Soldiers in Iraq Are Fighting for Israel, Not America

In an article in the New York Review of Books, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., makes no bones about the Israeli/Jewish basis for the war in Iraq. He cites the influence of Leo Strauss at the University of Chicago on many of the neo-conservatives who pressed for the war. He quotes from Anne Norton's book, Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire. She says the post-September 11 strategic plan of Paul Wolfowitz was "built conceptually and geographically around the centrality of Israel.... This strategy could be understood as advancing American interests and security only if one saw those as identical to the interests and security of the state of Israel."

Then he cites James Bamford's book, A Pretext for War. Bamford says that "despite the fact that Israeli intelligence, like that of the United States, had no evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the Israeli government, along with the media, deliberately hyped the dangers of Iraq before the war." Schlesinger does not note that one component of the Israel media, the Jerusalem Post, had a virulent, anti-Iraq neo-con on its editorial board, Richard Perle. According to Schlesinger, Bamford further suggests that the Mossad and Ranaan Gissin, "Sharon's top aide," rivaled Ahmed Chalabi in sending Washington phony intelligence designed to frighten President Bush.

It worries me that it was so easy to frighten Bush. We need a courageous President, who is not necessarily John Kerry, but is certainly not George Bush.