Panetta Lies About Iraq And Iran

July 12, 2011

Rumsfeld: I have said for some time that there are al Qaeda in Iraq, and there are.
REMARKS BY DONALD H. RUMSFELD – DEFENSE SECRETARY, August 20, 2002

—

“The reason you guys are here is because on 9/11 the United States got attacked, and 3,000 not just Americans, but 3,000 human beings got killed, innocent human beings, because of Al Qaeda,” Mr. Panetta told Army troops at Camp Victory, the sprawling American military base in Baghdad.

Later, Mr. Panetta told reporters that he was not speaking of the reasons for the 2003 American-led invasion but rather was referring to events afterward.

“I wasn’t saying, you know, the invasion, or going into the issues or the justification of that,” Mr. Panetta said. “It was more the fact that we really had to deal with Al Qaeda here.”
Panetta Presses Iraq for Decision on Troops, July 11, 2011

Panetta is obviously lying, just as Rumsfeld did.

A guy who is now, 9 years later, still willing to lie to about the Iraq invasion will not be honest on anything else either. He will stick to the program whatever that may be.

Keep that in mind when Panetta says anything about Iran or Afghanistan or any other issue.

Clarifying: I would have doubted what Panetta says in any case. But he had up to now not made outlandish claims as this one. As the second Iran NIE confirmed the first one, I though Panetta, then the CIA boss, was rather on the reality based side than a hack. Now he is just that.

Posted by b on July 12, 2011 at 06:47 UTC | Permalink

Comments

“He will stick to the program whatever that may be.”
the program was spelled out for us in PNAC’s “rebuilding america’s defenses” in september of 2000, in which PNAC noted that “the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor.”
there’s no evidence that the neocons or the US government or anybody else is backing off from that plan.
if the big financial boys were in on the PNAC plan (and there’s no reason to suppose they were not in on it), that gives the plan a little more oomph, doesnt it? …a little more credibility…
there may be little intramural squabbles over looting opportunities and the fate of israel, but basically the peak oil collapse is being managed to benefit the people who dreamed up the PNAC scheme, and it’s not likely we’re gonna see any deviations from that plan so long as it provides useful cover for the looting operation.
…keeping in mind that there are factions of religious and racist fanatics who see the PNAC plan as their last chance to make the world safe for askenazi supremacism… or their last chance to start a big enough catastrophe that jesus will yank them up out of their socks to heaven… or their last chance to establish “benevolent global hegemony”… we can only wonder about the benevolence of that hegemony seeing as how the project isnt yet very far along and already it’s caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

Posted by: groundresonance | Jul 12 2011 8:15 utc | 1

Just as that other meme they keep peddling: “Iran is arming the Shia militias”. Problem of course, there is “only some intelligence” that can’t be unveiled, let alone published (as it has been for the past 10 years or so).
http://news.antiwar.com/2011/07/11/state-dept-official-no-evidence-iran-arming-iraqi-militias/

Posted by: philippe | Jul 12 2011 9:07 utc | 2

This is just as bad by PressTV

Israel’s Channel 2 News last year interviewed two Israeli Jewish women of Libyan origin who claimed to be relatives of Gaddafi.
“The story goes that Gaddafi’s grandmother, herself a Jewess, was married to a Jewish man at first. But he treated her badly, so she ran away and married a Muslim sheikh. Their child was the mother of Gaddafi”, said Rachel Saada, who claimed to be a distant relative of Gaddafi.
Should their story be true, which would make Gaddafi a Jewish, then Israel would be obligated by its own laws to grant him asylum.

How can PressTV report such tripe, I understand that they hold MQ responsible for the death of Sadr but surely no one will believe them and the comments already reflect that. MQ first and foremost is an Africanist, not a religious man, he cares a f*** about Islamic awakening come to think most off the Arab street do not care about Islamic awakening rather they want freedom and a better standard and quality of life.
PressTV article

Posted by: hans | Jul 12 2011 9:40 utc | 3

“Pentta Lies” … took me a moment to realise this is a typo. I was thinking of “Penta” as a multiplier, like Mega or Giga.
“Penta-Lies About Iraq”
Yeah, sounds about right.

