Setting the Propaganda Stage for an Attack on Iran: American Hegemony Is Not Guaranteed

by Paul Craig Roberts www.globalresearch.ca

Exactly as the British press predicted, last week's congressional testimony by Gen. David Petraeus and Green Zone administrator Ryan Crocker set the propaganda stage for a Bush regime attack on Iran. On April 10 Robert H. Reid of AP News reported: "The top US commander has shifted the focus from al-Qaida to Iranian-backed 'special groups' as the main threat . . . The shift was articulated by Gen. Petraeus who told Congress that 'unchecked, the special groups pose the greatest long-term threat to the viability of a democratic Iraq.'"

According to the neocon propaganda, the "special groups" (have you ever heard of them before?) are breakaway elements of al Sadr's militia.

Nonsensical on its face, the Petraeus/Crocker testimony is just another mask in the macabre theatre of lies that the Bush regime has told in order to justify its wars of naked aggression against Muslims.

Fact #1: Al Sadr is not allied with Iran. He speaks with an Iraqi voice and has his militia under orders to stand down from conflict. The Badr militia is the Shi'ite militia that is allied with Iran. Why did the US and its Iraqi puppet Maliki attack al Sadr's militia and not the Badr militia or the breakaway elements of Sadr's militia that allegedly now operate as gangs?

Fact #2: The Shi'ite militias and the Sunni insurgents are armed with weapons available from the unsecured weapon stockpiles of Saddam Hussein's army. If Iran were arming Iraqis, the Iraqi insurgents and militias would have armor-piercing rocket-propelled grenades and surface-to-air missiles. These two weapons would neutralize the US advantage by enabling Iraqis to destroy US helicopter gunships, aircraft and tanks. The Iraqis cannot mass their forces as they have no weapons against US air power. To destroy US tanks, Iraqis have to guess the roads US vehicles will travel and bury bombs constructed from artillery shells. The inability to directly attack armor and to defend against air attack denies offensive capability to Iraqis.

If the Iranians desired to arm Iraqis, they obviously would provide these two weapons that would change the course of the war.

Keep Reading...

punditman says...Since when did the Bush regime let the facts get in the way of a good opportunity to lie?

Bush Regime Normalcy

Arrogant Lies

by BRIAN CLOUGHLEY

www.counterpunch.org

Last month:

"an Egyptian citizen was killed when a [US] Navy-contracted ship fired warning shots at approaching motorboats in the Suez Canal. The United States Embassy in Cairo and the Navy initially maintained that, according to the security team aboard the ship, there had been no casualties. But on Wednesday, an embassy statement said it "appears that an Egyptian in the boat was killed by one of the warning shots." - Associated Press, March 27.

That report wasn't carried by any major US newspaper or TV channel but demonstrates the arrogance of Bush Washington which encourages knee-jerk lying, reluctant retraction when it becomes obvious that a lie was told, and making a grudging admission later. These are not just indications of dishonesty and evil in the Bush-Cheney administration : they are evidence of the deep and horrible malaise that has penetrated Washington's officialdom. Who killed the man? We don't know. We will never know. Nobody will ever be prosecuted for the slaughter of this Egyptian citizen. He is a non-person : just another raghead who got in the way of the United States of America. The lies about his murder by a "warning shot" didn't work, but who cares, anyway?

It doesn't matter that some poor Egyptian, trying to make a few cents by selling trinkets to people on passing ships in his country's Canal (a trade that has existed for over 130 years), is murdered by trigger-happy mercenaries. It's all part of the great con-trick, the idiot "war on terror". And it shows that the Bush-Cheney mentality is alive and thriving throughout the armed forces and intelligence agencies and among those responsible for anonymous brutal attacks which take place in Africa, the Middle East and, especially, Pakistan. Members of the special forces are accountable to nobody for what they do. These people are exempt from scrutiny of any sort, all in the sacred name of 'security', which is simply a cover for official permission to murder whom and when they want. (In a TV comedy series in the UK many years ago the actor playing a civil servant was asked about the Official Secrets Act which forbids revelation of uncomfortable facts. "The Official Secrets Act," he said, "is not there to protect Secrets--it's there to protect OFFICIALS." Humor is sometimes more ironic and accurate than intended.)

Full Article...

punditman says...To coin a phrase from someone else, it's "just another day in the empire."

