Iran: a Chronology of Disinformation

Nuclear Weapons program, Al-Qaeda Links, Mahdi Milita Support, Terrorism Ties, Religious Badging, Hostage-Taking, EFP Supply, Genocide Plans, etc.

Iran: a Chronology of Disinformation

By GARY LEUPP
CounterPunch Weekend Edition
February 17 / 18, 2007

Larisa Alexandrovna has recently written an excellent article detailing the neoconservatives' six-year long project to use American power to attack and produce regime change in Iran. Appended to the piece is a timeline including key Bush administration statements about Iran, "news" stories and neocon writings abetting efforts to vilify Iran, and the antics of such characters as former Congressman Curt Weldon, Iran-Contra arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar, and spy-for-Israel Larry Franklin who have worked to facilitate that attack. I've used it as the basis for this more elaborate (although surely incomplete and imperfect) chronology.

2002

On January 29, 2002, President Bush gave his State of the Union speech featuring the now infamous formulation "axis of evil" contrived by speechwriter and Richard Perle cohort David Frum. (Frum currently writes a regular column for the extreme rightwing National Review, arguing among other things that Iran is supporting al-Qaeda-related Iraqi Sunni groups.) Iran was of course included in that "axis" alongside Saddam's Iraq and North Korea. The conceptual sloppiness of the phrase puzzled world leaders, while its bizarre linkage of dissimilar regimes alarmed mainstream scholarship. But for mass consumption it successfully conflated disparate targets and vaguely associated Iran with the Evil represented by the 9-11 attacks.

On August 14, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (led by the armed Iranian dissident movement Mujahedin-E-Khalq or MEK) held a press conference in Washington D.C. and announced that Iran was constructing a secret nuclear facility near the city of Natanz. The MEK had long been (and still is) listed as a "terrorist" organization by the State Department, and had been under the protection of Saddam Hussein's regime since the 1980s although disarmed by U.S. forces following the Iraq invasion. But the Bush administration seized upon the report (while Cheney and the neocons pressed for a reconsideration of MEK's status). In February 2003 the International Atomic Energy Agency visited the Natanz site, finding centrifuge machines. Iran declared that the facility was part of a civilian nuclear energy program.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) criticized Iran for concealing this and other nuclear facilities and demanded that Iran submit to rigorous inspections of its nuclear sites. In December Iran suspended its uranium enrichment program and allowed such inspections, which have not to this day produced evidence for a nuclear weapons program. But the concealment in violation of IAEA rules (by no means unprecedented among Non-Proliferation Treaty signatories, such as close U.S. ally South Korea) was presented by the U.S. administration as virtual proof for an illegal nuclear weapons program.

2003

In January 2003, according to a New York Times report published in 2006, Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, "talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation , including a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire." In other words, the two leaders discussed the possibility of provoking an attack that could be represented as Iranian aggression against the "international community" in order to generate public support for a planned regime change operation.

Thereafter the disinformation campaign got underway in earnest. In April Pennsylvania Republican Congressman Curt Weldon, vice-chair of the Armed Services Committee and the House Homeland Security Committees, met with a certain "Ali" in Paris who informed him that Iranian agents had stolen enriched uranium from Iraq before the U.S. invasion. (Iran-Contra figure and Weekly Standard neocon propagandist Michael Ledeen, fresh from his work with Donald Feith's Office of Special Plans, also dispensed this "intelligence.") This "Ali" was identified by American Prospect reporters Laura Rozen and Jeet Heer in April 2005 as Fereidoun Mahdavi, former minister of commerce in the government of the Shah of Iran and business partner of Manucher Ghorbanifar. (Ghorbanifar and Ledeen were old friends and had met in Rome in December 2001 with Farsi-speaking Defense Department officials Larry Franklin, Harold Rhode and Iranian dissidents to discuss regime change in Iran.)

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http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp02172007.html

Make Your Own EFP--No Need to Dial Iran for Tech Support!

Sold to Mr. Gordon, Another Bridge!

