Gingrich's '24' scenario:
US, Israel face potential 'second Holocaust'
which could lead to 'greater dictatorial societies'

Echoing the plotline of a popular television show, Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House and a potential Republican candidate for president in 2008, warned attendants at a conference that Israel and the United States could face a potential "second Holocaust" in the future, and that if two or three cities were destroyed the two democracies may devolve into "greater dictatorial societies."

"Israel is facing the greatest danger for its survival since the 1967 victory," Gingrich said via satellite at the Herzliya Conference, sponsored by the Institute for Policy and Strategy in Israel. "Israel maintained its dominance since 1967 even after the 1973 failure."

Gingrich continued, "In 1984 I wrote that WMD and terrorism would pose a threat for US national security. If two or three cities are destroyed because of terrorism both the US and Israel’s democracy will be eroded and both will become greater dictatorial societies."

Fox Television's 24 features Kiefer Sutherland as a sort of "superheroish" counter-terrorism agent who sometimes uses torture to gain information, and this season's plot concerns the race to stop nuclear bombs exploding across the United States. The fourth episode ended with a nuclear explosion in Los Angeles, which prompted some characters on the show to argue for mass arrests and deportations of Muslims in America.

Although many critics slam the show as being slanted to the right or anti-Muslim, the current storyline also touches on the importance of civil liberties to democracies, and even the scenes regarding torture aren't so clear-cut. Sutherland's character, Jack Bauer, is often portrayed as wracked with guilt when forced to resort to brutality in order to get people to talk, and sometimes the show suggests that he went too far.

# Israel is facing the greatest danger for its survival since the 1967 victory. Israel maintained its dominance since 1967 even after the 1973 failure. In 1984 I wrote that WMD and terrorism would pose a threat for US national security. If two or three cities are destroyed because of terrorism both the US and Israel’s democracy will be eroded and both will become greater dictatorial societies.

Three nuclear weapons constitute a second Holocaust. Enemies are explicit in their desire to destroy us. We are sleepwalking through this as if diplomatic engagement will create a fiesta where we will all love one another. The terrorist threats are larger and more formidable than the political system in Israel or the US can cope with. We need a grand strategy similar to the Kenan telegram which formed US policy for the duration of the Cold War, and the 68 plan developed by Nitze in 1950.

We lack the language and goals to address the new environment along with the speed and intensity to counter the contemporary threats. If we have no strategy we will need to be intellectually honest to consider the next step once two cities have been destroyed. My grandchildren are in greater danger than I was throughout the Cold War. What stages are you in Israel going to take if tomorrow morning Jerusalem, Haifa and Tel Aviv would be destroyed? Similarly the US needs to consider what policies it would advance if in twenty four hours, Atlanta, Boston and San Francisco were destroyed. These threats will become even more imminent in two or five years time.

Science is spreading rapidly and thus enemies have greater capabilities to break out. China’s satellites are indicative of this.

The US should have as an explicit goal, regime change in Iran, as its constitution makes them a revolutionary regime. In 2006 even the Department of State which seeks to deny the nature of reality, noted that Iran is a leading sponsor of terror. What I need is something that will be similar to Reagan’s Replacement strategy in Iran. The current unrest in Iran will facilitate this.

The US, Israel and the West have not developed technologies to command urban spaces similar to the sophisticated technologies applied to air and sea-power. Urban technologies have not developed extensively since the 1940’s, unlike that of air and sea. Similarly intelligence capabilities must be advanced and sufficiently integrated to contribute to bettering our urban capabilities.

It is important for Israel to discriminate between those who are willing to live with us and those that are not. Those who are not willing to live with one another will either die or live in prison. We should take our enemies at their word. Ahmadinajed is most explicit regarding his intentions as is Hamas when speaking to the New York Times. To those who are willing to live with us, we need to arouse, organize, defend and enrich them.

A Palestinian state with Hamas at its helm will seek to destroy Israel. In conflict one side wins and another loses. If I have to choose between surviving and being killed, I will choose to kill the enemy and to survive. Peace comes as a result for victory and not as a substitute for victory. The number one requirement for long-term peace is the growth of organizations for peace. This would include a Lebanese government willing to take over Southern Lebanon from Hezbollah, an Iraqi government that would be willing to take over factions. The US and Israel have both underestimated this challenge intellectually, as it will take a long period of time with tremendous investment of resources to achieve this desirable end.

The Department of Homeland Security should conduct two nuclear exercises and one biological exercise in major cities such as Philadelphia or Dallas to determine how many causalities would occur and whether hospitals could accommodate the casualties. Last year in Long Beach, California an exercise was conducted to measure the potential effects of the ramifications of a nuclear weapon being set off.

