As anonymous administration sources hype up the threat of Iran, some reporters fall into the same bad habits they did in the run-up to the disastrous Iraq War, spreading unconfirmed information as if it is fact. But there's also some evidence that lessons have been learned.
By Greg Mitchell
(March 05, 2007) -- Four years ago, E&P was one of the few mainstream news outlets to strenuously question the administration's case for WMD in Iraq. We've carried countless articles about this since, and occasionally a reader will ask, Why do you harp on it?
The simple answer is: We wonder if the media has really learned its lesson. Periodic incidents suggest otherwise, balanced by evidence that, as the prophet urged, "we won't get fooled again."
The recent firestorm over reports of Iranian weapons in Iraq provided reason for both hope and fear.
Three weeks ago, The New York Times featured prominently on its front page and Web site a report by Michael R. Gordon -- based wholly on unnamed sources -- claiming firm evidence that Iran was supplying "the most deadly" weapon used against U.S. forces in Iraq: a certain kind of roadside bomb. Gordon, of course, had produced (with Judith Miller) the so-called "mushroom cloud" article in 2002 relating to WMD in Iraq that proved quite false.
Last week, the Times' public editor, Byron Calame, offered his appraisal, which raised some questions about Gordon failing to provide a little more balance in his report -- but praising followup articles by other Times reporters that did seem more skeptical. Yesterday he printed some letters from readers, all critical of Gordon and the Times.
A San Francisco man commented: "Now even The New York Times’s public editor must pick up a bucket of whitewash to try to paint over the newspaper’s boosting of the Bush administration’s propaganda for another misguided war, this one against Iran. The truly unfortunate aspect is that these articles are carried on the front pages of hundreds of local newspapers. It’s a sorry mess, to which your fingerprints have been added, even through the white gloves your column claims to wear."
A woman from New Hampshire: "You insult the readers when you imply that Mr. Gordon has become the scapegoat du jour and that questioning his writing is merely sour grapes — leftover anger from the W.M.D. debacle. This demeaning argument suggests that readers aren’t able to make cogent decisions about the validity of his writing but are, rather, too busy nursing old wounds."
And a man from Maryland: "If the Times editors were so anxious to demonstrate the tenuous nature of this story as you suggest, why was the story prominently placed on Page 1? I recognize that a journalist’s task is difficult. But we are dealing with a president with a clear track record on war and diplomacy. Times editors were enablers for the Iraq war. Have these editors learned nothing more than to insert mild caveats into administration propaganda that could potentially be used to lead us into another war?"
This made made me reflect on one night last month, just after the Gordon and Baghdad briefing articles, when an e-mailed memo arrived in my inbox. At least one news editor had seen enough.
That night, the first part of the PBS Frontline series on the media was aired, with distressing reminders of newspapers' complicity in the Iraq invasion. It showed Bob Woodward on Larry King's CNN show back then saying there was "almost zero" chance WMD would not be found in Iraq. In a new interview, Judith Miller said she did nothing wrong in her reporting back then, even if the reporting itself was wrong.
A few minutes after that, the e-mail landed in my "new messages" box.
It came from KSFR, a public radio station in Santa Fe, N.M. I don't know anything about the station, although I have been to Santa Fe a couple of times. It seems that the surge in "unnamed officials" had finally pushed News Director Bill Dupuy to take action. He wrote that "until further notice, it is the policy of KSFR's news department to ignore and not repeat any wire service or nationally published story" about Iran, North Korea, and other sensitive foreign areas if it quotes an "unnamed" U.S. official.
"What we have suspected and talked about at length before is now becoming clear. 'High administration officials speaking on the condition of anonymity,' 'Usually reliable Washington sources,' and others of the like were behind the publicity that added credibility to the need to go to war against Afghanistan and Iraq.
"This is a small news department with a small reach. We cannot research these stories ourselves. But we can take steps not to compromise our integrity. We should not dutifully parrot whatever comes out of Washington, on the wire or by whatever means, no matter how intriguing and urgent it sounds, when the source is unnamed. I am also calling on our colleagues in other local news departments -- broadcast and print -- to take the same professional approach."
The following day, President Bush at a press conference contradicted the still-unnamed officials at the Baghdad briefing, admitting, "I do not know" one way or the other if the Iranian government knew anything about the weapons in Iraq. But, to update Mark Twain, I'll add: An unnamed source's lie can dominate the Web while the truth is still putting on its boots.
Greg Mitchell (gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com) is editor of E&P.
Showing posts with label wmds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wmds. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Friday, February 23, 2007
Blix Blasts Bush’s Policy in Iran
Related
US intelligence 'wrong' on Iran
Much information given to UN was unfounded, Vienna sources say.
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US intelligence 'wrong' on Iran
Much information given to UN was unfounded, Vienna sources say.
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The former U.N. weapons inspector thinks the government is playing with fire.
By Niall Stanage
2/26/2007
copyright © 2006 the new york observer, llc | all rights reservedHans Blix believes the Bush administration is courting catastrophe in its handling of Iran. “It is playing at very high stakes,” Mr. Blix said. “The risk is that a spark could fly and that things could happen unexpectedly.” Mr. Blix’s dark warnings come at a time of particularly high tension. The United Nations is grappling this week with what to do about the recalcitrant regime in Tehran, with the government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad virtually certain to breach a Wednesday deadline for suspending its uranium-enrichment program. What will the world body do next? The U.S. is insistent that the pressure on Iran must be intensified. Other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council—notably Russia and China—are much less enthusiastic about such a course. Meanwhile, Mr. Ahmadinejad told a crowd in northern Iran on Feb. 20 that his country would stop enrichment and enter talks—so long as Western nations also closed down their own “nuclear-fuel-cycle program.” “Then we can hold dialogue under a fair atmosphere,” the Iranian president said. Mr. Blix, who led U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq in the run-up to war—and who earned the deep enmity of Washington hawks for his circumspection—spoke by telephone from his home in Sweden. He is now removed from U.N. politics, plying his trade for the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, a body funded primarily by the Swedish government. Liberated from the constraints of forced diplomacy, he is scathing about the U.S.’s refusal to negotiate with Tehran, in particular its demand that Iran must suspend its uranium-enrichment program before such talks begin. “The U.S. is sitting down with North Korea while they are making plutonium! Yet they are refusing to sit down with the Iranians,” he said. “A big part of it seems to be about humiliating the Iranians. It’s like, ‘Say uncle!’ The U.S. wants the Iranians to say uncle before it will sit down. “The West has painted itself into a corner with Iran,” Mr. Blix continued. “The Iranians are willing to talk about anything. All they have said is that they are not willing to close enrichment before the talks begin. Well, that is just like playing poker. Who gives away their trump card before you start to play?” Mr. Blix earlier this week wrote a syndicated column that appeared in the International Herald Tribune and on the MaximsNews.com Web site. Headlined “Will The U.S. Attack Iran?”, it noted that two U.S. aircraft carriers are now in the Persian Gulf. “The military build-up is either to scare Iran or to prepare for attacks on Iran,” he wrote. In his interview with The Observer, Mr. Blix said that he was not yet convinced an attack on Iran was imminent. But he believes that that has more to do with the realities of American politics than any lack of bellicosity on the part of the Bush administration. “On balance, I think it is unlikely they will do it. The U.S. public seems averse to more military adventures,” he said. He also cautioned that belligerence towards Iran would be likely to have effects that would be counterproductive from an American perspective. “The hardliners inside Iran would be strengthened by an attack,” he said. “The Iranians are clearly divided,” he added, referring to increasing domestic dissatisfaction with the presidency of Mr. Ahmadinejad. “But if the country was to be attacked from abroad, I think you would very quickly see a return of nationalistic fervor. If they were attacked, the argument about why they should have a weapon would also become even stronger.” For Mr. Blix, full negotiations with Tehran are by far the best option. And he believes in the carrot as well as the stick. “Iran has never been offered any security guarantees,” he asserted. He again drew a contrast with the negotiations with North Korea, which have long incorporated a U.S. pledge not to attack or invade in return, essentially, for good behavior from Pyongyang. “In negotiations, it is always the same: If you think the other fellow is terribly anxious, you can make use of it—but if you don’t, you can’t extract anything,” he said. “With North Korea, it was the U.S. which was anxious to get talks going. The North Koreans wouldn’t concede anything in advance.” Mr. Blix said he was aware of the domestic difficulties the U.S. might have in negotiating directly with Mr. Ahmadinejad or his representatives, but he argued that the potential benefits would far outweigh the costs. “Of course, it might be more politically difficult for the U.S. to sit down with Iran—I realize that. “But,” he added dryly, “it might also be less unpleasant than another war.” Mr. Blix was equally critical about other aspects of U.S. foreign policy. In his syndicated article, he described the situation in Iraq as a “debacle.” Asked if he saw any hope of circumstances improving there, he answered, “No, I don’t see any.” He added: “The Iraqis are not empowered, whatever the U.S. says about it being a sovereign nation. For, so long as the U.S. is there, the various Iraqi groups will not finally come together. Only when the U.S. says, ‘We are leaving and we will have no bases there,’ will the Iraqis say, ‘We have to get our act together.’” To Mr. Blix, the fundamental first step is obvious. Referring to American withdrawal, he said: “A timetable is desirable.” Turning his attention back to Iran, the former weapons inspector expressed horror at the notion of a supposedly “surgical” strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. “It would be absolutely catastrophic,” he said. “It would be an entirely new game if anyone started to bomb nuclear-power plants. I’m altogether against it. It is the worst possible option, aside from attacking civilian centers.” Mr. Blix believes that more time for inspections and negotiations could have helped to avert war in Iraq. He is insistent that the same mistake should not be made again. “There is time with Iran. The C.I.A. says they are five to 10 years away from having a bomb. The Israelis, they will probably say one or two years,” he said. “But there is time.”
Sunday, February 18, 2007
U.S. charges against Iran just like Iraq WMD hype
Posted on Sun, Feb. 18, 2007
By Trudy Rubin
COMMENTARY
TOO BAD THE trial of Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, is getting only a fraction of the media fuss stirred up by the death of Anna Nicole Smith.
No question, Smith's passing is more titillating. But Libby's perjury trial is crucial to U.S. security. It has laid bare how the White House skewed the intel on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and sold these distortions to the media. What makes the tale even more unnerving is the possibility that the process is being repeated -- with Iran.
The trial revolves around a 2003 White House campaign to defame a retired diplomat and Africa expert, Joseph Wilson. Wilson was sent to Niger by the CIA in 2002 to check reports that Niger had sold uranium to Iraq in the 1990s. The White House was promoting the Niger story to strengthen its case that Saddam Hussein had revived his nuclear program.
But Wilson found no evidence of such a sale, nor did the U.S. embassy in Niger. And from the beginning, CIA analysts doubted the story. The State Department's intelligence arm, which saw the foreign documents that had provoked the story, considered them to be blatant fakes.
