All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
We're at lrn.fm, chaosradioaustin.org, antiwar.com/radio, and for that matter, antiwar.com/donate, especially this week.
All right, our guest on the show is Grant F. Smith.
He's from the Institute for Research Middle East Policy.
That's IRMEP, I-R-M-E-P dot org.
Welcome back to the show.
Hey, Scott, good to be back.
Well, I'm very happy to have you here.
Everybody, you can also find Grant Smith's archive at antiwar.com, and I just recently got this email from you here just a few minutes ago about a March 17th, 1961 memo.
Oh, no, boring history.
What interest, could this possibly be something that happened before I was even born, Grant?
Come on.
Well, it happened before I was born as well, but it's important because what we're talking about is the history of AIPAC and robust pro-Israel lobbying in the United States, and that memo that just went out that we obtained through declassification of sealed Senate records, it's pretty important, and it tells a history that the American people and the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee has always been rather circumspect about.
In fact, if you go to their webpage, they say that they came from, a quote, for more than half a century, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee has worked to help make Israel more secure by ensuring that American support remains strong.
From a small public affairs boutique in the 1950s, AIPAC has grown into a 100,000-member national grassroots movement, unquote, boutique.
So that's the AIPAC version.
They came from, what, Paul's Boutique in Brooklyn.
Who knows what they're talking about, but that's not the history of AIPAC.
Here's the short history of AIPAC focused on that memo that just went out.
In 1961, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee became concerned that events like the Levon Affair, a covert Israeli false flag terrorist attack on U.S. installations in Egypt, were driving U.S. foreign policy, and they wanted to investigate it.
So that's step one.
Step two is they passed some of their preliminary reports, which were classified at the time to the Department of Justice, which ordered an organization called the American Zionist Council to begin registering as Israeli foreign agents, and the lobbying division of that Israeli foreign agent split off and incorporated itself, step three, six weeks later, and is still with us today, only it's called the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, and it's never openly registered or disclosed the things that it does in coordination with the Israeli government.
And now, wait a minute.
If we're talking about the American-Brazilian Public Affairs Committee, those guys all have to register as foreign agents?
I just made up the name of that one, but you get my point.
I mean, there is no American-Brazilian Public Affairs Committee, and the Brazilians, they don't have the clout in the United States to operate the way AIPAC does.
You know, AIPAC- Well, now, but there are foreign lobbyists.
Why is, I mean, is it really the case that the Israeli lobby is treated that much differently, or why is it that other even powerful countries, let's say the British, the French, the Spaniards, the Russians, they can't set up the Turks?
They can't at least follow the quote-unquote legal model framework of the Israel lobby and get around the Foreign Registration Act just the same?
Well, no, they don't, and they can't.
And basically, there are two factors here.
Number one, that 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act is woefully under-enforced by the Justice Department.
It was back in the 60s.
They had to be dragged kicking and screaming by the Senate to begin enforcement.
They were utterly lax and irresponsible, and I visited that office, and I can tell you it hasn't changed much.
And the second factor is they have been able to, just by sheer inertia, and in particular, organizing campaign contributions in this country, been able to do something the Germans, the French, the Brazilians can't do, which is enforce and create penalties on any U.S. politician or elected official, for that matter, who relies on campaign contributions, impose a penalty for not towing their talking points and their agenda.
So, you know, you've talked about this and had people on to talk about British lobbying, you know, before World War II, I believe it is, but this is something else.
Both World Wars.
Yeah, both World Wars, and those have been excellent programs, but the scale and the organization and the communications, comparatively, that sort of thing is not going on to the scale that it does with the Israel lobby.
Yeah, but, you know, here's the thing, though.
I mean, from a point of view, at least devil's advocate or something here, it sounds like this is basically just sour grapes.
You know, any group of Americans can, you know, of course, petition their government to act the way that they want it to act.
That's what a democracy is.
If you accept the Constitution, the House of Representatives and all these things, any group of Americans, whether they're pro or anti-gun or pro or anti-Ireland or pro or anti-anything, can do what's being done here.
And these are American citizens, after all, and they're interested in seeing their government make sure that the tiny little government that where their, you know, kinsmen live or whatever is protected, you know, by this one.
I don't know if that was all in English, but you understand what I'm saying.
What's so illegitimate about all this?
The illegitimate part is when you break the law.
They're just too good at it, it sounds like.
I don't know.
