Axis of Weasel

Azerbic launches a new category today: Tales from the Crypt. Here's where I remind people -- and media types who may have forgotten -- of relevant stories from the past. To begin, a 2003 Guardian report on U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's involvement with nuclear reactor components being sold to ... drum roll please! ... North Korea.

Mr Rumsfeld was a non-executive director of ABB, a European engineering giant based in Zurich, when it won a $200m (£125m) contract to provide the design and key components for the reactors. The current defence secretary sat on the board from 1990 to 2001, earning $190,000 a year. He left to join the Bush administration.

The reactor deal was part of President Bill Clinton's policy of persuading the North Korean regime to positively engage with the west.

The sale of the nuclear technology was a high-profile contract. ABB's then chief executive, Goran Lindahl, visited North Korea in November 1999 to announce ABB's "wide-ranging, long-term cooperation agreement" with the communist government.

The company also opened an office in the country's capital, Pyongyang, and the deal was signed a year later in 2000. Despite this, Mr Rumsfeld's office said that the de fence secretary did not "recall it being brought before the board at any time".

In a statement to the American magazine Newsweek, his spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said that there "was no vote on this". A spokesman for ABB told the Guardian yesterday that "board members were informed about the project which would deliver systems and equipment for light water reactors".

And how is this relevant?

You need to ask?

Which leads me to this bit of even ancienter history.

Donald Rumsfeld chaired the space commission, which released its report on January 11, 2001. Rumsfeld’s staff director was Stephen Cambone, who became the first-ever undersecretary of defense for intelligence in March 2003. Two years previously Rumsfeld had chaired another congressionally mandated commission to assess rogue nation capacity to threaten the U.S. homeland with ballistic missiles. (2) The space commission is often referred to as the second Rumsfeld commission. Like the first commission, the more recent commission echoed the alarmism about national security threats propagated by right-wing groups such as the Center for Security Policy.

The commission concluded that it is “possible to project power through and from space in response to events anywhere in the world.…Having this capability would give the U.S. a much stronger deterrent and, in a conflict, an extraordinary military advantage.” The Rumsfeld space commission argued in Orwellian style that because the United States is without peer among “space-faring” nations, the country is all the more vulnerable to “state and non-state actors hostile to the United States and its interests.” In other words, U.S. enemies would seek to destroy the U.S. economy together with its ability to fight high-tech wars by attacking global-positioning satellites and other “space assets,” which would effectively result in a “Space Pearl Harbor.” (3)

The list of members of the Rumsfeld space commission reads like a Who’s Who of space weapons enthusiasts, military hard-liners, and military-industrial complex insiders.

Amazing what a couple of minutes of Googling can produce in the connect-the-dots department.

Feel free to send your Tales from the Crypt anytime to az@thestar.ca. All submissions I use will win minor recognition right here on this blog seen every day by, um, thousands.

Oh say can you see Osama yet?

From my mailbox today, in regard to the welcome demise of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most wanted terrorist in Iraq.

Antonia,

My  condolences.

But keep your chin up.  Hopefully, someone will step up to take Zarqawi's     place.

It's from somebody named R. Lara. Or so the email said.

I dunno. Personally, I still haven't gotten over mourning Uday and Qusay, whose killings three years ago were to have signaled the end of the war. Then there was the capture of their daddy Saddam, and how that was supposed to bring the end of the insurgency. And now, Zarqawi's number came up, for the nth time apparently -- at least according to this 2004 MSNBC report.

NBC News has learned that long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself — but never pulled the trigger.

In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide.

The Pentagon quickly drafted plans to attack the camp with cruise missiles and airstrikes and sent it to the White House, where, according to U.S. government sources, the plan was debated to death in the National Security Council.

“Here we had targets, we had opportunities, we had a country willing to support casualties, or risk casualties after 9/11 and we still didn’t do it,” said Michael O’Hanlon, military analyst with the Brookings Institution.

Four months later, intelligence showed Zarqawi was planning to use ricin in terrorist attacks in Europe.

The Pentagon drew up a second strike plan, and the White House again killed it.  By then the administration had set its course for war with Iraq.

