the AIPAC Affair - #By mary, January 29: “If John Edwards doesn’t get the nomination, I sure would like to see him appointed Attorney General..... It’s time to gather evidence and start building criminal charges to be brought Jan, 2009....”

Thanks, mary, but I disagree with waiting around for January 2009 never mind November 2008. The time to start is now. The AIPAC scandal will bring everything to a head that hasn’t already erupted with the economic recession and what is about to.

Every congress-person and senator will have to make the most of it as it happens and old allegiances will fall apart as reality takes over. The main imperatives now are (a) protecting US investments in China, and (b) obtaining oil at a reasonable cost. Neither of those can be met with the current agenda of aggression from the US administration or Israel’s reckless expansionism.

Both of those are based on fear or manipulation of fear in the domestic political context. In other respects, the stock market and the real estate markets have distorted everything.The real agenda of facing climate change and rebuilding/ replacing/renewing infrastructure and addressing social welfare/health/education just took a back seat again with the idiotic statement from Ted Kennedy that “our country’s best days are still to come”.

Well, who will Bush and “the Democrat controlled Congress” scold now.......???

The AIPAC affair: Can the pro-Israel lobby recover?

As the American Israel Public Affairs Committee holds its annual policy conference this month, it can point with satisfaction to one of the closest relationships ever between the U.S. administration and the government of Israel.

The closer Israel and Washington have grown on policy issues, the more vociferous the charges of Israel’s critics that the Jewish state and its American Jewish supporters exercise too much influence over U.S. decision-making.

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FBI charges Pentagon analyst in AIPAC affair

WASHINGTON - Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin was formally charged Wednesday with passing classified military information about Iraq to two individuals, believed to be former officials of the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC........

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FBI probe into AIPAC-related scandal - more Qs than As

WASHINGTON - More than a week after a Pentagon official was charged with passing secret information to two employees of Washington’s pro-Israel lobby, Jewish communal leaders are still puzzled about the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s probe into the scandal........

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Israeli linked to AIPAC probe to leave post

WASHINGTON - Naor Gilon, the head of the political department at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, whose name has been linked to the Pentagon analyst charged with passing classified information to unauthorized personnel, will leave his post during the summer........

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Analysis / AIPAC institutes its own `disengagement plan’

AIPAC officials would like to see the event as an unreserved show of support for the lobby and an indication that the crisis over the organization is now over. To this end, AIPAC had to institute its own kind of “disengagement plan” this week........ By the time Rice steps onto the podium, they hope, AIPAC will have distanced itself from the affair..........

Was this a case of an Israeli mole in the Pentagon, a lobby that overstepped its authority, or a one-time act in which the lobby’s officials transferred forbidden information to Israeli representatives........