"[Neoconservatives] always continue to sort of lurk in the framework and look for opportunities to animate their crowd and bring in their fellow travelers.." - Steve Clemons, head of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation in The Nation, March 18, 2010
The chance for neoconservative activists to "animate" the true believers came with Israel's deadly flotilla raid on May 31, and they certainly ran with it. "We Con The World," that satire video suggesting that the real mission of those on board the Mavi Marmara was to aid terror, was produced by Latma, a media site run by Caroline Glick, an editor at the Jerusalem Post. But it's her other title that's more relevant here: Senior Fellow for Middle East Affairs at the Center for Security Policy. Glick launched Latma through the CSP, which she says fully funds its operations.
CSP is the think tank founded by Frank Gaffney, who was also a founding member of the effort known as the Project for the New American Century. PNAC, in a letter to President Clinton in 1998, called for the removal of Saddam Hussein.
Gaffney is one of the dozen or so members of what Janine calls in her book Shadow Elite the "Neocon core," the players who successfully pressed for the war in Iraq. Neocon core members are longtime ideological allies who used their interlocking relationships (see the chart below) across government, think tanks, media, businesses and borders to push forward their vision of asserting American power, and firepower, to remake the Middle East. And enmeshed with this worldview is an investment in defending Israel.
One might hope that the Neocon core has been chastened into silence or at least circumspection by the various failures of their grand vision for Iraq, what some critics have called "foreign policy malpractice."
Not so, says Stephen Walt of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government:
They are effectively insulated from failure...Even if you've totally screwed up in office and things you've advocated in print have failed, there are no real consequences, either professionally or politically. You go back to [the neoconservative-populated think tank American Enterprise Institute] AEI and [neoconservative magazine] Weekly Standard and continue to agitate or appear on talk shows as if nothing has gone wrong at all. -Newsweek, Jan. 22, 2010
And agitate they have in the past 10 days, defending the Likud-led Israeli government, blasting the White House and Turkey, and warning about Iran. Here's a quick round-up of what some core members and groups that played key roles in the Iraq war push have been saying.
Her platform these days: the advocacy group Keep America Safe, which she founded last fall with help from leading neoconservative William Kristol (still another signer of the 1998 PNAC letter). Here's some of her statement on the Israel raid, which she reiterated last Sunday on ABC's "This Week".
President Obama is contributing to the isolation of Israel, and sending a clear signal to the Turkish-Syrian-Iranian axis that their methods for ostracizing Israel will succeed, and will be met by no resistance from America.
And like her fellow traveler Caroline Glick, she is no slouch in the showmanship department. Keep America Safe caused an uproar this spring by targeting unidentified Justice Department lawyers who had previously represented terror detainees - asking in an ad, "who are the al Qaeda Seven?" and "Whose values do they share?" Cheney might have thought this was one of those chances to "animate" supporters, but it seemed to backfire, with even GOP stalwart Ken Starr calling her move "out of bounds" and "very unwise."
Cheney and much of the Neocon core also run the risk of backfiring in terms of Israel. Despite JINSA's insistence that Israel is a security asset to the U.S., Anthony Cordesman, a distinguished foreign policy and military expert, last week argued that the U.S. must ask itself whether Israel might now be a "strategic liability." His commentary came out of the centrist Center for Strategic and International Studies. Stephen Walt, well-known for tangling with neocons and the Israel lobby, said last week that it is Israel's most fervent "friends", not President Obama, who are doing damage to their own cause. His message: they need to temper their unquestioned support, or risk letting their "misguided zeal" drive Israel "down the road to further international isolation."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/us/16nsa.html
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/09/what-did-bush-tell-gonzales/7064/
This involved an effort to prevent his very own Justice Department from investigating the surveillance program in the first place. The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility wanted to investigate the administration’s surveillance program, but was unable to because its investigators were being denied security clearances to do their work. Over time, it was revealed that Gonzales had denied those security clearances, and later that Bush himself had made the decision disallowing them.
http://www.theatlantic.com/murray-waas/
PNAC, Sourcewatch, and Wiki agree with me, as well as this compilation of signatories, which has links to every PNAC document, so signatures can be verified:
http://www.publiceye.org/pnac_chart/pnac.html
Show me your source that says he did.