From 1947-1950, while there was an under funding of defense, there was a simultaneous coming to terms intellectually with the threat of Communism. To those that advance a withdraw of troops in Iraq; the onus is on them to explicate the consequences of defeat. In 1979 the US looked weak in the Middle East with the hostage crises and embassies coming under attack. I have been told that there are not enough marine detachments to protect embassies for when they potentially will be under the threat of attack. It is not the Bush doctrine that is at stake, but our very lives. Thus national security should be advanced rather than mere utopianism.

Q: There has been a lot of discussion about the Palestinians and Iran, do you think there can be progress in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without first dealing with Iran?

The United States and its allies should work together to change the regime in Iran. We have zero reason to believe that the current Iranian regime will change its behavior; they have been lying for eighteen years to the International Atomic Agency. Even the United States State Department has had to admit that Iran is the leading supporter of terror in the world. We should learn from the way Ronald Regan strategically changed the regime in Poland, and apply it to Iran.

On the Palestinian front, the United States and Israel have not made the necessary investments in dominating and controlling urban spaces. If we look at the technology that was used to control urban spaces in the 1940’s and we look at the technology for controlling the seas and the skies in the 1940’s and compare then to today it is clear that there has been much less investment into the ability to control urban areas. The United States and Israel need to develop intelligence to gain both military and economic dominance so that we can discriminate against those who want to live with us and those who don’t. Those who don’t want to live with us will either have to die or go to prison. If they say not a single Jew will live, then we should take them seriously. If they say its either us or them, I choose us. If we are going to live with the Palestinians then we need to gain control of their urban spaces and we need to arouse those who support us from within their community. We can’t live next to a Palestinian state that wants to destroy Israel. In the end one side wins and the other loses, peace will come after victory and cannot be a substitute for it.

Long term peace will require a growth of organizations willing to fight for peace. The growth of a Lebanese government that is willing to take control of the south and fight against Hezbollah, and the growth of an Iraqi government that is willing to fight for peace and up hold law and order is what we need. Both the United States and Israel have underestimated how big of an investment and how difficult of a task this will be. The era of defeating states ended in 1973 and was replaced with and era of working with allies that want to help you, and we haven’t confronted that yet.

Q: Ronald Lauder As we hear democrats saying that we want to pull out of Iraq, and talking about the Patriot Act; are we talking about WWII prior to the appeasement? What is going to happen in standing up to the challenge?

First the ( US ) Department of Homeland Security needs to hold two exercises of what would happened if a nuclear weapon is deployed against us, and one exercise with a biological weapon, to be used on an American city like, Dallas or Pittsburg. These would look into what the effect would be on the city, for example how many casualties there will be, and how many hospitals will be lost. They did one such test in Long Beach, California. This is not paranoia by the Bush administration, but their legitimate worries about how dangerous the world has become, and most Americans believe this.

In 1930 we thought we could accommodate Hitler, this was not the case. Today it’s impossible to engage Syria and Iran as partners for peace. Just look at how Chaves and Ahmedinajad behave, and this should show us that we need to change our national security polices. The Bush program is inadequate, but the American people need to realize that there lives are at stake, not the legacy of the Bush administration.

Anyone who proposes that we pull out of Iraq needs to understand the price of defeat. The last time the United States was seen as weak and defeated, 1979 and 1980, we had a 444 day long hostage crisis in Iran, and an ambassador killed in Afghanistan. Those who advocate for defeat must be aware that they will bear the burden of our allies losing faith in us as well as China beginning think that it may be able to seize Taiwan.

The Threat of a Nuclear Iran

(Note: The following are remarks delivered by Newt Gingrich at the 7th Herzliya Conference in Israel last week.)

Israel is facing the greatest danger for its survival since the 1967 victory. Israel maintained its dominance since 1967 even after the 1973 failure. In 1984 I wrote that WMD and terrorism would pose a threat for US national security. If two or three cities are destroyed because of terrorism both the US and Israel's democracy will be eroded and both will become greater dictatorial societies.

Science is spreading rapidly and thus enemies have greater capabilities to break out. China's satellites are indicative of this.

The US should have as an explicit goal, regime change in Iran, as its constitution makes them a revolutionary regime. In 2006 even the Department of State which seeks to deny the nature of reality, noted that Iran is a leading sponsor of terror. What I need is something that will be similar to Reagan's Replacement strategy in Iran. The current unrest in Iran will facilitate this.

The US, Israel and the West have not developed technologies to command urban spaces similar to the sophisticated technologies applied to air and sea-power. Urban technologies have not developed extensively since the 1940's, unlike that of air and sea. Similarly intelligence capabilities must be advanced and sufficiently integrated to contribute to bettering our urban capabilities.

With U.S. presidential hopefuls on hand at conference,
how to stop the dangerous regime is front and center.

Herzliya, Israel — At Israel’s premier strategic forum this week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was invoked more often than Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Tehran dwarfed Tulkarem, and nuclear proliferation trumped suicide bombs.

