It seems the Russians changed their mind about the S-300 missiles, after Putin met Sarkozy, and are "freezing" the sales for now. What did Sarkozy offer Putin, that sold out the missiles deal?
Thank you very much, Dr. Cole, for this long expected piece.
All the elements are there, including the positioning for a potential military strike, even if the US lacks the strategic means while directly involved in two (three? four?) wars in the region, with direct commitment of large number of US troops in two of them. I have always wondered, and if you can illustrate me on that point, whether there is a US/Israel unofficial contemporary policy in the ME, that can be traced back to the infamous paper "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm" (http://www.iasps.org/strat1.htm), written by Perle, Colbert, Feith, the Wurmsers, etc., the cream of the crop of the pro-Israel US establishment, for The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies’ "Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000," in 1996, and which I am sure you know well.
The paper, a policy document for Netanyahu, Israel's PM at that time, can be read as a forecast of the recent ME history that has unfolded before our eyes, though the execution of those policies was only made possible with a little help from their friends, meaning US. The "rolling-back" of Iraq's Saddam Hussein, a prerequisite before "rolling-back" Syria, is now a fact, as real as many of the other aggressive ("defensive" in Israel's security lingo) actions to be taken by Israel listed in the paper. Clearly, the authors or those who adopted this paper for their strategic planning in the region, didn't expect some of these policies to go F.U.B.A.R., and lots of blood has ran since it was written, changing the ME landscape drastically, but I believe we can see the seed of Netanyahu's hard, intransigent, strength-based, close-minded, current "leper state" policies of isolating Israel (as Shlomo Ben-Ami recently called Bibi's and Barak's policies), in that "Clean Break" paper from another era, so much has happened since we used it to prove WMD was not at all the reason to invade Iraq.
A result of that unspoken policy is to render Israel's neighbors incapable of developing parity with Israel on any realm, be that strategic weapons, technology, science, education, etc., and to always keeps them off-balance, cutting deep into their budgets for national security reasons, in an almost futile effort to defend their countries from nuclear-armed Israel. I believe the bombing of a country's infrastructure, used by the US in vast amounts in Iraq, and practiced by Israel frequently, is the military extension of the same policy, by which the destruction created, forces the damaged countries to divert precious and scarce resources to rebuild their basic infrastructure, to be destroyed again at Israel's whim, as it happened in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon, several times. Therefore these countries are unable to invest in long-term development, since the specter of an Israeli aggression clouds permanently their strategic calculations. The "rolling-back" then, is not just applied to "regime-change", but to "bombing 'em back to the stone age" constantly, keeping these countries busy rebuilding, or building defenses before the next Israeli attack.
Israel's almost bloodthirsty intention to bomb Iran, with or without the help of the US (but with its backing), can be explained in the light of this paper, and within the "rolling-back" policy. The US/Israel intentions are to use the bombing of nuclear centers in Iran, if that comes to be, as a pretext to "roll-back" Iran for 20, 30 0r 50 years, by bombing it "back to the stone age."
Thanks for alerting us about it. Google News has nothing on Ireland's reaction to the boarding of the "Corrie." I did a Google search on "Ireland", and all I got was soccer and old news about the "Corrie"
Same thing with Turkey, which besides old, rehashed, and pro-Israel news, it has completely disappeared from Google. You can find only a couple of new pieces,
It seems the Russians changed their mind about the S-300 missiles, after Putin met Sarkozy, and are "freezing" the sales for now. What did Sarkozy offer Putin, that sold out the missiles deal?
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2010-06/12/c_13346070.htm
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/russia-to-freeze-missile-sale-to-iran-putin-tells-sarkozy-1.295616
Cole at Tomdispatch
Thank you very much, Dr. Cole, for this long expected piece.
All the elements are there, including the positioning for a potential military strike, even if the US lacks the strategic means while directly involved in two (three? four?) wars in the region, with direct commitment of large number of US troops in two of them. I have always wondered, and if you can illustrate me on that point, whether there is a US/Israel unofficial contemporary policy in the ME, that can be traced back to the infamous paper "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm" (http://www.iasps.org/strat1.htm), written by Perle, Colbert, Feith, the Wurmsers, etc., the cream of the crop of the pro-Israel US establishment, for The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies’ "Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000," in 1996, and which I am sure you know well.
The paper, a policy document for Netanyahu, Israel's PM at that time, can be read as a forecast of the recent ME history that has unfolded before our eyes, though the execution of those policies was only made possible with a little help from their friends, meaning US. The "rolling-back" of Iraq's Saddam Hussein, a prerequisite before "rolling-back" Syria, is now a fact, as real as many of the other aggressive ("defensive" in Israel's security lingo) actions to be taken by Israel listed in the paper. Clearly, the authors or those who adopted this paper for their strategic planning in the region, didn't expect some of these policies to go F.U.B.A.R., and lots of blood has ran since it was written, changing the ME landscape drastically, but I believe we can see the seed of Netanyahu's hard, intransigent, strength-based, close-minded, current "leper state" policies of isolating Israel (as Shlomo Ben-Ami recently called Bibi's and Barak's policies), in that "Clean Break" paper from another era, so much has happened since we used it to prove WMD was not at all the reason to invade Iraq.
A result of that unspoken policy is to render Israel's neighbors incapable of developing parity with Israel on any realm, be that strategic weapons, technology, science, education, etc., and to always keeps them off-balance, cutting deep into their budgets for national security reasons, in an almost futile effort to defend their countries from nuclear-armed Israel. I believe the bombing of a country's infrastructure, used by the US in vast amounts in Iraq, and practiced by Israel frequently, is the military extension of the same policy, by which the destruction created, forces the damaged countries to divert precious and scarce resources to rebuild their basic infrastructure, to be destroyed again at Israel's whim, as it happened in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon, several times. Therefore these countries are unable to invest in long-term development, since the specter of an Israeli aggression clouds permanently their strategic calculations. The "rolling-back" then, is not just applied to "regime-change", but to "bombing 'em back to the stone age" constantly, keeping these countries busy rebuilding, or building defenses before the next Israeli attack.
Israel's almost bloodthirsty intention to bomb Iran, with or without the help of the US (but with its backing), can be explained in the light of this paper, and within the "rolling-back" policy. The US/Israel intentions are to use the bombing of nuclear centers in Iran, if that comes to be, as a pretext to "roll-back" Iran for 20, 30 0r 50 years, by bombing it "back to the stone age."
Thanks, Dr. Cole for your comments.
N. Jaragua
"Completely unacceptable Use of Force"
Dr. Cole,
Thanks for alerting us about it. Google News has nothing on Ireland's reaction to the boarding of the "Corrie." I did a Google search on "Ireland", and all I got was soccer and old news about the "Corrie"
http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=Ireland
Same thing with Turkey, which besides old, rehashed, and pro-Israel news, it has completely disappeared from Google. You can find only a couple of new pieces,
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/turkey-investigates-israeli-ship-raid-20100606-xm8i.html
while Turkey is breaking news in no less than Israel's Haaretz (via http://www.antiwar.com)
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/report-erdogan-considering-visiting-gaza-to-break-blockade-1.294326
I started doing this last night with Turkey, and just added Ireland to my curiosity. The media manipulation is of gigantic proportions.