'Unambiguous intelligence' unambiguously wrong

When the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran (pdf) was released, it was a blow to those within the Bush administration agitating for another preemptive war, as it declared that all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies had come to believe that Iran halted whatever design work on a nuclear weapon they may have once engaged in back in 2003 -- and most importantly, that there was no sign Iran had restarted weapons program since. At the time, this assessment was welcomed by both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, each trying to out do the other in their scathing press statements denouncing the Bush administration’s bellicose rhetoric about a non-existent threat.

Here’s what candidate Obama had to say back in December ’07:

By reporting that Iran halted its nuclear weapon development program four years ago because of international pressure, the new National Intelligence Estimate makes a compelling case for less saber-rattling and more direct diplomacy. The juxtaposition of this NIE with the president's suggestion of World War III serves as an important reminder of what we learned with the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq: members of Congress must carefully read the intelligence before giving the President any justification to use military force.

Come the taste of power, however, and oh my how times change. Funny how that works.

The New York Times, reprising its familiar role as conduit for anonymous White House officials leaking information too authentic and supportable to go on the record about, informed us earlier this month that six of President Obama’s “top advisers say they no longer believe the key finding of a much disputed National Intelligence Estimate about Iran, published a year before President George W. Bush left office, which said that Iranian scientists ended all work on designing a nuclear warhead in late 2003.”

According to the Times, that view came after the administration reviewed leaked documents -- presumably the debunked Times of London “nuclear trigger” story -- and information from defectors (comparisons to Ahmed Chalabi are unfair I'm sure). Importantly, the advisers conceded it was ultimately based on “their own analysis”, and not a “new formal intelligence not.” And of course it wasn’t, as I pointed out at the time, because it continues to be the view of the U.S. intelligence community -- which has a bureaucratic interest in playing up the threat of foreign foes -- that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program.

That view was reaffirmed yet again today by the Pentagon’s top intelligence official, Lieutenant General Ronal Burgess, who in an interview with Voice of America said there is no evidence Iran has decided to build nuclear weapons.

"The bottom line assessments of the NIE still hold true," he said.  "We have not seen indication that the government has made the decision to move ahead with the program.” In typical Pentagon -- and bureaucratic fashion -- Burgess didn’t rule anything out, though, echoing former boss Donald Rumsfeld. “The fact still remains that we don't know what we don't know,” he noted, adding “man” before presumably passing his bong to the bemused reporter.

Despite Burgess’ inability to know the unknowable, his unequivocal statement that Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency has not seen any “indication” -- that is, evidence that would hold up under careful review, not what might fly in a newsroom -- Iran is developing nuclear weapons stands in stark contrast to the dubious leaks from the administration. In September, for instance, ABC News’ Jake Tapper reported an anonymous “senior administration official” as stating on a press call that the enrichment facility in Qom -- the one Iran reported to the IAEA and which Obama and friends later claimed to “reveal” at a dramatic press conference, the Western media dutifully misreporting the timeline of events ever since -- was undoubtedly for weapons purposes.

"‘Primary source intelligence,'" wrote Tapper, “meaning firsthand accounts and/or satellite imaging -- provided ‘unambiguous intelligence’ that this is a facility to enrich weapons-grade uranium, the official said.” Indeed, the facility doesn’t “make sense for commercial use,” said one official, but is the “right size” for enriching weapons-grade uranium. That Iran built it as a contingency enrichment plant should the chief one at Natanz be bombed as some U.S. and Israeli commentators and officials have suggested was apparently given little consideration -- at least that’s the message the officials sought to convey to the press.

The intelligence, as it turns out, isn’t so “unambiguous” if the Pentagon’s own spy agency doesn’t buy it. Anonymous administration officials disseminating sensational and hyped up accounts of foreign threats posed by scary and irrational enemies are what grab the headlines, though, a formula for selling news embraced since probably the earliest days of the printing press. Major outlets like the Times wouldn't dare publish an on-the-record interview with the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency regarding Iran's nuclear program -- why, that's small-market stuff better left to Voice of America and the Penny Pinchers of the world. The appearance of being an insider that comes from quoting "senior White House officials" and relaying the right narrative, not necessarily the most accurate but the one most conducive to establishment desires, is what matters most to your typical major media national security reporter.