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
CounterPunch Weekend Edition
February 17 / 18, 2007

It requires no special skill to sell Michael Gordon, chief military correspondent of the New York Times, the Brooklyn Bridge. All you have to do is whisper down the phone to him that the transaction will occur at a background "briefing" by anonymous intelligence sources and a "senior official" or two.

One would think that it would require astonishing rhetorical ingenuity on the part of the salesteam (in fact operating out of the U.S. Defense Department) to keep on selling Gordon the Brooklyn Bridge, long after the deed from the first sale has been pronounced an obvious fraud. But it's not so strange, really. Your true sucker is a vain fellow, who can never accept the evidence of his own gullibility and who therefore regards each successive purchase of the Brooklyn Bridge as a sound investment, certain to re- establish him in the public eye as a man with a keen eye for the good deal. He thus becomes psychologically and professionally a captive of the bridge salesmen.

On September 8, 2002 the New York Times editors published Gordon and Judith Miller's fictions concerning aluminum tubes in Iraq, supposedly part of Saddam's nuclear program. Much too late this bout of bridge-buying on the part of the Times duo prompted widespread derision and finally the embarrassed Times editor banned Miller from bridge-buying altogether.

No such restraints were placed on Gordon. After lying low while Miller took the heat, he was back late last year, promoting the famous "surge", sold him by General Petraeus and others. Then, Saturday, February 10, the Times excitedly announced another major purchase.

The story was from the usual salesfolk, unnamed "American officials." Their mission: get Gordon to boost Bush's anti-Iran propaganda drive by promoting the story that Iran is supplying Iraqi Shi'a with the new "explosively formed penetrator," the war's "most lethal weapon" now killing American boys in their Humvees, Bradleys and even Abrams tanks.

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http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn02172007.html

Burnt Offering

How a 2003 secret overture from Tehran might have led to a deal on Iran’s nuclear capacity -- if the Bush administration hadn’t rebuffed it.

By Gareth Porter
The American Prospect
Issue Date: 06.06.06

Iran’s “mad mullahs” want nuclear weapons to destroy Israel and can only be stopped by the threat or use of military force. That’s what the Bush administration would have the public believe, as it pushes toward a confrontation with Iran over that country’s nuclear program. A key link in the argument is that Tehran has shown no interest in negotiating over the nuclear issue. As State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters last January, the administration didn’t then see “anything that indicates the Iranians are willing to engage in a serious diplomatic process” on the nuclear issue.

In the woeful history of falsehoods about the targets of potential U.S. force, however, this one is particularly egregious. In the spring of 2003, the Islamic Republic of Iran not only proposed to negotiate with the Bush administration on its nuclear program and its support for terrorists but also offered concrete concessions that went very far toward meeting U.S. concerns.

The story of that Iranian negotiating proposal and the U.S. failure to respond, which has never been covered by major U.S. media, reveals the underlying pragmatism driving Iranian policy toward an agreement with the United States. It also reveals a fierce struggle between realists who wanted to engage Iran diplomatically and the inner circle of advisers who were determined to avoid it. The stubborn rejection by President Bush and his neoconservative advisers of normal diplomatic practice in their dealings with Iran, detailed for the first time here, raises grave questions about the Bush administration’s real motives as it maneuvers through the present crisis over Iran’s nuclear program.

* * *

The Post–9-11 Opportunity With Iran

SNIP...

The September 11 attacks created an entirely new strategic context for engagement with Iran. The evening of 9-11, Flynt Leverett, a career CIA analyst who was then at the State Department as a counter-terrorism expert, and a small group of officials met with Powell. It was the beginning of work on a diplomatic strategy in support of the U.S. effort to destroy the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and the al-Qaeda network it had harbored. The main aim was to gain the cooperation of states that were considered sponsors of terrorism.

“The United States was about to mount a global war on terrorism with complete legitimacy from the United Nations,” recalls Leverett, “and these states didn’t want to get on the downside of it.” Within weeks, Iran, Syria, Libya, and Sudan all approached the United States through various channels to offer their help in the fight against al-Qaeda. “The Iranians said we don’t like al-Qaeda any better than you, and we have assets in Afghanistan that could be useful,” Leverett recalls.

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http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=11539

Cheney Linked To Halliburton Deal

WASHINGTON, June 1, 2004

(CBS/AP) A Pentagon e-mail indicates that a multimillion-dollar Halliburton contract for Iraqi reconstruction was "coordinated" with the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, the company's former chief executive, a newsmagazine reports.

Time magazine says the March 5, 2003 e-mail from an unknown Army Corps of Engineers official says Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz gave his deputy Douglas Feith the authority to "execute" the contract for restoring Iraq's oil industry.
According to the magazine, the e-mail says Feith approved the contract "contingent on informing WH (White House) tomorrow."

"We anticipate no issues since action has been coordinated w VP's (Vice President's) office."

SNIP...

Federal authorities also are investigating whether Halliburton broke the law by using a subsidiary to do business in Iran, whether the company overcharged for work done for the Pentagon in the Balkans and whether it was involved in an alleged $180 million bribery scheme in Nigeria. The company admitted in 2003 that it improperly paid $2.4 million to a Nigerian tax official.

Previous reports indicate Halliburton studied the possibility of privatizing Pentagon contracts when Cheney was defense secretary, then was awarded one of the first private deals. Cheney became CEO after leaving the Pentagon.

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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/01/politics/main620517.shtml

Halliburton Doing Business With the 'Axis of Evil'

By Jefferson Morley
washingtonpost.com staff writer
Thursday, February 3, 2005; 8:00 AM

EXCERPT...

You might not think that a charter member of President Bush's "axis of evil" could enlist the oil-services firm once run by Vice President Cheney to bolster its bargaining position with an international community intent on curbing its nuclear ambitions.

But that is apparently what happened last month.

The story began on Jan. 9 when the Iran News ran a Reuters story reporting that Halliburton "has won a tender to drill a huge Iranian gas field."

The deal to develop two sections of Iran's South Pars gas field promises significant economic benefits.

"The project includes onshore and offshore sections and its initial phase is to become operational by the first quarter of 2007," said the Tehran-based news site. The total output of the phases will reportedly produce 50 million cubic meters per day of treated natural gas for domestic use and 80,000 barrels of gas liquids per day for export.

SNIP...

Two days later, American political analyst Michael Ledeen, a neoconservative advocate of ousting the government in Tehran, described Halliburton's actions as "disgusting." In a Jan. 23 online chat sponsored by the Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran, Ledeen was asked about "secret business deals between some U.S. companies, like Halliburton, and the Islamic regime."

"What has happened is against U.S. laws . . . and the people involved in this transaction must be put in jail, according to American law," Ledeen replied.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58298-2005Feb2.html

Serious questions about Bush-Gates Iran mortar allegation

By Larry Chin
Online Journal Associate Editor
Feb 16, 2007, 00:46

In the wake of purported “strong evidence” that mortars used to attack US soldiers in Iraq were manufactured by Iran, disturbing new questions are being raised about the veracity of the claims made by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and President George W. Bush.

Here is one analysis, the first on this topic, by Ray Hanania, which also contains a link to photographic evidence: Serious questions about the mortar, Bush and the media.

The photograph is of an 81 mm shell. But the serial numbers on the shell are in English. Would a mortar “manufactured by Iran” have English lettering (if so, why)? Why an American-style 81mm shell instead of a more typical Russian-manufactured 82mm shell? How and where were these munitions really made and distrubuted? Is it an American shell? Is it an American-style shell that was brokered globally? If so, how did this shell find its way to Iran (or did it)?

Is it planted evidence by the Bush administration’s intelligence apparatus? Is this just one of the many planted lies being used to set up the upcoming attack on Iraq? (See Fabricating the case against Iran.)

Iranian officials have called the mortar evidence a complete fabrication. In a related development, another allegation, that Iran is harboring Iraq insurgency leader Al-Sadr, has been denied by Al-Sadr’s organization.

CONTINUED w links...

