Israel were going to do it anyway and Blair knew it

[matt66]

israel had received the green light from the USA to destroy Hezbollah as a precursor to destroying Irans nuclear facilities. The kidnapping of the soldiers was not part of the equation (only gave it a cloak of legitimacy). And Blair knew that 500 children in Lebanon were going to be slaughtered even before it happened. How does he sleep at night??

[hopalong]

WW3 is on the way. The only good thing about WW3 is there wont be a WW4

[keyvan]

Should that be the case matt66 it brings the morality into question. What I see as hypocritical is that both Bush & Blair preach the values of being good christians yet both of them fail to adhere to the values of being a good one themselves.

[WaldoMcFroog]

Do you have something to substantiate this accusation..? If true it would have serious implications, but uncorroborated it's conspiracy theory nonsense.

[Loosehead]

Yes, what Waldo said, sources please!

[matt66]

Article in the New Statesman magazine. extracts reproduced in Daily mail today.

[matt66]

http://www.newstatesman.com/200608070017


heres the link.

[Nemesis9]

I reported, in a similar question over a year ago, of the plans for Israel to act as a 'buffer zone' and staging post for the US in it's (so-called) war on terror.

At the time the strategy under development was one aimed at preventing a variety of factionalized anti-west terror organisation from taking root, and recruiting in various parts of the Middle East. In particular degrading any potential for them developing WMD. Part of this strategy involved the US supplying Israel with specialist weapons, namely armaments like the 'bunker busting' bombs designed to destroy underground facilities.
These weapons would not only allow Israel to 'take out' Hezbollah and Ha mas strongholds, but also provide a means for Israel to take pre-emptive measures on the behalf of the US should Iran continue with it's Uranium enrichment process and threaten a nuclear weapons capability.

Attached is a relevant news article with some of the details:
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L2488 7074.htm

[OBonio]

In A Pickle... the US stopped the Suez Crisis by threatening to sell all its Sterling reserves, plummeting our economy into .. something bad. So they were very much involved!

To answer the question however, I don't believe a word of it. Conspiratorial hogwash. You'll be saying that it was the US that was sending the rockets from Hezbollah locations into Israel to provoke this war!

[Catso]

We (the west, in general) should leave Hamas, Hezbollah and especially Iran alone and let them get on with whatever it is they want to do. We've no right to interfere to stop them doing anything.

[JamesEverton]

That's an interesting article matt66. It doesn't, however, say anything about attacks on Hezbollah being a precursor to the destruction of Iran's nuclear facilities. (How would that work, by the way? Are you saying that America wants to escalate the temperature in the Middle East in order to provide a pretext for attacks on Iran?).

Your question also implies that Israel already intended to attack Hezbollah in Lebanon and that the kidnapping of the soldiers, and the rocket attacks, were just a happy coincidence. This is also not referred to in the article. Could you clarify that, please.

Kampfner indicts Blair's foreign policy and accuses him (most damningly) of being too impressionable. This may well be fair comment although it seems confusing to blame him for deaths in Lebanon because he did not speak up in advance of Israeli attacks. Would a statement prior to the bombings have prevented them from taking place?

I'm also interested in Kampfner's access to members of the cabinet. If they are so aghast at Blair's handling of the conflict why don't one/some of the pro-Brownites resign from the cabinet in an effort to precipitate Blairs resignation? Maybe this will still happen.

[matt66]

James... the reason for Israeli dismantling of Hezbollah as a precursor to attacks on the Iranian nuclear programme was to preempt any Iranian directive to Hizbollah to attack israel after attacks on its nuclear programmes. So israel feared that attacking Iranian nuclear interests would mean that Hizbollah would be directed by the Iranians to attack israel. Thus preparing the goundwork for any imminent attack on iran (by USA/Israel) required Hizbollah to be neutralised. israel had gained permission from USA to do that and the US had notified Blair. The kidnapping of soldiers was a gift to the isralis and did they grasp it with every hand!!

[JamesEverton]

So, I think that you're saying that Israel intends to destroy Hezbollah through their bombing attacks and to then attack Iran, with the USA, to eliminate its nuclear programme? This seems far-fetched to me and isn't supported by the source that you cited. Where are you getting this extra information from?

[matt66]

Extra info was from the daily Mail article.