And yet the story wouldn't die. Despite the fact that CIA director George Tenet personally got President Bush to remove a reference to Niger uranium in a 2002 speech, the tale lived on. The reason: relentless White House efforts to promote the story and relentless White House pressure on the CIA to confirm it. Dissenters in the intelligence community were brushed aside.
Bush made the Niger claim a centerpiece of his 2003 State of the Union speech to justify the coming war, citing British intelligence as the source. (The British intel was apparently based on the same set of fake foreign documents.)
By early 2003, White House claims about Iraq's WMD had crumbled. The U.S. National Intelligence Agency said the Niger story was baseless. The Niger forgeries had been unmasked.
As White House claims about Iraq's WMD crumbled, Wilson finally went public in July 2003 with the story of his mission to Niger. In retaliation, Cheney organized a smear campaign against Wilson.
A number of White House officials, including Libby, were dispatched to tell reporters (inaccurately) that Wilson had been sent to Niger by his wife, Valerie Plame, a covert CIA agent. The implication was that the trip was nothing but a nepotistic junket.
To further deflect any focus on flawed intelligence, reporters were told that any false information was the fault of the CIA. Bush even declassified a top-secret, pre-war national intelligence estimate on Iraq's WMD so Libby could quote it to selected reporters. But Libby misrepresented the contents of the brief -- falsely claiming it supported the Niger charge.
In the end, Libby was indicted not for leaking Plame's name -- a potential felony -- but for lying about who told him about her existence. He claims he learned it from NBC's Tim Russert. But Russert denies this, and Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, who investigated and is prosecuting the case, says Libby got the information from Cheney.
Why would Libby lie about this? According to Fitzgerald, Cheney and his aides saw Wilson as a threat to "the credibility of the vice president (and the president) on a matter of signal importance: the rationale for the war in Iraq."
This brings us up to the present. In a build-up of tension that resembles a replay of the Iraq war run-up, the White House is claiming that Iran is America's chief problem in Iraq.
Bush has authorized the U.S. military to "kill or capture" Iranian agents who are plotting attacks on U.S. troops, and U.S. special forces have raided Iraqi government offices and arrested visiting Iranians. We have moved more ships to the Persian Gulf and armed Iran's Arab neighbors with Patriot missiles.
Last Sunday, U.S. military briefers in Baghdad made a long-delayed presentation of evidence that Iran provides weapons to Iraq's Shiite militias, weapons they claimed have killed 170 coalition troops since 2004. But even if that figure were correct, the fact that more than 3,000 Americans have died in Iraq since March 2003 underlines that Iran is not the main problem facing the U.S. military there.
Iran does present serious security problems in the region. But the drumbeat of new U.S. charges against Iran is disturbingly similar to the hype about Iraq in 2002 and early 2003.
The difference this time is that the intelligence community is holding firm against promoting claims that aren't fully backed up with reliable data. A new intelligence estimate on Iraq downplays the overall significance of Iranian interference there.
The Libby trial is a salutary reminder that the same officials who cherry-picked Iraq intelligence are still in the White House. The Niger charge was patently false, yet Bush, Cheney -- and Libby -- promoted it. Perhaps they auto-hypnotized themselves into believing it. Hopefully, they can't hypnotize the country again.
Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer. E-mail her at trubin@ phillynews.com.
By Trudy Rubin
COMMENTARY
TOO BAD THE trial of Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, is getting only a fraction of the media fuss stirred up by the death of Anna Nicole Smith.
No question, Smith's passing is more titillating. But Libby's perjury trial is crucial to U.S. security. It has laid bare how the White House skewed the intel on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and sold these distortions to the media. What makes the tale even more unnerving is the possibility that the process is being repeated -- with Iran.
The trial revolves around a 2003 White House campaign to defame a retired diplomat and Africa expert, Joseph Wilson. Wilson was sent to Niger by the CIA in 2002 to check reports that Niger had sold uranium to Iraq in the 1990s. The White House was promoting the Niger story to strengthen its case that Saddam Hussein had revived his nuclear program.
But Wilson found no evidence of such a sale, nor did the U.S. embassy in Niger. And from the beginning, CIA analysts doubted the story. The State Department's intelligence arm, which saw the foreign documents that had provoked the story, considered them to be blatant fakes.
And yet the story wouldn't die. Despite the fact that CIA director George Tenet personally got President Bush to remove a reference to Niger uranium in a 2002 speech, the tale lived on. The reason: relentless White House efforts to promote the story and relentless White House pressure on the CIA to confirm it. Dissenters in the intelligence community were brushed aside.
Bush made the Niger claim a centerpiece of his 2003 State of the Union speech to justify the coming war, citing British intelligence as the source. (The British intel was apparently based on the same set of fake foreign documents.)
By early 2003, White House claims about Iraq's WMD had crumbled. The U.S. National Intelligence Agency said the Niger story was baseless. The Niger forgeries had been unmasked.
As White House claims about Iraq's WMD crumbled, Wilson finally went public in July 2003 with the story of his mission to Niger. In retaliation, Cheney organized a smear campaign against Wilson.
A number of White House officials, including Libby, were dispatched to tell reporters (inaccurately) that Wilson had been sent to Niger by his wife, Valerie Plame, a covert CIA agent. The implication was that the trip was nothing but a nepotistic junket.
To further deflect any focus on flawed intelligence, reporters were told that any false information was the fault of the CIA. Bush even declassified a top-secret, pre-war national intelligence estimate on Iraq's WMD so Libby could quote it to selected reporters. But Libby misrepresented the contents of the brief -- falsely claiming it supported the Niger charge.
In the end, Libby was indicted not for leaking Plame's name -- a potential felony -- but for lying about who told him about her existence. He claims he learned it from NBC's Tim Russert. But Russert denies this, and Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, who investigated and is prosecuting the case, says Libby got the information from Cheney.
Why would Libby lie about this? According to Fitzgerald, Cheney and his aides saw Wilson as a threat to "the credibility of the vice president (and the president) on a matter of signal importance: the rationale for the war in Iraq."
This brings us up to the present. In a build-up of tension that resembles a replay of the Iraq war run-up, the White House is claiming that Iran is America's chief problem in Iraq.
Bush has authorized the U.S. military to "kill or capture" Iranian agents who are plotting attacks on U.S. troops, and U.S. special forces have raided Iraqi government offices and arrested visiting Iranians. We have moved more ships to the Persian Gulf and armed Iran's Arab neighbors with Patriot missiles.
Last Sunday, U.S. military briefers in Baghdad made a long-delayed presentation of evidence that Iran provides weapons to Iraq's Shiite militias, weapons they claimed have killed 170 coalition troops since 2004. But even if that figure were correct, the fact that more than 3,000 Americans have died in Iraq since March 2003 underlines that Iran is not the main problem facing the U.S. military there.
Iran does present serious security problems in the region. But the drumbeat of new U.S. charges against Iran is disturbingly similar to the hype about Iraq in 2002 and early 2003.
The difference this time is that the intelligence community is holding firm against promoting claims that aren't fully backed up with reliable data. A new intelligence estimate on Iraq downplays the overall significance of Iranian interference there.
The Libby trial is a salutary reminder that the same officials who cherry-picked Iraq intelligence are still in the White House. The Niger charge was patently false, yet Bush, Cheney -- and Libby -- promoted it. Perhaps they auto-hypnotized themselves into believing it. Hopefully, they can't hypnotize the country again.
Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer. E-mail her at trubin@ phillynews.com.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
More inquiries into the intelligence activities of Feith's office coming?
More to Come?
The Defense Department Inspector General's report may only spell the beginning of inquiries into the intelligence activities of Douglas Feith's office.
The Defense Department Inspector General's report may only spell the beginning of inquiries into the intelligence activities of Douglas Feith's office.
Web Exclusive: 02.12.07
By Laura Rozen
This writer has reported extensively on a 2001 meeting in Rome between two then-members of the office of Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar, Iranian intelligence operatives, and the Italian intelligence service. Reading the DoD IG (Defense Department Inspector General) report on its investigation into the activities of Feith's office, and watching Friday's Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the report, were, therefore, somewhat surreal experiences. What was surreal was their narrow focus on the question of the Pentagon policy shop's alternative intelligence analysis alleging Iraq-al-Qaeda links, when few dispute that the array of activities engaged in by Feith's shop was broader than that and hardly limited to alternative intelligence analysis.
Both the hearing and the unclassified two-page DoD IG report (with an accompanying PowerPoint presentation) were narrowly focused on the question of whether members of Feith's policy shop were in fact conducting intelligence activities regarding Iraq that should have been reported to Congress; they determined that they were. The IG also determined that the policy shop behaved inappropriately but not without authorization or illegally when in 2002 it presented to then-vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and then-deputy national security advisor Stephen Hadley a slide presentation asserting links between al-Qaeda and Iraq. The policy office's presentation to the White House disagreed with the judgment of the U.S. intelligence community in several key respects, and was not cleared in advance with then-Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet.
But even given the report's narrow focus on these questions, it was the subject of intense, heated, and politicized jockeying by Senator Armed Services Committee members grilling acting DoD Inspector General Thomas Gimble in the Russell Senate office building on February 9. Gimble, a 35-year veteran of the DoD IG's office, seemed desperate not to get drawn into the partisan fray. As the questioning intensified, he appeared unsure of how to respond to queries that seemed to demand he offer his opinion about issues that went far beyond the scope of his office’s purview.
For instance, Republican Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a former prosecutor, seemed to believe that Feith's office was perfectly within its rights to make an end run around the CIA to inform the White House that it had found evidence -- deemed unreliable by the intelligence community -- that 9/11 hijacker Mohammad Atta allegedly had a meeting with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague in 2001. The CIA had early on determined that the source on the Prague meeting was unreliable, and the Czech intelligence service -- the United States' original source -- later fully recanted the claim. But listening to Sessions bear into Gimble, you might have thought that such facts were still in dispute.
The hearing also revealed seeming holes in the IG's powers to investigate even the narrow question of what Feith's shop channeled to the White House beyond the CIA's judgment on the Iraq-al-Qaeda matter. For instance, Gimble revealed under questioning, current national security advisor Stephen Hadley declined his office’s request to be interviewed. The IG interviewed more than 70 people as part of its review, but only Defense Department employees are apparently required to answer interview requests.
But what was most frustrating about the hearing was that the IG and the senators seemed to ignore instances -- such as the December 2001 Rome meeting involving Feith staff members, Ghorbanifar, and a foreign intelligence service -- that look far more like an intelligence collection operation -- even a covert action -- than the alternative intelligence analysis the IG report focused on. The Rome meeting was never mentioned in three hours of hearings at all, but it would certainly seem to be at the crux of a possible instance of an intelligence operation not reported to Congress -- although the meeting was authorized by the White House. While that meeting concerned Iran policy rather than Iraq, the IG has the ability to look at all intelligence issues pursued by Feith's office; the meeting's absence as a subject of investigation was mystifying.