Posted by: ScuzzaMan | Jul 12 2011 9:58 utc | 4

As a lie, it was so primitive and crude, that it sounded more like Palinesque ignorance.
The Defense Department is getting so het up, as they will have to start moving materiel majorly out of Iraq soon (as the NYT says). I don’t see the Iraqis being in a hurry though. As far as I can detect from Reidar Visser’s blog, the issue is not more than a peripheral one in Iraqi politics. It may be that in the end the US and the Kurds will be able to bludgeon the Iraqi parliament into voting to ask the US to stay longer, but it is not going to be anytime soon.
We haven’t heard anything about proposed conditions for a new treaty, which were issued in June 2008 when the SOFA was negotiated. We are already a month past that schedule. I mean, Iraq is not just going to ask the US to stay unconditionally. A new SOFA would be needed.
The absence of news of anything like that suggests that the pressure for movement is coming mainly out of the Pentagon, perhaps nowhere else.

Posted by: Alexno | Jul 12 2011 11:08 utc | 5

“Pentta Lies About Iraq And Iran”
The first clue is that the man works for the empire. It is his duty to lie, since the truth never comes out of the USA government. Hell, even when the truth would be in their own best interest they will still “spin it” some just to stay in practice.
It the USA makes an announcement that the Sun will rise tomorrow morning, start your preparations to meet your maker because it is all over.

Posted by: joseph | Jul 12 2011 11:42 utc | 6

There is a truism that I have repeated from time to time here at the Moon that I have been trying for years to imbue in other’s minds, that if more of us would grok, could go a long way in thwarting the shenanigans of the dominator class. I like to think of it in the form of an aphorism.
To wit:

The only time they* tell the truth is when it just happens to coincide with their agenda.

*they: including but not necessarily limited to agents of the government, military and corporations and their shills, the Main Stream Media.
I think most of us tend to start from a mind set of trust. This may be appropriate when dealing with our friends and acquaintances and others on or near our social and economic level but when communication takes place with the PTB it would be highly prudent if we were to always start off with a cynical sense of incredulity.
I think joseph has grasped this and has articulated it in his way it in his post.

Posted by: juannie | Jul 12 2011 15:00 utc | 7

always consider who the audience is too. as i mentioned yesterday, panetta is simply telling an audience of soldiers what is considered necessary to manipulate those — indentured servants, essentially — responsible for the heavy lifting required of imperial ambitions they otherwise most likely would not lay their lives on the line for.
earlier, panetta said something a little (with ‘little’ being the operative word) different to a press crew chosen to accompany him onboard his plane enroute to afghanistan:
stars and stripes: U.S. nearing ‘strategic defeat’ of al-Qaida, Panetta says

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said he is convinced the U.S. is within reach of “strategically” defeating al-Qaida if military and intelligence operations can nab fewer than 20 key leaders remaining between Pakistan and North Africa.
“I think we have them on the run. I think now is the moment,” he said Friday. “… I do believe that if we continue this effort, we can really cripple al-Qaida as a threat to this country.”
…
“I’m not going to list all the names that we have,” Panetta said of al-Qaida, “but we’re talking about, at this stage in the game, I would say somewhere around 10 to 20 key leaders … between Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, AQIM (al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb) in North Africa. Those are — if we can go after them, I think we really can strategically defeat al-Qaida.”
…
Gen. David Petraeus agreed with Panetta’s assertion about the U.S. effort, in a subsequent interview with reporters in Kabul – his last press roundtable as commanding general. “It does hold the prospect of really a strategic defeat, if you will, a strategic dismantling of al-Qaida,” he said.
With just 50 to 100 al-Qaida members inside of Afghanistan – a number that has not changed for several years – Petraeus insisted the counterinsurgency must continue to eliminate and hold former safe havens as Afghan security forces transition. “We have good visibility of who leaders of various groups are,” he said, though while it gets murkier identifying their subordinates and numbers of fighters, the estimate still holds at under 100.

only ten to twenty key AQ targeted individuals spread across four or five countries? how does that require massive military deployments? and, as petraeus alludes, more than 100,000 u.s. troops deployed in afghanistan to take on the threat of 50 to 100 AQ members there? (and it’s telling that both estimates range w/i the same pattern – 10 to 20 and 50 to 100).
what if panetta were to have told those soldiers “The reason you guys are here is because on 9/11 the United States got attacked, and 3,000 not just Americans, but 3,000 human beings got killed, innocent human beings, because of Al Qaeda and, dammit, we’re pretty sure there are around 50 to 100 of them here today.”

Posted by: b real | Jul 12 2011 18:30 utc | 8

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