Shaping the Iran story - Giraldi

 "There have been recent reports that Iran has enabled the travel of al-Qaeda leaders to Afghanistan and Pakistan where they will be able to confront and kill American soldiers.  If you think you have heard the story before, you have, in another context.  In the earlier rendition it was Saddam Hussein who was hand-in-glove with al-Qaeda, helping the group in its nefarious planning to attack the United States and kill Americans.  Saddam, who was in reality only a threat to his own people, was on the receiving end of a barrage of fabricated information claiming that he was secretly developing weapons of mass destruction and clandestinely dealing with the terrorists who were responsible for 9/11.  Or so the story goes.  And now it is Iran’s turn and the story and the storytellers are exactly the same."  Giraldi

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http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2010/05/19/shaping-the-story-on-iran/

Comments

[n m slalmon]

The sad part of this new wave of neo-con propaganda is that the respective authors did not learn the lessons of th Iraqi centered hype: the consequences have greatly contributed to the fall from grace of the USA in the eyes of the world.

Moreover, being so busy hyping war and hyping pro-israeli garbage, the media and the talking heads did not have "free time" to uncover the birth of the second greatest economic reversal in USA history, the Recession/depression of 2007.

I believe the miscalculations if Iran is attacked will put the nail in the coffin of the USA economy, and perhaps the nation due to fragmentation/localization necessary after the economic collapse.

[Jackie]

Col.,
We have been picking at Iran since the 1979 overthrow of the Shah. It is a real shame that we cannot accept the fact that the Iranians did not appreciate having to put up with him after the 1953 coup. You may have a different opinion of the situation.

It's probably still about oil as it was in '53. What is our oil doing under their country?

[jr786]

Oh! The villains!

Thanks to the efforts of Col. Lang and others there is plenty of information available to anyone with the wit and will to think critically.

The official story is being challenged more and more, providing seats for those who don't want a place on the fainting couch.

[anna missed]

It's like my old art professor used to say, "there's nothing more boring, and less inspiring, than an old idea that's run its course".
The U.S. was never going to attack Iran as long as it occupied and held on to some vestige of its interests in Iraq. And as all that dwindles down to an inevitable zip, the odds are that Iran will reap the whirlwind of our suppressed frustration. Which will of course, for us, only double down the impact of the unfolding catastrophe currently materializing in the Gulf of Mexico.

[Clifford Kiracofe]

1. For a classic book on propaganda (Brits in WWI) see Arthur Ponsonby's, Falsehood in Wartime. A quote from which:

"Falsehood is a recognized and extremely useful weapon in warfare, and every country uses it quite deliberately to deceive its own people, to attract neutrals, and to mislead the enemy. The ignorant and innocent masses in each country are unaware at the time that they are being misled, and when it is all over only here and there are the falsehoods discovered and exposed. As it is all past history and the desired effect has been produced by the stories and statements, no one troubles to investigate the facts and establish the truth."
http://www.heretical.com/miscella/ponsonby.html

2. One notes the step up of war propaganda per Iran and one also notes the timing of the change for DNI.

One might argue a more compliant DNI would be desired by those seeking war. Thus Clapper.

3. As in the case of the Iraq War, Congress has to be stirred up to something approximating a fever pitch.

As in the case of the Iraq War, public opinion has to be manipulated so as to spike upward in support of "the use of force" (war) at the appropriate political moment.

As I recall, the LA Times (I think it was) did a study of their readers and how they formed opinions per the Iraq War. The study concluded that about 70 percent of their readers formed their opinions based upon television "reporting" and opining.

We can also remember the role of the national network controlled by the pro-war "Clear Channel" communications group.

And there was even that Nashville country song a bout eagles and freeeedumb and so on...

3. On the academic side, Prof. Chaim Kauffman nailed the media manipulation issue back in a 2004 scholarly analysis.

"Chaim Kaufmann - Threat Inflation and the Failure of the Marketplace of Ideas: The Selling of the Iraq War - International Security 29:1 International Security 29.1 (2004) 5-48 Threat Inflation and the Failure of the Marketplace of Ideas The Selling of the Iraq War Chaim Kaufmann Mature democracies such as the United States are generally believed to be better at making foreign policy than other regime types. Especially, the strong civic institutions and robust marketplaces of ideas in mature democracies are thought to substantially protect them from severe threat inflation and "myths of empire" that could promote excessively risky foreign policy adventures and wars. The marketplace of ideas helps to weed out unfounded, mendacious, or self-serving foreign policy arguments because their proponents cannot avoid wide-ranging debate in which their reasoning and evidence are subject to public scrutiny. The marketplace of ideas, however, failed to fulfill this function in the 2002-03 U.S. foreign policy debate over going to war with Iraq. By now there isbroad agreement among U.S. foreign policy experts, as well as much of the American public and the international community, that the threat assessments that President George W. Bush and his administration used to justify the waragainst Iraq were greatly exaggerated, and on some dimensions wholly baseless. Postwar revelations have made clear that President Bush and top officials of his administration were..."
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/
international_security/v029/29.1kaufmann.html

[johnf]

The degradation of the Israel brand name continues.

Revealed: how Israel offered to sell South Africa the bomb

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/23/israel-south-africa-nuclear-weapons

"The Israeli authorities tried to stop South Africa's post-apartheid government declassifying the documents at Polakow-Suransky's request and the revelations will be an embarrassment, particularly as this week's nuclear non-proliferation talks in New York focus on the Middle East.

They will also undermine Israel's attempts to suggest that, if it has nuclear weapons, it is a "responsible" power that would not misuse them, whereas countries such as Iran cannot be trusted."

Interesting time for the documents to be leaked. I wonder who it was - the South Africans or even the Obama administration?

[zanzibar]

When the truth of our financial situation can no longer be hidden by monetization - there is nothing like war to distract the masses.

The demonization of the Iranian regime on the basis of some fact and a whole lot of falsehoods would ultimately serve a purpose when the moment to pull the trigger arrives - usually a few months before a close fought election. If that premise is correct then the fateful moment would be around 6-12 months prior to November 2012.

[Fred]

Zanzibar, President Lieutenant General Leopoldo Galtieri and the hunta of Argentina thought the same thing before the Falklands war. Didn't quite turn out the way they planned.

[zanzibar]

Fred - yes, indeed! Argentina looms larger and larger in our own futures.

[Cynthia]

Most of the world's medical isotopes are produced by the Netherlands and Canada, and they are barely keeping up with the West's demands for medical isotopes, leaving the rest of the world in very short supply of them. So Iran does have good reason for wanting to produce its own supply of medical isotopes. And given that enriching uranium for medical uses is child's play, as Einstein would say, compared to enriching uranium for weapons of war, it's wrong to think that Iran having medical-grade uranium is just one step away from having weapons-grade uranium.

Iran, in my view, isn't any more warlike than any other country in the world, so I doesn't think that Iran is any different from most countries in not wanting nuclear weapons. And even if the Iranians do want nukes, I don't think they want them in order to nuke Israel. If anything, Iran wants nukes in order to create a balance of power between itself and Israel. But then, I'm of the opinion that Israel, being a lone nuke power in the Middle East, is doing more harm than good to itself and to its Western allies.

[J]

Phil,

Here's Ray McGovern's take regarding the Turkey-Brazil-Iran enrichment deal

http://consortiumnews.com/2010/051910a.html

US/Israel Challenged on Iran
By Ray McGovern

The times may be a-changin’ – at least a bit – with the United States and Israel no longer able to dictate to the rest of the world how crises in the Middle East must be handled, though the new reality has been slow to dawn on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her neocon friends in Congress and the U.S. media.