wall Street Journal titled , “The Case for Toppling Saddam”, where he wrote, “This is a dictator who is rapidly expanding his arsenal of biological and chemical weapons, who has used these weapons of mass destruction against his subjects and his neighbors, and who is feverishly trying to acquire nuclear weapons If a pre-emptive action will be supported by a broad coalition of free countries and the U.N., all the better. But if such support is not forthcoming, then the U.S. must be prepared to act without it. This will require courage, and I see it abundantly present in President Bush’s bold leadership and in the millions of Americans who have rallied behind him”.

Netanyahu also testified before congress in 2002, saying, “there is no question whatsoever that Saddam is seeking and is working and is advancing towards the development of nuclear weapons” and pushing for the U.S. to invade.

Similarly, in 2002, the former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak wrote an op-ed for the New York Times where he wrote, “President Bush’s policy of ousting Saddam Hussein creates an extraordinary standard of strategic and moral clarity”, “Saddam Hussein’s nuclear-weapons program provides the urgent need for his removal” and “the greatest risk now lies in inaction.”

As Netanyahu prepares to meet with Trump to push new lies to justify a new war in Iran, it is well worth remembering Israel’s previous role in pushing lies and pushing for the war in Iraq.

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