Iran. Plus: The exquisitely-named CON Coughlin

This administration does many awful things, but it also refuses to leap into the void, even as a thousand neocons shout "Jump!"

The Iran deal is actually pretty good. Even the Pope likes it. Iran allows inspections without warning, while the US relieves the sanctions against Iran. This should pose no great hardship for Iran, since they had no nuclear program. What they want is to get rid of the sanctions. To achieve that goal, the bogus nuclear threat was the one card they had to play.

So: In the end, Obama opted for peace over war. The conservative response to all of this is insane and horrifying. Bob Corker of Tennesse is pushing a measure that would require submission of any agreement to Congress. A number of reddish-tinged Dems are going along with this idea.

According to Scott Ritter, the UN weapons inspector (and former Marine):

The nuclear deal as negotiated is a far cry from the kind of irresponsible capitulation critics of the negotiations charge. The high-profile criticism coming from Israel and Congressional Republicans channel the most extreme examples of the last weapons of mass destruction (WMD) witch-hunt -- involving Iraq -- which culminated in a war that killed thousands, cost trillions, and destabilized and further radicalized a region of the world essential to international prosperity. Armed with the knowledge that the case against Iraq's WMD was, at best illusory and, at worst, a complete fabrication, Americans should be hesitant about accepting at face value claims of Iranian nuclear malfeasance that are unsustained by fact and are at odds with history.

Speaking about things that are "unsustained by fact": The agit-prop war against Iran continues.

Iran has sent Hamas’s military wing tens of millions of dollars to help it rebuild the network of tunnels in Gaza destroyed by Israel’s invasion last summer, intelligence sources have told The Sunday Telegraph.

It is also funding new missile supplies to replenish stocks used to bombard residential neighbourhoods in Israel during the war, code-named Operation Protective Edge by Israel.

"Intelligence sources." Pretty vague.

And who is the author of this exercise in vagueness? None other than Con Coughlin, the notorious "Defense Editor" of the Telegraph. Here's a fun exercise: Type his name into Google and take note of the auto-completions. Amusingly, the second auto-completion (after "con coughlin telegraph") is "Con Coughlin MI6."

If you hit some of those links, here's the kind of thing you'll read...

Yet more proof that Daily Telegraph correspondent Coughlin works for MI6 and as MI6 is a minor department of the CIA, Con Coughlin also works for the CIA. Whether they pay him or not is beside the point.

In 2003, Coughlin wrote that he had seen a document proving that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11. No such connection existed, as even President Bush came to admit. The letter shown to Coughlin was later admitted to be a forgery.

Understand? Get it?

Coughlin is the kind of "journalist" who mindlessly repeats what he is told by his spooky buddies. When that 9/11 story turned out to be a lie -- an incredibly important lie -- Coughlin did not become angry at his sources. He did not complain about being used. He did not apologize to his readers. He did not say "In the future, I'll be far less trusting." He did none of these things.

Instead, he told the spooky pals: Thank you, sir. May I please have another?

And that's not all, folks:

"It was Coughlin who, with the help of unnamed intelligence sources, discovered that Saddam Hussein could launch weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes.

"And it was Coughlin who revealed the link between the 9/11 hijacker, Mohammed Atta, and Iraqi intelligence.

"Both claims have, of course, been exposed as utter nonsense." - (UK Indymedia - Pentagon Propaganda Occupies the Guardian's Front Page:)

Previously, Coughlin offered a "scoop" about Colonel Gaddafy's son Saif, who allegedly was part of a counterfeiting scheme. This narrative turned out to be another disinfo exercise:

The story was written by Con Coughlin, the paper's then chief foreign correspondent, and it was falsely attributed to a “British banking official”. In fact, it had been given to him by officers of MI6, who, it transpired, had been supplying Coughlin with material for years.

The younger Gaddafy sued the Telegraph, and this legal action led to revelations about Coughlin's meetings with British spooks.

Bottom line: The guy's name is "Con." Imagine how Ian Fleming would have chortled if he had come up with a name like that.

Gaza. Incidentally, I certainly hope that Iran is helping out the victims of Gaza. Israel has been telling international agencies that any money spent on rebuilding will be wasted, since the Israelis will simply destroy the new construction next time they "mow the lawn." As a result, there has been almost no rebuilding effort, and many in Gaza are living a ghastly, nearly feral existence.