1.
Smoke and mirrors
WHO'S KILLING AMERICAN SOLDIERS IN IRAQ?
By Philip Giraldi
** Iran or the White House? **
Antiwar.com
August 28, 2007
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/giraldi.php?articleid=11509
Anyone who doubts that the war party is firmly focused on Iran need only take note of the Aug. 21 lead editorial in the Washington Post, which had the heading "Tougher on Iran: The Revolutionary Guard is at war with the United States. Why not fight back?" The Post, which regularly features neocons like Charles Krauthammer on its editorial page, was a principal cheerleader for the Iraq war. Its editorial accepts at face value Pentagon claims that advanced munitions provided by Iran killed one third of the U.S. troops who died in Iraq last month and that 50 members of the Guard operating south of Baghdad are "facilitating training of Shi'ite extremists." The Post concludes that the Revolutionary Guard is "trying to kill as many American soldiers as possible" and coyly recommends increasing military pressure while labeling the Iranian group as a terrorist organization to facilitate subjecting it to more economic pressure.
The Post's assertion that Iran is already at war with the U.S. has a familiar ring to it. It has already been used by Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and was originally coined by the Israel lobby. The big problem with the Washington Post is that it, in knee-jerk fashion, is accepting any Pentagon attempt to implicate Iran in Iraq as fact. It is also advancing the premise that any time an improvised explosive device is used to kill an American Iran must be behind the attempt. The Washington Post then uses its extremely unreliable "fact" from the Pentagon to make a leap to the premise that the Iranians are "trying to kill as many Americans" as possible. This is dangerous language and may be total fiction, as one might readily assume that if the Iranians and their allies were really in earnest about wanting to kill even larger numbers of American soldiers they most likely could do so.
What passes for thinking at the *Post* is ridiculous, but it serves the purposes of an administration that appears to be paving the way for a new war before President Bush leaves office. Successful military action against an adversary who has been painted as yet another "new Hitler" could be very useful for the Republicans in 2008 in order to rally the public 'round the flag again. There's nothing like a war or a terrorist attack to revive red-state fervor. Blaming Iran also provides a convenient explanation why the U.S. military has done so poorly in Iraq -- someone else is "interfering."
The Post editorial demonstrates that it's not just Fox News beating the drum for war with Iran. The belligerent posturing by the Pentagon and its poodles in the media is all too familiar given the U.S. experience in Iraq, and it is often the "liberal media" that takes the lead in disseminating the propaganda. One of the more astonishing claims that has surfaced from Pentagon sources in the past two weeks is that the Iraqis have apparently learned to aim their mortars better when they fire into the Green Zone, where the U.S. embassy is located. That know-how must come from Iran, at least if one believes the logic employed by the Department of Defense, ignoring the fact that Iraq had a large army that included artillery and mortars prior to three years ago. Where are all those mortarmen? They are now unemployed thanks to the U.S. occupation. An independent source in Iraq suggests that the explanation for the more accurate shooting is twofold. First, there are numerous informants inside the Green Zone who are collaborating with the insurgents and militias and who are helping direct the shooting using cell phones, not unlike forward artillery observers. Second, the insurgents are increasingly embedded in formerly secure neighborhoods close to the Green Zone in spite of the "surge," making the triangulation of the rounds a lot less complicated.
One last comment on the gullibility of Washington's self-styled "newspaper of record" is necessary. If the Iranians are interfering inside Iraq, and it is perfectly possible that they are, where is the evidence? Doesn't the *Washington Post* editorial staff wonder what the Pentagonese "facilitating training" actually means before using it in a leading editorial advocating something close to war? If a large group of 50 Guardsmen is operating south of Baghdad and supplying Iraqis with advanced shaped-charge munitions, where is the evidence? Why haven't the U.S. Army and the Iraqi security services caught one of the Iranians? Where are the weapons?
The New York Times, former home of the redoubtable Judith Miller, is not much better than the Post. Its recent coverage of Pentagon claims that Iran is targeting U.S. troops was similarly accepting of the official line. In response to numerous complaints about the poor journalism, its public editor conceded that there should have been "more context." Maybe he should have said "content." Nearly all of the U.S. mainstream media has bought in to Sen. John McCain's line that the only thing worse than going to war with Iran is a nuclear-armed Iran. Such thinking, which results in only neither-nor scenarios, eliminates all other options for resolution of the conflict and can only lead to war.