At the hearing, Armed Services Committee Chairman Levin and Vice Chairman John Warner both made statements indicating that their committee would pursue the matter of Feith's shop further, calling witnesses that the DoD IG could not get to testify. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence may also pursue the matter. But one possibility to keep in mind is that the DoD IG’s office may have other ongoing investigations related to Pentagon activities that may not have been reported to Congress. An office spokesman, Gary Comerford, wouldn't confirm or deny any other specific reviews. But it's worth noting that members of Congress have requested that the Defense Department Inspector General investigate other, related questions -- such as connections between the Iraqi National Congress and U.S. persons, and what work the Rendon Group did for the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Other possible IG reviews notwithstanding, one is still left with the sense that the Defense Department internal review did not deliver what Congress needs to serve the public -- especially entering a fourth year of public agonizing over the war in Iraq. Across town, at the Libby trial, so much has been revealed that belies the central narrative of the Defense Department review -- that a Pentagon office that evaded congressional oversight and made end runs around the CIA to channel its alternative intelligence analysis to the White House is a phenomenon rising merely to the level of inappropriate, and that U.S. bureaucratic processes are resilient enough to filter out corrupted intelligence from the policymakers consuming it. The task of challenging that narrative with the truth has ever greater urgency as we now see signs of similar patterns leading towards an escalation with Iran.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Scary Movie 2: PAUL KRUGMAN - Attacking Iran
THE COMPLETE ARTICLE
The New York Times
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The New York Times
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Scary Movie 2
By PAUL KRUGMANPublished: February 12, 2007
Attacking Iran wouldn’t be the first catastrophic mistake this administration has made, and there are indications that, at the very least, a powerful faction in the administration is spoiling for a fight.
Attacking Iran would be a catastrophic mistake, even if all the allegations now being made about Iranian actions in Iraq are true.
But it wouldn’t be the first catastrophic mistake this administration has made, and there are indications that, at the very least, a powerful faction in the administration is spoiling for a fight.
Before we get to the apparent war-mongering, let’s talk about the basics. Are there people in Iran providing aid to factions in Iraq, factions that sometimes kill Americans as well as other Iraqis? Yes, probably. But you can say the same about Saudi Arabia, which is believed to be a major source of financial support for Sunni insurgents — and Sunnis, not Iranian-backed Shiites, are still responsible for most American combat deaths.
The Bush administration, however, with its close personal and financial ties to the Saudis, has always downplayed Saudi connections to America’s enemies. Iran, on the other hand, which had no connection to 9/11, and was actually quite helpful to the United States in the months after the terrorist attack, somehow found itself linked with its bitter enemy Saddam Hussein as part of the “axis of evil.”
So the administration has always had it in for the Iranian regime. Now, let’s do an O. J. Simpson: if you were determined to start a war with Iran, how would you do it?
***
"... last year Donald Rumsfeld set up a new “Iranian directorate” inside the Pentagon’s policy shop. And last September Warren Strobel and John Walcott of McClatchy Newspapers — who were among the few journalists to warn that the administration was hyping evidence on Iraqi W.M.D. — reported that “current and former officials said the Pentagon’s Iranian directorate has been headed by Abram Shulsky.”"
RelatedUS Sending Third Carrier Strike Group to Persian Gulf
Right Web | Profile | Abram Shulsky
Right Web | Analysis | Leo Strauss and Intelligence Strategy
Abram N. Shulsky - SourceWatch
Office of Special Plans - SourceWatch
EXPORTING DEATH AND VIOLENCE TO THE FOUR CORNERS OF THE EARTH: See Comments
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Scooter Libby's Time-Travel Trial
consortiumnews.com
The trial of former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby is being billed by the Big Media as a case study of a favorite Washington cliché – “it’s not the crime but the coverup” – a smugly delivered line suggesting that Libby committed no real offense beyond trimming a few facts when questioned by overzealous investigators.
But the major U.S. news media is again missing the point. The real significance of the Libby trial is that it could demonstrate how far George W. Bush went in 2003 to shut down legitimate criticism of his Iraq War policies as well as questions about his personal honesty.
In that sense, the trial could be a kind of time machine for transporting America back to that earlier era of not so long ago when Bush and his team felt they controlled reality itself and were justified in tricking the American people into bloody adventures overseas.
It was a time when President Bush swaggered across the political landscape, a modern-day king fawned over by courtiers in the government and the press – and protected by legions of followers who bullied citizens who dared to dissent.
Libby may be going on trial for five felony counts of lying and obstructing justice, but the essence of his criminal behavior was his work as a top enforcer responsible for intimidating Americans who wouldn’t stay in line behind the infallible Bush.
Though many Iraq War skeptics – from the Dixie Chicks to longtime U.S. allies in Europe, such as France – were punished for disagreeing with Bush, Libby’s most notable target was former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
Wilson attracted the White House’s wrath in mid-2003 because he was one of the first Washington insiders to question the official consensus about Bush’s wisdom, courage and integrity.
Just months after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, as Bush basked in stratospheric poll numbers, Wilson went public with first-hand evidence that Bush had “twisted” intelligence to frighten Americans about the prospects of Iraq developing a nuclear bomb.
The former ambassador’s heresy was countered by administration officials who leaked the identity of Wilson’s wife, covert CIA officer Valerie Plame. They also enlisted Bush’s defenders in both the right-wing and mainstream media to wage an unstinting attack on Wilson’s credibility.
That campaign of vilification continues to this day, even though Wilson’s criticism of Bush’s honesty has long since been vindicated. Everytime I write about Wilson, I get a flurry of e-mails repeating administration-inspired canards about Wilson “the liar.”
Ugly Tale
This ugly back story of the Libby trial dates to early 2002 when Vice President Dick Cheney expressed interest in dubious reports that Iraq had sought to obtain yellowcake uranium from Niger, presumably for a revived nuclear weapons program.
Senior CIA officials asked Plame, who was working on WMD issues, to approach her husband about a fact-finding trip to check out the Niger-yellowcake claims. Wilson, who had served as a U.S. diplomat in both Africa and Iraq, accepted the unpaid assignment, traveled to Niger and reported back that the allegations appeared to be false, a conclusion later confirmed by other U.S. investigations.
But the White House kept looking for ways to slip the alarming suspicions into its public statements, most notably when Bush inserted 16 words about the yellowcake accusation into his State of the Union address in January 2003. Gripped by fear of mushroom clouds, many Americans supported Bush’s invasion of Iraq.
After toppling Saddam Hussein’s government in April 2003, however, the U.S. military couldn’t find Iraq’s supposed stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, nor did they find evidence that Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program.
As this reality began to sink in, Wilson told his Niger story anonymously to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who wrote an article about the yellowcake inquiry. Figuring out the identity of Kristof’s source, the White House prepared to retaliate.
In his memoir, The Politics of Truth, Wilson cited sources as saying that a meeting in Cheney’s office led to a decision “to produce a workup” to discredit Wilson.
Libby, Cheney’s chief of staff, asked Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman, a neoconservative ally in the State Department, to prepare a memo on Wilson. Dated June 10, 2003, the memo referred to “Valerie Plame,” a CIA officer, as Wilson’s wife. [NYT, July 16, 2005]
CIA Director George Tenet also divulged to Cheney that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA and had a hand in arranging Wilson’s trip to Niger – information that Cheney then passed on to Libby in a conversation on June 12, 2003, according to Libby’s notes as described by lawyers in the case. [NYT, Oct. 25, 2005]
The administration shaped those two facts – Plame’s work for the CIA and her minor role in Wilson’s Niger trip – into key attack points against Wilson. On June 23, 2003, Libby briefed New York Times reporter Judith Miller (who was considered close to the administration’s neoconservative wing) about Wilson and may then have passed on the tip that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA.
About the same time as the Libby-Miller meeting, conservative columnist Robert Novak received a surprise call from Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage’s office offering an interview, Novak later recalled.
“During his quarter of a century in Washington, I had had no contact with Armitage before our fateful interview,” Novak wrote in a Sept. 14, 2006, column. “I tried to see him in the first 2 ½ years of the Bush administration, but he rebuffed me – summarily and with disdain, I thought.
“Then, without explanation, in June 2003, Armitage’s office said the deputy secretary would see me.”
Novak dated the call from Armitage’s office at about two weeks before Wilson went public with his Niger story via a New York Times Op-Ed on July 6, 2003, entitled “What I Didn’t Find in Africa.” In other words, Armitage's outreach to Novak and Libby's briefing of Miller came at virtually the same time.
Cheney’s Notes
As Cheney read Wilson’s article, a perturbed Vice President scribbled down questions he wanted pursued.
“Have they [CIA officials] done this sort of thing before?” Cheney wrote. “Send an Amb[assador] to answer a question? Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?”
Though Cheney did not write down Plame’s name, his questions indicated that he was aware that she worked for the CIA and was in a position (dealing with WMD issues) to have a hand in her husband’s assignment to check out the Niger reports.
“Those annotations support the proposition that publication of the Wilson Op-Ed acutely focused the attention of the Vice President and the defendant – his chief of staff [Libby] – on Mr. Wilson, on the assertions made in his article, and on responding to these assertions,” special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald later wrote in a court filing.
That same eventful day – July 6, 2003 – Armitage called Carl W. Ford Jr., the assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research, at home and asked him to send a copy of Grossman’s memo to Secretary of State Colin Powell, according to a former department official interviewed by the New York Times.
Since Powell was preparing to leave with Bush on a state visit to Africa, Ford forwarded Grossman’s memo to the White House for delivery to Powell, the former official told the Times. [NYT, July 16, 2005]
The next day, July 7, 2003, Bush left for Africa with Powell and other senior officials. But administration officials who stayed behind in Washington stepped up their efforts to counteract Wilson's Op-Ed.
On July 8, 2003, Libby gave Judith Miller more details about the Wilsons. Libby said Wilson’s wife worked at a CIA unit responsible for weapons intelligence and non-proliferation. Miller wrote down the words “Valerie Flame,” an apparent misspelling of Mrs. Wilson’s maiden name. [NYT, Oct. 16, 2005]
That same day, Novak had his interview with Armitage. Novak later recalled that Armitage divulged Plame’s identity toward the end of an hour-long interview.
Armitage “told me unequivocally that Mrs. Wilson worked in the CIA’s Counter-proliferation Division and that she had suggested her husband’s mission,” Novak wrote, adding that Armitage seemed to want the information published.
Armitage “noted that the story of Mrs. Wilson’s role fit the style of the old Evans-Novak column – implying to me that it [the column] continued reporting Washington inside information,” Novak wrote. [Washington Post, Sept. 14, 2006]
Feeling encouraged by Armitage to disclose the Plame connection to Wilson’s trip, Novak contacted Bush’s chief political adviser Karl Rove, who confirmed the story as Novak’s second source.
