From jad@ckuxb.att.com Ukn Feb 3 08:20:58 1993 Received: from att-out.att.com by css.itd.umich.edu (5.67/2.2) id AA08920; Wed, 3 Feb 93 08:20:56 -0500 Message-Id: <9302031320.AA08920@css.itd.umich.edu> To: pauls@css.itd.umich.edu Date: Wed, 3 Feb 93 08:14:42 EST From: jad@ckuxb.att.com Status: RO X-Status: Article 20038 of alt.conspiracy: Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy,alt.activism,alt.society.civil-liberty,alt.individualism,alt.censorship,talk.politics.misc,misc.headlines,soc.culture.usa Subject: Part 14, Within America's Soul, Hitler is Victorious. Message-ID: <1993Feb2.204123.17807@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> Followup-To: alt.conspiracy Keywords: Within America's Soul, Hitler is Victorious Sender: usenet@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU Organization: University of Virginia, FREE Public Access UNIX! Lines: 156 From: "ISRAEL'S WAR IN LEBANON: EYEWITNESS CHRONICLES OF THE INVASION & OCCUPATION, Compiled and edited by Franklin Lamb, 1984 Publisher and sole distributor: Spokesman for the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, Bertrand Russell House, Gamble St., Nottingham, England NG7 4ET. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * (continuation) page 516 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ CLAUDIA WRIGHT, Journalist, England ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "WITH ADVANCE KNOWLEDGE OF THE INVASION, THE UNITED STATES SENT ARMS TO ISRAEL AND MOVED IN SHIPS." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Lebanon War has differed from the four earlier Arab-Israeli wars in the ferocity of the Israeli attack and the degree of United States involvement. There has been widespread speculation in the international press, bordering on conviction in the Arab world, that these two things are connected -- part of a joint Israeli- United States plan to destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and redraw the map of Lebanon once and for all. ..... And the following evidence indicates that the Reagan Administration did a great deal to encourage the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and to assure its military success. WHO'S TELLING THE TRUTH? In an Israel radio interview on August 14, Israeli Defense Minister General Ariel Sharon suggested that United States Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and former Secretary of State Alexander Haig not only had advance knowledge of Israel's plans to invade Lebanon, but also had approved those plans. [JD: As you will eventually come to learn, just ONE of the reasons that the corporate U.S. Government endorsed the invasion of Lebanon is because wars reap vast sales for the American military-industrial war profiteers.] Weinberger's office responded by calling Sharon's claim untrue, saying, "At no time did the Israeli defense minister say or allude to the fact that Israel had plans to invade Lebanon." Weinberger's statement is not an outright denial of Sharon's claim. Instead, he evades the issue of how much he knew when Sharon was in Washington last May. The Israeli general did not need to discuss the invasion plans directly, because those details had already been made known to the Pentagon from U.S. intelligence reports and from earlier visits to Washington by military officers, including the visit, just days before Sharon arrived, of his aide, Arye Ganger. On May 20, as Sharon prepared to leave Israel for Washington, a spokesman told the Tel Aviv newspaper Ma'ariv that "Jerusalem wants to maintain complete freedom of action" regarding Lebanon. That was a carte blanche for the Israeli Military, and apparently, nothing Sharon was told at the Pentagon indicated that there were U.S. reservations about Israel's plans. Indeed, everything that happened during Sharon's visit between May 22 and 27 suggested the U.S. Government's resolve to back him as much as possible. On May 24, the Reagan Administration sent an informal notice to Congress of its decision to sell Israel seventy-five F-16 jet fighters, worth about three billion dollars. Two days later, an Administration offer of another eleven F-15s [jet fighters], costing five hundred and ten million dollars, cleared Congress. The offer was then dispatched to Jerusalem. On the same day, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted to add one hundred and twenty-five million dollars to the seven hundred and eighty-five million dollars in economic support funds already authorized for Israel in 1983, and to convert the entire nine hundred and ten million dollars to a grant, dropping the Reagan Administration proposal that one-third be treated as a loan. The reason, the Senate Committee claimed, was that "Israel's qualitative edge" in weaponry "continues to erode .... necessitating increased arms purchases," at the same time that heavy debts on past arms purchases were straining the Israeli economy. On May 26, former Secretary of State Haig gave a speech in Chicago hinting, for the first time, at how far the United States was prepared to go to find a new political solution in Lebanon, and how far, therefore, the Israelis could go toward eliminating the Palestinian and Syrian presence in Lebanon. "The time has come," he said, "to take concerted action in support of both Lebanon's territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders, and a strong central government capable of promoting a free, open, democratic and traditionally pluralistic society." To Sharon and the Israeli Cabinet, there was no doubt what this "concerted action" meant. Former President of the United States Jimmy Carter has said that he was told by "very knowledgeable people in Israel" that their plans to invade Lebanon had been given "a green light from Washington." After Carter made these comments in an interview in the Atlanta Constitution on August 19, Secretary of State George Shultz responded by saying that Carter was "not correct." "My understanding is that the United States Government was not informed, and the United States Government was and is on the record as having opposed the invasion." Like Weinberger's response to Sharon, this also evades the specific contention that Washington knew of the invasion in advance and tacitly gave its go-ahead. "It was possible," Shultz said, that "somebody came through here and talked about [the invasion] as a possibility." Even if Sharon and his subordinates had spoken vaguely of their plans, United States Naval deployments in the Eastern Mediterranean could not have occurred without at least ten days advance warning of the likely date of the Israeli attack. According to the Pentagon, deployments were ordered even before Sharon had left Washington for home, thereby stationing one of the most powerful United States armadas ever assembled in the Eastern Mediterranean, offshore from Lebanon at the same time that Israel invaded. The U.S. armada gave that [Israeli] invasion vital protection from Soviet or Arab threats from the west. According to the Pentagon, in one of these deployments, the nuclear- powered aircraft carrier USS Ranger was ordered to sail from San Diego, California to the Indian Ocean to relieve the USS Kennedy. The USS Ranger reached its station June 1, two days before the shooting of the Israeli ambassador in Britain, Shlomo Argov, an assassination attempt used by Israel to justify its attack on Lebanon. The USS Kennedy then headed for the Suez Canal, passing through immediately after the assassination attempt. By the time Israeli forces had begun to move, the Kennedy had taken up a position off the Lebanese coast, where its surveillance and interceptor aircraft covered Israel itself and Israeli Naval operations off the Lebanese coast from surprise air or sea attacks from the west. The USS Ranger's relief of the USS Kennedy, said the Pentagon officials at the time, was routine, but the timing of the move and the Kennedy's new battle station were not. page 519 (to be continued) * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The American Public is evidently in dire need of the truth, for when the plutocracy feeds us sweet lies in place of the bitter truth that would evoke remedial action by the People, then we are in peril of sinking inextricably into despotism. So, please post the episodes of this ongoing series to computer bulletin boards, and post hardcopies in public places, both on and off campus. The need for concerned people, alerting their neighbors to overshadowing dangers, still exists, as it did in the era of Paul Revere. That need is as enduring as society itself. John DiNardo