New York Times, Spins Wikileaks Cablegate to Favor America

New York Times plays the role of America's, Spin Dr.

Sharmine Narwani

The New York Times' lengthy explanation of why it decided to publish the WikiLeaks Cables leaves out one important consideration. What on earth would the State Department have done if a major US paper had not "interpreted" the information dump for the American masses?
Someone had to take on the "national responsibility" of "crafting" the leaks into supporting US policy initiatives, after all.

The Wikileaks Cables are plump with evidence of US doublespeak, proof that "conspiracy-minded" Middle Easterners are, well, correct on most counts.

Iran Was Right

Here is a startling September 2009 Cable from the US Embassy in London summarizing a high level US-UK meeting that included British Foreign Secretary David Miliband and US Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security Ellen Tauscher. Discussing the upcoming P5+1 talks on Iran's nuclear program, the principals agree to push through an unrealistically short time frame for negotiations, and initiate plans for sanctions almost immediately.

One can hardly fault the Iranians for believing that the US was never serious about negotiations, and the Cable is a reminder of the days before our invasion of Iraq, when Baghdad complained that every time they tried to make concessions on IAEA inspections, "the goalposts were moved."


 Arabs Vs Iran -- The New York Times Refrain

Instead of honing in on significant disclosures that shed some light on the many Middle East policy failures that have marked US decision making in the region for decades, the US press went with "silly" and "sully." Those much-touted Cables reporting the acidic -- and not very diplomatic -- barbs of Arab leaders against Iran do not represent any "new" thinking, and need instead to be examined in context:

Firstly, these rulers have never recovered from their 1979 "bogeyman" fear of a Shia-majority, non-Arab, Islamist regional hegemon on their doorstep -- one that continued to thrive even after the predominantly Sunni, Arab Persian-Gulf nations, Egypt, Jordan and others misguidedly backed Saddam Hussein's hostile 1980 invasion of Iranian territory.

Secondly, many of these rulers are viewed - internally and throughout the Arab world -- as corrupt, often illegitimate and beholden to foreign interests. These heads of state are bitterly resentful that, by comparison, leaders like Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah, Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Syria's Bashar al Assad are viewed vastly more favorably by populations throughout the Mideast and Muslim world.

In fact, when asked in a July 2010 Brookings poll about the prospects of a "nuclear" Iran, 57% of the populations of the same Arab nations whose leaders were caught in this Wikileaks pants-down-moment supported a nuclearized Iran. Why? Because only 10% of the Arab public view Iran as a threat, as opposed to their leaders. Instead, 88% of Arabs views Israel as their main threat, followed closely by 77% who worry about the United States.

To be honest, the "real" story is that this many Arab nations had secret dealings with Israel, which they bash very publicly for domestic and regional consumption. I suppose the theme here is Iran-in-secret, Israel-in-public.

Wikileaks "Beef" -- Some Random, Informative Analysis
 
The Wikileaks Cables do disclose some very telling snippets of information that provide critical information on a changing Middle East. I research shifting centers of influence in the region, and have long pointed out that we are erroneously lumping Syria, Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas together as a exclusive club of four. This grouping -- often referred to as the "Resistance Bloc" -- is perhaps the ground zero of a new and fast-growing "Worldview" emanating from the Mideast, but there are other important participants, namely Qatar, Turkey, maybe Oman, Iraq, and more.

This worldview -- put simply -- reflects a "desire to act in their own self-interest," and its adherents, who come from varying backgrounds, place "opportunism" ahead of "ideology" which has led to new and unexpected political and economic alliances, both regionally and internationally.

A revealing March 2009 Cable from the US Embassy in Tel Aviv shows that we are aware of these subtleties, but obviously choose not to assign importance to the regional shifts in influence and alliances. They simply and inconveniently do not "fit" our own worldview.

In a July 2007 Cable, Israel's Mossad Chief Meir Dagan characterizes Qatar as "a real problem," and accused its Emir Sheikh Hamad of "annoying everyone." The Cable continues: "In his view, Qatar is trying to play all sides -- Syria, Iran, Hamas -- in an effort to achieve security and some degree of independence."
Bingo. There is your New Middle East right there.

Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs Director General for the Middle East Yacov Hadas provides a March 2009 briefing for US political counselors along the same lines, stressing "that he thought Qatar's policies were not a matter of a shift in ideology toward the radical camp, but linked to their rivalry with the Saudis and, by extension, with Egypt. "

Russian Intelligence Calls US Bluff on Iranian Nukes, Wikileaks

US Media ignore the full details of the Wikileaks documents

By Gareth Porter

A diplomatic cable from last February released by Wikileaks provides a detailed account of how Russian specialists on the Iranian ballistic missile program refuted the U.S. suggestion that Iran has missiles that could target European capitals or intends to develop such a capability.

In fact, the Russians challenged the very existence of the mystery missile the U.S. claims Iran acquired from North Korea. But readers of the two leading U.S. newspapers never learned those key facts about the document.

The New York Times and Washington Post reported only that the United States believed Iran had acquired such missiles - supposedly called the BM-25 - from North Korea.

Neither newspaper reported the detailed Russian refutation of the U.S. view on the issue or the lack of hard evidence for the BM-25 from the U.S. side.

The Times, which had obtained the diplomatic cables not from Wikileaks but from The Guardian, according to a Washington Post story Monday, did not publish the text of the cable.

The Times story said the newspaper had made the decision not to publish "at the request of the Obama administration".

That meant that its readers could not compare the highly- distorted account of the document in the Times story against the original document without searching the Wikileaks website.

As a result, a key Wikileaks document which should have resulted in stories calling into question the thrust of the Obama regime's ballistic missile defense policy in Europe based on an alleged Iranian missile threat has instead produced a spate of stories buttressing anti-Iran hysteria.

Iranian President Says Obama Failed to Bring Change

Iranian President not afraid of Obama

Press TV

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has denounced the US administration for failing to implement the policy of change, saying capitalism in the US is nearing its end.

"US President Barack Obama was brought to power to salvage the capitalist system," Ahmadinejad said in an address to directors and producers of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) on Tuesday.

The president said although Obama came to power with the emphasis that wrong US policies should be reformed, he has failed to live up to his promise of change.

President Ahmadinejad further pointed out that Obama will not be able to save a dying US economy.

Elsewhere in his remarks, the Iranian president dismissed the US-backed sanctions against Tehran's nuclear program.

"The West has been trying to use sanctions to deal a blow to the Iranian nation, but Iranianians will turn those moves into opportunities." he said.

He underlined the West is trying to force Iran into a retreat through imposing sanctions.

Western Media Maxim: "Ignorance Is Strength"

This summer, Obama is Big Brother...

By Paul Craig Roberts 

Big Brother Obama, following in the tradition of Big Brothers Bush and Cheney, declared that America and the “entire world” are “appalled and outraged” by Iran’s violent efforts to crush protests organized by US interference in Iran’s election.

The American media’s one-sided and propagandistic coverage of the Iranian election has made an American hero out of the defeated candidate, Mousavi.

This leaves one wondering if anyone anywhere in the US media or US government knows that Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who served as prime minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran from 1981 to 1989, the decade following the overthrow of the American puppet government by Khomeini, has been fingered as the Butcher of Beirut.

He was responsible for the bloody attacks on the US embassy and Marine Corps barracks in Beirut during the Reagan administration that blew to pieces 241 US Marines, sailors, and Army troops.

According to Jeff Stein writing in the June 22, 2009, CQ Politics, Mousavi “personally selected his point man for the Beirut terror campaign, Ali Akbar Mohtashemi-pur,” who presided over the terror cell responsible for the attacks.

The National Security Agency had a tap on the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, according to Admiral James Lyons who was deputy chief of Naval Operations at the time.

Admiral Lyons told Jeff Stein that “the Iranian ambassador received instructions from the foreign minister to have various groups target US personnel in Lebanon, but in particular to carry out a ‘spectacular action’ against the Marines.”

Stein reports that Lyons “also fingered Mousavi for the 1988 truck bombing of the US Navy’s Fleet Center in Naples, Italy.”

Bob Baer, a CIA Middle East field officer at the time, says that Mousavi “dealt directly with Imad Mughniyah,” the person responsible for both attacks.

All of these facts have gone into the Memory Hole. The US media and government have turned Musavi, the bloody butcher of US servicemen, into the would-be liberator of Iran from theocracy.

Only in America and in George Orwell’s fictional population in his predictive book, 1984, can we find such citizen ignorance.

Every day in America, a.k.a. Oceania, we see the growing power of Big Brother’s three slogans: WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

From ignorance comes the strength to create a hero out of America’s terrorist enemy, Mousavi.

