Posts
Cheney, the Decider, and their mouthpieces (except “scooter” Libby, nicknamed after Phil Rizzuto of the New York Yankees) have been warning us of the horrible aggressive stance of Iran, just as they did with Iraq. It looks as if they are preparing for a war against Iran, especially with the numerous navel vessels the Pentagon sent there recently. In addition, all of the “intelligence” to justify an attack has the same credibility (almost the same words) as that used to prepare to attack Iraq. If you are in search of real credibility, I would recommend the Dixie Chicks who won five Grammies. I wouldn’t want them in government because they contribute more as things are, but I’d certainly rather listen to them than the Decider crowd. Congratulations, Dixie Chicks. But I digress.
Of course, there is an alternative explanation. The troop “uptick” and the threats against Iran (terrorist Sunni bombs and attacks in Iran just this week) could be a way to keep people’s attention away from the real goal: to stay in Iraq, maintain military bases, and privatize oil, just so long as we decide who gets it. Now Congress is debating the “surge,” not the funding for the whole mess, and in a “non-binding” resolution. People have complained about the “non-binding part,” but the Decided would just use a signing statement to make it non-binding anyway, so what’s the difference? Just cut off the funds. The Absurd Travel Agency will support our troops and bring them home for a paltry 50 billion dollars, as mentioned last week.
Some see a slight problem from the “proof” seen on television about the dreaded weapons Iran is sending. It was quite nice of them to use the Roman alphabet instead of Pharisee (their language) so we could read them. Also, it was quite useful for them to use the Arabic numerals (the Arabs don’t use them) and who knows what the Persians use. Nice of them to use the metric system as well.
You know, one good thing that has come of all of this is that some Americans now know the difference between Iran and Iraq.
The Decider has a few problems, however. Ahmadinejad, the leader of Iran, is funny and has a sense of humor. He is one of the most amusing, intelligent, and interesting figures on the world scene since Quaddafi who usually looked as it he had overdosed on mushrooms with his all-female karate kids bodyguards, living in a tent and taking horses with him everywhere he went. He also wrote a very Fabian tract called “The Green Book.”
Well, Ahmadinejad is funny. In one interview one of his helpers said something to him and the reporter, hoping to catch something, asked “What did he just say?”
“He said my jacket was not straight. Do you like my jacket?” Eyes twinkling.
Then a long question, piling on all the U.S. accusations, and asking “Yes or no?”
“You spend five minutes asking one question and you expect a yes or no? What is this, multiple-choice?”
Well, we are told, this evil man is after weapons of mass destruction, has given arms to Iraq, killed U.S. servicemen, etc. It is clear that we have done these things, but one is not all that convinced about Iran. After all, it’s the same that was said about Iraq and Sadam, and by the same people. It was wrong and proven so about Iraq. In a future edition, The Absurd Times will post some of what Ahmadinejad actually said (it has not been made widely available), but for now you can access it at Ahmadinejadquotes.blogspot.com
The fact is The Decider lied to us about Iraq. The fact is that Iran is not Iraq. The fact is that The U.S. administration would be crazy, absurd, to start a war with Iran. That very fact could make one inevitable.
The transcript for Democracy Now is a good illustration of the show and what the media is doing about this. It looses a bit without the audio of that idiot from the NY Times who was very aggressive about being stupid.
1) New York Times Trumpets Pentagon's Claims Over Iran Sending Bombs to
Iraq [and what’s going on there featuring two very perceptive writers] from Democracynow.org, especially Rick Macarthur with Amy Goodman.