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_1761.shtml

Bush on Iran: I'm right because ... I'm right

Today, nearly four years after the start of the war in Iraq, CNN's Ed Henry asked the president of the United States a question that struck us as pretty reasonable: With contradictory claims now being made about Iranian involvement in Iraq, "What assurances can you give the American people that the intelligence this time will be accurate?"

The president's answer: Trust me.

No wait, that's not exactly true. It suggests that the president actually engaged with the question -- that he said that he knows that there were problems with the intelligence and the way it was used in the run-up to Iraq and that he has worked double-triple hard to make sure he's right about what he's saying this time.

That's not how the president answered the question. What he said was this:

"Ed, we know there, we know they're provided by the Quds force. We know the Quds force is a part of the Iranian government. I don't think we know who picked up the phone and said to the Quds force, 'Go do this,' but we know it's a vital part of the Iranian government.

"What matters is, is that we're responding. The idea that somehow we're manufacturing the idea that the Iranians are providing IEDs is preposterous."

SOURCE:

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html

Getting It Right on Iran

by Larry C Johnson

The truth about the Iranian threat is that the Bush Administration is not telling the real truth. Like any effective propagandist President Bush is using a kernel of truth and, with the help of many in the media, laying the foundation for another war. Only this time it will likely be a war of retaliation rather than one of pre-emption.

The kernel of truth is that Iranian intelligence agents are active in Iraq and are working with a variety of Shia militia and groups. What Bush cleverly omits in his litany is the fact that Iran has been present in Iraq since the early days of the U.S. invasion in March of 2003. Bush and his generals also are ignoring the fact that Sunni insurgents, not Iranian backed Shia militia, have been those responsible for the vast majority of U.S. casualties in Iraq.

You do not have to accept my word or my numbers. Go to icasualties.org (and while you are there leave a donation for these deserving folks) and count for yourselves. According to the U.S. officials who briefed reporters in Baghdad last Sunday, Iranian explosives figured in the deaths of 170 U.S. soldiers and the wounding of 620 since June of 2004. However, total coalition casualties during that same period are 2,265 dead and 17,788 wounded. For the math challenged among you that means Iran is linked to less than 8% of the fatalities and less than 4% of the wounded.

The conclusion is very simple. Iran is not responsible for most U.S. casualties, whether from explosives, small arms fire, or thrown rocks. Now it gets interesting.

Who is our main enemy and who is responsible for the vast majority of U.S. casualties? Sunni insurgent groups--ranging from Al Qaeda jihadist to angry Baathists.

Iran for its part has shied away from encouraging or supporting widespread attacks against U.S. forces because the United States is perceived as helping the Shia consolidate power in Iraq and acknowledged for concentrating its firepower on the Sunnis. Remember Fallujah? Tall Afar? How about Al Anbar? What about Zarqawi?

With Zarqawi dead and buried the Bush Administration has christened Moqtada al Sadr as its latest villain. But this is another lie. Moqtada al Sadr is the least Iran friendly of the various Shia clerics. Moqtada is no friend of the United States but he is first and foremost an Iraqi nationalist. He is not an Iranian toady. That distinction goes to Mr. Abdul-Aziz Al-Hakim. Remember him? He's the guy who was sitting with George Bush for a photo op in the Oval Office in December.

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http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/02/getting_it_righ.html#more

It's Not About Democracy

The Looming War on Iran

By RON JACOBS
CounterPunch February 5, 2007

Recent media reports about Iran suggest that President Ahmadinejad has run slightly afoul of the clerics in that country's Council of Guardians. Most specifically, the Imam Khamenei has publicly criticized the president's statements about Iran's nuclear program and his government's failure to stop inflation in Iran. Khamenei, for those who don't know, is the Supreme Leader of Iran, which means that, he reviews every political decision made by the Iranian legislature and the president according to the Koran and its interpretations. He has issued a fatwa that states the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons was forbidden under Islam. He has also supported the economic subsidies of basic goods and shelter and free medical care for all Iranians--two programs currently existing in Iran This support stems from the Koran's teaching that those who can afford it must pay zakat to help the poor, although the institutionalization of it through Tehran could be considered part of the Islamic government's successful attempts to remove leftists and their thought from the revolutionary regime by renaming their programs and then killing the left.