Robert Fisk: Semantics can't mask Bush's chicanery

This goes beyond hollow laughter. Since when did armies go around 're-liberating'

After his latest shenanigans, I've come to the conclusion that George Bush is the first US president to march backwards. First we had weapons of mass destruction. Then, when they proved to be a myth, Bush told us we had stopped Saddam's "programmes" for weapons of mass destruction (which happened to be another lie).

Now he's gone a stage further. After announcing victory in Iraq in 2003 and "mission accomplished" and telling us how this enormous achievement would lead the 21st century into a "shining age of human liberty", George Bush told us this week that "thanks to the surge, we've renewed and revived the prospect of success".

Now let's take a look at this piece of chicanery and subject it to a little linguistic analysis. Five years ago, it was victory – ie success – but this has now been transmogrified into a mere "prospect" of success. And not a "prospect", mark you, that has even been glimpsed. No, we have "renewed" and "revived" this prospect. "Revived", as in "brought back from the dead". Am I the only one to be sickened by this obscene semantics? How on earth can you "renew" a "prospect", let alone a prospect that continues to be bathed in Iraqi blood, a subject Bush wisely chose to avoid?

Keep Reading...

Meet the U.S. War Machine's worst nightmare

by Tarnjit Johal and Anita Krajnc
April 11, 2008

Last month, for the first time, the Iraqi-Canadian community came together to organize a week of action in Toronto to commemorate the 5th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. rabbletv covered this historic occasion and interviewed the keynote speaker, American-Iraqi peace activist Dr. Dahlia Wasfi.

Dahlia Wasfi left her medical career in 2002 and became a full-time activist and speaker calling for an immediate and unconditional withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. She uses personal stories and hard-hitting analysis of the conditions faced by Iraqis combined with a passionate and often highly comedic delivery to put a human face on the conflict. In her powerful oratory, she is a blend of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X or maybe Karl Marx and Groucho Marx, as one commentator on an Internet message board put it. In April 2006, she appeared before the Democratic progressive caucus's congressional forum on Iraq.

As the daughter of an Iraqi Muslim father originally from Basra, Iraq and an American Jewish mother from New York City, she says both sides of her family have faced genocide. First, her Ashkenazi Jewish grandparents fled the Nazis in Vienna in the 1930s. Now the Iraqi side of her family is facing genocide as a result of the U.S. attack and occupation of Iraq.

She describes the situation of her relatives on her father's side: "[They] are not living, but dying, under the occupation of this [Bush] administration's deadly foray in Iraq. From the lack of security to the lack of basic supplies to the lack of electricity to the lack of potable water to the lack of jobs to the lack of reconstruction to the lack of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, they are much worse off now than before we invaded. 'Never again' should apply to them, too."

"I have the credibility," Wasfi says, "to come forward and I'm willing to risk the false label of anti-Semitism to condemn the policies of the United States and Israel and its continued oppression of the Arab world."

In the rabbletv interview, Dahlia Wasfi confronts the complacency and fatigue that characterizes the reporting of the war in mainstream media. In a country that worships its military, the U.S. corporate media has failed to acknowledge the concerns of returning war veterans. There was a complete blackout, in mainstream U.S. media, of the recent Winter Soldier testimonies, which ran March 13-16 in Silver Spring, Maryland. U.S. veterans who served in the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan testified to give an accurate account of what is really happening on a daily basis on the ground in these countries. rabbletv broadcast independent media coverage of these testimonies by DemocracyNow! and The Real News.

Keep Reading...

Media cheerleaders miss story

by Linda McQuaig

To listen to the media tell it, Canada scored a victory last week at the NATO summit. We got the extra 1,000 troops that the Harper government said were needed to continue our involvement in the Afghan war.

So the fact that we're going to continue to fight in Afghanistan — which most Canadians oppose, according to the polls — has been transformed into a victory. We did it! We got the extra troops for a war Canadians don't want! Bravo!

Actually, the media have confused the Harper government achieving its own objectives with the national interest being advanced.

Yes, the staunchly pro-Washington Harper government cleverly manipulated the weak Liberal opposition into supporting the Afghan military venture, largely by presenting it as an international duty mandated by NATO.

In fact, the countries that make up NATO have no more interest in fighting in Afghanistan than the Canadian public does, which is why the 1,000 extra troops are coming from the United States — the one country that is keen to fight over there. But our media turned the situation into a mini-drama: Would Harper succeed at NATO or wouldn't he? It was easy to lose sight of the real story: The U.S. has succeeded in getting Canada to be its lead partner fighting an unpopular counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan.