2) *Countdown for Iran
When Commonsense is Nonsense *
*by Ramzy Baroud; February 13, 2007
3) Target Tehran: Washington sets stage for a new confrontation
*by Patrick Cockburn; The Independent
*******************************************************************************
Democracy Now! http:”“www.democracynow.org
New York Times Trumpets Pentagon's Claims Over Iran Sending Bombs to
Iraq
Tuesday, February 13th, 2007
http:”“www.democracynow.org”article.pl’sid=07”02”13”154251
The new accusations of Iranian-supplied bombs in Iraq first appeared in
Saturday's New York Times. The article was titled "Deadliest Bomb in
Iraq is Made by Iran, US Says." Some media critics immediately compared
the New York Times piece to its articles on Saddam Hussein's alleged
weapons program that were used by the Bush administration to make the
case for invading Iraq. [includes rush transcript]
These critics have pointed out two similar features between Saturday's
article and those before the war --- a near-complete reliance on unnamed
government sources, and the by-line of New York Times reporter Michael
R. Gordon.
Gordon and former New York Times reporter Judith Miller co-authored the
infamous September 8, 2002 piece alleging Iraq attempted to purchase
aluminum tubes towards developing nuclear weapons. The New York Times
later singled out the article as part of its editor's note apologizing
for its inaccurate coverage of Iraq and WMD's. > Michael Gordon appeared
on Democracy Now! last March. During our interview, I asked Michael
Gordon about his reporting in the lead-up to the US invasion of Iraq.
* *Michael Gordon*, speaking on Democracy Now!
I'm joined now in the studio by Rick MacArthur. He is the publisher of
Harpers Magazine and author of the book "Second Front: Censorship and
Propaganda In the Gulf War." Craig Unger is still with us.
* * John "Rick" MacArthur*, publisher of Harpers Magazine and author
of the book "Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda In the Gulf
War."
* *Craig Unger*, journalist and author. His latest article appears
in Vanity Fair. It's called "From the Wonderful Folks Who Brought
You Iraq." He is the author of "House of Bush, House of Saud: The
Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
“This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us
provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV
broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.
*AMY GOODMAN: *The new accusations of Iranian-supplied bombs in Iraq
first appeared in Saturday's “New York Times”. The article was headlined
"Deadliest Bomb in Iraq is Made by Iran, US Says." Some media critics
immediately compared the “New York Times” piece to its articles on
Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons program that were used by the Bush
administration to make the case for invading Iraq.
These critics have pointed out two similar features between Saturday's
article and those before the war: near complete reliance on unnamed
government sources and the byline of “New York Times” reporter Michael
R. Gordon.
Gordon and former “New York Times” reporter Judith Miller co-authored
the infamous September 8, 2002 piece, alleging Iraq attempted to
purchase aluminum tubes towards developing nuclear weapons. The “New
York Times” later singled out the article as part of its editor's note
apologizing for its inaccurate coverage of Iraq and WMDs.
Well, Michael Gordon appeared on “Democracy Now!” last March. During our
interview, I asked him about his reporting in the lead-up to the US
invasion of Iraq.
*MICHAEL GORDON: *There was no agency in the American government
that said Saddam was not involved in WMD. You know, the State
Department, although it's turned out to be correct, certainly on
the nuclear issue, did not turn out to be -- you know, didn't
challenge the biological case, the chemical case, and I'm going to
offer you this last thought, and I'm happy to respond to any
questions you have, but you know, there are a number of
complicated WMD issues --
*AMY GOODMAN: *Let me just ask something on that. Are you sorry
you did the piece’ Are you sorry that this piece --
*MICHAEL GORDON: *No, I'm not. I mean, what -- I don't know if you
understand how journalism works, but the way journalism works is
you write what you know, and what you know at the time you try to
convey as best you can, but then you don't stop reporting.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Well, let me, let me --
*MICHAEL GORDON: *Can I answer your question, since you asked me a
question’
*AMY GOODMAN: *Well, no, I wanted to get --
*MICHAEL GORDON: *No, wait a second, if you ask me a question --
I'm happy to answer all your questions, but what I'm trying to
explain to you is one thing. That was what I knew at the time.
It's true that it was the key judgment. It’s the same information
they presented to Colin Powell, by the way, and it's what
persuaded him to go to the United Nations and make the case on the
nuclear tubes. I wrote the contrary case, giving the IAEA equal
time. They disputed it. I don't have a dog in this fight. I didn't
know what was the ultimate truth. When the IAEA came out in
January and disputed it, I reported it.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Michael Gordon, let me just respond. We don’t -- we
have limited time in the program, but I just --
*MICHAEL GORDON: *Well, then you should let me answer your questions.