From freedom comes the protection provided by being constantly spied upon, no longer endangered by privacy which might keep Big Brother from discovering a terrorist plot.

This freedom from terrorists morphs into the slavery of being held in indefinite detention without evidence or charges. Habeas corpus has become the opposite of freedom as it prevents our protection from terrorists.

On June 23, Big Brother Obama, following in the tradition of Big Brothers Bush and Cheney, declared that Oceania and the “entire world” are “appalled and outraged” by Iran’s violent efforts to crush protests organized by Oceania’s interference in Iran’s election.

Meanwhile, Oceania continued its wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, crushing people right and left while gearing up to bring peace to Iran. No one is outraged at the violence. War is Peace.

Those who don’t fight wars can’t bring peace. Peace results when Big Brother’s hegemony extends over those regions that do not understand that War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength.


The face of Big Brother seemed to persist for several seconds on the screen, as though the impact that it had made on everyone’s eyeballs were too vivid to wear off immediately. The little sandy-haired woman had flung herself forward over the back of the chair in front of her. With a tremulous murmur that sounded like ‘My Savior!’ she extended her arms toward the screen.

At this moment the entire group of people broke into a deep, slow, rhythmical chant of ‘Big Brother, Big Brother, Big Brother!’ over and over again, very slowly, with a long pause between the first ‘B’ and the second.

A heavy, murmurous sound, somehow curiously savage, in the background of which one seemed to hear the stamp of naked feet and the throbbing of tom-toms. For perhaps as much as thirty seconds they kept it up.

It was a refrain that was often heard in moments of overwhelming emotion. Partly it was a sort of hymn to the wisdom and Majesty of Big Brother, but still more it was an act of self-hypnosis, a deliberate drowning of consciousness by means of rhythmic noise. [1984]

The drowning of consciousness by means of rhythmic noise sums up well enough the performance of Oceania’s Ministry of Truth.How long do Americans have before doubting Big Brother and the Ministry of Truth is a Thoughtcrime?

“Whether he wrote ‘Down With Big Brother,’ or whether he refrained from writing it, made no difference. The Thought Police would get him just the same. He had committed the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it.”

The neoconservatives have set up in America Thoughtcrime watch committees over professors. Academics who depart from or challenge the neocon line are reported and are subjected to vilification campaigns.

Sami Al-Arian, a computer science professor at a Florida University, was destroyed by the US Department of Justice [sic] because he gave the Palestinian side of the story.

The neocon academic spy operation has been given a boost by Dennis C. Blair, director of National Intelligence. Writing in CounterPunch (June 23), David Price reports that Blair has announced plans for a program to train intelligence officers, whose identities and activities would not be known to professors or administrators, to conduct covert missions in university classrooms.

This is as Orwellian is it comes. Thinking independently is rapidly becoming a serious Thoughtcrime. Winston Smith was the only one among Big Brother’s subjects capable of independent thought. His ability to think independently was discovered and terminated.

Already we see that the US media is incapable of independent thought. Independent thought in the universities, where careers are dependent on government grants, is already half dead. Independent thought does not exist in think tanks, which serve the interests of donors. In America independent thought is rapidly becoming an anti-American act, which is itself morphing into a terrorist act.

Newspeak handles effortlessly the morphing and transforming of meaning. New generations born into the new system know no difference and, thus, do not need to be silenced. Once the older generations are brought to heel, truth is whatever Big Brother says.

Analyzing The Situation With Iran

 Iran, a threat?

By Noam Chomsky

 

The Iranian threat is not military aggression but that doesn't mean it might be tolerable to Washington. Iranian deterrent capacity is considered an illegitimate exercise of sovereignty that interferes with U.S. global designs. Specifically, it threatens U.S. control of Middle East energy resources.

The dire threat of Iran is widely recognized to be the most serious foreign policy crisis facing the Obama administration.

General Petraeus informed the Senate Committee on Armed Services in March 2010 that "the Iranian regime is the primary state-level threat to stability" in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility, the Middle East and Central Asia, the primary region of U.S. global concerns.

The term "stability" here has its usual technical meaning: firmly under U.S. control. In June 2010 Congress strengthened the sanctions against Iran, with even more severe penalties against foreign companies.

The Obama administration has been rapidly expanding U.S. offensive capacity in the African island of Diego Garcia, claimed by Britain, which had expelled the population so that the U.S. could build the massive base it uses for attacks in the Central Command area.

