barracuda wrote:As I pointed out earlier in the thread, IntelCenter has an clear connection to the DoD and probably the CIA. It's seems to me that once that has been established, the onus of linking them to Israel in some way belongs to others. In fact it seems more prudent to ask why you happen to think that the Pentagon would have some reason - any reason - to avoid putting out stories like these under their own steam. If you can't think of any ways in which these releases benefit the Pentagon, you're not trying very hard.
Nobody's disputing that IntelCenter has a clear connection to the DoD. The first question is whether that fact alone outweighs the numerous clues that IntelCenter is working on behalf of Israeli intelligence, the Mossad. Given what we know about Israeli agents' deep infiltration into the DoD, even at the highest levels, the answer is no, it does not.
The second question is whether Melnick and Venzke's connection to the DoD necessarily means that their primary loyalty is to the DoD, rather than to Israeli objectives. Once again, the answer is no. Steven Green's article which I posted on page 1 of this thread illustrates through numerous examples that Israel's agents in the DoD have a long history of betraying their Pentagon employer to profit Israel financially, politically and militarily.
The third question is whether it is makes more sense to attribute to the Mossad or to the US Pentagon IntelCenter & SITE's use of Jewish "converts" like Youssef Khattab (aka Joseph Cohen, an Orthodox Jewish former settler) and Adam Gadahn (aka Adam Pearlman, who,
at the time of his sudden "conversion" via the internet, was living with his grandfather, a committed zionist who headed his local chapter of the ADL).
Once again, we need to look at the history. Israel has repeatedly used Jews disguised as Arabs to carry out its false flag operations as far back 1946, when Menachem Begin's Irgun terrorists bombed the King David Hotel while disguised as Arabs. There's "Operation Susannah" also known as "the Lavon Affair" in 1954, in which Israel used Egyptian Jews to bomb American and British installations and throw blame on Muslims, Israel's attack on the USS Liberty in 1967, which was intended to appear as an attack by Egypt, and many more. In fact, Israel maintains a special unit in both its army and its internal security service, the Shin Bet of “mista’aravim”, Jews who are trained and deployed for false-flag operations and espionage while disguised as Arabs. Once could say that the use of Jews for this purpose is a 'signature' or a 'tell' of Israeli intelligence.
In contrast, I'm not aware that this is a typical Pentagon or US intelligence tactic at all. So for this reason alone, it makes more sense to attribute the SITE and IntelCenter fabrications to the Mossad than it does to the Pentagon.
But there are other reasons as well, equally compelling. Would the Pentagon use such clearly cheap and unconvincing videos full of stupid errors (like having "Bin Laden" write with his right hand, when US intelligence knows very well that he is left-handed, or wear a gold ring when anybody could tell them that religious Muslim men are prohibited from wearing gold, etc.), and be forced to admit that they rely on "transcripts" provided to them by SITE and IntelCenter rather than their own translations? As I asked before (repeatedly): why would the Pentagon, with its formidable intelligence apparatus, huge staff of highly-trained multi-lingual personnel and multi-billion dollar budget, continue to rely on to two-bit private contractors who have a history of producing laughable "evidence" that can't stand up to even casual scrutiny?
The only answer that makes sense is that those who make such decisions within the Pentagon have the same agenda as those who labeled very expensive advanced military hardware as "surplus" and sold it to Israel for a fraction of its worth or "lost" trillions of dollars (Dov Zakheim) or those who arranged for the likes of Perle and Wolfowitz and Feith and so many others to engage in espionage and massive theft from within the Pentagon on behalf of Israel. They also exhibit the same contempt for their American counterparts and for the American people that Israeli officials typically display. Why should they make an effort to be convincing when any old bullshit will do?
Finally, it makes no sense to pretend that the Pentagon shares Israel's burning desire to utterly destroy all the countries of the Middle East. To borrow an Arabic expression, Americans have a strong interest in keeping the cow alive so they can continue to milk it and use client regimes to protect American economic and military interests in the region and beyond.
The Israelis, on the other hand, have made no secret of their aim to "cauldronize" the entire Middle East and transform it into one big blood-soaked Somalia, divided into tiny ethnic statelets in a state of permanent war with each other. It's no accident that President Eisenhower, a former general who was keen to maximize America's military dominance, and President Kennedy, who was highly skilled at using America's cultural and economic power to shape the global environment, were both very determined to reign in Israel's ambitions and to keep its agents on a tight leash, precisely because both were aware of the danger to American interests that Israel represented if it was allowed to run amok.
It is an Israeli goal to incite widespread fear and loathing of Muslims and Arabs, to utterly demonize them and to destroy them as nations, and to isolate them even as citizens in Western countries. In fact, some influential Israeli strategists, most infamously Oded Yinon, but others before and after him, have openly stated that they perceive some version of this as a prerequisite to the very survival of the zionist project. Therefore it is no coincidence that all of the most active and influential hate-mongers happen to be fanatic zionists as well, both on the "left" and on the "right". It is in that context that the agitprop of SITE and IntelCenter makes perfect sense. It makes
no sense to ignore the glaring fact that their manufactured 'evidence' is clearly designed to support all Likudnik talking points, no matter how outrageous or baseless or racist or callous or reckless, and to sic America against targets openly named by Israel's policymakers, on behalf of an agenda that serves Israel's objectives and profits only Israel, even when these wars make no sense at all from
any American point of view.
"If you're not careful the newspapers will have you hating the oppressed and loving the people doing the oppressing." - Malcolm X