| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Jei" |
| Date: |
22 Feb 2004 05:49:46 PM |
| Object: |
Ghosts of 1973 still haunt Israel as its spies face Iraq probe, too |
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/opinion/21_02_04_c.asp
Ghosts of 1973 still haunt Israel as its spies face Iraq probe, too
While the United States and Britain launch investigations into their
intelligence services' failures on Iraq, a special committee of
Israel's Parliament is putting the finishing touches to a seven-month
probe of the Jewish state's vaunted intelligence services which, on
the face of it at least, were just as wrong as the American and
British allies about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction
(WMD).
But the Israeli lawmakers have an added wrinkle to worry about:
allegations that Israel's intelligence services provided the US with
false information that Saddam possessed WMD because they wanted to
encourage the Americans to attack Iraq and eliminate one of the Jewish
state's staunchest enemies without having to involve Israel.
Most of what the Israeli lawmakers conclude is expected to be
classified, but sources close to the proceedings have already
indicated that the report will note "serious shortcomings" in Israeli
intelligence-gathering, especially in countries such as Iraq beyond
the Jewish state's immediate neighbors.
This could affect Israeli intelligence on Iran, which Israel sees as a
major threat because of its nuclear arms and ballistic missile
programs. Senior Israeli officials have warned that Tehran is within a
year of reaching the "point of no return" in its nuclear efforts, that
is to say, the point at which it will no longer need to depend on
outside help. Such intelligence has deeply influenced US policymaking
and if it were found to be flawed could cause great embarrassment to
Israel and the US.
Some see these suspected imperfections in Israeli intelligence
assessments as part of the lingering fallout from the intelligence
failures that took Israel to the brink of disaster of the 1973 Middle
East war and which has haunted the nation for the last three decades.
Amid great secrecy and considerable opposition from senior figures in
the defense and intelligence establishments, the chairman of the
Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Yuval Steinitz of the
Likud Party, launched the Israeli investigation last summer after it
became clear that contrary to the dire warnings of Israel's
intelligence community Saddam did not have WMD and did not use them
against the Jewish state.
The investigating committee has held 50 sessions and some 70 witnesses
have testified before it: including Prime Minister Ariel Sharon;
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz; Israeli Army chief of staff, Lieutenant
General Moshe Yaalon; Military Intelligence director Major General
Aharon Zeevi; Mossad director Meir Dagan; and Shin Bet chief Avi
Dichter.
Steinitz insists that the investigation, which he heads, was necessary
because "there has been no committee that has seriously investigated
the intelligence services" since the commission set up after the
near-disaster of the 1973 war. The final report by that commission,
headed by the then-president of the supreme court, Shimon Agranat,
published on Jan. 30, 1975, was scathing in its criticism of the
inefficiency of Military Intelligence, known by the Hebrew acronym
Aman in detecting the surprise attacks by Syria and Egypt.
Its main recommendation was to break Aman's monopoly on the evaluation
of intelligence and to introduce "pluralism in the various types of
intelligence evaluations." Top officials, like Moshe Dayan, were badly
tarnished by the findings and senior intelligence officials were
dismissed.
The perceived post-Cold War threats to Israel have undergone major
shifts in recent years, particularly after Sept. 11, 2001, and the
subsequent US-led "regime changes" in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the
question of whether Israel's intelligence establishment has not been
able to keep pace with the changing security environment is causing
considerable concern in Israel. This extends to its allies,
particularly in light of European allegations that Israel exaggerated
the Iraqi threat so the Americans and British would conveniently
eliminate an Arab state that had fired ballistic missiles on Israeli
cities in 1991, the first attacks on Israeli population centers since
1948.
One of the most vocal critics of the intelligence community is
legislator Yossi Sarid, a member of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and
Defense Committee who represents the dovish Meretz Party. He says that
Israeli intelligence knew that Iraq had no WMD stockpiles and misled
the Bush administration. Sharon's office insists that Israel had
doubts about Saddam's weapons and advised Washington of that.
In the runup to the Iraq war, Israeli leaders warned of possible
attacks with missiles carrying chemical or biological warheads and
ordered a nationwide alert. Sarid says Israeli intelligence knew the
threat "was very, very, very limited ... It was known in Israel that
the story that WMD could be activated in 45 minutes was an old wives'
tale. Israel didn't want to spoil President Bush's scenario, and it
should have."
Scott Ritter, a former top UN weapons inspector in Iraq, has also said
that the Israelis overstated the Iraqi threat because they wanted to
encourage the US and the UK to launch a war that would eliminate a
threat to Israel. "As far back as 1995, Israel knew that Saddam
Hussein had no capability to hit it with long-range missiles," Ritter
said in an interview with the Israeli Ynet website. Steinitz and
others across the Israeli political spectrum insist that is untrue,
although they acknowledge serious flaws in the intelligence
community's capabilities.
