Aljazeera

1. The Iraq war divided the Arabs, the Europeans, the Americans and caused a structural damage to Iraq’s society, state, & infrastructure Aljazeera

2. 1981: Israel bombs Baghdad [Osirak/Tammuz] nuclear reactorBBC, June 7, 1981 Map of the Israeli Attack Israel's Prime Minister Menachem Begin ordered the raid Source: BBC, 5 June 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5020778.stm

3. Bill Kristol, Keeping Iraq in the Cross Hairs “Moments after the [1991] Persian Gulf War was halted, Bill Kristol got a call from columnist Charles Krauthammer, and both were fuming over what they saw as unfinished business.” Source: Washington Post, March 18, 2003; Page C01

4. “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm”Prepared by the Jerusalem-basedInstitute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies' Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000 • A report prepared in 1996 by a neoconservative study group led by Richard Perle for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. We read in the report: • …. “removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq” is “an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right.” Participants in the Study Group on "A New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000:" • Richard Perle, American Enterprise Institute, Study Group Leader • James Colbert, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs • Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Johns Hopkins University/SAIS • Douglas Feith, Feith and Zell Associates • Robert Loewenberg, President, Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies • Jonathan Torop, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy • David Wurmser, Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies • Meyrav Wurmser, Johns Hopkins University

5. “A free Iraq will help secure Israel”---U.S.President George W. Bush, September 2004(NPR, 9/30/2004)

6. “I'm going to get it right for those soldiers because it's important to Israel”---U.S.Senator and Presidential Candidate John Kerry, September 2004(NPR, 9/30/2004)

7. “If you believe that the State of Israel will be more secure if the United States fails in Iraq, you and I have a disagreement.”--- Republican presidential candidate John McCain (JTA, 10/30/2007)

8. Iraq was invaded 'to protect Israel' - US official • Philip Zelikow, a member of the president’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (2001—03), executive director of the 9/11 Commission, and counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (2005-06), told a crowd at the University of Virginia on September 10, 2002, speaking on a panel of foreign policy experts assessing the impact of September 11 and the future of the war on al-Qaeda: • “Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I'll tell you what I think the real threat [is] and actually has been since 1990 - it's the threat against Israel… And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don't care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell.” Emad Mekay, “Iraq was invaded 'to protect Israel' - US official,”Asia Times Online, 31 March 2004, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FC31Aa01.html John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux I, 2007, page 31

9. “The war was about Israel’s security”Group* Urges Pro-Israel Leaders' Silence on Iraq;Memo Outlines Response If Hostilities Occur, Discourages Lecturing of Americans on Middle East”The Washington Post, November 27, 2002: • “You do not want Americans to believe that the war on Iraq is being waged to protect Israel rather than to protect America.” • The memo coached: "(A)s an Israeli, most certainly don't talk about why some Arab leaders and their people dislike the United States. Americans don't want to be told by an Israeli why we have problems in the Middle East or why people hate us." *the Israel Project, a group funded by American Jewish organizations and individual donors.

10. Israeli newspaper Haaretz5 April 2003 • The U.S. war in Iraq was conceived “by a small group of 25 or 30 neoconservatives, almost all of them Jewish.”

11. Lawmaker under fire for saying Jews support Iraq warMoran apologizes; White House blasts comments Moran steps down from leadership post Lawmaker under fire for saying Jews push war with Iraq CNN, March 14, 2003.http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/03/14/moran.remarks/index.html on the World Wide Web. CNN, March 11, 2003,http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/03/11/moran.jews/index.html The War Began March 19, 2003

12. “Jews,”“Israel,” and “America” • Some times the words “Jews,”“Israel,” and “America” are interchangeable in the minds of many people in the Arab and Muslim worlds. For example, amidst the bloody chaos and destruction in U.S.-occupied Iraq, Scott Pelley of CBS News’s 60 Minutes was reported going around and asking Iraqis on the streets wondering if they had nicknames for Americans. He found that Iraqis “call American soldiers ‘The Jews,’ as in, ‘Don’t go down that street, the Jews set up a roadblock’” • Source: Thomas Friedman, 2004, “Jews, Israel and America,” The New York Times, October 24.

