Reply #17: Here's Justin Raimondo's short take on Wurmser (10/21/05)

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http://www.etherzone.com/2005/raim102105.shtml

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Raw Story, which is the place to go these days for the latest in the rats' sweepstakes, reported that John Hannah, Dick Cheney's national security adviser, was turning state's evidence as of yesterday, and today it's David Wurmser, Cheney's chief adviser on Middle East affairs.

Wurmser, whose Israeli-born wife Meyrav is Middle East scholar-in-residence at the neoconservative Hudson Institute, is the principal author of a by-now-famous 1996 policy paper, "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," prepared for then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by the Jerusalem-based Institute for Advanced Strategic Political Studies. The "Clean Break" strategy proposed an attempt by Israel to break out of its military and political isolation in the midst of a hostile Arab sea by pursuing regime-change in Iraq, and eventually Syria. Wurmser sought to mobilize the far-right wing of Israel's Likud party, represented by Netanyahu, around a vision of a Greater Israel surrounded by much lesser enemies. Syria, in Wurmser's view, was the main target, but the road to Damascus, he contended, had to run though Baghdad. "Whoever inherits Iraq dominates the entire Levant strategically," he wrote. The key to Israel's regional hegemony was in rejecting "land for peace" and creating a "natural axis" consisting of Israel, Jordan, and a Hashemite Iraq that could "squeeze and detach Syria from the Saudi peninsula." This would be "the prelude to redrawing the map of the Middle East" – to Israel's advantage, of course.

Among the other co-authors whose names adorn "A Clean Break": Douglas J. Feith, director of policy at the Department of Defense, and the ubiquitous Richard Perle, who is having his own problems with prosecutor Fitzgerald.

The connection of Israel to all this is plain enough: for the neoconservatives, Israel plays the same role as the old Soviet Union did to the American Communist Party. Acting sometimes in tandem with Tel Aviv, and always in Israel's interests, the cabal Wilkerson and others have identified is pursuing an ideological vision, which Seymour Hersh refers to above. Yet it could not be pursued in a vacuum, without the assistance of allies, and certainly the Israelis have played a key role in influencing the U.S. government to tread the path to war – covertly in the case of Iraq, and now quite openly when it comes to Syria and Iran.

The Israeli penetration of our national security has been put in the spotlight, lately, by the indictment – and guilty plea – of former Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin on charges of spying for Israel. During his tenure as the Pentagon's top Iran specialist, when he worked for Doug Feith, Franklin was caught red-handed funneling highly classified information to Steve Rosen, AIPAC's chief lobbyist, and Keith Weissman, AIPAC's top foreign policy analyst, who then passed the stolen secrets on to the Israeli embassy. The interconnectedness of the investigation into AIPAC's treason with Fitzgerald's probe is underscored by the following passage from Franklin's indictment:

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