Bernie Sanders' "Truther" Adviser Says Israel Bigger Threat Than ISIS

The debates made it clear that Bernie Sanders does not understand foreign policy. And when it comes to trying to understand it, he has reached out to extremists and fringe figures.

Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell — and who harshly criticized Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq — said that he has given Sanders his advice.

He has also said that Vice President Dick Cheney should be "in jail for war crimes" and that some Republicans, including John McCain were "bordering on being traitors" for their opposition to President Barack Obama's Iran nuclear deal.

Lawrence Wilkerson is basically the sort of guy you see being interviewed on Al Jazeera or quoted at DailyKos and his views are not only crazy, but he has a special level of crazy hatred stocked up for the Jewish state.

Lawrence Wilkerson, who once served as Secretary of State Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff, believes that the chemical weapons used in Syria may have been an Israeli “false flag” operation aimed at implicating Bashar Assad’s regime.

Wilkerson made his astounding assertion in an interview on Current TV, the network once owned by former Vice President Al Gore and recently purchased by Al-Jazeera.

Wilkerson said that the evidence that it was Assad’s regime that had used the chemical weapons was “flaky” and that it could very well have been the rebels or Israel who were the perpetrators. Asked why Israel would do such a thing, Wilkerson said: “I think we’ve got a basically geostrategically, geopolitical inept regime in Tel Aviv right now.”

So Bernie Sanders is turning to a Truther for foreign policy advice. A Truther who really, really hates the Jewish State.

 “They’re the most predatory capitalist state in the eastern Mediterranean, and that’s saying something because we [the U.S.], China, and Russia have exemplified predatory capitalism in the last 20 years, but Israel outstrips us all.”

And the "predatory capitalist" Israel is really the problem. Not ISIS.

“By the way,” he boomed, “the problems that you’ve [the U.S.] elevated to the top of your list, like ISIS [the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria], are ridiculously insignificant in the greater scheme of things.”

Currently, Wilkerson laments, the U.S. is “tactically trying to build stability in a country that’s not even a country [Iraq].” At the same time, it is ignoring the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. He says that if the U.S. were to focus on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, and make it better in any way or even resolve it, that would aid the U.S. strategically in every other problem facing the region, including instability in Iraq.

For some reason, the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds would all get along... if it just wasn't for Israel.

He warned that within the next 10 to 15 years, problems related to the Israeli state will grow in magnitude, carrying unimaginable consequences. He told MintPress that if he were king of the U.S. for one day, he would force the Mediterranean country to cease settlement activity.

Well that escalated quickly, your majesty. And Wilkerson's agenda is about as subtle as well... this...

Here, for instance, is what he told Robert Dreyfuss, the former Middle East Editor of Lyndon LaRouche's Executive Intelligence Reviewand now a Senior Correspondent for the American Prospect and Contributing Editor to The Nation, in 2006, about David Wurmser, Doug Feith and other "neocons" in the Bush Defense Department:

A lot of these guys, including Wurmser, I looked at as card-carrying members of the Likud party, as I did with Feith. You wouldn't open their wallet and find a card, but I often wondered if their primary allegiance was to their own country or to Israel."

This is who Bernie Sanders is taking foreign policy advice from. After Diane Rehm pulled the same anti-Semitic attack on him.

And aside from Israel, there are some obvious questions as to just whom Wilkerson is partying with these days.

Here’s another tidbit for you. I was in Havana when Ahmadinejad was there. I can’t reveal my sources, but not only did the Cuban government give him a third- or fourth-level award—which really made him angry because it wasn’t the top or even the second-level award...

Might be time to discuss what Wilkerson was doing in an enemy nation back then and what kind of inside sources he seems to be claiming inside its Communist government.