With the Obama administration spinning tall tales about non-existent WMD programs to a credulous press, the parallels to the run-up to the Iraq war are obvious, even if the White House's idea of warfare is solely economic (or covert) at this point. Just don't expect to read about it in The New York Times.

My conversation with Iranian state television

A week ago I published a satirical article on this blog, “EXCLUSIVE: Obama orders air strikes on Guantanamo Bay,” intended to highlight the absurdity of people (I'm looking at you establishment liberals) condemning the Gitmo military prison and the government’s denial of habeas corpus to the “suspected terrorists” imprisoned there (and the others even the Obama administration concedes are innocent but whom they won’t release) while condoning extrajudicial killings by U.S. Predator drones in Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan and Pakistan. This being the internet, that the piece is satire was of course lost on some, which probably says more about what people believe the U.S. government is capable of than anything else.

One such person is “Sarah”, employed by the Iranian government’s English-language news/propaganda service, Press TV, who emailed me yesterday with the subject line “Interview Request” after the piece was published over at Dissident Voice. Now mind you, the second paragraph of my piece quoted a supposed “senior White House official” as stating that the attack “killed a whole damn bunch of them there terrorist sons of bitches” -- “the sound of clinking glasses and celebratory gunfire audible in the background.” Further, the next paragraph said the men imprisoned at Guantanamo were there because they “were suspected of being Muslim” (well…) and having “maintained an interest in recruiting sheep to be suicide bombers.” Sheep. In other words, there were ample signs, I think, the piece was satirical -- in addition to it being categorized as “satire.”

With that in mind, here’s the email I received:

This is Sarah, Press TV's newsroom coordinator. Press TV is an English News channel being broadcasted from Iran. we just saw one of your articles "EXCLUSIVE: Barack Obama orders air strikes on Guantanamo Bay killing at least 220 detaineees" on the net. Would we be able to get you on the phone for an interview on this story? i would really appriciate it if you reply back soon and give me your contact number.

Regards

Sarah

Press TV's Newsroom Coordinator

www.presstv.ir

Being a bit of an asshole, I of course responded by sending my Google Voice number. About five minutes later I received a call from “Sarah” in Tehran, who conducted a fact check of my piece consisting of the question: “Is it credible?” Again, being a bit of an asshole, I assured her my sources were second-to-none and that the credibility of the piece was not in doubt, prompting her to invite me to appear on *LIVE* television in an hour. I naturally accepted. You should probably just listen to the conversation yourself:

A few minutes later I received another email from Sarah, this one in preparation for my coming appearance:

charles would you mind sending a brief profile about urself as well along with the pic, thanks

I quickly complied, sending along this bio -- “Charles Davis is a journalist based in Washington, DC, where he covers U.S. foreign policy. His work has appeared in highly credible publications throughout the world.” -- and this picture.

For those unfamiliar, that’s Emiliano Zapata, a prominent leader in the Mexican revolution, an advocate of land reform and decentralization, one of my idols for actually turning down political power rather than trying to seize it for himself (see a paper I wrote about him in college), and, as you can see, an all-around mustachioed badass. Unfortunately, I was informed that “it seems we can use black and white pics for the documentaries but only allowed to use colored pics for the live shots like news, let me see what happens…” This did not dissuade the folks at the Iranian regime’s international mouthpiece from persisting in their effort to get me on the air, though:

can we have u at the studio maybe? one of our studios is on M street in WDC, like around 9pm?

“Holy shit,” I thought, wondering how the hell I could pass myself off as a 90-years-dead Mexican revolutionary. I would also need to concoct a story -- and concoct I did, penning a tale of a CIA carrier pigeon “going rogue”, refusing to carry out its mission to inform the drone operators in Langley, VA, of their assignment to bomb Guantanamo Bay and instead flying to my apartment to spill the beans on the imminent attack, coming to me due to my “longstanding ties to the dissident carrier pigeon community.” Alas, YouTube stardom was not to be as Sarah apparently wisened up before I could tell my story on the air -- presumably because she read my Twitter feed -- never responding to my request for directions. Sigh.