“I didn’t dig it out, it was given to me,” Novak later told Newsday, adding that Bush administration officials “thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it.” [Newsday, July 22, 2003]
Out of Africa
Meanwhile, senior officials in Bush’s traveling party to Africa were trying to plant the same anti-Wilson stories.
To the administration’s dismay, the Niger-yellowcake deceit was dogging Bush’s Africa trip. At every stop, questions were asked about how the infamous “16 words” on Niger’s yellowcake ended up in the State of the Union speech.
Bush’s spokesman Ari Fleischer was finally forced to concede that the yellowcake allegation was “incorrect” and should not have been included in the speech. On July 11, 2003, CIA Director Tenet took the fall for the State of the Union screw-up, apologizing for not better vetting the speech.
“This did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for presidential speeches,” Tenet said.
The admission was one of the first times the Bush team had retreated on any national security issue. Administration officials were embarrassed, incensed and determined to punish Wilson.
Time magazine correspondent John Dickerson, who was on the Africa trip, said administration officials urged him to pursue the seemingly insignificant question of who had been involved in arranging Wilson’s trip.
While Bush was meeting with the president of Uganda, one “senior administration official” pulled Dickerson aside and told him that “some low-level person at the CIA was responsible for the mission” and Dickerson “should go ask the CIA who sent Wilson.”
Later, Dickerson discussed Wilson with a second “senior administration official” and got the same advice. “This official also pointed out a few times that Wilson had been sent by a low-level CIA employee and encouraged me to follow that angle,” Dickerson recalled.
“At the end of the two conversations I wrote down in my notebook: ‘look who sent.’ … What struck me was how hard both officials were working to knock down Wilson.
“Discrediting your opposition is a standard tactic in Washington, but the Bush team usually played the game differently. At that stage in the first term, Bush aides usually blew off their critics. Or, they continued to assert their set of facts in the hope of overcoming criticism by force of repetition.” ” [See Dickerson’s article, “Where’s My Subpoena?” for Slate, Feb. 7, 2006]
Back in Washington on July 11, 2003, Dickerson’s Time colleague, Matthew Cooper, was getting a similar earful from Rove, who tried to steer Cooper away from Wilson’s information on the Niger deception and toward the notion that the Niger trip was authorized by “Wilson’s wife, who apparently works at the agency [CIA] on WMD issues,” according to Cooper’s interview notes. [See Newsweek, July 18, 2005, issue]
Cooper later got the information about Wilson’s wife confirmed by Cheney’s chief of staff Libby, who was peddling the same information to Judith Miller.
On July 12, 2003, in a telephone conversation, Libby and Miller returned to the Wilson topic. Miller’s notes contain a reference to a “Victoria Wilson,” apparently another misspelled reference to Wilson’s wife, Valerie. [NYT, Oct. 16, 2005]
The Novak Column
Two days later, on July 14, 2003, Novak – having gotten confirmation about Plame’s identity from Rove – published a column, citing two administration sources outing Plame as a CIA officer and portraying Wilson’s Niger trip as a case of nepotism.
The disclosure of Plame’s identity effectively meant the end of her CIA career and put the lives of her overseas contacts in jeopardy. But the White House counterattack against Wilson had only just begun.
On July 20, 2003, NBC’s correspondent Andrea Mitchell told Wilson that “senior White House sources” had called her to stress “the real story here is not the 16 words [from Bush’s State of the Union speech] but Wilson and his wife.”
The next day, Wilson said he was told by MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that “I just got off the phone with Karl Rove. He says and I quote, ‘Wilson’s wife is fair game.’”
However, CIA officials, angered by the damage done to Plame’s spy network, lodged a complaint with the Justice Department about whether the leaks amounted to an illegal exposure of a CIA officer.
But the initial investigation was under the direct control of Attorney General John Ashcroft. So, Bush and other White House officials confidently denied any knowledge of the leak.
Bush even vowed to fire anyone who leaked classified material.
“The President has set high standards, the highest of standards, for people in his administration,” White House press secretary Scott McClellan said on Sept. 29, 2003. “If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration.”
Bush personally announced he wanted to get to the bottom of the matter.
“If there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is,” Bush said on Sept. 30, 2003. “I want to know the truth. If anybody has got any information inside our administration or outside our administration, it would be helpful if they came forward with the information so we can find out whether or not these allegations are true.”
Yet, even as Bush was professing his curiosity and calling for anyone with information to step forward, he was withholding the fact that he had authorized the declassification of some secrets about the Niger uranium issue and had ordered Cheney to arrange for those secrets to be given to reporters.
Bush’s legal danger came into clearer focus later with the release of a court document citing testimony from Libby, who claimed that Bush approved the selective release of intelligence in July 2003 to counter growing complaints that Bush had hyped evidence on Iraq’s pursuit of uranium.
Libby testified that he was told by Cheney that Bush had approved a plan in which Libby would tell a specific New York Times reporter about the CIA’s secret analysis, according to a court filing by special prosecutor Fitzgerald.
“Defendant’s [Libby’s] participation in a critical conversation with Judith Miller on July 8 [2003] occurred only after the Vice President advised defendant that the President specifically had authorized defendant to disclose certain information in the NIE,” the highly classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, the filing said.
In other words, though Bush knew a great deal about how the anti-Wilson scheme got started – since he was involved in starting it – he uttered misleading public statements to conceal the White House role and possibly to signal to others that they should follow suit in denying knowledge.
Retaliation
Privately, some administration officials acknowledged that the Plame disclosure was an act of retaliation against Wilson for being one of the first mainstream public figures to challenge Bush on the WMD intelligence.
In September 2003, a White House official told the Washington Post that at least six reporters had been informed about Plame before Novak’s column. The official said the disclosure was “purely and simply out of revenge.”
Bush’s cover-up might have worked, except in late 2003, Ashcroft recused himself because of a conflict of interest, and Fitzgerald – the U.S. Attorney in Chicago – was named as the special prosecutor. Fitzgerald pursued the investigation far more aggressively, even demanding that journalists testify about the White House leaks.
Yet, from 2003 to 2005, as the Plame case grew into a political embarrassment for Bush, Republican operatives and their right-wing media allies stepped up efforts to transform Wilson – a private citizen – into a national bete noire.
The Republican-run Senate Intelligence Committee made misleading and derogatory claims about Wilson’s honesty in a WMD report.
The Republican National Committee posted an article entitled “Joe Wilson’s Top Ten Worst Inaccuracies and Misstatements,” which itself used glaring inaccuracies and misstatements to discredit Wilson. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Novak Recycles Gannon on ‘Plame-gate.’”]
Rather than thank Wilson for undertaking a difficult fact-finding trip to Niger for no pay – and for reporting accurately about the dubious Iraq-Niger claims – the Bush administration sought to smear the former ambassador.
But Bush’s strategy did not entirely succeed. In October 2005, Fitzgerald indicted Libby on five counts of perjury, lying to investigators and obstruction of justice. Libby resigned from Cheney’s staff.
In a court filing on April 5, 2006, Fitzgerald added that his investigation had uncovered a “concerted” effort by the White House to “discredit, punish or seek revenge against” Wilson because of his criticism of the administration’s handling of the Niger evidence.
Still, the cost to the Wilsons was high. Sidelined by the notoriety from the scandal and faced with the destruction of her spy network, Plame eventually quit the CIA. (It was later revealed that Plame’s operation was focused on obtaining intelligence about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, another flash point that could boil over into a new war.)
Even then, the public punishment of Wilson wasn’t over.
In late summer 2006, authors Michael Isikoff and David Corn promoted an angle in their book, Hubris, that identified the State Department’s Armitage as Novak’s original source on the CIA identity of Valerie Plame.
The Isikoff-Corn disclosure was quickly cited by the mainstream Washington press corps as vindication for the Bush administration and yet another reason to dump on Joe Wilson.
The Armitage Mistake
Since the “conventional wisdom” held that Armitage wasn’t part of the administration’s neocon inner circle and was a skeptic about the Iraq War, the major news media jumped on the story as evidence that there never had been a White House conspiracy to punish Wilson by outing his wife.
“It follows that one of the most sensational charges leveled against the Bush White House – that it orchestrated the leak of Ms. Plame’s identity – is untrue,” a Washington Post editorial declared on Sept. 1, 2006.
While acknowledging that Libby and other White House officials were not “blameless,” since they allegedly released Plame’s identity while “trying to discredit Mr. Wilson,” the Post still reserved its harshest condemnation for Wilson, blaming his criticism of Bush’s false State of the Union claim for Plame’s exposure.
“It now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame’s CIA career is Mr. Wilson,” the Post editorial said. “Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming – falsely, as it turned out – that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials.
“He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush’s closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It’s unfortunate that so many people took him seriously.”
The Post’s editorial, however, is at best an argumentative smear and most likely a willful lie. Along with other government investigators, Wilson did debunk the reports of Iraq acquiring yellowcake in Niger and those findings did circulate to senior levels, explaining why CIA Director Tenet struck the yellowcake claims from other Bush speeches.
(The Post’s accusation about Wilson “falsely” claiming to have debunked the yellowcake reports apparently is based on Wilson’s inclusion in his report of speculation from one Niger official who suspected that Iraq might be interested in buying yellowcake, although the Iraqi officials never mentioned yellowcake and made no effort to buy any. This irrelevant point has been a centerpiece of Republican attacks on Wilson.)
In shifting the blame for exposing Plame’s identity away from the White House and Novak and onto Wilson, Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt also absolved himself since he published Novak’s column revealing Plame’s identity in the first place.
Contrary to the Post’s assertion that Wilson “ought to have expected” that the White House and Novak would zero in on Wilson’s wife, a reasonable expectation in a normal world would have been just the opposite.
Even amid the ugly partisanship of today’s Washington, it was shocking to many longtime observers of government that any administration official or even an experienced journalist would disclose the name of a covert CIA officer for such a flimsy reason as trying to discredit her husband.
And only in this upside-down world would a major newspaper be so irresponsible and so dishonest as to lay off the blame for exposing a CIA officer on her husband because he dared criticize lies told by the President of the United States, deceptions that have led the nation into a military debacle and to the deaths of more than 3,000 American soldiers.
The day after the Post’s editorial, the New York Times took a slightly different tack in defending the White House. The Times article suggested that special prosecutor Fitzgerald was the real villain for having pursued the Plame investigation for more than two years after Armitage had admitted in secret grand jury testimony that he was Novak’s firstl source. [NYT, Sept. 2, 2006]
Armitage-Rove Connection
But these major news outlets had missed another key fact. They assumed that Armitage – as Colin Powell’s well-liked deputy – had no significant connection to the White House political machinations.
