The propaganda has succeeded. According to a recent poll, two out of three Americans (roughly the same percentage favoring increased funding for mass transit) now view Iran as a major threat.
As recently as October, Iraq and China were seen as the biggest threats, closely followed by North Korea.In the words of the immortal Homer: "Mmmmmm! Kool-Aid!"
"The threat from Iran has really penetrated, with two of three saying Iran's nuclear program represents a major threat," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center. "Among people who have been following news about the issue, there's even greater concern."
A prediction from Russia: Vladimir Zhirinovsky, that lovably weird quasi-fascist, has looked into his crystal ball, and he foresees a U.S. attack on Iran in late March.
"The war is inevitable because the Americans want this war," he said. "Any country claiming a leading position in the world will need to wage wars. Otherwise it will simply not be able to retain its leading position. The date for the strike is already known — it is the election day in Israel (March 28). It is also known how much that war will cost," Zhirinovsky said.I'm not so sure about that one -- but let us take note, nonetheless.
He went on to add that the publication of Prophet Muhammad cartoons in the European press was a planned action by the U.S. whose aim is "to provoke a row between Europe and the Islamic world".
Rumsfeld rattles the saber: When a guy like Rumsfeld says that military force is "an option" he usually means "it's a done deal."
The administration line is that Iran will hand nukes to terror groups. Of course, there is no evidence that they have any such intention. If the powers-that-be in Tehran possess even one iota of sanity (and I think they must possess several), they must be praying that no terrorist cell sets off a WMD in the United States -- because the Iranians know full well who will be blamed, regardless of who actually did what.
Making it personal: I have always said that the prelude to war would be marked by a stepped-up demonization of Iran's leadership. That's happening -- and the latest effort comes from a striking source:
GERMAN Chancellor Angela Merkel compared President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran to Adolf Hitler...All righty, there we have it: The inevitable comparison to Adolf. As you know, this is the first step in any modern propaganda campaign.
Now all we need is the traditional tabloid story in which Ahmadinejad stands exposed as a cross-dresser or a pedophile. Or perhaps he will be portrayed as the rejected suitor of a blonde American woman -- which, if I recall correctly, was the yarn they attached to Osama Bin Laden. Once you see a headline of that sort blaring at you as you stand in line at the grocery store, you'll know it's war.
The document dump: Last -- but certainly not least -- are the "leaked" faked documents. Remember the yellowcake forgeries? Meet their older siblings. (In case Effwit has posted more, scroll down to "White House Takes Iran Propaganda To New Low.") The original story appeared in the Washington Post:
Analysts cannot completely rule out the possibility that internal opponents of the Iranian leadership could have forged them to implicate the government, or that the documents were planted by Tehran itself to convince the West that its program remains at an immature stage. CIA analysts, some of whom had been involved only a year earlier on the flawed assessments of Iraq's weapons programs, initially speculated that a third country, such as Israel, may have fabricated the evidence. But they eventually discounted that theory.Of course they did. To do otherwise would be Thoughtcrime.
"There is always a chance this could be the biggest scam perpetrated on U.S. intelligence," one U.S. source acknowledged.But hey...just to be on the safe side, let's nuke Tehran anyways. Otherwise, people could get hurt.
Two further points:
1. What is Michael Ledeen up to these days?
2. The same poll referenced above reveals that the vast majority of the American people still want to see this issue resolved via the U.N. -- not unilaterally. In order to change that opinion, something big will have to take place. Something really big.
5 comments:
joe, isn't the iranian bourse scheduled to open mar. 20th?
seems like this single event provides more explanation for the timing of this aggression than anything, certainly more than iranian elections, and definitely more than those dumb documents.
my god, how the hell are we going to finance another invasion? and occupation? well, i suppose that supplies even more explanation for us right there. the big dick and his buds have done so well with our first two wars, of course they'd be all gung ho for another one.
Speaking of our country gearing up for war with Iran, here comes mainstream media to do its part in getting the public to back this war.
check out the latest Newsweek Feb 13th issue which appears to be consumed with Iran.
It features a scowling picture of Iranian President Aehmadinejad on the cover with "How dangerous is Iran?" in huge font plus two lovely sub-titles:
1) "the next nuclear threat"
2) "Radical Islam in Power"
Newsweek devotes no fewer than 12 pages to banging the war drums in our upcoming war with Iran.
Plus the article contains a handy-dandy map of Iran with all the nuclear related sites nicely marked and demarked as either a star icon "nuclear" or missile icon "missile". The pentagon must be using a similar map.
I predict that the military will toss out its "don't ask, don't tell" policy regarding gays because they will need so many bodies. My guess is they'll just empty the gay bars in places San Francisco when they need more recruits and ship them off to boot camp once the draft is reinstituted.
Personally I think the US will wage war, nuclear war, against Iran in late summer/early fall, just in time to make sure that voters can't throw out the Repugs.
Anon from SF
Great post. As to Michael Ledeen, I saw a story a while back where he was saying that Osama bin Laden was in Iran, followed by a story where he said bin Laden had died in Iran. The source was said to be Iranian dissidents.
It does seem Bush & Co. are preparing the public for some sort of military attack on Iran, and it would assuredly come before the Nov. 2006 elections.
But what form could such an attack take? The same media which has been doing its loyal part in the propaganda campaign has also noted that bombing selective sites in Iran wouldn't be effective. And "we" certainly don't have troops or equipment for an invasion, much less an occupation.
A nuclear attack -- even for this administration -- would seem highly unlikely. The costs would be enormous, effectively making the U.S. a outlaw pariah state, to a degree unthought of even now. A nuclear strike would, in effect, be the end of American empire and likely precipitate a worldwide economic crash.
In a word, the whole thing is very puzzling.... They seem to want to do it, but there's no apparent way they could.
Excellent post. Great summary.
Regarding this:
CIA analysts, some of whom had been involved only a year earlier on the flawed assessments of Iraq's weapons programs, initially speculated that a third country, such as Israel, may have fabricated the evidence. But they eventually discounted that theory.
Let's keep in mind where all that "faulty intelligence" that the OSP was peddling came from:
The OSP was an open and largely unfiltered conduit to the White House not only for the Iraqi opposition. It also forged close ties to a parallel, ad hoc intelligence operation inside Ariel Sharon's office in Israel specifically to bypass Mossad and provide the Bush administration with more alarmist reports on Saddam's Iraq than Mossad was prepared to authorise.
"None of the Israelis who came were cleared into the Pentagon through normal channels," said one source familiar with the visits. Instead, they were waved in on Mr Feith's authority without having to fill in the usual forms.
The exchange of information continued a long-standing relationship Mr Feith and other Washington neo-conservatives had with Israel's Likud party.
In 1996, he and Richard Perle - now an influential Pentagon figure - served as advisers to the then Likud leader, Binyamin Netanyahu. In a policy paper they wrote, entitled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, the two advisers said that Saddam would have to be destroyed, and Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iran would have to be overthrown or destabilised, for Israel to be truly safe.
The Israeli influence was revealed most clearly by a story floated by unnamed senior US officials in the American press, suggesting the reason that no banned weapons had been found in Iraq was that they had been smuggled into Syria. Intelligence sources say that the story came from the office of the Israeli prime minister.
The OSP absorbed this heady brew of raw intelligence, rumour and plain disinformation and made it a "product", a prodigious stream of reports with a guaranteed readership in the White House. The primary customers were Mr Cheney, Mr Libby and their closest ideological ally on the national security council, Stephen Hadley, Condoleezza Rice's deputy.
It certainly wouldn't surprise me if someone from Likud (or one of its American neocon henchmen, like Ledeen) was the source of these new documents.
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