*AMY GOODMAN: *I did.
*MICHAEL GORDON: *No, you haven’t let me answer your question.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Are you sorry then, that the “New York Times” was
sorry that this piece appeared as it did on the front page of the
“New York Times”.
*MICHAEL GORDON: *I don't think "sorry" is the word the “New York
Times” used.
*AMY GOODMAN: *That was the “New York Times” reporter Michael Gordon
speaking on “Democracy Now!” last March. I’m joined in studio now by
Rick MacArthur, publisher of “Harper’s” magazine, author of the book,
“Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War”, as well as by
Craig Unger, who has this new piece in “Vanity Fair” called ‘From the
Wonderful Folks Who Brought You Iraq.’
Rick MacArthur, your response to the “New York Times” piece and then
pieces, the news conference in Baghdad that people couldn't bring in
their cameras, name names’
*RICK MACARTHUR: *I always read the “New York Times” the way
Sovietologists used to read “Izvestia”, the government newspaper, and I
half-kiddingly always ask the question: is the “New York Times” playing
the role of “Izvestia” or the role of “Pravda”, which was the party
newspaper’ The “New York Times” owes its success, its long-term success,
economic and otherwise, to being close to the government, to being sort
of the semiofficial government newspaper and giving the administration
line to the public fairly unfiltered. And Michael Gordon is just a tool.
He’s just a conduit for this policy that the paper has been pursuing for
decades.
So, what’s interesting about Michael Gordon is that when he did the
reporting on the phony aluminum tube story with Judith Miller four years
ago, he somehow escaped unharmed and is now thriving. He has a book out,
as you saw, and he’s doing very well, and he's going around acting like
he’s an expert on Iraq, when, in fact, he’s still playing the role of
conduit for the official line, the Army line or the government line,
depending on who he’s talking to on what day.
Now, what’s interesting is the play that they gave his story on
Saturday, the Michael Gordon story about the exploding canisters, or
whatever they’re calling them. The canisters are called EFPs. They put
it on the top of the front page, and it was the lead story, actually, in
the Saturday paper. And not far down in the story, you find a paragraph
-- actually, this was in the Monday story -- you find a paragraph where
they say -- and this is very interesting -- that they don't have any
real evidence, any direct evidence, that any of this is true. All they
have is the say-so of the military, of briefers, or the National
Security briefers. There’s one who is unnamed, who’s clearly been
brought in from the civil side of the government to help buttress the
case. Well, if they don't have direct evidence, why is it on the front
page’ Why is it the lead story’
Just to give you a comparison, “Newsday”, a perfectly respectable
newspaper, puts ‘US: Iran is Arming Shia’ on page 22 on Monday. That is,
yesterday. They do a story. They report what the military officials are
claiming, but in the second paragraph, they say the military command in
Baghdad denied, however, that any newly smuggled Iranian weapons were
behind the five crashes of US military helicopters since January 20th,
four confirmed as having been shot down by insurgent gunfire. So that is
what journalism is, contrary to what Michael Gordon says. It’s putting
the story in perspective, pointing out that the guerrilla movement,
whatever you want to call it, in Iraq is broad-based, it’s dominated by
Sunni, not by Shia.
And the most damning omission in the story, if you want to talk about
overall perspective, is complete lack of perspective on who’s fighting
whom, who’s shooting at whom in Iraq. Does the Iranian government really
have an interest in destabilizing what’s now a Shiite-dominated
government’ Doesn't make any sense. If it does make sense to the
administration that the Iranians want to destabilize a Shiite-dominated
government, when they’re a Shiite-ruled nation, then they should explain
it. But there's no logic to it, and there’s just this massive omission.
*AMY GOODMAN: *It’s interesting. When the “New York Times” did that
piece September 8, 2002, talking about, well, allegations of weapons of
mass destruction, Judith Miller and as well as Michael Gordon, the day
that that piece appeared, Vice President Cheney was on the Sunday
morning talk shows. He was holding the “New York Times”, saying, ‘You
don't have to believe me. It’s here in the “New York Times”.’
*RICK MACARTHUR: *Right.