That was not the reality, according to a well-placed conservative source who spoke with me. An early supporter of George W. Bush who knew both Armitage and Rove, the source told me that Armitage and Rove were much closer than many Washington insiders knew.
Armitage and Rove developed a friendship and a close working relationship when Bush was lining up Powell to be his Secretary of State, the source said. In those negotiations, Armitage stood in for Powell and Rove represented Bush – and after that, the two men provided a back channel for sensitive information to pass between the White House and the State Department, the source said.
The significance of this detail is that it undermines the current “conventional wisdom” among Washington pundits that Armitage acted alone – and innocently – in July 2003 when he disclosed Plame’s covert identity to Novak, who then turned to Rove as a secondary source confirming the information from Armitage.
The revelation from the conservative source as well as Novak’s version of how he got the story – “I didn’t dig it out, it was given to me” – suggest that Armitage and Rove were collaborating on the anti-Wilson operation, not simply operating on parallel tracks without knowing what the other was doing.
The mainstream media’s assumption that Armitage “inadvertently” let Plame’s identity slip out almost as gossip also was challenged by my conservative source. When I asked him about that scenario, he laughed and said, “Armitage isn’t a gossip, but he is a leaker. There’s a difference.”
Also forgotten in the mainstream news coverage was the fact that in 1998, Armitage was one of the 18 signatories to a seminal letter from the neoconservative Project for the New American Century urging President Bill Clinton to oust Saddam Hussein by military force if necessary.
Armitage joined a host of neoconservative icons, such as Elliott Abrams, John Bolton, William Kristol, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz. Many of the signers, including Donald Rumsfeld, would become architects of Bush’s Iraq War policy five years later.
Nevertheless, the Armitage-as-innocent-gossip version of events was embraced by leading Washington pundits as the final proof that Rove and the White House had gotten a bum rap on the Plame affair.
In a Sept. 7, 2006, article, entitled “One Leak and a Flood of Silliness,” veteran Washington Post columnist David Broder wrote that publications which had made allegations about White House wrongdoing “owe Karl Rove an apology. And all of journalism needs to relearn the lesson: Can the conspiracy theories and stick to the facts.”
But David Broder, Fred Hiatt and the other see-no-evil pundits appear to be the ones ignoring facts in favor of a more pleasant “conventional wisdom” about well-meaning Bush aides who would never think about smearing some Iraq War critic.
As the Libby case finally gets underway, the trial will offer another opportunity for the major news media to climb back into that time machine and travel back to the happier era when everyone who mattered in Washington just knew that George W. Bush was always right and anyone who thought otherwise must be a “conspiracy theorist.”
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'
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Saturday, January 13, 2007
NGOs to sue US over WMD claims
- January 14, 2007
SOME 30 non-governmental organisations in Niger said overnight they are going to sue the United States for nearly two billion dollars for "unfairly accusing" Niger of selling uranium to the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
"Our lawyers are about to file a lawsuit against the US calling for damages of about 1000 billion CFA francs ($2.42 billion dollars) for the harm suffered" by the country, Moustapha Kadi, president of the Collective of organisations in Niger defending the right to energy (CODDAE).
The lawsuit by the collective will be filed at either French or Belgian courts, Kadi added.
In January 2003, US President George W. Bush accused Saddam of having bought uranium from Niger to make weapons of mass destruction.
The Niger collective said in a statement that investigations by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), world media and US officials, all concluded that it was a "false accusation" against Niger.
That false information was used by Bush "to invade Iraq," said the collective's statement, which also called for support from Niger's President Mamadou Tandja, who back in 2003 said the US allegations were "harming Niger's image".
Niger is the world's third-largest producer of uranium with about nine percent of the global market, according to 2003 figures.
The country's two uranium deposits have been mined for 40 years by the French group Areva, number one in civil nuclear energy.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Pressing Colin Powell about his Security Council speech
Hussein Kamel
Transcript
Sam Husseini: Do you know that Hussein Kamel said that there were no WMDs? Did you know that?
Colin Powell: What’s that?
Husseini: You cited Hussein Kamel in your UN testimony. Did you know that he said that there were no WMDs, did you know that at the time?
Powell: I only knew what the intelligence community told me.
Husseini: But did you know that fact?
Powell: Of course not!
Husseini: You didn’t know that he said that, even though it was reported?
Powell: I -
Husseini: You didn’t know -
Powell: I’ve answered your question.
Husseini: You didn’t know that he said there were no WMDs.
In his famous February 4, 2003 speech to the United Nations Security Council, General Colin Powell said:
… It took years for Iraq to finally admit that it had produced four tons of the deadly nerve agent, VX. A single drop of VX on the skin will kill in minutes. Four tons.
The admission only came out after inspectors collected documentation as a result of the defection of Hussein Kamal, Saddam Hussein’s late son-in-law. …
Sam Husseini tried to follow-up some initial questions (see video below) with Powell today, as he left his Face The Nation appearance in Washington, D.C. Husseini pointed out that the man Powell cited in his speech, Hussein Kamel, also had said that there were no more weapons of mass destruction.
This story was first broken, according to FAIR, by Newsweek, in late February of 2003 (dated for early March) — before the open launch of the Iraq war and after Powell’s speech.
When Husseini pressed to see of Powell was aware of this evidence, he adamantly asserted “Of course not!”
In pressing again for a direct confirmation that he was not aware of evidence contradicting public assertions about alleged-Iraqi WMD, Powell’s only response was “I’ve answered your question.”
Related
Monday, December 18, 2006
Iran, Bigotry and the Bomb
Dec 18, 2006
While I personally am gratified at the recent Democratic electoral victories (William Jefferson not withstanding) and have long ago understood and recognize the value of this site to help the netroots/grassroots towards achieving that goal (i.e. getting Democrats elected to office). That said, I have mixed emotions about the current state of affairs because of policy, specifically our foreign policy. While Iraq is "the issue of our times" and was certainly a core issue which helped propel Democratic victories last month, I would like to move beyond the issues surrounding the extrication of our troops from Iraq and the political/electoral ruminations various options might portend, to the looming backdrop of our historical and current posture within the middle and near east, and one of the larger metaphorical elephants in the room...Iran.
While I personally am gratified at the recent Democratic electoral victories (William Jefferson not withstanding) and have long ago understood and recognize the value of this site to help the netroots/grassroots towards achieving that goal (i.e. getting Democrats elected to office). That said, I have mixed emotions about the current state of affairs because of policy, specifically our foreign policy. While Iraq is "the issue of our times" and was certainly a core issue which helped propel Democratic victories last month, I would like to move beyond the issues surrounding the extrication of our troops from Iraq and the political/electoral ruminations various options might portend, to the looming backdrop of our historical and current posture within the middle and near east, and one of the larger metaphorical elephants in the room...Iran.
Iran has long been a simmering issue at the crux of our entire posture within the middle and far east, and has greatly influenced and shaped my view on our comportment in the region, but I have recently been prompted by a couple of things to write about it now. The first being what seems to be a quiet surge in recent weeks of pushing a "crisis" in getting the UN to place sanctions on Iran, the other being conversations I have had with some politically astute people about the problem of relaying an honest historical perspective about why and how the United States has been cast into the role of the "Great Satan" to the average American voter.
The sordid tale of our nation's dishonesty and actions within the region is something that is virtually ignored within the Washington establishment, certainly within the media, which in turn has led to gross perversions of foreign policy spanning decades, and well over a half dozen administrations (more like the past ten actually). I see it as tantamount to treason how what passes for viable political debate, or rather a glaring lack thereof, precludes frank and honest ownership of what we have sown in the region, and consequently what we have reaped from it. Be it the cost of lives and treasure spent in the current disaster of unparalleled proportion which is our invasion of Iraq, to our actions past and present giving legitimacy to the anti-western hatreds which in no small part helped precipitate the fall of two iconic edifices in New York City from being symbols of American economic opportunity into that of grave markers within the cultural zeitgeist.
It is often deemed a third-rail in American politics to be honest with the public about what we have had done in our name, and how that ignorance is reflected in the virtual joke of what is allowed as legitimate discussion on the issue of Iran. It seems to be a first-class ticket to political or policy marginalization to have the temerity to even question the basic premise behind the hand-wringing over the "problem" of Iran. It is almost by rote which such discussion are branded "America hating" or "blame America first". Once labeled as such such annoyances as facts and history, and those who bring up such pesky things, can be shoved aside for those wishing to be "serious" in politics by willfully ignoring reality, our nations history of action and simply pandering to the bigotry, ignorance and lack of engagement of the general public in our country. Apparently such rejection of the truth and reality is what it takes in order to be "electable" or to be viewed as anything short of being someone who hates America, but I will come to that issue later.
This past summer I posted a diary which got on the rec. list which was simple yet for many provocative in its premise, and that was to ask simply, "So what if Iran gets a nuke?"(See article following).
While that is another large question, and more a thought exercise, what I hope to discuss here in this diary is what we have done, are doing and may do in the near future with regards to Iran. It is an issue, which to my mind, is little discussed and how American ignorance will hopelessly doom any legitimate discourse about Iran in the political sphere unless we can find a way to make being honest with ourselves, as a nation not only acceptable, but a political prerequisite for even being taken serious.
The Renewed March Towards "Crisis"
The latest round in the Iranian nuclear "crisis" was precipitated when Iran resumed enriching uranium earlier this year. However Iran has a legal right to enrich uranium, even under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of which Iran is a signatory, even though other nations, such as Israel, are not. The United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) Board even reported in its November 2004 resolution, and again later in a June of this year in the IAEA Board Chairman’s conclusions that suspension of enrichment by Iran in the first place under the Additional Protocol was "voluntary, non-legally binding, confidence-building measure." A voluntary measure that Iran undertook while it and the EU-3 were negotiating a longer-term settlement of outstanding concerns about Iran's nuclear program.
However early this year, the EU-3 instantly rejected a February Iranian six-point offer which included a further two-year moratorium on its uranium enrichment while negotiation continued on a settlement, thus setting in motion a major international "crisis" which is as fraudulent as WMDs and mushroom clouds claims about Iraq which were sold to an ignorant but shell-shocked American public in the aftermath of 9/11.
Given all the mountainous revelations about the cover-ups and disinformation on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction you would think the US media would have examined the nature and content of the six-point Iranian proposal, instead of giving an unexamined pass on the pronouncements over the immediate rejection by the EU-3 diplomats, when the issue is even mentioned at all. Diplomats who seem to be more keen on satisfying a US march toward the Security Council to get sanctions placed on Iran than in substantive negotiation.
Iran's "six-point" proposal was submitted by the Iran to the EU-3 (Germany, France and the UK) in Brussels on January 30, 2006. Instead of giving it careful consideration, the EU-3 diplomats rejected it as devoid of anything new, despite the fact that Iran offered for the first time to extend the voluntary freeze on enrichment activities (which is allowed under the NPT treaty) for another two years in order to give negotiations more time to fully satisfy IAEA "concerns" about offers of material sales from 1987 (yes you read that right, dating back the Reagan Administration).
