I don't mean to say I told you so, but... Stephen Walt, Foreign Policy

[grassfed]

Probably the most controversial claim in my work with John Mearsheimer on the Israel lobby is our argument that it played a key role in the decision to invade Iraq in 2003. Even some readers who were generally sympathetic to our overall position found that claim hard to accept, and some left-wing critics accused us of letting Bush and Cheney off the hook or of ignoring the importance of other interests, especially oil. Of course, Israel's defenders in the lobby took issue even more strenuously, usually by mischaracterizing our arguments and ignoring most (if not all) of the evidence we presented.

So I hope readers will forgive me if I indulge today in a bit of self-promotion, or more precisely, self-defense. This week, yet another piece of evidence surfaced that suggests we were right all along (HT to Mehdi Hasan at the New Statesman and J. Glatzer at Mondoweiss). In his testimony to the Iraq war commission in the U.K., former Prime Minister Tony Blair offered the following account of his discussions with Bush in Crawford, Texas in April 2002. Blair reveals that concerns about Israel were part of the equation and that Israel officials were involved in those discussions.

Take it away, Tony:

As I recall that discussion, it was less to do with specifics about what we were going to do on Iraq or, indeed, the Middle East, because the Israel issue was a big, big issue at the time. I think, in fact, I remember, actually, there may have been conversations that we had even with Israelis, the two of us, whilst we were there. So that was a major part of all this."

more http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/02/08/i_dont_mean_to_say_i_told_you_so_but

[grassfed]

1. Weiss on Walt

What’s always intrigued me about the argument that American Zionists/the lobby/American Jewish leadership had no responsibility for the war is that I grew up being told that Jews were the smartest people in the world and our ideas had changed history– Einstein, Freud, and Marx were the triumvirate my parents cited– and then the Iraq war happens, and basically it’s our ideas, or Zionist neocon ideas, and when the thing is a disaster everyone says that Bush and Cheney came up with it. And the Forward, fearing pogroms, says, "In Dark Times, Blame the Jews." It just doesn’t track. Ideas are important; that’s a modern conception, and a Jewish conception; and god knows that ideas that arose in the Jewish community were very important indeed here. The evidence is endless. There are all the books by Wurmser, Berman, Kaplan, Kristol, Perle and Frum on my bookshelves arguing for the Iraq war in part because of suicide bombers in Israel. There’s Tom Friedman making that argument; and later telling Ari Shavit that if you had abducted 25 intellectuals within a mile of his office in D.C., most of them Jewish, the war would never have happened. There’s the collapse of the liberal Jewish establishment, from the Union for Reform Judaism to the New Yorker magazine to 9 of 11 Jewish congressmen from NY and California (praise Bob Filner and Jerrold Nadler for their Tonkin Gulf-awareness). Yes and why did they collapse? There’s Philip Zelikow, the head of the 9/11 Commission saying that Israeli security was the motive for the war that dare not speak its name; there’s Colin Powell saying that the idea for the war came out of the Zionist thinktank the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs; there’s Condi Rice saying the war was to "help Israel," per her biographer. And now there’s Blair.

Vietnam helped bring down the WASP Establishment, and Iraq is going to do a number on the Jewish presence in this Establishment. That’s why there’s such anger at Mearsheimer and Walt; there’s a lot of social status in play, let alone national security issues. And Jewish life won’t be healed until we recognize the degree to which macho Israeli militarist ideas inside our Diaspora thinktank-journo-privileged-pencil-neck community have wagged the dog. We’re empowered people. Yes we have been victimized in history, as other people have been too. But that has given rise to a myth of Jewish non-agency in world affairs.

more
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/02/steve-walt-feels-vindicated-by-blair-confession-as-well-he-should.html

[Radical Activist]

2. Bush said we invaded Iraq because they supported terrorists.

Most of the terrorism they were supporting was directed at Israel. Seems perfectly clear to me.