Like those that exist in any country, there are those in Iran's ruling elites who would like to see all subsidies ended, with Iran incorporating itself into the neoliberal model of economic Darwinism. In other words, those with the money and connections would reap great profits while the poor and working people would suffer. The former president Rafsanjani is one of these men, so it seems ironic that he would be in favor with Khamenei if Khamenei is to be believed. Rafsanjani, for those who don't know, was part of the original troika of clerics (along with Ayatollah Khomeini and Mohammed Husseni Buheshi) that forced the left and the moderates out of the revolution and established a dictatorship of the clerics.

According to the revolution's first president Bani Sadr and the US Ambassador William Sullivan, the dictatorship was, at the very least, encouraged by the US Embassy in Iran, who preferred a military/clerical junta to a left-leaning democratic state. The army's unpopularity made its participation impossible, so the clerics replaced it with the Revolutionary Guard. That dictatorship exists today, albeit in a different form, with the primary difference being that laws are passed by representatives but are subject to the review of the clerics.

Some of these men were also involved with the Shah's government and the arms deals made with Ronald Reagan that were the cause of Irangate. Rafsanjani is acknowledged to have hidden away millions of dollars worth of Iran's monies in bank accounts around the world while the people of Iran dealt with the rationing of their basic goods. His number one motivation seems to be money and the power it provides.

If the government is so bad, one might ask, then what's wrong with the US trying to overthrow it? Besides the obvious-- that preemptive war is both illegal and immoral, there is the example of Iraq. As any informed reader must know, that attempt by Washington to overthrow a strongman and replace it with a different government id a failure. This is due in part because Washington never really planned to allow democracy to flourish there, but it is also related to the refusal of the Iraqi people to accept occupation. No matter what the United States does in that country, it is bound to fail for exactly that reason.

Assuming the Iranian experience to be different is folly. After all, if there is one sentiment that seems prevalent among Iranians it is their determination to refuse foreign domination. It is arguably this determination that created a situation the mullahs could manipulate to take power in the early 1980s when the attack by the Iraqi army of Saddam Hussein diverted monies and attention away from the internal needs of the people. This line of reasoning points to invasions by foreign powers during the French and Russian revolutions as the reason for their fall into dictatorship. Furthermore, some even argue that the mullahs kept the war with Iraq going in order to consolidate their power. At the time Washington was supporting Baghdad while it was also sending illegal arms shipments to Tehran. In short, the war served the interests of Washington more than it served either country.

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http://www.counterpunch.org/jacobs02052007.html

Bush, Iran and the House of Saud

by Tom Philpott at 3:27 PM on 16 Feb 2007

Bush's babble about Iran has taken on a darker tone of late. Just a couple of days ago, the president claimed with certainty that an elite Iranian unit had been supplying Shiite militias in Iraq with deadly weaponry.

He acknowledged a rare bit of uncertainty over whether the Iranian government had ordered the weapons transfer, but added this: "We do know that there and I intend to do something about it. And I've asked our commanders to do something about it."

Oh, dear. Sounds like the administration is cooking up a scheme to engage the Iranian military in hostilities. That makes zero sense.

SNIP...

The question becomes, who is funding the Sunni insurgency? Probably not U.S. arch-enemy Iran; that nation is populated, and controlled, mainly by Shiites.

More likely, the money that's bolstering the resistance is coming from staunch U.S. ally Saudi Arabia. The Saudi government is Sunni-dominated and has already publicly announced its intention to fund Sunni militias if Bush can't bring the Shiite government to heel.

Moreover, according to Salon, "Many young Saudis have gone to Iraq to become martyrs in the fight against the United States and the Shiite-led Iraqi government."

It will be remembered, I hope, that Bush marketed the Iraq war as a response to the Sept. 11 attacks. He never explained why invading Iraq made sense as a response to a crime committed largely by a bunch of Saudis.

Now, he seems to be gearing up for a move to attack Iran, even though, again, the real problem seems to lie in Saudi Arabia.