War and climate change

My latest piece on an environmental issue that, as I found out, few seem willing to talk about:

Climate change has been branded a threat to national security, but a future global treaty addressing the issue is likely to exempt from regulation most of the greenhouse gases associated with overseas military activities and the world’s largest polluter—the U.S. armed forces—a fact some environmentalists are arguing will significantly undercut the effectiveness of such an agreement. The issue is potentially troubling for proponents of a treaty as it suggests that even as the Obama administration and leading Democrats push emission controls based on the perceived security threat posed by global warming, they are unwilling to address a leading contributor to the problem.

The preliminary climate change agreement announced in Copenhagen leaves unresolved many key questions, but there’s a broad consensus overseas military operations will continue to enjoy a major exemption under any eventual comprehensive, legally binding treaty. Indeed, both foreign diplomats and officials with most major environmental groups have been reticent to broach the subject for fear of alienating the U.S. government, which accounts for nearly half of global military spending.

-----

“It can be a bit of a delicate subject,” says a former senior Defense Department official who was deeply involved in the debate over the Kyoto Protocol. “We’re the largest military in the world and we’re going to be the most penalized if military emissions are counted, so that has to be considered.”

Read the rest.

UPDATE (1/9): From the comments over at Jon Schwarz's A Tiny Revolution:

An illegal war bound by law to be eco-friendly. The obvious irony aside, it wouldn't feel that right to me if it happened (in some alternate universe, where it actually could). While less emissions is always good, I find the imagery of a spectacled ecologist high fiving generals for butchering the local resistance in an environmentally friendly manner too disturbing. (Military sprays acid instead of bombs to cause less burning buildings! World applauds!)

The injustice of it all

Sometimes life just isn't fair, John Michael Farren must be thinking. A 57 year old former deputy White House counsel under President George W. Bush, Farren is sitting in jail now after allegedly attacking his wife after she served him with divorce papers, "arraigned on charges of strangulation and attempted murder and ordered held on $2 million bail." His former boss, on the other hand, a war criminal who not only attempted to but succeeded in killing of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children in Iraq and Afghanistan -- what happens to him? Dude gets a library and a long lifetime of triple digit speaking fees, assuming he makes it through the next bag of pretzels. Ain't that a bitch.

Not to say I told you so...

Back in September 2008, I wrote a piece for Inter Press Service examining the proposed policies towards Latin America offered by both John McCain and Barack Obama. What did I find?

WASHINGTON, Sep 3 (IPS) - With an election to replace an immensely unpopular president just weeks away, Republican nominee John McCain and Democratic candidate Barack Obama have both sought to distance themselves from the record of George W. Bush - but when it comes to Latin America, neither candidate promises a major break with the policies of the last eight years.

From maintaining the embargo against Cuba to expanding efforts to fight the war on drugs in Mexico and Colombia, McCain and Obama support most aspects of current U.S. policy toward Latin America. Indeed, outside of their shared pledge to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, there is little to suggest that either candidate would overhaul the Bush administration's approach to the region.

To be fair, though he isn't the progressive messiah some of his most feverish supporters once claimed he would be -- and the more delusional amongst them claim he is -- Obama has largely fulfilled the Latin America agenda he outlined during the campaign, minus that whole closing Guantanamo thing. Indeed, in a recent analysis of Obama's actual policy toward Latin America since taking office, "More Continuity Than Change," IPS' DC Bureau Chief Jim Lobe observes that, "Nearly one year after his inauguration, hopes that President Barack Obama would bring fundamental changes to U.S. relations with Latin American have faded badly":

[D]espite a promising start with Obama's appearance and pledge to pursue "engagement based on mutual respect" at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad last April, his administration has fumbled a number of issues in ways that have contributed to what appears to be the growing disillusionment.

Most recently, the administration abruptly reversed its demand – along with that of all of the Latin American states - that [Honduran President Manuel] Zelaya, who was ousted in a military coup d'etat last June be reinstated before the November elections. And the U.S. failed to consult and reassure its sister nations in advance about a new, 10-year accord with Colombia that gives Washington access to seven military bases around the country.

Don't call it a sellout, it was obvious for years.

