Abrams “is making policy in the Middle East.”

AmericanFreePress (thnx kax):

SEN. CHUCK HAGEL (R-Neb.) has charged that hard-line pro-Israel
neo-conservatives are still directing the Bush administration’s U.S. Middle East policy, and this to the detriment of America’s interests. This is a pointed contradiction of continuing claims by many in the Israel-friendly American media monopoly who attempt to promote the myth that the neo-conservatives are no longer of any influence inside the Bush administration.

Because the neo-conservatives have been so discredited by their involvement in foisting the Iraq debacle on the American people, the media has sought to suggest that the influence of the neo-conservatives has been on the wane. But in the judgment of those in the know—including Hagel—nothing could be further from the truth.

Hagel—one of a handful of Republicans in Congress who have challenged the Bush administration’s disastrous policy in Iraq as well as the president’s refusal to engage in constructive dialogue with Syria and Iran—recently told columnist Robert Novak that he believes that the prime mover behind the ongoing Middle East policy of the administration is Elliot Abrams, who serves as deputy national security advisor.

In addition, Hagel told Novak, there are many “foreign ministers, ambassadors and former U.S. officials,” who believe, as Hagel believes, that Abrams “is making policy in the Middle East.”

What’s more, Hagel said, there are even Israeli officials who have said that while they would like to deal with Syria in a bid for Middle East peace, that it is Abrams who, in Hagel’s words, “keeps pushing them back.”

Although little known to the general public, Abrams is a very powerful player in pro-Israel power networks reaching from Washington to Tel Aviv, and has been for quite a while.
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Perhaps best known for having been convicted for his part as a State Department official enmeshed in the now-infamous Iran-contra scandal during the Reagan administration—a scandal that more appropriately should have been called the Iran-Israel-contra affair, considering Israel’s central, though largely hushed-up role in the matter—Abrams was later pardoned by former President George H. W. Bush.

Abrams is also said to have played a major part in instigating a coup attempt in 2002 against Venezuela’s democratically elected president, Hugo Chavez, who has been widely condemned by pro-Israel elements for his friendly relationships with the late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, both targets of Israel’s ire.