No One's Drinking Bush's Kool-Aid on Iran

By Robert Dreyfuss, TomPaine.com
Posted on February 15, 2007, Printed on April 19, 2007


It was, President Bush must have been thinking, a heck of a lot easier five years ago. Back in 2002, the president had a smoothly running lie factory humming along in the Pentagon, producing reams of fake intelligence about Iraq, led by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith and his Office of Special Plans. Back then, he had a tightly knit cabal of neoconservatives, led by I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, based in Vice President Dick Cheney's office, to carry out a coordinated effort to distribute the lies to the media. And he had a chorus of yes-men in the Republican-controlled Congress ready to echo the party line.

In 2007, Bush stands nearly alone, and he never looked lonelier than during a bumbling, awkward news conference on the Iraq-Iran tangle Wednesday.

Feith is long gone, and last week his lie factory was exposed by the Pentagon's own inspector general, who told Congress that Feith had pretty much made up everything that his rogue intelligence unit manufactured. Libby is long gone, apparently about to be sentenced to jail for lying about Cheney's frantic effort to cover up the lie factory's work. And the congressional echo chamber is gone: In six weeks, the Democrats have held more than four dozen hearings to investigate the White House's catastrophic Middle East policy, and even Hillary Clinton is warning that Bush had better keep his hands off Iran, saying: "It would be a mistake of historical proportions if the administration thought that the 2002 resolution authorizing force against Iraq was a blank check for the use of force against Iran."

Without his Orwellian apparatus behind him, the president spent most of his hour-long news conference yesterday shrugging and smirking, jutting his jaw out with false bravado, joshing inappropriately with reporters asking deadly serious questions and stumbling over his words. It was painful to listen to him trying to justify the nonsensical claims that Iran and its paramilitary "Quds Force" are somehow responsible for the chaos in Iraq:

What we do know is that the Quds force was instrumental in providing these deadly IEDs to networks inside of Iraq. We know that. And we also know that the Quds force is a part of the Iranian government. That's a known. What we don't know is whether or not the head leaders of Iran ordered the Quds force to do what they did.

Pressed about what the "head leaders" are doing, he went on:

Either they knew or didn't know, and what matters is, is that they're there. What's worse, that the government knew or that the government didn't know? ... What's worse, them ordering it and it happening, or them not ordering it and it happening?

If that makes no sense to you, well, that's because the whole thing makes no sense. It's a farcical replay of Iraq 2002, when the White House demonized Saddam Hussein with fake intelligence, turning him into a menacing al-Qaida backer armed with weapons of mass destruction. This time, however, the lie factory has been dismantled. All by himself, the president is trying to turn Iran into a scary, al-Qaida-allied, nuke-wielding menace. But he's not fooling anyone. The potent "war president" of 2002-2003 is now an incoherent, mewling Wizard of Oz-like figure, and people are paying attention to the man behind the curtain.

Unlike 2002, when the White House fired salvo after salvo of fake intelligence about Iraq, today it can't even stage its lies properly. Like the incompetents who couldn't organize a two-car funeral, the remaining Iran war hawks in the administration held a briefing in Baghdad on Sunday to present alleged evidence that Iran is masterminding the insurgency in Iraq. But it was a comedy of errors that convinced no one. Twice, at least, the administration had earlier postponed or canceled the much-promoted event, designed to reveal the supposed secrets behind Iran's actions in Iraq. When it was finally held, it was not in Washington, but in Baghdad, with not a single White House official, no U.S. diplomat, no State Department official, no CIA official and no one from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Instead, a couple of anonymous military officers held a background-only briefing, barring cameras and tape recorders, to present some blurry photographs of bomb-looking things -- and not a shred of evidence of Iranian government involvement.

It was as if Adlai Stevenson had gotten up at the United Nations during the missile crisis in Cuba and, rather than showing detailed U-2 photographs of missile emplacements, had simply said, "Ladies and gentleman, some Cuban guy we talked to said the Russians are putting missiles in Cuba."

According to The Washington Times, the effort to blame Iran was directly torpedoed by the U.S. intelligence community, through the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The ODNI, said the Times, "sought to play down the intelligence on Iranian involvement, fearing that the report will be used as a basis to launch an attack on Iran." Many earlier reports noted that both the State Department and the U.S. intelligence community were strongly opposed to any attempt to demonize Iran. There's nothing like a bureaucracy scorned to conduct passive-aggressive sabotage of misguided policies, and in this case the bureaucracy apparently succeeded. The dog-and-pony show on Iranian meddling in Iraq not only didn't scare anyone, it caused guffaws of laughter and ridicule.

