I approached a realist oracle this morning to learn what to think about the Harman scandal. Quoth the oracle:
There does not seem to me to be anything new in Israel and the lobby trying to quash the indictment of Steve Rosen and his colleague. The word in the Jewish community in D.C. is that "he was framed." (Whatever that means.) This story will, however, remind many of the Pollard case and the blatant efforts of Israeli politicians and the lobby to excuse Pollard's treasonous behavior.
What is new in Jeff Stein's report on CQ--to use the standard terminology in the intelligence community--is the documentation of Israeli/lobby sources and methods. These appear to suggest that Rep. Harman was so responsive to an alleged agent of Israel as to be herself a de facto (and maybe de jure?) Israeli agent of influence. This is the significance of the reported finding that Rep. Harman had accepted the assignment she was given, in return for efforts by Israeli agents to advance her status in the USG, and had thus committed a "completed crime." It is also striking that Minority Leader Pelosi was openly portrayed by the alleged agent of Israel with whom she was on the phone as similarly manipulable by Israel/the lobby. Note the irony that, had Attorney General Gonzales not intervened, Porter Goss would have had to report Rep. Harman's involvement in foreign covert action to subvert the integrity of the US political process to House Minority Leader Pelosi. Quis custodiet custodies? [For non-realists: Who will guard the guards?]
The good news, speaking ironically, is that the Bush Administration's illegal wiretaps have finally turned up notable evidence of foreign covert action that threatens US national security and the integrity (such as it is) of our political process. Not for the first time, this threat turns out not to be from al Qaeda or an avowed foreign enemy of the United States but by alleged agents of our self-described major ally in the Middle East, Israel. And the reported covert action was attempted manipulation of the selection of the chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), i.e. to the control of congressional oversight over the intelligence community and its activities. That position is by any measure an extremely sensitive one in our national security apparatus. The attempted placement of someone seen by a foreign country Israel as an agent of influence in that position is -- or should be -- a big story. So is the Obama Administration's apparent unwillingness to allow this or to appoint Ms. Harman to a position in the intelligence community, despite the well-documented effort she and the lobby made to advance her candidacy.
In this context, the willingness of Attorney General Gonzales to quash a national security investigation in order to retain Rep. Harman's support for unconstitutional wiretapping is a telling revelation of the corrupt nature of Washington politics and of the double standard applied to incidents of covert action by Israel and its agents vs. those of other countries. It is impossible to imagine that an effort by any other country to manipulate the selection of an intelligence official would be disregarded in this way. Here, moreover, we have a case of the Attorney General assigning the political defense of a controversial program a higher priority than investigation of a specific threat to US national security--which the program in question turned up.
The Harman-Pelosi story, reported by Stein, also seems to help explain why the HPSCI and its Senate counterpart -- as well as Pelosi -- were so responsive to the campaign the Likud-Lieberman lobby waged against Chas Freeman for the National Intelligence Council. In that case, the lobby vetoed an appointment to the intelligence community. In Harman's case, albeit ultimately unsuccessfully, it attempted to advance one.
All this would appear to provide nitty-gritty evidence to back the longstanding charge that, even in intelligence matters, "Capitol Hill is Israeli-occupied territory." Coming at a time of increased tension between the US and Israel, this could hardly be more injurious to US-Israel relations. Beyond this, like the emergence of a government in Israel openly committed to values and policies that are abhorrent to many Americans (not to mention a strong global majority), the sort of manipulation of our politics and national security interests this case appears to reveal runs a real risk of fueling anti-Semitism among Americans. As such it is sharp reminder of how very, very dangerous the game that the lobby and related wingnuts have been playing is for the Jewish diaspora as well as for Israel itself.
"Beyond this, like the emergence of a government in Israel openly committed to values and policies that are abhorrent to many Americans (not to mention a strong global majority), the sort of manipulation of our politics and national security interests this case appears to reveal runs a real risk of fueling anti-Semitism among Americans."
