CARTHAGE MUST BE DESTROYED
Carthage was Rome’s implacable foe; thus, did the Roman Senator Cato conclude whatever the topic at hand on the floor of the Senate with: “Carthago delenda est” – Carthage must be destroyed! Eventually, once the Senate of Rome realized her proximity to the pesky Punic, they attacked with impunity and wiped them off the map in the Third Punic War (149-146 BC), salting Hannibal’s commercial bastion, never to have her rise again; thus Rome’s supreme illustration of brutality and imperial ambition incorporated, like the Borg of Star Trek, the commercial aspects of Empire.
Alas! Meeting the challenge of President Bush’s infamous remarks hurled at the Axis of Evil (which clearly includes Iran), and reinforced by his NED speech given on October 6, 2005 to wit:
” . . . authoritarian regimes, allies of convenience like Syria and Iran, that share the goal of hurting American and moderate Muslim governments, and use terrorist propaganda to blame their own failures on the West and America, on the Jews . . . we’re determined (against Syrian and Iran) to deny radical groups the support and sanctuary of outlaw regimes . . . STATE-SPONSORS like Syria and Iran have a long history of collaboration with terrorists, and they DESERVE NO PATIENCE FROM THE VICTIMS OF TERROR. The United States makes no distinction between those who commit acts of terror and those who support and harbor them, BECAUSE THEY’RE EQUALLY AS GUILTY OF MURDER. Any government that chooses to be an ally of terror has also chosen to be an enemy of civilization . . . and the civilized world must hold those regimes to account.”
. . . Mahmoud Ahmadinejad decided to fight fire with fire: ISRAEL MUST BE DESTROYED! He shot back at the “World Without Zionism” conference held in Tehran this week against the United States and Israel (a.k.a., the USA=The Great Satan; Israel=The Little Satan…DiscoverTheNetworks). Ahmadinejad called Israel a “disgraceful blot” on the Islamic world, and the US Middle East “roadmap” nothing more than a diversion from the crusader wars between the Islamic world and perceived imperialists like the USA (http://news.viewlondon.co.uk)
“Israel must be ‘wiped off the map’ . . . she is a ‘disgraceful blot’ on the Islamic world . . . the US Middle East Roadmap to peace is a diversion from the crusader wars between the Islamic world and perceived imperialists such as the United States. Furthermore, Iran’s President attacked other Muslim nations which recognize the legitimacy of the Jewish state (an obvious allusion to Egypt). Israel is naught but the product of an ideological struggle between the ‘Arrogant World Order’ and ‘Islamic rule.’” (News.viewlondon.co.uk)
Quoting Mr. Ahmadinejad:
“Over the past 100 years, the last bastions of the Islamic world have collapsed. The World Arrogance turned the Zionist regime occupying Jerusalem into a staging-ground to dominate the Islamic world . . . there continues a historic war between the World Arrogance and the Islamic World, the roots of which go back hundreds of years ago.”
Now that sounds vaguely familiar. In my last article, “The Crusader vs. The Caliphate” President Bush targeted the source of terrorism’s frustration:
“The excuses for violence (range from) the Israeli presence on the West Bank . . . the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia . . . the defeat of the Taliban . . . or the CRUSADES of a thousand years ago.”
ISRAEL: AMERICA’S AIRCRAFT CARRIER
Putting it bluntly: The problem, President Bush, is the Israeli aircraft carrierthe USS Israelpoised on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean, ready (as far as the Middle Eastern edge of the Axis of Evil is concernedSyria/Iran) to launch its cruise missiles throughout the Islamic lands in order to expand its Arrogant World Order (a.k.a. the Decadent WestThe American New World Order System) under the guise of democracy, women’s rights, religious freedom, and, of course, economic globalization; in sum: Western world hegemony.
In 1991, Daniel Pipes in Commentary described the then unnamed Axis of Evil by inquiring:
“Why did British and American imperialists want Israel to exist? Arabs have a rich assortment of answers to the question. Ash-Sha’b, a leftist Egyptian newspaper, portrays Israel as a branch-office of the Central Intelligence agency, one which requires CIA “approval and support” before taking almost any step. Ahmad Jibril (leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command) dubs Israel ‘America’s Mideast aircraft carrier.’ Khalid al-Hasan, another PLO leader sees Israel as ’something like a conglomerate-General Motors, for example.’
“And what functions does this intelligence office/aircraft carrier/multinational corporation serve? To jeopardize whatever it may be the speaker holds most dear. Thus, for Nasser, the Pan-Arab leader, Israel endangered Pan-Arab nationalism. His 1962 Charter of National Action dubbed Israel ‘the tool of imperialism’ and ‘a whip in their hands to fight the struggling Arabs.’ In 1968 the PLO was still under Nasser’s influence, so its Covenant accused Israel of being ‘a geographic base for world imperialism placed strategically in the midst of the Arab homeland to combat the hopes of the Arab nation for liberation, amity and progress.’”