All this despite the IAEA's own reporting to the UN just a few months before that rejection of Iran's offer which has led us to the UN Security Council on the road to sanctions, that all the declared nuclear material in Iran has been accounted for.
The immediate rejection of Iran's offer led to Iran then withdrawing from the voluntary suspension of uranium enrichment, which even the EU-3 acknowledges Iran has a right to pursue. So in turn the IAEA voted to refer Iran to the UN Security Council in which the United States is now pushing for international sanctions (the United States has had worthless and petulant unilateral sanctions for years) to punish Iran for doing something which is not a violation of the NPT. Again you read that right, the US and the EU-3 want to sanction Iran for not violating the NPT.
The pressure being mounted by the United States, but not just from the United States but also from members of EU-3, is not the first time that Iran’s endeavors to stand on its own feet and make advances have faced the stiff resistance and concerted pressure of the United States and other permanent members on the UN Security Council.
If Only History Was TiVo'ed
The contrived "crisis' about Iran resuming its legal right to enrich uranium under the NPT is not the first time the United States or members of the EU-3 have been dishonest about, and contrived, a "crisis" over Iran. In fact contemporary Iran has been subject to numerous injustices and prejudicial approaches by the United States, and before and with the UK and our allies. The Iranian people's struggle to nationalize their oil industry in the 1950s was but the most glaring one and one which the vast majority of the American public remains stupefyingly ignorant of, much less factoring it into how and why we are not welcomed into the middle and near east with showers of sweets and petals of flowers.
The actions taken by the United States and the British in the events before and after World War II are inextricable to current events, yet they are almost virtually unkown or ignored by most Americans. It was a pivotal and tragic event which has pretty much permanently ceded any credibility of the United States as having a legitimate role in the region.
But to understand these events, put them in proper context, one must dig further back into history. Going back to just before the turn of the previous century, in the late 1800s. I know that it is somehow odd for Americans in the 21st century to pay heed to what transpired on the persian plateau almost a century and a half ago, but I posit it is at the heart of the problem about how and why the American public, and more pointedly our nation's "leadership" in how it deals with the peoples in the region, and specifically Iran. As the almost clichéd saying goes "if one does not learn from history, you are doomed to repeat it". I would instead cast it more critically as "those who do not even bother to learn history, are guaranteed to to make a disaster of your future". It is also vital, as former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara finally came to realize after leaving office (and chronicled in The Fog of War), to empathize with your opponent. What he was saying was that we must develop a sense of empathy towards enemies—and by that he didn't mean "sympathy" but rather "understanding"— in order to counter or preclude their hostility towards us and the west. Or to paraphrase, Sun Tze, to win militarily in battle is not the highest point of achievement or development, to best an enemy without fighting is the highest achievement. In essence, to preempt the need for confrontation and war, it is far better to understand why you have an enemy, and remove the reason for them to become your enemy.
The reasons for animus towards "the west", and the United States in particular, on the part of Iran begins roughly in 1872 and it has little or nothing to do with "our freedoms" or other absurd bromides offered by those who think like Bush. In 1872 Nasir al-Din Shah had been the monarch of Iran for some twenty years. He was a ruler of the Qajar dynasty, who were a long succession of monarchs from a Turkic tribe based near the Caspian Sea. They were in essence, to put it bluntly, a series of corrupt, small-minded kings who bear a heavy responsibility for the poverty and backwardness under which Iran had basically stagnated. At a time when both the United States and the British Empire had long ago moved the rule of the government in their own countries from the hands of monarchy (the United States through armed revolution, the British through making Parliament and representative democracy their form of government) the peoples of Iran were ruled by corrupt ne'er-do-wells. Even if somehow they had moved towards a more enlightened hand at governance, the pressures would still have been intense for subversion by foreign powers. This had to do with geography as Iran lay at the center of two great superpowers of its day, Great Britain and Russia. For the British, Iran was a land route to India its most valuable colony, and Tzarist Russia saw it as a chance to control a large swath of territory along its southern border.
So with a corruptible ruler, who like his predecessors was famous for their excesses, Nasir paid little heed to the needs of the people, and was instead quite willing to sell his nation into subservience in order to keep himself in royal pulchritude and comfort. In his harem where he spent most of his time, he had some sixteen hundred wives, concubines, and eunuchs. He fathered hundreds of princes all of whom had unfettered access to the national treasury. Nasir went by various titles as fanciful as they were pompous, such as Shah of Shahs (i.e. King of Kings), Subduer of Climate, Conqueror of Lands, Arbiter of His People, Shadow of God on Earth. Nasir would often travel abroad to Europe pleasure trips with huge entourage in tow. Nice work if you can get it, but hardly a legitimate voice for the people of Iran.
To support this outrageous lifestyle, Nasir sold government jobs, imposed oppressive taxes and confiscated the fortunes of successful merchants. Once he and his princes burned through all the domestic moneys they could lay their hand on, they turned to the idea of raising cash by selling concession rights to foreign companies and governments. First to the British who wanted rights to run a telegraph line and offices through Iran, to India. Then the French, German and Austrians for various other concessions. One of the most stunning ones of all went to a wealthy British interest, a Jewish German-born British journalist and media owner named Paul Julius Baron von Reuter (founder of the Reuters News Agency) in 1872. For a paltry sum and a small royalty payment, he acquired the exclusive rights to run the countries industries, irrigate its farmland, exploit its mineral resources, build and run its railroads and streetcar lines, create and run its national bank and print the nations currency.
Think about that. We Americans fought a brutal war, the longest war in North American recorded history, to kick out an overseas king who raised the taxes on tea.
Not only were Iranian patriots outraged by this, the merchant classes and the clerics were as well. Russia was startled by the huge reach the British would have, and even the British Government (which had not been consulted by Reuter) thought it might be too bold a move. Nasir himself realized he may have indeed gone too far, and less than year later canceled the concession, but his need for cash once again compelled him to sell these concessions, only to a more diverse competing set of foreign groups. He sold three to British consortiums. The mineral rights went to one, banking went to another, and the third granted exclusive rights to control commerce along the Karun River, Iran's only navigable waterway. Russia was placated for the most part by giving exclusive rights to the Caspian caviar fisheries. In essence, these and other concessions ceded the nation's most valuable assets to foreign hands. The money was used to continue the lavish court lifestyle of Nasir. When the money eventually ran out, he simply borrowed more from British and Russian banks. Things came to a head for Nasir in 1891 when he sold the Iranian tobacco industry and rights to the British for a pitiful 15,000 pounds. The terms of the concession meant that every farmer had to sell their crop to the British Imperial Tobacco Company and every smoker had to buy it from a shop that was part of the companies retail network.
Iran was (and is) a largely agricultural country and like America was at the time, a country of smokers. It was a huge domestic industry. From numerous small farmers who grew tobacco, to a large middlemen merchant class who cut, dried, packaged and distributed it to a multitude of Iranians who smoked it. Now this native product was being taken from the people on terms bordering on extortion, processed and sold back to them in order to line the pockets of foreigners. It was a huge insult. Remember about Americans and their outrage over taxes on tea towards the end of the previous century to the ones the Iranians found their tobacco in the hands of the British?
The entire country erupted in protest. One of the leading religious leaders declared it an affront and declared that as long as foreigners controlled the tobacco industry, it would be a sacrilege to smoke tobacco. Almost the entire nation heeded the fatwa against foreign controlled tobacco. Nasir was stunned and became fearful over the unanimity of the protest. Even his own harem stopped smoking foreign tobacco in protest. He had no choice but to cancel the concession, and to his own humiliation had to borrow a half a million pounds from a British bank to pay out compensation to the British Imperial for the cancelation of the concession. Nasir then went on to drift further from the public and even from reality, and was eventually assassinated a few years after the tobacco revolt in 1896 by a follower of Sayyid Jamal al-Din Afghani, who is considered to be the founding father of political Islam. But even with the violent removal of Nasir, his successor, one of his numerous sons, was not to lead to reforms and a fair deal for the Iranian people.
A Leader Not Too Far-Sighted
Mozzafar al-Din was unsuited for the responsibilities of office, yet became Shah with the assassination of his father, and followed a similar course, selling off concessions to foreigners in order to bankroll his courts lavish lifestyle. After ascending to the throne he quickly went on a tour of Europe paid for by borrowing money from a Russian bank, then when he came back took out another huge loan, this one from a British bank, in exchange for a portion of Iranian customs revenue. Rioting broke out as a result. Instead of recognizing the legitimacy of their outrage, he went even further by selling off another concession to a foreign interest which would irrevocably alter the course of history.
In May of 1901, Mozzafar sold to William Knox D'Arcy, a London-based financier, the "special, exclusive privilege to obtain, exploit, develop, render suitable for trade, carry away and sell natural gas and petroleum... for a term of sixty years." for the sum of 10,000 pounds and a fractional cut of the profits. A few years later oil was found and in April 1909 the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) was founded with D'Arcy being made its director. The company would later become British Petroleum, but that is getting ahead of ourselves.
Public anger fed on Mozzafar's continued practice of granting concessions to Europeans in exchange for payments to him and his officials. Payments which underwrote his extravagant lifestyle. Iranian political consciousness had grown considerable since the Tobacco Revolt. Religious and cultural traditions of the Shiite majority contributed to this. Long before Islam, Persian people with the blending of Zoroastrian theology with Persian concepts of justice and sacred kingship rooted in farr. Farr is the cultural concept that a ruler's legitimacy is directly tied to the expectation that spirituality and virtue are to guide a ruler in bringing a fair and just society to the people. If the king turns from the forces of light to the forces of darkness, he loses farr and with it, his legitimacy. Iranian leaders retain farr only insofar as they serve the communal goal of spiritual liberation and establishment of a just and righteous society. Implicit in this concept of charismatic kingship is the right of the people to rise up in rebellion against a king that has lost farr.
While it is more a spiritual concept than a legalistic or structural tie between the ruler and the ruled, it is deeply entrenched in the Persian zeitgeist. While it is easy for us in "the west" to dismiss this, one need only look at the expectations of morals and principals we expected and attribute to we had and continue to hold with regards to our nations founding fathers, to see that dynamic at work. Granted the efforts in crafting our nations form of Government, were great effort, and were undertaken to try and formalize and codify such concepts into legal statement of principles, and to form of structures of government to bring it about.
So for the Iranians, Mozzafar like numerous rulers before him lost farr in the eyes of the people with the selling out of the nation to foreign powers and being bought off with the money to feed a gluttonous personal lifestyle. People began to push for a curb on royal authority and the establishment of the rule of law with representation for the interests of the people. Tensions began to mount and a spark threatened to ignite the powder keg in which decades of corruption and abuse had built. The spark finally arrived in December of 1905.