I dunno. While I'd love to see the Israeli spies electrocuted on pay-per-view TV as much as the next guy, I'm uncomfortable with this formulation, which casts the American people and our governments of the past 50 years in a far too sympathetic light. It wasn't Israel's idea to massacre 3-4 million people with napalm and high explosives in Indochina, an event greeted with a spectacular outpouring of racist enthusiasm and bloodlust in this country, which has not by any means subsided. (Our last republican presidential candidate boasted one solitary qualification–he murdered a lot of "gooks" ..the word he continues to use to describe his victims in Vietnam. )
I don't buy the arguments about israel as a threat to US interests. Israel exists as America's rottweiler in the Mid East and has proven a marvelous asset as arms merchant, laboratory for our latest genocidal weapons, a center for money laundering and a world ambassador for America's repulsive ethos.
"Beyond this, like the emergence of a government in Israel openly committed to values and policies that are abhorrent to many Americans (not to mention a strong global majority), the sort of manipulation of our politics and national security interests this case appears to reveal runs a real risk of fueling anti-Semitism among Americans."
My impressions is that support of Israel and the Lobby runs pretty deep among American Jews. If a small minority harms the rest of the nation, I have to ask what's wrong with anti-Semitism? I come across plenty of sentiment among Jews that has to be considered anti-Christian, or anti-Majority. I have no problem seeing the people responsible for harming the United States in favor of Israel pay dearly, and the same goes for those who favor Chinese, Mexican or other interests. In the end, I guess it really is us against them. At least, that's what the internationalists and multiculturalists seem to say.
Again..I don't buy it. Has israel harmed the US standing in the world more than our massacre jamboree in Iraq, which began under Bush I, continued through Clinton and reached the apex of violence and Nazism under Bush II? Is Israel the reason our presidents are afraid to show their faces in public anywhere in Latin America, lest they be gunned down in under 12 seconds in retribution for America's stomach-turning crimes there?
America and Israel form a tightly knit, joint crime syndicate. One can't be separated from the other and in truth, the United States is the indispensable component of this axis of evil.
Baseless post, full of hate though. But who cares about what your false oracle hasto say?
Does Rep. Harman have an active security clearance? If so, why has it not been revoked? She is not supposed to be 'issued' one just because she is a member of Congress.
This story will justify the fury realists have about the relationship between Israel and America, but will hardly affect those with authoritarian personality types, who will accept their rulers' explanations without question.
It will only affect fanaticts like ED, LD, LT, and Rykart. The realists know the price of doing business in DC.
"Capitol Hill is Israeli-occupied territory"
Definitely ZOG (Zionist Occupied Government)
"I don't buy the arguments about israel as a threat to US interests."
There's a big gaping hole at the World Trade Center that might make you wish to rethink that position.
Let us give credit where credit is due. The quote
"Capitol Hill is Israeli occupied territory."
are the words of Pat Buchanan, in 1990.
cha
There's no gaping hole in the Trade Towers, they were demolished.
Are you suggesting the Israelis are the architects of 9/11? or that we were attacked due to our fealty to Israel? The former argument is a piece of lunacy, the latter argument, while certainly having some merit to it, is far from the whole story. The Arab world had plenty of legitimate reasons for attacking the US irrespective of our (admittedly loathsome) association with Israel and Judeo-Nazism in the Mid East.
What's a "fanatict?"
Yes, the realists know the power of the Lobby. We need campaign finance reform. Time to get
rid of the AIPAC pimps and their gentile whores.
Rykart,
It all depends on what spectrum you find yourself defining "US interests". If it's domination, hegemony and control as the biggest empire to date, then sure, Israel's position is one of a brute ally who is the bully pushing its neighbours around funded by the biggest bully this world has seen. If it's the liberal cause, or whatever or however they define "peace" with the people of this world, then possibly not.
Joshua
I quite agree. I'm only suggesting that those dedicated to the rule of law. human rights and a sustainable planet ought to be fiercely condemnatory of israel AND the United States. Both were founded on ethnic cleansing and both maintain themselves through export of their primary manufacturing product: violence.