*AMY GOODMAN: *So one confirms the other, and, of course, their article
is based on unnamed sources, of course, in the Bush administration. You
have this press conference on Sunday in Baghdad. Saturday is the opening
salvo with the “New York Times”, once again, front-page piece with
Michael Gordon. But it’s not just Michael Gordon who writes the piece
and he tapes it to the front page of the “Times”. It’s the entire
institution, because the editors decide to put it on the front page.
Now, they’ve already done their, what some call their “mea culpa”, what
I call their ‘kinda culpa,’ on their Iraq coverage, so what do you think
is going on here’
*RICK MACARTHUR: *Well, today, they ran a story on the front page, at
the bottom of the front page, quoting critics, quoting skeptics saying
that maybe there isn’t much to this story. And, of course, you ran the
clip of the general saying that --
*AMY GOODMAN: *Peter Pace.
*RICK MACARTHUR: *Peter Pace, or the chief of staff, saying we don't
have any direct evidence that the Iranian government is behind this. It
might be Iranians, but we don't know that the Iranian government is
behind it.
So what’s going on is the “New York Times”, again, the publisher of “New
York Times”, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., trying to keep his newspaper where
it’s been historically, which is close to the government as a spokesman
or a semiofficial spokesman for the government. I always call it the
‘Government Gazette.’ And the journalism that Mr. Gordon talks about is
left to other lesser mortals like you and me and my colleague here, Mr.
Unger, because that requires actually thinking before you just repeat
the stuff that’s given to you by the high official sources.
Now, I’m sure they’re also very nervous right now that they’re going to
get it wrong, which is why they ran the story on the front page today
trying to cover themselves. But their record is so bad now on getting
the story straight that I don't know why anybody would read the “New
York Times” anymore for straight news.
What people are doing now is they’re reading Paul Krugman's column.
Krugman had a very good column yesterday, sort of picking apart the case
that the institutional paper is making for Iranian meddling in Iraq and
asking all the questions that Gordon should have asked or that James
Glanz, the other reporter, should have asked in his story yesterday, but
including the pertinent fact that there were no cell phones or cameras
or anything allowed at this big security briefing in Baghdad.
*AMY GOODMAN: *And the rationale for that’
*RICK MACARTHUR: *The rationale for that is that the “Times” is covering
itself more broadly now. My question to Paul Krugman would be, are we at
the point now where a columnist for the “New York Times”, and not even a
journalist, is going to blow the whistle on the newspaper, on the
institution that he works for’ Because at this point it’s such a blatant
violation of what’s correct in journalism, that a columnist needs to
comment on it, that Krugman or Bob Herbert or somebody has to take his
own newspaper to task on this. I don't know if they’ve got the
wherewithal or the guts to do it, but somebody has got to do it.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Craig Unger, you have been working on this piece that you
did in “Vanity Fair” for many months, "From the Wonderful Folks Who
Brought You Iraq," looking at the same neocon ideologues behind the Iraq
war, who have been using the same tactics, alliances with shady exiles,
dubious intelligence on WMD, to push for the bombing of Iran, as
President Bush ups the pressure on Tehran. Is he planning to double his
Middle East bet’ And then, this all explodes this weekend, as your piece
comes out. Did this surprise you’
*CRAIG UNGER: *No. In fact, it was very much in line with the narrative
that I’d started. And I would just add to all this, if this really was
about who is killing Americans there, the vast, vast majority of
American deaths in Iraq have been in the Sunni-dominated areas. So the
real question should be, where are they getting their weapons from’ But
what you see has happened is that our policy has had extraordinary
unintended consequences. We have inadvertently tilted towards the
Shiites and empowered Iran. Now, we seem to be tilting back towards the
Sunnis, and you see this Sunni-Shiite civil war within Iraq potentially
spreading throughout the entire region. So we don't want to alienate our
Sunni allies, like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, who may be helping
the Sunni insurgency.
