All of a sudden Saddam, or one of his groomed doubles, is talking on tape. Bush was right all along about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, or at least partially right, and there is a new shine of legitimacy on the invasion of Iraq and the murder of thousands of Iraqis who probably should have known better than to live in a country with such a perfidious dictator, a guy who messed around with weapons of mass destruction behind the back of the United Nations and the Greatest Darn Country on Earth.

“Hussein … can be heard speaking with high-ranking Iraqi officials about deceiving United Nations inspectors looking into Iraq’s weapons program, which his son-in-law, Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel, oversaw,” reports CNN. “The tapes, which U.S. officials have confirmed are authentic, are part of a much larger cache of information on the nation’s weapons programs.” No doubt these are the same officials who confirmed the Osama tapes as authentic. On the side, they sell used cars in Poughkeepsie.

Since news is now considered entertainment, we are expected to check our disbelief and suspicion at the door. However, there is one small troublesome aspect to the Saddam tapes—they were released to the public by the International Intelligence Summit, described “as a nonpartisan, nonprofit forum that promotes an exchange of ideas among members of the international intelligence community…. The summit’s main sponsor is the Michael Cherney Fund, whose Web site describes the fund’s main objective as ‘helping realize the intellectual potential of the post-Soviet emigres to Israel.’”

For the casual observer, this bit about post-Soviet émigrés and Israel may seem confusing—that is until you realize, as Bush’s adviser Philip Zelikow revealed, the invasion of Iraq was launched to “protect” Israel, not that the enfeebled nation of Iraq, suffering from more than a decade of debilitating sanctions, posed a threat to Israel with its modern high-tech weaponry, including more than 400 nukes.

On the Michael Cherney Foundation web page, Cherney is described as an “Israeli philanthropist…. who has donated more than $20 million over the last decade to anti-terror activities and studies, and support for terror victims.” It appears Cherney made his money “buying low and selling high in the chaotic and unregulated post Soviet economies in several newly independent Eastern European states,” in other words he exploited the misery imposed on the people of Eastern Europe by a gang of globalist neoliberal bankers, loan sharks, and carpetbaggers after the props were pulled out from under the Soviet Union. Some of Cherney’s pals, described as the Russian-Jewish “Oligarchs,” have “fled Russia for the protection of Israel, where defrauding Gentiles is not considered a crime,” according to Focal Point. Cherney is not allowed to enter America due to his connections to the Russian Mafia, who are in turn connected to the Russian-Jewish Oligarchs.

So tainted is the “Israeli philanthropist” Cherney, even staunch Straussian neocons are backing away from him. “In the last week both John Deutch and James Woolsey abruptly left their positions at Intelligence Summit, according to its president, John Loftus, who said their departure is part of a campaign by the directorate of national intelligence to punish him for releasing the recordings,” reports the New York Sun. “The reason both men gave for their resignations was new information they received regarding one of the summit’s biggest donors, Michael Cherney, an Israeli citizen who has been denied a visa to enter America because of his alleged ties to the Russian mafia…. The Russian businessman immigrated to Israel in 1995 after allegations in his native country swirled that he was involved with assassinations and other criminal enterprises… In 1998, he was barred from Bulgaria for an alleged plot to assassinate the son of a Cabinet minister. The information originally was passed on by Israeli law enforcement authorities, who later rescinded the claim.”

In short, the alleged Saddam tapes, supposedly revealing how Hussein attempted to hide his desire to kick start a weapons of mass destruction program (and thus lending credence to the war crimes of the Straussian neocons), are tainted by the criminal background of “one of the summit’s biggest donors, Michael Cherney,” obviously an Israeli agent proffering dubious goods even hang tough Straussian neocons back away from, smelling a rat.

Of course, the corporate media will ignore all of this and go for the lathered gusto of the Saddam tapes story, even though we know the Straussian neocons are inveterate liars and flimflam artists, predicating the Iraq invasion on a passel of fabrications and outright and often absurd lies. None of this matters because it is all beyond the intellectual capacity of the average American, unable to break out of the Borg hive mentality of corporate media as it hucksters Straussian neocon and Jabotinsky Israeli propaganda.