The central role of the Iranian threat at this year’s Herzliya Conference, sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya (IDC), reflected the shift in Israel’s strategic agenda over the last 12 months. If a year ago, Israelis were still debating unilateral pullbacks and settlement dismantlement, the month-long war with Hezbollah and the escalating showdown over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions now figure as the primary challenge for Israeli policy makers.

Can the United Nations-imposed sanctions change Iranian behavior? And if they don’t work, what are the military options of the international community? Will Russia and China turn against Iran, their trading partner? Is the world about to replay World War II and the Holocaust? How much backing does Ahmadinejad have among Iranians? And should Israel seek the umbrella of NATO?

Rallying the international community to isolate Iran should be the “main mission” of Israel, said Likud Chairman Benjamin Netanyahu. The former prime minister said Israel must trigger a “wave for delegitmizing” the regime by putting the Iranian president on trial for incitement to genocide, and through voluntary economic sanctions like divesture.

Taking comparisons between the Iranian leader and Adolf Hitler a step further, Netanyahu has often suggested a parallel to the late 1930s and international efforts to contain the expanding power of the Third Reich.

Indeed, many observers point to Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iraqi Shia and Syria as proof of Iran’s impending regional hegemony.

Speaking a day later, however, Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres insisted on paring the Iranians down to size. “What empire? This is an inflated claim that stands on shaky ground,” he asserted, pointing to high unemployment, poverty, and hunger in Iran. The regime there is “unsustainable” he said because it is weak and empty. That makes economic sanctions all the more potent, Peres argued. “We still aren’t in 1938.”

Ariel Sharon and his historic addresses outlining the Gaza disengagement helped turn an annual conference of a little-known private university into a forum of the security glitterati that brought generals, academics and government officials under one roof.

And although there was low expectation of anything new from Olmert at Herzliya—he was scheduled to speak at the closing dinner Wednesday -- how to fix Israel’s ailing political and defense establishment filled the vacuum of government diplomatic initiatives.

Speaking on the eve of the Justice Ministry’s announcement of plans to indict Israeli President Moshe Katsav, Israeli political commentator Dan Margalit assailed a political system in which he alleged corruption had become the norm. “Our politicians have no respect for the rule of law,” he asserted.

Teva Pharmaceuticals Chairman Eli Hurvitz assailed a political leadership that is unable to lead and has no strategic vision. Philanthropist and former diplomat Ronald Lauder made a similar assertion, and challenged the Israeli government to synthesize a new direction for the country.

But for all of the post-war domestic angst, Iran remained an almost ubiquitous topic of discussion. Recommendations for coping with Iran ran that gamut from swift military action to cautious embrace.

Joining the debate was a cadre of American experts, officials and politicians. Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns emphasized the U.S. preference for a diplomatic — even a negotiated — deal with Iran. Richard Perle, a former administration official now with the American Enterprise Institute, cautioned that time is running out before Iran hits the point of “no return” on its nuclear program (although other speakers estimated it could take a decade before Iran produces a weapon). While he advocated for the creation of conditions for domestic regime change in Iran, Perle also warned that little time remains before the U.S. weighs taking military action.

U.S. presidential hopefuls Mitt Romney, John Edwards and John McCain, along with Newt Gingrich, were in Israel, seemingly competing to see who can be most strident in defense of the Jewish state during personal or video appearances at the conference here, just north of Tel Aviv.

The four politicians called for ways to prevent Iran’s government from acquiring nuclear weapons. While stressing the strong U.S.-Israel ties, the presidential hopefuls all agreed that the U.S. has to ratchet up sanctions on Iran and leave the possibility of a military attack “on the table.”

Romney, who served one term as governor of Massachusetts, called for economic sanctions against Iran “at least as severe” as those imposed on South Africa during its apartheid era. He compared the challenge posed by Iran and militant Islam to the clash of the West with 20th century conflicts with fascism and totalitarian communism.

“It is time for the world to plainly speak these three truths,” Romney said at the conference. “One, Iran must be stopped. Two, Iran can be stopped, and three Iran will be stopped.”

Gingrich, who spoke by a satellite video link, said that the existential danger to Israel has never been higher since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The former House speaker also said that many in Israel as well as the U.S. don’t fully appreciate the nature, size or scope of the threat posed by Iran.

“I have two grandchildren,” said Gingrich, “and I think there is a greater danger of them dying in an action than I faced during the cold war.”

For presidential hopefuls, the conference gives them an opportunity to float policy positions and reach out to Jewish voters.

“This forum has become the Davos for Middle East wonks,” said David Makovsky, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute who was also scheduled to speak. He was referring to the economic summit in Davos, Switzerland that has become a key gathering place for the world’s leaders. “During the cold war, the Middle East was a backwater of American policy. But with the end of the cold war, the Middle East has become the center of American policy. [The conference is] a legitimate forum for them to express their views on a region that’s important.”

The conference draws Israeli cabinet ministers, generals, business leaders, and academicians. It also attracts security experts from the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East.