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http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/2/16/123257/863

Republicans Only Need Apply?

February 15, 2007 12:02 PM

Rhonda Schwartz and Maddy Sauer Report:

The Pentagon rejected qualified experts for reconstruction work in Iraq because they were not deemed loyal to the Republican party, according to the former chief of staff of the Washington Office of the Coalition Provisional Authority, Frederick Smith.

"Some people were overlooked because they didn't meet the political saliva test," Smith, now retired, told ABC News.

Smith said political appointees at the Pentagon, including a special assistant to the secretary of defense and White House liaison, James O'Beirne, led the screening.

"We needed to get the best people out there," Smith said, "not just because they were a member of the Young Republicans Club at Michigan State."

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is now investigating the role of O'Beirne and allegations of what Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., called "an organized and systematic screening process."

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http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/02/republicans_onl.html

From the Wonderful Folks Who Brought You Iraq

The same neocon ideologues behind the Iraq war have been using the same tactics—alliances with shady exiles, dubious intelligence on W.M.D.—to push for the bombing of Iran. As President Bush ups the pressure on Tehran, is he planning to double his Middle East bet?

by Craig Unger
Vanity Fair March 2007

In the weeks leading up to George W. Bush’s January 10 speech on the war in Iraq, there was a brief but heady moment when it seemed that the president might finally accept the failure of his Middle East policy and try something new. Rising anti-war sentiment had swept congressional Republicans out of power. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had been tossed overboard. And the Iraq Study Group (I.S.G.), chaired by former secretary of state James Baker and former congressman Lee Hamilton, had put together a bipartisan report that offered a face-saving strategy to exit Iraq. Who better than Baker, the Bush family’s longtime friend and consigliere, to talk some sense into the president?

SNIP...

By the end of 2002, MEK operatives had provided the administration with intelligence asserting that Iran had built a secret uranium-enrichment site. As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle, David Albright, a former I.A.E.A. weapons inspector in Iraq, said that the data provided by the MEK was better than that provided by the I.N.C. But he added that it was possible Iran was enriching the uranium for energy purposes, and cautioned that Saddam’s former mercenaries could not be relied upon to provide objective intelligence about Iran’s W.M.D. “We should be very suspicious about what our leaders or the exile groups say about Iran’s nuclear capacity,” Albright said. “There’s a drumbeat of allegations, but there’s not a whole lot of solid information. It may be that Iran has not made the decision to build nuclear weapons.”

The MEK wasn’t the administration’s only dubious source of nuclear intelligence. In July 2005, House intelligence committee chairman Peter Hoekstra (Republican, Michigan) and committee member Curt Weldon (Republican, Pennsylvania) met secretly in Paris with an Iranian exile known as “Ali.” Weldon had just published a book called Countdown to Terror, alleging that the C.I.A. was ignoring intelligence about Iranian-sponsored terror plots against the U.S., and Ali had been one of his main sources.

But according to the C.I.A.’s former Paris station chief Bill Murray, Ali, whose real name is Fereidoun Mahdavi, fabricated much of the information. “Mahdavi works for Ghorbanifar,” Murray told Laura Rozen of The American Prospect. “The two are inseparable. Ghorbanifar put Mahdavi out to meet with Weldon.”

More than a year later, in August 2006, Peter Hoekstra released a House-intelligence-committee report titled “Recognizing Iran as a Strategic Threat: An Intelligence Challenge for the United States.” Written by Frederick Fleitz, former special assistant to John Bolton, the report asserted that the C.I.A. lacked “the ability to acquire essential information necessary to make judgments” on Tehran’s nuclear program.

The House report received widespread national publicity, but critics were quick to point out its errors. Gary Sick, senior research scholar at the Middle East Institute of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and an Iran specialist with the N.S.C. under Presidents Ford, Reagan, and Carter, says the report overstates both the number and range of Iran’s missiles and neglects to mention that the I.A.E.A. found no evidence of weapons production or activity. “Some people will recall that the IAEA inspectors, in their caution, were closer to the truth about Iraqi WMD than, say the Vice President’s office,” Sick remarked.