13. “From Israel's perspective, the longstanding strategic threat of a massive military attack from the east led by Iraq through Jordan no longer exists because of the [Iraq] war.”--- Jewish Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham H. Foxman, August 2006 (ADL, 8/1/2006)

14. Israel’s 1957 secret plan to partition Iraq Indian journalist Rustom Khurshedji Karanjia published the book The dagger of Israel (Bombay, Blitz Publications, 1957). (ر. ك. كرانجيا، خنجر إسرائيل، شرح وتعليق بسام العسلي، دار المسيرة، بيروت، الطبعة الأولي، 1980، ص 61). In the book, Karanjia published a secret Israeli plan involving, among other things, the partition of Iraq

15. Ze'ev Schiff, the military correspondent of Israel’s leading newspaper Ha'aretz, wrote on 2 June 1982: • The “best” that can happen for Israeli interests in Iraq: • “The dissolution of Iraq into a Shi'ite state, a Sunni state and the separation of the Kurdish part” (Ha'aretz 6/2/1982).

16. Oded Yinon's “A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties”Oded Yinon's article which appeared in Kivunim (Directions), the journal of the Department of Information of the World Zionist Organization. Oded Yinon is an Israeli journalist and was formerly attached to the Foreign Ministry of Israel. This essay originally appeared in Hebrew in KIVUNIM (Directions), A Journal for Judaism and Zionism; Issue No, 14--Winter, 5742, February 1982, Editor: Yoram Beck. Editorial Committee: Eli Eyal, Yoram Beck, Amnon Hadari, Yohanan Manor, Elieser Schweid. Published by the Department of Publicity/The World Zionist Organization, Jerusalem. Published by the Association of Arab-American University Graduates, Inc. , Belmont, Massachusetts, 1982 , Special Document No. 1, (ISBN 0-937694-56-8), http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/pdf/The%20Zionist%20Plan%20for%20the%20Middle%20East.pdf • “The plan operates on two essential premises. To survive, Israel must 1) become an imperial regional power, and 2) must effect the division of the whole area into small states by the dissolution of all existing Arab states. Small here will depend on the ethnic or sectarian composition of each state. Consequently, the Zionist hope is that sectarian-based states become Israel's satellites and, ironically, its source of moral legitimation.”--Khalil Nakhleh • “All the Arab States east of Israel are torn apart, broken up and riddled with inner conflict even more than those of the Maghreb… Lebanon's total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian peninsula and is already following that track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel's primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target…. Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel's targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times • is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi'ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north. It is possible that the present Iranian-Iraqi confrontation will deepen this polarization.”--Oded Yinon

17. Israel sees opportunity in possible US strike on IraqIsrael promised support and assistance this week for a US war against Iraq • “If the Americans do not do this now,” said Israeli Deputy Defense Minister and Labor Party member Weizman Shiry on Wednesday, “it will be harder to do it in the future. In a year or two, Saddam Hussein will be further along in developing weapons of mass destruction. It is a world interest, but especially an American interest to attack Iraq.” • “And as deputy defense minister, I can tell you that the United States will receive any assistance it needs from Israel,” he added. Source: The Christian Science Monitor, August 30, 2002, http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0830/p08s01-wome.htm

18. Gelb’s Idea of Partitioning Iraq Leslie Gelb, former editor and columnist for The Times andpresident emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in The New York Times of 11/25/2003: • The United States should “move in stages toward a three-state solution: Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the center and Shiites in the south.” Senator Joseph R. Biden of Delaware, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, picked up the idea, while The New York Timesof 19August 2007 dubbed it “The Biden-Gelb plan.”

19. On 27 September, the Senate passed a resolution (75-23) urging the Bush administration to support "a political settlement among Iraq's major factions based upon the provisions of the Constitution of Iraq that create a federal system of government and allow for the creation of federal regions." CNN.com 9/30/07…. Heartland Eurasian Review of Geopolitics [originally created in China and Italy!?] apparently made and posted this map on its website, http://temi.repubblica.it/limes-heartland/iraqs-partition/1106

