There ought to be a dictionary entry for Judith Miller — as in 1.) “journalist” of dubious reputation, 2.) front-page fiction writer; 3.) war fodder. Related google “search terms” could be: aluminum tubes, cakewalk, “un-named sources,” al-Qaeda linked, Chalabi, and “Michael R. Gordon.” Unkind thesaurus entries might be: shill, Benador, troll, and embed.
Yet never mind the recent timid documentaries on how the war to invade Iraq was “sold” to the American public, there’s been no shortage of Judith Miller clones in the media, doing their part to “sell a war” on Iran.
The latest sighting of Judy Miller wannabees appears, shockingly, in today’s Guardian – a paper alleged to be far to “the left” of the US mainstream media. The recent Guardian story hyping Iran’s alleged role in “taking over” Basra was bad enough. (as flagged here on the jwn sidebar) Simply being Shia doesn’t mean taking orders from Iran.
Ask Ayatollah Khomeini. When Iran pursued withdrawing invaders back into Iraq in 1982, Khomeini implored Iraqi Shia to rise up and unite with their would-be liberators. Didn’t happen then; not happening now..
In today’s Guardian, chaos theory reigns in a breathless front-page article entitled, Iran’s secret plan for summer offensive to force US out of Iraq.”
Written by no less than one of the Guardian editors, Simon Tisdall, this isn’t another shallow and dubious story of Iranian components alleged to be in roadside mines (e.g., “IED’s”) or about Iran supporting this or that Shia militia in Iraq.
Nope, it’s Miller Time.
Let’s pin the al-Qaeda tail on the next donkey – the Iranians.
“Iran is secretly forging ties with al-Qaida elements and Sunni Arab militias in Iraq in preparation for a summer showdown with coalition forces intended to tip a wavering US Congress into voting for full military withdrawal, US officials say.”
Say again? Never mind all the other reasons Congress — even the Bush Administration – is already likely to pull the plug on US forces in Iraq come September, it’ll be the rascally Iranians who will be “responsible.”
Ah, but what are the cited sources? By name, none. Check. Very Miller-esque.
Instead, we have un-named US officials in Washington and Baghdad. Ok. I’ll suggest a few names: Elliot Abrams (in Washington) and Dan Caldwell — the US military spokesman who lately seems obsessed with changing the subject from chaos in Iraq to Iranian sources.
And the charges?
“Iran is fighting a proxy war in Iraq and it’s a very dangerous course for them to be following. They are already committing daily acts of war against US and British forces… a lot of high-profile attacks meant to undermine US will and British will…. The attacks are directed by the Revolutionary Guard who are connected right to the top [of the Iranian government.”
Ah yes, the omnipresent “Qods force,” alleged to be responsible for anything, anywhere.
“The official said US commanders were bracing for a nationwide, Iranian-orchestrated summer offensive, linking al-Qaida and Sunni insurgents to Tehran’s Shia militia allies.”
Ah yes, the ole’ “enemy of my enemy must be my friend.” Or is it, the ally of my enemy must also be my enemy? But what if the supposed ally of my enemy really is the enemy of my enemy? Or must it be, all my enemies must be allies with each other? What would Nixon think of that one? Never mind.
In the Al-Qaeda-Iran case, the alleged linkage is utter nonsense. Dating to long before 9/11, al-Qaeda has been on an anti-Shia, and anti-Iran crusade – and Iran knows it. The crusade hasn’t stopped either.
But the ghost of Judith Miller counsels otherwise:
“Certainly it [the violence in Iraq] is going to pick up from their side. There is significant latent capability in Iraq, especially Iranian-sponsored capability. They can turn it up whenever they want.”
No doubt. And let’s not mention that recent GAO report, documenting that the single greatest source of munitions being used against Americans has been those unguarded Iraqi weapons depots….
“But the whole Iran- al-Qaida linkup is very sinister.”
Yes, and so was “The Joker” on Batman. The likely more “sinister” plot here may be the origins of this story.