Sen. McCain (R-Ariz.) said he supported exploring a strengthening of ties between Israel and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, as a means of easing Israel’s insecurity.

“A friendly democracy under siege should be closer partners to the world’s most successful security alliance,” he said, speaking via a satellite link. “American support for Israel should intensify. The enemies are too numerous, margin of error too small, and shared values too great.”

Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), the only Democratic presidential hopeful to address the conference, sounded similar notes of toughening sanctions and the threat of military force. But he was the one speaker to suggest that the U.S. needs to open a dialogue with Iran.

“I support being tough, but I think it’s a mistake strategically and ideologically not to engage them on this issue,” he said. “American should engage directly on this issue.”

World War III has begun, and the nation’s leadership is failing to deal with this reality, former House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich concludes.

Appearing on NBC’s "Meet the Press" with Tim Russert Sunday, Gingrich explained that "today is not the fifth day of the war, it’s the 58th year of the effort by those who want to destroy Israel. As Ahmadinejad, the head of Iran, says, he wants to defeat the Americans and eliminate Israel from the face of the earth. So we should not see this event in isolation. There is an . . . Iran/Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas alliance trying to destroy Israel.”

"The Israelis withdrew from Gaza to create the circumstance of peace. The Israelis withdrew from south Lebanon to create the circumstance of peace,” Gingrich continued. "They now have a thousand missiles fired from Gaza, they’ve had hundreds of missiles fired from south Lebanon. You clearly have Iranian involvement. There are at least 400 Iranian guards in south Lebanon. Apparently it was an Iranian missile fired by Iranians which hit an Israeli warship yesterday. The United States should be saying to Syria and Iran, 'South Lebanon is going to be cleared out. We are for Israel and the Lebanese government breaking the back of Hezbollah, getting rid of all 10,000 to 13,000 missiles, and we will decisively stop any effort by Syria and Iran to intervene.'”

Gingrich says the current crisis facing Israel is part of a larger world war that involved the United States.

"I mean, this is absolutely a question of the survival of Israel, but it’s also a question of what is really a world war,” Gingrich said.

"North Korea firing missiles. We say there’ll be consequences, there are none. North Koreans fire seven missiles on our Fourth of July; bombs going off in Mumbai, India; a war in Afghanistan with sanctuaries in Pakistan . . . the Iran/Syria/Hamas/Hezbollah alliance.”

In addition, he said "there is the war in Iraq funded largely from Saudi Arabia and supplied largely from Syria and Iran.”

Gingrich Lies To Assault Free Speech Again
Unrepentant, arch Neo-Con crafts deceptive Ahmadinejad boogeyman argument
to con Americans into First Amendment regulation

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Tuesday, December 5, 2006

Not content with last week's brazen attack on the First Amendment during a speaking engagement in New Hampshire, Newt Gingrich has swung another right hook in the direction of freedom of speech, by exploiting non-existent statements and Neo-Con propaganda as a reason for shutting down websites and gagging political dissent in America.

Unrepentant, the former Speaker of the House returns again to trash the sanctity of the First Amendment, this time in an article for Neo-Con rag Human Events.

Last week's diatribe in which Gingrich threatened Americans that if they didn't curtail websites and restrict free speech they would "lose a city," provoked a firestorm of reaction from bloggers and pundits alike.

Keith Olbermann devoted a section of his Countdown program to Gingrich's abomination and commented "If you're going to destroy freedom of speech Bub, you've already lost all the cities.", whilst comparing the speech to the rhetoric of Nazi politicians in Germany in the 1930s.

Gingrich's latest attempt to chill dissent in America relies on fraudulent claims and biased sources to present an argument that terrorists are hiding behind the First Amendment in order to recruit for jihad. It echoes similar rhetoric contained in the White House's own strategy document for "winning the war on terror," which identifies conspiracy theorists as terrorist wellsprings.

"We should be allowed to close down websites that recruit suicide bombers and provide instructions to indiscriminately kill civilians by suicide or other means, or advocate killing people from the West or the destruction of Western civilization," writes Gingrich.

The problem with this superficially reasonable statement is that Gingrich and his Neo-Fascist sympathizers classify any dissent against the Bush administration as "aiding the enemy," "hating America," and thus in effect calling for "the destruction of Western civilization," and won't hesitate to tar everyone with the same brush as we have seen all too may times on Fox News in the past.

Indeed, in his own article Gingrich links Hezbollah to leftist and anti-globalization political organizations, making it crystal clear who he thinks should be shut down and shut up.

Gingrich cites Iranian President Ahmadinejad's letter last week as another reason for erecting checkpoints around the First Amendment, erroneously claiming he, "threatens to kill Americans in large numbers if we don't submit to his demands."