“People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president’s policy of preemption against terrorists,” according to terrorism expert and former National Security Council member Roger Cressey.

In January 2003, the threat turned real. Police in London arrested six terror suspects and discovered a ricin lab connected to the camp in Iraq.

The Pentagon drew up still another attack plan, and for the third time, the National Security Council killed it.

Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi’s operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.

The United States did attack the camp at Kirma at the beginning of the war, but it was too late — Zarqawi and many of his followers were gone. 

And so Zarqawi went on, the apparent inspiration for countless vicious attacks against U.S. troops as well as Iraqi men, women and children -- anot to mention the spate of horrific beheadings that began with U.S. businessman Nick Berg.

Went on, that is, until he was eliminated. (Much celebration here.)

Funny thing is, Berg's father isn't jumping with joy over the news.

"I think al-Zarqawi's death is a double tragedy," Michael Berg told The Associated Press after learning a U.S. airstrike had killed the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. "His death will incite a new wave of revenge. George Bush and al-Zarqawi are two men who believe in revenge."

And here, via the almighty Crooks and Liars, is Berg on CNN, as Soledad O'Brien struggles to get him to say something pro-war. It's a must-see. (Transcripts are here.)

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: There's an alternate reading which would say at some point Iraqis will say the insurgency is not OK. That they'll, in fact, be inspired by the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in the sense of he was turned in, for example, we believe, by his own Iraqi, you know, number two, number three leadership in his ranks and that that's actually them saying, you know, we do not want this kind of violence in our country. And experts who we've spoken to this morning have said, this is sort of the critical moment where Iraqis need to figure out which direction the country's going to go. That would be an alternate reading to the scenario that you're pointing to.

BERG: Yes, well, I don't believe that scenario because every time that news of new atrocities committed by Americans in Iraq becomes public, more and more of the every day Iraqi people who try to hold out, to try to be peaceful people, lose it and join the -- what we call the insurgency, what I call the resistance against the occupation of one sovereign nation.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: There's a theory that a struggle for democracy -- I mean we have, you know . . .

BERG: Democracy? Come on. You can't really believe that that's a democracy there when the people who are running the elections are holding guns. That's not democracy.

(A majority of Americans seem to see it the same way, at least according to an AP-Ipsos poll published today.)

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: There is a theory that as they try to form some kind of government that, in fact, it's going to be brutal, it's going to be bloody, there's going to be loss and that's the history of many countries, that that's just a lot of people pay for what they believe will be better than what they had under Saddam Hussein.

BERG: Well, you know, I'm not saying Saddam Hussein was a good man, but he's no worse than George Bush. Saddam Hussein didn't pull the trigger, didn't commit the rapes. Neither did George Bush, but both men are responsible for them under their reigns of terror. I don't buy that.

Iraq did not have al Qaeda in it. Al Qaeda supposedly killed my son. Under Saddam Hussein, no al Qaeda. Under George Bush, al Qaeda. Under Saddam Hussein, relative stability. Under George Bush, instability. Under Saddam Hussein, about 30,000 deaths a year. Under George Bush, about 60,000 deaths a year.

I don't get it. Why is it better to have George Bush be the king of Iraq rather than Saddam Hussein?

And here's Bush looking king-like today after having run his victory lap.

I would like to believe that Zarqawi's death means that fewer innocent people will be killed, that war will soon be over , that the troops will be able to go home and that they will live happily ever after in Iraq, but, if recent history is any indication, this will only renew the terrorists' resolve.

And so, back to my keening and wailing.

UPPITY DATE: Wonkette has the best post of the day.

You know who the real winner is now that al-Zarqawi’s gone? The people of Iraq? No, they’re pretty much still screwed. It’s the editors of The Atlantic, who have a huge Zarqawi profile in their July/August issue, conveniently added to the website yesterday. Abu Musab al-Zarqari: Terrorist mastermind, total idiot.

UPPERMOST IN MY MIND DATE: Who collects the $25 million reward on Zarqawi's head?