20. When asked in January 2008 to clarify whether there was any Israeli involvement in his decision to invade Iraq, President Bush said: “No, not at all. None whatsoever.”Source: The White House, 1/2/2008. • When asked by Nahum Barnea and Shimon Shiffer of the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot to clarify whether there was any Israeli involvement in his decision to invade Iraq, President George W. Bush said “No, not at all. None whatsoever.”[1] Elsewhere in the same interview President Bush acknowledged that “one of the things in politics that happens often is people sometimes won't tell you really what's on their mind.” • [1] The White House, “Interview of the President by Nahum Barnea and Shimon Shiffer of Yediot Ahronot,” Oval Office, 2 January 2008, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/01/20080104-9.html Tariq Aziz [was a member of the Revolutionary Command Council, a leader of the Ba'ath party, deputy prime minister, foreign minister]: 'Britain and the US killed Iraq. I wish I was martyred':.... "Bush and Blair lied intentionally. They were both pro-Zionist. They wanted to destroy Iraq for the sake of Israel, not for the sake of the US and Britain.".... http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/05/iraq-us-tariq-aziz-iran

21. At a moment when almost all countries around the world were offering sincere sympathy and support to the United States after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, President Bush addressed the world in these terms: • “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2001-09/a-2001-09-21-14-Bush.cfm

22. Lloyd Gardner and Marilyn Young reported that President George W. Bush said: “I’m driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan. An I did, and then God would tell me, George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq.” Lloyd Gardner and Marilyn Young, “Introduction,” in Lloyd Gardner and Marilyn Young, eds. Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam, Or How Not to Learn from the Past, New York: The new Press, 2007, pp. 1-15, page 12.

23. March 19, 2008: President Bush spoke at the Pentagon to mark the fifth anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom:“The battle in Iraq is noble, necessary, and just.”The White House, 3/19/2008 March 19, 2008: President Bush spoke at the Pentagon to mark the fifth anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom: “The battle in Iraq is noble, necessary, and just.” “Defeating the enemy in Iraq will make it less likely we will face this enemy here at home.” “Because we acted against Saddam Hussein, the world is better and America is safer.” “The ‘Surge’ Strategy Has Produced Dramatic Results In Iraq” “The Stakes In Iraq Are Great” “Political Progress Is Taking Place In Iraq” [10/2005: new constitution; 12/2005: election under new constitution] The White House, 3/19/2008 President George W. Bush speaks to members of the Regimental Combat Team-2, Marine Wing Support Combat Patrol at Al Asad Airbase, Al Anbar Province, Iraq, Monday, September 3, 2007. White House photo by Eric Draper, The White House, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/09/images/20070903-1_d-0318-4-515h.html

24. Karen Hughes, Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, said she was tired of seeing the president presented as a “caricature.” The New York Times, 10/31/2007 President Bush told the AEI neoconservatives: “You are some of the best brains in our country and my government employs about 20 of you.” …"Employs" is too weak a verb,” wrote James Atlas. The New York Times, May 4, 2003 A representation of the stereotypical view of US-Israel relations Israel USA Al-Majalla, 4/21/2001, http://www.al-majalla.com/ar/

25. A representation of the stereotypical view of US-Israel relations “I know what America is.. America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction.”--Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Prime Minister, 1996-99 & 2009-present, “Fibi Netanyahu, In 2001, PM boasted of manipulating Oslo accords,”Tablet: A New Read on Jewish Life, http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/39692/fibi-netanyahu Israel “Israel has f----- up United States foreign policy for years"---filmmaker Oliver Stone, The Jewish Chronicle, http://www.thejc.com/news/world-news/36169/oliver-stone-jews-dominate-media Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Prime Minister, 1996-99 & 2009-present, when asked what 9/11 would mean for American-Israeli relations, responded: "It's very good." Realizing his maladroit gaffe, he then added: "Well, it's not good, but it will generate immediate sympathy" for Israel from the United States: http://www.counterpunch.org/sugg10252005.html America Palestine Iraq Afghanistan Pakistan Libya Lebanon Syria Sudan Iran Islam Etcetera Etcetera It’s the case of ‘a minnow swallowing a whale’ ‘the tail wagging the dog’ Bullfighting toreador Adapted from Work by Ian Antonio, http://www.creative-holidays-spain.com/painting.html “The U.S. can no longer afford $725 billion each year for defense, much of it borrowed. Given the poor return on our investment, it’s clear we need another strategy, one free of Zionist goals that advance behind serial conflicts and the debt incurred to fund them. We know what to do. What’s required is the leadership to do it.”Jeff Gates, 12/29/2010, http://criminalstate.com/2010/12/a-commonsense-solar-defense/ "only by force can a Jewish state in Palestine be established or maintained"--US Army Lt. Col. Harold Hoskins, 1943