The Navy reports sending a submarine tender to the island to service nuclear-powered guided-missile submarines with Tomahawk missiles, which can carry nuclear warheads. Each submarine is reported to have the striking power of a typical carrier battle group.

According to a U.S. Navy cargo manifest obtained by the Sunday Herald (Glasgow), the substantial military equipment Obama has dispatched includes 387 "bunker busters" used for blasting hardened underground structures.

Planning for these "massive ordnance penetrators," the most powerful bombs in the arsenal short of nuclear weapons, was initiated in the Bush administration, but languished.

On taking office, Obama immediately accelerated the plans and they are to be deployed several years ahead of schedule, aiming specifically at Iran.

"They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran," according to Dan Plesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London.

"US bombers and long range missiles are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours," he said. "The firepower of US forces has quadrupled since 2003," accelerating under Obama.

The Arab press reports that an American fleet (with an Israeli vessel) passed through the Suez Canal on the way to the Persian Gulf, where its task is "to implement the sanctions against Iran and supervise the ships going to and from Iran."

British and Israeli media report that Saudi Arabia is providing a corridor for Israeli bombing of Iran (denied by Saudi Arabia).

On his return from Afghanistan to reassure NATO allies that the U.S. will stay the course Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen visited Israel to meet IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi and senior military staff.

He also had meetings with intelligence and planning units, continuing the annual strategic dialogue between Israel and the U.S.

The meetings focused "on the preparation by both Israel and the U.S. for the possibility of a nuclear capable Iran," according to Haaretz, which reports further that Mullen emphasized that, "I always try to see challenges from Israeli perspective." Mullen and Ashkenazi are in regular contact on a secure line.

The increasing threats of military action against Iran are, of course, in violation of the UN Charter and in specific violation of Security Council resolution 1887 of September 2009 which reaffirmed the call to all states to resolve disputes related to nuclear issues peacefully, in accordance with the Charter, which bans the use or threat of force.

Some analysts, who seem to be taken seriously, describe the Iranian threat in apocalyptic terms. Amitai Etzioni warns that, "The U.S. will have to confront Iran or give up the Middle East," no less.

If Iran's nuclear program proceeds, he asserts, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and other states will "move toward" the new Iranian "superpower."

To rephrase in less fevered rhetoric, a regional alliance might take shape independent of the U.S. In the U.S. army journal Military Review, Etzioni urges a U.S. attack that targets not only Iran's nuclear facilities, but also its non-nuclear military assets, including infrastructure—meaning, the civilian society.

This kind of military action is akin to sanctions—causing 'pain' in order to change behaviour, albeit by much more powerful means."

What is the Threat, Exactly?


Such inflammatory pronouncements aside, what exactly is the Iranian threat? The military and intelligence assessments are concerned with the threat Iran poses to the region and the world.

The reports make it clear that the Iranian threat is not military. Iran's military spending is "relatively low compared to the rest of the region," and minuscule as compared to the U.S. Iranian military doctrine is strictly "defensive - designed to slow an invasion and force a diplomatic solution to hostilities."

Iran has only "a limited capability to project force beyond its borders." With regard to the nuclear option, "Iran's nuclear program and its willingness to keep open the possibility of developing nuclear weapons is a central part of its deterrent strategy."

Though the Iranian threat is not military aggression, that does not mean that it might be tolerable to Washington. Iranian deterrent capacity is considered an illegitimate exercise of sovereignty that interferes with U.S. global designs.

Specifically, it threatens U.S. control of Middle East energy resources, a high priority of planners since World War II. As one influential figure advised, expressing a common understanding, control of these resources yields "substantial control of the world".

But Iran's threat goes beyond deterrence. It is also seeking to expand its influence.

Iran's "current five-year plan seeks to expand bilateral, regional, and international relations, strengthen Iran's ties with friendly states, and enhance its defense and deterrent capabilities.

Commensurate with that plan, Iran is seeking to increase its stature by countering U.S. influence and expanding ties with regional actors while advocating Islamic solidarity."

In short, Iran is seeking to "destabilize" the region, in the technical sense of the term used by General Petraeus. U.S. invasion and military occupation of Iran's neighbors is "stabilization."

Iran's efforts to extend its influence in neighboring countries is "destabilization," hence plainly illegitimate. It should be noted that such revealing usage is routine.

