What is AIPAC? (sorry for the ignorance)

[Roxy66]

I keep seeing it in posts and finally decided to ask.

[MercutioATC]

1. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee...

http://www.aipac.org/

[cynatnite]

2. Here's a little more info:

In 1992, AIPAC president David Steiner had to resign when he was tape recorded boasting about his political influence, saying he had "cut a deal" with the Bush administration to give more aid to Israel. He had arranged for "almost a billion dollars in other goodies," he added and was "negotiating" with the incoming Clinton administration over appointing a pro-Israeli Secretary of State. "We have a dozen people in his Clinton's headquarters," Steiner bragged, "and they are all going to get big jobs." The story that forced his resignation broke in the Washington Times. http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/AIPACClinton.html

In 1995 prominent Congressman Newt Gingrich generated some criticism when it was disclosed that his wife accepted a position, while her husband was still in office, as the vice president for business development for the Israeli Export Company. She had visited the Israel in 1993 under the auspices of AIPAC. Mrs. Gingrich was "hired at an undisclosed salary to help recruit business for a free-trade zone in Israel." S., p. 6

In August 2004, it was revealed that the FBI had been conducting an investigation of Larry Franklin, a U.S. Defense Department employee, on suspicion of espionage; specifically, misdirecting classified information about Iran's military through AIPAC to Israel. In connection with this investigation, on December 1, 2004, the FBI searched AIPAC's offices and handed grand-jury subpoenas to four senior lobbyists http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002106823_ndig02.html. Both Israel and AIPAC have denied allegations of improper spying on the United States.

In May 2005, Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin was arrested and charged with providing classified information about potential attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, the Justice Department announced. Law enforcement sources said the the information was provided to members of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Franklin turned himself in to the FBI in Washington, and was scheduled to appear in court in Alexandria, Virginia, officials said. A one-count criminal complaint did not identify the pro-Israel group AIPAC by name, but described the June 26, 2003, luncheon meeting in which Franklin allegedly disclosed top-secret information to two AIPAC officials, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman. Rosen and Weissman had been dismissed by the organization about a month before the indictment. Law enforcement officials have acknowledged the information was provided to AIPAC members.

http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/American_Israel_Public_Affairs_Committee

[Loonman]

3. A criminal enterprise

Pretty much.

[BikeWriter]

4. During the runup to the war in Iraq...

I've heard they were frequently in the Pentagon intelligence offices.

[Nothing Without Hope]

5. Good reason for this: active censorship at DU. Here's what's left of

two threads originally posted in GD. Note how the second one was immediately locked after being hustled into the irrelevant and early invisible Israeli/Palestinian Affairs forum because - amazingly - that forum has a policy that only threads with current articles are allowed as posts!!!! That's a new one for me - never heard of that DU rule before. But it was an excuse to lock the thread in case ripping it out of General Discussion wasn't enough.

Still a few good links left despite all the deletions:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1904576

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5054112

Don't miss this Seymour Hersh New Yorker article - it will tell you most of what you need to know:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/050704fa_fact

[JohnyCanuck]

6. And speaking of AIPAC, have you heard about JINSA?

The Men From JINSA and CSP

Jason Vest
The Nation, September 2002

Almost thirty years ago, a prominent group of neoconservative hawks found an effective vehicle for advocating their views via the Committee on the Present Danger, a group that fervently believed the United States was a hair away from being militarily surpassed by the Soviet Union, and whose raison d'être was strident advocacy of bigger military budgets, near-fanatical opposition to any form of arms control and zealous championing of a Likudnik Israel. Considered a marginal group in its nascent days during the Carter Administration, with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 CPD went from the margins to the center of power.

Just as the right-wing defense intellectuals made CPD a cornerstone of a shadow defense establishment during the Carter Administration, so, too, did the right during the Clinton years, in part through two organizations: the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and the Center for Security Policy (CSP). And just as was the case two decades ago, dozens of their members have ascended to powerful government posts, where their advocacy in support of the same agenda continues, abetted by the out-of-government adjuncts from which they came. Industrious and persistent, they've managed to weave a number of issues--support for national missile defense, opposition to arms control treaties, championing of wasteful weapons systems, arms aid to Turkey and American unilateralism in general--into a hard line, with support for the Israeli right at its core.

On no issue is the JINSA/CSP hard line more evident than in its relentless campaign for war--not just with Iraq, but "total war," as Michael Ledeen, one of the most influential JINSAns in Washington, put it last year. For this crew, "regime change" by any means necessary in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority is an urgent imperative. Anyone who dissents--be it Colin Powell's State Department, the CIA or career military officers--is committing heresy against articles of faith that effectively hold there is no difference between US and Israeli national security interests, and that the only way to assure continued safety and prosperity for both countries is through hegemony in the Middle East--a hegemony achieved with the traditional cold war recipe of feints, force, clientism and covert action.

For example, the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board--chaired by JINSA/CSP adviser and former Reagan Administration Defense Department official Richard Perle, and stacked with advisers from both groups--recently made news by listening to a briefing that cast Saudi Arabia as an enemy to be brought to heel through a number of potential mechanisms, many of which mirror JINSA's recommendations, and which reflect the JINSA/CSP crowd's preoccupation with Egypt. (The final slide of the Defense Policy Board presentation proposed that "Grand Strategy for the Middle East" should concentrate on "Iraq as the tactical pivot, Saudi Arabia as the strategic pivot Egypt as the prize.") Ledeen has been leading the charge for regime change in Iran, while old comrades like Andrew Marshall and Harold Rhode in the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment actively tinker with ways to re-engineer both the Iranian and Saudi governments. JINSA is also cheering the US military on as it tries to secure basing rights in the strategic Red Sea country of Eritrea, happily failing to mention that the once-promising secular regime of President Isaiais Afewerki continues to slide into the kind of repressive authoritarianism practiced by the "axis of evil" and its adjuncts.

Continued at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020902/vest

[leesa]

7. They have purchased quite a few members of our Congress.

Usually, when you get Dems being really irrational about warmongering in the Middle East or ignoring treason, etc., check their donation tally from AIPAC