Firstly, Gingrich is exploiting the words of an Iranian national who as a non US citizen doesn't even have a First Amendment right, to attack the foundation of freedom of speech in America. Whatever Ahmadinejad chooses to say has no bearing on any debate about regulating free speech in America. The media decides whether to carry his statements or not, they are not forced into doing so by the terms of the First Amendment. Would George W. Bush have any grounds for complaint under the First Amendment if Iranian state TV refused to broadcast his speeches? No, and yet Gingrich wastes no time in wagging the Ahmadinejad boogeyman stereotype to try and convince Americans that their words should be controlled.

Secondly, the claim that Ahmadinejad "threatens to kill Americans in large numbers if we don't submit to his demands," is to be found nowhere in the Iranian leader's letter. Gingrich has carte blanche invented this supposition out of thin air as an excuse to craft his warped argument that the First Amendment should not be a "suicide pact."

Go and read the letter for yourselves! At no point does Ahmadinejad in any context "threaten to kill Americans in large numbers."

This fallacy is moored on an even less stable footing that the "wipe Israel off the map" baloney, in which Ahmadinejad merely called for the end of the barbarous political system of Zionism. It's from the same school of lurid Neo-Con propaganda that brought you the wild-eyed crystal ball prophecy that Ahmadinejad would initiate world war three or the apocalypse on August 22nd.

The second prong of Gingrich's attack cites a report from the MEMRI website which in turn highlights a supposed terrorist website that promises "to use the Internet for the sake of jihad."

Besides the fact that on several occasions so-called terrorist propaganda disseminated via the Internet has led back to the U.S. government, including campaigns to boost profiles of terrorists such as Musab Al-Zarqawi, who was the subject of a Pentagon psy-op aimed at "the American home audience," MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute) is a well known Israeli intelligence front.

Founded by former Israeli military intelligence officer Yigal Carmon and Meyrav Wurmser, wife of the neo-con David Wurmser, MEMRI is notorious for selectively quoting, taking out of context and distorting Muslim news reports and editorials, having been the source for the vaunted "wipe Israel off the map" lie.

A London Guardian investigation into MEMRI further highlighted the fact that this shadowy organization is infested with Israeli military intelligence veterans.

"Retrieving another now-deleted page from the archives of Memri's website also throws up a list of its staff. Of the six people named, three - including Col Carmon - are described as having worked for Israeli intelligence," reported Brian Whitaker.

Whitaker details the website's link to Richard Perle and the numerous instances in which MEMRI exercised "selective memory" in falsely attributing statements, using sweeping generalizations and taking information out of context in order to tar Muslim nations and cheerlead for the Neo-Con war machine.

Gingrich is simply inflating already hyped Israeli military propaganda to try and justify nixing dissent in America, fearmongering in the all too familiar context of terrorist threats in order to scare Americans into keeping quiet while leftists, anti-globalists, "conspiracy theorists," and anyone who opposes the Neo-Con agenda has their website deleted and their First Amendment right stolen.

Freedom to dissent is the lifeblood of any society with a modicum of liberty. Wrapping his argument in a camouflage of fighting the phony war on terror, Gingrich's real targets are those who are wise enough to ignore all the chilling attempts on freedom of speech and exercise their inalienable rights without recourse.

Under the terms of reference defined by the Founding Fathers, it is people like Gingrich himself, not ghost terrorists in far-flung caves, that are the real threat to the American way of life, and their creed of tyrants rhetoric should be countered at every turn.

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do the math
Proportionate Response
Does one Israeli really equal 47 Americans?
By Jordan Ellenberg
Posted Monday, July 24, 2006, at 12:29 PM ET

On June 25, Louise Roug and Doug Smith of the Los Angeles Times wrote that "[a]t least 50,000 Iraqis have died violently since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. … Proportionately, it is equivalent to 570,000 Americans being killed nationwide in the last three years." Three weeks later on Meet the Press, Newt Gingrich asked viewers to "[i]magine Miami had missiles being fired at it every day. Remember that when Israel loses eight people because of the difference in population, it's the equivalent of losing almost 500 Americans."

It's hard for Americans to comprehend what's happening in the Middle East. That's why commentators reach for analogies. What event in the United States would be "equivalent" to the terror over there? The answer depends on what you mean by "equivalent." Is it, "What crime in America is morally equal to the killing of eight Israelis?" Or do you mean something more like, "What event would have the impact on America that the killing of eight Israelis does on Israel?"

The first question is easier. Unless you truly think Israeli lives are worth more or less than our own, the crime that's equivalent to the murder of eight Israelis is the murder of eight Americans. But what Roug, Smith, and Gingrich have in mind is something closer to the latter question. Their equivalences are shorthand for something like "an attack killing X percent of Iraq's population has the same impact as an attack killing X percent of America's population."

That description makes it easy to see how the factoids above were derived. The Times writers took the number of Iraqis who have died violently since the American invasion (50,000) and divided it by the population of Iraq (about 26 million) to find that 0.19 percent of Iraqis have been killed since 2003. The equivalent percentage of the American population, then, is 570,000. Gingrich's calculation works the same way. There are 6.3 million Israelis. Gingrich worked out that one in 787,500, or 0.00013 percent of Israel's population, was killed in the Hezbollah rocket attack. Multiply that proportion by the population of the United States, and you get something close to the quoted figure. (The correct number is closer to 380 Americans than 500, but Newt was in the ballpark.)

