[Peace-discuss] What did US/Israel do in Syria?

[Michael Shapiro]

This article is from antiwar.com: http://www.antiwar.com/porter/.
Here is another from that same site (by Ron Paul): http://antiwar.com/paul/

November 15, 2007
Entangling Alliances
by Rep. Ron Paul

In the name of clamping down on "terrorist uprisings" in Pakistan, General
Musharraf has declared a state of emergency and imposed martial law. The
true motivations behind this action however, are astonishingly transparent,
as the reports come in that mainly lawyers and opposition party members are
being arrested and harassed. Supreme Court justices are held in house arrest
after indicating some reluctance to certify the legitimacy of Musharraf's
recent re-election.

Meanwhile, terrorist threats on US interests may be more likely to originate
from Pakistan, a country to which we have sent $10 billion.

Now we are placed in the difficult position of either continuing to support
a military dictator who has taken some blatantly un-Democratic courses of
action, or withdrawing support and angering this nuclear-capable country.
The administration is carefully negotiating this tight-rope by "reviewing
Pakistan's foreign aid package" and asking Musharraf to relinquish his
military title and schedule elections.

By the time he complies with the requests of the White House sufficiently to
continue to receive his "allowance," courtesy of the American taxpayer, his
mission will be accomplished. A more friendly Supreme Court will be
installed and enough of the opposition party will be jailed or detained to
assure an outcome of the elections that will meet with his approval. All the
while, our administration lauds Musharraf as a trusted friend and ally.

So much for a War on Terror. So much for making the world safe for
democracy.

Free trade means no sanctions against Iran, or Cuba or anyone else for that
matter. Entangling alliances with no one means no foreign aid to Pakistan,
or Egypt, or Israel, or anyone else for that matter. If an American citizen
determines a foreign country or cause is worthy of their money, let them
send it, and encourage their neighbors to send money too, but our government
has no authority to use hard-earned American taxpayer dollars to mire us in
these nightmarishly complicated, no-win entangling alliances.

When we look at global situations today, the words of our founding fathers
are becoming more relevant daily. We need to understand that a simple,
humble foreign policy makes us less vulnerable and less targeted on the
world stage. Pakistan should not be getting an "allowance" from us and we
should not be propping up military dictators that oppress people. We should
mind our own business and stop the oppressive taxation of Americans that
makes this meddling possible.

On Nov 20, 2007 10:15 PM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu> wrote:

> [The war within the USG goes on.  Democracy (as well as the Congress)
> has nothing to do with it.  --CGE]
>
>        A warning shot for Iran, via Syria
>        By Gareth Porter
>
> WASHINGTON - Until late October, the accepted explanation about the
> September 6 Israeli air strike in Syria, constructed from a series of
> press leaks from US officials, was that it was prompted by dramatic
> satellite intelligence that Syria was building a nuclear facility with
> help from North Korea.
>
> But new satellite evidence has discredited that narrative, suggesting a
> more plausible explanation for the strike: that it was a calculated
> effort by Israel and the United States to convince Iran that its nuclear
> facilities could be attacked as well.
>
> The narrative promoted by neo-conservatives in the George W Bush
> administration began to unravel in late October with the release by a
> private company of a series of satellite images showing that the same
> square, multi-storey building that was hit by Israeli planes on
> September 6 had been present on the site four years earlier. Although
> the building appears to be somewhat more developed in the August 2007
> image, it showed that the only major change at the site since September
> 2003 was what appears to be a pumping station on the Euphrates and a
> smaller secondary structure.
>
> Media reports based on leaks from administration officials had suggested
> that the presence of a water pump indicated that the building must have
> been a nuclear reactor. But Jeffrey Lewis, a specialist on nuclear
> technology at the New America Foundation, pointed out in an interview
> with Inter Press Service (IPS) that the existence of a water pump cannot
> be taken as evidence of the purpose of the building, since other kinds
> of industrial buildings would also need to pump water.
>
> The campaign of press leaks portraying the strike as related to an
> alleged nuclear weapons program assisted by North Korea began almost
> immediately after the Israeli strike. On September 11, a Bush
> administration official told the New York Times that Israel had obtained
> intelligence from "reconnaissance flights" over Syria showing "possible
> nuclear installations that Israeli officials believed might have been
> supplied with material from North Korea".
>
> The Bush administration officials leaking this account to the press,
> obviously aligned with Vice President Dick Cheney, were hoping to shoot
> down the administration's announced policy, pushed by Secretary of State
> Condoleezza Rice, of going ahead with an agreement to provide food and
> fuel aid to North Korea in exchange for the dismantling of its nuclear
> program.
>
> They had lost an earlier battle over that policy and were now seeking to
> use the Israeli strike story as a new argument against it.
>
> The officials did not want the intelligence community involved in
> assessing the alleged new evidence, suggesting that they knew it would
> not withstand expert scrutiny. Glenn Kessler reported in the Washington
> Post on September 13 that the "dramatic satellite imagery" provided by
> Israel had been restricted to "a few senior officials" and not
> disseminated to the intelligence community, on orders from National
> Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.
>
> The intelligence community had opposed a previous neo-conservative
> effort in 2002-2003 to claim evidence of a Syrian nuclear program at the
> same site. A senior US intelligence official confirmed to the New York
> Times on October 30 that US intelligence analysts had been aware of the
> Syrian site in question "from the beginning" - meaning from before 2003
> - but had not been convinced that it was an indication of an active
> nuclear program.
>
> In 2002, John Bolton, then under secretary of state for arms control and
> international security, wanted to go public with an accusation that
> Syria was seeking a nuclear weapons program, but the intelligence
> community rejected the claim. A State Department intelligence analyst
> had called Bolton's assertion that Syria was interested in nuclear
> weapons technology "a stretch" and other elements of the community also
> challenged it, according to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee report.
>
> The attack on the site was an obvious demonstration of Israeli military
> dominance over Syria, generally considered a vital ally of Iran by
> Israeli and US officials. It was also in line with the general approach
> of using force against Syria that Cheney and his allies in the
> administration had urged on Israel before and during the war against
> Hezbollah in Lebanon in summer 2006.
>
> During the war, Deputy National Security Adviser Elliot Abrams told a
> senior Israeli official that the Bush administration would not object if
> Israel "chose to extend the war beyond to its other northern neighbor",
> leaving no doubt he meant for Israel to attack Syria, IPS reported last
> December.
>
> David Wurmser's wife Meyrev Wurmser, director of the neo-conservative
> Hudson Institute's Center for Middle East Policy, told Israel's Ynet
> News in December 2006 that, "many parts of the American administration
> believed that Israel should have fought against the real enemy, which is
> Syria and not Hezbollah". She said such an attack on Syria would have
> been "such a harsh blow for Iran that it would have weakened it and
> changed the strategic map in the Middle East".
>
> Both Israeli and US officials dropped hints soon after the Israeli air
> raid that it was aimed at sending a message to Iran. Ten days after the
> raid, Israeli's military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin declared to a
> parliamentary committee, "Israel's deterrence has been rehabilitated
> since the Lebanon war, and it affects the entire regional system,
> including Iran and Syria ..."
>
> Although he did not refer explicitly to the strike in Syria, the fact
> that the Syrian raid was the only event that could possibly have been
> regarded as restoring Israel's strategic credibility left little doubt
> as to the meaning of the reference.
>
> That same day, Reuters quoted an unnamed US Defense Department official
> as saying that the significance of the strike "was not whether Israel
> hit its targets, but rather that it displayed a willingness to take
> military action".
>
> On September 18, former United Nations ambassador John Bolton was quoted
> by JTA, a Jewish news service, as saying, "We're talking about a clear
> message to Iran. Israel has the right to self-defense - and that
> includes offensive operations against WMD [weapons of mass destruction]
> facilities that pose a threat to Israel. The United States would justify
> such attacks."
>
> On October 7, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who enjoys
> access to top administration officials, quoted an unnamed official as
> providing the official explanation for the Israeli attack as targeting
> "nuclear materials supplied to Syria by North Korea".
>
> But then, without quoting the official directly, Ignatius reported the
> official's description of the raid's implicit message: "[T]he message to
> Iran is clear: America and Israel can identify nuclear targets and
> penetrate air defenses to destroy them."
>
> The official's suggestion that the strike was a joint US-Israeli message
> about a joint policy toward striking Iran's nuclear sites was the
> clearest indication that the primary objective of the strike was to
> intimidate Iran at a time when both Israel and the Cheney faction of the
> Bush administration were finding it increasingly difficult to do so.
>
> Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing
> in US national security policy. His latest book, Perils of Dominance:
> Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in June
> 2005.
>
>        ###
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