The CIA's collateral damage computer algorithm -- revealed!

In October, The New Yorker's Jane Mayer wrote an excellent piece examining the Obama administration's increased reliance on unmanned Predator drones to do its killing in the ever expanding war on terror. Included in the article was this tidbit about the government's high-tech method for determining how much "collateral damage" -- innocent men, women and children killed by U.S. munitions -- is too much before some guy with a beer gut in Langley, Virginia, hits the trigger button on his Wii controller and sends them off into eternity:

Though the C.I.A.’s methodology remains unknown, the Pentagon has created elaborate formulas to help the military make such lethal calculations. A top military expert, who declined to be named, spoke of the military’s system, saying, “There’s a whole taxonomy of targets.” Some people are approved for killing on sight. For others, additional permission is needed. A target’s location enters the equation, too. If a school, hospital, or mosque is within the likely blast radius of a missile, that, too, is weighed by a computer algorithm before a lethal strike is authorized.

Well, thanks to a high-level source of mine deep within the U.S. intelligence community, I can now reveal a screenshot of the government's covert computer alogrithm. You math people out there try to make some sense of it:

Based on my reporting, this is a step up from the CIA's previous test for determining how many civilian deaths it should expect to incur from its actions: __________.

Bono: worst celebrity ever?

(U2 singer Bono, pictured right, coming to the aid of an unknown delusional man.)

Bono, the physical manifestation of all that is wrong with the world and the leader of some band called U2, has a column in The New York Times -- no seriously,  a column in The New York fucking Times, a followup to last week's op-ed from the Insane Clown Posse on the merits of a public option -- opining on that which is wrong in the world and how to make it right. As a rich rock star, one of the problems is obviously the internet and the power it gives people to make the enforcement of "intellectual property" laws an endeavor as laughably absurd as the intellectual argument for having them in the first place. As a great humanitarian, however, his argument is necessarily cloaked in the defense of the "fledgling songwriter" and the bus fare's worth of royalties they stand to lose out on because you don't feel like paying $18.99 for a Miley Cyrus album.

Rather than go on about by distaste for Bono, though, here's an article I wrote in college you can read that covers my feelings fairly well, subtly titled, "U2: The Word Band in the World?", the publishing of which in my school paper I'm pretty sure cost me an internship several years back with a major news company when the the woman interviewing me for the position turned out, to my great misfortune, to be a rather huge fan of the Irish rockers.

Obama administration 'analysis' trumps 2007 NIE on Iran

During the lead up to the 2003 invasion, the Bush administration infamously bypassed what they deemed insufficiently frightening intelligence about Iraqi WMDs coming from the CIA by creating their own unit staffed with political appointees, the Office of Special Plans, to deliver “raw intelligence” (think “Taxi Cab Confessions: Baghdad”) to the White House and the president’s speechwriters. The Obama administration, it appears, is now more or less doing the same thing, preferring the analysis of its political appointees to that of its intelligence services.

According to The New York Times, “Mr. Obama’s top advisers say they no longer believe the key finding of a much disputed National Intelligence Estimate about Iran, published a year before President George W. Bush left office, which said that Iranian scientists ended all work on designing a nuclear warhead in late 2003.” As a candidate, Obama praised the NIE as a sober reality check on the Bush administrations heated fearmongering on Iran. As president, however, he is relying not on that 2007 NIE -- the consensus view of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies -- but on his politically appointed advisers, people like United Against Nuclear Iran co-founder and National Security Council member Dennis Ross, who after “reviewing new documents that have leaked out of Iran and debriefing defectors lured to the West,” say “they believe the work on weapons design is continuing on a smaller scale.” As the official stenographers at the Times note, this review “did not amount to a new formal intelligence assessment” -- an oddity, for sure -- but was based rather “on intelligence reports, information from allies, and their own analysis”. In light of the Iraq war and the well-observed penchant government officials have for lying, it’s not asking too much to request that said officials cite something more verifiable then “their own analysis” when making a claim that will be used to justify further measures of economic warfare against another country, and make it that much more easy for Israel to claim justification should the Netanyahu government decide to launch air strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. It was too much for the Times reporters, though.

