An intelligent critic has challenged my suggestion that the Israeli lobby supported our invasion of Iraq and maintains that Israel warned against it. However, there are more subtleties here — as to what the Israeli lobby is and represents. A Google search turned up a number of items supporting my suggestion, but noting the AIPAC certainly does not represent the majority of American Jews or the rest of us — it has a right wing orientation and works in devious ways to achieve its ends. See Juan Cole’s 2004 piece, “AIPAC’s Overt and Convert Ops”

http://www.antiwar.com/cole/?articleid=3467

Here is a quote from same:

“Likud could not make U.S. policy on its own. Its members had to make convincing arguments to Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush himself. But they were able to make those arguments, by distorting intelligence, channeling Ahmed Chalabi junk, and presenting Big Ideas to men above them that signally lacked such ideas. (Like the idea that the road to peace in Jerusalem ran through Baghdad. Ha!)”

My revised comment would be that Israel, as we, has a sharp division between its war and peace makers. The former tend to be the more devious in pursuing their aims.

There are a number of other pieces along these lines such as this from the Washington Post in 2003: “For Israel Lobby Group, War Is Topic A, Quietly”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63578-2003Mar31?language=printer

I see no long term gain for Israel and real hazards ahead in our sponsoring such stuff either directly or indirectly. Peace is not made by killing people. It comes these days through truth and reconciliation!!
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“A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope.” (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
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Ed Kent 212-665-8535 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation