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Gordon’s Source on Iran
(updated below)
Michael Gordon (NYT co-writer of Judith Miller) has another hate-Iran piece in today’s NYT: U.S. Ties Iranians to Iraq Attack That Killed G.I.’s
BAGHDAD, July 2 — Iranian operatives helped plan a January raid in Karbala in which five American soldiers were killed, an American military spokesman in Iraq said today.
[…]
General Bergner declined to speculate on the Iranian motivations. But he said that interrogations of Qais Khazali, a Shiite militant who oversaw Iranian-supported cells in Iraq and who was captured several months ago along with another militant, Laith Khazali, his brother, showed that Iran’s Quds force helped plan the operation.
[…]
“Both Ali Musa Daqduq and Qais Khazali state that senior leadership within the Quds force knew of and supported planning for the eventual Karbala attack that killed five coalition soldiers,” General Bergner said.
Glenn Greenwald points out that Gordon’s only source for this piece is a "military spokesman" Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner. The source is not doubted, there are no other sources or viewpoints present. It is in fact, a pure U.S. military press release.
What Glenn doesn’t not tell is the background of Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner. Via sourcewatch we learn:
Kevin J. Bergner was named February 3, 2006, by President George W. Bush as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Iraq. Brigadier General Bergner recently served as Deputy Director of Political-Military Affairs (Middle East) at the Department of Defense. He received his bachelor’s degree from Trinity University and his master’s degree from City University of New York.
Berger left the White House and became spokesman for the U.S. military in Iraq only three weeks ago.
You can bet with a very good chance that his statement, which Michael Gordon dutiful stenographs, has its origins in the White House. This bomb-Iran propaganda, the accusation of direct, official Iranian military intervention in Iraq, is originating from within the center of the Bush administration. It is fed through a "military spokesman" who just left the White House to Michael Gorden who’s editors dependably publish it unfiltered in the New York Times.
Given the schemes we know from the start of the Iraq war disinformation campaign, the next step is obvious.
Someone from Bush’s administration will appear on television and will cite and confirm Gordon’s New York Times reporting as proof for Iran’s "bad intent".
Newsweek explained how this worked on Iraq:
The strongest
evidence that Saddam was building a nuke was the fact that he was
secretly importing aluminum tubes that could be used to help make
enriched uranium. At least it seemed that way. In early September, just
before Bush was scheduled to speak to the United Nations about the
Iraqi threat, the story was leaked to Judith Miller and Michael Gordon
of The New York Times, which put it on page one. That same Sunday
(Sept. 8), Cheney and national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice went
on the talk shows to confirm the story.
Here is the transcript Wolf Blitzer’s interview with Rice and there is Cheney on Meet the Press:
VICE PRES. CHENEY: […]The third thing you need is fissile material, weapons-grade material. Now, in the case of a nuclear weapon, that means either plutonium or highly enriched uranium. And what we’ve seen recently that has raised our level of concern to the current state of unrest, if you will, if I can put it in those terms, is that he now is trying, through his illicit procurement network, to acquire the equipment he needs to be able to enrich uranium to make the bombs.
MR. RUSSERT: Aluminum tubes.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Specifically aluminum tubes. There’s a story in The New York Times this morning-this is-I don’t-and I want to attribute The Times. I don’t want to talk about, obviously, specific intelligence sources, but it’s now public that, in fact, he has been seeking to acquire, and we have been able to intercept and prevent him from acquiring through this particular channel, the kinds of tubes that are necessary to build a centrifuge.
Thanks to Michael Gordon "it’s now public that, in fact," Iran attacks U.S. forces in Iraq.
Here we go again …
UPDATE
1. As Glenn just added, the NYT has changed its story:
Gordon’s article has now been edited substantially, most notably to include several sentences near the beginning of the article that cast at least some doubt on the military’s claims. None of these facts were included in the original version:
…
2. As slothrop in the comments points out, CNN ran about the same story Michael Gorden filed but as an exclusive yesterday. Here is a youtube video of that segment. The CNN’s Michael Ware in Baghdad and the studio anchors express little doubt that all they have been told is really, really, really true.
Associated Press runs the story too and has no caveats either.
According to CNN some "Lebanese Hizbullah fighter" got caught in Iraq and "did confess in interrogations …"
Let’s ask: Does he breathe again now or is he still coughing up water …
Thanks, everyone, for the warm welcome. I will email the administrator with my comments on what could, and should, have occurred (by foresight, not hindsight). Meanwhile I want to share this superb piece with you:
The path to war with Iran is paved by the hands of our enemies within
by Kam Zarrabi (source: Payvand )
Thursday, July 5, 2007
There is a world our there where Paris Hilton is known only as some hotel in Europe, where nobody gives a damn about Scooter Libby’s pardon or Los Angeles Mayor’s extra marital affairs. Millions are dying daily in that world and millions of others are threatened with impending doom and devastation, ignored by the high and mighty as either unworthy of attention or regarded as a nuisance to be dealt with by the world’s most powerful military machine. In this display of greed and prejudice, a great nation’s soul has been stolen and grand ideals encoded in the Constitution that framed this nation have been compromised by influence peddlers, foreign and domestic, and by policy makers whose personal interests and private allegiances override their duty to serve their own country.
Meanwhile, the world out there, where Paris Hilton is known only as some hotel in Europe, is paying the price for the luxury we enjoy of having even the most gruesome global events packaged piecemeal in entertaining vignettes in-between glamour shots of beady-eyed Paris Hilton and Miss luscious-lips, Angelina Jolie.
With that much interesting stuff to keep track of, who’s got the time or the incentive to worry about foreign policy issues or even the number of the dead and injured among our own young soldiers who are fighting for a non-descript cause they have been told is our war on terror?
It is in this kind of atmosphere that special interest groups, individuals and specially planted moles in the Administration create policies such as those that dragged us into the invasion of Iraq, and are now paving the way to expand the bloodshed into Iran.
Now Iran is looming bigger and bigger in the crosshairs.
The older, vaguer and less imminent threats of regime change through anti Iran propaganda, exploitations of pro democracy and human rights advocates, support for dissident groups inside and outside Iran, and various economic pressures, have now been ratcheted up to a level that might quickly get out of control.
Now we are hearing that Iranian weapons are “killing Americans” and Brits in Iraq, as well as allied forces in Afghanistan. We hear that Iran is training and sending Lebanese Hezbollah fighters to Iraq to commit terrorism and to “kill Americans” (a cunningly created new catch-phrase that is meant to generate just the perfect rationale to declare war). We hear that Iran is sending arms to the Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, and even to Al-Gha’eda terrorists in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Naturally, nobody expects the public to demand some proof of all this involvement; allegations seem to always suffice. After all, it is not like having doubts about who the father of Anna Nicole’s daughter was!
Of course, it is common knowledge that American arms are found in the hands of terrorists who kill Iranians in Iran or Iranians on pilgrimage in Iraq. And it doesn’t seem to matter if American Special Forces or the Brits are supplying arms and training to the likes of Jund-Ullah terrorists, among many other groups, to infiltrate Iran and “kill Iranians”.
We hear that a former politician and part-time television actor, now a candidate (by default, because of the lackluster Republican hopefuls) for presidency of the United States, is also a visionary in foreign policy and, like his co-campaigners on the Republican ticket, is a proponent of bombing Iran. Leading Democratic candidates for presidency refuse to rule out a preemptive attack on Iran. They prefer for the Democratic majority Congress to approve and get credit for such a decision, which it surely will. And, the sly weasel himself, the so-called Independent (he is definitely independent of true American interests, but fully committed to the mandates of the Israeli regime) Senator Joseph Lieberman, whose compatriots and co-conspirators are the top foreign policy advisors to Vice President, Dick Cheney (the real decision maker), as well as to the State Department, doesn’t believe we should even wait past the end of this year!
