"Israel's Nuclear Weapons" Farr

 http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/cpc-pubs/farr.htm

Comments

[JohnH]

The report points out one very interesting "use" of Israeli nuclear weapons: blackmail.

"One other purpose of Israeli nuclear weapons, not often stated, but obvious, is their “use” on the United States. America does not want Israel's nuclear profile raised. They have been used in the past to ensure America does not desert Israel under increased Arab, or oil embargo, pressure and have forced the United States to support Israeli diplomatically against the Soviet Union. Israel used their existence to guarantee a continuing supply of American conventional weapons, a policy likely to continue."

[Stormcrow]

Very nice paper, on a subject I've wondered about.

Thanks.

[William R. Cumming]

This article should be reviewed and comprehensively updated and when that is completed published in an open forum available to the entire American polity.

After all and educated public is the essence of the founding fathers vision for our democracy (republic)!Perhaps all internal Executive Branch usage of this document could also be revealed.
Thanks PL for making US aware of what seems an excellent analysis.

[Patrick Lang]

wrc et al

I suppose that LTC or by now COL Farr will be the object of AEI's attention. Rubin can devise a descriptive for him.

This paper was evidently Farr's thesis paper when he was a student at the Air War College. His biography is interesting. A former SF sergeant. He was raised from the ranks and sent to the armed forces medical school like (but not like) Nidal Hasan. He is described as a SF medical officer, but he probably has a different assignment by now. It took courage for him to address this subject and courage for the Air War College to support him. Some of the "remnant" that Cliff was talking about. Farr makes me proud to have been a Green Beret. pl

[Stormcrow]

I had the opportunity to watch a televised interview with Jonathan Pollard a few years after his sentencing.

What an arrogant piece of work!

I read his bio just after I read your post, and he seems to have been his own worst enemy at almost every turn. The amazing thing is that he wasn't found out and arrested much earlier. He seems to have acted as if nobody else in the world mattered save him. Which was pretty much how he came across during that interview. It was like listening to slime. I hate to use that metaphor, but it's the only one that comes to mind when I think about that extraordinary video.

With a personality like that, I have to wonder about the soundness of his mind. The only person I can recall offhand who acted as offensively as that during an interview was Bobby Fischer (the infamous 9/11 interview), and he was clearly not in his right mind from a very early age.

Not that this makes me feel the slightest sympathy for Pollard! Not after seeing him and listening to him. I'm not a bit surprised that the sentencing judge threw away the key. I'd have done the same thing in his place.

[J]

If I may call your attention to 'Appendix A Estimates of the Israeli Nuclear Arsenal, circa 1997, footnote 172'. Any guesses as to their numbers today circa 2010?

How many from that number are being currently carried by the 3 Israeli nuclear subs stationed just off Iran's coast?

Why hasn't any nation undertaken a covert program to nullify the Israeli nuclear blackmail threat? Surely a combined operation (U.S., Russia, China) would be in all their interests, as all three depend on Mideast oil to assist in the running of their respective nations and Israel with its nuclear cache is a threat to them all.

I have excluded the Europeans from any such combined operation for a specific reason.

[The Twisted Genius]

PL,

"Farr makes me proud to have been a Green Beret. "

Amen to that. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find him setting up free clinics throughout the U.S. today. I hope Farr's paper sees a wider distribution. The American public needs to pull its head out of the sand and understand this true WMD threat... but I doubt it will.

[William R. Cumming]

AGree with your comments PL. Yes, never overlook the fact that senior enlisted ranks in all armies of the world, including US, contain some of the best soldiers, sailors, and airmen/woman. How we get these capable people to career is a wonder.

[Sidney O. Smith III]

In the big picture, Farr’s essay is historically significant, imo It has been available on the web for a few years. (I may have linked it here awhile back but can’t say for sure). But when I first stumbled upon the essay, I was in the initial stages of re-examining my life-long assumptions that I held regarding Zionism. Farr’s work deeply influenced my thinking.

For one thing, the essay demonstrated that not everyone in the USM was buying into the neoconservative/OSP/Pentagon “Shock and Awe” mindset. And keep in mind that Farr published this work before 911.

Second, Farr’s essay is the first (and maybe only) example I seen written by someone associated with the USG who, whether intentionally or not, is relying upon the assumptions given to us by Rabbi Teitelbaum. Decades before the rise of “progressive” criticism of Israel, Teitelbaum and his colleagues stressed that Zionists have usurped the religious symbols of Judaism to promote a virulent form of nationalism.

Farr makes that point beautifully in the title of his work, as well as by quoting Dayan’s admission during the 1973 war.

Events in the Middle East subsequent to Farr’s writing of this essay demonstrate beyond all doubt that the analytical assumptions given to us by Rabbi Teitelbuam lead to the most accurate conclusions, bar none. Yet such an analytical foundation appears nonexistent in the work of the Pentagon, the USG, as well as, of course, DC think tanks and msm. (although Dr. Erbinger of Brookings deserve great credit for taking a stand on the USS Liberty recently under his own name.).

Thirdly, since Farr’s 1999 essay illustrates how Zionism has melded religious symbols and the power of the State, he thus infers a future aspect of Zionism that I find critically important. One of the key moments in the history of Zionism will be when someone, in essence, reads Tehillim (Psalm) 149 before turning the launch key, thus unleashing the Jericho III from the Holy of Holies. Farr suggests convincingly that such a desire lies deep within the Zionist pathos.

