Grant Smith:  Well, this is a very high stakes trial, and basically, what we are talking about is that if Rosen and Weissman, along with their Department of Defense, and press, and collaborators gone forward, we might very well have American sons and daughters fighting a ground war in Iran.  This is all about Iran. 

But when you look at the maneuvers in the court, we've seen almost two years of very savvy legal maneuvering trying to get this thrown out of court on numerous pretexts.  And what we see is that the press is very much in favor of seeing this go away.  The Wall Street Journal had a major editorial about how new attorney general Mukasey's first job should be throwing this out of court.  We've seen the Washington Post and others saying that this is about free speech and that these lobbyists are the equivalent of reporters who should not be denied access to information, or any (classified) information they can find, and the judge himself has set extremely high standards.  Although the act that they are being prosecuted under states that they should be shown to have either advantaged a foreign country or harmed US interests, he is insisting that it be shown that these actions taken by Rosen and Weissman actually harmed the United States.  So it is extremely...if the case follows any historic pattern, we will not see this ever get to court.  Certainly not April 29.  The Bush administration has too much to lose, the mainstream press has too much to lose, Congress has too much to lose, and, of course, AIPAC.

On March 18, 2005, the Jewish Daily Forward had already revealed that as members of governing bodies of the World Zionist Organization, US divisions of Hadassah, B'nai B'rith and other tax exempt organizations were directly linked to this criminal activity.  Unfettered US nonprofit money laundering continues to finance a major source of grief and violence that generates international terrorism.

US law enforcement agencies are hobbled by outside domestic lobbies and internally by political appointees determined to proactively take major law enforcement issues involving Israel "off the table."  Fortunately, Interpol remains well situated to pursue law enforcement solutions where individual nation-states fail and the global stakes are high.  2008 is a good year for Interpol action as the US turns inward to the November elections and law enforcement agencies continue to turn a blind eye on American nonprofit money laundering as a systemic terrorism generator.

The Bush administration is triangulating a positive counterbalance to two initiatives that are already extremely unpopular in the US: continuing the military occupation of Iraq and finding pretexts for hitting Iran.  If you don't see this negotiation as their chance to score some public relations wins to provide cover for their more favored but unpopular projects, then you're missing the whole point.

John Mearsheimer, a professor of political science in Chicago, is now something of a pariah for his recent work on the Israel lobby, unwelcome and disinvited from numerous relevant venues. I now agree with much of what he says, but also value the opportunity to consider opposing views.

"If I vote in favor of an inquiry into the Lavon Affair�We would be opening a Pandora's box of troubles. It will not end with this affair or with this investigation. We'll be spending the next fifteen years dealing with investigations into various unsolved matters."

Levi Eshkol, the Jewish Agency executive overseeing funding for the establishment of the Israel lobby in the United States, successfully quashed Ben-Gurion's demand to appoint a judicial inquiry into Israel's false-flag attack on America when he became prime minister of Israel.

Radio France Internationale:  The US President George W. Bush Hill announced the withdrawal of 30,000 US troops deployed in Iraq.  This message is directed at two audiences.  In the US Congress the commander of US troops in Iraq, general David Petraeus, warned legislators that a rushed withdrawal would have grave consequences, and announced that "surged troops" could be withdrawn in the summer of 2008.  For his part, Bush said his Iraq policy is base upon recommendations from his commanders in the field. However the questions raised are whether the troop movements are political in nature or part of a military strategy.  The answer of Grant Smith, Director of Research of IRmep in Washington, DC.

Grant Smith, IRmep:  Many in America perceive the Petraeus report and forecast troop reduction as a purely political move.  That's because, number one, the net affect of withdrawing troops sent as part of the so called "surge" basically leaves the same number of troops that were there before the escalation.  Number two, now that the political season of US presidential campaigns is arriving, if there is no positive news and moves with respect to Iraq, it will have a negative effect on Republican candidates.  But there is a building domestic public opinion that these heavily publicized numerical troop movements have been all but completely politicized.

"Wealthy, powerful, almost covert, with the proven capability of strongly influencing the media as well as both parties in Congress and the White House, AIPAC's omnipresent, little-known activities demand the public scrutiny that Foreign Agents initiates." -Ambassador Edward L. Peck is former Chief of Mission in Iraq and Former Deputy Director, White House Cabinet Task Force on Terrorism

"AIPAC has proved itself to be a danger to our democracy by using money and political power to benefit a foreign government, all at the expense of the American taxpayer. Grant Smith has done a great deal of powerful research to bring facts that will benefit us all when making decisions as to who we vote for." -Senator James G. Abourezk