SO WHAT’S NEWS? THE “CLEAN BREAK”
Hating and annihilating Israel is not news. However, the hate rhetoric’s been ratcheted up a great dealespecially the “religious” overtones and undertones, greatly! Instead of President Carter and the Ayatollah Khomeini, who founded the first modern Islamic Republic (Iran) chattering away over American hostages for 400+ dayswe now have President Bush and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (perhaps to the right of the original supreme leader Khomeini) blasting away at one another.
Somehow, the current war in Iraq, the intel scandal rocking the nation, and Israel-America being fed up with Moslem terrorists (who more and more interfere with our quest for “hidden treasurers” in the Middle Easti.e., OIL), has got to be dealt with. Is/was there a plan to effect this sea change in the Middle Easti.e., put the terrorists on notice (and to flight) after the collapse of the Soviet Union and their little war they lost in Afghanistan, as we, the Americans, supplied millions to the likes of Osama ben Laden and his Mujahadeen (Holy Warriors) to defeat the red menace?
Indeed, thus was laid the plan entitled “Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.” The document was prepared in 1996 by an Israeli think tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies. The document was a precursor to the then-incoming government of Benjamin Netanyahu. The plan was, according to the London Guardian, Brian Whitaker and syndicated columnist Georgie Anne Geyer, designed to reshape Israel’s “strategic environment” (Christian Century) Alas! The proposal/plan has turned out, according to Geyer, to be Bush’s blueprint for Iraqi policyand, I hasten to add, the centerpiece for an upcoming confrontation with both Syria and Iran.
The 1996 plan called for the removal of Saddam Hussein, the installation of a monarchy akin to Jordan’ssimilar to one that ruled Iraq in the mid-1900s. Next, with Saddam eliminated, Jordan and Turkey would team up, along with Israel, to severely weaken Syria. Thus, “Israel will not only contain its foes, it will transcend them.”
Naturally, to orchestrate the plan, Israel would need extensive American downfield blocking. Thence, was born the linguistics of the Cold War to persuade the Americans to get on board; and, after all, it would (in the long/short run) secure America’s insatiable quest for cheap energy. Hard to say who was pushing whom here . . . the Israelophils/Israelis the Americans or the Americans the Israelophils/Israelis!
In any event, by 2000 the Americans under the then (now deposed) Richard Perleperhaps the most prominent of the war hawks after 9/11 insofar as Iraq is concerned, and strong proponent of Dr. Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations, wherein the Judeo-Christian West vs. Islam is a defacto reality of life (apparently, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad unwittingly embraces the same reality)drafted additional expansions of “Clean Break” – to wit:
“Following is a report prepared by The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies’ ‘Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000.’ The main substantive ideas in this paper emerge from a discussion in which prominent opinion makers, including Richard Perle, James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Douglas Feith, Robert Loewenberg, David Wurmser, and Meyrav Wurmser participated. The report, entitled ‘A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,’ is the framework for a series of follow-up reports on strategy.
As group leader, Perle (also of the American Enterprise Institute at the time, and still is), knew full well the immediate plans insofar as Syria were concerned:
“Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese soil. An effective approach, and one with which America can sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon, including by:
• Striking Syria’s drug-money and counterfeiting infrastructure in Lebanon, all of which focuses on Razi Qanan.
• Paralleling Syria’s behavior by establishing the precedent that Syrian territory is not immune to attacks emanating from Lebanon by Israeli proxy forces.
• Striking Syrian military targets in Lebanon, and should that prove insufficient, striking at select targets in Syria proper.
It is safe to say that Perle, who has spent considerable time in Israel, is a staunch supporter of Israel’s conservative Likud Party. Furthermore, while the 2000 report wholeheartedly supports the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime (i.e., “regime change”), it wholly backs the encirclement and neutralization of Syria:
“Given the nature of the regime in Damascus, it is both natural and moral that Israel abandon the slogan ‘comprehensive peace’ and move to contain Syria, drawing attention to its weapons of mass destruction program, and rejecting ‘land for peace’ deals on the Golan Heights.”
And, finally, the coup de matre:
“Israel can make a clean break from the past and establish a new vision for the U.S.-Israeli partnership based on self-reliance, maturity and mutuality not one focused narrowly on territorial disputes.”
Perle headed up the discretionary-funded Defense Policy Board (Advisory Committee) which provided the Secretary of Defense, under Bush (i.e., Donald Rumsfeld), “independent, informed advice and opinion concerning major matters of defense policy.”
