"We should prepare to go on the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there, and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai." --David Ben-Gurion, May 1948

I have been stunned by many things on the US political scene since I was jerked violently awake on Nov. 22, 1963. However, one thing that simply flew under the cuckoo's nest of my awareness was the total influence on our Congress; the control of our media, our courts, our universities, our entire society -- even our religion -- by the state of Israel. I had no idea.

I've learned a lot about both Israel and the United States in the last five years -- most of which I fervently wish I didn't know. I learned very quickly in the wake of 9-11 that the neoconservatives in the US claim an ideological right -- the Zionists in Israel a theological right -- to do whatever they want to whomever they want whenever they want, and those who question their increasingly bloody aggression are labeled "anti-American" or "anti-Semitic." Those who protest are ostracized from both religious and patriotic society (not to be confused with "civilized" society) and are immediately bombarded with ridicule and vicious ad hominems. Some receive death threats. Some receive death.

I learned that there is a vast difference between Jews, or people of Israel, and the warmongering Zionists who control the state of Israel, just as there is between most American citizens and the cowardly neo-fascist chicken hawks who control the United States. The people of both regimes cry out against the barbaric genocide and ethnic cleansing perpetrated in their name -- they shriek, they march in protest, but the world media pushed the "mute" button long ago, and no sound emerges from the weeping masses.

As these two "democracies" force their way across the Middle East, it's as if Charles Manson is stalking the innocent with a mad dog on a leash. Neither can be reasoned with, and no living creature in their path is safe. But it is easy to tell where they've been, because the landscape is littered with rotting corpses of innocent men, women and children, with mass graves and displaced millions fleeing for their lives.

From the Frying Pan . . .

The current conflict raging in the Middle East has less to do with self-defense or protecting the homeland than with Zionist politics, Christo-fascist talking points and corporate media spin. It is a war of extermination -- a carefully planned crusade for world dominion, and it has been simmering on US and Israeli back burners for decades.

Every writer addressing this subject since George Bush was fraudently installed in the White House has pleaded with Americans to pay attention to the plan, Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century, penned by Dick Cheney while he was defense secretary, by Donald Rumsfeld, Scooter Libby, Paul Wolfowitz and Jeb Bush, which calls for seizing the world's resources and establishing permanent military bases throughout the Middle East. That plan was immediately put in place and is being relentlessly carried out.

Ninety pages too formidable? Okay, try the September 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States of America, whose 35 pages puts in place a barbaric preemptive war policy that destroys 230 years of honor, dignity, decency -- and democracy. This manifesto was also written by Cheney and Wolfowitz, and is a direct result of behind-the-scenes input from then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Colin Powell.

In his article, Dick Cheney's Song of America, David Armstrong writes, "In early 1992, as Powell and Cheney campaigned to win congressional support for their augmented Base Force plan, a new logic entered into their appeals. The United States, Powell told members of the House Armed Services Committee, required 'sufficient power' to 'deter any challenger from ever dreaming of challenging us on the world stage.' To emphasize the point, he (Powell) cast the United States in the role of street thug. 'I want to be the bully on the block,' he said, implanting in the mind of potential opponents that 'there is no future in trying to challenge the armed forces of the United States.'"

Armstrong's article is 11 easy-to-read, eye-opening pages and was entered into the Congressional Record by Rep. John Larson (D-CT) in Oct. 10, 2002 -- one month after Cheney's National Security Strategy was released.

If you're wondering what these homework assignments have to do with what's going on in Lebanon, Israel and Gaza today, take a look at A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, a document written in 1996 by neoconservatives Douglas Feith, Richard Perle and David Wurmser, among others, for incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. No more Mr. Good Guy when dealing with the Palestinians, "A Clean Break" calls for a hot pursuit policy -- in effect, a familiar smoke 'em out, get 'em on the run and chase 'em clean out of the realm. Those who choose to stay and fight for their land will die. It's their choice.

Although the Likudnik game plan, was written by American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) power-mad neocons, who fantasized that Israel could seize the "strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hizballah, Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon," and suggested that after these wars, which would all be successful, of course -- Israel could reshape "the strategic balance in the Middle East" by attacking Saudi Arabia and Egypt. "Clean Break" is a mere six pages, and is a Zionist's wet dream . . .

Into The Fire . . .

They can't stop now. They wouldn't, even if they could. The neocons' thirst for blood has reached unquenchable proportions. No one has worked more feverishly for total Middle East war than the Weekly Standard's ghoulishly grinning editor, Bill Kristol, who wrote in his July 24 piece, "It's Our War," that Hezbollah is intent on wiping Israel off the map for Iran, and now is the time to strike Iran's nuclear facilities.

"Why wait?" Kristol asked. "Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions -- and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement."

Then there's Dick Cheney, the madman who pulls the levers, who is chillingly indifferent to suffering and -- being bloodless himself -- doesn't see what all the fuss is about. Cheney's plans go beyond just controlling the world's resources; he knows he won't be here much longer, so he's desperate to seize all the riches, if you will, and take them with him. In this administration, Cheney is the "go to" guy for arrogant, barbaric murder.

According to journalist Seymour Hersh, whose article, Watching Lebanon, published in the Aug. 21 issue of the New Yorker, Israeli officials came to Washington earlier this summer "to get a green light for the bombing operation and to find out how much the United States would bear."