*RICK MACARTHUR: *Well, they most definitely are help being the Sunni
insurgency. I mean, I can't give you a document that shows that Saudi
money is going directly to the Sunni insurgents, but it’s a very, very
good bet, just as it was a very good bet before 9”11 that the Saudis
were funding the Islamic fundamentalist charitable organizations that
helped cover for the 9”11 hijackers. But they get special treatment,
because the Bush family is friends with the Saudi oligarchy and with the
Gulf oil Arabs and the Persian Gulf oil oligarchies. And so, the “New
York Times” follows their lead. You don’t see stories in the “New York
Times” speculating about Saudi grants of money going, or through the
back door going to fund the Sunni insurgency. At least, I haven't seen
any. Maybe you’ve seen some.
*CRAIG UNGER: *No.
*RICK MACARTHUR: *Yeah.
*AMY GOODMAN: *You begin your book, “Second Front”, talking about Saudi
Arabia being the ones to decide what press gets to cover -- that was the
Gulf War.
*RICK MACARTHUR: *Right.
*AMY GOODMAN: *But maybe you could repeat that, because here we are many
years later, more than a decade later, and that part of the story, the
key role of the media in the telling of all of this.
*RICK MACARTHUR: *Right. Well, this is, of course, part of what my book
is about, what is what Mr. Unger’s book is about, almost entirely, is
that the Bush family, when they decided it was time to move against
Saddam Hussein, their former ally, for getting too greedy, for taking
too much oil from Kuwait or trying to take the whole thing over, as
April Glaspie -- remember April Glaspie said, ‘We didn’t think he was
going to take the whole thing.’
*AMY GOODMAN: *The former US ambassador to Iraq.
*RICK MACARTHUR: *The former US ambassador to Iraq. So, when the Bushes
make policy, they talked to -- at that point it was King Fahd, and now
it’s King -- sorry.
*CRAIG UNGER: *Abdullah.
*RICK MACARTHUR: *Abdullah. And they say, ‘Well, we want to put -- we
would like to have a presence in the Middle East. We would like to have
troops in Saudi Arabia, but we need permission from our loyal allies.’
And so, they come up with a case for a threatened invasion, an imminent
invasion from Kuwait by Saddam into Saudi Arabia, which was a pretext
completely unsupported by documentary evidence. But they make the case,
and they send the troops to Saudi Arabia. And then -- it’s a wonderful
irony about freedom of the press in this country -- they assign to
Prince Bandar, a member of the royal family and then the very
influential Saudi ambassador to Washington, the role of deciding who
gets credentials in the US press to go to Saudi Arabia to cover the
build-up.
And I have this scene at the beginning of the book, where the Washington
bureau chiefs of the major networks -- ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN -- go to
Bandar's house on Chain Bridge Road in McLean, Virginia --
*AMY GOODMAN: *Nicknamed ‘Bandar Bush.’
*RICK MACARTHUR: *-- and they basically kiss his pinky ring and beg him
for credentials. So it’s a Saudi monarch or aristocrat deciding what the
American press gets to cover, and that sort of sets the tone for the
rest of the Gulf War coverage, and it brings us to this very -- it’s not
funny. It brings us to this absolutely nearly disastrous end.
*AMY GOODMAN: *By the way, AP reported in December, private Saudis
supplying money for arms to Sunnis, including anti-aircraft arms.
*RICK MACARTHUR: *Again, I urge people to read other newspapers and to
read the Associated Press. The Associated Press, which I used to make
fun of, I’ll admit, as a former UPI man, has become the alternative
source of information in the United States, along with the BBC and a
couple of British papers. The AP has gotten very good. And if you just
read a straight Associated Press story on any of these stories -- Iraq,
Iranian meddling, alleged Iranian meddling in Iraq, and so on and so
forth -- you would get a straighter story, a better understanding of
what’s going on than you would get from the “New York Times”.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Well, Craig Unger, I’ll give you the last word, since
your book was called “House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret
Relationship Between the World’s Two Most Powerful Dynasties”.
*CRAIG UNGER: *Well, I mean, I think the scary thing is, will this
happen again’ Will we repeat history’ I mean, it’s hard to forget events
that just happened three years ago. If it happens again with Iran --
it’s been a catastrophe in Iraq. If it happens again with Iran, I think
the consequences are much, much greater, potentially. That is, you can
see Iran easily blockading the Straits of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf,
which would cut off about 40% of the oil in the world, and oil prices
would go up to at least $125 a barrel. That could precipitate sort of a
meltdown of the whole Western economy and almost a global oil war. Iran
is very close to China, in terms of China is the biggest customer there.
