Without further evidence, the alleged Iranian plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States is rather hard to believe. See Glenn Greenwald’s take, for example, to appreciate the need for skepticism about U.S. claims–and the eagerness of many elite pundits to take the government story more or less at face value.
Jim Lobe’s piece on how Iran experts are reacting is worth reading too. Juan Cole’s post has a provocative, almost unbelievable headline–“Is an Iranian Drug Cartel Behind the Assassination Plot Against the Saudi Ambassador?”–but then again, the Official Story is pretty out there, too.
One can never underestimate the ways elite media can be spun by official sources, as this anonymous quote in the Washington Post today (10/12/11) demonstrates:
“There’s a question of how high up did it go,” said an administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal White House thinking. “The Iranian government has a responsibility to explain that.”
Under normal circumstances, a government accusing another government of a criminal terrorism plot would have to demonstrate that it has the evidence–not the other way around. I guess I’d want to remain anonymous, too, if I was going to say something like that to a newspaper.
On the face of it, my bullshit-detector is definitely ringing. The Official Story just seems too good to be true, if you know what I mean.
The R and D leadership demonstrates the absence of Left and Right in their orientation, not its representation. We have remaining only the parties of the Upstairs and the Downstairs: the 1% with its military government media complex, and the residual and, until of late, inconsequential 99%.
What else is to be expected from the Rs and Ds? The Rapacians call for more murder sanctified by nationalism and the Delusionals swallow all presented to their gaping maws, without discretion, like blind little birdlings, with the trust that only an ahistorical instinctive response to a fear provoking stimuli can explain.
The domesticated herd, motivated by the fear inspired by the sight of their burning barn, rushes for the safety of their own stallsâ┚¬”Âalas, to their detriment, within the burning barn!
Gareth Porter has an interesting account over at Smirking Chimp. From what he has gathered it seems like another FBI entrapment operation where repeated government instigation and efforts to encourage this plot were met largely with disinterest and incoherence. That, once in custody, the “suspect” declined his right to an attorney and immediately “confessed” shows what a put-up job this has been from the start. Since we are assassinating people left, right and center around the world with no concern for due process or sovereignty, Obama’s righteous indignation would be downright laughable if it weren’t so deadly.
What struck me as oddest about the story, however, seems to be the only thing that holds water. With opium pouring through from Afghanistan, the Iranian government holds 85% of the world’s opium seizures so it’s no wonder that a Mexican drug cartel would be interested. Tying this as some government-sanctioned plot is still ludicrous. But the Obama administration, in its neverending efforts to outdo its illustrious predecessor, is also trying to tie in Wikileaks as responsible for exposing the “assassination target,” the FBI being the ones to select that target notwithstanding. But I guess that’s what living in Bizarro World is all about.
I think we can safely assume that anything bad said about Iran by anyone in American Politics is an outright lie. The 2006 NIE (done during G.W.BUSH no less) said that Iran had dismantled its weapons program as of 2003 and was not in a position to reconstitute it nor showed any interest in doing so. Yet, the politicians kept referring to “Iran’s nuclear weapons program” as if it existed and were active. So they were just LYING, all of them – and right in the face of the facts!
So it has nothing to do with the truth at all – it’s purely to make claims and have most of the audience believe it for having heard it. Joseph Goebbels would be proud. So they must have done a poll and found that they “Iran threat” is vanishing from the public mind (as it should), and are trying to reignite the panic.
Let’s invent the lie that nobody could ignore and that would definitely support a war: Iran is trying to CHANGE THE INGREDIENTS IN HEINZ’S KETCHUP. They’re trying to subvert America! So please sell off whatever you own to support the Pentagon …. thanks and see ya later.
This whole Iranian conspiracy fabrication stinks of Wolfowitz, Perle, and Shulsky–the Pentagon’s architects of the bush’s war with Iraq. When Iran sought warmer relations between the United States and Tehran, Iran offered Conoco an oil franchise, but Israel wouldn’t allow it. When the first airplanes hit the twin towers, Mossad celebrated; what a strange coincidence! We still have Jonathan Pollards in our midst.
Who benefits most from this Key Stone Cops episode? I guess it’s time for President Obama to serve up another veto for his patron state.
@joe p
if only it were “bizzaro world”. Ive seen nothing from the obama administration but the cheapest, most ridiculous kind of dictator-theatre, the kind that we used to get treated to back in the cold war for a good laugh, back when we felt so smug and superior. No one is laughing now. What a bunch of ZEROS. With the 0 in chief himself the most transparently, grossly dishonest of them all.
@solerso
The indications were all in by the time Obama’s AG refused to mention or discuss that the prior administration had committed crimes worth prosecuting. I think that was within two weeks after Obama’s inauguration. Nothing further needed to be said. The only people who would excuse such crimes would have to be criminals of the very same nature.