UH-OH DATE: Here's Loretta Napoleoni, author of Insurgent Iraq: al-Zarqawi and the New Generation as well Terror Incorporated, talking to Amy Goodman (Robert Fisk) on Democracy Now about all of this.

I mean, killing al-Zarqawi is not going to solve the problem. In fact, to be honest, I think killing al-Zarqawi is turning this individual into a super martyr. Because, let's face it, it's the first leader of Al Qaeda who's actually died fighting, on the field, coalition forces. So tomorrow we'll see the proliferation of the al-Zarqawi brigades. People who want to vindicate the death of the master.

Those who think that – what Robert said is very true about Al Qaeda. In fact, I wouldn't talk so much about Al Qaeda, this so-called transnational organization which existed before 9/11. I would talk about Al Qaeda-ism, which is this new global anti-imperialist ideology , which has been embraced by the jihaddists, which has been created from the ashes of Al Qaeda, the transnational organization, through the fight in Iraq. In that, al-Zarqawi, a man we created out of nothing -- because let’s not forget that al-Zarqawi was presented to the world as the link between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden on February 5, 2003, when in reality he wasn't [audio lost] Al Qaeda. So I think, you know, this man has embodied the icon of Al Qaedaism, and in death he will be even more powerful than in life.

The T-shirted crusader

Seriously, what a goof.

So I got an idea (which someone else has undoubtedly thought of first). The alleged terrorists apparently wanted to target the busy Skydome-CN Tower-Convention Centre area in downtown Toronto. That's what terrorists want to do, naturally: scare people, and keep them from doing what is normal.

So here's what I suggest: we all organize a trip to see a Jays game, and wave the flag, and wear a few T-shirts bearing a defiant message. Remember what we saw after the London bombings? WE ARE NOT AFRAID. Remember that? It was the right thing to do.

I say: let's all go to a ball game - and show no one's afraid.

OMG! All those people in downtown Toronto dressed like that? What's that line about the terrorists having won?

Frankly, I prefer Sinister Thoughts' idea. It's so less "Shoot me, I'm the London Tube'' bull's eye  and much more "I. Am. Canadian."

Via Robert McClelland.

UPPITY DATE: Really, wouldn't just turning out en masse for Gay Pride not be funner, not to mention so much more tasteful than those heinous t-shirts? The theme this year is "BE FEARLESS!" Now how cool and coinkidinky is that?

A jaundiced eye

THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED:

As promised, today's treeware column on last Friday's arrests of 17 terrorism suspects in the GTA. Here are excerpts, with links, and other stuff which dropped out for lack of space.

Okay, not to put too fine a point on it: the Toronto Star kicked butt with its scoop on Friday's arrests of 17 suspected Islamic extremists across the GTA.

Don't take my word for it.

The New York Times, which borrowed heavily from our coverage, even ran a story about us yesterday, praising the efforts of (my friend) terrorism beat reporter Michelle Shephard, who had been tracking this tale for two months.

(If you don't have a sub. to the Times, go here.)

Of course, that didn't stop the National Post's Andrew Coyne from accusing the Star on his blog of having "learned'' (scroll down) details of the police operation from the Times.

Perhaps he ought to have been watching the Post's sister operation, Global TV, which was resorting to American network reports on the Toronto busts.

(UPDATE: Global-TV News honcho Steve Wyatt takes issue with this in a letter to the Star published on June 9.)

Anyway, depending on what edition of which national paper Canadians received, on Saturday morning the first inkling they may have had of the alleged bomb plot in their midst was the police news conference at 10 a.m.

That's because the Globe buried the story, cobbled together from CBC and Reuters reports, on page A2. As one former newspaper exec emailed me on Saturday, "in my day, heads would rolls for a lapse like that.''

The National Post, meanwhile, which had an obviously long-planned feature about extremists-in-our-midst by terrorism expert Stewart Bell, managed to squeeze in some news of the arrests. But it offered almost no details.

We had it all, including photos of the arrests and suspects.

Not to blow our horns too long and loud, it must be said that there's always danger in getting too close to sources, especially when it comes to courts, crime and cops. There's a fine line between collusion and co-operation and maintaining close contacts.