“This is like pre-war Iraq all over again,” David Albright said in The Washington Post. “You have an Iranian nuclear threat that is spun up, using bad information that’s cherry-picked and a report that trashes the inspectors.”

SNIP...

The only American whose opinion mattered, however, was not impressed. Bush, Salon reported, slammed the I.S.G. study as “a flaming turd.” If Rice even delivered Scowcroft’s message, it had fallen on deaf ears.

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http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/03/whitehouse200703

Secrets
Washington's $8 Billion Shadow
Mega-contractors such as Halliburton and Bechtel supply the government with brawn. But the biggest, most powerful of the "body shops"—SAIC, which employs 44,000 people and took in $8 billion last year—sells brainpower, including a lot of the "expertise" behind the Iraq war.
by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele March 2007

...The bland observation of Nazi Hermann Goering, made during the Nuremburg trials, bears frequent repeating. "The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." All the above forms a case that Iran, a developing country, is attacking the United States of America, the world's sole superpower, and Israel, a country close to many Americans' hearts. All the above makes Iran the aggressor, the U.S. and Israel the victims. No matter that Iran has never in modern times attacked another nation, or that an attack on the U.S. or Israel would result in horrific consequences for the Islamic Republic...

http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp02172007.html

Show Me The Intelligence

by Ray McGovern
AntiWar.com
January 20, 2007

Have you noticed? Neither President George W. Bush nor Vice President Dick Cheney have cited any US intelligence assessments to support their fateful decision to send 21,500 more troops to referee the civil war in Iraq. This is a far cry from October 2002, when a formal National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was rushed through in order to trick Congress into giving its nihil obstat for the attack on Iraq.

Why no intelligence justification this time around? Because there is none.

Having successfully cooked intelligence four years ago to get authorization for war, the Bush administration has zero incentive to try a repeat performance. Nor is there any sign that the new Democratic chairmen of the Senate and House intelligence committees will even think to ask the intelligence community to state its views on the likely effect of the planned "surge" in troop strength. This, even though an NIE on Iraq has been "almost ready" for months.

For the Bush administration, it has been difficult enough whipping its fickle but ultimately malleable generals into line. The civilian intelligence chiefs have proven more resistant. So the White House is playing it safe, avoiding like the plague any estimate that would raise doubts about the wisdom of the decision to surge. And that is precisely what an honest estimate would do. With "sham-dunk" former CIA director George Tenet and his accomplices no longer in place as intelligence enablers, the White House clearly prefers no NIE to one that would inevitably highlight the fecklessness of throwing 21,500 more troops into harm's way for the dubious purpose of holding off defeat for two more years.

From Mushroom Cloud to Lead Balloon

The NIE, which leaned so far forward to support the White House's warnings of a made-in-Iraq "mushroom cloud," remains the negative example par excellence of corrupted intelligence. The good news is that Tenet and his lackeys were replaced by officers who, by all indications, take their job of speaking truth to power seriously. Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis, Tom Fingar, is a State Department professional not given to professionally selling out. And his boss, John Negroponte, is too smart to end his government career by following the example of his servile predecessors in conjuring up "intelligence" to please the president – not even for a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

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http://www.antiwar.com/mcgovern/?articleid=10361

Steve.

Q Thank you, sir. General Pace says that these bombs found in Iraq do not, by themselves, implicate Iran. What makes you so certain that the highest levels of Tehran's government is responsible?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes --

Q And how can you retaliate against Iran without risking a war?

THE PRESIDENT: What we do know is that the Quds force was instrumental in providing these deadly IEDs to networks inside of Iraq. We know that. And we also know that the Quds force is a part of the Iranian government. That's a known. What we don't know is whether or not the head leaders of Iran ordered the Quds force to do what they did.