Do these calculations make any sense? In math, if you're not certain your argument is correct, you should apply it in some novel situations and see if it spits out reasonable results. For example: I live in Madison, Wis., which has a population of 220,000. If I want to compute what the Iraq war would look like in my town, I can just take 0.19 percent of that figure and find that the "equivalent" death toll here is 400 people. As for the Hezbollah attack, 0.00013 percent of 220,000 yields 0.286. So, Hezbollah's rocket attack killed the equivalent of a quarter of a Madisonian—surely an underestimate of the crime's impact. On the other hand, nothing forces us to use the whole population of Israel. The city of Haifa has a population of about 270,000, so 0.003 percent of its population was killed in the attack Gingrich cites. The equivalent in Miami (population 362,470) would be 11 people. So, what should we imagine in Miami? Eleven people dead, or Gingrich's 500? The method of proportions gives both answers—not a great advertisement for the technique.

There are cases where the method of proportions is a useful one. Human Rights Watch estimates that 75 percent of the Tutsi population of Rwanda was murdered in the 1994 genocide. It's hard to get a mental picture of such a crime—but imagining three-quarters of your neighbors hauled off to slaughter isn't a bad place to start.

Why does it make sense to use proportions when talking about Rwanda but not when talking about Haifa? The difference between the two cases is simple—75 percent is a big number, and 0.00013 percent is a really small one. You can imagine what it means to lose three-fourths of your population, but your innate number sense simply doesn't extend to "one in 787,500." Try to follow Gingrich's instructions and imagine the impact on a society in which one in 787,500 people had just been murdered. Now imagine that it was actually one in 78,750. You just multiplied the scale of the crime tenfold, but can you say sincerely that the two numbers inspire a different reaction? The proportions are just too small to comprehend.

How small a proportion is too small? Here's a good rule of thumb: If it makes sense to talk about the "survivors" of an event—as in the "Tutsi survivors of the Rwandan genocide"—it's probably reasonable to scale by population. (The Rwandan genocide would be the equivalent, in this sense, of killing 165,000 people in the city of Madison.) But only the most tendentious cranks would refer to "those Iraqis who survived the U.S. occupation," let alone call an Israeli living far from the war zone "a survivor of Sunday's Hezbollah rocket attack." That's your signal not to make the claim that each one of those Israelis is "equivalent" to 47 Americans, or four Iraqis, or one twenty-eighth of a Madisonian.

If you wanted to, you could incorporate the above reasoning into a more complicated formula. That formula would work one way in Rwanda, where most of the targeted population was killed, and another way in Iraq, where relatively few have died. But such a formula would lack the simplicity of the straightforward proportional argument, and complicated formulas have a way of lending undeserved authority to assertions—"the aftereffect of the Iraq War is the equivalent of 570,000 dead Americans"—that are supposed to be mere analogies. Maybe it's best to keep it simple. If you want to imagine eight people killed, imagine eight people killed—but people on your block, not across the world. That computation is mathematically and morally unimpeachable, and no calculator is required.

December 10, 2003

The War According to Newt Gingrich

Growing the Dictatorship in Iraq

http://www.counterpunch.org/nimmo12102003.html

By KURT NIMMO

Yes, things are going haywire in Iraq -- but we can fix the problem, or so says one of the top slot neocons, Newt Gingrich.

See, according to Newt, the problem is Bush didn't install an Iraqi dictator immediately after the invasion. Instead he sent over Paul Bremer and his crew who took up residence in one of Saddam's palaces.

It looks bad, having all these white boys around calling the shots. Besides, they are really a bunch of screw-ups.

So, as Newt explains, Bush needs to get an Iraqi in there soon as possible. Put an Arab face on the neocon Master Plan for Zionist domination of the Middle East. Maybe that way it will be more palatable to the Iraqis. Maybe that way not so many Americans will die.

Well, chances are it won't be the least bit palatable to the Iraqis, but then the neocons are hardly concerned about what the Iraqis think. Hell, on most days, the Iraqis don't even have electricity.

"The idea that we are going to have a corruption-free, pristine, League of Women Voters government in Iraq on Tuesday is beyond naiveté," Newt told John Barry and Evan Thomas of Newsweek.

Bush has to get a quisling in there, a groomed puppet maybe like Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan.

Never mind that Karzai can't take a stroll around the block in Kabul without a few dozen Special Forces types protecting him from the people he supposedly represents.

Anyway, what Newt's saying is that Bush needs to get a dictator in there pronto, another Saddam, a Saddam minus the Ba'ath Party and all that exhibitionistic Arab nationalism stuff, a Saddam who answers to Bush and the Zionist neocons and doesn't fund Palestinian suicide bombers.