And then there was the hilarious presidential press conference yesterday, to top it off.

There is, of course, no basis for arguing that the civil war in Iraq is caused by Iran. And there is no basis -- "not supported by underlying intelligence," as the Pentagon I.G. said about Doug Feith's 2002 work -- to argue that Iran is responsible for a significant part of American deaths in Iraq. Nearly all of the U.S. casualties in Iraq are caused by the secular-Baathist Sunni-led resistance and religious Sunni extremists fighting the occupation, and none of the forces allied with the resistance have ties to Iran. Even the anonymous briefers at the dog-and-camel show in Baghdad admitted that Iran is helping the Shiite militias, not the Sunnis; in other words, Iran is helping the self-same militias that are being trained and armed by the United States.

And the spurious claim that 170 Americans have died in attacks using Iranian-supplied super-IED's since 2004 can only mean one thing: that the Pentagon is counting the numbers of U.S. soldiers and Marines who died in April and August, 2004. That was when the United States waged two mini-wars against Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. It was the only time in the past four years when the United States suffered significant casualties fighting the Shiites -- though the administration presented zero evidence that Sadr's Mahdi Army gets weapons from Iran, or needs to. But if they're counting as far back as 2004 -- and, according to the Pentagon, the super-IED's started showing up in 2004 -- then the whole issue is absurd, since what happened three years ago has little or no relevance to current conditions.

Those prone to believe, along with the president, that Iran is fomenting the violence in Iraq have already drunk deep of the neocon Kool-Aid. The rest of us can only shake our heads in wonder that the president thinks he can get away with this.

Robert Dreyfuss is the author of "Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam" (Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books).
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/48083/

Iran: The Next War

from Rolling Stone magazine

Even before the bombs fell on Baghdad, a group of senior Pentagon officials were plotting to invade another country. Their covert campaign once again relied on false intelligence and shady allies. But this time, the target was Iran. BY JAMES BAMFORD >>read the Rolling Stone story here

Bush Administration lies about Iran exposed

Today's Must Read
By Paul Kiel - February 27, 2007, 9:17 AM

Two weeks ago, the Bush administration organized an intelligence briefing for journalists in Iraq to demonstrate that Iran was providing weapons to Iraqi insurgents. According to the anonymous briefers, the weapons -- particularly explosively formed penetrators or E.F.P.s -- were manufactured in Iran and provided to insurgents by the Quds Force -- a fact that meant direction for the operation was “coming from the highest levels of the Iranian government.”

Well. A raid in southern Iraq on Saturday seems to have complicated the case. There, The Wall Street Journal reports (sub. req.), troops "uncovered a makeshift factory used to construct advanced roadside bombs that the U.S. had thought were made only in Iran." The main feature of the find were several copper liners that are the main component of EFPs. But, The New York Times reports, "while the find gave experts much more information on the makings of the E.F.P.’s, which the American military has repeatedly argued must originate in Iran, the cache also included items that appeared to cloud the issue."

>>read more

Buying the Bush Line on Iran Nukes: Despite uncertainty, U.S. journalists take sides

from:
Extra! September/October 2005

Buying the Bush Line on Iran Nukes
Despite uncertainty, U.S. journalists take sides

By Steve Rendall

How should U.S. journalists treat charges that Iran has a secret nuclear weapons program? On the one hand, the track record of White House allegations about the weapons programs of the “axis of evil” is decidedly poor. On the other hand, Iranian officials who claim their country has only a peaceful nuclear energy program have their own history of deceptions and evasions.

With a story marked by uncertainty, the journalist’s job is to puncture official misinformation all around while digging for more solid information. Unfortunately, U.S. news media outlets have instead largely decided to echo White House charges despite the shortage of facts.

News articles in the New York Times, which often sets the tone for other news outlets, repeatedly treat the alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program as a matter of fact. A front-page Times story by reporter Patrick Tyler (6/27/05) mentioned that China might block “efforts to bring the issue of Iran’s nuclear weapons program before the United Nations Security Council.” Another Times front-pager by Michael Gordon (10/19/04) suggested that a U.S.-friendly regime in Iraq might pressure “Iran to halt its nuclear weapons program.” And a Times article by Scott Shane (3/26/05), reporting on how U.S. intelligence on Iran is lacking, nevertheless took the administration’s view when it referred to “Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons.”