The article instead dutifully fulfills its role as an amplifier for the administration’s alarmist reading of Iran’s nuclear program, stating that claims it is civilian in nature are “roundly rejected by Western officials and, in internal reports, by international nuclear inspectors.” This, apparently, despite the fact that both the incoming and outgoing chiefs of the IAEA say they have not seen any evidence Iran is developing nukes, while the agency declares in its official reports that its inspectors have verified the non-diversion of nuclear material to such a purpose. No doubt the IAEA continues to raise questions about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but that’s not to say it has accused it have being in outright violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty either, rather saying Iran’s actions have at times been “inconsistent” with the accord.

The Obama administration’s assessment also differs from what its own top intelligence official, Admiral Dennis Blair, testified to Congress earlier this year. It likewise contradicts a recent report from the Congressional Research Service on Iran’s nuclear program, which noted that the CIA and other intelligence agencies stand by the 2007 intelligence assessment finding Iran halted whatever nuclear weapons work it may have engaged in. Part of the problem lies in the ambiguities of the language the administration employs. While dimmer bulbs might make assertions liable to be challenged and proven wrong by events in the near future, like “Iran is building a nuke that will be completed in six months,” for instance, suaver propagandists like those employed in the Obama administration are more likely to accuse Iran, like they do in the Times article, of continuing to engage in work on a “weapons design” on “a smaller scale,” a claim that could conceivably apply to Googling “how to build a nuclear bomb”. It’s therefore exceedingly difficult to prove such a statement is a lie, even though the average reader is likely to interpret such an assertion as meaning Iran is actively building a suitcase nuke for delivery in Manhattan -- not an unintended effect, mind you.

The ultimate problem lies in the whole premise of seeking to block Iran not only from having a nuclear weapon, but from achieving the “breakout capacity” to build one should it so desire or continuing the undefined “smaller scale” work on a weapons design. At the heart of this endeavor, beside a desire to punish a country that refuses to accept Western hegemony (it certainly isn’t about human rights when Israel and Egypt are raking in the U.S. foreign aid), is a doomed attempt to suppress the spread of knowledge. The very medium that lets all those urban Iranians express their distaste for the ruling regime on Twitter is the one that pipes in their LOLcats, porn and, yes Virginia, designs for an atom bomb, courtesy the U.S. government. So long as Iran maintains a domestic capability to enrich uranium, a half-decent military capability and an internet connection, it could probably build a nuclear weapon at some point in the future -- but not without the whole world knowing about it, as it would need to withdraw from the non-proliferation treaty and kick out international inspectors. A policy based on thwarting the inevitable -- the spread of knowledge, in this case of how to make a nuclear weapons -- is not one likely to be met with much success. But perhaps that’s the point.

'Obama orders air strikes on Guantanamo Bay'

WASHINGTON -- A series of U.S. predator drone strikes just after dawn this morning killed at least 220 suspected terrorists, many presumed to have ties with al-Qaeda, at the naval detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to two senior White House officials.

“We hit the jackpot,” said one official who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. “We killed a whole damn bunch of them there terrorist sons of bitches,” the source said, the sound of clinking glasses and celebratory gunfire audible in the background.

The strikes come just days after the attempted Christmas Day attack on a Northwest Airlines flight by a 23 year old Nigerian man alleged to have received ineffective crotch bomb training in Yemen. President Barack Obama himself authorized the mission, according to the officials, upon receiving word that nearly half of the men based at the Guantanamo Bay facility were Yemeni nationals, some of whom were suspected of being Muslim and having maintained an interest in herding sheep, possibly in order to recruit them as suicide bombers.

In launching the attack, Mr. Obama has not only diffused a perceived threat to U.S. national security, but he has fulfilled a key campaign pledge to shutter the Guantanamo detention facility, which had become an object of widespread international condemnation. Meeting the pledge had proved difficult, however, in the face of congressional opposition, with GOP lawmakers and centrist Democrats seeking to block the planned release of the Yemeni men housed there to their native country, where they argued it would be more cumbersome and expensive to bomb them.