Amazing how, for me and hopefully MANY others, the neocon/zionist ‘twisted-logic’ propaganda machine is now becoming so obvious and transparent. Amazing how the neocon/Zionist dogma is literally everywhere, coming at us from every direction. Hopefully, I will never fall for it again (won’t be easy). The fog of confusion seems to be lifting!!!
How to help others to see through it??? Amazing how the average American will instantly dismiss (i.e. literally lose all trust and respect for, and become extremely angry and hostile towards) anyone who even suggests the ‘neocon/Zionist agenda’.
BTW, I became aware of the ‘neocon agenda’ when I read the PNAC, 90-page, “prevent all other nations from rising against the U.S.A” report submitted to G.W. Bush in ‘2001. I immediately disliked and distrusted the neocons for their tribal, supremacist, vicious, greedy, hateful, take-before-taken, kill-before-killed attitude. Even still, I was at first confused why the neocon agenda was so extreme and targeted the Middle East. the Israel/zionist connection answered those questions completely.
What happened to them ---- all of them ??????
Not a good sign from HP.
All my posts from last night not posted so I have to repost again.
So once again ---
Out of a 12 Million World Jewish Population 5 Million are Secular.
Jewish intellectuals believing in a "G-D" are rare.
Yet Israel is all about a nonexistent G-d giving land to Jews in a fable written by Jews.
The chairman of the Tel Aviv University’s Department of Archaeology, Israel Finkelstein says David and Solomon were “hill country chieftains” and Jerusalem an obscure tribal village.
Jewish priests "created" a glorious and ancient history with myths & fables.
Now we have messianic prophesies promoted by Jewish & Christian Zionists & neocons.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RjnvQHWyLE.
This Rabbi explains how it should be.
A Jewish Rabbi explains but nobody seems to listen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RjnvQHWyLE
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mj-rosenberg/schumer-im-on-a-mission-f_b_560091.html
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/62899,business,dick-cheney-halliburton-implicated-in-bp-deepwater-horizon-oil-spill
2. Dick Cheney needs to testify about Haliburton.
http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/about_hal/chronology.html
3. Dick Cheney needs to testify about torture.
4. Dick Cheney needs to testify about Valerie Plame.
5. Dick Cheney needs to testify about warantless eavesdropping.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/09/what-did-bush-tell-gonzales/7064/
http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/0315nj1.htm
6. Dick Cheney needs to testify about WMD.
http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/0330nj1.htm
This is only propaganda the President NEVER said such a thing .
This was mistranslated on purpose by the neocon press.
What he wants to see blown away like so many people is the Apartheid Regime ruling Israel
http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2008/03/06/top_iraq_contractor_skirts_us_taxes_offshore/
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/radio/2008/09/26/waas
http://dir.salon.com/topics/murray_waas/
Cheney's Guy
He's barely known outside Washington's corridors of power, but David Addington is the most powerful man you've never heard of. Here's why:
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/060529/29addington_2.htm
PNAC, Sourcewatch, and Wiki all agree with me, as well as this compilation of signatories, which links to each PNAC document so signatures can be verified:
http://www.publiceye.org/pnac_chart/pnac.html
Show me your source, or stop spreading rumors.
That was before video emerged appearing to show two Israeli soldiers first pummeling with their boots and then shooting one of the victims as he lay at their feet. To stand above an injured man and then finish him off with rounds from an assault rifle can by no one's estimation be described as an act of self-defense.
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/06/israels-self-defense-narrative-falls-apart.html
Was it their intention to incite rage? Was it their intention to become martyrs? Some willed and desired martyrdom.
While it oft stated that knives, chains, iron bars are found on any ship, or in any home, as a defense of their use, slings shots are not. They were taken on board, which shows premeditation. Sling shots are deadly weapons, and a metaphor.
Video shows that the members on board the ship were preparing for a fight, before the Israeli's arrived, were off in the distance. Broken bottles used to slash people is as much a deadly weapon as is iron bars, chains, and sling shots.
Irregardless, of their own intentions toward violent behavior, what you describe is not self defense.
Nor is the flotilla innocent.
Keep up the spin. Too bad it isn't working anymore.
It just goes to show what brains, connections, drive, persistence, and a utter lack of human ethics and compassion can do to help you succeed.