You effectively would have a war going on in three of the world's
biggest oil-producing countries -- Iran, Iraq and potentially Saudi Arabia.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Well, we’re going to leave it there. I want to thank you
both very much for being with us. Craig Unger, his piece is in “Vanity
Fair”, ‘From the Wonderful Folks Who Brought You Iraq’; and Rick
MacArthur, publisher of “Harper's” magazine, author of “Second Front:
Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War”, thank you both.
2
*ZNet | Iran*
*Countdown for Iran
When Commonsense is Nonsense *
*by Ramzy Baroud; February 13, 2007*
The relationship between Iran and the United States is one of
peculiar temperament: intense but accommodating at times,
barefaced and seemingly self-destructive at others.
Currently, the latter estimation rings truer: the US naval
military build up in the east Mediterranean and the Gulf,
conjoined with an intense and sinister propaganda campaign that
is being drummed up at home, among other signals, are all
pointing to one ill-fated conclusion: the Bush administration,
entranced in its foolishness, has decided to discard, and in its
entirety, the Baker-Hamilton recommendations; instead of
engaging Iran politically, the US is opting to engage it
militarily.
Is it possible that the increasingly prevailing analyses are
true, as fluently communicated in a recent commentary by
Australian journalist John Pilger, that the Bush administration
is gearing up for an attack against Iran as a way of “buying
time for its disaster in Iraq”?
Pilger suggests another motivating factor for Bush’s new
possible war: “As the American disaster in Iraq deepens and
domestic and foreign opposition grows, neocon fanatics such as
Vice-President Cheney believe their opportunity to control
Iran's oil will pass unless they act no later than the spring.”
But how can attacking Iran buy the ‘Bushites’ time, if they,
more than any one of us know the deeply entrenched Iranian
presence and influence in Iraq, often directly over prominent
elements of the pro-American Shia government: one of whom is the
indestructible Abdel Aziz Al Hakim?
“Al Hakim spent 20 years in Iran prior to the fall of Saddam and
is clearly allied to the Mullahs,” writers US commentator Mike
Whitney. “His militia, the Badr Brigade, was trained by the
Iranian Republican Guards (as well as the CIA) and is perhaps
the most feared death squad in all of Iraq. Al Hakim’s militia
operates out of the Iraqi interior ministry and is deeply
engaged in the purging of Sunnis from Baghdad.”
Isn’t it rational to envisage that an attack on Iran would upset
the cozy relations that the Americans have cultivated with
al-Hakim and such disreputable characters, thus lead to further
destabilisation of Iraq, to more of the same unmitigated
violence, where well over 3,000 US soldiers, nearly 1,000
contractors have met their doom, not counting the 45 thousand
who were evacuated due to injuries and other medical
emergencies, as indicated by Iraqbodycount.org?
US sources claim that innumerable Iraqis receive their salaries
from Tehran (that is aside from the alleged 40,000 Iranian
agents in Iraq, which the US media ceaselessly talks about), an
indication of Iran’s incessant efforts to obtain the loyalty of
many of Iraq’s Shia, and to dig into such valuable human
reserves whenever needed, such as in the case of a war with the
United States.
Considering Iran’s “natural affinity with the Shia majority of
Iraq”, as accurately depicted by Pilger, by provoking a military
showdown with Iran, the US is condemned to broaden its military
confrontation in Iraq, which would then include Shia as well as
Sunni, in a most imprudent barter to achieve an impossible
military mission in Iran. Since airpower and commando style
‘surgical’ operations inside Iranian territories -- that would
most likely involve some Israeli special army units -- are all
that the US can conjure up at the moment, for ground troops are
no longer a palpable option (half of the recently announced US
military surge of 21,000 troops in Iraq will constitute from the
same soldiers who are already serving in the country, simply by
prolonging their tours and cancelling some vacations) one can
safely conclude that any US military adventure in Iran will
bring an indecisive outcome, at best, if not a wholesale
disaster, a most likely possibility.
