AEI and Iran Contra connections? The shit just keeps getting deeper.

[HootieMcBoob]

Who knows what will come of this but it sure the hell stinks. I was reading through the NY Times aritcle on the Israeli/Pentagon spy case and this was at the very end of the article:

The Pentagon analyst who officials said was under suspicion was one of two department officials who traveled to Paris for secret meetings with Iranian dissidents, including Manucher Ghorbanifar, an arms dealer. Mr. Ghorbanifar was a central figure in the Iran-contra affair in the 1980's, in which the United States government secretly sold arms to Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages in Lebanon and to finance the fighters, known as contras, opposing the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

The secret meetings were first held in Rome in December 2001, were approved by senior Pentagon officials and were originally brokered by Michael Ledeen, a conservative analyst at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute who has a longstanding interest in Iranian affairs.It was not clear whether the espionage investigation was directly related to the meetings with Mr. Ghorbanifar. Nor was there immediate evidence of whether money had changed hands in exchange for classified information.

American policy towards Iran is now of critical importance to Israel, which is increasingly concerned by evidence that Tehran has accelerated its program to develop a nuclear weapon. The Bush Administration has become concerned that Israel might move militarily against Iran's nuclear complex.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/28/politics/28spy.html?pagewanted=1&hp

[Trajan]

1. Another interesting link ...

RETHINKING THE MIDDLE EAST (10/14/98) by Jon Basil Utley

1 snip: "Former UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick warned in an early session that , for the first time, American cities were vulnerable to (terrorist) weapons of mass destruction, that only in the Middle East do "people define themselves as enemies of the United States."

2 snip: "Douglas Feith, formerly an Assistant Secretary of Defense, criticized US policies overseas as always pushing democracy simply as being majority rule rather than concentrating on its features of limited government and personal freedoms."

3 snip: "Frank Gaffney, columnist and another of the panelists, said that the problems in the Middle East were the fault of only one side not living up to its Oslo commitments, he said that it wasn’t necessary to identify which party it was, that everybody knew, and then explained that he meant the Palestinians. He then warned that any Palestinian state would become a formula for war and declared opposition to any American economic aid for it."

4 snip: "Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthamer worried that, like it or not, a land for peace agreement was coming. He worried also that the largest water aquifers would be under Palestinian soil. He said the Palestinian state would remain without certain sovereign rights and might become a model for Kosovo and a way for resolving other future conflicts in the world. He argued that any Palestinian state would give up a lot in return for U.S. diplomatic recognition and said that "any new Palestinian Israeli war would be a disaster."

5 snip : "Pre-emptive U.S. bombing and active use of military forces overseas was then proposed in the next panel by Weekly Standard editor William Krystol. For Serbia he urged the "taking out" of Miloslavich. He argued for Washington to accept its duties to become the "world policeman," and to effectively exercise U.S. power abroad. His arguments favoring active use of the U.S. military abroad were seconded by John Bolton, Senior Vice President of AEI and a former Bush Administration State Department Assistant Secretary."

Another Snip:
The afternoon session concerned the "American Jewish Community and the Foreign Policy Establishment." Morris Amitay, prime mover and longtime powerhouse of the omnipotent American Israel Political Action Committee stated, "I think AIPAC represents the majority of American Jews."

USA TODAY had printed a letter from a Fordham University professor some weeks before the conference complaining that the militancy and intransigence of much of the Jewish leadership in Washington about Israel was not shared by most American Jews. Amitay went on the criticize Jewish groups which opposed AIPAC’s hard line, saying that there were now 57 represented in the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, too many in his opinion. He complained that some of them viewed Arafat and Netanyahu as being morally equivalent. He complained about the roll of Jewish Americans holding most of the top positions in the State Department, that they were not pushing AIPAC policies and said, "Bring back (former Secretary of State) Christopher and Tony Lake," meaning that they were better for Israel. He said that now Jewish money was going to the Republican Party because Gingrich, Lott and Forbes were very much pro-Israel.

-snip-

Thank to DUer higher_class for this : http://www.againstbombing.org/aei.htm