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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (35948)	8/5/2002 12:47:57 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 281500

You may have had other things on your mind, but my mind was focused on this issue since 9/11, and I remember it the same way Carl remembers it. People who are fervidly pro-Israel, including you, have been anti-Iraq war hawks since 9/11. I remember talk about Iraq, and speculation about an Al Qaeda-Iraq connection, but not a decisive turn towards it. I too was watching carefully, and it was early this year when I said that judging by the tea-leaves of this administration, I thought we would go into Iraq by the end of the year (sparking off the back-and-forth with Carl, who doesn't believe it). The WSJ journal pieces, which seem very credible to me (they cost $ now, sorry) say that the Administration didn't make up its mind until it received certain intelligence reports in October. There is some space between neocon and pro-Israel positions on Iraq. The neocons are basically for cleaning up unfinished business in Iraq, now that Sept 11th has caused everyone to reevaluate just how much of a threat a terrorist group with bioweapons might pose. The Israeli position (and consequently the pro-Israeli position) is, we certainly have no objection to your taking out Saddam Hussein but would you please hurry up about it? Because while you're making up your mind, it's getting pretty hot around here. Because everyone who is opposed to the US going in (that's just about everyone except Israel and Turkey) is raising the flame on the Israeli/Pal conflict and shouting "Israel first! you must solve Israel first!" Unless things have changed in the Bush administration (sorry, I've been rather busy these days) the military brass at the Pentagon and the State Department, and, I believe, the CIA, have been dragging their feet on Iraq, while it's been the neocons and the civilian upper echelon at the Pentagon that have been banging the war drum Clearly true to some extent, though it's actually quite unclear to me how much of the leaks that are hitting the press are about whether, and how much about how. For instance, the big NY Times leak of a planned invasion was probably by someone who wanted a different plan, not no invasion at all. Also, it's a great method of distributing disinformation. As I heard someone say recently, "Who needs the Office of Strategic Initiative when you have the New York Times?"