While the U.S.’s legal authority to imprison men and boys at the Guantanamo detention center has been a matter of some dispute, its right to conduct drone attacks against targets it deems potential threats has provoked little controversy either at home or abroad, at least in countries populated with white people. Indeed, even as Mr. Obama has overseen a significant escalation in drone attacks, authorizing strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, in addition to U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he’s received a Nobel Peace Prize, a recognition of his efforts to promote peace through war.

Given international acceptance of the drone attacks, the Obama administration expects the same level of support for today’s strikes, which likewise took place on foreign soil -- as it happens, in a country deemed by the U.S. government to be a state-sponsor of terror. As one American official put it, “if we can kill ‘em without trial in Yemen, why the hell couldn’t we do the same a whole heckuva lot closer to our own shores?”

Though questioned by some human rights groups long considered hostile to freedom, the Guantanamo attack has been met with overwhelming praise from those who actually matter, with political analysts predicting a healthy boost in the Mr. Obama’s approval ratings among the general public as well.

“The president has shown that he’s tough, a regular blue collar guy not afraid to throw a few punches and kill a couple hundred bad guys trapped in cages when he needs to, which is really going to help him win those independents come 2012,” said University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato in an interview. “You can’t overestimate the electorate’s hunger for mass killing. Monday Night Football’s got nothing on Shock and Awe.”

Cable news commentators were similarly aflutter with praise for Mr. Obama. “Can’t you just imagine this guy’s masculine musk? I mean, I just want to douse myself in whatever his sweat glands are emitting,” said a visibly aroused Chris Matthews on his afternoon MSNBC program, Hardball.

But not all praised the president’s decision. In a fiery speech on the Senate floor, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Mr. Obama’s challenger during the 2008 election, denounced the administration’s approach to the war on terror as timid, “gook league” and lacking in theatrics.

“Why weren’t these men doused in acid and set ablaze amid fireworks and the loud and proud blaring of the national anthem? C’mon,” McCain thundered. “Why was there no consideration of the history books, here -- or pay-per-view? And frankly, my friends, why weren’t these men killed the moment our intelligence agencies learned they were actively living in the Middle East?”

A couple of other people also disagreed with the president’s decision, questioning the morality and wisdom of handing one fallible man the unilateral power to order the death of anyone he chooses, but no one really takes them seriously.

On advertising copy and a request for 2010

The ad says: "Try our product and lose 30 pounds, GUARANTEED!" The small print says, as of course it must: "*Your results may vary." Nope, no great political insight or impassioned indictment of American imperialism in this post, just an observation that those two statements don't really work together.

Anyway, happy New Year faithful reader(s?). And humanity, if you're out there: let's say we refrain from the whole war and exploitation thing we've been trying out for the last couple hundred centuries or so and give that do-unto-others nonsense a shot for, I don't know, a year?

UPDATE: Yeah, that request was swiftly denied.

US gov't report casts doubt on US gov't Iranian nuke claims

If you believed the politicians, one could be forgiven for thinking the end is nigh, the day fast approaching that the opposition-suppressing mullahs of Tehran can ignite a nuclear holocaust even their own president couldn’t deny, with Tel Aviv, Manhattan and Peoria, Illinois, tops on the target list. Inexplicably treated as a respected voice on foreign affairs on this past Sunday’s Meet the Press (brought to you by defense contractor Boeing), former House Speaker Newt Gingrich took time away from divorcing whoever his latest wife is to proclaim that “the Iranians have been lying consistently” about their nuclear program. “It's very clear the Iranians want to get nuclear weapons, [and] it's pretty clear the Iranians -- this current dictatorship will use them.”

And it’s not just the usual hawks on the right that are dusting off the arguments about a hostile Middle Eastern nation seeking weapons of mass destruction. Playing the role of Objective Foreign Affairs Reporter to Gingrich’s Elder Statesman, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell provided the unbiased analytical voice on why we all should be very afraid. “The Speaker is correct,” said Mitchell, a series of words that would have prompted immediate self-doubt in any grounded, rational thinker. Iran “is the biggest single threat, I think, that we face," she said, which if true speaks more to the relative security of the United States than its vulnerability, I think.