We also saw the American Congress almost unanimously (minus only two votes by Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul) approve a resolution accusing the Iranian President Ahmadinejad of inciting “genocide” by promoting the destruction of Israel (against all evidence that he ever said such a thing!).
The other sly fox, the Holocaust survivor Tom Lantos, now the chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, has just championed another resolution to strengthen sanctions against the Islamic Republic in order to strangulate the Iranian people beyond recovery. But, unlike his compatriot and co-conspirator, Joe Lieberman, Mr. Lantos does not believe in nuking Iran first and asking questions later; he prefers, instead, to destroy Iran at a slower, more tortuous pace, through economic deprivation resulting in social chaos.
This sly fox, our Congressional arch Zionist and long-time Iran-hater, had the audacity recently to coyly ask a member of the visiting Russian delegation at a meeting of the committee he chairs, televised by C-SPAN, to intervene on his behalf to get a visa to visit Iran. He expressed his dismay and surprise that the Iranian government has thus far refused to grant him a visa! Now, this is chutzpah. Can you imagine having Osama Bin Laden being invited to address a joint session of the US Congress?!
Perhaps he wants to offer Mr. Ahmadinejad his personal testimony as a living survivor that Holocaust did really take place, notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Ahmadinejad has never questioned the reality of the Holocaust, only some of its established narratives and subsequent ramifications.
Our major newspapers, like their television and radio counterparts, prefer to pander to their readerships and audiences rather than carry out their honest journalistic task of unbiased reporting and informing. After all, money or the bottom line is everything. Rags like The Nation or Mother Jones don’t enjoy much of a circulation and have to print their few humble pages on cheaper paper.
On television, the only voices of dissent or criticism are wrapped in entertaining comedy shows and satire or cartoon programs.
There surely will be big demonstrations across the nation against the decision to attack Iran, after it has been initiated, of course! Most will object to such a war because of its certain losses of American lives, economic costs to the nation and the negative image it would create for America worldwide. But the same rationale that was used to justify dropping atomic bombs over Japan in WWII will again be used to justify doing the same to Iran: Why; aren’t they doing things that help kill Americans? Ask Joe Lieberman!
But, once again, other episodes of American Idol, Wheel of Fortune, and soon to restart, NFL football, will more than make up for the ugly news from overseas.
Should we not wake up to the realities behind the scene, we are doomed to repeat and expand our mistake in invading Iraq by attacking Iran. No doubt Iran will be the big loser by sinking into total economic collapse after its vital infrastructure is devastated. Just as in Iraq, the United States will also be a loser in the eyes of the world. The war America is fighting against terror will also be lost, while terrorism will gain an even stronger position to expand and proliferate with greater zeal.
There will, however, be a winner in all this. This winner, albeit in short-term, is well represented by its warmonger cronies and supporters in our Administration.
Do I have to name that winner? (Personal comment: Could he be referring to Israel??? Of course not, because this is the typically misguided conclusion of simplistic ‘conspiracy theorists’!)
Clearly, interfering in the internal affairs of any sovereign nation and openly threatening, and even actually engaging in, steps to culminate a regime change are blatantly against the charter of the United Nations and American law. Implementing severe economic and trade embargos against Iran is tantamount to a de facto economic blockade, which can be interpreted easily as an act of war. So, in actual fact, a cold war has been taking place between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran for the past decades, now nearing a flashpoint.
In my view, and I do hope, even expect, that I am right, this cold war will also vaporize as did the last one between the Soviets Block and the West, much like a block of dry ice. And just like the last one, the end result will be a cautious, protracted détente as we see going on currently between the United States and Russia.
Should I prove too optimistic, we’d better tighten our belts for a very rough ride, brother; there’ll be rocky roads ahead.
About the author: Kam Zarrabi is the author of In Zarathushtra’s Shadow and Necessary Illusion. Please visit intellectualdiscourse.com for ordering.
Posted by: Parviz | Jul 8 2007 7:04 utc | 53
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