Tisdall might wish to inquire with his colleague Jason Burke, who, three weeks ago in the Sunday Observer, broke the story that Iran may well have provided the key tip that led to the recently announced capture of Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi, the Kurdish born, senior al-Qaeda figure. Strange behavior for an al-Qaeda “ally.”
And since we brought up al-Qaeda, let’s pull a Michael R. Gordon and blame Iran for the troubles in Afghanistan too:
“In a parallel development, they say they also have proof that Iran has reversed its previous policy in Afghanistan and is now supporting and supplying the Taliban’s campaign against US, British and other Nato forces….”
Tisdall might want to check with the Guardian’s own reporter in Afghanistan, Declan Walsh. Walsh closed out his report last month on the allegations, with a quote from a “western official” who deemed the matter as, “all a war of words. It has very little basis in reality.”
But Tisdall’s un-named “officials” are true-believers from a different reservation:
“We have plenty of evidence from a variety of sources. There’s no argument about that. That’s just a fact,” the senior official in Baghdad said.
Yes, it’s such a fact that these “sources” don’t wish to give their names or appear on camera. They wouldn’t want to give a clip for some Bill Moyers documentary four years from now. Even a rabid neocon would not make such an absurd claim of an Iran and al-Qaeda alliance. Or would they?
Among the many “facts” that Simon Tisdall doesn’t wish to confuse his readers with is the latest Al-Qaeda tape, which features al-Zawahiri condemning to hell both US President Bush and Iranian President Ahmadinejad. It would seem then that this might yet be something else for George and Mahmoud to have their designated representatives talk about next week.
Simon Tisdall surely knew what he was doing in writing this piece of fiction. I’m with Will Bunch of New York Daily News who today brands Tisdall’s story as “the biggest load of crap — and that’s not a phrase I would use loosely — I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“This is a stunning allegation — so stunning because it really makes no sense. Iran’s government does have close ties with some of Iraq’s Shiite leaders that we also seem to be propping up these days, but it is the bitter enemy of the Sunni forces that these unnamed Bush spinmeisters now claim they are also supporting. If such a bizarre reversal had taken place, and I were to write a story about it, I would be sure to talk to outside experts on the region and to non-U.S. government sources — and quote them by name — to prove such an unlikely premise was in fact true.”
Ironically, it was no less than the prolific Simon Tisdall who back on January 12th wrote that the Bush Administration’s “backup plan,” if the surge appeared to be failing, would be to “blame Iran.”
“If George Bush’s remodelled strategy for halting the Iraq disaster fails to work, it is becoming clear where the US administration will point the finger of blame: Tehran.”
Tisdall went on to cite a Bush speech, which he presumed to mark “a key operational shift” against Iran, “the opening of a new, far more aggressive phase… an unmistakable warning that US forces may in the future conduct hot pursuit operations into Iran against terrorist suspects or their backers.”
Perhaps that was also Tisdall’s preferred strategy – to blame Iran for a looming Iraq failure. With the US on the brink of serious talks with Iran, Tisdall fronts for those who wish to get US policy towards Iran back on track – towards another war.
Dr. Harrop,
Do you really think that it might be Señorito Eliot Abrams and/or General Caldwell — two outstanding public nuisances, assuredly — who cause such stuff to printed? I’m by no means sure your hypothesis is wrong, but I incline to suppose that such leaks as these are located much further down the Great Chain of Bushing.
Judith Miller wannabes see that there is a market for their shoddy sort of product, and, just as St. Adam Smith foresaw them doing, they step forward to supply it. A “demand-side phenomenon,” I should guess that we are dealing with here, myself. Whereas the tonier Eliot/Caldwell class of Bushies, should they ever sink so low as caring whether or not America likes what they and their Party and their Party’s Leader are up to, would be rather supply-side aggression salesmen, trying to create new demands rather supply existing ones. For a time after the Pentagon/WTC attacks, the line I have in mind was difficult to draw. A great many of US the People originally bought into the militant GOP’s quagmire product when it was first released in late March of 2003 because there remained a popular demand, after eighteen calendar months, and even after the happiness of a whole nation (I refer to the brave new Afghanistan) had been unilaterally and preëmptively created, for yet more venting of anger and revenge and wounded self-esteemism, of “THEY damn well can’t do THAT to US!” in general. “We” didn’t quite exactly get what “we” then demanded, obviously, but it seems clear enough that their Party Feiths and Perles and Wolfowitzen and Timmermans and all suchlike invasion-lovin’ Party critters were not “hidden persuaders” who seduced us somehow into wanting what we should never have dreamed for an instant of desiring unseduced.
