Neocons Wanted Israel to Attack Syria

[IndianaGreen]

Olmert refused to speak to Assad on talks to settle Israel-Syria land dispute for fear of angering the Americans, according to a recent published report. It now appears that Israel was not the tail that wagged the dog, but that it was the neocon dog that was wagging everyone else.

Published on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 by the Inter Press Service

Neo-Cons Wanted Israel to Attack Syria

by Jim Lobe

Neo-conservative hawks in and outside the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush had hoped that Israel would attack Syria during last summer's Lebanon war, according to a newly published interview with a prominent neo-conservative whose spouse is a top Middle East adviser in Vice President Dick Cheney's office.

Meyrav Wurmser, who is herself the director of the Centre for Middle East Policy at the Hudson Institute here, reportedly told Yitzhak Benhorin of the Ynet website that a successful attack by Israel on Damascus would have dealt a mortal blow to the insurgency in Iraq.

"If Syria had been defeated, the rebellion in Iraq would have ended," she asserted, adding that it was chiefly as a result of pressure from what she called "neocons" that the administration held off demands by U.N. Security Council members to halt Israel's attacks on Hezbollah and other targets in Lebanon during the summer war.

"The neocons are responsible for the fact that Israel got a lot of time and space... They believed that Israel should be allowed to win," she told Ynet. "A great part of it was the thought that Israel should fight against the real enemy, the one backing Hezbollah... If Israel had hit Syria, it would have been such a harsh blow for Iran that it would have weakened it and (changed) the strategic map in the Middle East."

Wurmser's remarks bolster reports from Israel that hawks in the Bush administration did, in fact, encourage in the first days of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to extend its war beyond Lebanon's borders.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1219-04.htm

[peacebird]

1. hawks in the Bush administration did, in fact, encourage Olmert to extend its war

in Lebanon....

:argh:

We MUST get the neocons out of power, and SOON. For the good of everyone.

[Scurrilous]

2. Ynet link:

Neocons: We expected Israel to attack Syria

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3340750,00.html