Trump: Our First Billionaire President

1. “useful idiot”(s) all of them. Yes! money can earn you cheap popularity.

   The problem in America is more severe than many know or would like to believe.

   Who is driving U.S foreign policy train? Elected U.S. citizens who have all sworn oaths to the Constitution or the State of Israel?

   Many years ago Scott Ritter wrote an article detailing the control Israel has over the United States and at the end he said, “why don’t we just raise the Israeli flag and call it a day?”

   The neocons fear the outbreak of peace with Iran.

   The way political culture in Washington has become so degenerate especially evident with the last
   presidential race and the current, anything is possible.

   JAMES ABOUREZK is a board member of the Council for the National Interest (CNI) and is a contributor to CounterPunch and the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

   His e mail address is: [email protected]

   Letters of 76 Senators

   When Gerald Ford was President and Henry Kissinger was his Secretary of State, the two decided, during U.S. backed peace talks to bring Israel around to U.S. thinking by withholding American aid to Israel. That effort ended quickly when 76 U.S. Senators signed an AIPAC drafted letter to President Ford containing a thinly veiled threat to Mr. Ford if he continued to withhold military aid to Israel. The letter prompted President Ford to give in to the Lobby’s demand and to resume aid to Israel.

   What happened leading up to the publication of the letter in the U.S. press is an interesting story. I had dinner with one Senator—who shall go unnamed here—the night before the letter was released to the press. He told me that he had no intention of signing it.

   The next day, when the letter appeared in the Washington Post, I asked my friend what had happened.
   “Jim, I received phone call after phone call all during the day yesterday, calls from people who had gone beyond just supporting me in my election, but people—lawyers, doctors, professional people and businessmen—who had interrupted their careers to work in my campaign. I couldn’t say no to them, which is why you saw my name on the letter.”

   Later, in the Senate cloakroom, a number of us were standing together, talking about the letter. Ted Kennedy spoke first. “I knew that’s what would happen when I was approached to sign the letter, and I don’t like it at all. We should, next time, get together before signing such a letter, and all of us say no at the same time.” What Kennedy was referring to was the Israeli Lobby’s practice of picking off the Senators by going to one Senator, saying, “Senator So- and-so has signed, and you’d better not be the only potential presidential candidate not on the letter.” They would then go to Senator So-and-so and say the same thing. Ultimately, all of the leading Senators—especially those who wanted to run from President—would put their signature on the letter.

   Kennedy’s statement was what spurred me to say something, during a mini-debate I had with Hyman Bookbinder before a section of the D.C. Bar Association’s meeting in D.C. We were promoting a book we had written together as a debate on the Middle East—Through Different Eyes—and I mentioned that Senators would cheer on Israel in public but would bad mouth both Israel and the Lobby in private. One lawyer raised his hand and asked, “name just one U.S. Senator who would do that.”

   I said, simply, “Ted Kennedy,” hoping he was politically strong enough to resist the Lobby’s counter-attack.
   Two or three days later, Ted Kennedy called me and said, “Abourezk, what the hell have you done to me?” I guess Ted had underestimated his own political strength, or at least, did not want any of it diluted in a tiff over the Middle East. And he for sure did not want to spend his time defending himself from the Israeli Lobby.

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