Tzar Wars, A New Hope
In December 1905, there was a dispute among a handful of merchants in Teheran over sugar prices which resulted in arrests. The punishment met out by the the local governor, who was a crony of the ill-healthed Shah, was bastinado, a favorite Qajar punishment. Bastinado is when the victim is tied up and hung by their wrists, then the soles of their feet are beaten. The bazaar was enraged and erupted in rioting. Fearing retributions the protesters, lead by merchant and clerical leaders, sought sanctuary in mosques in Tehran and outside the capital at the Shah Abd al-Azim Shrine in the city of Qum. In January they began public calls for reform. At first they demanded only the local Governor who had ordered the beatings, but then realizing their rising power demanded reduced taxes, which they saw line the pockets of the corrupt Shah and foreigners. Finally their protest came to a head when they concluded that the only way to curb the abuses they had long suffered under was the creation of a national assembly. As their central demand stated "In order to carry out reforms in all affairs, it is necessary to establish... a national consultive assembly to insure that the law is executed equally in all parts of Iran, so that there can be no difference between high and low, and all may obtain redress of their grievances."
In order to quell the pubic unrest, Mozzafar first promised to establish a consultative assembly or representative body for the people in government, then proceeded to break that promise by stalling and doing all he could to derail the effort. This in turn brought thousands of people that summer, again led by the merchants and church leaders, to once more take sanctuary or bast, which is an ancient Persian tradition giving asylum and shelter to those seeking refuge from persecution (similar to what western churches gave since Constantine I). This time ironically within the compound of the British legation in Tehran in order to safely launch their protests. There they went about setting up what amounted to a shotgun school for democracy. They held discourse in translating and circulating reformist newspapers, the works of European philosophers and the study of western democratic movements. Finally as the protests escalated, Mozzafar reluctantly agreed in August to issue a decree promising a constitution. In October, elections were held and the elected assembly representing the various trade guilds convened to draw up a constitution, which was based on that of the Belgian Constitution of 1831.
The drafted Constitution provided for strict limitations on royal power, an elected parliament, or Majles, with broad powers to represent the people, and a government with a cabinet subject to confirmation by the parliament. Under the constitution the parliament would negotiate all foreign treaties. It guaranteed the autonomy of the provincial councils and supported freedom of the press. Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians were recognized as citizens and given equality under the law with Muslims. Getting the drafting and signing of the constitution done quickly was seen as crucial, since the long ailing Mozzafar was ill and his son was well known to despise the democratic movement. So the hastily drafted constitution was signed on December 30, 1906, but refusing to forfeit all of the powers of the Shah to the proposed parliament, Mozzafar attached a caveat that made his signature on all laws a requirement, before he would sign the constitution. He died five days later.
Mozaffar's son Mohammad Ali Shah, who had no desire to uphold the constitution, was made Shah and with the aid of Russia, attempted to rescind the constitution and abolish the parliamentary government. In Russia, the Tzar, who along with the British had dug its claws into Iran, was mortified by the impression it would give for a cuckold monarchy to be deposed or neutered by a popular people's movement, with Russia having just undergone the Revolution of 1905 itself. A revolution in which the Tzar had only managed to retain his position by giving reluctant acquiescence to the formation of a consultative "parliament" or Duma.
Most serious threat of all to the Constitutional Revolution, and what was hoped would inaugurate a new era of independence from the great powers, was sown under the Anglo-Russian Agreement of 1907 when Britain and Russia agreed to divide Iran into spheres of influence. The Russians were to enjoy exclusive right to pursue their interests in the northern sphere, the British in the south and east; both powers would be free to compete for economic and political advantage in a neutral sphere in the center. Iran nor its parliament were consulted but simply informed of this arrangement after the treaty was signed in St. Petersburg Russia. Think about that for a moment. Imagine if you will if two foreign powers had signed a treaty amongst themselves dividing your country between them, two powers which by the way have been looting your nation for decades and backing corrupt degenerate puppet kings looking to score foreign capital to keep themselves in isolated luxury, backed by foreign troops on your soil. Ponder that for a moment.
With the treaty signed, what had long been a de-facto, though technically informal, control of Iran was made explicit and backed by British and Russian troops. Both foreign powers feared a nationalist movement and viewed it as a threat to their concessions which allowed them to basically loot the country blind. Such veto power and control by the people had to be stopped. As several disputes between the Shah and the members of the newly formed yet weak parliament escalated, in June of 1908 the Shah used the supplied Russian-officered Persian Cossacks Brigade to bomb the parliament building. His forces arrested many of the deputies, and closed down the assembly.
Iranians flocked to the banner of democracy because they believed that by establishing the rule of law and limiting the selling off of their nation's economy, they could pull themselves out of poverty and into the modern era. Yet this aspiration was fought by the bought off king with foreign support and with foreign troops. Resistance to the shah continued however, with the opposition coalescing in Tabriz, Isfahan, Rasht, and other areas outside the capital and in July 1909, constitutional forces marched from Rasht and Isfahan to Tehran. The shah went into exile in Russia and his 11 year old son ascended to the peacock throne on July 16, 1909.
Although the constitutional forces had triumphed, they faced serious difficulties. The upheavals of the Constitutional Revolution and civil war had undermined stability and trade and their weak control could do little to undue the rampant corruption or seriously change the dynamic of living under divided foreign control. In addition, the ex-shah, with Czarist Russian support, attempted to regain his throne, landing troops in July of 1910 in the north, yet still the reformers pushed forward to try and wrest control from foreign powers. Matters came to a head when, ironically they turned to the United States.
Morgan Shuster, a United States administrator was hired as treasurer general by the constitutional government to reform its finances and sought to set its tax collection in order. Shuster arrived with a zealotry toward's dismantling the corrupt back-room deals through which the British and Russian syndicates were looting Iran. It boiled over when he pressed to carry out the reforms which opposed powerful officials who were Russian protégés and proxies by sending members of the treasury gendarmerie, a tax department police force, into the Russian zone to enforce the reforms.
Russia and Britain pushed back demanding Shuster be removed. When in December 1911 the parliament unanimously refused the Russian ultimatum calling for Shuster's dismissal, Russian troops, already in the country, moved to occupy the capital. The government, weakened by bread riots, was forced to capitulate to a series of ultimatums. The cabinet was revised to suit Russian dictation. Teheran was near famine. Violence erupted again; terrorists began a campaign of assassination. In December Russian troops crossed the frontier en masse. The Shia church leaders imposed a boycott on all Russian enterprises and goods: tramways, tea-drinking, etc. Street fighting flared up in Tabriz, where a thousand nationalists took refuge in the citadel. The Russian troops moved in and massacred them. On December 24th, the parliament was shut down. With it, Iran's tumultuous five-year Constitutional Revolution, the first concerted attempt to synthesize Iranian tradition with modern democracy, was over.
The War to End All Wars... Except Oil
Events outside of Iran would not stay outside for long as the events of World War I unfolded. Iran hoped to avoid entanglement in the war by declaring its neutrality, but ended up as a battleground for Russian, Turkish, and British troops.
Throughout their rise in Iran, the Russians embraced more and more desperate techniques of imperialism. Because of the decay and threat populist movements poised to the tsarist régime at home, the Russian oppression was more pronounced and overt than it was from the British. British control in the southern zone however was not free from the rattling of sabers or even moving to put down in the south what it perceived as threats to its control, in particular its slowly growing need for oil.
With the outbreak of war against Turkey in 1914, rule shifted to overt British military administration in the south. Iran became the backstage of the Mesopotamian theatre during the war, and a vital supply line to the Russian front. Britain became the dominant ally in the balance of Anglo-Russian control. The agreement between Russia and Britain dividing the zones of Iran was revised, granting the neutral zone and the cities of Isfahan and Yezd to Britain. The regional Bakhtiari chiefs were subsequently bought off like the shah. In an attempt to stop Iranian obstruction of British military deployments, overtures were made to populist leaders and a third Majlis or Parliament was permitted to assemble as a token gesture.
A group of Iranian nationalists were highly averse to throwing their lot behind the Anglo-Russian side in the war and in early in 1915 a delegation obtained an audience with Ahmed Shah and persuaded him to set up a new government and endorse a secret Iranian-German treaty which had been drawn up. A defiant pro-German government was declared first in Qom but was soon forced to retreat behind the Ottoman lines to Kermanshah (now called Bakhtaran when it was renamed after the 1979 Iranian Revolution), where they established a provisional government. The provisional government lasted for the duration of the war but failed to capture much support and its fate was tied to that of the Turks and their position within the larger World War. When German agents tried to arouse the southern tribes against the British, Britain created an armed force, the South Persia Rifles, to protect its interests.
As the World War carried on, the structure of Iran society finally collapsed. The government existed solely to bargain for bribes and, satisfied, sign warrants and decrees drafted by Britain and Russia. Order was maintained by foreign troops. Unrest was general though there, no cohesion or unifying nationalist movement and opposition was scattered throughout the country. The corruption was rampant and the various foreign leaning factions and regions were often at odds with each other. The south tended to be pro-German. In Tehran and the east military contracts and pro-royalist (and hence pro Russian/British) back-room deals were the order of the day. In the oil-fields, trade-union movements sought to improve worker conditions and everywhere in the country opium was easy to get a hold of, which helped to drown the indignities and the uncertainties of the fractured nation.
At the end of the war, because of Russia's preoccupation with its own revolution after the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, Britain became the dominant influence in Tehran. However the ominous strategic interests within the region began to assert themselves which, for the first time were not predicated by the ground you could walk on, but what lay under it. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company which had grown out of the D'Arcy concession had begun extracting huge quantities of oil from beneath the Iranian soil. With the shift in warship design in the British Royal Navy from burning coal to burning the relatively smokeless oil burning power plants, it became not just a strategic economic asset to control, but a militarily vital one as well. As Churchill, yes that Churchill, put it in 1917... Iranian oil was "a prize from fairyland beyond our wildest dreams."
Realizing the immense value both militarily and economically of this new resource, the British sought to secure it under terms in their favor. The British foreign secretary, Lord Curzon, pushed an agreement onto the impotent Ahmad regime under which Britain would provide Iran with a loan and with advisers to the army, but more dramatically virtual control of every government department. Under its provisions the British assumed control over Iran's army, treasury, transportation system, and communications network.
To help seal the agreement, the Iranian prime minister, Vosuq od-Dowleh, and two members of his cabinet where bought-off to support it. The Anglo-Persian Agreement of 1919, like the earlier corrupt Shah's concessions, was in essence selling off the nation and was widely viewed as establishing a British protectorate over Iran. This naturally aroused considerable opposition, and the parliament, seeking to finally throw-off the yoke of foreign subversion, refused to approve it. Martial law was declared but the agreement was already dead when, a Persian Cossacks Brigade would burn a new phase into Iranian history.