Hersh writes that "Israel began with Cheney. It wanted to be sure that it had his support and the support of his office and the Middle East desk of the National Security Council." After getting Cheney's blessing, Hersh said he was told, "persuading Bush was never a problem, and Condi Rice was on board."

And evangelical Zionists, such as Pat Robertson, who are lusting for Armageddon, at last see an opportunity to rid the Holy Land of the Palestinians. Only after a crusade wherein the entire Middle East explodes in a tsunami of blood will Robertson be swept up in glory, leaving the rest of us below to choke to death on depleted uranium dust and to drown in the blood of the innocent.

Those of you who don't know Robertson are, well, damn lucky. Robertson makes Charles Manson look like a pussy cat. As far back as 1985, Robertson told his brain-dead followers that God wants all Palestinians exterminated. "God told the Israelites to kill them all -- men, women and children -- to destroy them," Robertson said.

What are we to think of that? Robertson, God's most vocal confidant, says Palestinians are an abomination -- a contagion for which there is no cure and whose only function is to "cause trouble for the Israelites, and pull the Israelites away from God, and prevent the truth of God from reaching the Earth." He explained it was "more merciful" to kill Palestinians sooner rather than later because if they continue to reproduce, Israel will be burdened with having more to kill in the future. According to Robertson, the only way to look at such mass extinction is, "God, in love, took away a small number so that He might not have to take away a large number."

Last, but not least, we have Israel's militant leaders -- and America's Decider, George Bush. The Zionists are very good at what they do, whether blowing things apart with US bombs and missiles or crushing everything in their path with US bulldozers. But don't take my word for it. In his book, "You Gentiles," Maurice Samuels (p.155) wrote, "We Jews, we are the destroyers and will remain the destroyers. Nothing you can do will meet our demands and needs. We will forever destroy because we want a world of our own."

One has only to stumble through the ruins of Sabra, Shatilla, Jenin, Gaza and Qana -- to recall the torture, assassinations, collective punishment of civilians, destruction of infrastructure, denying sustenance to those dying of thirst and hunger -- to realize that Israel is the "cod piece" of the Middle East. The Zionists who control it also make Charles Manson's mad dog look like a pussy cat.

And, what of George Bush -- what part is he playing in all of this? It is incomprehensible to believe he is in charge of, even aware of, anything. In recent weeks, I have watched Bush, the man at the helm of the most powerful nation on earth, run and hide, blather and bumble his way thorugh fund-raising speeches, make an ass of himself at the G8 Summit gathering in Russia, crudely grope another world leader, and refuse to discuss anything more serious than "slicing the pig."

Two weeks into the Lebanon crisis -- wherein "Condi," as Bush crudely calls this nation's Secretary of State, lurched around the Middle East and was twice sent home empty-handed t -- he was finally backed into a corner and asked about the bombs dropping on Lebanon and the Hezbollah rockets raining down on Israel. Bush responded inanely that Israel was merely exercising its right to defend itself," before launching into his familiar, Texas-style "Remember the 9-11 Alamo . . ."

Are We Done Yet?

These widely different factions have divergent goals but they need each other to achieve them, and their eyes are riveted on a single prize -- Iran. This oil-rich nation must be brought to its knees before the neocons can have their New World Order, before Cheney can control the world's resources, before Israel can have its final solution in the Holy Land, before Bush can spread freedom and democracy and death, and rid the world of yet another safe haven for plotters and planners and evil terrorists. . . . Iran is all that is standing between true believers and their ascension into Heaven. The same people who lied us into the Iraq war are telling the same lies about Iran -- the WMD are now nuclear bombs, and no UN resolution, no US Congress, no US media will stop the madness.

They will have their war, knowing full well that an assault on a nation fully capable of retaliation will sign the death warrants of millions of innocents, as well as of every US service member on the ground in the Middle East. Unfortunately, such losses carry little weight with all but a handful of the members of the US Congress and the majority of the American people who blindly support Zionist Israel and who advocate ethnic cleansing as a final solution to the problems of the Middle East.

Edward Said, the late Palestinian-American theorist, wrote one month before the Iraq invasion, "We cannot in any way lend our silence to a policy of war that the White House has openly announced will include three to five hundred cruise missiles a day (800 of them during the first 48 hours of the war) raining down on the civilian population of Baghdad in order to produce "Shock and Awe", or even a human cataclysm that will produce . . . a Hiroshima-style effect on the Iraqi people . . . What sort of God would want this to be a formulated and announced policy for His people? And what sort of God would claim that this was going to bring democracy and freedom to the people not only of Iraq but to the rest of the Middle East?"

Said pleaded with the American people to speak out before it's too late. "Who knows what more evil will be done in the name of Good?" Said asked. "Every one of us must raise our voices, and march in protest, now and again and again. We need creative thinking and bold action to stave off the nightmares planned by a docile, professionalised staff in places like Washington and Tel Aviv and Baghdad. For if what they have in mind is what they call "greater security," then words have no meaning at all in the ordinary sense . . . The question is, how long can they keep getting away with it?"

How long, indeed. Look around. They have come for the others. Only we the people remain, and most of us are blind to our shame, our national disgrace. If we do not raise our voices now and again and again, we will be done. Then, God help us, we will realize -- too late -- that we are all Charles Mansons now.

� 2006 Sheila Samples