NucNews July 24, 2006 -------- NUCLEAR -------- accidents and safety -------- africa Illegal Uranium Mining at Shuttered Congo Site - UN Story by Irwin Arieff REUTERS INTERNATIONAL: July 24, 2006 http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/37379/newsDate/24-Jul-2006/story.htm UNITED NATIONS - Uranium is being mined illegally at a site in Congo that provided the radioactive material for the US atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945, UN experts reported on Thursday. The Shinkolobwe mine in mineral-rich Katanga province in southwestern Congo was ordered shut down by UN investigators in 2004 who found it unsafe to operate. The investigators, sent in after a partial collapse of the mine killed eight people that year, concluded it was likely to collapse further and miners were in danger of chronic exposure to radiation. But a team of experts monitoring a UN arms embargo on the Democratic Republic of Congo said they found ample signs of "artisan mining" by small groups of private individuals during a recent visit. Local police and residents told them "local agents of the mining police and of the National Intelligence Agency not only encourage but also charge fees from the miners," the experts said in a report to the UN Security Council. "These observations stand in stark contrast to the assurances given to the Group of Experts by officials of the Ministry of Mines and of the National Intelligence Agency," the experts said. "They assured the group that the mine is secured and that no artisan mining is taking place," their report said. Some 14,000 miners, mainly youths under 18 living in the adjacent village of Shinkolobwe, once earned their living in the mine. The United States used uranium from the site to make the first nuclear weapons used in warfare. The Congolese authorities destroyed the village in August 2004, at the same time the UN investigators ordered the mine closed. But the UN experts said they found seven villages within a few miles of the mine, with a total population of nearly 10,000 people. They said they were able to drive their all-terrain vehicles right up to the mine and encountered "no barriers or even simple warning signs." Part of the experts' work is to advise the Security Council on how to prevent Congo's rich supply of natural resources from being used to fuel internal conflict that has long plagued the vast central African nation. -------- australia Australia Labor leader makes U-turn on uranium By Raphael Minder in Sydney July 24 2006 Asia Pacific News http://feeds.asiapacificnews.net/?rid=3a4dc7c2483d85e2&cat=4a8b544d0e80ba53&f=1 Australia on Monday took a significant step towards boosting its production and exports of uranium as the leader of the opposition Labor party suggested abandoning the country’s long-standing restrictions on mining the controversial metal. The surprise U-turn by Kim Beazley, the Labor leader, follows a recent call by John Howard, the prime minister, to turn Australia into an “energy superpower”. Mr Howard said last week that Australia, as the world’s largest holder of uranium reserves, should consider developing its uranium enrichment activities, even if that might upset Washington’s efforts to contain nuclear proliferation worldwide. Ahead of a speech in Sydney on Monday night, in which he was expected to announce formally the policy review, Mr Beazley said: “We must move from a focus on no new mines to a focus on the terms and conditions under which we export uranium.” Mr Beazley’s new stance is certain to spark a fierce debate within his party, which was responsible for introducing in 1984 a “three mines” policy that has restricted Australia’s uranium production to three specific sites. Meanwhile the country’s only nuclear reactor, south of Sydney, has been used for research purposes only. The Labor party has long argued that Australia does not need nuclear energy when it is already sitting on huge coal and gas reserves, and Mr Beazley on Monday insisted that his back-flip over uranium mining should not be seen as an endorsement of a domestic nuclear industry. “While we debate uranium exports, Labor will not change our long-standing policy on a domestic nuclear power industry in Australia,” he said. The issue of how Australia should manage its vast natural resources at a time of booming commodities markets, as well as respond to worldwide concerns about energy supply and security, has climbed up the political agenda ahead of next year’s federal elections. But Mr Beazley denied he had been forced to reignite the debate over uranium within the Labor party by Mr Howard’s recent focus on energy, which has also involved the launch of a comprehensive panel review of Australia’s energy policy, expected by the end of the year. Mr Beazley suggested that tough export safeguards for uranium could provide a more appropriate policy and than the existing “three mines” restrictions. But he also recognised that there would inevitably be a backlash within his own party to any attempt to scrap the mining restrictions. “I’m not leading a debate in the Labor Party about uranium mining and export safeguards because it’s easy. I believe it’s right for Australia’s future,” he said. -------- britain Blair to meet Bush Friday LONDON (AFP) Jul 24, 2006 http://www.spacewar.com/2006/060724143555.zpencc9c.html British Prime Minister Tony Blair will fly to Washington on Friday for talks with US President George W. Bush, his spokesman confirmed Monday, with Israel's offensive in Lebanon high on the agenda. After his talks with Bush, Blair will travel to the country's west coast. "He will meet on Friday President Bush and visit San Francisco and LA (Los Angeles)," the prime minister's official spokesman told reporters, without providing details on the reason for the California stop. The trip will be Blair's second to the White House in less than two months. On Friday, the White House said the two allies would use the meeting to discuss the Middle East crisis and other world troublespots, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and Sudan's western Darfur region. Bush and Blair last held talks in Washington on May 26, which were then focused on Iraq. The international community is now confronted with fresh Middle East violence as Israel bombs Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, leaving more than 360 dead and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee their homes. ---- Fight to stop nuclear waste storage near homes JOHN ROSS, Sat 29 Jul 2006 The Scotsman http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1100572006 HOMEOWNERS living close to the Dounreay nuclear site are to challenge its operators over plans to build huge waste storage vaults near their properties. Residents in Buldoo, Caithness are trying to stop the development of the shallow storage dumps which will be built just 430 metres from the nearest home and will be left in the ground forever. They want a public inquiry into the move, as the stores would be built outside Dounreay's licensed site. The plan has also been put forward ahead of a decision on how to deal with nuclear waste in future. The Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM) will be announcing its final recommendations on long-term management on Monday. The UK Atomic Energy Authority has lodged a planning application to build the shallow vaults for up to 175,000 cubic metres of solid low-level waste (LLW) from the decommissioning of Dounreay. The authority spent five years considering what to do with its LLW and changed its original choice of site after consultation. It says the revised choice meets safety and environmental criteria and will be less visible to passers-by. It also considered predictions of coastal erosion which could have affected the vaults if located elsewhere. According to a report it "minimises the spread of the Dounreay footprint, lies as close to the existing site and as far from nearest neighbours as is practical, is visually unobtrusive and utilises an area dominated by relatively poor agricultural land". But residents of Buldoo, where the vaults are now planned, say they should be inside the Dounreay boundary. John Webster, 70, a retired probation officer, said the vaults would contain waste with a radioactive shelf life of 300 years. "This would bring nuclear facilities much nearer to the houses. "The Scottish Executive has told UKAEA to keep the waste at Dounreay and we believed that meant keeping it on the licensed site. We are not anti-nuclear. We are just saying it [the waste] should be kept on the site." Another resident, Deirdre Henderson, who rents land on the UKAEA-owned area where two of the vaults are planned, said: "A few of us have young families and we think it's a pretty bleak outlook for us. I don't think we are being unreasonable not wanting this at our back doors." Dr Eleanor Scott, a Green MSP, has now asked UKAEA to find another site. She said: "I appreciate that Dounreay has to find somewhere to store the waste at the same time as they are decommissioning the site and demolishing buildings, but I am concerned all the options have not been fully examined." A Dounreay spokesman said: "If we could build the stores on the existing site and therefore remove the anxieties of local residents we would do that. But it's physically impossible to do it on the licensed site." -------- china Discharge test on Chinese "artificial sun" to be carried out in August July 24, 2006 People's Daily Online http://english.people.com.cn/200607/24/eng20060724_286123.html Around August 15th, the first plasma discharge test on China's experimental advanced superconducting Tokamak (EAST), or the so-called "artificial sun", will be conducted at the Science Island in Hefei, in east China's Anhui Province. Once the test succeeds, it will mean that the world's first nuclear fusion device of its kind is completed and will be able to go into actual operation. The "artificial sun" at the Science Island, the world's first EAST nuclear fusion device, is designed and developed by China itself. The device has now successfully gone through a series of tests, including low-temperature test and power-on test on its magnets, both of which people has followed with attention. This has laid a reliable basis for it to go into operation in the year and pass state appraisal. The first discharge test in August will draw high attention from scientific circles both in China and overseas. People are concerned with risks involved in electric discharge process. But according to explanations of a researcher partaking in the research work, neutron radiation occurs only during the course of electric discharge and, once the test ceases, radiation will halt. So neutron radiation would not have any impact outside the experiment hall. It is learned that the experiment hall for nuclear fusion is an all-tight enclosed structure made of reinforced concrete, with 1.5-meter-thick walls and 1-meter-thick roof. So the hall is "extremely safe", quoted from the researcher. So how does the "artificial sun" work? It can make plasmas from deuterium or tritium (two isotopes of hydrogen) that have been put into its vacuum hall. Then the device will increase the intensity of plasmas and raise their temperature, resulting in fusion reaction between them and producing huge quantities of energies. In the future, these energies are useable to humans after they are transformed and transmitted by certain devices in a fusion plant. It is said that deuterium to be extracted from one liter of sea water can produce as much as the amount of heat energy derived from 300 liters of gasoline through burning in the process of complete fusion reaction. Currently, the second-phase equipment installation is being carried out in an orderly way in vacuum hall of this nuclear fusion device. By People's Daily Online -------- depleted uranium Depleted Uranium Situation Worsens Requiring Immediate Action By President Bush, Prime Minister Blair, and Prime Minister Olmert Dr. Doug Rokke, PhD., former Director, U.S. Army Depleted Uranium project July 24, 2006 Uruknet http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m25045&hd=0&size=1&l=e The delivery of at least 100 GBU 28 bunker busters bombs containing depleted uranium warheads by the United States to Israel for use against targets in Lebanon will result in additional radioactive and chemical toxic contamination with consequent adverse health and environmental effects throughout the middle east. Today, U.S., British, and now Israeli military personnel are using illegal uranium munitions- America's and England's own "dirty bombs" while U.S. Army, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of Defense, and British Ministry of Defence officials deny that there are any adverse health and environmental effects as a consequence of the manufacture, testing, and/or use of uranium munitions to avoid liability for the willful and illegal dispersal of a radioactive toxic material - depleted uranium. The use of uranium weapons is absolutely unacceptable, and a crime against humanity. Consequently the citizens of the world and all governments must force cessation of uranium weapons use. I must demand that Israel now provide medical care to all DU casualties in Lebanon and clean up all DU contamination. U.S. and British officials have arrogantly refused to comply with their own regulations, orders, and directives that require United States Department of Defense officials to provide prompt and effective medical care to "all" exposed individuals. Reference: Medical Management of Unusual Depleted Uranium Casualties, DOD, Pentagon, 10/14/93, Medical Management of Army personnel Exposed to Depleted Uranium (DU) Headquarters, U.S. Army Medical Command 29 April 2004, and section 2-5 of U.S. Army Regulation 700-48. Israeli officials must not do so now. They also refuse to clean up dispersed radioactive Contamination as required by Army Regulation- AR 700-48: "Management of Equipment Contaminated With Depleted Uranium or Radioactive Commodities" (Headquarters, Department Of The Army, Washington, D.C., September 2002) and U.S. Army Technical Bulletin- TB 9-1300-278: "Guidelines For Safe Response To Handling, Storage, And Transportation Accidents Involving Army Tank Munitions Or Armor Which Contain Depleted Uranium" (Headquarters, Department Of The Army, Washington, D.C., JULY 1996). Specifically section 2-4 of United States Army Regulation-AR 700-48 dated September 16, 2002 requires that: (1) "Military personnel "identify, segregate, isolate, secure, and label all RCE" (radiologically contaminated equipment). (2) "Procedures to minimize the spread of radioactivity will be implemented as soon as possible." (3) "Radioactive material and waste will not be locally disposed of through burial, submersion, incineration, destruction in place, or abandonment" and (4) "All equipment, to include captured or combat RCE, will be surveyed, packaged, retrograded, decontaminated and released IAW Technical Bulletin 9-1300-278, DA PAM 700-48" (Note: Maximum exposure limits are specified in Appendix F). The previous and current use of uranium weapons, the release of radioactive components in destroyed U.S. and foreign military equipment, and releases of industrial, medical, research facility radioactive materials have resulted in unacceptable exposures. Therefore, decontamination must be completed as required by U.S. Army Regulation 700-48 and should include releases of all radioactive materials resulting from military operations. The extent of adverse health and environmental effects of uranium weapons contamination is not limited to combat zones but includes facilities and sites where uranium weapons were manufactured or tested including Vieques; Puerto Rico; Colonie, New York; Concord, MA; Jefferson Proving Grounds, Indiana; and Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. Therefore medical care must be provided by the United States Department of Defense officials to all individuals affected by the manufacturing, testing, and/or use of uranium munitions. Thorough environmental remediation also must be completed without further delay. I am amazed that fifteen years after was I asked