← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · yummybear
Thread ID: 9251 | Posts: 1 | Started: 2003-08-24
2003-08-24 17:39 | User Profile
This was posted on another web site forum. Interesting analysis.
The DEBKA.file is written by an Israeli group that has befriended several Mossad and Shin Bet operatives and is at times "fed" scoops by the Israeli PM's office. It is therefore hard to pick the wheat from the chaff without parallel assets. But a most telling series of reports are its account of Hizzbollah accumulation of rockets in Southern Lebanon. That, more than any arguments about weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) may help to explain why President Bush seemed to have become impatient in March and launched an invasion of Iraq after giving Saddam 48 hrs. to get out of Baghdad. This Bush did, even though, according to Franco-Brit intelligence reports, the choreographed maneuvers of US troops in the desert on the Iraq-Kuwait border were dissolving the Ba'athist regime in fearful anticipation.
Why was Bush suddenly in such a rush? The nuclear WMDs threat mentioned by Bush and the "45-min. interval to devastation" of Blair were "sexy" inventions, that may have hidden the real issues at play. Barton Gellman et al, in a very elaborate account in the Washington Post (8/10/03) entitled: "Deception of Threat Outgrew Supporting Evidence," presented a case against the evidence for nuclear WMDs. We know of Saddam's tactical bio-chemical weapons from their use. But these are meaningless against America's multimegaton nuclear devises and its inescapable delivery systems. But an unsubstantiated case was made for a nuclear threat that was deliberate and of long duration. Why?
It is here that DEBKA.file's reports on Hezbollah rockets comes in. It turns out, according to Gellman et al, that the smoking gun-- "aluminum tubes"-- were not meant for centrifuges that separate out enriched uranium, but as components for the Italian Medussa 81 rocket, whose blueprints the Iraqis had acquired. Such medium range rockets were believed by Israel to be intended for mass production, armed with bio-chemical WMDs for delivery to all anti-Israel guerrillas. Sharon, apparently threatened to take immediate action unless Bush, within 48 hrs. invades and disarms Iraq. Since the production and storage areas were dispersed so that Israel did not know precisely where they were, Israel would need to engage in a massive preemptive nuclear bombardment of Iraq in order to sanitize it and avoid becoming victim of a first strike. This would result in a devastating Mideast conflagration. To avoid this, Bush grafted on to his administration the Sharon argument for acting abruptly. However, to make it credible, the regional nuclear threat from an Israeli first strike, he attributed to Iraq. The Syrian disarmament of Hezbollah in Lebanon of Iraqi missiles after the invasion, it is said, supports this argument.
An addendum was proposed by a number of intelligence sources. Brazenly, after blackmailing Bush into attacking Iraq, Sharon blackmailed Bush with exposure of this if Bush continued to insist rigidly on the roadmap limitations on the security wall and the settlements in the Palestinian territories. Facing the prospect of having to resign if the Israeli attorney general takes the Israeli police investigators'' advice and indicts him for illicit campaign and personal finances, Sharon may have shed all inhibitions of his threats to Bush for his devoted cause of Greater Israel and no Palestinian state. Bush and Blair are thus left unable to explain the need for a sudden invasion of Iraq and for capitulation on the roadmap. In conclusion, the real deception may not have been that of Iraqi WMDs, but the fact that Bush acted out of fear of Sharon instead of fear of Saddam.
Daniel E. Teodoru