Both Wurmsers worked with Richard Perle and Douglas Feith on writing the 1996 "Clean Break" strategy for Benjamin Netanyahu. The plan for remaking the Middle East in Israel's interest had to wait until after 9/11 to be implemented, however, when Bush became more susceptible to the very same advisers and their associates.
It was this neoconservative cabal that put Abrams into the position where he could instigate the Gaza coup. Writing in Salon magazine, an "anonymous" veteran foreign service officer explained how Abrams, who had been convicted for unlawfully withholding information about the Iran-Contra scandal from Congress, came to be hired by Rice. In "The State Department's Extreme Makeover," he wrote: "In December 2002, Wolfowitz, Feith, Wurmser and Vice President Cheney's national security advisor, I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, acting together, maneuvered Condoleezza Rice into appointing Elliott Abrams to the position of special assistant to the president and senior director for the Middle East at the National Security Council."
Considering Abrams' extreme Likudnik views, former CIA political analysts Kathleen and Bill Christison wryly commented on his appointment, "Putting him in a key policy-making position on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is like entrusting the hen-house to a fox."
In a revealing comment on who exactly was directing national security during Bush's first term, Anonymous predicted that Rice would be the neocons' second choice to replace Colin Powell as secretary of state. Since the Iraq debacle was likely to militate against their first choice, Wolfowitz, they planned "to again play behind Condoleezza Rice."
It is worth noting that Abrams is the son-in-law of Norman Podhoretz. From his bully pulpit at Commentary magazine, the neocon godfather harangues Americans into waging "a very long war" against what he calls "Islamofascism" -- a disparate group of enemies that looks suspiciously like an Israeli hit list.
As to where Abrams' own loyalty lies, his 1997 book, Faith or Fear: How Jews Can Survive in a Christian America, is unequivocal. Jews "are in a permanent covenant with God and with the land of Israel and its people," he claims. "Their commitment will not weaken if the Israeli government pursues unpopular policies."
Shouldn't Americans be more wary of national security advisers with an avowed uncritical allegiance to a foreign country, especially one which seeks to induce the United States to fight an endless war with one-fifth of the world's population?
And instead of poking fun at convenient scapegoats like Bush, Cheney and Rice for America's disastrous Middle East policy -- as The Daily Show did for eight years to great acclaim -- hasn't Jon Stewart a responsibility to his many fans to sift the merely plausible from the hard facts? When those facts point to a handful of other Jewish Americans whose "covenant" with their tribal God endangers all Americans, to do otherwise is to make fools of his audience.
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