Monday, October 17, 2011

The Persian Paranoia Ploy

18 Oct. 2011
by Jeff Huber

I thought about calling this essay “The Boys Who Cried Iran,’” but that title had a cross-purpose parallel problem. The lesson of the “Boy Who Cried Wolf” parallel is that the townspeople eventually ignore the boy’s false alarms.  It seems, on the other hand, that we the people will never tire of hearing the “Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran” mantra. 

The Iranians vant to
drink your blood!
This time around, the Pentarchy’s bull feather merchants have manage to cull a confluence of Persian Peril Paranoia with our by now Pavlovian terror of terrorism.  An Iranian-American used-car salesman is accused of being the key figure in an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the U.S. and to bomb the Israeli Embassy in Washington.  Scary, huh kids?

The used-car salesman in question is 56 year-old Mansour J. Arbabsiar (aka “Scarface), whose apprehension by the FBI was in keeping with the legendary Homeland Security sting operations that netted the Dirty Bomber who turned out to be too retarded to make a dirty bomb, and the Panty Bomber whose panty bomb didn’t even put third-degree burns on his party favor, and the Times Square Screw Up who locked himself out of his bomb car and his getaway car andhis apartment. 

Scarface, if that really is his international underground terrorist cabal code name, is a 30 year resident of Texas, a state renowned for another Justice Department fiasco of fame that unfolded in the town of Waco, a travesty during which Janet Reno’s Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) hooligans immolated 76 lonesome losers whose heinous crime was allowing themselves to be brainwashed by cult leader David Koresh.  Scarface Arbabsiar inhabited Texas for three decades during which he racked up a string of failed businesses, a covey of angry creditors, and a furious former spouse who sought a protective order against him.  His friends describe him as “perennially disheveled” and “hopelessly disorganized.”  His socks never matched and he constantly lost his keys and cell phone.  A rival used-car salesman described Arbabisiar as “worthless.”

Mansour J. Arbabsiar was a mark so perfect for a pre-election propaganda con game that the fool infested FBI couldn’t have overlooked him if they were wearing two blindfolds instead of the single one that was their standard issue in the years that led up to the 9/11 attacks.    

Attorney General Holder and senior Justice Dept. Staff
At the uber-helm of this cockamamie caper was Attorney General Eric Holder, who is to Barack Obama’s Justice Department what Ford Sterling was to Mack Sennett’s Keystone Kops: the chief buffoon.  It was no doubt coincidence, it just had to have been, that the Scarface assassination scare story hit the mainstream fire hose the day after Holder was subpoenaed to do some ‘splainin’ to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about the ATF’s Operation Fast and Furious, a gun-walking campaign that should have been dubbed “Faster and Funnier.”  In the course of groping though an investigation trying to trace firearms from American gun dealers to Mexican drug gangs, Holder’s ATF-ups managed to lose track of 1,400 to 2,000 guns that migrated into the mitts of the Mexican drug gangsters they were trying to keep guns from migrating into the mitts of. 

I’d characterize Faster and Funnier as a Petraeus-class fumble, but that would be incredibly unfair to Holder and the ATF.  When then three-star general David Petraeus let U.S supplied guns tiptoe into the hands of Shiite militiamen, he didn’t just hand over a couple thousand of the things.  Petraeus gave away 190,000 of the things, more than enough to arm 10 United States Army infantry divisions.  Funny how the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee never subpoenaed King David to explain how that happened.  It must have been an oversight on their part (heh).  

It's the old "They can't
be that stupid so they
must be that stupid" ploy.
According to the Runyonesque scenario Holder and Company spin, the case just happened to fall together when some Defense Enforcement Agency Dunderhead had a chance meeting with Johnny Scars and a pair of Iran’s elite Quds Force baddies who just happened to be operating on American soil in plain sight of every federal, state and local law enforcement official and intelligence agent in the great state of Texas.  Our best intelligence (double heh) alleges that officials at the highest levels of Iran’s government pulled stunts that prompted Robert Baer, a former CIA case officer in the Middle East and author of several books on Iran, said there was “sloppiness about the case that defies belief.”  “Sloppy” is a kind euphemism.  According to Holder’s Heroes, top Iranian leaders left a paper and electronic trail leading back to themselves that Inspector Clousseau could have followed. 

