🚀 go-pugleaf

http://www.antiwar.com/ips/mekay.php

IPS uncovered the remarks by Philip Zelikow, who is now the executive 
director of the body set up to investigate the terrorist attacks on the 
United States in September 2001 - the 9/11 commission - in which he 
suggests a prime motive for the invasion just over one year ago was to 
eliminate a threat to Israel, a staunch U.S. ally in the Middle East.

Zelikow's casting of the attack on Iraq as one launched to protect Israel 
appears at odds with the public position of President George W. Bush and 
his administration, which has never overtly drawn the link between its war 
on the regime of former president Hussein and its concern for Israel's 
security.

The administration has instead insisted it launched the war to liberate the 
Iraqi people, destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and to 
protect the United States.

Zelikow made his statements about "the unstated threat" during his tenure 
on a highly knowledgeable and well-connected body known as the President's 
Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), which reports directly to the 
president.

He served on the board between 2001 and 2003.

"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," Zelikow told a crowd at the University of 
Virginia on Sep. 10, 2002, speaking on a panel of foreign policy experts 
assessing the impact of 9/11 and the future of the war on the al-Qaeda 
terrorist organization.

"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," said Zelikow.

The statements are the first to surface from a source closely linked to the 
Bush administration acknowledging that the war, which has so far cost the 
lives of nearly 600 US troops and thousands of Iraqis, was motivated by 
Washington's desire to defend the Jewish state.

The administration, which is surrounded by staunch pro-Israel, 
neo-conservative hawks, is currently fighting an extensive campaign to ward 
off accusations that it derailed the "war on terrorism" it launched after 
9/11 by taking a detour to Iraq, which appears to have posed no direct 
threat to the United States.

Israel is Washington's biggest ally in the Middle East, receiving annual 
direct aid of three to four billion dollars.

Even though members of the 16-person PFIAB come from outside government, 
they enjoy the confidence of the president and have access to all 
information related to foreign intelligence that they need to play their 
vital advisory role.

Known in intelligence circles as "Piffy-ab", the board is supposed to 
evaluate the nation's intelligence agencies and probe any mistakes they make.

The unpaid appointees on the board require a security clearance known as 
"code word" that is higher than top secret.

The national security adviser to former President George H.W. Bush 
(1989-93) Brent Scowcroft, currently chairs the board in its work 
overseeing a number of intelligence bodies, including the Central 
Intelligence Agency (CIA), the various military intelligence groups and the 
Pentagon's National Reconnaissance Office.

Neither Scowcroft nor Zelikow returned numerous phone calls and email 
messages from IPS for this story.

Zelikow has long-established ties to the Bush administration.

Before his appointment to PFIAB in October 2001, he was part of the current 
president's transition team in January 2001.

In that capacity, Zelikow drafted a memo for National Security Adviser 
Condoleezza Rice on reorganizing and restructuring the National Security 
Council (NSC) and prioritizing its work.

Richard A. Clarke, who was counter-terrorism coordinator for Bush's 
predecessor President Bill Clinton (1993-2001) also worked for Bush senior, 
and has recently accused the current administration of not heeding his 
terrorism warnings, said Zelikow was among those he briefed about the 
urgent threat from al-Qaeda in December 2000.

Rice herself had served in the NSC during the first Bush administration, 
and subsequently teamed up with Zelikow on a 1995 book about the 
unification of Germany.

Zelikow had ties with another senior Bush administration official - Robert 
Zoellick, the current trade representative. The two wrote three books 
together, including one in 1998 on the United States and the "Muslim Middle 
East".

Aside from his position at the 9/11 commission, Zelikow is now also 
director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs and White Burkett Miller 
Professor of History at the University of Virginia.

His close ties to the administration prompted accusations of a conflict of 
interest in 2002 from families of victims of the 9/11 attacks, who 
protested his appointment to the investigative body.

In his university speech, Zelikow, who strongly backed attacking the Iraqi 
dictator, also explained the threat to Israel by arguing that Baghdad was 
preparing in 1990-91 to spend huge amounts of "scarce hard currency" to 
harness "communications against electromagnetic pulse", a side-effect of a 
nuclear explosion that could sever radio, electronic and electrical 
communications.

That was "a perfectly absurd expenditure unless you were going to ride out 
a nuclear exchange - they (Iraqi officials) were not preparing to ride out 
a nuclear exchange with us. Those were preparations to ride out a nuclear 
exchange with the Israelis", according to Zelikow.

He also suggested that the danger of biological weapons falling into the 
hands of the anti-Israeli Islamic Resistance Movement, known by its Arabic 
acronym Hamas, would threaten Israel rather than the United States, and 
that those weapons could have been developed to the point where they could 
deter Washington from attacking Hamas.

"Play out those scenarios," he told his audience, "and I will tell you, 
people have thought about that, but they are just not talking very much 
about it".