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May 20: On Capitol Hill, President Bush asked fellow
Republicans to "keep the faith" as he sought to ease their jitters
about Iraq and his lowest approval ratings ever.
At a closed-door meeting described by some as a pep rally, Bush
vowed to "stay the course" and do what is right for America. But a top
Democrat fired back by calling him incompetent. Republican lawmakers
showered him with ovations.
Bush's approval ratings have slipped to the mid-to-low 40 percent
range, the lowest of his presidency. No recent president has been
re-elected with such numbers this close to the November elections. But
"The president's going to win," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina,
crowed on his way out of the meeting.
Bush's
unflagging support for Israel also appears to be in a sudden downward
spiral after the US Administration sharply criticised Israel's
military operations in Gaza and the US allowed the UN Security Council
to condemn the Jewish state. Israel has defended its
foray into Gaza as a security measure against terror groups.
Notwithstanding the above, , a U.S. senator has charged that
Israel is behind the Bush administrations's decision to invade Iraq.
This has ofcourse rattled American Jewish leaders.
Understandably, the U.S. Sen. Ernest "Fritz" Hollings (D-SC) is
now under
fire for his remarks. He is being accused of "anti-semitism".
The South Carolina senator Hollings wrote in his column , "Israel's survival depends on
knowing. Israel long since would have taken us to the weapons of mass
destruction if there were any or if they had been removed. With Iraq
no threat, why invade a sovereign country? The answer: President
Bush's policy to secure Israel."
"The whole foreign policy of the United States is based on Israel?
What kind of ridiculous statement is that?" said Rabbi Philip
Silverstein of Columbia's Beth Shalom synagogue in comments to "The
State," a South Carolina news source.
"It makes him anti-Israel. It's anti-Semitic ... it's dangerous,"
continued the Rabbi.
By abstaining, as it almost never does when
Israel is under assault in the Security Council, the Bush
Administration permitted the UN resolution to pass unanimously, 14-0.
What that means diplomatically "I can't help you this time. You went
too far". An 'anti-semitic' move by Bush under the garb of
diplomacy?".
Sen. Ernest Hollings, a South Carolina Democrat, wrote a column
that appeared in several newspapers in the USA. The column asserted that the U.S.
war against Iraq represented a decision by President George Bush to
protect Israel and ensure American Jewish support for his reelection.
"Of course there were no weapons of mass destruction," Hollings stated
in the column. "Israel's intelligence, Mossad, knows what's going on
in Iraq. They are the best. They have to know."
The South Carolina senator continued, "Israel's survival depends on
knowing. Israel long since would have taken us to the weapons of mass
destruction if there were any or if they had been removed. With Iraq
no threat, why invade a sovereign country? The answer: President
Bush's policy to secure Israel."
The column reflects a growing sentiment in the corridors of power
in Washington according to congressional sources.
The view attributes the U.S. war in
Iraq to the so-called neo-conservatives in the administration,
particularly Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and former
Pentagon adviser Richard Perle, Middle East Newsline reported.
Both
men are Jewish.
"There is a strong fear among American Jewish leadership that the
whispering campaign that 'the Jews started it,' will become public," a
senior congressional staffer said. "We could be seeing others get on
Hollings' bandwagon."
"Bush felt tax cuts would hold his crowd together and spreading
democracy in the Mideast to secure Israel would take the Jewish vote
from the Democrats," Hollings said in a column first published on May
6 in the Charleston Post and Courier. "You don't come to town and
announce your Israel policy is to invade Iraq."
Congressional sources said Hollings was expressing a view that has
become increasingly prevalent in Congress and parts of the
administration.
Does that mean Bush is being ambushed?
The administration has been debating a U.S. exit strategy from Iraq
that appears to pit elements of the Defense Department against the
State Department. The debate includes the affect of a short-term U.S.
military withdrawal from Iraq on Washington's allies in the Middle
East, particularly in the Gulf Cooperation Council. Such a U.S.
withdrawal, Pentagon officials warned, could threaten these Gulf Arab
states.
"They [Arab leaders] are more worried that we will lose our
patience with the difficult tasks of stabilizing those places and will
walk away and come home and bring up the drawbridges and defend
Fortress America," U.S. Central Command chief Gen. John Abizaid told
the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday." "I reassured our
friends that we are tough, that we cannot be defeated militarily, and
that we will stay the course."
For his part, Hollings said Israel has never claimed that Iraq
maintained a weapons of mass destruction arsenal. The senator, who
later refused to retract his statements, said Wolfowitz's advocacy of
a plan to promote democracy among Arab states comprised an Israeli
initiative.
"With Iraq no threat, why invade a sovereign country?" Hollings
asked. "The answer: President Bush's policy to secure Israel. Led by
Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Charles Krauthammer, for years there has
been a domino school of thought that the way to guarantee Israel's
security is to spread democracy in the area."
Hollings said Bush realized that he would be unable to bring about
an Arab-Israeli peace to help his reelection efforts. Instead, Bush
started laying the groundwork to invade Iraq days after his
inauguration in 2001.
The senator said Wolfowitz persuaded Bush that the war against Iraq
would take a week. Hollings said Vice President Richard Cheney was
convinced U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators.
"In the Mideast, terrorism is a separate problem to be defeated by
diplomacy and negotiation, not militarily," Hollings said. "Here,
might does not make right – right makes might.
Acting militarily, we
have created more terrorism than we have eliminated."
June 30 exit therefore makes military sense. But what about the WMDs?
(Web Made Democracies)
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