What's more, the media must now move into an entirely different mode — the innocent-until-proven-guilty mode. A little more skepticism — and more important, some moderation — is in order, please. Problem is, the story is in danger of running out of control.

One of my regular readers -- have already received tons of email -- wrote to say that it's a good thing the Star had this first. Imagine what would have happened had certain other papers started the ball rolling.

For example, because the Star had such a jump on the competition, with so many GTA-based reporters and resources, plus the advantage of a Sunday edition, we had the names, residences and other personal details of the suspects plastered over three pages.

Lots more Star reporting here.

Yesterday, the other papers followed suit, drawing out what must be the considerable anguish of the families, personified by a very distraught relative who appeared on CBC Newsworld insisting his son, Sareef Abdehaleen, 30, was innocent.

"To everybody now, these people are guilty already,'' he said.

Not just "these people,'' but all Muslims, according to some sources.

At least the Globe and the Star, in yesterday's editorials, urged readers not to start labelling Muslims with the "t-word," and target them for hate crimes.

The Star also took a few steps back, both on Sunday with a column by Thomas Walkom imploring people to view events with a critical eye, and again yesterday with a report by Linda Diebel on how the police played up the arrests for maximum spectacle.

But read yesterday's editorial in the Post: "The Jihadis among us," and even more egregious, Christie Blatchford's front-page column (read it here free) in the Globe, and you'll see first: calls for stepped-up law enforcement and diminished civil rights, Bush-style. And second: a Christie-nacht screed against a single community, tantamount to hate speech.

"The accused men are mostly young and mostly bearded in the Taliban fashion," wrote Blatchford. "They have first names like Mohamed, middle names like Mohamed, and last names like Mohamed. Some of their female relatives at the Brampton courthouse who were there in their support wore black head-to-toe burkas ... which is not a getup I have ever seen on anyone but Muslim women (sic).''

Oh but that was nothing compared to some of the online hatred in the rightwingdingosphere, where the story is, of course, burning up bandwidth. Dr. Dawg has been cataloguing some of the uglier stuff here. Back to my column:

Blogger Kathy Shaidle of Relapsed Catholic not only praised Blatchford's words, she ranted, "Re-examine the last traces you may have of all the multi-culti `immigration built this country' pieties you were force fed during your long Trudeaupian education, in the schools, the media, in university, at work. All the charming restaurants and colourful ethnic festivals (that `help the economy') and funky world music on earth are not worth the life of one baby mangled in a subway bombing.

"Regardless of whether or not immigration built this country, it may now destroy it.

"If you persist in believing all your `Heritage Moment' pieties you are a delusional coward."

Unfortunately, Ms. Shaidle's blog is a one-way screed, so she doesn't take comments.

South of the border, the neocon bible National Review had these words on its blog: "(T)he Toronto Star is easily the most left wing major media outlet in a country full of left wing media. It could be argued that their constant support for multiculturalism and their soft on terror and crime views provided conditions favorable for these home grown terrorists to develop. It is therefore highly ironic that their strong crime beat is leading the coverage on this story, as there is not a more politically correct media outlet in the country."

The wing nuts are so right they can't even admit to ever being wrong.

What nailed this story is a dogged reporter pounding a beat, a paper investing time and resources on good old-fashioned journalism — something on which the corporate media, and the bloggers who attack them, can't, or won't, spend.

Too bad.

Solid journalism may be pricey, but it is always in the public interest. And, ultimately, it sells newspapers.

Much more coverage of the coverage later.

Levers of power

In 2004, I got a lot of hate mail for writing that there were serious issues around the November U.S. election.

Remember those exit polls promising a John Kerry victory?

Activists and journalists such as Mark Crispin Miller, Greg Palast and BradBlog tried to make their protests heard in the mainstream media -- but the story was anathema to news organizations afraid of losing access to the administration. Democratic candidate Kerry had given up. Why should anybody else fight?

Now, slowly, slowly, Americans may be waking up to the fact that their democracy may have been corrupted.