26. A representation of the stereotypical view of US-Israel relations Islamic world Israel USA alabonline, http://www.alarab.co.uk/

27. A representation of the stereotypical view of US-Israel relations The Israelis The Americans The Arabs President Bush Middle East Tour

28. Millions Worldwide Protest Iraq War LONDON, Feb.15 -- Several million demonstrators took to the streets of Europe and the rest of the world today in a vast wave of protest against the prospect of a U.S.-led war against Iraq. Washington Post Sunday, February 16, 2003

29. Madrid, Spain

30. Berlin, Germany

31. Istanbul, Turkey

32. Sydney, Australia Prague, Czech Rep.

33. Seoul, South Korea

34. London, United Kingdom

35. Rome, Italy

36. New York, USA

37. Population: 28.9 million (2009 est.) Ethnic groups: Arab 75%-80%, Kurdish 15%-20%, Turkoman, Assyrian, or other 5% Religions: Muslim 97% (Shi'a 60%-65%, Sunni 32%-37%), Christian or other 3% Languages: Arabic, Kurdish (official in Kurdish regions), Turkoman (a Turkish dialect), Assyrian (Neo-Aramaic), Armenian Iraq's oil sector provides over 90% of government revenue and foreign exchange earnings GDP per capita (PPP): $3,600 (US GDP per capita: $46,400 (2009 est.) Border countries:Iran 1,458 km, Jordan 181 km, Kuwait 240 km, Saudi Arabia 814 km, Syria 605 km, Turkey 352 km Geography of Iraq Source: CIA

38. U.S.-Led Coalition Air and Ground Forces Deployed Against Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War John E. Peters and Howard Deshong, Out of Area or Out of Reach: European Military Support for Operations in Southwest Asia, National Defense Research Institute, Prepared for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, RAND, 1995, pages 23-24, http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/2007/MR629.pdf

39. In the wake of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 Iraq did not even control its airspace, shorelines, or a third of its territory. Iraq was still recovering from: • The Iran-Iraq war 1980-88 • The Gulf war of 1991 • The no-fly zone war 1991-03 • CIA Covert Operations 1995-96 • UN/US Sanctions 1990-2003 (Sanctions killed some 1.7 million Iraqis between 1990-2000, WRMA 12/31/00) • Depleted uranium 1991– present • Some have said that the DU used in Iraq makes the Agent Orange used in Vietnam look like “orange juice.” DoD, http://www.defendamerica.mil/iraq/iraq_nofly.html Professor Doug Rokke, the US army physicist in charge of cleaning up depleted uranium in Kuwait told film maker John Pilger (The Secret War on Iraq, 12/20/2002): “I am like most people in southern Iraq. I have 5,000 times the recommended level of radiation in my body.”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-8PlJVhogs

40. Geography of the Iraq War • Basic geography of Iraq • The “what” of the war • The “why” of the war • What shall be done? Source: CIA

41. “The conventional wisdom about Nixon-Kissinger relationship was that they worked as equals, or even that Kissinger was the teacher and Nixon the student” p. 135 “When I returned to government service in 2001, I invited Henry [Kissinger] to join the Defense Policy Board. He was routinely involved in advising me on national security issues. I also arranged for him to be able to meet regularly and privately with President Bush” p. 206 “Fifteen days after 9/11, the President asked me to join him in the Oval Office alone… He asked that I take a look at the shape of our military plans on Iraq… ‘Dick told me about your son’, he [Bush] said… What happened to [my son] Nick [who suffers from drug addiction]—coupled with the [9/11] wounds to our country and the Pentagon—all started to hit me. At that moment, I couldn’t speak… I had not imagined I might choke up in a meeting with the President of the United States” p. 425-426 "I think that Donald Rumsfeld will go down as one of the worst secretaries of defence in history”—Senator John McCain, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6377687.stm Sentinel, 2011

42. In the book My Year in Iraq (Simon & Schuster, 2006), Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III wrote, “Among my own assignments during almost three decades and as an American diplomat, I’d been Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s chief of staff and ambassador-at-large for counterterrorism under President Ronald Reagan, jobs that had taken me to almost every capital in the region. Every one but Baghdad.” Page 4 2006