How about the other suggestion, that neocon fanatics believe
their opportunity to control Iran's oil will pass unless they
act no later than the spring?
This suggestion would also seem doubtful, for the neocon’s war
architects are still scrambling to avoid the blame of the Iraq
fiasco and are at odds with Bush himself and his war generals,
using their wide sway over US mainstream media to blame the
president for all the ills that have befallen the country --
ills that were born mostly from their own ominous war stratagems
and their unwarranted commitment to Israel’s security at the
expense of their country’s own. How can such a group of
intellectuals still effectively hold sufficient clout to lead
the US into another ill-advised war? Moreover, how can Cheney
and his discredited ilk even contemplate the seizure of Iran’s
oil if Iraq’s oil industry is still in shambles and has proven
ineffective to settle the heavy bill of war, which is moving its
way toward the half trillion dollar mark?
Considering these difficult questions, one must assume that any
attack on Iraq is both irrational from a military viewpoint and
self-defeating from a political one. However, the quandary with
any political analysis of this subject that consults reason or
even Machiavellian realpolitik is that it fails to consider
history, and in this case, recent history which taught us that
the Bush administration functions in a vacuum, separate from
commonsense or any other kind of sense. It was around this time,
some four years ago, that many hoped that the American military
buildup in the Gulf region was aimed at strengthening the US
political position against Iraq, to simply convey to former
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that the US ‘means business’. It
was clear from the outset to any even-headed observer that a war
against Iraq would destabilise the region and harm the United
States’ overall interests in the Middle East. I stated that
numerous times on American radio programmes, receiving all sorts
of censure for being anti-American and unpatriotic.
Now, we stand at the same critical junction, four years later,
as US news networks are readying for another awesome fireworks
show, this time over Tehran; dehumanisation of the Iranians has
already begun; the public is being fed with all kinds of
half-truths and all sorts of rubbish about the Islamic Republic
and its people; insanity has returned and the voices of reasons
are again, labelled, shunned and marginalised. But for obvious
reasons, this time around, war is an evident mistake, a fact
that should irk and make every sensible American, every
Congressman, every commentator question the wisdom of a new war
while the country is on the verge of defeat in another.
Such a reality suggests that the Bush administration is working
against the interests of his own people and makes Pilger’s
analysis the more poignant; indeed, as irrational as it may
seem, the US could very much be on its way to war with Iran.
But as explained by Joschka Fischer, Germany's foreign minister
and vice chancellor from 1998-2005, “getting into Iraq and
defeating Saddam was easy. But today, America is stuck there and
knows neither how to win, nor how to get out.” Fischer writes:
“A mistake is not corrected by repeating it over and over again.
Perseverance in error does not correct the error; it merely
exacerbates it.”
But this is exactly the key trait that has defined the current
Bush administration since its early years in office. It’s
committed to duplicating failures; instead of abandoning the
Iraqi ship, it insists on setting sale in the same tumultuous
sea, another defected one.
Indeed, the US is again back on the same self-destruct mode, in
the name of national security, regional stability, staying the
course‚ and all the rest. Reality cannot be any further from the
truth, however. A war against Iran will further exasperate the
instability of the region and compromise the security of the
United States, at home and abroad. It might also be the end of
American military adventurism in the region for some time, but
at a price so heavy, so unbearable. If Iraq’s cakewalk has cost
the lives of 650,000 Iraqis, how many more must die in broader
war before Bush bows to commonsense and brings the grinding
wheel of war to a halt?
-Ramzy Baroud’s latest book, The Second Palestinian Intifada: A
Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (Pluto Press), is available at
Amazon.com and also from the University of Michigan Press.
Baroud is a veteran journalist and a human rights advocate at a
London-based NGO; he is the editor of PalestineChronicle.com;
his website is ramzybaroud.net
3
ZNet | Iran
Target Tehran: Washington sets stage for a new confrontation
*by Patrick Cockburn; The Independent
<http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/>; February 13, 2007*
The United States is moving closer to war with Iran by accusing the “highest levels” of the Iranian government of supplying sophisticated roadside bombs that have killed 170 US troops and wounded 620.