It's the illegitimate part, and the only part that my organization focuses on is when laws are broken to achieve those goals that negatively impact the rest of Americans.
So I would agree that if you want to have a U.S.
-Guatemala Public Affairs Committee and you want to try and impose better policy toward the Guatemalan government, you can do that.
But here's where you have to draw the line.
If you're going to, for example, you wish to arm the Guatemalans by raising a bunch of U.S. military equipment and ship it to them, even though there might be an embargo in place, I would say you can't do that.
You should be arrested and thrown in jail.
If you suddenly decide that Guatemala is imperiled and it really needs to have eight or nine nuclear weapons and you want to steal highly enriched uranium from the United States and use various networks in the U.S. to do that in contravention to a U.S. president's desire expressed in a policy framework for nonproliferation, I would say, no, you should be thrown in jail for that because that negatively impacts everybody else in the United States that elected a president to do something different.
So I'm really concerned, particularly when you have things going on such as this massive ongoing funding flow to the West Bank and Gaza, that you've got all of these groups in the United States working in coordination with the Israeli government to commit to activities that are illegal under international law and the clout to keep the commissioner of the IRS with whom I've spoken about this, keep him from doing anything about it.
That's corruption.
That's lobby-enforced corruption and that's bad for everybody in the United States.
Now, I talked with a guy named John M. Cole on this show who is a former FBI counterintelligence officer and he said that there were, that he knew of personally, there were 250 something counterintelligence, counterespionage investigations into the actions of the Israeli government and their agents in our country that never went anywhere.
And that seems, from a certain point of view, pretty surprising to me because the FBI and the Justice Department and these people, you're talking about some of the most arrogant, Tommy Lee Jones always plays a U.S. attorney or something.
That's a good, it's good casting, right?
That's the kind of guy who is a U.S. attorney, is the kind of guy who won't take anything from anyone, will just convene a grand jury and indict your ass.
How could it be that 250 investigations into espionage against this country are allowed to let go?
Well, do I have time to even jump into that?
Yeah, well, hold it till after the break.
We do have plenty of time, but that's like anecdotal evidence of an extraordinary amount of power and influence in this country by the government of another there.
There is definitely something to talk about, how those cases are quashed.
All right, now hold it.
We'll be back.
It's Grant F. Smith, Anti-War Radio.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
This dang old Anti-War Radio, which makes me Scott Horton, the host of it.
Talking on the phone with Grant F. Smith.
He knows more about the Israel lobby and its power in America than anybody.
Maybe all put together.
Now, Grant, we were talking about how the FBI and the Justice Department, who are made up of, if anything, they're patriotic about their own agencies, and how they have been made to bow down to a foreign power over and over again and quash investigations, in John M. Cole's view anyway, 250 investigations that should have gone somewhere went nowhere.
How could that be?
Well, I think he actually said something like 125, but regardless of the number, it's a three-digit number.
And what you find is there seem to be kind of three operating principles.
One is political pressure that's put on the agency.
A second is, unfortunately, people are looking out for their careers, and they don't see it as a career-enhancing move to be at the forefront of any sort of crackdown or warranted accountability moment.
And the second is just interconnectedness.
You start pulling at one of these strings, and it just goes everywhere.
And you can see this.
We just talked about, for example, when Apex Parent was ordered to register as a foreign agent, Nicholas Katzenbach, who slowly became the Attorney General over that time period, you can see it in the Justice Department memos, how he slowly became convinced that maybe it would be better not to come down too hard and just let them slowly go away and file some perfunctory statements about what they were up to and just let them go.
And that is, in fact, what he did.
In 1985, during the Jonathan Pollard affair, when Apex was caught with a bunch of classified documents trying to negotiate better trade terms, the same thing kind of happened because the Justice Department was pulling at this.
And again, it was during a Ryan Contra, during Pollard, during a really bad moment, the year of the spy.
And it didn't seem like there was any end in sight if they kept working on this and actually found out what happened.
And they found it in their interest to just cut off the investigation and shut it down.
And then, of course, in 2005, the reason, as we all know, that Paul McNulty of the Justice Department or the prosecuting attorney, he found it in his interest and was talking to the lawyers at Apex saying he wanted to help them get out from underneath all of this.
And if they only threw a couple of guys overboard, they could move on.
And he has since gone on.
He was promoted and has gone on to the private sector.
And again, as we know, Jeff Stein over at CQ, at The Post, he started pulling on this and he found out lines going right to Jane Harman and all sorts of other things.