43. As the senior American in Baghdad, I would be President George W. Bush’s personal envoy. My chain of command ran through Secretary of of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and straight to the president. I would be the only paramount authority figure—other than dictator Saddam--Iraqis had ever known. Page 4 2006

44. Like Adolf Hitler, Saddam was convinced destiny had chosen him for greatness… On May 9 [2003], my last day of preparation at the Pentagon, Don Rumsfeld had given me my marching orders in a memo… Undersecretary Douglas Feith had shown me a draft order for the ‘De-Baathification of Iraqi Society.’ He had underscored the political importance of the decree. ‘We’ve got to show all the Iraqis that we’re serious about building a New Iraq. Page 39 2006

45. In early May [2003], before we left for Iraq, [Senior Advisor for defense and security affairs, Walt] Slocombe had began discussions with top Pentagon officials, including Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, about the policy implications of Saddam’s army having melted away. Page 54 2006

46. On May 9, 2003, the day before our departure, I sent a memo to Secretary Rumsfeld, copied to Wolfowitz, DOD’s policy office and the General Counsel, summarizing these discussions and the tentative conclusion that we should formally dissolve Saddam’s army as well the security and intelligence services as a prelude to establishing Iraq’s new security services … and because we have to take into account the ethnic make-up and the history of the country, assembling a New Iraqi Army (NIA) would not be easy. Page 54 2006

47. The “exiles” comprised the small Iraqi Leadership Council (ILC) who had been selected during a conference of several hundred Iraqis in London in December 2002, which in turn had been a product of the Iraqi Liberation Act that President Bill Clinton had signed into law in 1998. This law made it U.S. policy to support efforts to “… remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein.” Page 42…. • On Friday [May 16, 2003] afternoon, we were expecting seven Iraqi representatives to meet us in the palace conference room where I held staff meeting. The group, whom we had come to refer to as the G-7, included: • Ahmad Chalabi, of the Iraqi National Congress,a Shiite • Ayad Allawi, leader of the Iraqi National Accord, also a secular Shiite, was Chalabi’s chief rival • The two Kurds were Massoud Barzani, head of the Kurdish Democratic Party, and his sometime ally and sometime rival, Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan • The ILC also included Naseer Chaderchi, a respected seventy-year-old Sunni lawyer, who led the small, secular National Party • The other Shiite Islamist party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), was represented by Dr. Adel Mahdi and Hamid al-Bayati, reportedly because the party’s most senior leader in Baghdad, Abdul Aziz Hakim, was ill. I suspected Hakim’s illness might be “diplomatic,” since he was known to be distrustful of the Coalition’s motives. Page 46 2006

48. On May 19, I sent a memo to Secretary Rumsfeld detailing our recommendations for the dissolution of the Iraqi Defense Ministry and its ‘related entities.’… At the Pentagon on May 22 [2003], Feith carefully reviewed our draft order, which would formally abolish Saddam’s security and intelligence services. He asked us to clarify some of the wording, which we did to his full satisfaction…. Later that day, when Rumsfeld authorized me to proceed, I informed the president of the plan in a video teleconference. On Friday, May 23, 2003, I signed CPA Order No. 2, “Dissolution of Entities” Page 57 2006

49. It was after 11:00 P.M. when Brian McCormack and I got into my armored SUV for the run back to the Green Zone. Our convoy, as usual, consisted of two “up-armored” Humvees sheathed in tan slabs of hardened steel, a lead-armored Suburban, our Suburban, another armored Suburban following, and two more Humvees. Overhead, we had a pair of buzzing Bell helicopters with two Blackwater snipers each. Page 245 Simon & Schuster, 2006

50. For the last time, and again in the sweltering heat of Baghdad summer, I took off from the Green Zone for the twenty-minute flight to Baghdad Airport. The Chinooks landed behind several camouflaged C-130s, one of which was designated to fly me out of Iraq….After a ninety-minute flight, we landed at the military airport in Amman, Jordan. I called Francie, who by now had seen news reports of the early transfer of sovereignty. “I’m safe and free,” I said. “And I’m coming home.”Pages 394 and 396 Simon & Schuster, 2006