And finally, something that military people may want to keep in mind. Israeli actions, at some point, may turn the American people against the Pentagon, in ways unimaginable. If so, then Farr’s essay is documentary proof that not everyone in the US Military was/is a Kagan apostle and that another tradition existed all along. At some point Farr’s essay may be necessary to rehabilitate the image of the USM if our government signs onto what Farr most accurately calls the Zionist Holy of Holies.

[confusedponderer]

Succint summary on Pollard by US ambassador to Israel Richard Jones

The fact that he wasn't executed is the mercy that Jonathan Pollard will receive.

In contrast, an interview on Pollard with Caroline Glick.

Glick is editor at the Jerusalem Post and currently famous for authoring propaganda videos after the flotilla incident and her previously linked to vid 'the three terrors'. Crude propaganda, and a IMO curious activity for a newspaper editor.

[Patrick Lang]

CP

I was in on the JCS damage assessment effort for the Pollard case. He damaged us severely. He was tasked by his controllers to retrieve specific documents by title and serial number so that they could be photocopied before he returned them to DoD files. Most of the documents had nothing to do with the ME. They were about the USSR and the Warsaw Pact and they revealed how much we specifically knew about them and their forces. The Israelis wanted them as trading material for exchanges with the Soviets. pl

[confusedponderer]

I understand the Russia paid by allowing Russian Jews to emigrate to Israel?

[Sidney O. Smith III]

In re: Caroline Glick

I find her work essential reading and, quite honestly, enjoy doing so.

She is the mediatrix into the mindset to which Farr refers.

Because I still have an uber Zionist within me, I can really appreciate her talent and she has loads of it. Just my opinion, but I would not brush aside her work simply because, at least of present, she is on the other side of an ideological divide. She scores many a fine point and her work is higher up the chain than, say, Jeffery Goldberg or M Peretz.

I feel the same way about M. Begin. I understand. I understand. Rak Kach. (Only this way). Intoxicating.

[Patrick Lang]

CP

That was at least part of the payment. pl

[J]

Colonel,

Your comment - "tasked by his controllers to retrieve specific documents by title and serial number" speaks to a serious penetration.

[Patrick Lang]

j

yup. pl

[ServingPatriot]

@JohnH -- re: nuclear blackmail.

I suspect at the heart of China's mendacious behavior regarding the DPRK, we have a similar blackmailing dynamic at play. Certainly one of the great quandaries of statecraft emerges when a close, protected ally "goes its own way" and acquires nuclear weapons against the desires of its main protector.

Thanks Pat for highlighting this paper. It goes well with Michael Karpin's The Bomb in the Basement from 2006.

SP

[Castellio]

Do we assume that penetration is on-going? Perhaps less? Perhaps more?

[Sidney O. Smith III]

I simply cannot over-emphasize the following dire scenario: the American people, particularly in the red States, turning against the Pentagon because of USG support of Israeli actions. (Hasn’t Petraeus already mentioned such, albeit in a very oblique way)

I am not talking about the Jane Fonda crowd. I am talking about working class people -- the I Smoots from Col. Lang’s novel.

They, by nature, are not anti-military. In the 70’s and under different circumstance, some of them simply lost all trust in the Pentagon. This group is a bit older than I am, but I use to listen to them as a kid in my small town upbringing. To borrow from language already mentioned, I think they felt that they had been stabbed in the back.

And all I can tell you is that, all these years later, when I see someone like Keane or McInerney on the television, I hear the wisdom from them working class people from my youth -- it‘s like a voice from 35 years ago, “You see, we were right all along, they don‘t give a damn about you.”

My allegiance is with them, to be honest with you, although I hate to see the Pentagon and USG destroy the best of our military traditions.

The great problem in the 70’s was that these people did know that there were Sam Damon’s who wore the uniform. Hope for all involved, it doesn’t happen again.

And, for what it is worth, I am starting to see a shift when I watch working class civilians stare at a guy in uniform when he walks into a courtroom during a calendar call or the such. Not the same as in 2002 or so. Just passing along the observation.

[Sidney O. Smith III]

Addendum

Meant to write that these people did NOT know there were Sam Damon’s who wore the uniform.

[confusedponderer]

Sidney O. Smith III,
she just came to my attention with those videos and the interview she gave on Pollard.

[shanks]

tasked by his controllers to retrieve specific documents by title and serial number


Would that also mean, they got in touch with the Soviets as he was being handled? i.e. you have a a huge load of docs coming in, you have little time to strategise, you offload the work to the end user?

If I were Israel, I would lead the Soviets with a TOC of documents and ask them to choose and then get Pollard to get them.

Proof of access and control et. al, to establish confidence and genuineness of docs?

From then on, the field would be wide open.

What else would explain the specific serial #s?

[confusedponderer]

shanks,
one explanation was afaik that there was at least one higher level person than Pollard providing the info for the Israelis, and Pollard was then just tasked to retrieve the requested documents. That other agent was supposedly called 'Mega'.

He was never uncovered. There are known prime candidates however, for instance Martin Indyk and Richard Clarke.

I read that Pollard apologists claimed that Pollard was set up as a fall guy for Hanssen and Ames - by whom, I have no idea, and why, I don't have an idea either. It doesn't sound plausible to me.

Mr. Giraldi appears to be rather informed about the matter ;)

[ike]

confusedponderer | 21 June 2010 at 12:10 AM

The link isn't working.

[confusedponderer]

my apologies:
http://amconmag.com/article/2008/jun/02/00006/