"Targeted Assassination" by U.S. Security Establishment?

[Exit40]

"Targeted Assassination" by U.S. Security Establishment?
by Shoshana Bryen April 2, 2012 at 4:00 am

Why are Israel's limited choices for alliances ridiculed, while the administration insists that Hamid Karzai – and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Vladimir Putin, for that matter – are legitimate rulers because the President wants to work with them? "The [administration's] aims are… to make it more difficult for… the IDF to carry out a strike, and… to erode the IDF's capacity to launch such a strike with minimal casualties."

When President Obama wants to impress Jewish audiences, such as AIPAC, he frequently casts U.S.-Israel relations in a military context. How much military aid Israel receives (although he had nothing to do with the level; President Bush set the level in a 10-year deal), how many exercises the two militaries do together (the last one was canceled; previous ones were on a regular multi-year schedule); provision of the X-Band radar to Israel (done single-handedly by now-Sen. Mark Kirk during the Bush Administration) and missile defense cooperation (for which the Administration has reduced its financial request for 2013). Intelligence cooperation is assumed. "I've got Israel's back," he says.

But how good is the Obama administration on security for Israel? And how does that impact upon American security interests in the Middle East and Southwest Asia?

There have been a series of media reports recently suggesting that intelligence cooperation has been reduced, in part because of a "trust gap" that developed when Israel became concerned that the U.S. did not share Israel's sense of urgency on Iran. A visit to Israel by National Security Advisor Tom Donilon and Donilon's subsequent report to Capitol Hill did not help. Testimony by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called Israel's strategic security choices "imprudent" – a line repeated and expanded upon by other American military officers, both active and retired......

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God Bless

David

[Exit40]

Israelis Suspect Obama Media Leaks to Prevent Strike on Iran
ABC NewsBy Alexander Marquardt | ABC News – Thu, Mar 29, 2012

JERUSALEM - Two reports today about Iran's nuclear program and the possibility of an Israeli military strike have analysts in Israel accusing the Obama administration leaking information to pressure Israel not to bomb Iran and for Iran to reach a compromise in upcoming nuclear talks.

The first report in Foreign Policy quotes anonymous American officials saying that Israel has been given access to airbases by Iran's northern neighbor Azerbaijan from which Israel could launch air strikes or at least drones and search and rescue aircraft.

The second report from Bloomberg, based on a leaked congressional report, said that Iran's nuclear facilities are so dispersed that it is "unclear what the ultimate effect of a strike would be…" A strike could delay Iran as little as six months, a former official told the researchers.

"It seems like a big campaign to prevent Israel from attacking," analyst Yoel Guzansky at the Institute for National Security Studies told ABC News. "I think the [Obama] administration is really worried Jerusalem will attack and attack soon. They're trying hard to prevent it in so many ways."....

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God Bless

David