That if you, again, you start pulling on that string and suddenly you can find that you're pulling some foundations out from the government and the elites here inside the beltway and nobody wants that.
And so you walk away from it.
And if they've been successful in getting the documents and launching a PR campaign to get Bush to bomb Iran, then you win.
You get busted by the FBI, there's some publicity, but the thing gets shut down, you can try again in five or 10 years.
And that's the pattern.
And that's the illegality of, again, in this last case, getting national defense information and trying to touch off not a Levan affair, but something worse in this case.
You know, use it to paint the picture you want in the press, leak it to your friends, give it to overseas officials, start putting the foundations into a policy that advances Israel's interest.
That's the kind of stuff that's got to stop.
Yeah, well, so what you're saying really is that the corruption has gone so far that we cannot have accountability without a crisis, which it seems to me is basically the same thing, or at least through the eyes of the state.
It's the same problem with impeaching or removing George Bush from power, that the Speaker of the House, if Bush and Cheney had been removed for torturing people to death, which is a felony, for example, one of many felonies that they committed in their role in power there, then they would have been replaced next on the list by Nancy Pelosi, who was a co-conspirator in their plan to torture people to death, which is a felony, for example.
And so then what do you do?
Then you go to Ted Stevens or something, you're talking about a major political crisis, same thing in the media, where every one of these nitwits on TV went, oh yeah, the Iraqi empire armed to the teeth with VX gas is marching on, you know, South Carolina, cover your house in duct tape and plastic, or else he'll spray you with germs, they said.
And now there's no accountability for any of them either.
They would all have to be replaced by you and me and Eric Margulies, and that ain't gonna happen.
So the whole thing just continues on until the country burns, I guess.
Well, I disagree on that last point.
I mean, the only reason people know about any of this stuff is because of people like you and other people doing research and not being sucked into just promoting all of this chaos and corruption.
But I do think to the extent that more and more people have access to the internet and have access to alternative information sources, you know, that's a good thing.
So I'm not hopeless, but you do point to something very important.
Last Friday, there was a Human Rights Council meeting in which the U.S. for the first time had to present itself and present a report about its own activities, and countries like Venezuela and Iran and Cuba and all of those countries got two minutes during a morning session to hold the U.S. to account.
And one of the things that the U.S. stated at the end of that pertaining to all of these torture allegations was, well, at least, you know, we've put a special attorney, John Durham of Connecticut, a special prosecutor who's investigating all of this, and he's going to find out what's really going on and hold people accountable.
You know, that's last Friday, and today we get the message that, oh, you know what?
There's nobody who's going to be held accountable for any of this.
So, yeah, it's just, it's really, it's gotten to a stage where I think if you wanted to define a national security threat to this country that's not the economy, it's definitely the corruption that doesn't allow any sort of due process to take place for these important matters.
And after all, you know, as has been documented 10 million times by the likes of Jim Loeb and James Bamford and Meir Scheimer and Walt and Justin Raimondo and yourself and on and on and on down the list, Bob Dreyfuss and Jason Vest, that excellent article, The Lie Factory and what have you.
It was basically the, you know, I don't know if the neoconservative movement and the Israel lobby are just synonyms or they're kind of the right-wing vanguard of it or I guess the more warlike vanguard of it.
They're kind of pink on social issues and stuff.
But anyway, you know, they got us into the Iraq war and they're trying to get us into war with Iran.
We were just talking about on the show before you came on how Netanyahu is telling Joe Biden that, hey man, you guys need to credibly threaten Iran with military attack regularly.
Get going on that.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, at least the Secretary of Defense appears to have temporarily said no.
Maybe he hasn't gotten a memo yet.
But yeah.
But then he lied outright and said that there was a nuclear program in his telling them to chill.
Yeah.
Hey, stay on.
Let me interview you more after this.
All right, I'm on.
All right, good deal.
Everybody, it's Grant Smith from IRMEP, I-R-M-E-P dot org.
It's Anti-War Radio.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott.
I'm terrible at running radio shows, but I'm interested in important things.
Like, hey, should there be daylight between America's foreign policy and Israel's or not?
And if not, then who decides?
The empire or the client state?
Grant?
The lobby.
The lobby decides.
But does that count as the foreign state or that's still really just Americans who really like that foreign state a lot?
Well, I would just say that when you've got, again, an organization like AIPAC and some of the other organizations, which you can trace the leadership all the way back to working in the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
And this is this real constant back and forth to the extent that it's got an office over there and is in constant contact.
