Say Anything Blog

Jerusalem Post

The report said that instead of driving its enemies out of power, the US-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007.

David Wurmser, who resigned as Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief Middle East adviser a month after the Hamas takeover, said he believed that Hamas had no intention of taking over the Gaza Strip until Fatah forced its hand.

“It looks to me that what happened wasn’t so much a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by Fatah that was preempted before it could happen,” he was quoted as saying. Wurmser said that the Bush administration engaged in a “dirty war in an effort to provide a corrupt dictatorship [led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas] with victory.”

Wurmser said he was especially galled by the Bush administration’s hypocrisy. “There is a stunning disconnect between the president’s call for Middle East democracy and this policy,” he said. “It directly contradicts it.”

Neocon critics of the administration told the magazine that the old State Department vice of rushing to anoint a strongman rather than solving problems directly had led to the terrible missteps in the Gaza Strip.

To rely on proxies such as Dahlan, former UN ambassador John Bolton said, was “an institutional failure, a failure of strategy.” Bolton blamed Rice, saying Rice, “like others in the dying days of this administration, is looking for a legacy. Having failed to heed the warning not to hold the elections, they tried to avoid the result through Dayton.” Lieutenant General Keith Dayton was the US security coordinator for the Palestinians, who reached a secret agreement with Dahlan to strengthen Fatah’s forces.

If only we could look our own Middle East policies ‘in the eyes’. But no, we are lied to and Bush/Rice/et al. provide covert support to terrorists.