Hyping The Evil Iranian Empire

By Steve Hynd

Over at Salon, Glenn Greenwald examines the quality of "reporting" on Iran and the threat it presents to America.

it wouldn't surprise me in the least if Iran wanted a nuclear weapons capability.  If anything, it would be irrational for them not to want one.  What else would a rational Iranian leader conclude as they look at the U.S. military's having destructively invaded and continuing to occupy two of its neighboring, non-nuclear countries (i.e., being surrounded by an invading American army on both its Eastern and Western borders)?  Add to that the fact that barely a day goes by without Western media outlets and various Western elites threatening them with a bombing attack by the U.S. or the Israel (which itself has a huge stockpile of nuclear weapons and categorically refuses any inspections or other monitoring).  If our goal were to create a world where Iran was incentivized to obtain nuclear weapons, we couldn't do a better job than we're doing now.

But regardless of one's views on that question, or on the question of what the U.S. should do (if anything) about Iranian proliferation, the first order of business ought to be ensuring that the reporting on which we base our views is accurate.  A CNN poll from February found that 59% of Americans favor military action against Iran if negotiations over their nuclear program fail (see questions 31-32) -- and that's without the White House even advocating such a step.  As the invasion of Iraq demonstrated, the kind of fear-mongering, reckless, and outright false "reporting" we're seeing already -- and have been seeing for awhile -- over Iran's nuclear program poses a far greater danger to the U.S. than anything Iran could do.

Word. (And thanks for the link, Glenn). But I think Glenn puts too much blame on reporters and not enough on the "unofficially official" hawks in the Pentagon and White House who have fed the mainstream's stenographers a steady diet of outright lies, half-truths and distortions for years now. People like David "Judy in Drag" Sanger wouldn't have diddly if they weren't privy to constant leaks of ammunition from within the U.S. government. That's what the "stenography for access" game played by all the serious people is all about.

A quick side note: there's news today that a missing Iranian nuclear scientist who disappeared from Saudi Arabia months ago is indeed in CIA hands. That means that Iranian claims of American involvement in his disappearance were correct and official U.S. denials at the time were outright lies. Hmmmm. I take this as proof the U.S. government is more than capable of lying about matters Iranian, but I'm sure someone will be along shortly to tell me how Iran is always the liar and the U.S. always the truth-teller, because we're the good guys or something.

Anyway, there's more proof that the powers-that-be are busily stirring the pot with lurid stories about Iran today in news that Admiral Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has yet again voiced concern over Iran "providing some assistance to insurgents in Afghanistan". Oh those evil and perfidious Iranians, how ever can we trust them when they say they have no intention of building a nuclear weapon? One day we'll have to deal with them directly, but only after we've made a show of "exhausting every other option"!

It's exactly the same as the hyperbole the Pentagon and Bush administration expressed over Iranian weapons in Iraq - and has exactly as much basis in fact, which is to say not much. But Mullen and his stenographers aren't interested in telling Americans about arms bazaars, the ancient Silk Road smuggling routes that run through the entire region and further, from China to Morocco, or the vast and lucrative black arms market in the region which has grown up over decades of war in one country or another along those routes since 1945. They're not interested in explaining that Afghanistan is the world's leader in unaccounted-for weapons, with over 10 million small arms in-country provided by Russia, the U.S., Pakistan and others. They're not interested in mentioning that the U.S. has lost tens of thousands of weapons since the invasion, dwarfing any alleged Iranian shipments. They're certainly not interested in applying Occam's razor - just like when they accused Iran of the same thing in Iraq. And you notice that there's no indication that another "Baghdad Briefing" is in the offing.

Don't look behind the curtain.

Comments

[malcontent]

New Moon on a Friday. That is always when the munitions fly. May 13 or June 11th.

Mark your calendars. Gather the family around the teevee and get your narratives while they are hot and fresh!

[tofubo]

i saw we put into gitmo the person, and the people in his inner office, that allowed the transfer of the nuclear technology to iran in the first place

[tofubo]

i would also 'say' the same thing

[anon]

you might want to look for information about operation mockingbird.

[Poison]

Why isn't Jordan trying to develop a nuke? They're squeezed between the US in Iraq, and Israel? See, the problem with your line of reasoning is that you imply the US just up and invaded Afghanistan and Iraq for no reason. With Afghanistan, that is clearly not the case, they provoked the attack; with Iraq, obviously the invasion was bull****. HOWEVER, Saddam and the US had a longstanding beef, and as dumb as it was, it wasn't out of nowhere.

If Iran was busy minding its own business, being the cradle of civilization or whatever else they're good at, and cranking out natural gas by the boatload, and not supporting terror around the globe (argentina, israel, lebanon, syria, etc), no one would think twice about Iran, just as they don't think about invading Jordan. But Iran is not minding its business; it meddles in other countries affairs, the region, it tries to develop nukes, it supplies the insurgency in Iraq to the tune of thousands of dead Americans, and it verbally threatens the US and Israel.

And I know it's just SO HARD to fathom that all Muslims don't hate the US as much as you, but half Iran is pro-US, and can't stand their ****ing retard Islamist leadership.

As far as the scientist that defected goes it seems you SO want to put the US in Bad Guy shoes, that you'll grasp at anything to do so. Did you even consider that the guy defected of his own free will, and its the US job to 1) protect valuable intel, 2) protect the source, and 3) it's really none of your/the general public's goddamn business?

What do you think the CIA does? "Ladeeda, knock knock, i'm here to spy on you. Yes, your guy defected, here's what he told us, is that everything, or is there more"? Trust me, you naive schmuck, BOTH sides are lying about the scientist.

[JohnFarnham]

It's a scam run by every administration to uphold strategic policy of denying nuclear power generation unless it is supplied by the U.S.A. Despite the fine-sounding rhetoric of the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty, what it accomplishes is to provide a platform from which to construe fault and whip up fear of WMD.
Yet the proposition is not right on the face of it. Russia is providing Iran with fuel and technology.
Hello. Remember the Cuban Missile Crisis ? Do you think the people who raised Holy Hell over nukes on missiles in Turkey are suddenly going to supply a threat in their back yard ? Really ? Tell me more. This should be good.
And of course, power plants are designed NOT to go bang. So the fuel isn't fissionable material without a whole bunch of processing huge quantities of materials. That wouldn't be noticed, right ? You don't even Need an inspection program to tell what's going on from amounts supplied !
But there is one. The IAEA chief agrees with Iran's neighbours - which include Turkey. Everybody is fine with Iranian activities, which go past usual transparency.
Yep. They gilded the lily...or StinkWeed.
And I do have a section up in the corner of my.opera.com/oldephartte/links/ which include musings on this topic as my opinions solidified. But Dec 4 and Dec 20 especially were a surprise. And of course I had to chase down something that makes me look totally inane according to Conventional Wisdom.
Since that's out of Madison Avenue and Hollywood - no problem.
http://opitslinkfest.blogspot.com/2009/12/4-dec-following-trail-climate-fraud-and.html

[jay]

I tend to agree with the Glenn -- the onus is on the so-called journalists and on us. The establishment, hawks, neocons, etc have a vested interest in achieving their goals by any means possible. As far back as history recalls, group in power tend to fabricate stories purportedly to serve what they benevolently call "the public good". In the past, the counterbalance in the US has been "the press". And, Glenn is vividly painting the picture of what has been lost by illustrating the fabrications the so-called journalists are participating in.