To: Emile Vidrine who wrote (310352 ) 10/22/2002 5:42:41 PM From: craig crawford Read Replies (2) | Respond to SMEARING THE ANTIWAR MOVEMENT antiwar.com That this war has always been about Israel is a matter of simple geography. For all the President's palavering about the "threat to Americans" posed by Iraq, those "weapons of mass destruction" Saddam supposedly has couldn't even reach Europe, let alone the U.S. But Tel Aviv is well within range. Indeed, the prospect of Iraqi missiles raining down on Israel has been one of the chief deterrents against a move by Israel's far-right Likud government to ethnically cleanse Palestine of Arabs – a plan that is increasingly popular among Israelis – and/or move the IDF back into Lebanon. The U.S. occupation of Iraq will eliminate that deterrent – and set up Israel to deal with Hizbollah the Syria in the regional conflagration to follow. "Much more plausible is the suggestion that this plan is being promoted in the interests of Israel. Certainly it is being pushed very hard by a number of influential supporters of Israel of the hawkish neoconservative stripe in and outside the administration (Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol, and others) and one could easily make the case that a successful preventive war on Iraq would promote particular Israeli security interests more than general American ones."