to clean up the initial DU mess from Gulf War 1 and over ten years since I finished the depleted uranium project that United States Department of Defense officials and others still attempt to justify uranium munitions use while ignoring mandatory requirements. I am dismayed that Department of Defense and Department of Energy officials and representatives continue personal attacks aimed to silence or discredit those of us who are demanding that medical care be provided to all DU casualties and that environmental remediation is completed in compliance with U.S. Army Regulation 700-48. But beyond the ignored mandatory actions the willful dispersal of tons of solid radioactive and chemically toxic waste in the form of uranium munitions is illegal ( http://www.traprockpeace.org/karen_parker_du_illegality.pdf ) and just does not even pass the common sense test and according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, DHS, is a dirty bomb. DHS issued "dirty bomb" response guidelines, http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/aces/fr-cont.html , on January 3, 2006 for incidents within the United States but ignore DOD use of uranium weapons and existing DOD regulations. These guidelines specifically state that: "Characteristics of RDD and IND Incidents: A radiological incident is defined as an event or series of events, deliberate or accidental, leading to the release, or potential release, into the environment of radioactive material in sufficient quantity to warrant consideration of protective actions. Use of an RDD or IND is an act of terror that produces a radiological incident." Thus the use of uranium munitions is "an act or terror" as defined by DHS. Finally continued compliance with the infamous March 1991 Los Alamos Memorandum that was issued to ensure continued use of uranium munitions can not be justified. In conclusion: the President of the United States- George W. Bush, the Prime Minister of Great Britain-Tony Blair, and the Prime Minister of Israel Olmert must acknowledge and accept responsibility for willful use of illegal uranium munitions- their own "dirty bombs"- resulting in adverse health and environmental effects. President Bush, Prime Minister Blair, and Prime Minister Olmert should order: 1. medical care for all casualties, 2. thorough environmental remediation, 3. immediate cessation of retaliation against all of us who demand compliance with medical care and environmental remediation requirements, 4. and stop the already illegal the use (UN finding) of depleted uranium munitions. References- these references are copies the actual regulations and orders and other pertinent official documents: http://www.traprockpeace.org/twomemos.html http://www.traprockpeace.org/rokke_du_3_ques.html http://www.traprockpeace.org/du_dtic_wakayama_Aug2002.html http://www.traprockpeace.org/karen_parker_du_illegality.pdf http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/aces/fr-cont.html http://cryptome.org/dhs010306.txt ******supporting information*** more references: FOCUS | Bush Admin. Rushing More Bombs to Israel http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/072206Z.shtml The Bush administration is rushing precision-guided bombs to Israel. The request for expedited delivery of the satellite and laser-guided bombs was described as an indication that Israel still had a long list of targets in Lebanon to strike. An arms-sale package approved last year allows Israel to purchase from the United States as many as 100 "bunker buster" weapons, GBU-28s developed for penetrating hardened command centers located deep underground. http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0305/S00050.htm U.S. Colonel Admits 500 Tons of D.U. Were Used in Iraq By Jay Shaft Coalition For Free Thought In Media 5 May 2003 In three separate interviews a U.S. Special Operations Command Colonel admitted that the U.S. and Great Britain fired 500 tons of D.U. munitions into Iraq. He has also informed me that the G.B.U.-28 BLU 113 Penetrator Bunker Buster 5000 pound bomb contains D.U. in the warhead. Until now, as far as I know, the materials used to make the warhead of the G.B.U-28 have remained shrouded in mystery. He also admitted that privately the Pentagon has acknowledged the health hazards of D.U. for years. He asked to remain unnamed for obviously apparent safety reasons, and so that he may remain a valuable source of information. (I will admit that I will jealously guard his identity to keep him as a source.) I have verified his identity and that his information is mostly accurate. Some things I could not verify due to top secret classifications of certain weapons. The following is a transcript of questions I asked him. I will refer to him as U.S.C. from here on. J.S.: I understand you are a Colonel in the U.S. military, is that right? U.S.C.: You are correct; I work for the U.S. Special Operations Command attached to Central Command. My job is to plot coordinates for targets and decide what is the best way to destroy the target. I have a large network of analysts at my disposal to analyze each target and figure out what weapons would best destroy it. J.S.: Do you know how much D.U. was just used in Iraq, and what types of munitions were used? U.S.C.: Yes I am aware of at least 500 tons of D.U. munitions that were used by combined coalition forces. I also know that many cities were heavily bombarded with D.U. munitions. J.S.: 500 tons? Are you absolutely sure? U.S.C.: Oh, most sure on that matter. I know it was a little over 500 tons, but you can round off your figures to the nearest hundred tons (chuckles). J.S.: What about the cities? Did you deliberately use D.U. on them? U.S.C.: Let's just say that we didn't do anything to avoid using D.U. in cities or heavily populated areas. I know that I selected some D.U. bunker busters because of the fact that they have a high penetration factor. I used D.U. weapons exclusively on some targets so as to ensure maximum damage on those targets. You don't want to just halfway destroy some targets, you want maximum damage. J.S.: Hold on here, I didn't know that the Bunker Busters were D.U. How do you know that? I have to make sure this is for real. U.S.C.: Well the specs on the B.B.s are top secret, so good luck on verifying it. To answer your question I will ask you one. How do you think they can penetrate a steel hardened bunker with a bomb unit? There has to be D.U. in the warhead or else you wouldn't get the penetration of the target that is buried underground. J.S.: Oh I see your point. Well can you tell me which of the B.B.s have D.U. warheads? U.S.C.: Well.......... (long pause) I think I will tell you about one and leave it at that. The G.B.U.-28(guided bomb unit) BLU 113B 5000 pounder is capable of being fitted with a D.U. warhead and dropped. It is not solely a D.U. warhead; they still use them with conventional non-D.U. warheads. If you were watching T.V. and you saw any bombs hit there was an easy way to tell if it was D.U. If you saw all those little secondary white fires burning in the air in the blast: that was D.U. burning off. D.U. burns with a whitish orange flame, almost looks like a firework shell burning. J.S.: Any other B.B.'s using D.U. warheads? U.S.C.: I don't think I'll answer that, I've already said too much. Next question! J.S.: Back to the 500 tons of D.U., did the D.O.D. / Pentagon deliberately target civilian areas? And if they did, why? U.S.C.: I answered that already, but I will tell you that there were a lot of Iraqi armored vehicles in and around most major cities. Our own tanks and vehicles use D.U. penetrator rounds to destroy those enemy vehicles. We are aware that over 100 tons of D.U. munitions were used in and around Baghdad, but a lot more fighting went on around the Northern cities and Basra. We knocked out over 20,000 different types of vehicles in Iraq, and even shelled buildings in downtown Baghdad with D.U. J.S.: The Pentagon knew this was happening? Did they try to stop it? You know, because of the health risks of D.U. and the fact that we were supposed to be liberating Iraq? U.S.C.: They wanted complete destruction of any military vehicle in Iraq. That was why you saw our vehicles shooting even the disabled and already shelled vehicles. I have seen pictures of many vehicles with over 20 holes in them. The objective was to make sure that there is no way that any fighting force could ever use those vehicles in any way. We wanted to decimate the Iraqi army and make sure they were never able to fight again. I think we achieved that objective quite well, more so than we had hoped in such a short amount of time. This took an enormous amount of ammunition, mostly D.U. tipped 25mm, 30mm, and 125mm penetrator rounds. J.S.: What about the health risks that are associated with D.U.? Or do you deny there are any? U.S.C.: You are determined to get me to make a statement about the health risks aren?t you? J.S.: If you will, I want to see what the behind the scenes view of D.U. is in the Pentagon. U.S.C.: Well????? (long pause, followed by heavy profanity)?. Okay, I?ll give you some dirt if that?s what you?re looking for. The Pentagon knows there are huge health risks associated with D.U. They know from years of monitoring our own test ranges and manufacturing facilities. There were parts of Iraq designated as high contamination areas before we ever placed any troops on the ground. The areas around Basra, Jalibah, Talil, most of the southern desert, and various other hot spots were all identified as contaminated before the war. Some of the areas in the southern desert region along the Kuwaiti border are especially radioactive on scans and tests. One of our test ranges in Saudi Arabia shows over 1000 times the normal background level for radiation. We have test ranges in the U.S. that are extremely contaminated, hell they have been since the 80?s and nothing is ever said publicly. Don?t ask don?t tell is not only applied to gays, it is applied to this matter very heavily. I know at one time the theory was developed that any soldier exposed to D.U. shells should have to wear full MOP gear (the chemical protective suit). But they realized that just wouldn?t be practical and it was never openly discussed again. J.S.: So the stories that they know D.U. is harmful are true? U.S.C.: Yes, there is no doubt that most high level commanders who were around during the 80?s know about it. J.S.: So how do you feel about the fact that you exposed your own men to D.U.? U.S.C.: F?k you!! What do you know about my job? I did what I had to do to take out the targets I was given. If it was necessary to use D.U., than I put it in my target analysis reports. I didn?t actually fire the rounds myself; I work in a remote office. J.S.: So you?ll never have to worry about being exposed to D.U. huh? Very brave. U.S.C.: (lot?s of profanity) this interview is over with (more profanity, followed by the phone slamming down) I never did get to finish the third interview, but I think what I got out of the colonel is very telling. By his own admission, even knowing the dangers of D.U., it was used on major Iraqi cities. Our own troops are being exposed to the areas that have been highly contaminated, with no warning or attempt to protect them. There were hundreds of tons of D.U. used in major population centers, by troops following orders to completely destroy all Iraqi military vehicles and buildings. This is the first time that D.U. has been used in heavily populated areas. A whole country was just contaminated again with no regards to the future generations that will live there. The Tigris River irrigates all the crops grown in that area of the world, and most livestock is raised with water and crops irrigated from that river. How many more babies will be born with birth defects? How many more children will get cancer and die before they can ever live a productive life? Thousands have been affected by D.U. used in the first Gulf War. Some figures on the rate of cancer in Iraq showed a 300-500% increase in cancer and related illnesses since then. Now the major population areas have been highly contaminated, with no regard to any Iraqi?s future health. We will have to wait and see what the cost of this action will be. It is sure to be extremely high, and result in a huge amount of further suffering and death. - Jay Shaft, Editor: Coalition For Free Thought In Media - freethoughtinmedia@yahoo.com - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/coalitionforfreethoughtinmedia -------- india Lawmakers call for release of State Department nuclear report Mon Jul 24, 2006 (AFP) http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060724/pl_afp/usindianuclear_060724182830 WASHINGTON - Democratic lawmakers accused the US government of withholding a report containing information that could hurt chance of congressional passage of a US-India nuclear energy deal. Representative Ed Markey, co-chair of the House of Representatives' bipartisan task force on proliferation, called for the release of the State Department document, which he said identifies entitities "known to be engaging" in weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferation activities. "It would be absolutely unacceptable if the State Department purposefully withheld information relating to Indian entities engaged in proliferation of weapons of mass destruction until after the Congress considers the US-India nuclear agreement," Markey said. "If the Congress is going to vote to open up the flood gates of nuclear cooperation with India, we need to know whether or not India is capable of preventing proliferation by its citizens or companies," Markey said. Under the Iran-Syria Nonproliferation Act the US administration must submit a report to Congress every six months identifying every foreign person engaged in WMD-proliferation activities. The last report was released in December 2005, making the current one more than one month overdue. Other Democrats joined Markey in accusing the State Department of purposely withholding the document because its contents would thwart the administration's push for passage of the US-India nuclear cooperation accord. "Given the grave concerns about the nonproliferation implications of the India nuclear deal, it is staggering that the State Department could be failing to provide Congress with information about illicit transfers of nuclear and chemical weapons related technology and goods from entities located in the state of India," said Representative Barbara Lee (news, bio, voting record), a member of the House International Relations Committee. Ellen Tauscher, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, added: "At a time when the international community is threatened by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, it is critical that the administration release its report on persons that may have provided or received sensitive technology from Iran and Syria -- two rogue nations with a poor record in this area." -------- mideast 'Nuke Iran, Blame the Jews' Who Benefits from the Israel-Lebanon Flare-Up? By Jorge Hirsch 07/24/06 "Information Clearing House" http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14176.htm Members of the Jewish faith and others correctly point out that Jews are often blamed for the sins of others. They may be about to be proven right again, in a big way. The current conflict may escalate to the point where the US will use nuclear weapons against Iran, in what will be the first use of nuclear weapons in war since Nagasaki. And the world will blame it on the Jews. Israel's hugely disproportionate response to Hezbollah's actions is causing immense suffering, is in blatant violation of the Geneva conventions, and deserves the strongest of condemnations. It is especially important for Jews today to distance themselves from Israel's immoral government policies and US's support for them. Fortunately some are doing this [1], [2], [3], unfortunately, many are not. "Thousands of American Jews clogged the streets" in New York and elsewhere in the US [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8] in support of Israel's actions, reports the Jerusalem Post. Both Houses of the