A dictator who will immediately recognize Israel.

Newt put in a lot of time prior to the invasion, browbeating folks over at the CIA, and hell if he's going to let it all go down the tubes now.

He was "seen as a personal emissary of the Pentagon and, in particular, of the OSP," the Guardian wrote at the time.

For those of you who don't know, OSP is short for the Office of Special Plans, a sort of neocon version of the CIA that "cherry-picked" intelligence favorable to the idea that invading Iraq and killing a few thousand people, wrecking Iraq's already decimated infrastructure, and grabbing its oil, all in the best interest of America -- or, rather, in the best interest of Israel and multinational corporations, most notably oil and death merchant, i.e., "defense industry" corporations, connected to Bush and Cheney.

Last time we heard from Citizen Newt, the washed-up and disgraced former speaker of the House, he was lambasting the State Department.

There were people in Colin Powell's State Department "appeasing dictators and propping up corrupt regimes," complained Citizen Newt.

In his speech, delivered before the neocon choir over at the American Enterprise Institute -- known fondly as the "Temple of Doom" by Washington insiders -- Newt sounded oddly like the infamous senator from Wisconsin, Joe McCarthy, when he said back in 1950 that the State Department was "thoroughly infested with communists."

These days, of course, communists are pretty much old hat--the new enemy burrowing deep inside our government, according to the neocons, are treacherous Middle East specialists who do not demonstrate the requisite degree of allegiance to Israel and the whacked out Zionists.

Back in April, when Newt made his Joe M. speech, Powell was off to Syria to talk. Neocons, of course, don't talk--they drop bunker buster bombs.

"The last seven months have involved six months of diplomatic failure and one month of military success," said Citizen Newt, referencing the previous month's mass murder in Iraq. "The first days after military victory indicate the pattern of diplomatic failure is beginning once again and threatens to undo the effects of military victory."

In other words, diplomacy only spoils all the good work accomplished by mass murder and wanton destruction predicated on a swarm of lies and deception, most of it spawned from the OSP where Gingrich worked.

As well, diplomacy doesn't earn a bundle for the death merchants, the guys who have a stranglehold on the government, the same government more than a few clueless Americans believe has their best interests at heart.

Frankly, Newt is a Richard Perle automaton.

For some reason it's hard to imagine Gingrich talking without a nod from his ideological boss, the Prince of Darkness and accused Israeli spy Richard Perle.

Both of these right-wing zealots spend their time plotting the demise of Arab children and grandmothers over at the Defense Policy Board (DPB), along with other dangerous rogues such as the former spooks James Woolsey and James Schlesinger, war criminal at large Henry Kissinger, intellectual luminary Dan Quayle, and a few retired generals who take JINSA-sponsored walking tours over in Israel.

Not long ago Perle was the chairman of Rumsfeld's DPB, but his apparently insatiable desire to profit from war and misery got in the way and he had to step down, although he is still firmly entrenched in the DPB.

As previously stated, the DPB is stacked with war profiteers beholden to death merchant corporations such as Boeing, TRW, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Booz Allen Hamilton, all of whom have a keen interest in bombing "failed states" such as Iraq for fun and profit.

As the Center for Public Integrity notes, of the DPB's thirty members "at least nine have ties to companies that have won more than $76 billion in defense contracts in 2001 and 2002." Additionally, four DPB members "are registered lobbyists, one of whom represents two of the three largest defense contractors."

As well, a large number of Rummy's DPB members are connected to far right- wing extremist "think tanks":

Former national security adviser Richard Allen, in addition to being a lobbyist for Alliance Aircraft, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution (these guys were Dubya's "brain trust" -- since it seems Bush doesn't have much of one--during the 2000 election).

Retired Admiral David Jeremiah, who works for no less than five corporations doing business with the misnamed Defense Department, is a board member of JINSA, or the Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs (a rabidly Zionist organization that hosts the General and Flag Officer's program; this rewires American military officers into pro-Israel Stepford humans).

Kiron Sinner, assistant professor of history, political science and public policy at Carnegie Mellon, and helpmate to Condoleezza Rice, is a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Ruth Wedgwood, professor of law at Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies, is also a CFRite.

Former CIA director James Woolsey labors in the service of JINSA.

Richard Perle, the quintessential dual-allegiance Zionist and accused Israeli spy (in the Jonathan Pollard espionage case), is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, a board member of the hawkish pro-Israel Advisors of Foundation for Defense of Democracy (Perle shares this position with the right-wing Zionists Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, and Gary Bauer), and is the former director of the Jerusalem Post.

Finally, Newt Gingrich is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, and "analyst" for the Bush Ministry of Disinformation, aka Fox News.

It's no secret that these individuals and organizations, along with the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), are primarily responsible for planning and conspiring together to illegally and immorally invade Iraq (current number of innocent civilians murdered: over 10,000).

