The following is passed along from a reader and researcher who cannot vouch for the discussion between Bush and de Villepin. Everything else stands.

“Lebanon - the new target. The neo-conservatives and the policy of creative destruction.
[By: colonsay on: 26.07.2006 [15:27 ] (185 reads)]

By Thierry Meyssan   http://www.voltairenet.org/article142364.html

Translated by Colin Buchanan

www.iransolidarity.endofempire.org

and http://endempire.blogspot.com

http://iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/article/96231

 . . . Jacques Chirac who wished to intervene in Lebanon to defend France's remaining interests and who had sent Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin has become disenchanted : at the G8 summit in St. Petersburg, George W. Bush stopped him in his tracks by telling him that it was not an Israeli operation supported by the US but a US operation carried out by Israel. Suddenly, M. de Villepin had nothing to declare but fine words and his own impotence.

More precisely, the project for the destruction of Lebanon had been presented to the Bush administration by the Israeli army just over a year ago as revealed by the San Francisco Chronicle. It was up for discussion at the annual world forum, the 17th and 18th of June 2006 at Beaver Creek organised by the American Enterprise Institute. Benjamin Netanyahu and Dick Cheney spoke at length in the company of Richard Perle and Nathan Sharansky. The green light was given in the course of the following days by the White House.

The military operations of Tsahal are supervised by the US Defence Department. They decide the basic strategy and choose the targets. The main role has been given to Bantz Craddock in his capacity as head of Southern Command. Craddock is a specialist in the deployment of armoured vehicles as he showed when he commanded NATO's ground forces in Kosovo. He is the right -hand man of Donald Rumsfeld whose personal staff office he runs and on whose behalf he set up Guantanamo. Next November he can be expected to be namd head of European Command and of NATO. In this capacity, he could lead the NATO force to be deployed in South Lebanon as well as those already on the ground in Afghanistan and Sudan.

The generals of Israel and the US have already had the opportunity to get to know each other over the last thirty years, thanks to the exchanges organised by The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), a grouping which obliges its cadres to follow courses of study of the thought of Leo Strauss.”