And the winner is … the Israel lobby
[quote]WASHINGTON - They’re all here - and they’re all ready to party. The three United States presidential candidates - John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Madam House speaker Nancy Pelosi. Most US senators and virtually half of the US Congress. Vice President Dick Cheney’s wife, Lynne. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
…
Republican presidential candidate McCain is opening this year’s AIPAC jamboree; Clinton and Obama are closing it on Wednesday. Walt and Mearsheimer’s verdict on the dangerous liaisons between presidential candidates and AIPAC remains unimpeachable: “None of the candidates is likely to criticize Israel in any significant way or suggest that the US ought to pursue a more evenhanded policy in the region. And those who do will probably fall by the wayside.”
Take what Clinton said in February at an AIPAC meeting in New York: “Israel is a beacon of what’s right in a neighborhood overshadowed by the wrongs of radicalism, extremism, despotism and terrorism.” A year before, Clinton was in favor of sitting and talking to Iran’s leadership.
And take what Obama said in March at an AIPAC meeting in Chicago; no reference at all to Palestinian “suffering”, as he had done on the campaign trail in March 2007. Obama also made it clear he would do nothing to alter the US-Israeli relationship.
No wonder AIPAC is considered by most members of the US Congress as more powerful than the National Rifle Association or the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations.
…
AIPAC keeps a very close relationship with an array of influential think-tanks, like the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Security Policy, the Hudson Institute, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, the Middle East Forum, the The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Sprinkled neo-cons in these think-tanks can be regarded as a microcosm of the larger Israel lobby - Jews and non-Jews (It’s important to remember that Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser and five other neo-cons drafted the infamous “A Clean Break” document to Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996 - the ultimate road map for hardcore regime change all over the Middle East.)
Ref.[/quote]
Not suggesting abandonment of US-Israel relations, but an awareness of controlling influences within DC makes scrutiny of our leaders all that much easier.
Neo-con/PNAC champions of 9/11’s success fully intend to maintain control of this American century. Supporting any of these party-line servants of AIPAC/PNAC dogma will unfortunately prolong the illegal and unjust invasions, at home and on foreign soil. I can’t think of a better reason why we American’s should reject all three of these disasters. We need someone to reverse the foreign and domestic policies of aggression and lawlessness, not just add a different flavor.