The paper also tips its hand toward the White House by emphasizing official charges about Iran, while downplaying conflicting information. For instance, a front-page Times report (3/15/04) quoted George W. Bush suggesting Iran was violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) by developing a nuclear weapons program: “We cannot allow rogue states that violate their commitments and defy the international community to undermine the NPT’s fundamental role in strengthening international security.” Bush cited no evidence that Iran was violating the NPT; neither did his National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, who appeared in the article echoing his boss’s views.

One had to look further down in the article—between parentheses, at the end of a paragraph—to learn that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. organization responsible for inspecting and monitoring NPT compliance, had found “no compelling evidence” of an Iranian weapons program.

Exaggerated certainty

The New York Times isn’t the only news outlet confusing White House charges with what is actually known about Iran’s nuclear program. An article in Newsweek’s July 11 edition, headlined “Iran’s Nuclear Lies,” parroted the White House line on Iran, stressing Iran’s spotty history of compliance with the IAEA while failing to tell readers about the IAEA’s cautiously positive assessment of Iran’s current compliance.

On a European trip, Bush explained to reporters in Germany how Iran was violating the NPT (AP, 2/23/05): “The reason we’re having these discussions is because they were caught enriching uranium after they had signed a treaty saying they wouldn’t enrich uranium. . . . They’re the party that needs to be held into account, not any of us.’’

Despite the fact that Iran’s right to openly enrich uranium for non-military purposes is protected by the NPT, Bush’s false charges were reported unchallenged in many outlets (e.g., AP, 2/23/05; All Things Considered, 2/23/05). In this case, the New York Times was an exception: “In his public comments about Iran’s uranium enrichment,” the paper reported (2/24/05), “Mr. Bush appeared to have misspoken, because the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty permits uranium enrichment for commercial purposes as long as a country declares the activity and allows inspections.” The Times did, however, fail to mention that Iran’s enrichment program had been suspended for three months at the time of Bush’s statement.

Justifiable suspicions

There are good reasons to be suspicious of Iran’s nuclear intentions. The country hid its uranium enrichment program for years and, following its discovery, officials stalled IAEA inspectors and obfuscated details of the program. These facts have not been lost on U.S. journalists, who have routinely covered them.

More recently, the IAEA has found Iran to be more or less in compliance. A Christian Science Monitor story (3/31/05) citing Iran’s past record of secrecy and delayed inspections reported that Iran “has been relatively cooperative” and that the IAEA “says its inspectors have found no evidence of a weapons program.”

According to the IAEA, Iran’s enrichment program had only produced a small amount of non-weapons-grade uranium before Iran voluntarily suspended it in November 2004 as a result of negotiations with France, Germany and Britain. On June 13, IAEA chief Mohammed ElBaradei declared that Iran has “respected its commitment with regard to suspension of the fuel-cycle activities” (Agence France Presse, 6/13/05).

Under the NPT, non-nuclear-weapons countries agree not to pursue or possess nuclear weapons, while nuclear-armed countries agree to pursue disarmament and to share nuclear energy technology with the non-nuclear countries. (See Extra!, 7–8/05.) Under the agreement, non-nuclear-weapons states may develop nuclear programs, enrich uranium, etc., as long the programs are for non-military purposes and they are disclosed to the IAEA.

Lacking context

When pointing out Iran’s deceptions and evasions, evenhandedness would require reporters to provide context regarding Iran’s situation. A fair analysis would acknowledge that, whatever its sins, Iran has not been particularly well-served by the current nonproliferation regime. To its east, Pakistani and Indian nuclear arsenals have thrived outside the NPT regime; and to its west, Israel, another non-NPT state, receives a wink from the U.S. for its undeclared nuclear arsenal.

Nor do White House rhetoric and threats exactly encourage Iran to remain nuke-free. Besides dubbing it part of an “axis of evil,” the White House has spoken flippantly about possible attacks on Iran.

On February 22, reacting to a reporter’s question about whether the U.S. is considering attacking Iran, George W. Bush drew laughter from journalists when he dismissed the notion as “simply ridiculous” and then immediately added: “And having said that, all options are on the table” (Public Papers of the Presidents, 2/28/05).