The old Who song: the new boss is the same as the old boss.
Frank I dont know you but i wonder….do you consider yourself in any way anti semitic?if not- i apologize.But some of your blogs have left me questioning.
As far as Iran…… Im at a loss to see anything in her leadership that is not insane,dangerous,and leads to the conclusion she is our enemy.Strangely her people seem far different from their leadership.I could see a reaching across the isle to them.I ma needs a job looks like, and is as crazy as a shit house rat.Iran may say she will never develop nuclear weapons.I believe that is a lie.
â┚¬Ã…“ARE THEY DOING IT AGAIN?â┚¬Ã‚Â
Is it about to happen again? Nine years ago, America (WE) invaded a foreign land and its people. They called it â┚¬Ã…“shock and awe.â┚¬Ã‚ WE killed thousands of citizens in their own country and forced millions to flee to other lands. They did not attack us or threaten us. They had no WMD’s. They didn’t even have many, if any, fighter planes, tanks or much of an army. Why did WE do it, really? WE didn’t like their leader? Well, WE hunted him down and made sure he was killed. But WE stayed on and continued to kill the people and allow our (we support the troops) troops to be wounded and killed. Billions of our tax money supported this invasion. Still does. We’re still there. Why? Is it because we want Iraq to become a democracy? Or is it because contractors (like Cheney’s Halliburton) are making a lot of money? Or is it because it positions us to more conveniently attack Iran?
It is true we had already invaded another foreign land, Afghanistan. Seeking one man. Evidently, he was involved in the trade center incident. Of course, most of the terrorists in that action were from Saudi Arabia, but we didn’t attack that country. They were friends of the Bush family. So, WE bombed mountain after mountain. Chased most of the al Queda out, but made enemies of the Taliban, so now we’re fighting them. Why do WE stay? Our soldiers keep getting wounded and killed. How does one life compare with admission of failure? Finally, after 9 years, we found and assassinated that â┚¬Ã…“one man, Bin Laden,â┚¬Ã‚ so, why are we still there? Is it because we need a launching pad so WE can invade other countries with our drones? Like Yemen (oops, we assassinated another alleged terrorist, our own citizen), Pakistan, probably Somali and who knows where else our drones are invading. Or is it because Iran is next door, convenient if we decide to attack them? I won’t even mention our involvement in Libya. The only persons held accountable for these actions are in the caskets that arrive on our shores.
Dare I mention the incredible tale now being told us about the plot to assassinate the ambassador to US from Saudi Arabia? This tale involves our security/informant and the Mexican drug cartel with money passing hands. Remember the administrative/media lead up to the invasion of Afghanistan, then Iraq? No, not again! Don’t let it be the first steps toward invading Iran! IS IT HAPPENING AGAIN?
Given the recent revelations about Saudi money involvement in the 9-11 operation, do Americans really care if the Iranians and Saudis off each other? The winner is already known: the US defense contractors and their Congressional lackeys.
It appears that the Israelis, faced with many problems at home, can no longer be counted on for beating the war drums against Iran.
If these patently ridiculous allegations don’t stick, the US is out of friends in the Middle East.
My. my, so the U.S. is upset because of a single alleged episode of a foreign power attempting to do something bad in our country. That’s very funny coming from Washington, which has and continues to be engaged in many. many illegal special ops assassination attempts in at least half a dozen countries. Oh, by the way, just how many women and children did Al-Awlacki kill versus how many Obama has killed with his years-long drone progam? Hey, maybe that should be Obama’s campaign slogan next year, “Keep my wars droning on ’til we win!”
This whole things smells. But as to what really happened I hope we don’t have to wait 20 years to find out after Iran is attacked by Israel an USA killing millions and reducing it to an Israeli oil outpost.
michael e – do you consider yourself as a Zionist. You know, one of those religious Evangelicals who create hatred, murder and rapture?
The Iranian might look funny, or might be even bad – but they are not the killers you and your American lifestyle presents to the World.
You guys need a German moment, we call that the moment when you detect you are evil and your action lead to the death of 120 million people since the end of WW II.
Never mind if you aren’t one of those Zio-Zombies.
Michael e claims Iran is dangerous and our enemy. As Dr. Robert Bowman explains in this excerpt of a longer speech THIS is what is dangerous:
U.S. Policy on Iraq: History & Prospects
Text of an Address by Most Rev. Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF (retired)
President, Institute for Space and Security Studies, &
Presiding Bishop, United Catholic Church; March 18th 1999
In 1897, Kuwait was a small village in the Iraqi province of Basra. Iraq itself was part of the Ottoman Empire (and had been for 300 years). It was a time that global capitalism first got involved in this sleepy remote part of the world. The British, coveting a secure trade route to India, wanted to get control of the Persian Gulf.
So they attempted to bribe two brothers of the Sheikh of Kuwait to declare independence. They refused, and the British had them killed.