If we were to remain true to every single part of that equation, and we should, then the majority of nations that we see today are guilty of all of this, only some are still in gross violations of human rights than others. (Or perhaps you are only speaking in terms of being a citizen of the USA, limiting the scope of your own reach.)
Rycart
Right wing Zionists such as Walt Rostow and Norman Podhoretz were among the strongest supporters of the Vietnam War if memory serves.
Not because they cared tw sh..ts about Vietnam but because they worried than any show of US weakness would embolden Israel's many enemies.
@
I don't buy the arguments about israel as a threat to US interests. Israel exists as America's rottweiler in the Mid East and has proven a marvelous asset as arms merchant, laboratory for our latest genocidal weapons, a center for money laundering and a world ambassador for America's repulsive ethos.
Posted by: rykart | April 20, 2009 at 04:43 PM >>>>>>>
Huummm….you need more edcuation. May I suggest W&M's chapter on how Israel has actively and covertly and overtly worked to destroy every single US effort toward normal relations with the Arab world..and others, since the day of their inception and their becoming our welfare client state.
It'a all documented…read the foot notes too. Then we can have an 'informed' conversation about Israeli threats to US interest.
Crimson…I remember Dershowitz, in a debate with Noam Chomsky, began by trying to make nice, claiming that the two of them had been fellow anti-Vietnam activists. I asked Chomsky about this and he said that it's a complete fabrication. "Believe me, I would have known if he were active against the war. He wasn't." Of course, many Jews besides Chomsky were active against the war. I don't understand their allegiance today to a vicious aggressor state in the business of invading other lands and shooting old women on their way home in Gaza.
Of course you don't understand. How could a lying moron such as yourself understand?
Americans stand with Israel as they defend themselves against Islamic fascism.
American
Dick Cheney was coerced by the Israel lobby to launch an unprovoked war of aggression on Iraq? The abominations at Abu Ghraib, Bagram and elsewhere were under the direction of the Israel lobby?
This is American Nazism, which certainly overlaps with Israeli Nazism but exists as a distinct disease, a distinct perversion all its own.
Haven't time for M&W at the moment…could you give me a quick rundown on America's bold efforts at normalization with the arab world, thwarted by israel? Also, let me know what role if any Israel played in the destruction of Iranian democracy in 1953–another raw wound the Arab Muslim world has not forgotten about, even i we have.
If israel wasn't serving US interests, we'd be bombing them. Or at least, threatening to.
PRESS RELEASE
Espionage and Property Theft Triggers Call to Suspend Israeli Access to U.S. Market
http://tinyurl.com/ustrfile
This is posted today on "Marketwatch" website. Of course they are conflicts of interest.
Here is the article:
PRESS RELEASE
Espionage and Property Theft Triggers Call to Suspend Israeli Access to U.S. Market
Last update: 11:55 a.m. EDT April 20, 2009
WASHINGTON, April 20, 2009 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ — A major legal filing urges the United States Trade Representative (USTR) to suspend preferential Israeli access to the U.S. market.
In 1983 the Israeli Prime Minister and American Israel Public Affairs Committee (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) lobbied the Reagan administration for preferential Israeli access to the U.S. market. In spite of overwhelming opposition from U.S. agricultural, industrial and citizens groups over Israel's weak protection for intellectual property rights, the U.S.-Israel Free Trade Area was signed into law in 1985.
Intellectual property violations tainted negotiations of the agreement in 1984 when the FBI discovered that AIPAC obtained a copy of the secret report "Probable Economic Effect of Providing Duty Free Treatment for U.S. Imports from Israel, Investigation No. 332-180." The still classified 300 page report was compiled from business confidential market share, cost, and other closely held information solicited by the International Trade Commission for USTR use in negotiations.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s U.S. counterintelligence agencies uncovered Israeli networks illicitly acquiring and transferring intellectual property on U.S. weapons systems. Purloined intellectual property for missiles, imaging technology and other weapons was subsequently incorporated into Israeli manufactured systems. Some Israeli systems were exported to rogue regimes and rivals American manufacturers avoided under U.S. arms export prohibitions.