That was then. This, however, is now.
At the moment I believe one may safely claim that outside certain tiny, though noisy, jihád careerist circles, nobody in the USA thinks that an attack on Iran would be only the third installment of US getting back at THEM for 11 September 2001. Deplorably many Americans would go along with such a fresh aggression if a certain Yalie Boy and a certain “conservative” Party should decide to perpetrate it, yet scarcely one armchair rifle-toter in a thousand would vicariously march against Qom and Tehran in exactly the same spirit tomorrow (23 May 2007) that she vicariously marched against Saddam’s Baghdad and Takrít fifty months ago.
That is to say, “It’s a whole new ball game.”
Top-flight GOP geniuses, the A. Eliot or D. Caldwell class of Party-base invasionites, recognize as much, or so it seems to me. If such ideocrazed gentry were seriously attempting to entice their poor long-suffering Uncle Sam into fresh pastures of neo-adventurism, they would not do it like this, they would certainly not say
“Iran is secretly forging ties with al-Qaida elements and Sunni Arab militias in Iraq in preparation for a summer showdown with coalition forces intended to tip a wavering US Congress into voting for full military withdrawal, US officials say.”
“Been there, done that!,” We the People would hoot them down with instantly, “That’s just how you lied to us about Saddám! Do you take us for fools, O Yale-based Kennebunkport-Crawfordites, that you should expect to get away with this same shabby shtik of yours TWICE IN A ROW?”
(( I write “lied to us” as being what the vulgar instinctively might hoot. The accusation is unsustainable, but Princess Posterity and her historians may find it rather tricky to work out and explain exactly how and why LBJ and his entourage never actually LIED to America about their “bipartisan” Tonkin Gulf, or how and why some George XLIII Bush and its Party and its Dynasty never quite exactly lied about the Big Management handling of neo-Iraq either. Separating true caviar from mere fish eggs can be rather a tricky business. ))
You’re right. The Guardian went down the tubes a year or two ago. How the deed was done is what I would like to know.
Gary Kamiya of Salon Magazine (online edition) has a good piece out now explaining why America won’t get rid of the clearly culpable Crawfordite cretin because to do so would necessitate revisiting, recognizing, and repudiating America’s own atavistic adoption of Henry Kissinger’s “we have to humiliate them” and Thomas Friedman’s “we had to hit somebody” (meaning, in both cases, Muslims generally) lines of vengeful “reasoning” about why we stupidly did what no sane and civilized nation would ever have done. Soul searching requires that one first have a soul: an undemonstrated proposition as still regards a majority population in the war-agitating United States of America today. Kamiya basically says that Americans even now knowing full well what lies their own government concocted in plain sight with no other aim than to deceive and manipulate them — even now cannot bring themselves to expunge the execrable egomaniacs who betrayed them to our counry’s humiliation and dishonor because to do so would require smelling the shit in their own collective bloodstream.
Warfare Welfare and Makework Militarism have so compromised and ruined America that I have to agree with Chalmers Johnson: namely, that things have gone too far down hill to reasonably expect the empire not to crumble from the endemic and institutionalized rot within. With all due apologies to William J. Lederer and Charles Beaudelaire, even their apt phrases “Nation of Sheep” and “Fate Driven Herd,” respectively, fail to do sullen, somnolent, solipsistic America the descriptive justice it deserves. Color that failed and flailing experiment in democracy finished almost before it had a chance to begin.
This is a part of the plan do destabilize Iran. More at :
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/05/bush_authorizes.html
Simply being Shia doesn’t mean taking orders from Iran.