In the final analysis, there can be little doubt that Israel has
benefited greatly from Sept. 11, 2001, and the US response to those
events. The crushing of Saddam's odious regime, the ravaging of Saudi
Arabia's alliance with the US, the isolation of Syria, Moammar
Gadhafi's amazing surrender of his nuclear arms program and Iran's
retreat on its nuclear ambitions in the face of international pressure
have removed just about every strategic security the country faced.
There have been repeated allegations, even within the US, that all
that was a key objective of the Bushite neocons, and had been long
before Al-Qaeda struck and presented them with the opportunity to put
their strategy into practice. More recently, new allegations have been
surfacing that the ad hoc intelligence review cell made up of
pro-Israel neoconservative hawks within the Bush administration,
overseen by Undersecretary for Defense Policy Douglas Feith, prior to
the March 2003 invasion of Iraq cooperated closely with Israel in
pushing for the war against Saddam.
The entire team involved in the Office of Special Plans (OSP)
championed by Vice-President ***** Cheney were political appointees and
all are closely identified with Ariel Sharon's right-wing Likud Party
in Israel. Indeed, Feith's law partner is a spokesman for the settler
movement in Israel.
Whether there was intelligence linkage between the neocons in the Bush
administration and the Sharon government or not remains to be
conclusively determined. Still, domestic critics of Israel's
intelligence establishment contend that the data it provided the
Americans to buttress their prewar assessment of Saddam's WMD programs
pointing to a threat that did not, in fact, exist damaged Israelis'
trust in their intelligence establishment and its credibility in the
eyes of Israel's allies and friends.
Shlomo Brom, an air force reserve brigadier general, intelligence
specialist and a former deputy commander of the Israeli Army planning
branch, believes there was a serious Israeli intelligence failure over
Iraq, just as there was in the US and Britain.
In a report issued by the Jaffe Center for Strategic Studies in Tel
Aviv in December, Brom wrote: "Israeli intelligence was a full partner
to the picture presented by US and British intelligence about Iraq's
nonconventional capabilities ... The failures in the war in Iraq point
to inherent failures and weaknesses in Israeli intelligence and
decision-makers. Similar failures could take place in the future if
the issue is not fully researched and the proper conclusions reached."
Brom wrote that Israeli intelligence chose to believe that Saddam had
WMD, a "dogmatic concept" that was viewed with insufficient
skepticism. He explained: "The intelligence agencies were taken over
by a nondimensional view of Saddam that fundamentally described him as
the embodiment of evil, a man in the grip of an obsession to develop
weapons of mass destruction to harm Israel and others, without any
other considerations ... There was absolute indifference to the
complexity of considerations that a leader like Saddam Hussein must
have."
The issue of the accuracy of Israel's intelligence establishment in
assessing threats to the nation has been highly emotive and sensitive
since the failure to anticipate the attacks by Egypt and Syria in
October 1973 that came within a hair's breadth of defeating Israel.
Brom believes that the fallout from the intelligence disaster of 1973
was at least partially to blame for a flawed assessment of Iraq
because since that time Israeli intelligence officials have tended to
opt for the worst case scenario rather than be caught napping again.
Ed Blanche, a member of the International Institute for Strategic
Studies in London, is a Beirut-based journalist who has covered Middle
Eastern affairs for three decades. He is a regular contributor to THE
DAILY STAR
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| User: "InsuranceBroker" |
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| Title: Re: Ghosts of 1973 still haunt Israel as its spies face Iraq probe, too |
22 Feb 2004 06:20:01 PM |
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Subject: Ghosts of 1973 still haunt Israel as its spies face Iraq probe, too
From: Jei
Date: 2/22/2004 6:49 PM Eastern Standard Time
Message-id: <Pine.LNX.4.58.0402230148230.14053@horus.hut.fi>
In the final analysis, there can be little doubt that Israel has
benefited greatly from Sept. 11, 2001, and the US response to those
events
You have failed to mention poeople like ***** Perle who has made millions
starting the Iraq war. There are tons of other Israel or Israel dual citizens
who have made a lot of money getting our kids killed.
"Israeli intelligence was a full partner
to the picture presented by US and British intelligence about Iraq's
nonconventional capabilities ...
I am sure they also got a lot of money for there effort.
Like the USS LIberty, murder and destruction of US Citizen is not a problem for
Israel.
Doing Insurance business in the Garden State
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