Thursday, August 13, 2009

Iran: Whose War?

by Jeff Huber

Rupert Murdoch’s Times of London has set a new standard in canard journalism. The headline of an Aug. 3 story exclaims, “Iran is ready to build an N-bomb—it is just waiting for the Ayatollah’s order.” The first sentence reads, “Iran has perfected the technology to create and detonate a nuclear warhead and is merely awaiting the word from its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to produce its first bomb.”

The article goes on to make similar outrageous claims, all supported by the testimony of unnamed “western intelligence sources.” The identity of the “sources” becomes pretty clear in the 11th paragraph when the article attributes revelations about Iran’s three-decade “master plan” to build a nuke to an unidentified “Israeli official.” And oh, the article was written in Tel Aviv.

The authors—James Hider, Richard Beeston and Times Defense Editor Michael Evans—attempt to “confirm” what the Israelis breast-fed them by stating that anonymous sources say British intelligence services are “familiar with the secret information about Iran’s experiments.” The authors admit that “British agencies” do not have their own “independent evidence” regarding Iran’s nuclear-weapons experiments, but “they said there was no reason to doubt the assessment.”

We can’t prove that aliens built the pyramids, but we can’t completely disprove it either, so it must be true. Run it on the front page.

Read the rest at The American Conservative.


6 comments:

  1. It might be a good idea to completely ignore the unnamed sources and anything that comes out of Tel Aviv...but they won't. God almighty! How many wars can they possibly contemplate at a time, unless they're planning to speed up Armageddon and the "end times".

    Jeff, I don't know whether you saw this NYT article about a new army handbook.

    New Army Handbook Teaches Afghanistan Lessons

    More deathless prose from Stan the Man:

    "Combat commanders acknowledge how much they rely on the analysis and lessons-learned manuals sent from headquarters back in the United States. 'The education of our force is the best weapon we have,' said Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the new commander in Afghanistan. 'Counterinsurgency is complex, nuanced and ever-changing, and success is dependent on a fighting force that can recognize these changes and adapt to them.'"

    This from the guy who was surprised that the Taliban disappeared in Helmand when the Marines showed up. I'm no military tactician (or military anything) but even I knew that's what they were going to do.

    "...[I]n distilling lessons into practical advice for the troops, General Caldwell is building on an effort brought to popular attention by a predecessor, Gen. David H. Petraeus, now commander of American forces in the Middle East.

    Under General Petraeus’s leadership at Fort Leavenworth, the military released a counterinsurgency field manual credited with helping turn around the war in Iraq and ending the armed services’ focus on heavily armored conventional warfare."


    Ah, yes. The heavily plagiarized CI manual has come back to haunt us.

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  2. The only part of that FM Petraeus wrote was his signature on the endorsing letter.

    Jeff

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  3. Just read the piece at the AC.

    Biden as a "double-wide ego with a life support system"?

    Perfect.

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  4. Oh for the "good old days" when newspapers just printed the news. Seems like now, their reporters feel compelled to "make it up. "

    It is no longer about informing the public.

    It is now ALL about selling papers to give the stockholders a good return on their investments.

    No wonder so many are going broke, and out of business.

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  5. I meant to post this the other day when I saw your lead-in about Rupert Murdoch and his "newspaper". Shame. The Times used to be pretty good.

    Murdoch might be feeling the pinch. He's renting his yacht out to those with more money than sense for a mere $310,000 a week. I don't know if that includes the crew.

    $310,000? Peanuts!

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  6. Andrei Vyshinski1:23 PM

    And for anyone that believes that the Republican Party will ever do an about face on the Middle East, this from Glenn Greenwald this morning concerning Huchabee:

    http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

    Clearly pandering to his Christian Zionist co-religionists, Huckabee nevertheless gives us a snap-shot of the depth of the rot in what remains of the Republican Party. Here we have yet another American candidate running for president of Israel. Obama apparently wasn't enough.

    The Quixotic Ron Paul and his band of misguided romanticists notwithstanding, there will be no end to the present insanity through the exercise of the franchise. The present structures are so corrupt that not even veto proof margins can bring Obama a so-called "public option" on healthcare. The interests, be they financial, drug, arms, or Middle East foreign policy, so own the system that only mass demonstrations and/or the general strike will bring relief.

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