NY Times Once Again Lies For Bush Whose Itching to Attack Iran
Posted in H.L. News, Main Blog (All Posts) on February 11th, 2007 3:43 pm by HL
‘NYT’ Reporter Who Got Iraqi WMDs Wrong Now Highlights Iran Claims
Editor & Publisher
Excerpt
NEW YORK Saturday’s New York Times features an article, posted at the top of its Web site late Friday, that suggests very strongly that Iran is supplying the “deadliest weapon aimed at American troops†in Iraq. The author notes, “Any assertion of an Iranian contribution to attacks on Americans in Iraq is both politically and diplomatically volatile.â€
What is the source of this volatile information? Nothing less than “civilian and military officials from a broad range of government agencies.â€
Sound pretty convincing? Well, almost all the sources in the story are unnamed. It also may be worth noting that the author is Michael R. Gordon, the same Times reporter who, on his own, or with Judith Miller, wrote some of the key, and badly misleading or downright inaccurate, articles about Iraqi WMDs in the run-up to the 2003 invasion.
Gordon wrote with Miller the paper’s most widely criticized — even by the Times itself — WMD story of all, the Sept. 8, 2002, “aluminum tubes†story that proved so influential, especially since the administration trumpeted it on TV talk shows…..
Now, more than four years later, Gordon reveals: “The Bush administration is expected to make public this weekend some of what intelligence agencies regard as an increasing body of evidence pointing to an Iranian link, including information gleaned from Iranians and Iraqis captured in recent American raids on an Iranian office in Erbil and another site in Baghdad.†Gordon’s unnamed sources throughout the story are variously described as “Administration officials,” “intelligence experts” and “American intelligence.”
Rumors of War
MSNBC
The Iranians have reason to feel paranoid. In recent weeks senior American officers have condemned Tehran for providing training and deadly explosives to insurgents. In a predawn raid on Dec. 21, U.S. troops barged into the compound of the most powerful political party in the country, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and grabbed two men they claimed were officers in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Three weeks later U.S. troops stormed an Iranian diplomatic office in Irbil, arresting five more Iranians. The Americans have hinted that as part of an escalating tit-for-tat, Iranians may have had a hand in a spectacular raid in Karbala on Jan. 20, in which four American soldiers were kidnapped and later found shot, execution style, in the head. U.S. forces promised to defend themselves.
Some view the spiraling attacks as a strand in a worrisome pattern. At least one former White House official contends that some Bush advisers secretly want an excuse to attack Iran.
H.L.s Take
Its like we keep saying here at The H.L. Bush, and his neocon administration want constant war without end, so that they and their friends at Halliburton, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing, can continue to make Billions.
February 11th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
Very good, HL, that you caught that story in Saturday’s NY Times. I had the same sinking feeling that ‘here they go again’ when I read it. Ironically, in the same paper they had a good editorial about the Pentagon’s IG report about Doug Feith’s skunk works intel operation and how they got it all so wrong about Hussein and Al-Quaida. I hope the Times is applying the same skeptical eye to their own reporting as they want us to apply to what the government is saying. They have the resources to do good investigative reporting that can help us all figure out what the hell is really going on in the world, but can they be trusted to get it right? As far as this Times subscriber is concerned.. it doesn’t look good.
February 11th, 2007 at 7:56 pm
Americans are just now beginning to understand the dangers posed by a nuclear-armed Iran. A recent Washington Post/ABC poll found that 56% of Americans endorse the use of U.S. military action to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, while just 38% opposed it. By contrast, we Israelis have always understood the dangers posed by a nuclear Iran, a state that has long backed terrorist attacks against our people.- Shemon Peres
http://www.geocities.com/munichseptember1972peres.htm
February 11th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
“Last Monday, just before he announced that Iran had gatecrashed “the nuclear club”, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad disappeared for several hours. He was having a khalvat (tête-à -tête) with the Hidden Imam, the 12th and last of the imams of Shiism who went into “grand occultation” in 941.
According to Shia lore, the Imam is a messianic figure who, although in hiding, remains the true Sovereign of the World. In every generation, the Imam chooses 36 men, (and, for obvious reasons, no women) naming them the owtad or “nails”, whose presence, hammered into mankind’s existence, prevents the universe from “falling off”. Although the “nails” are not known to common mortals, it is, at times, possible to identify one thanks to his deeds. It is on that basis that some of Ahmad-inejad’s more passionate admirers insist that he is a “nail”, a claim he has not discouraged. For example, he has claimed that last September, as he addressed the United Nations’ General Assembly in New York, the “Hidden Imam drenched the place in a sweet light”.