Prior to “financial indiscretions” which brought Perle down (March 28, 2003), Perle was a member of the Project for the New American Century (PNACan original signer of their January 26, 1998 letter sent to President Clinton. An outstanding article/intentions of PNAC can be found at the 11th Hour (http://www.11th-hour.info/Articles/PNAC.html), by Frank Reilly. The group’s fascination with “American Dominance” is no small accusation (to say the least, throughout the whole world). Interestingly enough, in today’s light, original signers included:
“Richard Armitage, William J. Bennett, Jeb Bush, Ellen Bork (the wife of Robert Bork), Dick Cheney, Zalmay Khalilzad, Lewis Libby, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz. A large number of its ideas and its members are associated with the neoconservative movement.”
NEOCONS AND MICHAEL LEDEEN
In case you haven’t noticed, the NEOCONS (that most despised of expletives hurled from the Left) are peppered amongst the PNAC group and ipso facto, main backers of the demise of Saddam Hussein, and aggressive democratization of the Middle Eastin particular, Syria and Iran. In defense against the British Left’s accusations, Ledeen, currently National Review Online contributing editor, author of The War Against the Terror Masters, and resident scholar in the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute (among other “items”we’ll discuss later) remarked in a July 13, 2005 piece for NRO entitled THE JEWS, War and a Sickness:
“The final component of British blindness on the subject of the Middle East is one we are not supposed to talk about in good company: the Jews. Yet I don’t know any country this side of the Levant in which there has been so much anti-Semitism, so many complaints that ‘Zionists,’ ‘Likudniks,’ ‘Jewish hawks,’ and the single epithet that sums up all of the above ‘neocons’ had manipulated America and its poodle Blair into the ghastly blunder of Iraq. The BBC has devoted hours of radio and television to slanderous misrepresentations of places like the American Enterprise Institute, where I sit, and of such Jewish luminaries as Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, and Paul Wolfowitz. Sometimes it seemed one was reading translations from the Saudi or Egyptian or Iranian press, so total was the hatred of the Jews.” (My emphasis.)
Ledeen, who also heads the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, expressed his foreign policy initiatives in his recent release:
“The awesome power of a free society committed to a single mission is something [our enemies] cannot imagine. … Our unexpectedly quick and impressive victory in Afghanistan is a prelude to a much broader war, which will in all likelihood transform the Middle East for at least a generation, and reshape the politics of many countries around the world.”
Ledeen’s co-worker at the American Enterprise Institute, Richard Perle, has articulated a new neocon book entitled: An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror. Check out this review:
“Billed as a ‘manual for victory’ in the war on terror, the book suggests ‘reinvigorating homeland security with a new security agency; waging a global campaign against the terrorist ideology…’ Among the book’s proposals are: funneling U.S. aid to Iranian dissidents to help them overthrow their government; promoting the secession of Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich Eastern Province; and rejecting the jurisdiction of the United Nations Charter, unless it is modified to accommodate the doctrine of preemption. According to Frum (co-author) and Perle, militant Islam has replaced communism as the main threat to U.S. and global security. ‘There is no middle way for Americans,’ they write. ‘It is victory or holocaust.’” (My emphasis.)
A group, comprising of many of these same people, was formed around the time of the Iraqi incursionCLI: Committee for the Liberation of Iraq
“Like most front groups, the CLI was a transitory political project (Note: Membership included . . . Robert Kagan, Richard Perle, William Kristol, Joshua Muravchik AND Senator Bob Kerrey, former Congressman Steve Solarz, Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute (an offshoot of the center-right Democratic Leadership Council), Sen. John McCain, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, and former Secretary of State George Shultz, who served as honorary chairman of the CLI advisory board.) . . . that (i.e., the CLI’s mandate) faded as soon as the invasion was launched – despite its professed mission of working beyond the ‘liberation’ to ensure the reconstruction, democratization, and institution of the rule of law in Iraq. For CLI organizers, the toppling of the Hussein regime constituted, as President Bush declared on May 1, 2003, evidence of a ‘mission accomplished.’ Thus, the attention of the new crusaders turned to Iran, Lebanon, and Syria, while talk continued about restructuring Saudi Arabia and the Muslim nations of North Africa. Two months prior to the Iraq invasion, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control John Bolton (now US Ambassador to the UN), an early associate of PNAC and a former AEI vice president, traveled to Jerusalem to meet with Ariel Sharon. Bolton promised Sharon that the Iraq offensive would be just the first of the disarmament wars, declaring that “it will be necessary to deal with threats from Syria, Iran, and North Korea afterwards.” http://presentdanger.irc-online.org/commentary/2003/0311damascus_body.html
Ledeen, considered by some to be . . .
