This afternoon, CNN.com: U.S. ties Iranian leader to bombs killing U.S. troops. Where’s the evidence?:*The U.S. military Sunday presented evidence it says shows an elite Iranian force under the command of Iran’s supreme leader is behind bombings that have killed at least 170 U.S. troops in Iraq.
U.S. officials have made general statements in the past year about Iranian involvement in Iraq, but haven’t provided many details.
The charges came at a Baghdad briefing by a senior defense official, a senior defense analyst and an explosives expert, all of whom asked to remain unnamed.*
This reminds me of a very disturbing but astute exchange from David Mamet’s underappreciated allegorical politico-thriller Spartan:Robert Scott: The girl on the boat, how do you fake the DNA? Secret Service Agent: Laura Newton’s alive. Robert Scott: I don’t know if Laura Newton’s alive. I know they lied. How do you fake the DNA? Secret Service Agent:You don’t fake the DNA. You issue a press release.
All we need are some Albanian terrorists coming across the Canadian border carrying suitcaes nukes and we can promise not to deploy the B-3 bomber. “There is no B-3 bomber.” “Perfect, deny it even exists.”
Is there some reason the so-called journalists aren’t asking any real penetrating questions about this whole deal?
The Bush administration is screwed now. The only way they’re going to sell this is if they can get some credible person within the adminstration to stake his personal integrity on this by saying he’s reviewed all the evidence and supports the conclusions. And they used up Colin Powell on the last war. Damn, who’d have ever figured they’d needed two credible people?
I’m certain that Iran is pushing things along - let’s be realistic. The sooner they US is out the sooner they can get a friendly Shia Theocracy next door.
Does anyone doubt this?
However, I don’t trust the bunch of bumblefucks currently infesting Washington to actually come up with any credible evidence. Even if there is some - it’ll be kind of like the OJ Trial - they couldn’t even successfully frame a guilty man.
I’m having a hard time envisioning any kind of evidence the Bush administration could provide at this point that their opponents would believe. THey could find IED’s with ‘made in Iran’ stamped on the side, and they’d just be accused of manufacturing fakes. They could find a dozen people willing to come forward and say they were ordered by Iran to attack Iraqis, and they would be accused of being plants.
And at this point, it’s hard to blame people. One reason manufacturing intelligence is so dangerous to national security ini the first place is that once you’re caught doing it, it becomes incredibly difficult to get anyone to believe anything you have to say, if if this time it happens to be correct.
The thing that irks me most is that the cable TV news account I saw (CNN Headline News) merely repeated the Pentagon press release with no hint of an skepticism at all. That’s exactly how they performed in the runup to the Iraq adventure.
It goes without saying that the Pentagon has zero credibility with this, but I don’t even care if it IS true. The solution remains the same. Get the hell out of Iraq.
There is that, but the thing that disturbs me the most is that for this bit of news the media is relying on unnamed sources.
Now, if it does turn out that Iran is involved, can anyone ignore that this is an admission that the US and England can not control the borders at all?
Precisely. The media (decidedly non-liberal, even in the most liber…er, generous sense of the word) have essentially become a propaganda distribution arm for the government. Why have a state-owned media apparatus when the private “Fourth Estate” will do your bidding for you; all you have to do is issue a press release and sit back. Heck, at least Fox News is blatant about its bias; CNN and the like come off as simply being apathetic, as if “we know we’re not going to get the real story, anyway, and we’re too tired to dig for it.”
Sidney Blumenthal began reporting over a year ago, on Salon.com, that Bush’s administation already had definite plans to attack (and possibly invade) Iran, claiming he had information from insiders in the administration. For a while it seemed like there was little movement toward that end, and I hoped he had gotten it wrong. It sure as hell looks like it’s taking shape after all, though.
For me, Bush lost his credibility to declare water wet a long time ago. I can’t express how fucking angry I am at the likelihood of an expanded war, that there’s very little we can do to stop it, and that it will be near impossible to know what’s actually going on, as the bullshit machine cranks into high gear and the press dutifully spreads it around.
I really wish it were hyperbole, but I honestly feel that the United States has begun a decline (morally, ethically, and militarily, if not yet economically) from which it will not recover, at least in my lifetime. I feel physically sick.
Sam, perhaps I’m being unfair, but I’m having difficulty thinking of any evidence that the Bush administration would provide that you would not believe.
Juan Cole is dead on: the insurgency is most Sunni-driven, and to assert the the Shiite Iranians are providing sophisticated weaponry to the to kill US soldiers supporting a Shiite majority government is laughable.
I’m trying to picture **Sam ** singing “Won’t Get Fooled Again”, but somehow it isn’t working.
True or not, this story wouldn’t be a surprise, or all that significant either. Once Bush’s war became sectarian, Iran supporting its neighbor coreligionists was inevitable, and maybe was even before that point. But that won’t stop the warhawks from trying to get more people killed uselessly, with no goal and no strategy and no exit plan and not even any nonmilitary options considered, and it won’t stop the board’s (few remaining, granted) warhawks from demanding it, either.
This is a good point and a question I’d like to see answered myself. Why would a Shi’ite Iran want to take sides with a Sunni insurgency against a Shia government? It does not make sense.
Maybe you shouldn’t get your news in the Reader’s Digest condensed version.
I just saw NBC’s coverage of this very issue, and they expressed quite a bit of skepticism, even interviewing Kerry and one other Democratic Senator echoing that skepticism.
If you had read the entry in Cole’s blog, you would have seen that he claims that US casualties taken in fighting with Shiites are less than the total casualties Iran is being claimed to have been involved with. Hence, if the we are to take the “intelligence” seriously it requires us to believe that Iran has been arming the Sunnis, which is what Cole is calling laughable. I think Cole is misinterpreting what the claim concerning Iran actually is, but he still does have a point.