And a lot of its leadership asserts the fact that coordinating with the Israeli government to promote legislation in the Congress is acceptable, even though, again, it's technically not legal.
I think that's a huge problem.
The secrecy is a huge problem.
The things that you were mentioning before, the fact that there isn't any rational, in-depth reporting on any of this in at least the media that gets significant viewership in this country.
I think that's a problem because, again, you don't wanna have US policy and launching of military actions on the basis of the fact that a lobby for a foreign government got ahold of some secret documents and ginned it up into an event that required a military response.
So that's just not the way this government is supposed to be working.
Well, and I don't know if you read this the same way as me, but when Jeffrey Goldberg, an IDF veteran, wrote his piece in The Atlantic a couple of months back about how the Israelis really want there to be a war or whatever, and the push is on, it seemed to me like Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, the defense minister, both pretty much conceded that Iran really isn't a threat to Israel in any real existential sense, the way that they portray it to the people of Israel and to the people of the United States.
Netanyahu said that he was worried that if Iran did have a nuke, nevermind any evidence that they're making nukes, but that if they did, that Hezbollah and Hamas would be emboldened and that would be bad.
And Ehud Barak was worried that smart young Israelis would rather go to grad school in America than in Israel, maybe, and that there would be what he called a possible brain drain.
And I'm thinking, this is the push?
This is what, you know, the American people are told, at least Fox News watchers, for example, are told that, you know, the imams over there are hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons, one way or the other, hook or crook, and then because they want the 12th imam to come back, they're gonna start a nuclear war with Israel, unprovoked.
And so we must stop them.
And yet Netanyahu and Ehud Barak apparently do not believe that.
Did you read that the same way as me?
I read it somewhat the same way you did, but again, I have so little respect for Goldberg's reporting that, you know, even if that was the rationale he was putting forward, I kind of discounted some of it as well.
I think that really, when you look at the history, the fact of the matter is, that the real threat is not, again, those factors.
The real threat he should have mentioned is, if there were any sort of peace, if there were any sort of absence of conflict, interest in Israel really starts to wane.
You know, the whole real fundraising drive in this country to support Israel happened in 1967 when it faced a true mortal conflict.
And ever since that date, it's been in the lobby's interest to gin up the idea that there's an existential threat.
So from my analysis, the existential threat is the absence of an existential threat.
I mean, it's really a constant feeding frenzy.
And one of the reasons that this government is so preoccupied with Israeli affairs to an extent that just saps the energy of our government is the lobby and Israel have decided that they need to constantly promote this idea of Israel in danger to the United States in order to be at the forefront of policy and at the forefront of fundraising, at the forefront of aid, and that that is the true driver.
And in fact, that was the subject of a book, the whole Israel in Danger concept of Elliott Abrams, after he left the Hudson Institute and went into the Bush administration.
That was sort of the capstone of his book, was talking about how to maintain this heightened atmosphere of crisis, which again, I argue, misappropriates U.S. resources, world attention, and just diverts the United States and other countries from so much productive activity that they could be engaged in.
So, I don't really buy much of what Goldberg writes.
I don't believe that he's a very credible person, no matter what sort of campaign he's engaged in, whether it was the Iraq weapons of mass destruction or analysis of the necessity or non-necessity to attack Iran.
I personally don't think that his track record merits much attention.
I do think, though, that Elliott Abrams hit the bale on the head when he said that, you know, the existential crisis is if anyone perceives that Israel is not in some sort of danger.
Oh, I'm sorry, man, I didn't hit the button.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, the Israel in Danger thesis, but it's just that it's not plausible.
We're talking about the most heavily armed state in the region.
You know, basically, look, here's the thing.
It's a brand new state, basically, right?
From the end of World War II there.
And now, presumably, it's supposed to last for hundreds and hundreds of years or whatever, right?
They would want, you know, as we would like to see the USA last, most of us, although I wonder about the guys that run things in DC.
But it doesn't make sense, really, strategically, does it, to just try to be the most heavily armed bully in the neighborhood and demand peace from everybody else all the time, which is the stance that Israel's taken?
Doesn't it make sense for them to try to achieve peace with their neighbors?
I don't think so.
I don't think so.
I mean, look at, for example, let's just take one small example, and I know it's gonna sound crazy, but one of the biggest, for example, drives across the Middle East in all of Israel's neighbors, from Egypt to Jordan to Saudi Arabia to UAE, is for civilian nuclear power, right?
