Eli Lake has a scoop for Newsweek outlining President Obama’s secret approval of bunker busting bombs to Israel, which could presumably be used in an attack on Iran. The deal was cut early in the Obama administration.
From Newsweek:
While publicly pressuring Israel to make deeper concessions to the Palestinians, President Obama has secretly authorized significant new aid to the Israeli military that includes the sale of 55 deep-penetrating bombs known as bunker busters, Newsweek has learned.
In an exclusive story to be published Monday on growing military cooperation between the two allies, U.S. and Israeli officials tell Newsweek that the GBU-28 Hard Target Penetrators—potentially useful in any future military strike against Iranian nuclear sites—were delivered to Israel in 2009, just several months after Obama took office.
The military sale was arranged behind the scenes as Obama’s demands for Israel to stop building settlements in disputed territories were fraying political relations between the two countries in public.
Commentary‘s Jonathan Tobin sees the leak of two-and-a-half-year-old news as part of the Obama administration’s ongoing charm offensive to woo the Jewish community:
Yet, let us be in no doubt as to the reason why news about the bunker buster sale was leaked now, more than two years after the fact, according to Lake’s reporting. At a time when Obama’s support in the Jewish community is dropping in part because of his abusive treatment of Netanyahu, it is vital he try to prove he is as good a friend to Israel as any of his predecessors.
In a tease for the full article Newsweek insinuates the bombs might have been just the tip of the iceberg of covert US support to Israel:
While the Obama administration has touted some public cooperation with the Israeli military, Newsweek’s article Monday will reveal other covert efforts by the U.S. military to aid Israel in the volatile Middle East region, and the impact the improving military cooperation has had on the sometimes chilly relations between Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the president’s popularity in the American Jewish community.
Tobin is right about the timing of the leak, first to Newsweek and now to to the New York Times as well. The Obama administration is desperate to shore up its bona fides with respect to Israel. The leak about the sale of the bunker buster bombs simply underscores Obama’s weakness and his eagerness to fellate the domestic Israel Lobby.
Hello all,
Off-topic, sorry. You’ll probably want to see this: M.J. Rosenberg on Al Jazeera.
Is this part of the reason the media is now calling him
the most Jewish President?
Israel refused to allow shipments of concrete to enter Gaza on the theory that Hamas would use it to construct bunkers, a military purpose, rather than to rebuild after Israel’s wanton, widespread destruction. a href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa4kfdM2QSM” rel=”nofollow”>Link
Now that the truth is out, and we know that Israel was equipped with bunker busters, it surely is only a matter of time before Congress investigates to determine whether Israel was actually engaging in illegal collective punishment against a civilian population rather than protect its citizens from the dangers posed by Hamas building defensive structures.
I hope the desperate Obama gets it in the next 48 hours that aipac ain’t EVER letting him stay in the White House past 2012 and they’re just milking him for what he’s worth before they throw him to the “crocodile”. Nope not even a nano chance in hell are aipac EVER gonna show Obama gratitude or MERCY. And that’s exactly why Michelle should slap Obama hard in the face (when no one’s looking) to sober up his panic-stricken brains, and she should then take him by the ear to the nearest phone where he should accordingly make the RIGHT call (Do The Right Thing) and instruct his UN mission to vote YES for Palestinian Statehood: right smack at the twelfth hour. Now THAT is what I would call felicitous, dramatic history-making.
It’s about the only thing that can save his smeared reputation in studied history. About the only thing that can save America from foolishly creating a billion+ enemies overnight.
I bet Obama is envying Abbas for miraculously re-inventing himself without political strings and chains. Maybe he’ll do like Abbas and cleave asunder the ashkanazi political noose around his pencil-pushing neck. Maybe he’ll follow his old cell-mate, Abbas, and break outta the ashkanazi cell-block himself.
Maybe he’ll finally understand that ‘historic’ leaders make difficult decisions based on the calling of their integrity and not on the vanity of re-election. They behave like upright family men and no like show-dogs on a studded leash.
C’mon get with the program mister president – last call before history’s train leaves the station.