US Congress have just passed solidly backed bipartisan resolutions supporting Israel's actions in Lebanon [1], [2], to "solidify long-term backing of Jewish voters" according to the Washington Post. The irony is, Israel's war crimes are going to be dwarfed in comparison to the crime against humanity that will take place if the US uses nuclear weapons against Iran. Israel, by its disproportionate reaction and by accusing Iran (without proof) of being behind Hezbollah's actions [1], [2], [3] , [4], will be seen as having played a key role if the conflict escalates to engulf Iran and the United States. Yet the motivation for those that want this to happen [1], [2] is not to ensure Israel's hegemony in the Middle East, rather it is to ensure US hegemony in the world. Israel's Interests It goes without saying that Israel would benefit from the destruction of Hezbollah. Yet it is hard to see how the indiscriminate attack against Lebanon that is taking place will achieve anything other than strengthening the already strong support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and elsewhere in the Arab world. Shmuel Rosner argues in a Haaretz OpEd that Israel is "America's deadly messenger", being used to promote Bush's "democracy agenda". It certainly appears that Israel's current actions are irrational and self-destructive. Unless their real aim is to draw Syria and Iran into the conflict, following directions from Washington. At the very least it is clear that Israel would not be doing this in the absence of a guarantee from the US that it will intervene if the conflict widens, which in any event Bush has already publicly announced. If Iran enters the conflict and shoots a single missile against Israel, the US will step in and destroy the military infrastructure of Iran by aerial bombardment. As suggested by Seymour Hersh and others [1], [2], [3], [4], this is likely to involve the US use of nuclear "bunker busters". It has been predicted that if the US or Israel attack Iran, Iran will unleash Hezbollah who will carry out devastating attacks against Israel. "Hizbollah was also seen as a means of tying our hands on the Iranian nuclear threat," says an Israeli official. Well, we are in the dress rehersal, and we are seeing that despite all the hype, Hezbollah is a paper tiger. Green light for the Iran attack. Iran's Interests What is really unusual about the current flare-up in the Middle East is the barrage of strident denunciations against Iran, from the Bush administration, politicians from across the political spectrum [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], and the mainstream media [1], [2], [3], [4], that uniformly accuse Iran (without presenting evidence) of being behind the Hezbollah actions. This has never happened before when there was conflict in Lebanon where Hezbollah was involved, why now? One argument is Ahmadinejad's stated animosity against Israel. However, that has been Iran's stated position since 1979. The other argument is that Iran is trying to "divert attention" from the nuclear issue. That defies the most elementary logic. If Iran was really intent in getting nuclear weapons and destroying Israel, it would try to keep things as quiet as possible until it gets those nuclear weapons, several years into the future. The reality is that, whether one ascribes to Iran evil or benign intentions, Iran draws no benefit whatsoever from the current turmoil in Lebanon. Neither does Syria. Consequently the rhetoric from the US and Israel suggests a deliberate attempt to draw Syria and Iran into the conflict. The US's Interests A US attack on Iran has been predicted by analysts for several years. The US policy vis-a-vis Iran is clearly directed towards confrontation rather than accommodation. There are many reasons for the US to attack Iran, including the control of energy resources, suppression of a regional power opposite to US and Israeli interests, etc. However I have argued for many months that the key reason for the US to seek a military confrontation with Iran is that it will "force" the US to cross the nuclear threshold and use low yield nuclear weapons against Iranian installations. And this is seen as essential to further US geopolitical goals. The United States used nuclear weapons against Japan not because it had to. It did so to demonstrate to the world that it was in possession of a new weapon that packed the destructive power of thousands of bombing missions into a single one. To tell the rest of the world, beware. Since then, it has spent over 5 trillion dollars in building up its nuclear arsenal, but nuclear weapons have become "unusable" after 60 years of non-use. America has achieved nuclear primacy but it is useless, until it shows that nuclear weapons are usable again. Everything has been put in place. The US is likely to have obtained classified "intelligence" concerning hidden Iranian chemical and biological underground facilities. Low yield B61-11 nuclear bunker busters must have been deployed, just in case "surprising military developments" give rise to "military necessity". Once Iran is drawn into a conflict and shoots a single missile against Israel or US forces in the region, the US administration will argue that the next Iranian missile could carry chemical or biological warheads and cause untold casualties among Americans, Iraqis or Israelis. A low yield nuclear bunker buster will be touted as the most "humane" way to prevent further loss of life. Why it may happen In 1941, a vast military effort was started by the United States to create nuclear weapons, culminating in the Trinity test and subsequent bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The effort was shrouded in secrecy and any moral qualms were set aside. When it succeeded, it was argued that many American and Japanese lives had been saved by nuking Japan into surrender. Any speculation during the period 1941-1945 that the United States had 100,000 people devoted to create a secret weapon million-fold more powerful than any known weapon would have been dismissed as the ultimate "conspiracy theory". Similarly, much evidence indicates that a deliberate project, shrouded in secrecy, exists today that will culminate in the nuking of Iran, to "save lives". Many are privy to parts of the plan, as Seymour Hersh revealed, only a few know the plan in its entirety. Low-yield nuclear bunker busters will be used, untested but as reliable as the untested "Little Boy" that leveled Hiroshima. Americans will buy the "military necessity" argument because it will be true: American troops in Iraq will be sitting ducks facing Iranian missiles, with or without WMD warheads. After the US uses nuclear weapons again, it will have established the usability of its nuclear arsenal against non-nuclear countries. It will be possible to wage war "on the cheap", saving many American lives in future conflicts. "Support the troops" is the one thing all Americans, no matter how diverse their views are, agree on. It should not be allowed to happen. The President has sole authority to order the use of nuclear weapons against Iran. We know from previous actions of this administration what Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are capable of. There have been radical changes in US nuclear weapons policies and in preemption "doctrine", and the Bush announcement that the nuclear option is "on the table". In response, there needs to be a strong groundswell call to restrict the absolute presidential authority of this President to order the use of nuclear weapons against Iran. By the general public, by "antinuclear" organizations, by scientific, political and professional organizations. To push Congress into action before it is too late. Without a "nuclear option", the US will be more interested in negotiation than in confrontation with Iran. Cui Bono? In the short term, Israel certainly will benefit from the destruction of Iran's military capabilities. But Israel will not enjoy peace as a result, because the nuking of Iran will create enormous animosity against Israel in the Muslim world and beyond. To the extent that the world buys the US fable that the nuking of Iran was required by "military necessity" and not premeditated, Israel (and Jews worldwide) will bear a heavier than deserved brunt for having contributed to "precipitate" these events. The US will reap enormous benefits. Flexing its nuclear muscle, it will establish its absolute hegemony in the Middle East and Central Asia and beyond, and gradually squeeze China and Russia into nuclear disarmament and complete submission. In the end of course we will all lose. Because the nuclear genie, unleashed from its bottle in the war against Iran, will never retreat. And just like the US could develop nuclear weapons in only 4 years with completely new technology 60 years ago, many more countries and groups will be highly motivated to do it in the coming years. Think about the current disproportionate response of Israel, applied in a conflict where the contenders have nuclear weapons. 10 to 1 retaliation, starting with a mere 600 casualties, wipes out the entire Earth's population in eight easy steps. Who will be willing to stop the escalation? The country that lost 60,000 citizens in the last hit? The one that lost 600,000? 6 million? As the nuclear holocaust unfolds, some will remember the Lebanon conflict and subsequent Iran war and blame it all on the Jews. Others will properly blame Americans, for having allowed their Executive to erase the 60-year old taboo against the use of nuclear weapons, first in doctrine and then in practice, despite having the most powerful conventional military force in the world. Others of course will blame "Muslim extremism". And then the blaming will wither away as a three-billion-year old experiment, life on planet Earth, comes to an end. Jorge Hirsch is a Professor of Physics at the University of California at San Diego, a fellow of the American Physical Society, and organizer of a recent petition, circulated among leading physicists, opposing the new nuclear weapons policies adopted by the US in the past 5 years. He is a frequent commentator on Iran and nuclear weapons. Email to: jorgehirsch@yahoo.com. ---- Gaddafi says Libya came close to building bomb Mon Jul 24, 2006 (Reuters) http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060724/wl_nm/nuclear_libya_dc_3 TRIPOLI - Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, whose country abandoned weapons of mass destruction programs in 2003, said that at one stage Libya had come close to building a nuclear bomb, the Libyan news agency reported on Monday. It was the first time any Libyan official has confirmed that the north African country of more than five million had been trying to build a nuclear bomb. "It is true that Libya came close to building a nuclear bomb. This is no longer a secret ... as everything was laid bare by the International Atomic (Energy) Agency for everyone to see," the agency quoted Gaddafi as saying on Sunday in a speech to Libyan engineers. "The programs and equipment (to build a nuclear bomb) are known," he added. Gaddafi, who was speaking mainly about the need for economic self-reliance, referred to Libya's efforts to gain the bomb as one of several examples of Libyans being successful in challenging endeavors. He gave no further details. The main point of Gaddafi's speech was to say that he wanted to limit the role of foreigners in the economy to ensure as much of the country's wealth as possible stayed at home. In December 2003 Libya said it was abandoning its weapons of mass destruction programs and would allow in international weapons inspectors. The move was the most startling of several by Libya that helped the OPEC oil producer repair relations with the West after decades of estrangement. The U.S. government said in May that it would restore formal ties with Tripoli and take Libya off the list of countries deemed state sponsors of terrorism. Gaddafi, elaborating on a long-standing explanation for his abandonment of confrontation with the West, said the time for spending large amounts of money on supporting political movements overseas was now over. Although the support was a "must" at the time, it was clear that the effort had used up large amounts of resources. "All revolutionaries used to come to the (Libyan) revolution for help. Revolutionaries in Latin America, Africa and Asia, sought our help, even the IRA ( Irish Republican Army)," he said. "I put a stop to this because we spent a great deal of money on the military side, not only in terms of construction." He said Libya had taken part in a "battle" for Arab nationalism, but this era was now over. "There were hopes and aspirations to have a strong nationalist entity of which we would be a part, expanding from Iraq to Morocco, for example. This no longer valid," he said. "Arabs would be one nation ... Unfortunately this has failed and that era ended and a new era began." "We have to learn lessons." -------- pakistan Report: Pakistan Expanding Nuclear Reactor The Associated Press July 24, 2006 http://www.topix.net/content/ap/0049851617225045872923811709801474167892?threadid=N20FU1LT0J0JF5RM This ought to be no revelation to anyone because Pakistan is a nuclear weapon state. Independent analysts say Pakistan has started work on a new reactor that could signal a major expansion of the country's nuclear weapons capabilities, The Washington Post reported. The paper cited in Monday's editions an analysis by the Institute for Science and International Security that said satellite photos of Pakistan's Khushab nuclear site show construction of what appears to be a reactor capable of producing enough plutonium for 40 to 50 nuclear weapons a year. It said an assessment by the Washington-based nuclear experts concluded that would represent a 20-fold increase from Pakistan's existing capabilities. 'South Asia may be heading for a nuclear arms race that could lead to arsenals growing into the hundreds of nuclear weapons, or at minimum, vastly expanded stockpiles of military fissile material,' the institute's David Albright and Paul Brannan concluded in the report, a copy of which was provided to the Post according to the newspaper. In Islamabad Monday, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said her country opposes a nuclear and conventional weapons arms race in South Asia. But she also declined to reject the report. 'This ought to be no revelation to anyone because Pakistan is a nuclear weapon state.' Aslam said. '(But) I have no specific comments on Pakistan's facilities.' Aslam defended Pakistan, saying it was not the first country to introduce nuclear weapons into South Asia. The comment apparently referred to archrival India, with whom Pakistan has fought three wars with since 1947. 'We were not the first to test nuclear weapons in this region and that remains our position,' Aslam said during a press conference. 'We do not want an arms race in this region.' The Post said the assessment's key judgments were endorsed by two other independent nuclear experts who reviewed commercially available satellite images, provided by the company DigitalGlobe, and supporting data. The Post also quoted a senior Pakistani official, speaking on condition of anonymity, as acknowledging that a nuclear expansion was under way. 'Pakistan's nuclear program has matured,' the official told the Post. 