The Obama administration, took, has joined in on the fearmongering fun. "The Iranians have responsibilities to the international community to walk away from their . . . ballistic nuclear weapons program," White House spokesmen Robert Gibbs lectured in September, stressing the need for Iran to hand away its right to enrich uranium on its soil during the very negotiations Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- an accomplished fearmonger in her own right -- has herself declared won’t succeed. (At this point she is only raising the specter of imposing “crippling” sanctions on Iran rather than the possibility of its total obliteration, so perhaps that’s a baby step in the right direction.)

Obama, meanwhile, has at several turns asserted that Iran is "pursuing a nuclear weapon", convening a dramatic press conference in September to unveil the “secret” Qom nuclear facility that Iran itself had revealed days before to the IAEA, which has since inspected it. Fulfilling its traditional role as the printing press for the powerful, major media outlets dutifully ran with the story, informing the public that This Was It, the proof as-if-we-needed-it that Iran was up to no good, with ABC News' Jake Tapper penning helpful articles like this one, “Why Not Just Bomb the Qom Facility?”, which tellingly never ponders the unthinkable in serious Washington circles: the effect bombing radioactive facilities might have on the innocent Iranians you claim to care so much about. Such articles do drum up support for military action among the public, though, insofar as they suggest preemptive war -- and air strikes, boys and girls, are acts of war -- is just another ho-hum policy option for dealing with the supposed threat posed by Iran.

Congress, in typical me-too fashion, has also gotten into the act, with the House overwhelmingly passing a measure to impose sanctions on Iran’s gas imports, progressives and conservatives alike voting in lockstep to increase the hardship for the average Iranian over their government’s exercise of its rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which the U.S. with its massive nuke stockpiles and plans to develop more is arguably itself in violation of.

There's a funny thing about those claims U.S. politicians and journalists seek to pass off as beyond dispute: the folks that make up the U.S. intelligence community -- the very people whose livelihood depends on their finding a never-ending series of foreign hobgoblins -- say Iran abandoned any nuclear weapons program it may have had nearly 7 years ago, issuing a high-profile National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) in 2007 declaring just that, which both Obama and Clinton at the time praised as a welcome rebuke to the Bush administration. And the IAEA, whose inspectors are the ones actually on the ground in Iran examining its nuclear facilities, continues to verify that no enriched uranium is being diverted to a military program, with agency chief Mohammed ElBaradei declaring there to be "no credible evidence" of a covert weapons effort afoot.

But don’t take their word on the lack of a scary imminent Iranian thereat: even the Obama administration privately concedes it.

According to a report (pdf) just leaked from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), a non-partisan arm of Congress, the White House’s own “talking points made public September 25, 2009, stated that the [intelligence] community still assesses that ‘Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003.’’ Indeed, “On several occasions, the U.S. intelligence community has reaffirmed the 2007 NIE’s assessment that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program but is keeping its options open,” the report states. “For example, Leon Panetta, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, did so in May 2009. More recent press accounts have also reported that the community does not believe that Tehran has restarted its weapons program.”

The CRS' findings, which one should remember were available to every one of the lawmakers who blindly voted to impose yet further sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, continues:

Other factors also suggest that Iran may not have an active nuclear weapons program. First, the IAEA has resolved several of the outstanding issues described in the August 2007 Iran-IAEA work plan and has apparently not found additional evidence of a nuclear weapons program. Indeed, the agency has not discovered significant undeclared Iranian nuclear activities for several years (although, as noted above, the IAEA’s ability to monitor Iran’s nuclear facilities has decreased). Second, Tehran, beginning in 2003, has been willing to disclose previously undeclared nuclear activities to the IAEA (though, as previously discussed, Iran has not been fully cooperating with the agency). Third, Iran made significant changes to the administration of its nuclear program in fall 2003—changes that produced greater openness with the IAEA and may have indicated a decision to stop a nuclear weapons program.

Fourth . . . Iranian officials have stated numerous times that Tehran is not seeking nuclear weapons, partly for religious regions—indeed, Khamenei has issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons, according to Iranian officials. A change in this stance could damage Iranian religious leaders’ credibility. Moreover, Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute of Strategic Studies argued in May 2008 that “given the pervasive religiosity of the regime, it is unlikely that Iran’s supreme leader would be secretly endorsing military activity in explicit contradiction of his own religious edict.”