Other evidence is also mounting that an attack on Iran is impending. Former CIA officer Robert Baer, writing in the Aug. 18 issue of Time magazine, notes that the current neocon line of thinking is that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard constitutes the "one obstacle to a democratic and friendly Iran." This is reminiscent of the assertion that Saddam Hussein was the one obstacle to a friendly and democratic Iraq. Baer regards the assertion as the latest neocon delusion, but he also notes, unfortunately, that it informs the White House thinking. When Baer suggested to his administration source that the opposite might happen and a strike on Iran might unify the country behind the clerical regime, he was told that the Revolutionary Guard's improvised explosive devices are a "casus belli for this administration. There will be an attack on Iran."
The facts don't seem to matter at all to the Bush White House and the true believers still clustered around the mainmast as the ship of state goes down. Iran is surely not a model that anyone would seek to emulate, a fact that is confirmed by opinion polls conducted worldwide. The polls, which rank countries based on "favorable impressions," consistently place Iran at the bottom together with the United States and Israel. But Iran's evident disagreeableness does not mean that it is a threat to the United States or to anyone else that would justify war. There is no actual hard intelligence confirming that Iran has a nuclear weapons program or that it would even use such a weapon if it acquired one. There is no solid evidence that Iran is interfering in Iraq or Afghanistan, just essentially unsourced comments from the Pentagon and the American media. On the contrary, one might easily argue that it is the United States that is interfering in both countries after having invaded them. Both the Afghan and Iraqi governments claim to have good, positive relationships with Iran, contradicting many of the American claims and heightening the impression that the White House is seeking to create a pretext for a new war in the Middle East.
2.
Editorial
TOUGHER ON IRAN
** The Revolutionary Guard is at war with the United States. Why not fight back? **
Washington Post
August 21, 2007
Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/20/AR2007082001581_pf.html
Iran's revolutionary Guard Corps is a sprawling organization involved in myriad activities, including guarding borders, pumping oil, operating ports, smuggling, manufacturing pharmaceuticals, building Iran's nuclear program -- and supplying the weapons that are killing a growing number of American soldiers in Iraq. According to the Pentagon, one-third of the U.S. troops who died in Iraq last month -- 23 soldiers -- were killed by "explosively formed penetrators," sophisticated bombs supplied by Tehran. Iran also delivers rockets and other weapons to Shiite militias; on Sunday, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch said that about 50 members of the Revolutionary Guard Corps were operating in the area south of Baghdad, where they are "facilitating training of Shiite extremists."
In effect, the Revolutionary Guard, a radical state within Iran's Islamic state, is waging war against the United States and trying to kill as many American soldiers as possible. In response, the Bush administration is considering categorizing the Guard as a "specially designated global terrorist" organization under a post-Sept. 11 executive order aimed at blocking terrorists' access to their assets. The measure is reportedly part of a package the administration is considering to increase pressure on Iran at a time when it is defying U.N. orders to freeze its nuclear program and is showing no hint of flexibility in talks with the United States and the European Union.
This seems to be the least the United States should be doing, given the soaring number of Iranian-sponsored bomb attacks in Iraq. What's puzzling are the murmurs of disapproval from European diplomats and others who say they favor using diplomacy and economic pressure, rather than military action, to rein in Iran. So far, the diplomacy and sanctions haven't been working: Iran has been unresponsive to extensive European deal-making efforts and hasn't taken up a year-old U.S. offer of across-the-board negotiations in exchange for stopping its uranium enrichment. The sanctions have been too weak to cause the regime serious discomfort, and tougher measures are being blocked in the U.N. Security Council by China and Russia.
Increased economic pressure could be the main byproduct of designating the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. The designation could cause banks and exporters in Europe and Asia that do business with Guard affiliates to pull back. So what's the objection? Some European diplomats say they fear that an escalating confrontation between the United States and Iran will end in war. But sanctions are the alternative to war -- Iran already rejected initiatives aimed at ending its nuclear program by offering economic concessions and other carrots.
Others suggest that the administration's labeling of a principal arm of the Iranian regime as a terrorist group would contradict its recent embrace of bilateral talks with Tehran about Iraq. Yet that contradiction, if it exists, seems puny compared with that of a regime that participates in those discussions while escalating its surrogate war against American troops. If Iran chooses to fight as well as talk, the United States should not shrink from fighting back with all the economic weapons it can muster.