In the current edition of Rolling Stone, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asks Was the 2004 Election Stolen?  (The numbers are footnotes.)

Like many Americans, I spent the evening of the 2004 election watching the returns on television and wondering how the exit polls, which predicted an overwhelming victory for John Kerry, had gotten it so wrong. By midnight, the official tallies showed a decisive lead for George Bush -- and the next day, lacking enough legal evidence to contest the results, Kerry conceded. Republicans derided anyone who expressed doubts about Bush's victory as nut cases in ''tinfoil hats,'' while the national media, with few exceptions, did little to question the validity of the election. The Washington Post immediately dismissed allegations of fraud as ''conspiracy theories,''(1) and The New York Times declared that ''there is no evidence of vote theft or errors on a large scale.''(2)

But despite the media blackout, indications continued to emerge that something deeply troubling had taken place in 2004. Nearly half of the 6 million American voters living abroad(3) never received their ballots -- or received them too late to vote(4) -- after the Pentagon unaccountably shut down a state-of-the-art Web site used to file overseas registrations.(5) A consulting firm called Sproul & Associates, which was hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters in six battleground states,(6) was discovered shredding Democratic registrations.(7) In New Mexico, which was decided by 5,988 votes,(8) malfunctioning machines mysteriously failed to properly register a presidential vote on more than 20,000 ballots.(9) Nationwide, according to the federal commission charged with implementing election reforms, as many as 1 million ballots were spoiled by faulty voting equipment -- roughly one for every 100 cast.(10)

In this 10-page investigation, Kennedy makes one very damning case, covering all the bases starting with those exit polls.

As the last polling stations closed on the West Coast, exit polls showed Kerry ahead in ten of eleven battleground states -- including commanding leads in Ohio and Florida -- and winning by a million and a half votes nationally. The exit polls even showed Kerry breathing down Bush's neck in supposed GOP strongholds Virginia and North Carolina. Against these numbers, the statistical likelihood of Bush winning was less than one in 450,000. "Either the exit polls, by and large, are completely wrong," a Fox News analyst declared, "or George Bush loses."

But as the evening progressed, official tallies began to show implausible disparities -- as much as 9.5 percent -- with the exit polls. In ten of the eleven battleground states, the tallied margins departed from what the polls had predicted. In every case, the shift favored Bush. Based on exit polls, CNN had predicted Kerry defeating Bush in Ohio by a margin of 4.2 percentage points. Instead, election results showed Bush winning the state by 2.5 percent. Bush also tallied 6.5 percent more than the polls had predicted in Pennsylvania, and 4.9 percent more in Florida.

According to Steven F. Freeman, a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in research methodology, the odds against all three of those shifts occurring in concert are one in 660,000. "As much as we can say in sound science that something is impossible," he says, "it is impossible that the discrepancies between predicted and actual vote count in the three critical battleground states of the 2004 election could have been due to chance or random error."

So far, the MSM are silent. Even the not-so-MSM are quiet, notes the Left Coaster.

I find it a little troubling that a half hour after this story is online, not one of the A-list center-left blogs is even posting on it. Has possible election fraud now become taboo with the larger blogs?

If they don't jump in to encourage a serious look at this issue, who will?

Broadsides

Helen Thomas, the grand old damn (and no, that's not a mistake) of the West Wing, is on a book tour, promoting her Watchdogs of Democracy? The Waning Washington Press Corps and How It Has Failed the Public.

Here's an excerpt that I posted last month. But today, Raw Story has juicier bits here.

Two American task forces, under David Kay and later Charles Duelfer, spent millions of dollars and months in Iraq and found no unconventional weapons. Their findings verified what the United Nations inspectors, headed by Hans Blix, had tried in vain to convey to the world.

"I said from the White House podium on many occasions that we knew Saddam Hussein possessed chemical weapons. I said we knew Saddam possessed biological weapons," (Ari) Fleischer continued in his book.

Any remorse at the falsehoods? Hell, no. After blaming faulty intelligence and some other world leaders who thought Iraq possessed the doomsday weapons, Fleischer said, "The Bush administration may have been wrong about Saddam's capabilities, but we weren't wrong about his intentions."