But incredulity is by no means grounds among the Obama inner-war party for stiff-arming a chance to pacify the Pentarchy with the citizenry marching on Wall Street and an election on the horizon.  State Secretary Cruella Clinton said of the case “The idea that they [the Iranians, I guess she means] would attempt to go to a Mexican drug cartel to solicit murder-for-hire to kill the Saudi ambassador, nobody could make that up, right?”  Wake up and smell the napalm, Hillary.  Remember the whoppers Big Dick Cheney and his Delaware Destroyers fabricated about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and his ties al Qaeda and his connections to 9/11 that got us into the Iraq quagmire that you voted for?  Conjuring incredible tales so the American public will let you bomb or invade other countries is neocon de rigueur.  If you ain’t lyin’ they ain’t buyin’, that’s the warmongery’s motto when it comes to constructing a casus belli from hydrogen molecules.     

Holder's argument that top Iranian government officials were involved in a plot to hire Mexican Drug runners to assassinate a Saudi diplomat and bomb an Israeli embassy has more holes in it than Scientology dogma.  But that’s okay because young Mr. Obama said in a 13 October press conference that, “the facts are there for all to see,” though he failed to mention what any of those facts are or where any of us might go to see them.     

When Holder's Iranian/Mexican assassination/bomb plot accusations began generating guffaws globally, Obama’s spin physicians switched to another cherished wolf cry.  Favored Pentarchy echo chamberlain David E. Sanger of the New York Times relays to us that “President Obama is pressing United Nations nuclear inspectors to release classified intelligence information showing that Iran is designing and experimenting with nuclear weapons technology.”  If you crawl between the gutters in this puff piece you pick up that the “classified intelligence information” they’re talking about is the so-called “smoking laptop” documents that were proven to be forgeries five freaking years ago

But young Mr. Obama’s story is that Iran wants to kill Saudis and Israelis and they’ll do it with hired banditos or nukes or trick-or-treaters or whatever it takes, and he’s sticking to it, and he’ll get away with this used mare's oats mendacity because beating war drums appeases the neocons and today's liberals are too vaginal to stand up to him.    

Where do we find such candidates?
Why do we elect such men to the highest office in our land?  Oh, that’s right.  The choice was him and Bazooka Joe or Grampaw Pettibone and Patriotic Barbie.  The difference between the two tickets doesn’t seem so clear in the rearview mirror, does it?  This Obama person who promised to put the brakes on the neocon agenda is starting to make Barry Goldwater look like a peace pansy.    

Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes at Pen and Sword. Jeff's novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books), a lampoon on America's rise to global dominance, is on sale now. 

16 comments:

  1. I think this probably has a lot less to do with Eric Holder (the Maytag Repairman of Justice) than with Mr. Obama singing the OWS blues. Trust me, all eyes are on the dramas in New York, Boston, and countless other places. If anyone is talking about this Iran nonsense in a few weeks time, I will be very surprised.

    You guys might like these video clips, I certainly found them inspiring. Veterans standing up to the system that screwed them, and not only that, defending their nation and its people in the purest sense:

    Second Time I've Fought For My Country

    This Is Not a War Zone!

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  2. Cool links, JP. Thanks.

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  3. PO2, I'm sorry but I somehow managed to eliminate your excellent post in the course of unfurling this article. Here it is copied from the email version:

    PO2 has left a new comment on your post "The Persian Paranoia Ploy":

    What do you think about this, Cmdr Huber?

    Last month Sec Clinton announced additional funding for the Silk Road infrastructure project-- a plan to carry oil, minerals, ore through Afghanistan into S Asia. Included is the Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India (TAPI) oil pipeline -link.

    You'll notice that Iran has a competing project to supply India oil: the Iran, Pakistan, India (IPI) line.

    Of course, US powers-that-be don't want India giving their money to Iran, especially if that means buying oil on an Iranian Bourse in euro or yen as opposed to on markets that deal in USDollars only.

    Also last month, Iran announced it is willing to exchange "full supervision" of its nuclear energy program for lifting sanctions (link). As access to the program is the reason for sanctions, this puts pressure on the US to negotiate with Iran and possibly lift (soften) sanctions.