Last year, it was after another khalvat that Ahmadinejad announced his intention to stand for president. Now, he boasts that the Imam gave him the presidency for a single task: provoking a “clash of civilisations” in which the Muslim world, led by Iran, takes on the “infidel” West, led by the United States, and defeats it in a slow but prolonged contest that, in military jargon, sounds like a low intensity, asymmetrical war.
In Ahmadinejad’s analysis, the rising Islamic “superpower” has decisive advantages over the infidel. Islam has four times as many young men of fighting age as the West, with its ageing populations. Hundreds of millions of Muslim “ghazis” (holy raiders) are keen to become martyrs while the infidel youths, loving life and fearing death, hate to fight. Islam also has four-fifths of the world’s oil reserves, and so controls the lifeblood of the infidel. More importantly, the US, the only infidel power still capable of fighting, is hated by most other nations.
According to this analysis, spelled out in commentaries by Ahmadinejad’s strategic guru, Hassan Abassi, known as the “Dr Kissinger of Islam”, President George W Bush is an aberration, an exception to a rule under which all American presidents since Truman, when faced with serious setbacks abroad, have “run away”. Iran’s current strategy, therefore, is to wait Bush out. And that, by “divine coincidence”, corresponds to the time Iran needs to develop its nuclear arsenal, thus matching the only advantage that the infidel enjoys.
Moments after Ahmadinejad announced “the atomic miracle”, the head of the Iranian nuclear project, Ghulamreza Aghazadeh, unveiled plans for manufacturing 54,000 centrifuges, to enrich enough uranium for hundreds of nuclear warheads. “We are going into mass production,” he boasted.
The Iranian plan is simple: playing the diplomatic game for another two years until Bush becomes a “lame-duck”, unable to take military action against the mullahs, while continuing to develop nuclear weapons.
Thus do not be surprised if, by the end of the 12 days still left of the United Nations’ Security Council “deadline”, Ahmadinejad announces a “temporary suspension” of uranium enrichment as a “confidence building measure”. Also, don’t be surprised if some time in June he agrees to ask the Majlis (the Islamic parliament) to consider signing the additional protocols of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Such manoeuvres would allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director, Muhammad El-Baradei, and Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, to congratulate Iran for its “positive gestures” and denounce talk of sanctions, let alone military action. The confidence building measures would never amount to anything, but their announcement would be enough to prevent the G8 summit, hosted by Russia in July, from moving against Iran.
While waiting Bush out, the Islamic Republic is intent on doing all it can to consolidate its gains in the region. Regime changes in Kabul and Baghdad have altered the status quo in the Middle East. While Bush is determined to create a Middle East that is democratic and pro-Western, Ahmadinejad is equally determined that the region should remain Islamic but pro-Iranian. Iran is now the strongest presence in Afghanistan and Iraq, after the US. It has turned Syria and Lebanon into its outer defences, which means that, for the first time since the 7th century, Iran is militarily present on the coast of the Mediterranean. In a massive political jamboree in Teheran last week, Ahmadinejad also assumed control of the “Jerusalem Cause”, which includes annihilating Israel “in one storm”, while launching a take-over bid for the cash-starved Hamas government in the West Bank and Gaza.
Ahmadinejad has also reactivated Iran’s network of Shia organisations in Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Yemen, while resuming contact with Sunni fundamentalist groups in Turkey, Egypt, Algeria and Morocco. From childhood, Shia boys are told to cultivate two qualities. The first is entezar, the capacity patiently to wait for the Imam to return. The second is taajil, the actions needed to hasten the return. For the Imam’s return will coincide with an apocalyptic battle between the forces of evil and righteousness, with evil ultimately routed. If the infidel loses its nuclear advantage, it could be worn down in a long, low-intensity war at the end of which surrender to Islam would appear the least bad of options. And that could be a signal for the Imam to reappear.
At the same time, not to forget the task of hastening the Mahdi’s second coming, Ahamdinejad will pursue his provocations. On Monday, he was as candid as ever: “To those who are angry with us, we have one thing to say: be angry until you die of anger!””
http://www.allthingsbeautifull.com/all_things_beautifull/2006/04/nuclear_jihad.htlm