Thus, the prominent foreign policy analyst James Chace, former editor of the main establishment journal Foreign Affairs, was properly using the term "stability" in its technical sense when he explained that in order to achieve "stability" in Chile it was necessary to "destabilize" the country (by overthrowing the elected Allende government and installing the Pinochet dictatorship).

Beyond these crimes, Iran is also carrying out and supporting terrorism, the reports continue.

Its Revolutionary Guards "are behind some of the deadliest terrorist attacks of the past three decades,"including attacks on U.S. military facilities in the region and "many of the insurgent attacks on Coalition and Iraqi Security Forces in Iraq since 2003."

Furthermore, Iran backs Hezbollah and Hamas, the major political forces in Lebanon and in Palestine—if elections matter.

The Hezbollah-based coalition handily won the popular vote in Lebanon's latest (2009) election.

Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian election, compelling the U.S. and Israel to institute the harsh and brutal siege of Gaza to punish the miscreants for voting the wrong way in a free election.

These have been the only relatively free elections in the Arab world. It is normal for elite opinion to fear the threat of democracy and to act to deter it, but this is a rather striking case.

Particularly, alongside of strong U.S. support for the regional dictatorships, emphasized by Obama with his strong praise for the brutal Egyptian dictator Mubarak on the way to his famous address to the Muslim world in Cairo.

War With Iran, Imminent?

"...the two party system agrees to the necessity of more war."

 By Shamus Cooke

When the UN refused to agree to the severe sanctions the US wanted, Obama responded with typical Bush flair and went solo. The new U.S. sanctions against Iran are an unmistakable act of war. If enforced, Iran’s economy will be potentially destroyed.

The New York Times outlines the central parts of the sanctions:

“The law signed by Obama imposes penalties on foreign entities that sell refined petroleum to Iran or assist Iran with its domestic refining capacity. It also requires that American and foreign businesses that seek contracts with the United States government certify that they do not engage in prohibited business with Iran.”

Iran must import a large part of its refined oil from foreign corporations and nations, since it does not have the technology needed to refine all the fuel that it pumps from its soil. By cutting this refined oil off, the U.S. will be causing massive, irreparable damage to the Iranian economy — equaling an act of war.

In fact, war against Japan in WWII was sparked by very similar circumstances. Franklin Delano Roosevelt spearheaded a series of sanctions against Japan, which included the Export Control Act, giving the President the power to prohibit the export of a variety of materials to Japan, including oil.

This gave Roosevelt the legal stance he needed to implement an oil embargo, an obvious act of war. Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor simply brought the war out of the economic realm into the military sphere.

Iran is facing the exact same situation. Whereas the Obama Administration calmly portrays economic sanctions as “peaceful” solutions to political problems, they are anything but. The strategy here is to economically attack Iran until it responds militarily, giving the U.S. a fake moral high ground to “defend” itself, since the other side supposedly attacked first.

But the U.S. is provoking militarily too. According to the New York Times: “The Obama administration is accelerating the deployment of new defenses against possible Iranian missile attacks in the Persian Gulf, placing special ships [war ships] off the Iranian coast and antimissile systems in at least four [surrounding] Arab countries, according to administration and military officials.”

The same article mentions that U.S. General Petraeus admitted that, “… the United States was now keeping Aegis cruisers on patrol in the Persian Gulf [Iran’s border] at all times.

Those cruisers are equipped with advanced radar and antimissile systems designed to intercept medium-range missiles.” Iran, as well as the whole world, knows full well that “antimissile systems” are perfectly capable of going on the offensive — their real purpose.

Iran is completely surrounded by countries occupied by the U.S. military, whether it be the mass occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the U.S. puppet states that house U.S. military bases in Arab nations (not to mention Zionist Israel, a U.S. cohort in its war aims against Iran).

Contrary to the statements of President Obama, Iran is already well contained militarily.

It remains to be seen how closely U.S. allies will follow the new oil sanctions; they will be under tremendous pressure to do so. The European Union has already signaled that it will follow Obama’s lead.

Ultimately, the march to war begun by Bush is picking up momentum under Obama. Congressional Democrats and Republicans gave the President their overwhelming support in passing these sanctions, proving that the two party system agrees to the necessity of more war.

Uniting the U.S. anti-war movement is crucial if current and future wars are to be stopped. A step in this direction will take place at the National Peace Conference, in Albany, New York, July 23-25.

National Peace Conference