    With no sanctions, Iran will have a far easier time funding and securing partnerships in order to complete its oil line.

    Could it be that this "caper" is intended to give US allies, and especially the US media, another reason to intensify sanctions and block the IPI pipeline?

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  4. And PO2, I'm sorry about the missing links but I can't figure out how to paste them into a comment.

    Jeff

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  5. Thanks once again for a very informative and yet humorous commentary sir.
    One does need to stretch the imagination to even think that any sane, rational human being could "buy" this totally BS "plot". Of course that means that the congress critters (I refuse to capitalize "congress" until we have some honest critters in that group) will buy the entire story, no matter how "far out there" it may seem to us. Yes, I AM saying that the congress critters are deaf, dumb, and blind. Makes me almost "un-'Merikkkan" I suppose. Well, 4 years in the US Marines and a tour in Vietnam, yeah, not your "typical" flag waver.
    No doubt Faux Noise is eating this stuff like a sugar coated cereal. Same goes for the "tea party" no doubt.
    It does seem to fail the smell test simply because this "plot" story comes out just as the OWS is starting to gain some real traction. Can you say "October surprise"? Of course you can. Except this "surprise" isn't all that surprising.
    We need to face the facts here, the US government has become a total joke. It would be the most hilarious (as in Hi-Larry Clint-stone) if (and it is a very big if) the same gang didn't have the largest nuclear weapons cache in the entire planet. Yes, if the US was some third rate, banana republic with NO nukes, the entire world would be laughing its collective back side off at this "plot". Unfortunately, the US does have the biggest collection of nuclear weapons ever assembled. THAT makes the US the biggest bully ever. Just thinking about the clowns who have their finger on the trigger of those weapons is enough to give the rest of the world many sleepless nights.
    Thanks for including references to the Keystone Kops and also to SCTV. Brings back some very happy memories.

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  6. Yes, Charlie. Our government is a total joke. Good call.

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  7. I forgot to add that you made a very oblique reference to George Thorogood and the "Delaware Destroyers". Not sure if that one was intentional though.
    Any who, thanks for another great article.

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  8. No worries about erasing my comment. I'll re-post the links in case any readers are interested:

    Silk Road / TAPI:
    http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Resources/2011/10/03/Kabul-set-for-gains-through-new-Silk-Road/UPI-47181317656984/

    "full supervision":
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/06/world/middleeast/06iran.html?_r=1&ref=nuclearprogram

    Wanted to add that I truly appreciate the work you've done over the years. Thanks.

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  9. One more thing. You'll probably be interested in this profile of the Iranian mastermind:

    The man accused of scheming to kill a Saudi diplomat is described by those who know him as a scatterbrained, hapless businessman who in college earned the nickname "Jack" for his affinity for whiskey...
    [...]
    “He couldn't even pray, doesn't know how to fast. He used to drink, smoke pot, go with the prostitutes,” (said a friend)... “His first wife left him because he would lose his keys every other day. ... This guy is not a mastermind.” -link

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  10. Great link, PO2, thanks.

    Jeff

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  11. Hi Commander,

    Sam Smith, at Prorev.com has some pertinent thoughts, and questions about this "plot."

    http://prorevnews.blogspot.com/2011/10/slow-and-curious.html

    I guess, if you are looking for a "patsy"...for an alleged assassination plot. . this guy would make the short list.

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  12. Great link, EL. Yeah, Scarface has "patsy" written all over his, uh, face.

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  13. Quote from the link PO2 provided above "..there had been some signs of suspicious activity: When residents looked for available Wi-Fi networks, names like “FBI Van 1” pop up.".
    Wow this kind of sloppiness defies belief from the FBI who could not even be bothered to turn off the broadcast of their wifi name and to also use a name which clearly identifies them is another matter. Is it amateur hour at the FBI and arn't they supposed to be the top crime investigation organizations in world?

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  14. Sir, your inference that the FBI is a flock of amateurs is insulting to dignified amateurs everywhere! ;-)

    J

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  15. RE: "If you ain’t lyin’ they [the neocons] ain’t buyin" ~ a Huberism

    "Sticks and stones may break our bones, but facts will never sway us." ~ Neocon Creed

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  16. Heh. I don't think facts even enter into the equation when you're a true New Centurion.

    Jeff

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