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Been there, done that? Israel’s fresh concerns about Iraq

By Philip Weiss on December 27, 2011

One of the lingering controversies of the Iraq war is how beneficial it was to Israel, and whether those benefits were considered by the war’s promoters. Some grist for the mill: A JPost analysis by Yaakov Katz says that the American withdrawal from Iraq has created a security concern for Israel, on the “Eastern Front.”

Then head of the IDF Planning Directorate Maj.-Gen. Ido Nehushtan, the author of the multi-year plan, explained that as long as the US remains in Iraq, Israel has little to be concerned about in terms of a military threat from that country. But, he said, who knows what will happen when America leaves.

Today, Nehushtan is commander of the Israel Air Force and in April, he will step down after a four-year term, leaving behind a force that might not only have to deal with Iran’s nuclear program but also with a potential future threat from Iraq….

The second concern is the possibility that Israel will once again have to take into consideration what is referred to in the IDF as the “Eastern Front,” another term for Iraq as a military threat. Iraq was in fact the primary threat that the IDF believed it faced until the mid-1990s following the First Gulf War, when Israel began to shift its focus to the evolving missile and nuclear threat in Iran.

While Iraq is not believed to be strong militarily today, that could and is already beginning to change. By 2015, Iraq will take receipt of 18 F-16 fighter jets. Israel, for its part, is not actively lobbying Washington against the deal as part of an understanding that it is in the US interest to bolster the Iraqi government

Well– the neoconservatives also wanted the U.S. to stay in Iraq forever. From Ali Gharib at ThinkProgress in September. Emphasis his.

[Bill] Kristol’s new “letterhead organization” — the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) — released a letter yesterday about the Obama administration’s reported plan to drop troop levels in Iraq to a mere several thousand.

After lauding U.S. efforts in Iraq so far, the FPI letter, signed by 40 mostly-neoconservative analysts, said:

“We are thus gravely concerned about recent news reports suggesting that the White House is considering leaving only a residual force of 4,000 or fewer U.S. troops in Iraq after the end of this year. This number is significantly smaller than what U.S. military commanders on the ground have reportedly recommended and would limit our ability to ensure that Iraq remains stable and free from significant foreign influence in the years to come.”

December 27, 2011 - Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel

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