The allegations against Iran are similar in tone and credibility to those made four years ago by the US government about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction in order to justify the invasion of 2003.
Senior US defence officials in Baghdad, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they believed the bombs were manufactured in Iran and smuggled across the border to Shia militants in Iraq. The weapons, identified as “explosively formed penetrators” (EFPs) are said to be capable of destroying an Abrams tank.
The officials speaking in Baghdad used aggressive rhetoric suggesting that Washington wants to ratchet up its confrontation with Tehran. It has not ruled out using armed force and has sent a second carrier task force to the Gulf.
“We assess that these activities are coming from senior levels of the Iranian government,” said an official in Baghdad, charging that the explosive devices come from the al-Quds Brigade and noting that it answers to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader. This is the first time the US has openly accused the Iranian government of being involved in sending weapons that kill Americans to Iraq.
The allegations by senior but unnamed US officials in Baghdad and Washington are bizarre. The US has been fighting a Sunni insurgency in Iraq since 2003 that is deeply hostile to Iran.
The insurgent groups have repeatedly denounced the democratically elected Iraqi government as pawns of Iran. It is unlikely that the Sunni guerrillas have received significant quantities of military equipment from Tehran. Some 1,190 US soldiers have been killed by so-called improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Iraq since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. But most of them consist of heavy artillery shells (often 120mm or 155mm) taken from the arsenals of the former regime and detonated by blasting caps wired to a small battery. The current is switched on either by a command wire or a simple device such as the remote control used for children’s toys or to open garage doors.
Such bombs were used by guerrillas during the Irish war of independence in 1919-21 against British patrols and convoys. They were commonly used in the Second World War, when “shaped charges”, similar in purpose to the EFPs of which the US is now complaining, were employed by all armies. The very name - explosive formed penetrators - may have been chosen to imply that a menacing new weapon has been developed.
At the end of last year the Baker-Hamilton report, written by a bipartisan commission of Republicans and Democrats, suggested opening talks with Iran and Syria to resolve the Iraq crisis. Instead, President Bush has taken a precisely opposite line, blaming Iran and Syria for US losses in Iraq.
In the past month Washington has arrested five Iranian officials in a long-established office in Arbil, the Kurdish capital. An Iranian diplomat was kidnapped in Baghdad, allegedly by members of an Iraqi military unit under US influence. President George Bush had earlier said that Iranians deemed to be targeting US forces could be killed, which seemed to be opening the door to assassinations.
The statements from Washington give the impression that the US has been at war with Shia militias for the past three-and-a-half years while almost all the fighting has been with the Sunni insurgents. These are often led by highly trained former officers and men from Saddam Hussein’s elite military and intelligence units. During the Iran-Iraq war between 1980 and 1988, the Iraqi leader, backed by the US and the Soviet Union, was able to obtain training in advanced weapons for his forces.
The US stance on the military capabilities of Iraqis today is the exact opposite of its position in four years ago. Then President Bush and Tony Blair claimed that Iraqis were technically advanced enough to produce long-range missiles and to be close to producing a nuclear device. Washington is now saying that Iraqis are too backward to produce an effective roadside bomb and must seek Iranian help.
The White House may have decided that, in the run up to the 2008 presidential election, it would be much to its political advantage in the US to divert attention from its failure in Iraq by blaming Iran for being the hidden hand supporting its opponents.
It is likely that Shia militias have received weapons and money from Iran and possible that the Sunni insurgents have received some aid. But most Iraqi men possess weapons. Many millions of them received military training under Saddam Hussein. His well-supplied arsenals were all looted after his fall. No specialist on Iraq believes that Iran has ever been a serious promoter of the Sunni insurgency.
The evidence against Iran is even more insubstantial than the faked or mistaken evidence for Iraqi WMDs disseminated by the US and Britain in 2002 and 2003. The allegations appear to be full of exaggerations. Few Abrams tanks have been destroyed. It implies the Shias have been at war with the US while in fact they are controlled by parties which make up the Iraqi government.
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