"Grant Smith has produced a momentous scholarly work that reveals an eye-opening picture of the carefully guarded operations of the Israeli lobby and its unparalleled influence over US policy in the Middle East. What makes this daringly debunking research work convincing and its arguments irrefutable is the fact that it steers past the dangers of the conspiracy theories surrounding the Israeli lobby by drawing exclusively on official government and/or public sources of information. Foreign Agents is a must read primer for anyone interested in making sense of our government's policy in the Middle East and its implications for our domestic politics and priorities." -Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Ph.D. is Professor of Economics at Drake University and Author of the book "The Political Economy of US Militarism"

"In Foreign Agents, Grant Smith has drawn together the historical threads of a foreign lobby group that has managed to slip between the cracks despite its connection to numerous illegal activities in the United States. Foreign Agents reveals what every American citizen should know about AIPAC, the Israeli lobby which holds sway over many US politicians, and hence US politics, often to the detriment of US interests. A must read book."
-Kim Petersen is the co-editor of the Dissident Voice newsletter

"Grant F. Smith's book provides a superb review of the efforts that have been made to expose the Israel lobby from 1963 to 2005. Smith's work is extremely well researched. He gathers together documents, testimony from closed-door hearings, and news articles that most Americans have totally forgotten... His work is monumental."
-Richard Curtiss executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

Roger Noriega (American Enterprise Institute) and former undersecretary of State: "You really have to go out of your way to reach out to one of the four biggest rogue states in the world, Iran, which is recognized as a pariah by all the respectable countries of the world.  So unfortunately, President Ortega seems to be going back to the past."	Grant Smith (IRmep): "Let's just look at who is saying that. Noriega (Roger) was up to his elbows in the US Contra war against Nicaragua in the 1980's. He's got his agenda, but I don't think his agenda is either open or very rationally thought out....Ronald Reagan after all told us that Nicaragua had the capability to invade Texas...."

Adriana Amat: And so you say Iran is obviously a terrorist state?
Grant Smith: No, I didn't say that Iran is a terrorist state, the Bush Administration is naming them, indirectly.
Adriana Amat: Fine, the Bush administration and ambassador Paul Trivolli.  But where I'm going with this is the following, Grant. Iran is a threat for the United States, but the fact that they are allying with persons such as Daniel Ortega, or Hugo Chavez, really should be worrisome?
Grant Smith: No. Before anything, I am not in agreement that Iran is some big threat to the United States.
Adriana Amat: But you agree that it is a dangerous partner for country like Nicaragua?
Grant Smith: Sure, it is an ally that the Bush administration considers dangerous. But let's look at who says they are such a dangerous ally. Let's look at who is saying that. Noriega (Roger) was up to his elbows in the US Contra war against Nicaragua in the 1980's. He's got his agenda, but I don't think his agenda is either open or very rationally thought out. The US can have a great deal of problems with Iran, in the Gulf, if there is an armed conflict, because the Iranians have the capability of shutting down petroleum flow through the Gulf. The US is preoccupied by the nuclear program. But Iran the great threat? Right now? Against the United States? And our domestic interests? I think it's a little inflated sometimes the rhetorical warfare that's coming out of Washington.
Adriana Amat: Excellent, for clarifying that point.

"Some of the reasons that you'd think we'd want these students here in terms of integration, getting to know us, our way of life � they're not happening," says Smith.

The aid issue might seem like great news to some, and it certainly is circulating in the mainstream news outlets from Washington to Tel Aviv. But the fact of the matter is that the initial money being released are tax and customs fees that belong to the Palestinian people, more than $600 million, which the Palestinians desperately needed for social and other purposes, but were being deprived of by Israel in partnership and with full support of the Bush administration.

Reason #1:  A "Credit Card" War Drags on Future Generations.  The United States is financing the Iraq occupation with deficit spending.  In 2003 Americans rightly rejected the neoconservative plan for the Department of Defense to "lease" air tankers for Middle Eastern air wars.  That case rightly put Pentagon and industry officials (though not the authors of the plan) behind bars.  Americans saw the deal for what it truly was: corruption.  Americans are now rejecting the idea that the cost of the misguided Iraq war is being passed on to our future generations who will be repaying creditor nations such as China that purchase US government bonds financing this disastrous war.  Like the tanker deal, Americans usually reject the idea of paying interest above and beyond the base cost national security interests.  The Iraq war was deficit financed because it never was vital to the US's true defense needs.  The shell game of hiding the cost of the war to make it palatable to American taxpayers is no longer feasible as interest rates climb and the value of the dollar plunges.  The "credit card financed war" game is up.

Despite the forecast for U.S. exports to the region to expand nearly 30 percent this year, the Iraq war is just one of many "storm clouds" on the horizon, the report said.

ViewPoint:  Is it possible we're not going to hear much more about this until those companies start to say something about it?

IRmep:  Well some of those companies are beginning to talk in generalities.  They don't want to go to this level (Visa Denied Report), a lot of them, because it really doesn't look good.  To tell the truth, there aren't a lot of executives who want to go on record saying, "we could have done a lot better in terms of our sales to the Middle East". 

Continue (Year 2006 Research and Events)