But here's my point: Either they knew or didn't know, and what matters is, is that they're there. What's worse, that the government knew or that the government didn't know? But the point I made in my initial speech in the White House about Iraq was, is that we know they're there and we're going to protect our troops. When we find the networks that are enabling these weapons to end up in Iraq, we will deal with them. If we find agents who are moving these devices into Iraq, we will deal with them. I have put out the command to our troops -- I mean, to the people who are commanders, that we'll protect the soldiers of the United States and innocent people in Iraq and will continue doing so.

~snip~

The message to the Iranian people is that your leaders are making decisions that are isolating you in the world, thereby denying you a brighter future. And I believe Iran is an unbelievably vital nation. It's got a great history, it's got wonderful traditions, it's got very capable, smart people. There is -- I believe there's also a desire to not be isolated from the world. And our policies are all aimed at convincing the Iranian people there's a better way forward, and I hope their government hears that message.

Anyway, that's a long answer to a short question, and now you're trying to get to me to -- Gregory. Excuse me, David. David.

Q Thank you, sir. I'd like to follow on Iran. Critics say that you are using the same quality of intelligence about Iran that you used to make the case for war in Iraq, specifically about WMD that turned out to be wrong, and that you are doing that to make a case for war against Iran. Is that the case?

THE PRESIDENT: I can say with certainty that the Quds force, a part of the Iranian government, has provided these sophisticated IEDs that have harmed our troops. And I'd like to repeat, I do not know whether or not the Quds force was ordered from the top echelons of government. But my point is what's worse -- them ordering it and it happening, or them not ordering it and it happening? And so we will continue to protect our troops.

~snip~

Wake Up! The Next War Is Coming

by Ray McGovern
Global Research, February 15, 2007
TomPaine.com - 2007-02-12

EXCERPT...

On January 19, Senator Jay Rockefeller, D-W. Va., chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told The New York Times he believes the White House is developing a case for taking action against Iran, even though U.S. intelligence is not well informed about politics in Iran. “To be quite honest, I’m concerned that it’s Iraq again,” said Rockefeller. “This whole concept of moving against Iran is bizarre.”

Ten days later he told Wolf Blitzer, “I have a great deal of worry that this could expand...into some kind of action with respect to Iran, which I think would be an enormous mistake.”

Then why not stop it, Senator Rockefeller? Stop the war against Iran before it starts. You are chair of the intelligence committee. You don’t have to be stonewalled, as previous chair Senator Bob Graham was in September 2002. Yes, he voted against the war in Iraq because he knew of the games being played with the intelligence. But he failed to play a leadership role; he didn’t tell his 99 colleagues they were being diddled. It’s time for some leadership.

Several of your colleague senators were reeking of red herring when they arrived home from yesterday’s talk shows. Many of them allowed the administration to divert attention from the main issue with Iran—its nuclear development plans. Instead, the focus was on explosive technology Iran is reported to be giving to Shiite elements to blow up U.S. vehicles on the roads of Iraq. This transport problem is compounded by the unfriendly skies there, where a handful of U.S. helicopters have been shot down in recent weeks. So the problem with “explosively formed penetrators” in improvised explosive devices (IEDs) at roadside is real enough.

Why not take the Army’s PowerPoint show-and-tell to Tehran, confront the Iranian leaders and demand they stop? Sorry, I forgot: we don’t talk with bad people. Well, we might try it, just this once.

The real fly in the ointment—the real aim of the U.S. military buildup in the Persian Gulf and of threatening gestures elsewhere—has to do with Iran’s nuclear plans. Recent revelations that the Bush administration summarily rejected Iranian overtures in 2003 to include this neuralgic topic among others in a broad bilateral discussion strengthens the impression that President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney actually prefer the military option to destroy Iranian nuclear-related facilities. In any case, the recent hype and provocative actions are likely to end up with an attack on Iran, unless Congress moves quickly to head it off.

Show Me the Intelligence

Where is the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on prospects for Iran’s nuclear capability? You, Senator Rockefeller now have the power to ensure that such estimates are done regularly and in a timely way. An estimate is said to be under way, but at a seemingly leisurely pace completely inappropriate to the circumstances. And there has been no NIE on this key issue since spring 2005.

CONTINUED...

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=MCG20070214&articleId=4791