In fact, the Harper government has recently made two agreements that have quietly moved us into deeper co-operation with the U.S. military and U.S. foreign policy.

Full Article...

Linda McQuaig is a journalist and author. Her most recent book is Holding the Bully's Coat: Canada and the U.S. Empire. Linda McQuaig's column is originally published by The Toronto Star.

punditman says...In the Full Article link above, Linda McQuaig notes how the media missed out on three very important stories, all directly affecting Canadian policy and sovereignty.

Report From Iran: Should We Really Bomb These People?

By Larry Beinhart, AlterNet.

The author explains, "Iranians are among the most gracious and hospitable people I've ever met."

I'm in Shiraz, on the way to Esfahan.

It's good to get out of gray, smoggy Tehran, one of the least photogenic cities in the world, where black is the new black, from the hejabs on down.

One of the attractions of Shiraz is the tomb of Hafez, a Persian poet from the 14th century. It's thronged at night. Iranians bring flowers, then stand or kneel beside the sarcophagus and recite his poems. My personal reaction is, this is how writers should always be treated.

Iranians are among the most gracious and hospitable people I've ever met.

The question, of course, is whether we should bomb these people?

In America today, we tend to see things in Manichaean terms. That is, we divide things into absolute opposites, light and dark, good and evil, us and them.

We could, if we went back far enough, blame that on them. The word Manichaean refers to the Persian prophet Mani (from around 250 AD). The whole notion of good and evil, with man in the middle, having to make a choice, then rewarded and condemned in an afterlife, goes back to an even earlier Persian prophet, Zoroaster, from around 1,000 BC. Those ideas entered Judaism during the Babylonian exile and the liberation of the Jews by Cyrus the Great of Persia, and from there into Christianity.

There are still Zoroastrians and Jews in modern-day Persia, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

These are people with a rich and varied history. A very humanistic history.

The question is, why should we bomb these people?

The answer is that they are part of the Axis of Evil!

Iranians are somewhat confused by that designation.

The United States was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, by a ragged group of conspirators called Al Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, headquartered in Afghanistan, where they were protected and nurtured by the Taliban. The Taliban were, and are, fanatical, fundamentalist Sunnis. They're the ones who put women in burkhas, those full-body coverings and veils; required men to be bearded; and banned all music, television, movies, photographs, statues, stuffed animals and dolls.

The Taliban came to power in 1996. They were supported by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

They were opposed by the Northern Alliance. The Northern Alliance was supported by Russia, India and, most of all, by Iran.

Full Article..

punditman says...From the article link above:

Iran is, ultimately, ruled by the Supreme Leader. He is deemed to be infallible. In 2003 he issued a fatwa, a ruling of holy law, against the development and use of nuclear weapons. This is when, according to the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, Iran stopped such developments.

Iran claims it only wants nuclear energy...At least 56 countries have nuclear research reactors.

If they had nuclear weapons and used them, especially if they used them aggressively, as a first strike, then Israel and the United States would retaliate with far more force and effectively destroy Iran. What we are likely to have in reality is the sort of mutual stand-off we had with the Soviet Union for 50 years.

punditman further says...

So we are supposed to believe that this is Iran's intent; we are supposed to believe that an ancient civilization is engrossed in the notion of collective suicide. Ah...unlikely, Sherlock! Do your flipping homework.

Petraeus Testimony May Signal Iran Attack

by Paul Craig Roberts

On April 5, the London Telegraph reported that "British officials gave warning yesterday that America's commander in Iraq will declare that Iran is waging war against the U.S.-backed Baghdad government. A strong statement from Gen. David Petraeus about Iran's intervention in Iraq could set the stage for a U.S. attack on Iranian military facilities, according to a Whitehall assessment." The neocon lackey Petraeus has had his script written for him by Cheney, and Petraeus together with neocon warmonger Ryan Crocker, the U.S. governor of the Green Zone in Baghdad, will present Congress next Tuesday and Wednesday with the lies, for which the road has been well paved by neocon propagandists such as Kimberly Kagan, that "the U.S. must recognize that Iran is engaged in a full-up proxy war against it in Iraq." Don't expect Congress to do anything except to egg on the attack. On April 3, the International Herald Tribune reported that senators and representatives have made millions of dollars from their investments in defense companies totaling $196 million. Rep. Ike Skelton, the Democratic chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, is already on board with the attack on Iran. The Telegraph quotes Skelton: "Iran is the bull in the china shop. In all of this, they seem to have links to all of the Shi'ite groups, whether they be political or military." Keep Reading...