Meanwhile, a new propaganda campaign directed against the next target is going famously. “The World Jewish Congress has launched a campaign against Iran following the nuclear crisis and the anti-Semitic statements of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,” Haaretz reported on February 10. “In its biannual gathering in Jerusalem on Thursday the WJC called on Jewish communities throughout the world to pressure their governments to act against the Iranian nuclear program and urge economic and political sanctions against Iran,” in other words attack Iran for nukes it does not have and will not have for a decade or more, according to experts not on the Israeli-Straussian neocon payroll. Rabbi Israel Singer, chairman of the WJC’s Policy Council, “said Jewish communities around the world must make it clear to their governments that the Iranian regime threatens not only the Jews with its utterances and nuclear activity, but all the countries in the world.”

Naturally, no mention here of the fact Israel has “200 and 500 thermonuclear weapons and a sophisticated delivery system,” as John Steinbach noted in 2003. “Since the Gulf War in 1991, while much attention has been lavished on the threat posed by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the major culprit in the region, Israel, has been largely ignored. Possessing chemical and biological weapons, an extremely sophisticated nuclear arsenal, and an aggressive strategy for their actual use, Israel provides the major regional impetus for the development of weapons of mass destruction and represents an acute threat to peace and stability in the Middle East.”

No mention as well of the established fact the Israelis encouraged the Pentagon to use “non-contaminating tactical nuclear weapons” against Iraq in 2003 (see The Third Temple’s Holy of Holies: Israel’s Nuclear Weapons, Warner D. Farr, USAF Counterproliferation Center).

“The Israeli government is preparing to use nuclear weapons in its next war with the Islamic world. Here where I live, people often talk of the Holocaust. But each and every nuclear bomb is a Holocaust in itself. It can kill, devastate cities, destroy entire peoples,” Mordechai Vanunu stated in a December, 2005, interview.

But instead of worrying about Israel and its bulging weapons of mass destruction arsenal—and its apparent desire to use nukes against its enemies, who are considered little more than cockroaches and beasts walking on two legs—we are distracted by a questionable Saddam videotape and a few comments, taken out of context and hysterically blown all out of proportion, by the anti-Zionist president of Iran.

Addendum

As a “Russian oligarch,” Cherney, also known as Mikhail Chernoy, “along with several other oligarchs, cornered the Russian aluminum industry under Yeltsin in the 1990’s through bribery and murder. As he is under indictment for these crimes in Russia, he has taken refuge in Israel. Recently Cherney was indicted in Israel for money-laundering and fraudulent receiving evidence for his part in the purchase of a 20% stake in state-run phone company Bezeq. Mr. Cherney has been associated with a number of international fraudsters, including Marc Rich of the New York Bank scandal. The Cherney Foundation is seen by Israeli investigators as a public relations ruse,” according to a Colorado Congressman Bob Beauprez Q&A. Is it possible the Saddam tapes are a “public relations ruse” as well? It is curious, however, to watch Straussian neocons, infested with the lice of war crimes, run away from the likes of a scumbag such as Mikhail Chernoy, obviously a bird of a feather.

In the past, Cherney bankrolled the Jerusalem Summit, a Straussian-Jabotinsky confab held “at the King David Hotel on the first days of Sukkot, Oct. 12-14,” 2003, according to Helen Freedman, Executive Director, Americans For a Safe Israel. It should be noted that the location is appropriate, since the King David Hotel was bombed on July 22, 1946, by the Irgun terrorist and future leader of Israel, Menachem Begin, killing 91 and injuring 45. As for the Straussian and Jabotinsky luminaries in attendance, see the photos on this page. As Habib Siddiqui noted at the time, the first Jerusalem Summit was held on the “10th anniversary of the Oslo Accord” and was tasked with establishing “an international think tank that would solidify Israel’s position vis-à-vis sanctifying its illegal annexation of Jerusalem and occupation of Palestinian territories.” As if to dispel and doubts the confab was anything but a radical Jabotinsky affair, “Rabbi Benny Elon, head of the Moledet Party and Tourism Minister, unveiled [a] plan calling for the dissolution of the Palestinian Authority and recognition of Jordan as the Palestinian state, with West Bank Arabs becoming citizens of the Palestinian state in Jordan. It also called for Israeli sovereignty over Judea, Samaria and Gaza.” In short, the attendees discussed ethnic cleansing and rampant violations of international law, common enough fare in conquered Palestine.

At a subsequent summit, neocon friendly Congress critter Bob Beauprez characterized Afghanistan and Iraq as “free Arab states,” even though Afghans are not Arabs (we cannot expect the good congressman to tell the difference), and “are now a candle of hope where a short while ago, only darkness lived,” even though Iraqis resoundingly declare things were better under Saddam, even with a million and half people killed under brutal medieval sanctions (500,000 of them children).