No doubt, in the aftermath of the invasion and the muddle the Bushites have made of it, the above-mentioned neocons and others are antsy for stability.

There is, after all, a schedule here -- the US has to build military bases in Iraq in preparation for new invasions, decades of occupation, and fulfilling its obligation to be the policeman for a Likudite Greater Israel and enforcer for multinational neoliberalism, otherwise known as global theft.

So, according to the Perle neocons, there needs to be an Iraqi "leader" put in place, and sooner the better, hopefully before the election next year.

Over at the Pentagon where Rummy's DPB holds court, the idea has long been to put the CIA stooge, Iraqi National Congress darling, and convicted bank swindler Ahmed Chalabi in charge. Richard Perle is hot on Chalabi, mostly because he's an Arab who will do what the Likudites want.

"Chalabi and his people have confirmed that they want a real peace process, and that they would recognize the state of Israel," the Prince of Darkness told the Washington Post in April. Naturally, this is the most important thing for the Zionist neocons at the Pentagon, to hell with bringing stability and security to the Iraqi people. Plus, it would serve as a big slap in the face to millions of Arabs who want justice for the Palestinians.

Perle and the DPB are rolling out Gingrich, hoping to get something moving in regard to imposing Chalabi or some other Iraqi exile on the Iraqi people, and soon, before the occupation slips further out of reach and the insurgency is taken up by the Shi'ites.

Once the uprising against US occupation moves beyond the minority Sunni community, the neocon vision of an emasculated Iraq, no longer able to challenge Israel or pay stipends to Palestinian suicide bombers, will be shattered and lost.

Israel sorely needs to defuse the "Palestinian problem," most likely by turning the West Bank and Gaza into huge open-air concentration camps, or by way of "transfer," i.e., ethnic cleansing -- but it can't do any of this effectively until the Arab Middle East is rendered politically and militarily inert.

That's what the "war on terr'ism" is all about.

Moreover, before Bush gets too disillusioned, what with an election right around the corner and his apparent and growing willingness to find a quick fix to the Iraqi quagmire, the neocons hope to short circuit any talk of actual democracy in Iraq.

Obviously, allowing Iraqis to vote for whomever they want would result in a Muslim theocracy of one sort or another, possibly aligned with Iran, a complete nightmare scenario for the Zionist neocons. Instead, they hope get a malleable dictator in there, and right quick, preferably before the election next year.

"The real key here is not how many enemy do I kill. The real key is how many allies do I grow," Gingrich told Newsweek. "And that is a very important metric that [the US military] just don't get."

It's not that Gingrich and the Zionist neocons want to stop the killing and give peace a chance.

No, the Perle neocons simply want to take the killing off the front page, stop the incremental killing of US soldiers (it's bad PR), and install a strong dictator and an effective security apparatus, maybe something along the lines of the Shah's SAVAK in Iran, something with teeth able to effectively terrorize the resistance, something organized and trained under the guidance of the United States and Israeli intelligence officers, as was SAVAK in 1957. SAVAK, after all, was the prefect instrument for one-party rule, for torture and execution of political prisoners, and for mercilessly crushing dissent.

This, however, may not be necessary for, as the Telegraph reported in May, the US was busy at work recruiting former members of Saddam's Mukhabarat, regardless of Bremer's stated desire to pursue "de-Ba'athification" measures.

In fact, these former thugs in Saddam's employ may be exactly what Newt was referencing when he said the "idea that we are going to have a corruption-free, pristine, League of Women Voters government in Iraq on Tuesday is beyond naiveté."

On December 5, the handpicked Iraqi Ruling Council indicated it plans to revive Mukhabarat.

"We will use their own dogs to hunt them down," exclaimed Nabil al-Musawi, deputy president of the Iraqi National Congress and the party's chief of security. "To think that I am supporting this idea surprises even me. But we have to be realistic... If I have to deal with the devil for short-term gain for the sake of my people, then I will."

Nabil al-Musawi, of course, is being extremely disingenuous--once Mukhabarat, or a SAVAK-like equivalent, is unleashed on the Iraqi people, it will not be a "deal with the devil for short-term," but a permanent fixture of the US- Israel imposed state (or possible states, since there's talk of breaking Iraq up along ethnic lines).

The neocons have a lot riding on Iraq--they can't afford to have Bush blow it now with his trifling concerns over an election next year, an election that really means absolutely nothing to the neocons beyond that the fact that if Bush is trounced they will be unceremoniously bounced as well.

Besides, that's what Diebold voting machines are for.

Kurt Nimmo is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Visit his excellent no holds barred blog at www.kurtnimmo.com/blogger.html . Nimmo is a contributor to Cockburn and St. Clair's, The Politics of Anti-Semitism. A collection of his essays for CounterPunch, Another Day in the Empire, will soon be published by Dandelion Books.

He can be reached at: nimmo@zianet.com

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