Tel-Chai Nation

John Mearsheimer, the disgraceful professor who co-wrote The Israel Lobby and U.S Foreign Policy with Stephen Walt, has let his tongue slip and show that he knows that his whole claim that Israel manipulates US policy is just a big lie. Camera found him talking to NPR's On Point series with Tom Ashbrook, and during the segment recorded here, when Ashbrook asked:

Ashbrook: The argument’s been made that Iran is Israel’s greater fear, so if the Israel Lobby were so powerful, why would the US have gone into Iraq? That’s not the number one Israeli concern. Is there a contradiction then John, in you having described Iraq as the result of Israeli lobby influence?

So Mearsheimer replied:

Mearsheimer: No, Tom. It’s quite clear that in early 2002 – now remember we went into Iraq in March 2003. In early 2002 when the Israelis caught wind of the fact that we were seriously thinking about doing Iraq, that they came to Washington and told us that they would prefer that we do Iran first. The Israelis very clearly thought that Iran was a greater threat than Iraq. It’s not that they were uninterested in having us effect regime change in Iraq and Syria, it’s just that they preferred Iran.

But once they came to understand that Iraq would be the first operation, and we would subsequently deal with Iran and Syria, they embraced the idea of attacking Iraq, although they continually reminded us that we had to do Iran and Syria afterwards.

So what you see from early 2002 up until the war starts in March 2003 is that the Israelis are pushing us very hard, harder than other country outside the United States, to go to war against Saddam Hussein.

So thus, in that very same attempt to smear, he admitted the truth, that Israel had nothing to do with the decision to attack Iraq, and that this was the US administration's decision. So what's he trying to prove anyway?

F. William Engdahl points out that Mearsheimer and Walt are State Dept. consultants. Obviously, they're more involved in decision making than they'd have people believe.

Update: a writer for the Los Angeles Times notes that the terrible two writers first chose to publish excerpts of their abominable book in the London Review of Books. It's no surprise to me that they'd want to get read in something from that crazy place.

Trackposted to: bRight and Early, Church and State, Is it Just Me, Jo's Cafe, Stop the ACLU.

Labels: anti-semitism, Israel