The following year they threatened the Sheikh, Mubarak Al-Sabah, with the same fate, and forced him into a secret agreement, placing himself under British â┚¬Ã…“protection.â┚¬Ã‚ This is how the British managed to carve out a piece of Iraq and rule it through the Sheikh of Kuwait.
In 1920, after World War I, Britain, France and the US seized the rights to 95% of the oil in Iraq.
By 1932, Britain had expanded Kuwait from a small village on the Gulf into a colony occupying the entire coastline of the Persian Gulf from Arabia to Iran, completely shutting off Iraq from access to the Gulf. For the next half a century, British intelligence murdered almost every Iraqi leader and king, because they called for the return of Kuwait.
In 1938, the British murdered every member of the Kuwait Legislative Council.
By the 1950’s, the U.S. was an equal partner with Britain in the coups and assassinations. In 1953, the CIA organized the overthrow of Muhammed Mossadegh, the elected Premier of Iran (who had tried to nationalize Iranian oil). A member of the CIA team was Gen. Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf, the father of â┚¬Ã…“Stormin’ Norman.â┚¬Ã‚ Our government installed the Shah in Iran. It trained, armed, and paid his hated secret police. This bit of gunboat diplomacy resulted in us being hate in Iran, a fact that would become an important cause in the current war.
Time and again the British promised to give Kuwait back to Iraq, only to go back on their word. Iraq King Faisal II and his Premier Nuri es-Said, both hand-picked and installed by the British, were ousted and killed by a joint US/British coup in 1958.
In 1960, Faisal’s replacement, Abdel Karim Quassim also called for the return of Kuwait, so CIA Chief Allen Dulles ordered his assassination. After the job was botched a couple of times, the CIA gave the assignment to one of its promising assassins â┚¬“ Saddam Hussein. With the help of a CIA airlift, he succeeded. By 1968, Saddam Hussein was in complete control and, under CIA direction, killing trade unionists, radicals, and Communists.
In 1977, US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski met with Saddam Hussein, the Emir of Kuwait, and a Saudi representative, and proposed that Iraq invade Iran, seizing the Khuzestan oil fields. The subsequent war, prolonged by U.S. assistance to both sides, dragged on for a decade and cost millions of lives.
In 1982, US FBI chief William Webster met with the Emir of Kuwait and plotted the seizure of Iraqi oil fields and the slant-drilling with which Kuwait and western oil companies stole $14 billion worth of Iraqi oil.
Right up to the time of Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, US Department of Defense training manuals sang the praises of Saddam Hussein, noting how he had vastly improved education, medical care, and the standard of living of his people. His regime was called one of the most enlightened, progressive governments in the region. This was in an official DoD document used in the education of high-ranking officers of all the military services. Saddam was our guy!
But there was a problem. The Berlin wall had come down. The Soviet Union had collapsed. And the American people were clamoring for a peace dividend. They had to find another bad guy â┚¬“ fast. In May 1990, a National Security Council white paper stated that Iran and Saddam Hussein were (and I quote) â┚¬Ã…“the optimum contenders to replace the Warsaw pact as the rationale for major military expenditures.â┚¬Ã‚Â
Two months later, on July 20, 1990 General Schwarzkopf conducted training exercises simulating exactly the contingency of an Iraqi attack on Kuwait. Five days later, April Gilaspie gave Saddam the green light to invade Kuwait. A week later, he did. Almost immediately, the U.S. deployed as many troops and twice as much material as was moved for the Normandy invasion. Do you think this was done without advance planning?
This was the war they wanted, the war they planned for, the war they instigated, the war they salivated over. This was the war that would demonstrate the capabilities of the smart bomb made by our weapons manufacturers. It was better than a hundred trade shows. This was the war that would prove that George Bush was not a wimp. This was the war that would make billions for the oil company owned by the president’s son, George Bush, Jr., who had exclusive rights to offshore oil in the Gulf.
Saddam was suckered into our trap. And he fell for it. He crossed the undefended border of Kuwait, triggering â┚¬Ã…“Desert Shield.â┚¬Ã‚ As soon as he was our reaction to his attack, Saddam knew he had been had, and he was trying to find his way out. His numerous offers to withdraw from Kuwait if only this or that condition were satisfied were clear signals. He was ready to accept total defeat, if only he were given the chance to declare a victory.
His signals should have been met with creative peacemaking and negotiations, not threats and ultimatums. His various offers to withdraw should have been negotiated so as to give him incentives to agree. Instead, he was forced to continue his bravado and seeming intransigence.
Was this mere ineptness on the part of the Bush Administration? Hardly. They knew exactly what they wanted and they got it. They used bullying, blackmail, and bribery to get the approval of the Security Council and the Senate for their war, and they weren’t going to let anything deprive them of it. Even when Gorbachev secured the unconditional surrender of Saddam Hussein, it was ignored and Desert Shield became Desert Storm.