Thomas, who called George W. Bush ''the worst president in history, accuses his press secretaries of being ''robots'' guilty of ''spouting nonsense.'' Here's Editor & Publisher on the Raw Story excerpt:

Writing about spokesmen Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, Thomas observes that truth often "took a holiday. ... The Bush-2 spokesmen were predictable and Orwellian. They lived in fear that there would be a news leak, which made Bush apoplectic, not the first president with such a reaction. Fleischer and McClellan marched in lockstep in the most secretive administration in modern history."

<SNIP>

"My criticism of the press secretaries in the Bush-2 administration is that they are robots parroting the party line, on message word for word. They are afraid to deviate even when they are spouting nonsense. They stay on one page, no matter what the question.

"Pleasing their president too often means more to them than their questionable responsibility to the American people; to democracy itself. They define it as loyalty to the boss, but they owe a higher loyalty to the country, in my opinion. Dissembling and avoiding the truth does not engender trust or respect. It harms the nation."

This morning Thomas was on CBC Radio One's The Current, talking with guest host Susan Ormiston ... about the Battle for Bunkum Hill between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Parliamentary press gallery. She lauds the PPG for standing together in refusing to sign up on the PMO's list of questioners -- and has tough words for Harper. The interview will be online until tomorrow morning here. Catch it to hear her get cantankerous with Ormiston, chastising her for emphasizing her ''longevity.''

I hope Thomas, 85, lives long enough to dance on the Bush administration's grave.

 

Bloggin' in the free world

And now is the time at Zerb's place where we get up and dance: Here's a video that celebrates the growing power of alternative media.

Badge of dishonour

THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED:

Today on page A2, the National Post printed a lengthy ''Note to Readers'' with the headline "Our mistake,'' in reference to last Friday's shocking front-page story which claimed that Iran would ''require'' Jews to wear Nazi-era style badges. (SEE UPDATE)The mea culpa, signed by editor-in-chief Doug Kelly, reads, in part:

It is now clear the story is not true. Given the seriousness of the error, I felt it necessary to explain to our readers how this happened.

The story of the alleged badge law first came to us in the form of a column by Amir Taheri. Mr. Taheri, an Iranian author and journalist, has written widely on Iran for many major publications. In his column, Mr. Taheri wrote at length about the new law, the main purpose of which is to establish an appropriate dress code for Muslims. Mr. Taheri went on to say that under the law, "Religious minorities would have their own colour schemes. They will also have to wear special insignia, known as zonnar, to indicate their non-Islamic faith."

This extraordinary allegation caught our attention, of course. The idea that Iran might impose such a law did not seem out of the question given that its President has denied the Holocaust and threatened to "wipe Israel off the map." We tried to contact Mr. Taheri, but he was in transit and unreachable.

From there, Kelly tracks the trajectory of how Taheri's column ended up being spun into the horrifying Holocaust-type story on the front page. He concludes with:

We acknowledge that on this story, we did not exercise sufficient caution and skepticism, and we did not check with enough sources. We should have pushed the sources we did have for more corroboration of the information they were giving us. That is not to say that we ignored basic journalistic practices or that we rushed this story into print with no thought as to the consequences. But given the seriousness of the allegations, more was required.

We apologize for the mistake and for the consternation it has caused not just National Post readers, but the broader public who read the story. We take this incident very seriously, and we are examining our procedures to try to ensure such an error does not happen again.

Coupled with a front-page semi-retraction in Saturday's Post, it's fair to say that the paper acted as swiftly as it could to rectify what was a serious error, one with potentially catastrophic consequences. It did much better than did the New York Times did, say, with its Judith Miller/WMDs horsedip.

But have all the right wingdings accepted the fact that the story isn't true? What do you think?

Yes, many have climbed down. But not all. Their reasoning? It's fake but accurate, as the story goes. Well, knowing Iran, and its president's propensity to make hateful comments against Israel and all, what do you think? Here's a sample, one which ignores the fact that I corrected my errors while not correcting their own:

What I find most fascinating is why the Left isn't jumping all over this in defense of women and minorities in Iran!

