ISRAEL & US PLANNED LEBANON WAR BEFORE KIDNAPPINGS
Seymour Hersh is now reporting what many had already suspected and some even reported, that Israel along with the Bush administration had planned for the war in Lebanon on Hezbollah long before the Israeli soldiers were kidnapped:
The Bush Administration, however, was closely involved in the planning of Israel’s retaliatory attacks. President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah’s heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel’s security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preëmptive attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground...The New Yorker...Earlier this summer, before the Hezbollah kidnappings, the U.S. government consultant said, several Israeli officials visited Washington, separately, “to get a green light for the bombing operation and to find out how much the United States would bear.” The consultant added, “Israel began with Cheney. It wanted to be sure that it had his support and the support of his office and the Middle East desk of the National Security Council.” After that, “persuading Bush was never a problem, and Condi Rice was on board,” the consultant said.
This fits right in with the "Clean Break" plan the neocons wrote in 1996.
Any other documents they wrote that we should know about?
I love how Blitzer tries to discredit Hersh's sources. But he can't. Hersh is spotless in his journalistic ethics. Thank god he keeps digging.
Posted by: Elizabeth | Monday, August 14, 2006 at 04:40 PM