Former Israeli soldier and current writer for the Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg has a long cover story (9/10) on the “better than 50 percent chance” that Israel will launch air strikes against Iran by next July, with the aim of taking out the alleged nuclear threat from the Islamic Republic. Based on roughly 40 interviews with American, Arab and Israeli officials—some of them anonymously—Goldberg meanders from describing the worst-case scenario for what will happen after Israel attacks Iran to relaying dubious Israeli claims about how Iran is the new Nazi Germany to an analysis of Netanyahu’s relationship with his right-wing 100-year-old father. He does this while assuring readers that he is “not engaging in a thought exercise, or a one-man war game.”
Goldberg’s is just the latest in a line of recent stories from neo-conservatives and others on Israel or the U.S. bombing Iran (Weekly Standard, 7/26/10; The Washington Post, 8/1/10).
Why anyone would listen to Goldberg or give him space in a magazine to hype up the threat from another Middle Eastern country is beyond comprehension, given Goldberg’s role in printing propaganda about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and Iraq’s ties to Al-Qaeda (New Yorker, 3/25/02; 2/10/03; Slate, 10/3/02). That turned out wonderfully, remember?
Ken Silverstein (Harper’s, 6/30/06) is certainly shaking his head—he chronicled Goldberg’s role in pushing for the Iraq War, writing that:
In urging war on Iraq, Goldberg took highly dubious assertions—for example, that Saddam was an irrational madman in control of vast quantities of WMDs and that Iraq and Al Qaeda were deeply in bed together—and essentially asserted them as fact…
Back in late 2003, at a panel discussion hosted by the New School for Social Research, the topic of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction came up. ‘Did the CIA simply mess up?’ Goldberg asked Paul Wolfowitz. ‘Did I?’ is the question he should have asked.
A lot has already been written about Goldberg’s latest, so here’s a selection of good analysis:
- Iran experts Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett on “the weak case for war with Iran” (Foreign Policy, 8/11/10).
- Jonathan Schwartz (A Tiny Revolution, 8/11/10) argues that Goldberg is “America’s greatest foreign policy propagandist.”
- Glenn Greenwald on why Goldberg’s piece is “exhibit A” on “how propagandists function” (Salon, 8/12/10).
- Eli Clifton on how Goldberg’s article “is part of a campaign to push the Obama administration into authorizing a U.S. military strike rather than having any particularly believable scoops about an impending Israeli attack” (Lobelog, 8/10/10).
- Matt Duss on why an attack on Iran would have a “low likelihood of success” but a “high likelihood of disaster” (Wonk Room, 8/11/10).
- Paul Woodward on how the article is part of a campaign to put the Obama administration in a box to get the U.S. to bomb Iran (War in Context, 8/11/10).
- Tony Karon on Goldberg being willingly used by both U.S. and Israeli officials to “send messages” about both countries’ postures toward Iran (Rootless Cosmopolitan, 8/12/10).
It is so sick that this guy is given such a platform to spread his lies and warmongering. see video: Jeffrey Goldberg has the audacity to con Americans about the 9/11 terrorists’ motives How much more vile can a person be? Note the vulgar disregard for international law. The Atlantic pushes lawlessness and sells wars by playing the same game mainstream media plays, that of acting like international law doesn’t exist.
Also, Goldberg misrepresents what former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani was saying in 2001. He selectively quotes him like this: â┚¬Ã…“The
use of an atomic bomb against Israel would destroy Israel completely while [a nuclear attack] against the Islamic countries would only cause damages,â┚¬Ã‚ Rafsanjani said. And then dishonestly claims that “this line of thinking” “suggests that rational deterrence theory, or the threat of mutual assured destruction, might not apply in the case of Iran.” BUT DETERRENCE WAS THE SUBJECT OF Rafsanjani’s original quote. He was talking deterrence when he said “stalemate” or “impasse.” What he said has been translated as this: “If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in possession, the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate because application of an atomic bomb would not leave any thing in Israel but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world” or this “If one day, a very important day of course, the Islamic world will also be equipped with the weapons available to Israel now, the imperialist strategy will reach an impasse, because the employment of even one atomic bomb inside Israel will wipe it off the face of the earth, but would only do damage to the Islamic world.”
Great artcle from ALEX KANE great journalism
Najo Dein Lebenspartner verlangt, daß der Computer nicht mehr mit ins Bett kommt.
Academic and also entertaining. We have extra your internet log to my â┚¬Ã…“reading compound. â┚¬ Progress me personally up to date!. . . .