Most Iraqis in the south are not Iranian lovers, and they fights Iran for 8 years when Iraqi army was 60-70% are from south cities and towns.
Those who came from Iran after 2003, a proved to be they do not love Iraq and they are showing more Iranians behaviours.
I don’t know if you knew Arabic but I advice you to read Iraqi newspapers and some comments especially from southern Iraq you will realized that.
But wait now days Iranians influence so deep and strong Iraqis start shut up as they did during Saddam regime for survive from the killing by Iraq proxy/Iranian militia.
There were some stories coming from Iraq, there are many Iranians in the Iraqi parliament specifically one member I don’t have his name but reported that he is in Tehran and never been in any meeting in parliament!
Ask Ayatollah Khomeini. When Iran pursued withdrawing invaders back into Iraq in 1982, Khomeini implored Iraqi Shia to rise up and unite with their would-be liberators. Didn’t happen then; not happening now..
This is falls arguments simply that no happened for these reason:
1- Iraq through out his borders the Iranians proxy and sent them to Iran during late 70s, and then early 80’s.
2- Saddam regime was so determent that any Iraqi sell himself to any outsider (Iran or any country) will get death penalty according to the law, so if there were some still inside Iraq those are so worry to uncover themselves and do silly thing and they new that the death penalty waiting for them.
So that was the major factor that Khomeini call faced deaf ears inside Iraq.
Further more some Iraqi solders and some salvation solders that sent to war zone early 80’s they make their desire and surrendered to Iranians during the war, but what they saw from Iranians from torturing, brutally treated (There are many of them you may can speak and ask Iraqi around some near you in US just ask who was in Iran as POW they will tell you heroic stories, I got friends also my Brother in law he caught by Iranian’s force in 1981 he came back in 2003 he killed in 2004, BTW Iraqi POW was targeted in Iraq after 2003!!)
That proved to them and the rest of Iraqis that Khomeini and his rhetoric regime and his fake Islam is just falls, he have personal hatred toward Iraq and other Arab countries, its very clear from early days when he call to export his revolution to neighbouring courtiers and he call for Regime Change in Iraq!!
“not happening now” you need to think twice now before you say this…
The Guardian went down the tubes a year or two ago.
Three jolly cheers for the Mirror!
Michael Murray, your post didn’t have any substance. All you did was cop an attitude about U.S. residents and make a big deal of yourself through gratuitously overused alliteration.
Say Salah, I surely didn’t mean to cause a stir over this one, nor was this my focus….. I didn’t even begin to go into all the important and complex reasons for ambiguity between Iraq’s Arab-Shia communities and Iran, and many of your points I recognize. I think too we’d be in agreement that for years, if not now, the standard group-think in DC was to assume that Iraq’s Shia would be beholden to Qom. Ironically, with the removal of Saddam, there remains, the potential for the reverse equation to emerge – of Iranian Shia finding sources of “emulation” in Najaf…. (even if many of them happen to once hail from Iran)
Scholars also have “fun” contemplating why Saddam’s call for “Arab” Iranians of Khuzistan also fell on deaf ears when he first invaded Iran…. (a debate those enamored with the idea of carving up Iran along ethnic lines should review carefully)
For Western readers curious about the Iran-Iraq war issues here, I’d suggest a still useful 1987 book on Iran & Iraq at War, by Shahram Chubin & Charles Tripp.
So Inkan Michael Murray is not only anti-american for criticizing the murderous bipartisan monolith of US foreign policy, but also must be wrong because he has a writing style heavy on alliteration. Your contrarian conclusion that his arguments and citations have no substance, has no logical substance of its own.
The new goons at the Guardian have even mucked about with Steve Bell’s cartoons. There’s no more direct “Steve Bell” link from the “Guardian Unlimited” front page (now got up to look more like the Telegraph).
If you hack through to the cartoon section, and click on the link for Steve’s 23.05.2007 cartoon on Lebanon, it opens an article, not the cartoon. You can’t get the cartoon.
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