'We're now consolidating the program with further expansions.' The expanded program includes 'some civilian nuclear power and some military components,' the official was quoted as saying. Pakistan and neighboring India, which also has nuclear weapons, have never signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. News of the developments in Pakistan comes as Congress gets ready to take up a nuclear cooperation agreement between the Bush administration and India in which India would get access to sensitive U.S. nuclear technology in exchange for agreeing to more stringent safeguards over its civilian nuclear reactors. ---- Pakistan Expanding Nuclear Program Plant Underway Could Generate Plutonium for 40 to 50 Bombs a Year, Analysts Say By Joby Warrick Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, July 24, 2006; A01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/23/AR2006072300737_pf.html Pakistan has begun building what independent analysts say is a powerful new reactor for producing plutonium, a move that, if verified, would signal a major expansion of the country's nuclear weapons capabilities and a potential new escalation in the region's arms race. Satellite photos of Pakistan's Khushab nuclear site show what appears to be a partially completed heavy-water reactor capable of producing enough plutonium for 40 to 50 nuclear weapons a year, a 20-fold increase from Pakistan's current capabilities, according to a technical assessment by Washington-based nuclear experts. The construction site is adjacent to Pakistan's only plutonium production reactor, a modest, 50-megawatt unit that began operating in 1998. By contrast, the dimensions of the new reactor suggest a capacity of 1,000 megawatts or more, according to the analysis by the Institute for Science and International Security. Pakistan is believed to have 30 to 50 uranium warheads, which tend to be heavier and more difficult than plutonium warheads to mount on missiles. "South Asia may be heading for a nuclear arms race that could lead to arsenals growing into the hundreds of nuclear weapons, or at minimum, vastly expanded stockpiles of military fissile material," the institute's David Albright and Paul Brannan concluded in the technical assessment, a copy of which was provided to The Washington Post. The assessment's key judgments were endorsed by two other independent nuclear experts who reviewed the commercially available satellite images, provided by Digital Globe, and supporting data. In Pakistan, officials would not confirm or deny the report, but a senior Pakistani official, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that a nuclear expansion was underway. "Pakistan's nuclear program has matured. We're now consolidating the program with further expansions," the official said. The expanded program includes "some civilian nuclear power and some military components," he said. The development raises fresh concerns about a decades-old rivalry between Pakistan and India. Both countries already possess dozens of nuclear warheads and a variety of missiles and other means for delivering them. Pakistan, like India, has never signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. One of its pioneering nuclear scientists, Abdul Qadeer Khan, who confessed two years ago to operating a network that supplied nuclear materials and know-how to Libya, Iran and North Korea. The evidence of a possible escalation also comes as Congress prepares to debate a controversial nuclear cooperation agreement between the Bush administration and India. The agreement would grant India access to sensitive U.S. nuclear technology in return for placing its civilian nuclear reactors under tighter safeguards. No such restrictions were placed on India's military nuclear facilities. India currently has an estimated 30 to 35 nuclear warheads based on a sophisticated plutonium design. Pakistan, which uses a simpler, uranium-based warhead design, has sought for years to modernize its arsenal, and a new heavy-water reactor could allow it to do so, weapons experts say. "With plutonium bombs, Pakistan can fully join the nuclear club," said a Europe-based diplomat and nuclear expert, speaking on condition that he not be identified by name, after reviewing the satellite evidence. He concurred with the Institute for Science and International Security assessment but offered a somewhat lower estimate -- "up to tenfold" -- for the increase in Pakistan's plutonium production. A third, U.S.-based expert concurred fully with the institute's estimates. Pakistan launched its nuclear program in the early 1970s and conducted its first successful nuclear test in 1998. The completion of the first, 50-megawatt plutonium production reactor in Pakistan's central Khushab district was seen as a step toward modernizing the country's arsenal. The reactor is capable of producing about 10 kilograms of plutonium a year, enough for about two warheads. Construction of the larger reactor at Khushab apparently began sometime in 2000. Satellite photos taken in the spring of 2005 showed the frame of a rectangular building enclosing what appeared to be the round metal shell of a large nuclear reactor. A year later, in April 2006, the roof of the structure was still incomplete, allowing an unobstructed view of the reactor's features. "The fact that the roof is still off strikes me as a sign that Pakistan is neither rushing nor attempting to conceal," said Albright of the institute. The slow pace of construction could suggest difficulties in obtaining parts, or simply that other key facilities for plutonium bomb-making are not yet in place, the institute report concludes. Pakistan would probably need to expand its capacity for producing heavy water for its new reactor, as well as its ability to reprocess spent nuclear fuel to extract the plutonium, the report says. After comparing a sequence of satellite photos, the institute analysts estimated that the new reactor was still "a few years" from completion. The diameter of the structure's metal shell suggests a very large reactor "operating in excess of 1,000 megawatts thermal," the report says. "Such a reactor could produce over 200 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium per year, assuming it operates at full power a modest 220 days per year," it says. "At 4 to 5 kilograms of plutonium per weapon, this stock would allow the production of over 40 to 50 nuclear weapons a year." There was no immediate reaction to the report from the Bush administration. Albright said he shared his data with government nuclear analysts, who did not dispute his conclusions and appeared to already know about the new reactor. "If there's an increasing risk of an arms race in South Asia, why hasn't this already been introduced into the debate?" Albright asked. He said the Pakistani development adds urgency to calls for a treaty halting the production of fissile material used in nuclear weapons. "The United States needs to push more aggressively for a fissile material cut-off treaty, and so far it has not," he said. Special correspondent Kamran Khan in Karachi, Pakistan, and researcher Alice Crites in Washington contributed to this report. ---- Pakistan nuclear expansion raises US concerns By Carol Giacomo and Andrea Shalal-Esa Mon Jul 24, 2006 (Reuters) http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060724/ts_nm/nuclear_arms_pakistan_dc_4 WASHINGTON - Pakistan is building a new nuclear reactor that could produce enough plutonium for 40 to 50 nuclear weapons a year in what would be a major expansion of its nuclear program and could prompt an intensified arms race in South Asia, a report said Monday. But U.S. officials and congressional aides, who confirmed the Pakistani plan, said it was unlikely to derail a nuclear cooperation accord with India or the sale of U.S.-made F-16 jets to Islamabad. News of the planned new Pakistani facility was confirmed as the U.S. Congress faced targets for action this week on both an Indian cooperation accord and the F-16s deal. "We have been aware of these plans, and we discourage any use of that facility for military purposes such as weapons development," White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters. He said the administration "discourage(s) expansion and modernization of nuclear weapons programs, both of India and Pakistan," nuclear rivals who refused to sign the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. While U.S. officials knew about the reactor project, congressional aides said Congress was largely unaware until a report in the Washington Post on Monday citing an analysis of satellite photos and other data by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security. The analysis concluded Pakistan was building a second larger heavy water reactor at its Khushab complex that could produce enough plutonium for 40 to 50 nuclear weapons a year. Construction apparently began sometime after March 2000. But the analysis said Pakistan did not appear to be hastening completion, possibly due to shortages of reactor components or weapons production infrastructure. The administration preferred to keep the project quiet because public disclosure "probably will aggravate concerns in India" as well as on Capitol Hill, one U.S. official said. Congress this week faces a deadline for acting if it wants to block administration plans to sell Pakistan up to 36 F-16C/D Block 50/52 Falcon fighters built by Lockheed Martin Corp. in a deal potentially worth up to $5 billion. Some lawmakers are concerned about Pakistan's past nuclear proliferation record and fear the warplane technology could be leaked to China, Pakistan's close ally. Congress could block the sale by enacting a resolution of disapproval in both houses within 30 days of the June 28 notification date, but such action is rare. But to survive a presidential veto, the legislation would have to pass both houses with a two-thirds majority. "The reality ...is that it's very difficult to pass a resolution of disapproval," said Rachel Stohl of the Center for Defense Information. Added a congressional aide: "There should be no effect on the sale of F-16s (because of the new reactor). So far there seem to be no major obstacles to the sale. The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday is to take the first of two key votes on the U.S.-India nuclear deal, which would permit sales of American nuclear fuel and reactors to New Delhi for the first time in 30 years. U.S. officials and congressional aides expect the deal to be approved. However, Democratic Rep. Edward Markey (news, bio, voting record), an administration critic, said: "The nuclear arms race in South Asia is about to ignite, and ... the Bush Administration is throwing fuel on the fire. If either India or Pakistan starts increasing its nuclear arsenal, the other side will respond in kind; and the Bush Administration's proposed nuclear deal with India is making that much more likely." He and other lawmakers accused the State Department of withholding until after the vote an embarrassing report which will show Indian entities have sold or received weapons of mass destruction technology from Iran or Syria. A department spokesman said the report would be out "shortly." (additional reporting by Steve Holland)) ---- US calls on Pakistan not to use new nuclear reactor for bombs Neither Pakistan nor neighbouring India are signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and as the US Congress prepares to hold new debates on a proposed civilian nuclear cooperation deal with India, the ISIS report on Pakistan has set alarm bells ringing among some lawmakers who oppose the India deal. by Staff Writers Washington (AFP) Jul 24, 2006 http://www.spacewar.com/reports/a060724215346.dv6joi2b.html The United States on Monday urged Pakistan not to use a powerful new atomic reactor under construction to bolster its nuclear weapons capability amid warnings of a new South Asia arms race. The US administration confirmed it knew about the reactor at Pakistan's Khushab nuclear complex after satellite images were released by a US nuclear non-proliferation group. The International Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) said the heavy water reactor could produce more than 200 kilogrammes (440 pounds) of weapons grade plutonium a year. This would be enough to make 40-50 nuclear weapons every year. Pakistan is believed to currently have 30-50 uranium warheads in all, "which tend to be heavier and more difficult than plutonium warheads to mount on missiles," the Washington Post reported Monday. "South Asia may be heading for a nuclear arms race that could lead to arsenals growing into the hundreds of nuclear weapons, or at a minimum vastly expanded stockpiles of military fissile material," the ISIS warned. White House spokesman Tony Snow said: "We have been aware of these plans and we discourage any use of that facility for military purposes such as weapons development." A US official, who asked not to be identified, said: "The US government has been tracking it for several years". Neither Pakistan nor neighbouring India are signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and as the US Congress prepares to hold new debates on a proposed civilian nuclear cooperation deal with India, the ISIS report on Pakistan has set alarm bells ringing among some lawmakers who oppose the India deal. Representative Ed Markey, the Democratic co-chairman of the Bipartisan Taskforce on Nonproliferation, said: "The nuclear arms race in South Asia is about to ignite, and instead of doing everything possible to stop this vicious cycle, the Bush Administration is throwing fuel on the fire. "If either India or Pakistan starts increasing its nuclear arsenal, the other side will respond in kind; and the Bush Administration's proposed nuclear deal with India is making that much more likely." He called on President George W. Bush to press India and Pakistan to suspend production of bomb-grade fissile materials while an international treaty limiting bomb-making material stockpiles is negotiated. "Both Pakistan and India need to reverse their decisions to increase their nuclear arsenals, and take a step back from the brink," Markey said. But Representative Tom Lantos, the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, said there should be no impact on the legislation on India going through the House. "US and international exports to India's civilian energy programme are going to be under international safeguards to prevent their use in a military programme, so this agreement will not contribute to an arms race," said Lantos. "Pakistan's newly-disclosed reach for more plutonium does not change the safeguards in the US-India deal; it makes them all the more relevant." Khushab is in Pakistan's Punjab province. The new reactor is adjacent to Pakistan's only plutonium production reactor, a 50-megawatt unit that began operating in 1998. The dimensions of the new reactor suggest a capacity of 1,000 megawatts or more, according to ISIS experts David Albright and Paul Brannan. Pakistan would not confirm plans for the new reactor. In Islamabad, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said the existence of the Khushab nuclear facility "ought to be no revelation to anyone because Pakistan is a nuclear weapon state. "I have no specific comments on Pakistan's facility or details of the facility and our programme in this sector." The ISIS also called for accelerated efforts to reach agreement on halting production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons. "Not only are such arsenals a waste of precious resources, they increase instability in the region and could needlessly provoke China to respond by increasing the size and lethality of its own nuclear capabilities," said the ISIS report. -------- russia U.S.-Russian Effort Seeks To Prevent Terrorist Nuclear Attacks More private-sector and government resources needed to address threat By Jacquelyn S. Porth Washington File Staff Writer 24 July 2006 US State Department http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2006&m=July&x=20060724180123sjhtrop0.1296656&chanlid=eur Washington – The United States and Russia will hold the first organizational meeting of initial partners of the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism in the next several months. Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Robert Joseph answered questions from individuals in India, Israel and the United States about the threat of nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands during a July 19 web chat at the State Department. The initiative aims “to reduce the risk that terrorists could ever obtain a nuclear weapon or carry out a nuclear attack,” he said. It is designed to take “a comprehensive approach to dealing with all elements of nuclear terrorism risk,” Joseph said. The two countries unveiled their plans during a bilateral meeting at the July G8 Summit in St. Petersburg. (See related article.) Joseph said this is the first time that the United States and Russia “have come together to form a growing network of partner nations that are committed to taking effective and focused measures to build a layered defense” against nuclear terrorism. (See related article.) “This layered defense-in-depth requires that partner nations not only improve their interdiction cooperation, but that they also enhance the security of nuclear material, develop capabilities to detect its movement, and improve national emergency response.” The under secretary said the two countries will invite partner nations to the upcoming meeting “to elaborate and endorse a statement of principles” for the initiative. He said one of those partners will serve as the host for the initial meeting. “The Global Initiative will build our collective and individual capacity to combat nuclear terrorism on a determined and systematic basis,” the under secretary said, because such activities “require extensive cooperation and interoperability with partner nations across the full range of capabilities, to include prevention, protection and response.” The initiative will build on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s vision of transformational diplomacy, according to Joseph, “by building consensus among partner nations regarding our most serious international security threat, and galvaniz[ing] them to take concrete and sustained steps to defeat it.” Asked about the cost of the initiative, he said the amount of money spent “is only one measure of success,” suggesting that how well the money is spent is another measure. Joseph said each partner nation “should be measuring what percent of cargo leaving their ports and arriving ... in the ports of other partner nations is scanned for nuclear or radiological material.” In addition, he said partners “should be measuring how fast we share operational and technical information ... regarding potential nuclear terrorist threats as they emerge, and seeking new ways to accelerate that information flow.” Lastly, the under secretary said, each nation should be looking at how fast their emergency response teams can deploy and gain control over dangerous material and how quickly they can respond to calls for assistance from other nations. Through this initiative, he said the United States and Russia hope to galvanize their respective partners “to spend more resources on this threat, work with the private sector to ensure they allocate more resources to their own risk mitigation activities, and develop concrete performance measures to ensure that the money we all spend actually makes a difference.” -------- u.s. nuc facilities -------- new york Indian Point, NY, Nuclear Unit Returns to Service REUTERS US: July 24, 2006 http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/37378/newsDate/24-Jul-2006/story.htm NEW YORK - The Indian Point nuclear power unit 3 north of New York City returned to service Saturday morning after an unplanned shutdown, the plant's owner, Entergy Corp. said. Unit 3 should be at full power later Saturday, said Jim Steets, a spokesman for the plant. The unit was shut down unexpectedly Friday after sparks were seen at scaffolding in a non-nuclear part of the plant. No injuries were reported and the nuclear power reactor was shut down without incident, said Larry Gottlieb, spokesman for Entergy. When sparks were seen, the 991-megawatt unit 3 was shut as a precaution around 10 a.m. on Friday, said Gottlieb. "We didn't know where the sparks were coming from so we took the conservative approach and took the unit offline," Gottlieb added. Indian Point has another nuclear reactor unit, number 2, which continued to operate at full power. Indian Point is in Buchanan in Westchester County and is about 45 miles north of Manhattan. With summer demand at its highest levels in history across the United States, all of the other 102 nuclear reactors were generating electricity on Friday, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission showed in a daily report. Gottlieb said Entergy had gotten assurances from the power grid manager in New York, the New York Independent System Operator, that the shutdown of Indian Point did not adversely impact reliable electrical supplies. That's because temperatures in New York were cooler on Friday than earlier this week, causing less power demand. -------- MILITARY -------- arms Lebanon president says Israel uses phosphorous arms 24 Jul 2006 Reuters http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L24911888.htm PARIS, July 24 (Reuters) - Lebanon's president accused Israel on Monday of using phosphorous bombs in its 13-day offensive and urged the United Nations to demand an immediate ceasefire. "According to the Geneva Convention, when they use phosphorous bombs and laser bombs, is that allowed against civilians and children?" President Emile Lahoud asked on France's RFI radio. An Israeli military spokeswoman said arms used in Lebanon did not contravene international norms. "Everything the Israeli Defence Forces are using is legitimate," the spokeswoman said. Lahoud gave no details but said the United Nations had to take concrete action to force Israel to stop its assault. "The massacre must be stopped as soon as possible. Afterwards we can talk about everything," he said. "A decision has to be taken so that there is an immediate ceasefire." Lahoud's comments came as U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice flew to Beirut to seek a "sustainable" ceasefire in Lebanon. The conflict, triggered when Hizbollah guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers, has killed at least 373 in Lebanon as well as 37 Israelis and displaced half a million people in Lebanon. --- GRAPHIC VIDEO - Lebanese Doctor Says 'Phosphorus Weapons' Cause Suffering RAW STORY Published: Monday July 24, 2006 http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/VIDEO__Lebanese_Doctor_Says_Phosphorus_0724.html [A note to readers: This news report, originally aired on CNN International, contains graphic images.] CNN video correspondent, Karl Penhaul, follows a family that had been mistakenly caught in an Israeli air strike. The doctor treating the family says that there is phosphorus in the weapons that cause extremely painful burns on its victims. -------- israel / palestine Israel vs. the U.S. — A Pointed Reminder Monday, July 24th, 2006 in News by Justin Raimondo Antiwar.com http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2006/07/24/israel-vs-the-us-a-pointed-reminder/ As Israel ravages Lebanon, with the fulsome endorsement of George W. Bush, here’s a pointed reminder that Israeli and American interests, far from being identical, are often radically divergent. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAoe26MaTew&search=fox%20news This four-part investigation by Carl Cameron broadcast by Fox News in mid-December, 2001, was taken down from the Fox web site days after it appeared, and in the past the company has gone after anyone who has posted it online, but now, due to the miracle of YouTube, it’s available again – and more important than ever. http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j122201special.html I wonder how long it will be before “the Lobby” gets it taken down. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html For more information on this subject, go here http://www.antiwar.com/israeli-files.php – and here. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0595296823/102-0103842-7704107?n=283155 --- The Israel Lobby John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt London Review of Books | Vol. 28 No. 6 dated 23 March 2006 http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/print/mear01_.html For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centrepiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread ‘democracy’ throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardised not only US security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the US been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state? One might assume that the bond between the two countries was based on shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives, but neither explanation can account for the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the US provides. Instead, the thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the ‘Israel Lobby’. Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US interests and those of the other country – in this case, Israel – are essentially identical. Since the October War in 1973, Washington has provided Israel with a level of support dwarfing that given to any other state. It has been the largest annual recipient of direct economic and military assistance since 1976, and is the largest recipient in total since World War Two, to the tune of well over $140 billion (in 2004 dollars). Israel receives about $3 billion in direct assistance each year, roughly one-fifth of the foreign aid budget, and worth about $500 a year for every Israeli. This largesse is especially striking since Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income roughly equal to that of South Korea or Spain. Other recipients get their money in quarterly installments, but Israel receives its entire appropriation at the beginning of each fiscal year and can thus earn interest on it. Most recipients of aid given for military purposes are required to spend all of it in the US, but Israel is allowed to use roughly 25 per cent of its allocation to subsidise its own defence industry. It is the only recipient that does not have to account for how the aid is spent, which makes it virtually impossible to prevent the money from being used for purposes the US opposes, such as building settlements on the West Bank. Moreover, the US has provided Israel with nearly $3 billion to develop weapons systems, and given it access to such top-drawer weaponry as Blackhawk helicopters and F-16 jets. Finally, the US gives Israel access to intelligence it denies to its Nato allies and has turned a blind eye to Israel’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. Washington also provides Israel with consistent diplomatic support. Since 1982, the US has vetoed 32 Security Council resolutions critical of Israel, more than the total number of vetoes cast by all the other Security Council members. It blocks the efforts of Arab states to put Israel’s nuclear arsenal on the IAEA’s agenda. The US comes to the rescue in wartime and takes Israel’s side when negotiating peace. The Nixon administration protected it from the threat of Soviet intervention and resupplied it during the October War. Washington was deeply involved in the negotiations that ended that war, as well as in the lengthy ‘step-by-step’ process that followed, just as it played a key role in the negotiations that preceded and followed the 1993 Oslo Accords. In each case there was occasional friction between US and Israeli officials, but the US consistently supported the Israeli position. One American participant at Camp David in 2000 later said: ‘Far too often, we functioned . . . as Israel’s lawyer.’ Finally, the Bush administration’s ambition to transform the Middle East is at least partly aimed at improving Israel’s strategic situation. This extraordinary generosity might be understandable if Israel were a vital strategic asset or if there were a compelling moral case for US backing. But neither explanation is convincing. One might argue that Israel was an asset during the Cold War. By serving as America’s proxy after 1967, it helped contain Soviet expansion in the region and inflicted humiliating defeats on Soviet clients like Egypt and Syria. It occasionally helped protect other US allies (like King Hussein of Jordan) and its military prowess forced Moscow to spend more on backing its own client states. It also provided useful intelligence about Soviet capabilities. Backing Israel was not cheap, however, and it complicated America’s relations with the Arab world. For example, the decision to give $2.2 billion in emergency military aid during the October War triggered an Opec oil embargo that inflicted considerable damage on Western economies. For all that, Israel’s armed forces were not in a position to protect US interests in the region. The US could not, for example, rely on Israel when the Iranian Revolution in 1979 raised concerns about the security of oil supplies, and had to create its own Rapid Deployment Force instead. The first Gulf War revealed the extent to which Israel was becoming a strategic burden. The US could not use Israeli bases without rupturing the anti-Iraq coalition, and had to divert resources (e.g. Patriot missile batteries) to prevent Tel Aviv doing anything that might harm the alliance against Saddam Hussein. History repeated itself in 2003: although Israel was eager for the US to attack Iraq, Bush could not ask it to help without triggering Arab opposition. So Israel stayed on the sidelines once again. Beginning in the 1990s, and even more after 9/11, US support has been justified by the claim that both states are threatened by terrorist groups originating in the Arab and Muslim world, and by ‘rogue states’ that back these groups and seek weapons of mass destruction. This is taken to mean not only that Washington should give Israel a free hand in dealing with the Palestinians and not press it to make concessions until all Palestinian terrorists are imprisoned or dead, but that the US should go after countries like Iran and Syria. Israel is thus seen as a crucial ally in the war on terror, because its enemies are America’s enemies. In fact, Israel is a liability in the war on terror and the broader effort to deal with rogue states. ‘Terrorism’ is not a single adversary, but a tactic employed by a wide array of political groups. The terrorist organisations that threaten Israel do not threaten the United States, except when it intervenes against them (as in Lebanon in 1982). Moreover, Palestinian terrorism is not random violence directed against Israel or ‘the West’; it is largely a response to Israel’s prolonged campaign to colonise the West Bank and Gaza Strip. More important, saying that Israel and the US are united by a shared terrorist threat has the causal relationship backwards: the US has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel, not the other way around. Support for Israel is not the only source of anti-American terrorism, but it is an important one, and it makes winning the war on terror more difficult. There is no question that many al-Qaida leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are motivated by Israel’s presence in Jerusalem and the plight of the Palestinians. Unconditional support for Israel makes it easier for extremists to rally popular support and to attract recruits. As for so-called rogue states in the Middle East, they are not a dire threat to vital US interests, except inasmuch as they are a threat to Israel. Even if these states acquire nuclear weapons – which is obviously undesirable – neither America nor Israel could be blackmailed, because the blackmailer could not carry out the threat without suffering overwhelming retaliation. The danger of a nuclear handover to terrorists is equally remote, because a rogue state could not be sure the transfer would go undetected or that it would not be blamed and punished afterwards. The relationship with Israel actually makes it harder for the US to deal with these states. Israel’s nuclear arsenal is one reason some of its neighbours want nuclear weapons, and threatening them with regime change merely increases that desire. A final reason to question Israel’s strategic value is that it does not behave like a loyal ally. Israeli officials frequently ignore US requests and renege on promises (including pledges to stop building settlements and to refrain from ‘targeted assassinations’ of Palestinian leaders). Israel has provided sensitive military technology to potential rivals like China, in what the State Department inspector-general called ‘a systematic and growing pattern of unauthorised transfers’. According to the General Accounting Office, Israel also ‘conducts the most aggressive espionage operations against the US of any ally’. In addition to the case of Jonathan Pollard, who gave Israel large quantities of classified material in the early 1980s (which it reportedly passed on to the Soviet Union in return for more exit visas for Soviet Jews), a new controversy erupted in 2004 when it was revealed that a key Pentagon official called Larry Franklin had passed classified information to an Israeli diplomat. Israel is hardly the only country that spies on the US, but its willingness to spy on its principal patron casts further doubt on its strategic value. Israel’s strategic value isn’t the only issue. Its backers also argue that it deserves unqualified support because it is weak and surrounded by enemies; it is a democracy; the Jewish people have suffered from past crimes and therefore deserve special treatment; and Israel’s conduct has been morally superior to that of its adversaries. On close inspection, none of these arguments is persuasive. There is a strong moral case for supporting Israel’s existence, but that is not in jeopardy. Viewed objectively, its past and present conduct offers no moral basis for privileging it over the Palestinians. Israel is often portrayed as David confronted by Goliath, but the converse is closer to the truth. Contrary to popular belief, the Zionists had larger, better equipped and better led forces during the 1947-49 War of Independence, and the Israel Defence Forces won quick and easy victories against Egypt in 1956 and against Egypt, Jordan and Syria in 1967 – all of this before large-scale US aid began flowing. Today, Israel is the strongest military power in the Middle East. Its conventional forces are far superior to those of its neighbours and it is the only state in the region with nuclear weapons. Egypt and Jordan have signed peace treaties with it, and Saudi Arabia has offered to do so. Syria has lost its Soviet patron, Iraq has been devastated by three disastrous wars and Iran is hundreds of miles away. The Palestinians barely have an effective police force, let alone an army that could pose a threat to Israel. According to a 2005 assessment by Tel Aviv University’s Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies, ‘the strategic balance decidedly favours Israel, which has continued to widen the qualitative gap between its own military capability and deterrence powers and those of its neighbours.’ If backing the underdog were a compelling motive, the United States would be supporting Israel’s opponents. That Israel is a fellow democracy surrounded by hostile dictatorships cannot account for the current level of aid: there are many democracies around the world, but none receives the same lavish support. The US has overthrown democratic governments in the past and supported dictators when this was thought to advance its interests – it has good relations with a number of dictatorships today. Some aspects of Israeli democracy are at odds with core American values. Unlike the US, where people are supposed to enjoy equal rights irrespective of race, religion or ethnicity, Israel was explicitly founded as a Jewish state and citizenship is based on the principle of blood kinship. Given this, it is not surprising that its 1.3 million Arabs are treated as second-class citizens, or that a recent Israeli government commission found that Israel behaves in a ‘neglectful and discriminatory’ manner towards them. Its democratic status is also undermined by its refusal to grant the Palestinians a viable state of their own or full political rights. A third justification is the history of Jewish suffering in the Christian West, especially during the Holocaust. Because Jews were persecuted for centuries and could feel safe only in a Jewish homeland, many people now believe that Israel deserves special treatment from the United States. The country’s creation was undoubtedly an appropriate response to the long record of crimes against Jews, but it also brought about fresh crimes against a largely innocent third party: the Palestinians. This was well understood by Israel’s early leaders. David Ben-Gurion told Nahum Goldmann, the president of the World Jewish Congress: If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country . . . We come from Israel, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that? Since then, Israeli leaders have repeatedly sought to deny the Palestinians’ national ambitions. When she was prime minister, Golda Meir famously remarked that ‘there is no such thing as a Palestinian.’ Pressure from extremist violence and Palestinian population growth has forced subsequent Israeli leaders to disengage from the Gaza Strip and consider other territorial compromises, but not even Yitzhak Rabin was willing to offer the Palestinians a viable state. Ehud Barak’s purportedly generous offer at Camp David would have given them only a disarmed set of Bantustans under de facto Israeli control. The tragic history of the Jewish people does not obligate the US to help Israel today no matter what it does. Israel’s backers also portray it as a country that has sought peace at every turn and shown great restraint even when provoked. The Arabs, by contrast, are said to have acted with great wickedness. Yet on the ground, Israel’s record is not distinguishable from that of its opponents. Ben-Gurion acknowledged that the early Zionists were far from benevolent towards the Palestinian Arabs, who resisted their encroachments – which is hardly surprising, given that the Zionists were trying to create their own state on Arab land. In the same way, the creation of Israel in 1947-48 involved acts of ethnic cleansing, including executions, massacres and rapes by Jews, and Israel’s subsequent conduct has often been brutal, belying any claim to moral superiority. Between 1949 and 1956, for example, Israeli security forces killed between 2700 and 5000 Arab infiltrators, the overwhelming majority of them unarmed. The IDF murdered hundreds of Egyptian prisoners of war in both the 1956 and 1967 wars, while in 1967, it expelled between 100,000 and 260,000 Palestinians from the newly conquered West Bank, and drove 80,000 Syrians from the Golan Heights. During the first intifada, the IDF distributed truncheons to its troops and encouraged them to break the bones of Palestinian protesters. The Swedish branch of Save the Children estimated that ‘23,600 to 29,900 children required medical treatment for their beating injuries in the first two years of the intifada.’ Nearly a third of them were aged ten or under. The response to the second intifada has been even more violent, leading Ha’aretz to declare that ‘the IDF . . . is turning into a killing machine whose efficiency is awe-inspiring, yet shocking.’ The IDF fired one million bullets in the first days of the uprising. Since then, for every Israeli lost, Israel has killed 3.4 Palestinians, the majority of whom have been innocent bystanders; the ratio of Palestinian to Israeli children killed is even higher (5.7:1). It is also worth bearing in mind that the Zionists relied on terrorist bombs to drive the British from Palestine, and that Yitzhak Shamir, once a terrorist and later prime minister, declared that ‘neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat.’ The Palestinian resort to terrorism is wrong but it isn’t surprising. The Palestinians believe they have no other way to force Israeli concessions. As Ehud Barak once admitted, had he been born a Palestinian, he ‘would have joined a terrorist organisation’. So if neither strategic nor moral arguments can account for America’s support for Israel, how are we to explain it? The explanation is the unmatched power of the Israel Lobby. We use ‘the Lobby’ as shorthand for the loose coalition of individuals and organisations who actively work to steer US foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction. This is not meant to suggest that ‘the Lobby’ is a unified movement with a central leadership, or that individuals within it do not disagree on certain issues. Not all Jewish Americans are part of the Lobby, because Israel is not a salient issue for many of them. In a 2004 survey, for example, roughly 36 per cent of American Jews said they were either ‘not very’ or ‘not at all’ emotionally attached to Israel. Jewish Americans also differ on specific Israeli policies. Many of the key organisations in the Lobby, such as the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organisations, are run by hardliners who generally support the Likud Party’s expansionist policies, including its hostility to the Oslo peace process. The bulk of US Jewry, meanwhile, is more inclined to make concessions to the Palestinians, and a few groups – such as Jewish Voice for Peace – strongly advocate such steps. Despite these differences, moderates and hardliners both favour giving steadfast support to Israel. Not surprisingly, American Jewish leaders often consult Israeli officials, to make sure that their actions advance Israeli goals. As one activist from a major Jewish organisation wrote, ‘it is routine for us to say: “This is our policy on a certain issue, but we must check what the Israelis think.” We as a community do it all the time.’ There is a strong prejudice against criticising Israeli policy, and putting pressure on Israel is considered out of order. Edgar Bronfman Sr, the president of the World Jewish Congress, was accused of ‘perfidy’ when he wrote a letter to President Bush in mid-2003 urging him to persuade Israel to curb construction of its controversial ‘security fence’. His critics said that ‘it would be obscene at any time for the president of the World Jewish Congress to lobby the president of the United States to resist policies being promoted by the government of Israel.’ Similarly, when the president of the Israel Policy Forum, Seymour Reich, advised Condoleezza Rice in November 2005 to ask Israel to reopen a critical border crossing in the Gaza Strip, his action was denounced as ‘irresponsible’: ‘There is,’ his critics said, ‘absolutely no room in the Jewish mainstream for actively canvassing against the security-related policies . . . of Israel.’ Recoiling from these attacks, Reich announced that ‘the word “pressure” is not in my vocabulary when it comes to Israel.’ Jewish Americans have set up an impressive array of organisations to influence American foreign policy, of which AIPAC is the most powerful and best known. In 1997, Fortune magazine asked members of Congress and their staffs to list the most powerful lobbies in Washington. AIPAC was ranked second behind the American Association of Retired People, but ahead of the AFL-CIO and the National Rifle Association. A National Journal study in March 2005 reached a similar conclusion, placing AIPAC in second place (tied with AARP) in the Washington ‘muscle rankings’. The Lobby also includes prominent Christian evangelicals like Gary Bauer, Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson, as well as Dick Armey and Tom DeLay, former majority leaders in the House of Representatives, all of whom believe Israel’s rebirth is the fulfilment of biblical prophecy and support its expansionist agenda; to do otherwise, they believe, would be contrary to God’s will. Neo-conservative gentiles such as John Bolton; Robert Bartley, the former Wall Street Journal editor; William Bennett, the former secretary of education; Jeane Kirkpatrick, the former UN ambassador; and the influential columnist George Will are also steadfast supporters. The US form of government offers activists many ways of influencing the policy process. Interest groups can lobby elected representatives and members of the executive branch, make campaign contributions, vote in elections, try to mould public opinion etc. They enjoy a disproportionate amount of influence when they are committed to an issue to which the bulk of the population is indifferent. Policymakers will tend to accommodate those who care about the issue, even if their numbers are small, confident that the rest of the population will not penalise them for doing so. In its basic operations, the Israel Lobby is no different from the farm lobby, steel or textile workers’ unions, or other ethnic lobbies. There is nothing improper about American Jews and their Christian allies attempting to sway US policy: the Lobby’s activities are not a conspiracy of the sort depicted in tracts like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. For the most part, the individuals and groups that comprise it are only doing what other special interest groups do, but doing it very much better. By contrast, pro-Arab interest groups, in so far as they exist at all, are weak, which makes the Israel Lobby’s task even easier. The Lobby pursues two broad strategies. First, it wields its significant influence in Washington, pressuring both Congress and the executive branch. Whatever an individual lawmaker or policymaker’s own views may be, the Lobby tries to make supporting Israel the ‘smart’ choice. Second, it strives to ensure that public discourse portrays Israel in a positive light, by repeating myths about its founding and by promoting its point of view in policy debates. The goal is to prevent critical comments from getting a fair hearing in the political arena. Controlling the debate is essential to guaranteeing US support, because a candid discussion of US-Israeli relations might lead Americans to favour a different policy. A key pillar of the Lobby’s effectiveness is its influence in Congress, where Israel is virtually immune from criticism. This in itself is remarkable, because Congress rarely shies away from contentious issues. Where Israel is concerned, however, potential critics fall silent. One reason is that some key members are Christian Zionists like Dick Armey, who said in September 2002: ‘My No. 1 priority in foreign policy is to protect Israel.’ One might think that the No. 1 priority for any congressman would be to protect America. There are also Jewish senators and congressmen who work to ensure that US foreign policy supports Israel’s interests. Another source of the Lobby’s power is its use of pro-Israel congressional staffers. As Morris Amitay, a former head of AIPAC, once admitted, ‘there are a lot of guys at the working level up here’ – on Capitol Hill – ‘who happen to be Jewish, who are willing . . . to look at certain issues in terms of their Jewishness . . . These are all guys who are in a position to make the decision in these areas for those senators . . . You can get an awful lot done just at the staff level.’ AIPAC itself, however, forms the core of the Lobby’s influence in Congress. Its success is due to its ability to reward legislators and congressional candidates who support its agenda, and to punish those who challenge it. Money is critical to US elections (as the scandal over the lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s shady dealings reminds us), and AIPAC makes sure that its friends get strong financial support from the many pro-Israel political action committees. Anyone who is seen as hostile to Israel can be sure that AIPAC will direct campaign contributions to his or her political opponents. AIPAC also organises letter-writing campaigns and encourages newspaper editors to endorse pro-Israel candidates. There is no doubt about the efficacy of these tactics. Here is one example: in the 1984 elections, AIPAC helped defeat Senator Charles Percy from Illinois, who, according to a prominent Lobby figure, had ‘displayed insensitivity and even hostility to our concerns’. Thomas Dine, the head of AIPAC at the time, explained what happened: ‘All the Jews in America, from coast to coast, gathered to oust Percy. And the American politicians – those who hold public positions now, and those who aspire – got the message.’ AIPAC’s influence on Capitol Hill goes even further. According to Douglas Bloomfield, a former AIPAC staff member, ‘it is common for members of Congress and their staffs to turn to AIPAC first when they need information, before calling the Library of Congress, the Congressional Research Service, committee staff or administration experts.’ More important, he notes that AIPAC is ‘often called on to draft speeches, work on legislation, advise on tactics, perform research, collect co-sponsors and marshal votes’. The bottom line is that AIPAC, a de facto agent for a foreign government, has a stranglehold on Congress, with the result that US policy towards Israel is not debated there, even though that policy has important consequences for the entire world. In other words, one of the three main branches of the government is firmly committed to supporting Israel. As one former Democratic senator, Ernest Hollings, noted on leaving office, ‘you can’t have an Israeli policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here.’ Or as Ariel Sharon once told an American audience, ‘when people ask me how they can help Israel, I tell them: “Help AIPAC.”’ Thanks in part to the influence Jewish voters have on presidential elections, the Lobby also has significant leverage over the executive branch. Although they make up fewer than 3 per cent of the population, they make large campaign donations to candidates from both parties. The Washington Post once estimated that Democratic presidential candidates ‘depend on Jewish supporters to supply as much as 60 per cent of the money’. And because Jewish voters have high turn-out rates and are concentrated in key states like California, Florida, Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania, presidential candidates go to great lengths not to antagonise them. Key organisations in the Lobby make it their business to ensure that critics of Israel do not get important foreign policy jobs. Jimmy Carter wanted to make George Ball his first secretary of state, but knew that Ball was seen as critical of Israel and that the Lobby would oppose the appointment. In this way any aspiring policymaker is encouraged to become an overt supporter of Israel, which is why public critics of Israeli policy have become an endangered species in the foreign policy establishment. When Howard Dean called for the United States to take a more ‘even-handed role’ in the Arab-Israeli conflict, Senator Joseph Lieberman accused him of selling Israel down the river and said his statement was ‘irresponsible’. Virtually all the top Democrats in the House signed a letter criticising Dean’s remarks, and the Chicago Jewish Star reported that ‘anonymous attackers . . . are clogging the email inboxes of Jewish leaders around the country, warning – without much evidence – that Dean would somehow be bad for Israel.’ This worry was absurd; Dean is in fact quite hawkish on Israel: his campaign co-chair was a former AIPAC president, and Dean said his own views on the Middle East more closely reflected those of AIPAC than those of the more moderate Americans for Peace Now. He had merely suggested that to ‘bring the sides together’, Washington should act as an honest broker. This is hardly a radical idea, but the Lobby doesn’t tolerate even-handedness. During the Clinton administration, Middle Eastern policy was largely shaped by officials with close ties to Israel or to prominent pro-Israel organisations; among them, Martin Indyk, the former deputy director of research at AIPAC and co-founder of the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP); Dennis Ross, who joined WINEP after leaving government in 2001; and Aaron Miller, who has lived in Israel and often visits the country. These men were among Clinton’s closest advisers at the Camp David summit in July 2000. Although all three supported the Oslo peace process and favoured the creation of a Palestinian state, they did so only within the limits of what would be acceptable to Israel. The American delegation took its cues from Ehud Barak, co-ordinated its negotiating positions with Israel in advance, and did not offer independent proposals. Not surprisingly, Palestinian negotiators complained that they were ‘negotiating with two Israeli teams – one displaying an Israeli flag, and one an American flag’. The situation is even more pronounced in the Bush administration, whose ranks have included such fervent advocates of the Israeli cause as Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, I. Lewis (‘Scooter’) Libby, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and David Wurmser. As we shall see, these officials have consistently pushed for policies favoured by Israel and backed by organisations in the Lobby. The Lobby doesn’t want an open debate, of course, because that might lead Americans to question the level of support they provide. Accordingly, pro-Israel organisations work hard to influence the institutions that do most to shape popular opinion. The Lobby’s perspective prevails in the mainstream media: the debate among Middle East pundits, the journalist Eric Alterman writes, is ‘dominated by people who cannot imagine criticising Israel’. He lists 61 ‘columnists and commentators who can be counted on to support Israel reflexively and without qualification’. Conversely, he found just five pundits who consistently criticise Israeli actions or endorse Arab positions. Newspapers occasionally publish guest op-eds challenging Israeli policy, but the balance of opinion clearly favours the other side. It is hard to imagine any mainstream media outlet in the United States publishing a piece like this one. ‘Shamir, Sharon, Bibi – whatever those guys want is pretty much fine by me,’ Robert Bartley once remarked. Not surprisingly, his newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, along with other prominent papers like the Chicago Sun-Times and the Washington Times, regularly runs editorials that strongly support Israel. Magazines like Commentary, the New Republic and the Weekly Standard defend Israel at every turn. Editorial bias is also found in papers like the New York Times, which occasionally criticises Israeli policies and sometimes concedes that the Palestinians have legitimate grievances, but is not even-handed. In his memoirs the paper’s former executive editor Max Frankel acknowledges the impact his own attitude had on his editorial decisions: ‘I was much more deeply devoted to Israel than I dared to assert . . . Fortified by my knowledge of Israel and my friendships there, I myself wrote most of our Middle East commentaries. As more Arab than Jewish readers recognised, I wrote them from a pro-Israel perspective.’ News reports are more even-handed, in part because reporters strive to be objective, but also because it is difficult to cover events in the Occupied Territories without acknowledging Israel’s actions on the ground. To discourage unfavourable reporting, the Lobby organises letter-writing campaigns, demonstrations and boycotts of news outlets whose content it considers anti-Israel. One CNN executive has said that he sometimes gets 6000 email messages in a single day complaining about a story. In May 2003, the pro-Israel Committee for Accurate Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) organised demonstrations outside National Public Radio stations in 33 cities; it also tried to persuade contributors to withhold support from NPR until its Middle East coverage becomes more sympathetic to Israel. Boston’s NPR station, WBUR, reportedly lost more than $1 million in contributions as a result of these efforts. Further pressure on NPR has come from Israel’s friends in Congress, who have asked for an internal audit of its Middle East coverage as well as more oversight. The Israeli side also dominates the think tanks which play an important role in shaping public debate as well as actual policy. The Lobby created its own think tank in 1985, when Martin Indyk helped to found WINEP. Although WINEP plays down its links to Israel, claiming instead to provide a ‘balanced and realistic’ perspective on Middle East issues, it is funded and run by individuals deeply committed to advancing Israel’s agenda. The Lobby’s influence extends well beyond WINEP, however. Over the past 25 years, pro-Israel forces have established a commanding presence at the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution, the Center for Security Policy, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). These think tanks employ few, if any, critics of US support for Israel. Take the Brookings Institution. For many years, its senior expert on the Middle East was William Quandt, a former NSC official with a well-deserved reputation for even-handedness. Today, Brookings’s coverage is conducted through the Saban Center for Middle East Studies, which is financed by Haim Saban, an Israeli-American businessman and ardent Zionist. The centre’s director is the ubiquitous Martin Indyk. What was once a non-partisan policy institute is now part of the pro-Israel chorus. Where the Lobby has had the most difficulty is in stifling debate on university campuses. In the 1990s, when the Oslo peace process was underway, there was only mild criticism of Israel, but it grew stronger with Oslo’s collapse and Sharon’s access to power, becoming quite vociferous when the IDF reoccupied the West Bank in spring 2002 and employed massive force to subdue the second intifada. The Lobby moved immediately to ‘take back the campuses’. New groups sprang up, like the Caravan for Democracy, which brought Israeli speakers to US colleges. Established groups like the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and Hillel joined in, and a new group, the Israel on Campus Coalition, was formed to co-ordinate the many bodies that now sought to put Israel’s case. Finally, AIPAC more than tripled its spending on programmes to monitor university activities and to train young advocates, in order to ‘vastly expand the number of students involved on campus . . . in the national pro-Israel effort’. The Lobby also monitors what professors write and teach. In September 2002, Martin Kramer and Daniel Pipes, two passionately pro-Israel neo-conservatives, established a website (Campus Watch) that posted dossiers on suspect academics and encouraged students to report remarks or behaviour that might be considered hostile to Israel. This transparent attempt to blacklist and intimidate scholars provoked a harsh reaction and Pipes and Kramer later removed the dossiers, but the website still invites students to report ‘anti-Israel’ activity. Groups within the Lobby put pressure on particular academics and universities. Columbia has been a frequent target, no doubt because of the presence of the late Edward Said on its faculty. ‘One can be sure that any public statement in support of the Palestinian people by the pre-eminent literary critic Edward Said will elicit hundreds of emails, letters and journalistic accounts that call on us to denounce Said and to either sanction or fire him,’ Jonathan Cole, its former provost, reported. When Columbia recruited the historian Rashid Khalidi from Chicago, the same thing happened. It was a problem Princeton also faced a few years later when it considered wooing Khalidi away from Columbia. A classic illustration of the effort to police academia occurred towards the end of 2004, when the David Project produced a film alleging that faculty members of Columbia’s Middle East Studies programme were anti-semitic and were intimidating Jewish students who stood up for Israel. Columbia was hauled over the coals, but a faculty committee which was assigned to investigate the charges found no evidence of anti-semitism and the only incident possibly worth noting was that one professor had ‘responded heatedly’ to a student’s question. The committee also discovered that the academics in question had themselves been the target of an overt campaign of intimidation. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of all this is the efforts Jewish groups have made to push Congress into establishing mechanisms to monitor what professors say. If they manage to get this passed, universities judged to have an anti-Israel bias would be denied federal funding. Their efforts have not yet succeeded, but they are an indication of the importance placed on controlling debate. A number of Jewish philanthropists have recently established Israel Studies programmes (in addition to the roughly 130 Jewish Studies programmes already in existence) so as to increase the number of Israel-friendly scholars on campus. In May 2003, NYU announced the establishment of the Taub Center for Israel Studies; similar programmes have been set up at Berkeley, Brandeis and Emory. Academic administrators emphasise their pedagogical value, but the truth is that they are intended in large part to promote Israel’s image. Fred Laffer, the head of the Taub Foundation, makes it clear that his foundation funded the NYU centre to help counter the ‘Arabic [sic] point of view’ that he thinks is prevalent in NYU’s Middle East programmes. No discussion of the Lobby would be complete without an examination of one of its most powerful weapons: the charge of anti-semitism. Anyone who criticises Israel’s actions or argues that pro-Israel groups have significant influence over US Middle Eastern policy – an influence AIPAC celebrates – stands a good chance of being labelled an anti-semite. Indeed, anyone who merely claims that there is an Israel Lobby runs the risk of being charged with anti-semitism, even though the Israeli media refer to America’s ‘Jewish Lobby’. In other words, the Lobby first boasts of its influence and then attacks anyone who calls attention to it. It’s a very effective tactic: anti-semitism is something no one wants to be accused of. Europeans have been more willing than Americans to criticise Israeli policy, which some people attribute to a resurgence of anti-semitism in Europe. We are ‘getting to a point’, the US ambassador to the EU said in early 2004, ‘where it is as bad as it was in the 1930s’. Measuring anti-semitism is a complicated matter, but the weight of evidence points in the opposite direction. In the spring of 2004, when accusations of European anti-semitism filled the air in America, separate surveys of European public opinion conducted by the US-based Anti-Defamation League and the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that it was in fact declining. In the 1930s, by contrast, anti-semitism was not only widespread among Europeans of all classes but considered quite acceptable. The Lobby and its friends often portray France as the most anti-semitic country in Europe. But in 2003, the head of the French Jewish community said that ‘France is not more anti-semitic than America.’ According to a recent article in Ha’aretz, the French police have reported that anti-semitic incidents declined by almost 50 per cent in 2005; and this even though France has the largest Muslim population of any European country. Finally, when a French Jew was murdered in Paris last month by a Muslim gang, tens of thousands of demonstrators poured into the streets to condemn anti-semitism. Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin both attended the victim’s memorial service to show their solidarity. No one would deny that there is anti-semitism among European Muslims, some of it provoked by Israel’s conduct towards the Palestinians and some of it straightforwardly racist. But this is a separate matter with little bearing on whether or not Europe today is like Europe in the 1930s. Nor would anyone deny that there are still some virulent autochthonous anti-semites in Europe (as there are in the United States) but their numbers are small and their views are rejected by the vast majority of Europeans. Israel’s advocates, when pressed to go beyond mere assertion, claim that there is a ‘new anti-semitism’, which they equate with criticism of Israel. In other words, criticise Israeli policy and you are by definition an anti-semite. When the synod of the Church of England recently voted to divest from Caterpillar Inc on the grounds that it manufactures the bulldozers used by the Israelis to demolish Palestinian homes, the Chief Rabbi complained that this would ‘have the most adverse repercussions on . . . Jewish-Christian relations in Britain’, while Rabbi Tony Bayfield, the head of the Reform movement, said: ‘There is a clear problem of anti-Zionist – verging on anti-semitic – attitudes emerging in the grass-roots, and even in the middle ranks of the Church.’ But the Church was guilty merely of protesting against Israeli government policy. Critics are also accused of holding Israel to an unfair standard or questioning its right to exist. But these are bogus charges too. Western critics of Israel hardly ever question its right to exist: they question its behaviour towards the Palestinians, as do Israelis themselves. Nor is Israel being judged unfairly. Israeli treatment of the Palestinians elicits criticism because it is contrary to widely accepted notions of human rights, to international law and to the principle of national self-determination. And it is hardly the only state that has faced sharp criticism on these grounds. In the autumn of 2001, and especially in the spring of 2002, the Bush administration tried to reduce anti-American sentiment in the Arab world and undermine support for terrorist groups like al-Qaida by halting Israel’s expansionist policies in the Occupied Territories and advocating the creation of a Palestinian state. Bush had very significant means of persuasion at his disposal. He could have threatened to reduce economic and diplomatic support for Israel, and the American people would almost certainly have supported him. A May 2003 poll reported that more than 60 per cent of Americans were willing to withhold aid if Israel resisted US pressure to settle the conflict, and that number rose to 70 per cent among the ‘politically active’. Indeed, 73 per cent said that the United States should not favour either side. Yet the administration failed to change Israeli policy, and Washington ended up backing it. Over time, the administration also adopted Israel’s own justifications of its position, so that US rhetoric began to mimic Israeli rhetoric. By February 2003, a Washington Post headline summarised the situation: ‘Bush and Sharon Nearly Identical on Mideast Policy.’ The main reason for this switch was the Lobby. The story begins in late September 2001, when Bush began urging Sharon to show restraint in the Occupied Territories. He also pressed him to allow Israel’s foreign minister, Shimon Peres, to meet with Yasser Arafat, even though he (Bush) was highly critical of Arafat’s leadership. Bush even said publicly that he supported the creation of a Palestinian state. Alarmed, Sharon accused him of trying ‘to appease the Arabs at our expense’, warning that Israel ‘will not be Czechoslovakia’. Bush was reportedly furious at being compared to Chamberlain, and the White House press secretary called Sharon’s remarks ‘unacceptable’. Sharon offered a pro forma apology, but quickly joined forces with the Lobby to persuade the administration and the American people that the United States and Israel faced a common threat from terrorism. Israeli officials and Lobby representatives insisted that there was no real difference between Arafat and Osama bin Laden: the United States and Israel, they said, should isolate the Palestinians’ elected leader and have nothing to do with him. The Lobby also went to work in Congress. On 16 November, 89 senators sent Bush a letter praising him for refusing to meet with Arafat, but also demanding that the US not restrain Israel from retaliating against the Palestinians; the administration, they wrote, must state publicly that it stood behind Israel. According to the New York Times, the letter ‘stemmed’ from a meeting two weeks before between ‘leaders of the American Jewish community and key senators’, adding that AIPAC was ‘particularly active in providing advice on the letter’. By late November, relations between Tel Aviv and Washington had improved considerably. This was thanks in part to the Lobby’s efforts, but also to America’s initial victory in Afghanistan, which reduced the perceived need for Arab support in dealing with al-Qaida. Sharon visited the White House in early December and had a friendly meeting with Bush. In April 2002 trouble erupted again, after the IDF launched Operation Defensive Shield and resumed control of virtually all the major Palestinian areas on the West Bank. Bush knew that Israel’s actions would damage America’s image in the Islamic world and undermine the war on terrorism, so he demanded that Sharon ‘halt the incursions and begin withdrawal’. He underscored this message two days later, saying he wanted Israel to ‘withdraw without delay’. On 7 April, Condoleezza Rice, then Bush’s national security adviser, told reporters: ‘“Without delay” means without delay. It means now.’ That same day Colin Powell set out for the Middle East to persuade all sides to stop fighting and start negotiating. Israel and the Lobby swung into action. Pro-Israel officials in the vice-president’s office and the Pentagon, as well as neo-conservative pundits like Robert Kagan and William Kristol, put the heat on Powell. They even accused him of having ‘virtually obliterated the distinction between terrorists and those fighting terrorists’. Bush himself was being pressed by Jewish leaders and Christian evangelicals. Tom DeLay and Dick Armey were especially outspoken about the need to support Israel, and DeLay and the Senate minority leader, Trent Lott, visited the White House and warned Bush to back off. The first sign that Bush was caving in came on 11 April – a week after he told Sharon to withdraw his forces – when the White House press secretary said that the president believed Sharon was ‘a man of peace’. Bush repeated this statement publicly on Powell’s return from his abortive mission, and told reporters that Sharon had responded satisfactorily to his call for a full and immediate withdrawal. Sharon had done no such thing, but Bush was no longer willing to make an issue of it. Meanwhile, Congress was also moving to back Sharon. On 2 May, it overrode the administration’s objections and passed two resolutions reaffirming support for Israel. (The Senate vote was 94 to 2; the House of Representatives version passed 352 to 21.) Both resolutions held that the United States ‘stands in solidarity with Israel’ and that the two countries were, to quote the House resolution, ‘now engaged in a common struggle against terrorism’. The House version also condemned ‘the ongoing support and co-ordination of terror by Yasser Arafat’, who was portrayed as a central part of the terrorism problem. Both resolutions were drawn up with the help of the Lobby. A few days later, a bipartisan congressional delegation on a fact-finding mission to Israel stated that Sharon should resist US pressure to negotiate with Arafat. On 9 May, a House appropriations subcommittee met to consider giving Israel an extra $200 million to fight terrorism. Powell opposed the package, but the Lobby backed it and Powell lost. In short, Sharon and the Lobby took on the president of the United States and triumphed. Hemi Shalev, a journalist on the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv, reported that Sharon’s aides ‘could not hide their satisfaction in view of Powell’s failure. Sharon saw the whites of President Bush’s eyes, they bragged, and the president blinked first.’ But it was Israel’s champions in the United States, not Sharon or Israel, that played the key role in defeating Bush. The situation has changed little since then. The Bush administration refused ever again to have dealings with Arafat. After his death, it embraced the new Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, but has done little to help him. Sharon continued to develop his plan to impose a unilateral settlement on the Palestinians, based on ‘disengagement’ from Gaza coupled with continued expansion on the West Bank. By refusing to negotiate with Abbas and making it impossible for him to deliver tangible benefits to the Palestinian people, Sharon’s strategy contributed directly to Hamas’s electoral victory. With Hamas in power, however, Israel has another excuse not to negotiate. The US administration has supported Sharon’s actions (and those of his successor, Ehud Olmert). Bush has even endorsed unilateral Israeli annexations in the Occupied Territories, reversing the stated policy of every president since Lyndon Johnson. US officials have offered mild criticisms of a few Israeli actions, but have done little to help create a viable Palestinian state. Sharon has Bush ‘wrapped around his little finger’, the former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft said in October 2004. If Bush tries to distance the US from Israel, or even criticises Israeli actions in the Occupied Territories, he is certain to face the wrath of the Lobby and its supporters in Congress. Democratic presidential candidates understand that these are facts of life, which is the reason John Kerry went to great lengths to display unalloyed support for Israel in 2004, and why Hillary Clinton is doing the same thing today. Maintaining US support for Israel’s policies against the Palestinians is essential as far as the Lobby is concerned, but its ambitions do not stop there. It also wants America to help Israel remain the dominant regional power. The Israeli government and pro-Israel groups in the United States have worked together to shape the administration’s policy towards Iraq, Syria and Iran, as well as its grand scheme for reordering the Middle East. Pressure from Israel and the Lobby was not the only factor behind the decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was critical. Some Americans believe that this was a war for oil, but there is hardly any direct evidence to support this claim. Instead, the war was motivated in good part by a desire to make Israel more secure. According to Philip Zelikow, a former member of the president’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, and now a counsellor to Condoleezza Rice, the ‘real threat’ from Iraq was not a threat to the United States. The ‘unstated threat’ was the ‘threat against Israel’, Zelikow told an audience at the University of Virginia in September 2002. ‘The American government,’ he added, ‘doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell.’ On 16 August 2002, 11 days before Dick Cheney kicked off the campaign for war with a hardline speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Washington Post reported that ‘Israel is urging US officials not to delay a military strike against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.’ By this point, according to Sharon, strategic co-ordination between Israel and the US had reached ‘unprecedented dimensions’, and Israeli intelligence officials had given Washington a variety of alarming reports about Iraq’s WMD programmes. As one retired Israeli general later put it, ‘Israeli intelligence was a full partner to the picture presented by American and British intelligence regarding Iraq’s non-conventional capabilities.’ Israeli leaders were deeply distressed when Bush decided to seek Security Council authorisation for war, and even more worried when Saddam agreed to let UN inspectors back in. ‘The campaign against Saddam Hussein is a must,’ Shimon Peres told reporters in September 2002. ‘Inspections and inspectors are good for decent people, but dishonest people can overcome easily inspections and inspectors.’ At the same time, Ehud Barak wrote a New York Times op-ed warning that ‘the greatest risk now lies in inaction.’ His predecessor as prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, published a similar piece in the Wall Street Journal, entitled: ‘The Case for Toppling Saddam’. ‘Today nothing less than dismantling his regime will do,’ he declared. ‘I believe I speak for the overwhelming majority of Israelis in supporting a pre-emptive strike against Saddam’s regime.’ Or as Ha’aretz reported in February 2003, ‘the military and political leadership yearns for war in Iraq.’ As Netanyahu suggested, however, the desire for war was not confined to Israel’s leaders. Apart from Kuwait, which Saddam invaded in 1990, Israel was the only country in the world where both politicians and public favoured war. As the journalist Gideon Levy observed at the time, ‘Israel is the only country in the West whose leaders support the war unreservedly and where no alternative opinion is voiced.’ In fact, Israelis were so gung-ho that their allies in America told them to damp down their rhetoric, or it would look as if the war would be fought on Israel’s behalf. Within the US, the main driving force behind the war was a small band of neo-conservatives, many with ties to Likud. But leaders of the Lobby’s major organisations lent their voices to the campaign. ‘As President Bush attempted to sell the . . . war in Iraq,’ the Forward reported, ‘America’s most important Jewish organisations rallied as one to his defence. In statement after statement community leaders stressed the need to rid the world of Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction.’ The editorial goes on to say that ‘concern for Israel’s safety rightfully factored into the deliberations of the main Jewish groups.’ Although neo-conservatives and other Lobby leaders were eager to invade Iraq, the broader American Jewish community was not. Just after the war started, Samuel Freedman reported that ‘a compilation of nationwide opinion polls by the Pew Research Center shows that Jews are less supportive of the Iraq war than the population at large, 52 per cent to 62 per cent.’ Clearly, it would be wrong to blame the war in Iraq on ‘Jewish influence’. Rather, it was due in large part to the Lobby’s influence, especially that of the neo-conservatives within it. The neo-conservatives had been determined to topple Saddam even before Bush became president. They caused a stir early in 1998 by publishing two open letters to Clinton, calling for Saddam’s removal from power. The signatories, many of whom had close ties to pro-Israel groups like JINSA or WINEP, and who included Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, Bernard Lewis, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, had little trouble persuading the Clinton administration to adopt the general goal of ousting Saddam. But they were unable to sell a war to achieve that objective. They were no more able to generate enthusiasm for invading Iraq in the early months of the Bush administration. They needed help to achieve their aim. That help arrived with 9/11. Specifically, the events of that day led Bush and Cheney to reverse course and become strong proponents of a preventive war. At a key meeting with Bush at Camp David on 15 September, Wolfowitz advocated attacking Iraq before Afghanistan, even though there was no evidence that Saddam was involved in the attacks on the US and bin Laden was known to be in Afghanistan. Bush rejected his advice and chose to go after Afghanistan instead, but war with Iraq was now regarded as a serious possibility and on 21 November the president charged military planners with developing concrete plans for an invasion. Other neo-conservatives were meanwhile at work in the corridors of power. We don’t have the full story yet, but scholars like Bernard Lewis of Princeton and Fouad Ajami of Johns Hopkins reportedly played important roles in persuading Cheney that war was the best option, though neo-conservatives on his staff – Eric Edelman, John Hannah and Scooter Libby, Cheney’s chief of staff and one of the most powerful individuals in the administration – also played their part. By early 2002 Cheney had persuaded Bush; and with Bush and Cheney on board, war was inevitable. Outside the administration, neo-conservative pundits lost no time in making the case that invading Iraq was essential to winning the war on terrorism. Their efforts were designed partly to keep up the pressure on Bush, and partly to overcome opposition to the war inside and outside the government. On 20 September, a group of prominent neo-conservatives and their allies published another open letter: ‘Even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack,’ it read, ‘any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.’ The letter also reminded Bush that ‘Israel has been and remains America’s staunchest ally against international terrorism.’ In the 1 October issue of the Weekly Standard, Robert Kagan and William Kristol called for regime change in Iraq as soon as the Taliban was defeated. That same day, Charles Krauthammer