Blumenthal: Elliot Abrams Made Bush Betray Blair

[BurtWorm]

At the summit on the road map at Aqaba, Jordan, in June, Bush told Abu Mazen: "God told me to strike at al-Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them."

Blumenthal, citing interviews with Blairites, says Blair agreed to back the Iraq project only if Bush would try to push ahead on getting peace talks started again in Israel. Elliot Abrams, a rabid ultra-Zionist (a Jewish Colson?), scuttled Bush's end of the bargain, thus leaving Blair high and dry:



http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2003/11/14/blair_bush/print.html

Flynt Leverett, a former CIA analyst, revealed to me that the text of the road map was ready to be made public before the end of 2002: "We had made high-level commitments to key European and Arab allies. The White House lost its nerve. It took Blair to get Bush to put it out. But even then the administration wasn't really committed to it." Leverett is also a former senior director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council, one of the authors of the road map, and now a fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. "We needed to work this issue hard, but because we didn't want to make life difficult with Ariel Sharon, we undercut our credibility."

In the internal struggle over peace in the Middle East, the neoconservatives within the administration prevailed. Elliott Abrams, chief of Middle East affairs at the National Security Council, was their point man. During the Iran-contra scandal of the Reagan presidency, Abrams was a player in setting up a rogue foreign policy operation as the assistant secretary of state for Latin America. His solicitation of $10 million from the sultan of Brunei for the illegal enterprise turned farcical when he transposed numbers on a Swiss bank account and lost the money. He wound up pleading guilty to lying to the Congress and was eventually pardoned by former President Bush. He spent his purgatory as the director of a neoconservative think tank, denouncing the Oslo Accords and arguing that "tomorrow's lobby for Israel has got to be conservative Christians, because there aren't going to be enough Jews to do it." Abrams was rehabilitated when George W. Bush appointed him to the NSC in December 2002.

In his new position, Abrams immediately set to work trying to gut the text of the road map. He was suspicious of the Europeans and British, considering them to be anti-Israel if not inherently anti-Semitic, and spoke vituperatively against them to his colleagues. But working in league with his neoconservative allies in the vice president's office and at the Department of Defense, Abrams was unable to prevent Blair from persuading Bush to issue the road map at last.

...

Abu Mazen sent a secret emissary to the White House: Khalil Shakaki. He is the director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, the only independent Palestinian institute of its kind, which was physically destroyed by Arafat's thugs in early July.

I met with Shakaki in Ramallah on the West Bank recently, where he revealed his account of his urgent trip to the White House. There he met with Elliott Abrams and laid out the conditions of Bush's support essential for Abu Mazen's continued existence. Abrams told him, he said, that Bush "couldn't agree to anything" and offered domestic political considerations: Bush's reliance on the religious right, his refusal to offend the American Israel Political Action Committee and the demands of the upcoming election. "Why are you inviting Abu Mazen here?" asked Shakaki. "We're not inviting him," Abrams replied. "He's just here." Shakaki pleaded that the Palestinian was "a window of opportunity" and "an experiment" who could not go on without U.S. help. "He has to show he's capable of doing it himself," Abrams answered dismissively.

...

[Ouabache]

1. Eliot Abrams another one of the convicts in the Bu$h white house

One of the people PARDONNED on xmas eve 1992, for his Iran-Contra crimes, by Poppy Bu$h.

Hire a criminal and he will pursue criminal policies in the ME.

[ewagner]

2. This and the companion thread

are absolute blockbusters.

What is fascinating about the article is that it shows how Bu$h has no integrity whatsoever. he will betray whoever he must for political advantage. He betrayed Tony Blair and he betrayed Palestine, both to keep his conservative, fundamentalist Christian base intact.

Bu$h MUST be defeated in '04. The world cannot survive another four years of his blundering and lying.

[tinnypriv]

3. "They've got to be told" - Blair

"They've got to be told...this is their chance. If they don't use it, they'll lose it"

-Blair, speaking about the Roadmap to his senior advisor.

Sure looks like the fault of the occupied people now :puke:

[AP]

4. This is why Straw was so incredibly pissed when Israel withdrew all the...

...visas for the peace summit last summer. Bush told Israel to do that.

[leesa]

5. Snowy pure Bush...as though this is not the same sleazeball who was the

hatchet man for his Daddy. He stabs people in the back all the time.

[Hippo_Tron]

6. Could he be any more stupid?

Blair was about the only friend Bush had left. He didn't drop his support for the war in Iraq because Bush wouldn't go along with the UN government in the aftermath (of course Blair turned out to be right on this issue). Now this shit. Well I guess Blair learned his lesson, don't trust Shrub.

[BurtWorm]

7. Unfortunately, Blair has not learned his lesson.

Hence the state trip, the first by a US "president" since 1918. Clinton was invited, then disinvited when the Lewinsky scandal broke.

[AP]

8. Blair could still get his revenge

perhaps this state visit is part of his revenge. perhaps things are going on Iraq which we nothing about which are Blair's revenge. Perhaps there's more in store, which might cost Bush the election.

[seemslikeadream]

10. BCCI trail to start in January

as emad aisat sana dicusses in another thread this creditors class action starts in the UK High Court, Sueing the Bank of England in an unprescedented one billion pound compensation lawsuit.

This so-called State Visit had been arranged by his London ambassador William Stamps Farish 111 who was the bagman running Bush 1's blind trust portfolio when he was VP and later President.

It is primarily a 'front' to conceal the frenetic activity to quash the January trail from happeninig.

[BurtWorm]

9. kick