And in an interview on MSNBC’s Don Imus Show in January (cited in New York Sun, 2/18/05), Dick Cheney glibly referred to a potential Israeli attack on Iran in what some saw as a green light:

If, in fact, the Israelis became convinced the Iranians had a significant nuclear capability, given the fact that Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel, the Israelis might well decide to act first, and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards.


Independent reporting

Washington Post journalist Dafna Linzer, one of few mainstream journalists to consistently challenge White House claims about Iran’s nuclear program, reported (8/2/05) on a major new intelligence review that, while cautious about Iran’s intentions, clearly undermines White House charges:

The carefully hedged assessments, which represent consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies, contrast with forceful public statements by the White House. Administration officials have asserted, but have not offered proof, that Tehran is moving determinedly toward a nuclear arsenal. . . . The new National Intelligence Estimate includes what the intelligence community views as credible indicators that Iran’s military is conducting clandestine work. But the sources said there is no information linking those projects directly to a nuclear weapons program.


According to Linzer, the intelligence review says Iran is about a decade away (twice as long as the White House has claimed) from having the fissile material needed for a nuclear bomb, but does not say if it would have the additional technology needed to complete a bomb at that time. While Linzer questions the White House line—“Administration officials have asserted, but have not offered proof, that Tehran is moving determinedly toward a nuclear arsenal”—she also includes more dire assessments of Iran’s intentions, for instance, quoting a “senior intelligence official” remarking that the consensus view of the intelligence community is that “Iran is determined to build nuclear weapons.”

Linzer has questioned other official claims as well. For instance, many news outlets have recited without challenge the White House argument that Iran, with its large oil and gas reserves, has no need for nuclear energy; thus its nuclear energy program must be a front for a nuclear weapons program (New York Times, 6/13/04; AP, 10/26/03). In a March 27 Post report, Linzer quoted Dick Cheney making the case: “They’re already sitting on an awful lot of oil and gas. No one can figure out why they need nuclear as well to generate energy.” Then she challenged the White House logic by pointing out that Cheney and other top Bush White House officials were highly placed in the Ford White House 30 years ago when it pledged to help Iran (then possessing even larger fuel reserves) develop a network of nuclear power plants.

But Linzer’s independent reporting is the exception rather than the rule. While it is proper for journalists to report official charges and suspicions regarding Iran’s nuclear program, it’s quite another thing for them to confirm or adopt those suspicions without hard facts. This should be especially clear in the wake of the catastrophic failure of American journalism to challenge White House claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Iran as Bush's nuclear bogeyman

William O. Beeman, Donald A. Weadon

Thursday, September 30, 2004

The Bush administration continues an escalating spiral toward conflict with Iran, using Iran's nuclear policy as its primary focus. At the same time, the administration is reducing restrictions on other emerging nuclear states that pose a far more serious and immediate threat to world peace.

The consequence of this badly inconsistent policy is increased nuclear danger for the entire world. Since the end of the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has lacked convenient villains to be "against, " and the essential mechanics of American foreign policy seems to lose focus and founder.

Iran has become an on-again, off-again focus of American international discomfiture. It is a purported linchpin in international terrorism, a defiant nation who refuses to submit to years of U.S. economic warfare, a state run by theocratic functionaries, and now a nuclear felon. In short, Iran is a perfect villain, just what America needs, and the nuclear issue is a perfect pretext for this hostile behavior -- one that plays well to a nervous American public.

What the Bush administration is not telling Americans is that while it is directing attacks and calling for sanctions against Iran, it is touting meaningless nuclear containment efforts on the one hand and is consciously ignoring illegal and far more dangerous nuclear weapons development on the other. None of this is being done to guarantee public safety, but rather for partisan political reasons.

The silliest example of "progress" in nuclear containment is that of Libya. On Sept. 20, just after removing them from the list of terrorist nations, President Bush revoked a number of restrictive executive orders against Libya in part for Libya's abandonment of its nuclear ambitions. The Bush administration claims this as a diplomatic success. In fact, the Libyans gave up a fledgling and inconsequential program in exchange for political acceptance by the Western world and decreased trade restrictions.

The U.S. invasion of Iraq also did nothing to contain nuclear weapons development, since Saddam Hussein's progress on this front was negligible. Nevertheless, Iraq's "nuclear threat" was one of the reasons given by President Bush to justify the Iraq invasion. These examples of "noncontainment" containment are the purest political spin. The choice of the United States to ignore real and significant weapons development elsewhere for equally political reasons has far more serious consequences.