40 Years Ago Today: Silence is Betrayal (MLK anti-war speech)

punditman says...

Early morning, April 4
Shot rings out in the Memphis sky
Free at last, they took your life
They could not take your pride

U2 - Pride (In the name of Love)

I was just a little kid when, 40 years ago today, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. But I still recall the event vividly: having heard the terrible news of another violent calamnity in America (our neighbour to the south), my mother was crying, sobbing that "they've killed Martin Luther King."

One year earlier to the day, at Riverside Church in New York City, Dr. King delivered an impassioned speech against the Vietnam War.

His assassination led to riots in more than 100 American cities.

The Audacity of Depression

punditman says...
Joe Bageant takes up where Hunter S. Thompson left off. Read the whole thing. You will even chuckle.

Rage fatigue, plastic dirt and happy hour in techno-totalitarian America

By Joe Bageant

One of the best things about the hundred or so book festivals in America is that, with luck, a writer can manage to get drunk with some of his or her readers. And with more luck, the readers pick up the tab. Bear in mind that 90% of all real writers, people for whom writing is their sole income, spend much of their time counting their change in the rest room of the hotels where they are being put up while on tour. Believe me, there are better rackets than writing.

So here I am at the Virginia Festival of the Book copping a smoke on the back dining patio of the Omni Hotel in Charlottesville with one of my readers -- a somewhat elegant sixty-plus blonde who runs a small public library financial support group down in ancient marshy Northumberland County, Virginia. Created in 1648, it is the area James A. Michener wrote about in Chesapeake, and a place where, she tells me, periwinkles planted three hundred years ago on the graves of slaves still bloom. My wife, a historical librarian doing colonial African-American research, tells me these periwinkle marked slave graves can be found throughout Virginia.

Immensely energetic and a lifelong activist for literacy and informed thought, this cigarette voiced Northumberland librarian has built the county's new little library, and even managed to coax enough money out of the local government for two employees. In a county with a population of 12,000, that's no small political feat.

At the moment though, politically speaking, the Obama-Hillary dirt fight is in full fury, so I asked the obligatory question of the week, "Who will you vote for?"

"Oh, Obama, I guess. It's so hard to get excited over the elections. Lately I've been just plain depressed," she said.

"About what?"

"Oh just everything. It seems to have become so pointless in America, as if we are entering a Dark Age. I've come to wonder why I do anything at all."

Keep Reading Joe Bageant's essay...

Quarter Of Americans Now Think Iran is The Biggest Enemy

Consistent neocon propaganda campaign paying off...

by Steve Watson

A quarter of Americans believe that Iran now poses the biggest threat to the United States, confirming that a sustained neocon propaganda campaign to demonize Iran and its leaders for their own strategic benefit is having a significant impact.

According to a new poll by Gallup, Iran is top of the enemy list, with 25 percent, followed by Iraq at 22 percent, then China with 14 percent, and North Korea with 9 percent.

Republicans are more than twice as likely as Democrats to see Iran as the top U.S. enemy, while Democrats are likelier to name Iraq. Older people and those who say they closely follow world news are less likely to cite Iraq than the younger and less informed, reported the AP.

It was September last year when the New Yorker magazine reported that Barnett Rubin, a highly respected Afghanistan expert at New York University, asserted that Dick Cheney ordered top Neo-Con media outlets, including Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, to unleash a PR blitz to sell conflict with Iran.

The fruits of that propaganda campaign are now clear to see.

Keep Reading...

punditman says...

Let's see if I understand: Shi'a-dominated Iran has benefited greatly from the US invasion of the Sunni-dominated Iraqi regime of Sadam Hussein. In fact, now the Shi'a-dominated US-backed Iraqi regime and Shi'a-dominated Iran are getting along famously.

Nevertheless, 22 percent of Americans think Iraq is still their enemy. They think that the government that their soldiers are fighting to defend is their enemy! Of course, they are defending against...wait for it...other Iraqis! Hence the confusion on this minor point of who Americans think they should be killing at the moment. Voice of hubby in background:

"Damn it, Martha. We're still killing them dang ragheads, so the answer is I-RACK is our enemy! Tell the man!

Meanwhile, another 25 percent of Americans think that their Iraqi ally's new friend, Iran, should be their number one enemy. Voice of hubby in background:

"Martha, git off that friggin' phone, Fox News is coming on!"

You can always count on around half the American people being completely anaesthesized--and Dick Cheney knows it.