Our government dropped 300 to 400 million pounds of high explosives on Iraq. This onslaught destroyed tens of thousands of buildings and essentially every bridge, power plant, and industrial facility in the country. It killed a quarter of a million Iraqis, including at least 100,000 civilians of which half were children.
Now here we are eight years later, and the shocking death toll from the Gulf War has been dwarfed by that from our continuing war against Iraq. Not only have we failed to rebuild what we destroyed; we have imposed economic sanctions which have prevented the Iraqis and everyone else from doing so.
Among the ordinance we used on Iraq were some 500 tons of depleted uranium bombs and artillery shells. The radioactive dust covering the southern part of Iraq has caused birth defects and cancer rates to soar. As if that weren’t enough, we periodically continue to drop bombs and cruise missiles on that devastated nation. And the dying continues â┚¬“ about 200 children per day.
Who are the bad guys here? Ex-CIA agent Saddam Hussein is no saint. But he is one pawn in a century-long history of western intrigue, torture, murder, and callous disregard for the people who live in what once was a proud nation.
Is it any wonder we are considered the great Satan? Is it any wonder we are hated? Is it any wonder we are the target of terrorists? Is it?
We are gathered here to oppose our government’s war against the Iraqi people. But we must not see it as an isolated incident, for it is not. It is but one piece of a bloody history in which foreign policy has been conducted and wars have been fought on behalf of the financial interests of multinational corporations. It is time for a change.
For decades, progressives have been saying that nation-states are obsolete, that we need a new world order so that decisions can be made to deal with problems that are global in nature.
Unfortunately, and this is what too few people understand, we already have a New World Order, but it’s not the one we wanted. The New World Order is made up of multinational corporations, big banks, the G7, the World Bank, the IMF, NAFTA, the World Trade Organization, and the Trilateral Commission.
These institutions are run by the world’s oligarchs for their own benefit. They exist in order to orchestrate world political and economic decisions for their own profit. What we were hoping for, of course, was a democratic world order in which decisions would be made for the benefit of the world’s people. What we got was anything but.
It sure is funny when our Obama-hating troll lines up four-square behind the President and his pissant Attorney General when they concoct the most idiotic plot to further gin up a confrontation with the Iranians so the Pres can look tough for his re-election. It’s also instructive that even the mildest criticism of Israel drives the troll wild–how like an Obama apparatchik he really is here, no? As long as the State is using it’s police powers to stomp on people and curtail rights and stir up trouble with our alleged enemies, the Baggers are absolutely down with it. And on that note, Eric Alterman’s savaging of the President vis-a-vis Israel is worth reading in the Oct 17, 2011 issue of the Nation. (“This Presidency Invites Contempt.”) The sort of thing that Alterman points out is likely completely foriegn and un-understandable to Baggers and right-wingers. It simply doesn’t compute. When Obama does something they would have cheered under Cheney/Bush, they just can’t bring themselves to cheer on the President. maybe his heart isn’t in the right place, or he does bad and stupid and unlawful things just by accident.
Gmathol
Am I a zionist?Of course not.Im a catholic- and a very bad one at that.
As far as the history of Iran given by Larry …Interesting but It almost seems as if America and the CiA work in a vacuum .Spreading their evil ways for the sake of….power, greed and hell lets just call it what it is….EVIL!And of course no body else factors even remotely into that equation.Talk about history revisited.
Tim You gotta stop writing for me bud.I believe(these are my words) that Obama is wise to distrust the iranian leadership.Like North Korea they seem to be run by some folks who are “short of a full load”.I have no idea what Obamas policy is(who does) toward iran at this time.I hope and pray he knows what he is doing, though his track record aint great.I pray Iran stays quiet,and that our involvement stays small.When you hear Irans leader speak(translations are available and up to date)it is hard to disregard what he says.I hope he just talking out of his hat.The president does not have my luxury or ability to disengage from reality.If iran stopped their obvious march to weaponize their nuclear program, and resisted the urge to threaten others, and arm terrorists- it would be a huge positive jump in the normalization of relations.
(space) If iran (caps) stopped their (its) obvious march to weaponize their (its) nuclear program, (define weaponize) (no comma) and resisted the urge to threaten others, (no comma) and arm terrorists-(space (no dash) comma) it would be a huge positive jump in the normalization of relations. (define normalization) (specify relations, ie. mothers-in-law, nephews, etc.)
Maynard……..Hey moron,that was typed by my 10 year old nephew(he is a great little typing machine,though I helped him with the spelling)I laughed my ass off when i asked him to take down my words.He said THIS IS BORING.If only he knew the boring people I was baiting.Actually he probably cares about this as much as i do.It is Boring.As far as defining normalization of relations,or weaponization of nuclear weapons,you can look that up yourself.