The United States also recently removed nuclear restrictions imposed upon India for their thinly disguised nuclear weapons program. Much of the impetus for this reportedly came from the head of the export licensing arm of the Commerce Department, who is lobbying for a job as ambassador to India and who has a very cozy relationship with the Defense Department's neoconservative leadership.

And then there is North Korea. Washington continues to huff and puff at Pyongyang, but mindful of the intelligence community's long-held determination that we have no real strategic options, we continue to appease North Korea's frankly aggressive nuclear weapons ambitions.

The United States imposed no real sanctions upon Pakistan even though their none-too-secret proliferation, "Dr. A.Q. Khan's Road Show," spanned from South Africa to Taiwan and was responsible for a frightening East Asian nuclear race with India. But Pakistani assistance in the war on terrorism has been so essential as a point of political spin for the Bush administration that the Pakistan government has been granted a pass on their nuclear weapons program.

What about Taiwan? Their decades-old nuclear program included not only weapons development at the Chung Shan Institute, but also production of American Society for Mechanical Engineering Code Part III nuclear components - - the international standard -- at Kaioshung for nuclear programs throughout the world. The open-market availability of these parts through Taiwan is a key element of the world proliferation problem. Sanctions? Absolutely not.

Brazil is now defying the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) regarding questions over its nuclear program, which is not benign. This would violate the long-standing U.S. determination to keep South America nuclear- free. And the U.S. response? No seismic rumbles of the kind directed toward Iran are apparent here. And forget South Korean enrichment efforts -- clearly they were "just a mistake."

Finally, Israel has a robust nuclear weapons arsenal and is not a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation treaty, with nary a word of disapproval from Washington.

But, oh, those mad mullahs in Iran! From the rhetoric pouring out of the Bush administration, one would think that they constitute the greatest nuclear threat on the planet.

The Iranian program, in comparison to so many others, is less developed and less dangerous. It is ironic that the United States propelled Iran on a nuclear course years ago, urging them to sink billions into a handful of energy-producing reactors which we now demand they dismantle. Iran has specifically renounced the development of nuclear weapons, and is a signatory to the most stringent nuclear nonproliferation agreements. Even if Iran wanted to develop nuclear weaponry, the CIA estimates that it would take years before anything of any significance could be produced.

Yet speculation is widespread that a military strike by the United States or Israel against Iran's reactors is a possibility, despite the fact that such a strike is fraught with great risk. The U.S. intelligence community was reported in the Sept. 27 issue of Newsweek to have concluded, after months of "war-gaming," that no military strategy exists that would keep a strike on Iran from escalating.

The Bush administration has so mishandled matters that it has now touched the most powerful symbolic nerve for Iran -- national "face." The United States has pushed Iran so hard and with such discriminatory prejudice that the leadership of the Islamic Republic has shown itself willing to partially act against their own interests to rescue Iran's national honor. Threats from the United States, or from its surrogate in this struggle, Israel, are met with escalating defiance by Iran. The Reuters disclosure on Sept. 21 that the United States has agreed to send 500 "bunker buster" BLU-109 bombs, presumably to attack Iranian nuclear facilities has only served to further infuriate the Iranians.

Iranian President Khatami said on Sept. 20, "They [the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United States] have to explicitly recognize our natural and legal right [to peaceful nuclear energy] to open the way for greater understanding and cooperation." He added, "We've made our choice. Now it is up to others to make their choice." Iran then resumed its nuclear enrichment program.

The Bush administration's pursuit of Iran on this issue is counter- productive, and may become deadly dangerous. Through its exclusive targeting of Iran, leading perhaps to an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, the Bush administration is not making the world a safer place. They are giving a pass to powers far more dangerous than Iran, and goading Iran to retaliate for any violence directed against it. If Iran chooses to answer these attacks, it is not likely to be in a way that will improve prospects for peace in the Middle East, or in the rest of the world.

William O. Beeman is professor of anthropology and director of Middle East Studies at Brown University. Donald A. Weadon, a former naval officer, is a Washington-based international lawyer specializing in technology, defense, and trade sanctions.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2004/09/30/EDGB790KB01.DTL

This article appeared on page B - 9 of the San Francisco Chronicle