The zonnar mark for dhimmis ... was used in Iran until 1908. That the Council of Guardians MAY consider its reinstatement is hardly an odd notion. Even if it is sabotaged by Taheri's report, the bigger issue still hasn't been addressed by the Left.

I should emphasize that, while delusions such as this are not the responsibility of the National Post, it sure added fuel to what threatens to become a raging fire.

My friend D.R.A. sent along this Jim Lobe column about the whole mess which he found in the Winnipeg Free Press (sub. req'd.) The AntiWar folks have it too.

The newspapers that so far have run the story are similarly identified with a hard line against Tehran. The National Post, which was bought by CanWest Global Communications from Conrad Black, a close associate of Perle's, is controlled by David and Leonard Asper, who have accused the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation of being anti-Israel, according to Marsha Cohen of Florida International University, who has closely followed the badges story.

Similarly, the (New York) Sun has consistently taken positions consistent with the right-wing Likud Party in Israel on Middle East issues, while Murdoch owns the strongly pro-Israel Weekly Standard and Fox News, in addition to the New York Post.

"I think the way these stories played – particularly the references to the Holocaust – was designed to arouse and play upon concerns and accusations that Ahmadinejad is another Hitler who needs to be dealt with accordingly," noted Cohen, who added that the Iranian president's questioning of the Holocaust and aggressive statements about Israel have made such stories more credible.

Meanwhile, AntiWar's Justin Raimundo goes much further, connecting the dots between this and the -- cue the ominous music -- pro-Israel lobby.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was in Washington Tuesday, presumably to issue the Bush administration its marching orders. On this sojourn, he is hitting all the right notes – Iran,   which is "close to atomic bomb know-how," is "like Hitler," and poses a threat not just to Israel but "to  Western civilization." This is a change in tactics from last time around, when the Israelis were careful to keep a low profile on the question of invading Iraq: emboldened by success, they have sent the Israeli prime minister himself to make the case for war. And the Amen Corner is taking up the cause with alacrity, loudly beating their tom-toms and smearing anyone who – like Professor Juan Cole – dares to expose their tactics of mass deception.

Iran is years away from acquiring nuclear weapons and has formally stated that its intentions are peaceful. The Israelis think they have reason to doubt the Iranians' motives, and are scared to death – or so they claim. 

Oh what a tangled web they weave.

Another hat tip to Maz.

* UPPITY DATE: It has been pointed out to me that, to read the Post's retraction online, you need to go beyond the front page and then, you require a paid subscription.

Just one of those things that make me go hmmmmmmmmmmm.

All the fables fit to print

Still more on the National Post badges bungle ...

Taylor Marsh, guest-blogging over at Fire Dog Lake, has a wowser post that confirms what I picked up last week as to how all this got started, complete with a memo from the Post to the Simon Wiesenthal Center signed by a ''jte,'' apparently deputy comment editor John Turley-Ewart.

The National Post has an editorial policy similar to Brit Hume’s at Fox "News." They are interchangeable and far leaning to the right. But the above section I emphasized seems to show that not only is Turley-Ewert asking for confirmation of the Iranian badge story, but a sort of collaboration on promoting the story. Someone I spoke to today confirmed that was indeed their assessment, too.

But who got the Simon Wiesenthal Center to stick their necks out on this bogus Iranian badge story, risking their very reputation and funding credibility, and who had what to gain by doing so?

Could this story have something to do with Douglas Feith’s Office of Strategic Influence PSYOPS plan to plant false stories in foreign press? Sure, that was supposed to be shut down, but was it? After all, Canada is foreign press and once a story gets printed it’s all stops out for spreading the propaganda.

Frankly, I find that her take has the tang of tinfoil haberdashery to it. Still, there's no doubt that the Post would seize on the Holocaust angle to play to their reader base.

Marsh also notes that Taheri, the author of the op-ed piece at the centre of this storm, has issued a news release distancing himself from the Post story.

Regarding the dress code story it seems that my column was used as the basis for a number of reports that somehow jumped the gun.
As far as my article is concerned I stand by it.

Okey, dokey.

Hat tip to Ross K.

Yellow journalism

Further to the National Post's shameful blunder on Iran last week:

You know, after the U.S. has attacked Iran and found no nukes worth bombing civilians for, the war-mongers will turn around and say, ''Yabbut, we had to liberate the Iranian Jews because they were all going to be put into camps."

Why do I -- and others -- say that? Because of nonsense like this:

Although the National Post retracted a report that Iran was considering a dress code for non-Moslems, a NY Sun follow up interview with a spokesman from Iran’s Jewish community raises the worrisome possibility that we haven't seen the last of this issue:

    While the legislation considered in the Iranian parliament, the Majlis, so far does not create a dress code for Iran's Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians - an echo of Nazi laws that required Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies, and communists to wear distinctive armbands and badges - the spokesman, Sam Kermanian, said yesterday that he suspected early reports of this kind may have been a trial balloon.

This from a group that calls itself "Honest Reporting?'' PUH-leeze.

Even the Jerusalem Post debunked the story.

Yesterday, after it emerged that the report had been false, the affair of "the yellow patch that wasn't" left us with one lesson: The world is ready to believe anything when it comes to a country ruled by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The trumped up National Post story was based on an op-ed by the Iranian-born Amir Taheri, essentially an activist for an attack on the current regime. I have more info on Taheri from Lenin's Tomb:

Amir Taheri, of course, is a dubious figure. He is a sublunary of the Benador Associates, a right-wing PR firm that supplies conservative speakers for all sorts of occasions. He specialises in producing bilge about Iran, interpreting Ahmadinejad's letter to Bush as an attempt to provoke a clash of civilizations so that the Hidden Imam will return, while asserting not only that Iran wants a nuclear bomb, but that it wants one to - well, hasten a clash of civilizations so that the Hidden Imam will return. He has claimed that attacks on London and New York were inspired by a desire by some Muslims to exert total dictatorial control over what you eat for breakfast (which is cartoonish nonsense), referred to Tariq Ramadan as a Muslim Brotherhood militant (which is flatly false), smeared antiwar protesters as defenders of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, and asserted that Israel must claim victory over Palestine. As an "Iranian-born analyst" (they never forget to mention this), he is the neoconservative's favourite 'native informant' about Islam, the Middle East and how well various imperialist adventures are going. Commentary Magazine loves him, the Wall Street Journal loves him, the Telegraph loves him, the National Review loves him - to put it mildly, his brand of 'insight' is very popular with that baroque sodality of reactionary imperialists.

Unqualified Offerings debunks Taheri's op-ed here:

...while Amir Taheri’s story quotes “Mostafa Pourhardani, Minister of Islamic Orientation.” Google searches on variations of “Iran+Pourhardani” turn up no references that do not stem directly from Taheri’s story. That would be flying under the radar! As noted on the Just Adventure Forum, Iran has a Culture Minister named Mohammad-Hossein Saffar-Harandi. Google News finds nothing on Pourhardani (or “Pourharadani”) that does not stem from the National Post’s Friday story.

Go ahead and mouse over all the cabinet posts on the Iranian Presidency’s official site. There is no “Pourhardani” or variant on that name in the cabinet.

The marketing machinery for Operation Iranian Freedom -- or whatever brand name they're gonna give this one -- is in full gear. If you want to track it, check out what London Yank and others are doing over at Daily Kos, with their Walking Back the Cat.

"Walk back the cat" is spy slang for retracing the train of evidence and assumptions until the double agent, the false source or the analytic error is identified.

In 1991 the Rendon Group got a contract to create the conditions for regime change in Iraq.  Richard Perle introduced Ahmad Chalabi - on the run from 32 indictments for fraud and embezzlement.  They created the Iraqi National Congress and began lobbying for overthrow of Saddam Hussein.  Key allies included Conrad Black and Rupert Murdoch, whose newspapers spread disinformation.

The same cast and crew have moved on to Iran...

If at first you don't succeed, bomb, bomb, bomb again.