“. . . the neocons’ point man on regime change in Iran (and in Syria, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia), is apparently capable of viewing diplomacy only through the barrel of a gun, arguing in a November 2003 piece for the National Review Online that the ‘appeasers’ in Congress and the State Department ‘don’t want to know about Iran, because if they did, they would be driven to take actions that they do not want to take. They would have to support democratic revolution in Iran, and they prefer to schmooze with the mullahs.’ He concludes, ‘I guess some top official will have to die at the hands of (obviously) Iranian-supported terrorists before the Pentagon is permitted to work on the subject.’” (Unpunished Failure, NRO, Nov., 2003 and the International Relations Center).
Now, the Road to Damascus (title of Ian Williams’ article below) appears on the horizon, but a close second (to Ledeen and other neocons) is the Prince of Persia (Iran) . . . listen to Ian Williams in his November 28, 2003 article which appeared in the Interhemispheric Resource Center (Foreign Policy in Focus publication of IRC):
“The neocon chorus and Vice President Cheney made it possiblein defiance of the UN, major allies, and much of Congressto stampede the U.S. into a paroxysm of righteous patriotism against Iraq by manipulating claims of WMDs, terrorism, and similar bogeys. They have made it plain that they would like to do it again for Syria, and they may find allies in the White House who are more expedient in their views about Damascus. Syria would be a good scapegoat for continuing failure in Iraq during an election year. Taking another capital in the Spring is unlikely to hinder Republican prospects in the Fall. To paraphrase Woody Allen, just because I’m paranoid does not mean that they won’t try to follow Iraq with Syria.”
The DEAD-WRONG intelligence afflicting the administration on the incursion of Iraq, quite frankly, was overruled by the presuppositions and passions for a CLEAN BREAK with the status quo in the Middle Eastwhich, as far as they were concernedcould only get worse. But, let’s look at another aspect of that faulty intelligencethrough the eyes of Michael Ledeen.
ALL ROADS LEAD THROUGH MICHAEL LEDEEN TO ROME
The on-going investigations regarding outing Valerie Plame-Wilson as a CIA agent via Mr. Irv Lewis “Scooter” Libby, et al, is naught but a side bar to the real storywhich everyone knowson how in the world did all this “disinformation” and so-called “intelligence” get started in the first place?
Ultimately, the preemptive invasion of Iraq occurred. Now the pending conflicts in both Syria and Iran seem inevitable (now that today, November 4, 2005, we hear of massive movements of war materials through Iran’s borders into Iraq (not a new story), and of the continued insurgency in Iraq and support of the same through Syriato say nothing of the US/UN pressure upon Bashir Assad to give up both his brother and brother-in-law who allegedly orchestrated the assassination of Lebanon’s former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri).
But, the initiation of the bogus intelligence that Saddam attempted to purchase “yellowcake” from the Central African nation of Niger (which later on Ambassador Joe Wilson investigated and found utterly preposterous) in order to make WMD, was confirmed by the British, and announced in the now famous “16-word” utterance by President Bush during his January, 2003 State of the Union Address, to wit:
“The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa .”
The retribution (“treasongate”)i.e., “getting back” at Joe Wilson for having his article published in the New York Times exposing the bogus “yellowcake deal” (July 6, 2003) by having Robert Novak “out” Joe’s CIA-wife, Valerie-Plame, in a syndicated article on July 14, 2003leads us to backtrack. The “who said, he said, she said” smokescreen is NOTHING compared to the origination of the fraud itself!
So, what’s Rome got to do with Ledeen, the British, Niger, Joe Wilson, Saddam, and ultimately, the war in Iraq? Much, in every way . . .
After 9/11, 2001, events rapidly changed…by October, 2001 the US moved on the Taliban in Afghanistan…but it was not until March 20, 2003 that Iraq was invaded. The “yellowcake” via Niger to Iraq intelligence was somehow hatched in Rome and some very interesting people showed up for the Roman party.
First of all, Michael Ledeen (Karl Rove’s foreign policy advisor!) and others met in Rome with Italian intelligence in December 2001 (over a year before Bush’s infamous “16-words”). Their intention was to procure evidence against Iraq as an excuse for war.
Please see full article/links/graphics at http://www.the-tribulation-network.com
Doug is a member of the “Last Days Network” . . . a group of evangelical pundits providing news and analysis on Religion in Politics. “Applied Biblical prophecy,” apostasy and deception, the impact of the American New World Order System, and the influence of the Religious Right and Left upon American culture–are topics discussed by the group. He is an educator in the public schools (California) and an administrator. Doug’s articles can be found all over the netbut anchored @ http://www.the-tribulation-network.com (a real upbeat web site, given the name).