Sy Hersh 'Watching Lebanon' & Pallone's Open House

by: kwilkinson

Wed Aug 16, 2006 at 02:45:56 PM EDT

According to a Middle East expert ... Israel had devised a plan for attacking Hezbollah - and shared it with Bush Administration officials - well before the July 12th kidnappings. "It's not that the Israelis had a trap that Hezbollah walked into," he said, "but there was a strong feeling in the White House that sooner or later the Israelis were going to do it."

The Middle East expert said that the Administration had several reasons for supporting the Israeli bombing campaign. Within the State Department, it was seen as a way to strengthen the Lebanese government so that it could assert its authority over the south of the country, much of which is controlled by Hezbollah. He went on, "The White House was more focussed on stripping Hezbollah of its missiles, because, if there was to be a military option against Iran's nuclear facilities, it had to get rid of the weapons that Hezbollah could use in a potential retaliation at Israel. Bush wanted both. Bush was going after Iran, as part of the Axis of Evil, and its nuclear sites, and he was interested in going after Hezbollah as part of his interest in democratization, with Lebanon as one of the crown jewels of Middle East democracy."

Administration officials denied that they knew of Israel's plan for the air war. The White House did not respond to a detailed list of questions...

"The Israelis told us it would be a cheap war with many benefits," a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said. "Why oppose it? We'll be able to hunt down and bomb missiles, tunnels, and bunkers from the air. It would be a demo for Iran."

And guess who's behind it:

Cheney's office supported the Israeli plan, as did Elliott Abrams, a deputy national-security adviser, according to several former and current officials. (A spokesman for the N.S.C. denied that Abrams had done so.) They believed that Israel should move quickly in its air war against Hezbollah. A former intelligence officer said, "We told Israel, 'Look, if you guys have to go, we're behind you all the way. But we think it should be sooner rather than later - the longer you wait, the less time we have to evaluate and plan for Iran before Bush gets out of office.'"

Cheney's point, the former senior intelligence official said, was "What if the Israelis execute their part of this first, and it’s really successful? It'd be great. We can learn what to do in Iran by watching what the Israelis do in Lebanon."

The Pentagon consultant told me that intelligence about Hezbollah and Iran is being mishandled by the White House the same way intelligence had been when, in 2002 and early 2003, the Administration was making the case that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. "The big complaint now in the intelligence community is that all of the important stuff is being sent directly to the top - at the insistence of the White House - and not being analyzed at all, or scarcely," he said. "It's an awful policy and violates all of the N.S.A.'s strictures, and if you complain about it you’re out," he said. "Cheney had a strong hand in this"...

The crisis will really start at the end of August, the diplomat added, "when the Iranians" - under a United Nations deadline to stop uranium enrichment - "will say no" ...

Read the whole article at the New Yorker website.

I was depressed to hear last week at Cong. Pallone's open house, that he wouldn't back any legislation calling for a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.  That was before the UN ceasefire.  Sheila Jackson Lee's H Res 945 of July 25th didn't have enough other stuff in it.  And it was too late to write his own, but he wouldn't even make any public call for ceasefire, and avoided the issue (which gets heated pretty fast in townhalls).

H Res 945 ...

(1) calls for the cessation of the targeting by any side of infrastructure vital to non-combatants, which also increases the likelihood of the loss of innocent civilian life;

(2) calls for a secure humanitarian corridor to be opened immediately via the seaports and airports of Lebanon to alleviate the unnecessary suffering of the people of Lebanon;

(3) calls for an immediate cease-fire in line with the urgent appeals of the Government of Lebanon and the United Nations Secretary General; and

(4) urges a comprehensive and just solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict to ensure that the peoples of the Middle East can live in peace, freedom, and prosperity.