Somehow, I don't think I'm going to attach much credence to the work, excuses, or explanations of an analyst who was wrong, no matter for whom he worked.

By contrast, O'Neill sat on the National Security Council, after all, and his statement jibes with the known facts.

At any rate, it comes as no surprise to me that our intelligence agencies have been bamboozled - it's a matter of public record.

Ostrovsky also charges that Mossad framed Libya in the April 5, 1986 bombing of the West Berlin discothéque in which two U.S. servicemen and a Turkish woman were fatally injured. The background was that by planting an unmanned radio of its own in Libya, Mossad broadcast fraudulent orders for terrorist attacks to Libyan embassies around the world. Although the orders were rejected as false by the Spanish and French intelligence services, they were picked up and accepted as real by U.S. intelligence. As a consequence Libya was blamed by the U.S. for the La Belle discothéque attack. Ironically, according to Ostrovsky, even Mossad had no clue as to whom the real culprits were.

The tragic implication of the U.S. acceptance at face value of the intercepted radio signals rejected by the French and Spaniards is that American intelligence has been "conditioned" to accept as true anything that Israel claims. The subsequent American aerial attack on Tripoli, in which an adopted daughter of Muammar Qaddafi and American airmen were killed, seems to be one of the most obvious and extreme cases of the Israeli tail wagging the American dog.

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Even more to the point, in another chapter from the book reviewed above, The Other Side of Deception: A Rogue Agent Exposes the Mossad's Secret Agenda By Victor Ostrovsky, the author writes:

Ephraim had spelled it all out for me and confirmed some of the information I'd already known. He then went on. "After the bombing of Libya, our friend Qadhafi is sure to stay out of the picture for some time. Iraq and Saddam Hussein are the next target. We're starting now to build him up as the big villain. It will take some time, but in the end, there's no doubt it'll work."

"But isn't Saddam regarded as moderate toward us, allied with Jordan, the big enemy of Iran and Syria?"

"Yes, that's why I'm opposed to this action. But that's the directive, and I must follow it. Hopefully, you and I will be done with our little operation before anything big happens. After all, we have already destroyed his nuclear facility, and we are making money by selling hlm technology and equipment through South Africa."

In the following weeks, more and more discoveries were made regarding the big gun and other elements of the Saddam war machine. The Mossad had all but saturated the intelligence field with information regarding the evil intentions of Saddam the Terrible, banking on the fact that before long, he'd have enough rope to hang himself. It was very clear what the Mossad's overall goal was. It wanted the West to do its bidding, just as the Americans had in Libya with the bombing of Qadhafi. After all, Israel didn't possess carriers and ample air power, and although it was capable of bombing a refugee camp in Tunis, that was not the same. The Mossad leaders knew that if they could make Saddam appear bad enough and a threat to the Gulf oil supply, of which he'd been the protector up to that point, then the United States and its allies would not let him get away with anything, but would take measures that would all but eliminate his army and his weapons potential, especially if they were led to believe that this might just be their last chance before he went nuclear.

(My emphasis.)

Let me close by asking this question: if there was such a preponderance of analytical opinion testifying to the possession of WMD by Iraq, why was the Bush adminstration reduced to using as its main argument "intelligence" that was clearly without merit, such as the aluminum tubes and yellowcake materials?

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