So who are the experts in the region on nuclear affairs?
Well, it's the Israelis.
And if they were a normal country without this history, they would be actively engaged in helping all of these countries further their own civilian nuclear energy needs, instead of always talking about the need to have a quantitative military edge over their armed forces.
But because of the way it's developed and because of the positioning it's put itself in, it's not gonna participate in any sort of commercial boom.
And all of these countries really hate their guts for the fact that they haven't been able to do anything meaningful, whether it's the Saudi initiative or any of the others, to stop settlements and come to some sort of agreement with the Palestinians.
So I mean, I just don't see any desire on their part to become integrated into the regional economy and become a normal country, because they've already chosen alignment with the United States, as it forced alignment with the United States as sort of their strategic positioning, and don't see that as being something viable for them, even though a normal country would have had to make some tough choices in order to actually become a regional player, in a positive sense.
So back to the neighborhood, it's like the little brother knows that he can be a jerk to everybody because everybody's scared of his big brother.
Pretty much, I mean, that's pretty much the systemic relationship at this point.
And I don't see absence some sort of big move in the United States to change that.
I don't see them coming to any sort of deals with their neighbors.
I guess too much for not being a player that way.
But now, Grant, the new news is that you've got these documents about, what is it, State Department employees complaining to each other about the LeVon affair, something like that.
So two things, first of all, tell us everything that you know about the LeVon affair that you ever have learned or could teach us.
And then also, isn't it kind of nice to read the frank language of government bureaucrats writing the truth to each other about things that the rest of us never get to hear about until 60 years later or whatever?
Yeah, we always get the PR framework.
And I tell you, the more one digs, the more one realizes the extent to which the American people rarely have any idea what's going on.
And I'm also very concerned that we've got things, going back to the Eisenhower administration, which are apparently still too important for the American people to know about.
It never ceases to amaze me, doing a mandatory declassification review, just how much resistance there is in government to letting go of a lot of these documents.
And in the case of the 67 boxes from the Senate, they started parceling them out, starting with box 66 and working their way back.
And so that's why we released some of this information, picked through it, and looked at some of the important stuff this summer and put out some documents, which a lot of people have commented on that they're very important.
But only recently at the end of last month did we get to box one.
And a lot of that was resistance because the Senate technically doesn't have to release anything if they don't want to.
They exempted themselves from the Freedom of Information Act.
And so you wind up fighting with people at the National Archives and Records Administration just to get the source documents about what was really going on and why the State Department, the Justice Department, and Senate came together in the early 60s to try and generate and precipitate an accountability moment for the Israel lobby and some other lobbies as well, Dominican Republic and Germany, and West Germany rather, and whatever.
But so your question was really everything about the Levan Affair and why did it, you know, why did the Levan Affair drive the creation of AIPAC as we know it today?
I think that's the question of the day.
And it really has to do with the Israeli attitude that I think still exists today of creating events, whether in coordination with sympathizers in the U.S. lobby or on their own, to move America, as Netanyahu would say.
As you know, Scott, we're very easily moved, aren't we?
Or at least according to Benjamin Netanyahu.
Yeah, well, they caught him on tape.
I hope people remember that.
Just a few months back, they released a tape and it was during, I believe, or right around the time of him sabotaging the so-called peace process at the end of the Clinton years there.
Right, in conjunction with AIPAC, according to Douglas Bloomfield, who said, quite frankly, in a press article, that, gee, isn't it good the Justice Department doesn't know about this or doesn't have the guts to prosecute the fact that AIPAC coordinated with him to sabotage those?
Yeah, well, Bill Clinton hired Israel's lawyer to represent America's side of the negotiations.
Big surprise, it didn't work out.
But then, the real point being your point, Netanyahu, there he is bragging that, yeah, don't worry about the Americans.
They do whatever I say.
It's pathetic, really.
I'm paraphrasing this really close.
He kind of makes fun of the American people.
They believe what I tell them to believe.
Right, well, it is pathetic.
I don't begrudge the fact or even condemn the fact that there are other countries out there which are pursuing their own interests which do things that we don't like because that's the nature of the world.
But I think the thing that's not acceptable is to simultaneously, while you're trying to launch a terrorist attack, using another country's flag at the same time be forcing the press of the target country through the machinations of your lobby to almost sing your national anthem in Congress and across the country.
