Article: Confronting the Propaganda War Against Iran

Make no mistake about it. Israel and the White House are obsessed with attacking Iran. The recent Sunday Times revelation that Tel Aviv is training pilots to nuke Iranian nuclear facilities is a giant wake-up call. Moreover, Neocon shills have been writing opeds in major newspapers arguing for war, Israeli spokesmen have been wandering around the country promoting Iran's destruction, and now we have this new spectacle as reported by the Azerbaijani online news daily, www.Today.Az:

In a stark statement published on Saturday Brigadier General Oded Tira observed, "President Bush lacks the political power to attack Iran. As an American strike in Iran is essential for our existence, we must help him pave the way by lobbying the Democratic Party (which is conducting itself foolishly) and US newspaper editors. We need to do this in order to turn the Iranian issue to a bipartisan one and unrelated to the Iraq failure."
(For more, see http://www.today.az/news/politics/34565.html )

There is something obscenely wrong about a brigadier general of a foreign power (read Israel) thinking he has the right to lobby and "educate" (read bribe, bully and cajole) a major American political party into launching a war with Iran and shedding American blood to placate his paranoid delusions, assuming that he believes his own BS and is not merely being cynical.

This is a perfect example of how brazenly contemptuous the Israeli and Washington Neocons have become of Americans, arrogantly assuming that the United States is simply some vast and rich tub of silly putty to be molded to their hegemonic wills. Should we now rewrite our pledge of allegiance to read, "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of Israel...?"

I think not! It is time to speak truth to yet another corrupt and degenerate power, the extremist government currently perverting Israel. It is also equally important to confront their daily stream of hate and fear propaganda demonizing Iran. Iran is NOT Nazi Germany, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is NOT Hitler, he has no storm troopers ransacking synagogues, is not rounding up Iranian Jews for concentration camps and, although he is definitely mouthy, has been widely misquoted and mistranslated in an effort to make him look like Hitler. As Paul Craig Roberts said in his recent article published in Counterpunch:

Even the London Times is in the grip of Israeli propaganda. In its report of Israel's plan to attack Iran with nuclear weapons, the Times says that Iranian president "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has declared that 'Israel must be wiped off the map.'" It has been shown by a number of credible experts that this quote is a made-up concoction taken completely out of context. Ahmadinejad said no such thing.
(http://counterpunch.org/roberts01082007.html )

Ahmadinejad's and Iran's gravest sin is that they are a threat, not to Israel's survival, but to Israeli military hegemony. Israel is violently playing King of the Hill, and, even though they already possess from between 200 and 600 nuclear weapons, according to various intelligence reports, and the most advanced air force in the Middle East, they want us to defend the hill for them. "Hey, Americans are pretty dumb. Let's get them to fight our subjectively perceived enemies. Why shed our own blood and exhaust our own treasury and resources?"

To this insane end, the White House is clearly embarking on a full-court propaganda assault against Iran. Apparently they are getting ready to cook the intelligence books once again with worst case National Intelligence Estimates depicting Iran, just as they did Iraq, as an imminent threat to the survival of the planet.

This is likely why Bush has nominated Vice Admiral John Michael "Mike" McConnell to become the next Director of National Intelligence. Obviously John Negroponte, who is resigning, would not cook the books. Raw Story has just come out with an investigative report by Larisa Alexandrovna citing anonymous government officials as having little faith in McConnell's ability to resist Dick Cheney's Get Iran agenda. Worse still, he may be part of Cheney's war-team. See: click here

So it is up to us to neutralize all the lies and half-truths coming down the Neocon pipeline. But we need as much real knowledge about Iran as we can get to do so, which brings me to one final point. There are several organizations out there that are regularly debunking the lies and deceits of the Neocon war machine and confronting their frenzied drive to attack Iran. One of these is the international organization CASMII, the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (See http://www.campaigniran.org/casmii/ ). They are an excellent source of information. You can also Google them to get a wider look at their impact. (Note that the CASMII server has been down recently, so keep trying.)

Note that CASMII is not a blanket supporter of the Iranian government, its members including academics and journalists who are critical of the current regime as well as the excessive power of the Ayatollahs. However, they all recognize the sheer folly and barbarity of a military attack on Iran and clearly see through the geopolitical game that is being played. We can benefit from their insights, information and positive activities and they can certainly benefit from our solidarity and support.