Scott Ritter and Jeff Cohen's So. Cal. tour this week has become ever more pertinent. At the bottom, after a click-on Flash on Iran. ed
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/02/12/opinion/12krugman.html?th&emc=th Scary Movie 2 By PAUL KRUGMAN NY Times Op-Ed: February 12, 2007 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? First, you'd set up a special intelligence unit to cook up rationales for war. A good model would be the Pentagon's now-infamous Office of Special Plans, led by Abram Shulsky, that helped sell the Iraq war with false claims about links to Al Qaeda. Sure enough, 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." Next, you'd go for a repeat of the highly successful strategy by which scare stories about the Iraqi threat were disseminated to the public. This time, however, the assertions wouldn't be about W.M.D.; they'd be that Iranian actions are endangering U.S. forces in Iraq. Why? Because there's no way Congress will approve another war resolution. But if you can claim that Iran is doing evil in Iraq, you can assert that you don't need authorization to attack - that Congress has already empowered the administration to do whatever is necessary to stabilize Iraq. And by the time the lawyers are finished arguing - well, the war would be in full swing. Finally, you'd build up forces in the area, both to prepare for the strike and, if necessary, to provoke a casus belli. There's precedent for the idea of provocation: in a January 2003 meeting with Prime Minster Tony Blair, The New York Times reported last year, President Bush "talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation, including a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire." In the end, Mr. Bush decided that he didn't need a confrontation to start that particular war. But war with Iran is a harder sell, so sending several aircraft carrier groups into the narrow waters of the Persian Gulf, where a Gulf of Tonkin-type incident could all too easily happen, might be just the thing. O.K., I hope I'm worrying too much. Those carrier groups could be going to the Persian Gulf just as a warning. But you have to wonder about the other stuff. Why would the Pentagon put someone who got everything wrong on Iraq in charge of intelligence on Iran? Why wasn't any official willing to take personal responsibility for the reliability of alleged evidence of Iranian mischief, as opposed to being an anonymous source? If the evidence is solid enough to bear close scrutiny, why were all cameras and recording devices, including cellphones, banned from yesterday's Baghdad briefing? It's still hard to believe that they're really planning to attack Iran, when it's so obvious that another war would be a recipe for even bigger disaster. But remember who's calling the shots: Dick Cheney thinks we've had "enormous successes" in Iraq. *** Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2007 20:37:08 -0500 (EST) From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [NYTr] Juan Cole: NY Times Re-Runs Its Own Judy Miller Scandal [We've already noted the alarmist Michael Gordon article, but we're repeating it below, along with several of the "deja vu all over again" comments about it quoted by Juan Cole. As we've said before, it's incredible that The New York Times is doing this all over again. -NYTr] Informed Comment - Feb 11, 2007 http://www.juancole.com NYT Falls for Bogus Iran Weapons Charges Completely Implausible Numbers are Thrown Around Repeat of Judy Miller Scandal by Juan Cole This NYT article* (Feb 10 by Michael Gorden) depends on unnamed USG sources who alleged that 25 percent of US military deaths and woundings in Iraq in October-December of 2006 were from explosively formed penetrator bombs fashioned in Iran and given to Shiite militias: "In the last three months of 2006, attacks using the weapons accounted for a significant portion of Americans killed and wounded in Iraq, though less than a quarter of the total, military officials say." *Deadliest Bomb in Iraq Is Made by Iran, U.S. Says, by Michael Gordon 2/10/07 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/10/world/middleeast/10weapons.html This claim is one hundred percent wrong. Because 25 percent of US troops were not killed fighting Shiites in those three months. Day after day, the casualty reports specify al-Anbar Province or Diyala or Salahuddin or Babil, or Baghdad districts such as al-Dura, Ghaziliyah, Amiriyah, etc.--and the enemy fighting is clearly Sunni Arab guerrillas. And, Iran is not giving high tech weapons to Baathists and Salafi Shiite-killers. It is true that some casualties were in "East Baghdad" and that Baghdad is beginning to rival al-Anbar as a cemetery for US troops: Robert Burns of AP observes,** "The increasingly urban nature of the war is reflected in the fact that a higher percentage of U.S. deaths have been in Baghdad lately. Over the course of the war through Feb. 6, at least 1,142 U.S. troops have died in Anbar province, the heart of the Sunni Arab insurgency, according to an AP count. That compares with 713 in Baghdad. But since Dec. 28, 2006, there were more in Baghdad than in Anbar - 33 to 31." **"Death Toll Rising: More U.S. troops died in Iraq combat over past four months than any other time," Feb 11, 2007 http://www.journalnow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJ%2FMGArticle%2FWSJ_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1149193138155&path=!nationworld&s=1037645509161 