AIPAC and Mr. BoltonA matter of split loyalties [Archives:2006/928/Opinion]

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March 13 2006

Hassan Al-Haifi
On Monday March 6, 2004, as the heat over the Irani nukes was heating up, Mr. John Bolton, Ambassador of the United States to the United Nations and esteemed member of the Right Wing iconic group that has been responsible for the mayhem that is now seen everywhere in the world, was screaming wolf at the Islamic Republic of Iran. In a speech given dubiously at a conference or meeting of the American – Israel Public Affairs Committee, Mr. Bolton, in his typical belligenrent tone pointed out that Iran was to suffer serious consequences if it did not adhere to the international community's demands, etc. What is intriguing about the speech is not so much the usual scarecrow attitude of the neo-cons about the politics of power or “might makes right”, but the baffling importance of having to make such serious foreign policy speeches, on matters that especially have been the subject of major spy scandals involving American civil servants at the highest level in the Defense Department and senior officials of AIPAC at an AIPAC Conference. All the serious charges involved staff with close associations with Mr. Edward Feith, Donald Rumsfeldt and other leading figureheads in the White House Administration of G W Bush. All these scandals involved providing policy information to Israeli officials on American policy formulation on Iran. The FBI has already charged officials from AIPAC (“who have resigned” their posts in AIPAC immediatelty thereafter or before), as well as the senior staff involved. Incidentally, no one is certain as to what proceeded in these serious crimes against the security of the United States. But to Mr. Bolton, this is all history not worth recalling, because, if AIPAC was not satisfied with the information provided by her spies in the Bush Administration, he was ready to devulge of all the things that AIPAC has been wanting to hear all along (see Common Sense, Issue 898). Previously, AIPAC has voiced concern that the White House was not acting congruent to Israeli demands vis a vis Iran. It needed reassurances that now that the matter of Iran was going to the UN Security Council, in one form or another, that Mr. Bolton knew what AIPAC had in mind all along in its prodding on this matter on behalf of the Israelis.

Needless to say that the deplomatic propriety of such a move by Bolton is questionable, as he was making statements that would normally be expected to come from the highest level of the State Department (as his words amounted to policy matters that have not even been fully decided upon then). Maybe since Condy was too busy wooing Kamal Jumblatt of Lebanon to act as their newly found friend – erstwhile previous enemy), and AIPAC could not be allowed to have to wait any longer for being briefed on the next moves by the Bush Administration on Iran – never mind its questionable loyalty to the US, which is always superceded by the loyalty to Zion. But then, why shouldn't Mr. Bolton gain his respectable place in the large complex network of Israeli lobbyists in the United States? After all his colleagues in the Cheney group of neo-con icons have found their comfortable niches there, with or without being involved in spy scandals on hehalf of Israel and walking away freely. Israeli spies just don't fit the specifications of guests at Abu Ghreib or Guantanamo Bay.
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