For each of the past three years the Israeli Ministry of Health and pharmaceutical manufacturers have been placed on USTR watch lists for practices that cost U.S. manufacturers billions of dollars. But calls for warranted enforcement of trade rules have generated no results. Worse, proceeds from ballooning Israeli cut diamond exports to the U.S. have been used to finance illegal West Bank settlements in contravention of Obama administration policy.
According to IRmep director Grant F. Smith, "This fatally flawed agreement didn't simply facilitate intellectual property theft costing U.S. industries billions of dollars. It is the product of intellectual property theft."
A downloadable copy of the 92 page the USTR filing to suspend the U.S.-Israel trade agreement under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 is now available at link to
The Washington, DC-based Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy is an independent nonprofit that studies U.S. policy formulation toward the Middle East. IRmep's Center for Policy & Law Enforcement examines how balanced and vigorous law enforcement can improve trade, economic development and America's international standing.
SOURCE Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy
Chris Berel that's the most straight-up nazi-brand fascist I've ever heard you. This story has your employer hard pressed to find a good angle of attack, eh?
4000+ Brave men and women soldiers are dead tens of thousands wounded for Zionist Israel and Big Oil…and we do nada,even afraid to say the word JEW?
America a Jewish toilet..
Why the anonymity here? Who is this?
Malakyah,
Nobody is afraid to say the word Jew.
But if you are implying that concepts of Jews, Israelis and Jewish Isreali symphatisers are totally interchangable then you are totally off the mark.
"The realists know the price of doing business in DC." There speaks Cynicism incarnate. You and I are very different people as Americans, Chris – I guess there are at least two groups: those like Obama, who say that America is not and never will be at war with Islam, and those such as yourself.
I always suspect a militant zionist when references to bodily functions appear.
@ rykart
No question the American people, as democratic citizens (no matter how kept ignorant by the MSM, or spending most 24/7 trying to get or keep a job), are properly blamed for what the US government does, just as all Israelis are to blame for what their government does, for example–this to be distinguished from straight police states (e.g., all Arab states). We relied on this reality during the Nuremberg Trials, no?
Does Israel really exist as America's rottweiler in the Mid East? Or is it the other way around?
Whatever, the two state are certainly special partners, as both boast all the time. If you look at
the details in terms of foreign aid, UN vetoes, and the matrix of special US memorandums regarding the full entanglement between the two state, a very lop-sided beneficiary emerges.
Considering that the USA is the only current superpower, an actual marriage between Israel and the USA in terms of all important ways of getting and keeping power, leads to the common sense deduction that one is master, one slave. Forty plus years of supporting the occupation
of innocent Palestinians made to pay the price for the Shoah is the reality, and the results are
the blowback from the world that hates hypocrisy, the world burden every US citizen will shoulder, even though, if they were ever given the truth by their own MSM they would side with
the world.
@Citizen
Yes, but you always get it wrong if you think of this "Master blaster" in terms of religion, ethnicity, party-policy or even nationality.
These Straussians masters have no other affiliation except to their own kind, a small elite whose sole purpose is to obtain and exercise power.
Money is international, non-denominational, multi-ethnic, speaks every language.
It is interesting to note, however, the stress made in the Islamic faith on abstaining from interest-bearing monetary transactions.
How could Pollard's (and Rosen et al's, and Harman's, for that matter) actions possibly have been treasonous?! They were performed on behalf of the 51st State!!! (The 51st State when it's convenient, and not when it's convenient…what bugs a lot of people is the hypocrisy over dual citizenship, many in positions of influence have it…if there were similar levels, or any for that matter, of influential persons with dual Iranian, Russian, Chinese, Palestinian, Syrian, Saudi, you name it, the stuff would hit the fan – but the "special relationship" hypocrisy, which has been so abused and exploited and has done so much damage to our foreign policy and standing in the world, carries on…)