Khaaaaaaaaan!!!
The Anglo-Persian Agreement of 1919 removed the last vestiges of Iranian sovereignty, but it also ignited a nationalist movement which was inspired by the emergence of anti-colonial forces in other countries, including some that were under British rule. A group of nationalist radicals in the north, inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution in the neighboring Russia, eliminated the hands of the Tsar in Iran's national pocket, and established a Communist party. After Soviet troops landed on the Caspian coast of Iran, declared the surrounding area the "Iranian Soviet Socialist Republic."
In much of the country people were faced with the worst conditions they had ever known which gave rise to numerous separatist movements. With northern separatists aligning themselves with the radically new movement of Soviet Socialism to the north, wide-discontent in other provinces and a deteriorating situation, all with the newly vital resource oil on the table, securing Iran was vital to Britain. Not just for access to oil, but as you may recall Iran was viewed by the British as a vital link in the chain within a sort of governmental archipelago, tying its Indian colony (remember India was a British colony at that time) back through Iran onward towards its other de-facto colonial outpost of Egypt.
As a result of the Turks being on the losing side of World War I, the territories the Ottomon Turks controlled where now divvied up by the French and the English. The nations of Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Lebanon in essence where artificially contrived by the French and British drawing lines on a map, with little regard to the cultural, ethnic, or religious demographics of the people that lived within the newly conquered lands. Britain was at its height of power, and saw Iran as the lynchpin tying its vast empire together from the far-east all the way through to North Africa. Installing the Hashemites to the throne in Iraq, to the Saudis in Arabia as it sorted out the aftermath of the war in which it had involved itself in the Arab Revolt (as was romanticized in the west by its portrayal in Lawrence of Arabia). It only followed to the imperial line of thinking of Britain to secure for itself control to the keystone of its empire, Iran. The need to back a charismatic leader who would enjoy popular support among its people to stabilize the situation and secure British interests was vital, but who?
Reza Khan, a young Iranian officer of the Cossack Brigade, had impressed the British by the discipline among his men as the purge of Russian officers commenced following the Anglo-Persian agreement of 1919. A nominal nationalist, but disgusted with the Russian-backed elements of the Qajar rulers, the British had urged his promotion. Reza Khan used his new authority astutely, profiting from the general disorganization of the rest of the army. He was highly disciplined and efficient, among a sea of incompetents. With the assistance of a Teheran journalist, Zia ud-Din Tabatabai, who contrived allegiances in the capital, he carried out a successful coup d’état and installed himself as war minister.
He immediately embarked on a series of campaigns to restore order to the country. His first objectives were the suppression of the nomad tribes and the Soviet supported separatist republic in Caspian region. The British were much in favor of his campaigns since they saw such goals as a reason for backing him in the first place. To deal with the separatist movements, Reza Khan launched his own loyal regiments against the infant revolution in the north. During Reza Khan's campaign the British occupying army from the war retired from Iran, in accordance with the armistice agreements which ended World War I. Britain was confident of its ability to act decisively through its chosen horse, Reza Khan and British officers still held command positions within the Iranian army. As the campaign progressed, internal divisions within the factions that made up the separatist forces splintered the republic.
As he continued to secure his position, Reza Khan moved against others who were nominally aligned with him. He drove Tabatabai into exile, threw others in jail, and forcing others to resign their positions, among them Mohammed Mossadegh who was finance minister. He was forced to resign both for his anti-corruption campaign which threatened Khan and his cronies and because of his Qajar family heritage. Mossadegh went on to be named Governor of the Azerbaijan province, but resigned after Reza Kahn refused to give him authority over troops stationed there when the Soviets were trying to stir up a separatist rebellion. Mossadegh then served briefly as foreign minister but resigned that post as well after a few months when he finally concluded Reza Kahn shared neither his democratic instincts or his anti-imperialist views. Mossadegh was then easily elected to parliament, and will become a pivotal figure in our history in Iran, which we will come to later.
In 1923 Reza Khan added the premiership to the war ministry. For a time he toyed with the idea of declaring Persia a republic, after the model of Kemalist Turkey, but his autocratic tendencies, coupled the prospect of religious and traditionalist outrage if he were to abolish the vestiges of the monarchy prompted him not to go the other direction. Instead he undertook a pilgrimage, bare-headed, to the shrines of Kerbela and Najaf to secure the support of the religious factions in the country behind him. Finally, in 1925, Ahmed Shah Qajar was formally deposed and on April 25, 1926 Reza Khan, under the title of Reza Shah Pahlevi, ascended the throne. Five members of the parliament had dared to vote against his accession. Among them was the former finance minister Mossadegh.
The British were at first enthusiastically behind Reza Shah. He was the strongman they had sought to consolidate Iran with and was thought to be the reliable figure with whom they could cut deals and buy off, or failing that depose. However Reza Khan sought personal power and slowly sought to limit the influence of foreign powers, though he could not pull his country out of the orbit of foreign powers. He moved to ban the sale of property to non-Iranians, revoked the concession that gave the British-owned Imperial Bank the exclusive right to issue Iranian currency. Things were beginning to slide for the British and their interests in Iran.
Reza Shah's autocratic style soon came to the fore. He was fascinated by the fascist/nationalist movements that began to emerge in the early 1930s. In 1934 he traveled to Turkey to meet its leader Atatürk whom he had long admired and considered a friend. As they toured the country the Shah became despondent as he realized how quickly Turkey was progressing toward modernity and a secularism. Reza began imposing his will by terror and authoritarian methods. He unilaterally declared and enforced a ban of the veil for women and ordered that men wear billed caps that would prevent them from touching the floor with their foreheads during prayer. Religious leaders protested and gathered several hundred hundred followers in the sacred Khorasan mosque to protest. As soon as Reza shah learned of this he ordered soldiers to storm the church and massacre them. More than a hundred were killed.
This was also not an isolated occurrence, nor was it confined to religious observance. During a visit to Hamedan in western Iran, he was told by people that they were going hungry because they believed the local bakers were hoarding bread to drive up rices. He ordered the first baker he saw thrown into an oven and burned alive. His terror methods did have an effect, next morning every baker in town was practically giving away bread.
Many Iranians were appalled at his methods, yet others recalled the chaos and civil unrest and like the fascist movements he began to flirt with, many remained silent or applauded the order he imposed. That isn't to say that everything he did was inherently wrong or bad for the country. He did have legitimate achievements which improved civil society. He embarked on huge construction projects that gave the country new roads, highways, factories, government buildings railroad lines and schools. He introduced the metric system, the use of the modern calendar, use of surnames and civil marriage and divorce. Yet for all the reformist endeavors he pursued, true social transformation was not within his style of rule to engender. His censoring the newspaper media, forbidding organized labor, murdering opposition figures or jailing them or forcing them into exile undercut his being a true leader for his people. He considered the traditions of the nomadic tribes relics of the past and incompatible with his views of modernity and forced them into barren settlements where thousands suffered and died. His corrupt practices of bribes form foreign businesses led one member of the British Parliament to observe that "Reza Shah eliminated all the thieves and bandits in Iran and made his countrymen realize that henceforth there would be only one thief in Iran."
Like the emerging fascist movements he began to align himself with, he launched an oppressive campaign to obliterate the identity of minority groups, especially the Kurds and Azeris and established a "Society for Public Guidance" to glorify his ideas and person. Numerous German dignitaries visited Iran and spoke glowingly of the emerging German-Iranian alliance. Even one of the Shah's newspapers declared that "The cardinal goal of the German nation is to attain its past glories by promoting national pride, creating hatred of foreigners, and preventing Jews and foreigners from embezzlement and treason, our goals are certainly the same."
Reza Shah shared the increasing enmity towards the British and the Soviet Union. When World War II broke out, Iran declared official neutrality. However his policies were decidedly biased towards Germany. He allowed German agents to operate within Iran working to build networks of support with the traditional regional warlords. Western leaders, the Soviet Union in particular feared that Germany would use Iran as a conduit through which it would carry out the unfolding Operation Barbarossa to invade the Soviet Union. The loss of the oil fields would be not just a blow to the allies, but also a lifeline to the German Wehrmacht which was desperate for oil in the new age of mechanized warfare and could tip the balance in favor of the Germans. As a result, the British and the Soviets entered Iran with troops on August 25, 1941. They dropped leaflets from airplanes stating "We have decided the Germans must go and if Iran will not deport them, then the English and the Russians will." It is with supreme irony that these two countries would be promoting themselves as Iran's friends and protectors, yet there was little the Iranian army could do. It yielded in just days, and after seizing key points around the country the British demanded Reza Shah sever all ties to Germany and give free use of their territory to the allies. He abdicated on September 16, 1941 and his eldest son, twenty-one-year-old Mohammad Reza was allowed to succeed him, this time very much in the role of figurehead. Reza Shah left Iran quietly and died in Johannesburg South Africa three years later.
For nearly twenty years, part of it in active politics and the rest in virtual house arrest, Mohammed Mossadegh saw Reza Shah's regime as a enemy of the Iranian people. Now in the sudden turn of events of World War II, Reza Shah was gone and the elections of 1943 was the first free ones in many years. Mossadegh emerged from the sidelines and what was internal political exile and was elected to the newly reformed parliament, the Majles, with more votes than any other candidate. Although his old adversary had been deposed a new an even more powerful one now stood in the way of the Iranian people to reclaim their nation. The British, and in particular the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company dominated the country as no other and was to be the defining event for modern Iran and its relations with the west, though most Americans have little grasp of it.
Our story will continue in part II tomorrow evening, with...
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So what if Iran gets a nuke?
Aug 25, 2006
That is the question that is being begged in all this fear-mongering and hand-wringing about Iran and its nuclear program. But step back, and actually think about it.
So what if Iran does (even given the worst) develop some nuclear devices? What do people honestly think would happen then? Do people honestly think there is even the remote possibility that they would ever be used?
Iran has never attacked us and sought to kill Americans. Yet we are suppose to envision some nuclear holocaust because Iran gets a nuke, yet Pakistan, which backed and whose ISI created the Taliban has had nukes for a decade yet somehow we still don't have any mushroom clouds to show for it. It seems this administration, the media punditry, the GOP and yes... a vast number on "the left" and even here on Daily Kos seems to think that a nuclear armed Iran is "unacceptable"... which begs the question which never gets substantively answered... why is it unacceptable?
The canard that Iran backs Hezbollah and are led by mullahs, hence a threat to Israel and the U.S. and the world is utter bullshit. Yes many leaders in Iran are bigoted religious thugs, so is Pat Robertson and the Bush administration, but honestly look at reality and draw me any substantive scenario where Iran uses a nuke other than in response to getting nuked or invaded.
Anyone?
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