Stef from Famous for 15 megapixels is one of the best in the British blogosphere. He has recently posted two stories on the Iranian weapons found in Iraq.
Size matters and its follow-up Even More Urban Myths . And while at it, Stef has produced a third post on the subject.
And yet, despite the ridicule of their affirmations and the cynicism this time around, the neocons seem to be traveling the same path again. Another excellent Brit tackles the credibility question of these affirmations.
However, in countries supporting the war against Iran the press seems to be lending credibility to US lies. I detected in yesterday's coverage of the news about Iran a clear difference between Le Monde and The Guardian. Le Monde insisted on Ahmadi-Nejad's and Iran's will to negociate and to find solutions within the international legal framework, IAEA, etc...: ''Today, we are announcing that Iran's will is to achieve a negociated deal with the international community through a constructive dialogue... We don't want to aggravate the security situation in the region.'' declared Iran's supreme council chief of national security Ali Larijani in Munich. Even Ahmadi-Nejad showed restraint in face of the US frenzy to throw fabricated accusations at Iran. He declared yesterday that Iran's nuclear activity will stay in the framework of the IAEA and within the non proliferation treaty*.
While Mark Tran in the Guardian shows an Iranian president and a British PM both on the offensive: ''The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, today accused the US of seeking to blame others for its problems in Iraq.''
''Britain today weighed into the issue of alleged Iranian support for the insurgency by backing US claims of Iran's complicity at the highest level with insurgent attacks on American and allied forces that have left 170 soldiers dead.'' Added Mark Tran.
Are we witnessing here a repeat of the divergences we saw in the run up to the Iraq war; each newspaper expressing the official position of its government ? Are we going to witness another Freedom fries campaign on Capitol hill ? Are we going to hear the same spin, lies, relayed and broadcasted to us by our media hundreds thousands times in order to prepare the public opinion for war ? Are we going to let the Bush administration and Israel drive us into a silly war again ?
* Israel, who possess not less than 200 nuclear war heads ready to strike anywhere in the region, does not subscribe to the non proliferation treaty and is not inspected by the IAEA. Yet, the western press wants us to believe that Iran, who does not possess nuclear war technology, is a biggest threat than Israel. Actually, nobody is talking about Israel's nuclear war capacity.
''My people decide the truth in sixty countries every morning. And in every one it's different.''
Since March 29th 2006
9 comments:
at times like this, I pay more attention to the Fox and the CNNs of the world. The Neocon campaign against Iran has been going on for a while, but what is different from the Iraq case is that almost no reporter that I have heard has mentioned this new "hooolaaalaa Iranian weapons found" story without adding to it that
1. This is not the first time they have found "possibly" Iranian weapons=> pay attention to the timing
2. The administration is discredited thanks to their pack of lies in Iraq => don't believe them because of this report
Fromw hat I can tell, even the neocon media doesn't seem to think this story has much to sell. God bless anna Nikole Smith!
Naj,
I believe that the neocons are following a well traveled path. We have a saying in Arabic: With Repetition one can even convince a donkey. A donlkey is known for its stubborness and one has to be patient and repetitive to make the donkey comply. This case is no more laughable than other cases. It is just part of a chain of repetetive lies. I am sure that one can find more easily weapons from saudi arabia, Jordan and even the US in the hands of the insurgents in Iraq. But they are not building an argument here, they are just planting propaganda and unless we have more intelligent media and more critical thinking and agressive reproting, propaganda will always make its way in the minds...
From now on we will hear a different lie every now and then and the sum and repetition of lies, even though they won't constitute a Case, they will surely lead to the building of tension and 'hopefully' some escalation so new elements stemming from this confrontation of lies and indignation may eventually come out and justify an attack on Iran...
Clearly not Iranian ordinance and in spite of senior commanders in the British army stationed in Southern Iraq reporting that they were quite sure that seized weapons were not of Iranian origin our Prime Minister states publicly that he is convinced that the Iranian government is supplying the insurgency. The man has no shame (or respect for our military).
In spite of the US foisting the Shah on the people of Iran, they showed their sympathy.
http://www.time.com/time/europe/photoessays/vigil/index.html
Which was repaid in kind a few years later with a full page ad in the Financial Times.
http://stefzucconi.blogspot.com/2006/04/same-old-crap-different-fucking.html (Thanks again Stef).
I'm afraid this propaganda push was planned years ago and we will be hearing a lot more to come in the future.
Thanks Wolfie for the Links.
Link One
Link Two
Wolfie,
Link Two is another great post by Stef. I was listening at the debate on the Israel lobby (the link is on the first page, end of rightside column of the LRB). When it came to exami ning israel's role in pushing for war against Iraq, almost everybody, from both sides disputing the lobby hypothesis, agreed on the fact that israel would have liked going against Iran first but went along as the Bush administration priority was Iraq. They however promised that Iran and Syria will be next on the list...
Hello Sophia
Thanks for positive comments
As I'm sure you realise, my blog is very much a personal one and consequently mixes the trivial with the serious but, make no mistake, I take this business very seriously.
Having said that I'm still not 100% sure whether this current campaign against Iran is serious or an example of staged theatre. The Americans and Israelis have been more than happy to covertly trade arms with Iranian regime in the past and you could argue that the occupation and subsequent break up of Iraq has been a good thing from an Iranian point of view.
There are all sorts of scenarios to explain what is going on.
But whatever the truth is, it is difficult to conceive of any scenario where attacking Iran or Syria will solve anything
Hi Stef,
I agree. However, don't forget that Saddam's war against Iran was encouraged by the US at the time. Now that Iran is becoming a rising regional power, the US, and certainly Israel, might be tempted to strike. If you look at the big picture, there is coherence in Israel's and the US concerted policies in the middle east; it is to nurture dictatorial and weak regimes who have no internal legitimacy and depend on the US for their survival. These regimes become then totally compliant with US policies. Saudi Arabia is a clear example. Any non compliant regime might be seen as an ennemy and the Iranians cannot be seen as compliant for the time being.
Maybe the goal of the actual spin is to frighten and intimidate; it worked with Ghaddafi who is now a friend for the US. If intimidation does not work then they go for an escalation, at any price...I believe this is the US startegy for foreign policy now.
I honestly cannot see how they can wage another war but again this administration and its allies have shown us that they are not bothered by reality.
I still cannot think how they would attack Iran; and their campaign against Iran is not very well coordinated.
Don't underestimate the cunningness of the Iranian counterparts either. They have successfully "repelled" the "colonizer" imperialists for a few centuries (you can't say the same for Iraq or Afghanistan, for instance). I would also take the nationalism of Iranians far more seriously, in spite of Americans plots at creating regional tensions in the North West and the South East of Iran (and this is not new, by the way, but has never born fruit for the empires!)
Iran is a multi -ethnic society, not everyone is Persian, but everyone is Iranian.
The top post of Wordpress yesterday!
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