Over all, only a fourth of US troops had been killed Baghdad (713 or 23.7 percent of about 3000) through the end of 2006. But US troops aren't fighting Shiites anyplace else-- Ninevah, Diyala, Salahuddin--these are all Sunni areas. For a fourth of US troops to be being killed or wounded by Shiite EFPs, all of the Baghdad deaths would have to be at the hands of Shiites! The US military often does not announce exactly where in Baghdad a GI is killed and so I found it impossible to do a count of Sunni versus Shiite neighborhoods. But we know that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was running interference for the Mahdi Army last fall, and it seems unlikely to me that very many US troops died fighting Shiites in Baghdad. The math of Gordon's article does not add up at all if this were Shiite uses of Iran-provided EFPs. So the unnamed sources at the Pentagon are reduced to implying that Iran is giving sophisticated bombs to its sworn enemies and the very groups that are killing its Shiite Iraqi allies every day. Get real! Moreover, there is no evidence of Iranian intentions to kill US troops. If Iran was giving EFPs to anyone, it was to the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and its Badr Corps paramilitary, for future use. SCIRI is the main US ally in Iraq aside from the Kurds. I don't know of US troops killed by Badr, certainly not any time recently. It is far more likely that corrupt arms merchants are selling and smuggling these things than that there is direct government- to- militia transfer. It is possible that small Badr Corps stockpiles were shared or sold. That wouldn't have been Iran's fault. Some large proportion of US troops being killed in Iraq are being killed with bullets and weapons supplied by Washington to the Iraqi army, which are then sold by desperate or greedy Iraqi soldiers on the black market. This problem of US/Iraqi government arms getting into the hands of the Sunni Arab guerrillas is far more significant and pressing than whatever arms smugglers bring in from Iran. We now know that Iran came to the US early in 2003 with a proposal to cooperate with Washington in overthrowing Saddam Hussein, and that VP Richard Bruce Cheney rebuffed it.*** The US could have had Iran on its side in Iraq! ***Juan Cole's Informed Comment, Jan 19, 2007: http://www.juancole.com/2007/01/cheney-blew-off-iran-in-2003-for-love.html The attempt to blame these US deaths on Iran is in my view a black psy-ops operation. The claim is framed as though this was a matter of direct Iranian government transfer to the deadliest guerrillas. In fact, the most fractious Shiites are the ones who hate Iran the most. If 25 percent of US troops are being killed and wounded by explosively formed projectiles, then someone should look into who is giving those EFPs to Sunni Arab guerrillas. It isn't Iran. Finally, it is obvious that if Iran did not exist, US troops would still be being blown up in large numbers. Sunni guerrillas in al-Anbar and West Baghdad are responsible for most of the deaths. The Bush administration's talent for blaming everyone but itself for its own screw-ups is on clear display here. For more skepticism, see this column at Huffington: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-weisbrot-and-robert-naiman/people-without-names-p_b_40927.html and Glenn Greenwald http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2007/02/ny-times-returns-to-pre-iraq-war.html and Think Progress: http://thinkprogress.org/2007/02/10/iran-cooked-intel/ *** ----- Original Message ----- From: Liam Kirsher To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, February 12, 2007 7:45 PM Subject: [LiamOnline] Iran Everybody seems to love this one! I've already received it from several different sources. If you haven't seen it yet, take a look. http://www.lucasgray.com/video/peacetrain.html We've seen the administration's game plan before in the lead-up to the attack on Iraq. The first step is demonization of the "other." So a flash presentation like this one, that humanizes the people we would be killing, comes at an opportune time. We failed to stop the disastrous attack on Iraq. This time it's all the more important that we be actors, not "re-actors." Liam *** U.S. TOUR OF DUTY presents SCOTT RITTER and JEFF COHEN Fighting Disinformation with Real Intelligence Join former UN weapons inspector SCOTT RITTER (author of "Target Iran") and media analyst JEFF COHEN (author of "Cable News Confidential") for a discussion on the corporate media's coverage of the "War on Terror." Wednesday, February 21 7:30 PM - 9:30 PM Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica 1260 18th Street, Santa Monica, CA Suggested donation: $10 . sponsored by Take On The Media, Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles and Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica Thursday, February 22 7:30 PM - 9:30 PM Victoria Hall Theater 33 West Victoria Street, Santa Barbara, CA Friday, February 23 7:00 PM - 9:30 PM Oak Park Community Center (Ventura County) 1000 Kanan Road, Oak Park, CA * A book signing with Scott Ritter and Jeff Cohen will immediately follow each event. For more information visit www.ustourofduty.org or call 310.842.8794 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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