You can't have it both ways.
You can either say that your interests are the same and become a willing satellite, I guess, or you can say that your interests are different and break away, but it's this fusion of hypocrisy, both U.S. and Israeli, that I think is galling.
But in the case of the Levant Affair, we know about this particular operation because the operatives were caught, they were prosecuted in Egypt, the terrorist attack were not a success, and the details of it slowly trickled out so that the State Department and the Congress were being asked by constituents, what about this Levant Affair?
And the other question was really the subtle question, was anyone in the United States picking targets?
Was there any coordination?
Has it gotten that bad where, you know, to achieve better foreign aid or subvert U.S. policy that you've actually got a sort of peristatal operation going on against the United States?
And, you know, in all 67 boxes of these declassified documents, the core goal of the Senate hearing was never realized.
They never got any testimony from the CIA or from the administration, which they were working closely with on other matters, never got them to actually hand over any of the classified details of the Levant Affair.
But what we do know is that the surviving agents, you know, after so many years were officially honored in 2005, and they're heroes.
They're as much heroes as Jonathan Pollard would be if he were let go, because they successfully engaged in an operation in their country's national interest and paid a price for it by doing time in some Egyptian prison.
Now, the question is, did Condoleezza Rice, when she announced the crackdown on terrorism, demand the immediate extradition of the surviving Levant Affair agents?
No, she didn't.
And that's, you know, that's kind of the way we play it in this country.
You know, she was on National Public Radio a couple of weeks ago, and we give these officials, or at least National Public Radio, Fox News, and NBC, give these officials such deference that they're never asked any hard questions about their recent sordid past and what's actually important.
Instead, they get to talk about their upbringing and their vision and their philosophy and never have to talk about some of their bad decisions.
Well, it's pretty obvious, it ought to be pretty obvious that, you know, the model of understanding this, that says, nope, America's the empire and Israel's the client state and they do what we want and whatever.
I think just, it can't hold water when anyone can see that if there is such a thing as the U.S. national interest at all, Israel is contrary to it.
I mean, if they're a satellite, they're supposed to fight our wars for us.
We need Iraq invaded.
We have Israel invade Iraq for us.
That's how an empire is supposed to treat a satellite, not the other way around.
Yeah, I don't see, you know, a lot of intellectuals from all stripes in this country claim that it is some sort of strategic asset.
We don't even have a treaty with them, do we?
No, no treaties, just lots of memorandums of understanding, but they're all pretty much geared to boost the Israeli economy and transfer technology to the Israelis.
So their one-sidedness belies the idea that they're in the U.S. interest.
Now, I think the argument that Israel is a strategic asset, you know, people are making it, but I just don't see it holding water, particularly when you look at some of the examples of, you know, U.S. supported dictators who actually do engage in the repression or engage in the activities and make sure the resources flow.
I don't see that happening, but that's not to say that it's an honorable, honorable situation to be a U.S. client state.
I'd rather not be in a U.S. client state.
Yeah, well, you know what annoys me?
I've read Netanyahu, at least it's reported in Haaretz by one of their reporters, that he said that, wow, you know, we are benefiting from the September 11th attack on America and their struggle in Iraq.
And then a couple of years later, I think only about a year ago or so, Netanyahu publicly made a statement to a bunch of reporters and witnesses and whatever that we need America to stay in Iraq, that any American withdrawal from Iraq would be contrary to Israel's interests.
And, you know, I'm reading in here in the news today, Robert Gates, of course, echoing what we've all known all along, which is, oh, we'd love to stay after 2011.
Please invite us, government, that we've installed there.
And, you know, I kind of wonder whether that's because Netanyahu said so or just because some general said so or what.
But I gotta at least weigh the, you know, the influence of a foreign power in decisions like staying in Iraq, Grant.
Well, I mean, after you read the clean break plan and all of that, and of course, everyone's talked about all of the securing the realm strategies of Douglas Feith and all of the thought leadership of Bush administration regional policy.
I mean, I don't find it surprising at all.
No, just infuriating, that's all.
Infuriating, yes, absolutely.
All right, well, listen, we're all out of time.
I really appreciate you giving us a whole hour, especially, Grant.
Appreciate it.
Talk to you again soon.
Everybody, that's Grant F. Smith.
You can find him at antiwar.com.
And at the Institute for Research Middle East Policy, also wrote a ton of books at amazon.com.
Grant F. Smith at amazon.com.
Look him up.
