Who is Really Brazen

It seems that Zev Chafets thinks claims that supporters of Israel were not above using tricks to get the US to attack Iraq are "brazen".

This, of course, is a variation on the increasingly brazen charge that disloyal neocon Jews tricked the U.S. into Iraq on orders from Jerusalem — a theory propounded not only by Arab propagandists and academic Zionist-lobby-spotters such as professor Stephen Walt of Harvard, professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and David Duke of the Ukrainian Interregional Academy of Personnel Management, but by many "progressive" Democrats and Buchananite Republicans.

Now, Mr. Chafets throws "on orders from Jerusalem" to give him working room, but no one has made such a claim. (Perhaps he knows something we don't?) Oh, and a manditory David Duke reference.

But is it really brazen to make such a claim when Tyler Drumheller, the former chief of the CIA’s Europe division, making statements such as this:

BRADLEY: According to Drumheller, CIA Director George Tenet delivered the news about the Iraqi foreign minister at a high level meeting at the White House.

DRUMHELLER: The President, the Vice President, Dr. Rice…

BRADLEY: And at that meeting…?

DRUMHELLER: They were enthusiastic because they said they were excited that we had a high-level penetration of Iraqis.

BRADLEY: And what did this high level source tell you?

DRUMHELLER: He told us that they had no active weapons of mass destruction program.

BRADLEY: So, in the fall of 2002, before going to war, we had it on good authority from a source within Saddam’s inner circle that he didn’t have an active program for weapons of mass destruction?

DRUMHELLER: Yes.

BRADLEY: There’s no doubt in your mind about that?

DRUMHELLER: No doubt in my mind at all.

BRADLEY: It directly contradicts, though, what the President and his staff were telling us.

DRUMHELLER: The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming, and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy.

Well, we were certainly tricked. Now, was it "Neocon Jews" doing the tricking? Well, there is a little bit more to fill in, but the many involved included self-described Neocons, many of whom are Jews, but more importantly many of whom are on the record as having strong ties to the hard right in Israel and some being Israeli citizens.

In light of this it doesn't seem so "brazen" to come to such a conclusion, does it?

LAT.

Think Progress.