[Nemesis9]

Just to clarify my earlier post, The US (and by proxy the UK) governments have been well aware of Israel�s plans to attack Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, and well in advance of the operations being carried out. In point of fact this policy of �Regional Containment� is a strategy both developed and approved jointly by Tel Aviv and Washington officials, and dates back as far as 2004.

It may appear slightly oblique, but the attack on Lebanon is actually more about weakening Iran than Hezbollah, and is based on the following rationale:

Although Israel currently holds the balance of power in the region, this would almost certainly shift in Iran's favour if and when Tehran achieves nuclear capability - not even necessarily nuclear weapons. As is expected within the next few years

The current conflict against Lebanon is a planned pre-emptive strike that has little or in reality nothing, to do with a handful of kidnapped soldiers, but is widely accepted as a means of forcing Iran�s hand into siding with its neighbours. In fact Israel's use of such overwhelming force against targets in Lebanon during this conflict has led most experts and analysts to publicly conclude this fact

From Iran's perspective, they would much rather confront Israel in the future from a position of greater strength, both militarily and nuclear. But from Israel's point of view, if they are going to maintain a balance of power in the future and protect their borders they need to divide and weaken both Iran, Lebanon and to a lesser extent Syria, now. It is just a more modern variant on the �divide and conquer� maxim.

[JamesEverton]

Ok - I just found the article at: http://tinyurl.com/zvgsw

The Daily Mail claims that Blair knew about the attacks, "before the guerilla group kidnapped two Israeli soldiers," and that these claims, "are made in today's edition of the New Statesman." My reading of the New Statesman article doesn't agree with this.

The point about the intention to attack Iran comes from Dr John Pike who runs globalsecurity.org. The Daily Mail says that he "believes" there to be "an agreement between Israel and the U.S." with regard to attacks on Iran. It suggests that Israel has been waiting for an excuse to attack Hezbollah.

So, fair play matt66, I still believe that joint US/Israeli attacks on Iran are far fetched, but I certainly don't know as much about the Middle East situation as Dr Pike. I don't, however, regard the Daily Mail as a reliable reporter of news and my cursory searches on globalsecurity.org haven't turned up any quotes of Dr Pike that match the Daily Mail's report. It's certainly not clear enough to treat it as fact.

[Nemesis9]

Here's another source from the Washington Times, that outlines the strategy for potential preemptive strikes on Lebanon and Iran. The BBC also archives all it's reports and contains more background detail, so I'd recommend additional searching through there if your curious.

http://washingtontimes.com/national/20060717-1 05737-9603r.htm

[WaldoMcFroog]

My reading of the Kampfner article is much the same as JamesEverton's - it doesn't support your contention that these attacks were pre-ordained. I'm not saying they absolutely weren't - simply that the article doesn't support that view.

Kampfner's book Blair's Wars is an excellent read and I have a lot of time for his journalism. I don't doubt his contacts within the Blair cabinet at all - Cook and Short both gave extensive access for Blair's Wars and certainly there's still much to be concerned about in the piece.

[maxximus]

good posts nemesis9 , here's a slightly more detailed list of the 'specialized' weapons you refer to. as the u.s. and u.k. always had saddam to offset the balance of power with iran in the region,and we armed him to the teeth to make it so, and could tell the world exactly what he had for weapons when it was neccessary as we sold them all to him. israel has now been given saddam's mantle to fill the power vaccum while the u.s. sorts out it's quagmire in iraq. they have built the largest u.s. embassy in the world and are dotting the place with permanent military bases, they are not going anywhere anytime soon. and as you rightly say israel is sending a message to iran from the u.s.and u.k. at the expense of lebanese citizens. so, will we be dreaming up a story 40 years from now as to why we have to disarm the evil israeli regime? and we will no doubt have a list of everything we sold them for propaganda purposes. but we'll have stolen all the oil by then, and it probably won't be neccessary. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context =viewArticle&code=MEY20060801&articleId=2877

[kevb0444]

You just need to look at a map to get some idea of whats going on. Irans surrounded as you've got USA/UK forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. You've got the might of Isreal keeping the Hezbollah and in some respect Syria in check. I dout Saudi Arabia, Pakistan or Turkmenistan gonna get involved in anything if it does kick off with Iran.