Iran also has legitimate reasons for not wanting to rely on outsiders for fueling its nuclear reactors, having been screwed over by foreign suppliers in the past, the report notes. And Iran's claim that past attempts to conceal its nuclear procurement efforts were intended to evade Western efforts to deny it technology it had a legal right to under the NPT, not to develop nukes, is one “that appears to be supported by a 1997 CIA report." In sum, the CRS report is a calm and measured analysis of Iran's nuclear program which finds little justification for the bedwetting and warmongering that passes for serious debate on the Sunday morning talk shows. Don't hold your breath waiting for David Gregory to interview the author, though, as actual expertise in the field on which one wishes to opine is an almost certain disqualification.

War: a laughing matter

Religion and politics are not recommended topics of discussion at the American dinner table. The aerial bombardment of innocent foreigners to be followed, perhaps, by the invasion and occupation of their land, on the other hand, is a matter of casual debate, water cooler talk, just another policy option to elite opinion makers, the prospect bandied about in newspapers and on TV with a solemnity usually reserved for the latest Yankees trade rumor. Even the arguments for war are trodded out with as much conviction and moral suasion as an ad for Ovaltine or a Medicare-qualifying motorized scooter, with former Democratic staffer, humanitarian interventionist and head of a fancy-sounding university “non-proliferation” center Alan Kuperman offering in The New York Times the marvelously weak case for war with Iran on the basis that, hey, it could work at disabling their supposed nuclear weapons program -- actually citing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to demonstrate the effectiveness of U.S. military action -- so, uh, why the hell no give it a go? All we have to lose are a few thousand dead Iranians.

The idea of killing innocent foreigners is also always good for a laugh. Even prior to 9/11, The Day Everything Changed, I recall a girl at my high school donning an uproarious “Nuke Iraq: Just Do It” t-shirt parodying the Nike slogan, an hilarious call for the nuclear annihilation of a people thousands of miles away who had never done the U.S. any harm worn as proudly on her chest as a teenager in a non-psychopathic country might wear a shirt displaying an allegiance to some popular band, perhaps. While the genocidal humor may be forgiven as the antics of an unthinking adolescent not considering its implications -- and I for one am willing to absolve one from much of the blame for views expressed under the influence of a Pennsylvania public school -- some children never grow up, peddling their juvenile interpretation of the world and morning shock jock approach to foreign affairs into gigs as highly paid political advisers and commentators.

The Weekly Standard’s Michael Goldfarb, a former campaign spokesman for John McCain, is one such particularly bloodthirsty and brutishly dumb example of the perpetual adolescent approach to foreign affairs, suggesting in a blog post today -- in a line he later thought better off -- that President Obama maybe ought to declare war on Japan if newly elected Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama remains in office, or something. You see, “Hatoyama is proving to be a major problem,” Goldfarb writes, pointing to bipartisan agreement on that score (hardly a selling point, I'd think). The source of the friction? Hatoyama’s desire to reassert Japan’s independence from the U.S. and transition it away from its current client-state status, manifested in the new prime minister’s interest in possibly removing American forces from their base in Okinawa rather than relocating them on the island, and his rather well-supported assertion that the U.S.-led war in Iraq has been a failure, a statement apparently beyond the pale ever since Obama himself embraced the surge.

Though the whole problem might be resolved should scandal bring down his government, “if Hatoyama does stay in place and continue on this course, well, perhaps Obama can look to FDR for inspiration in how to deal with troublesome Japanese leaders,” Goldfarb wrote, a line since disappeared from The Weekly Standard blog but still viewable on Google News and other sites. FDR, of course, faced with a very different and expansionist Japan, imposed an oil embargo against the import-dependent country in the months preceding Pearl Harbor. After the attack, he declared war on Japan -- all measures Goldfarb implies the U.S. government should apply to modern Japan because its new leader appears unwilling to act as the editors of The Weekly Standard and The Washington Post would like: as the governor of a de facto overseas American protectorate, a Guam with cooler gadgets. Question that setup and Goldfarb's first instinct is to call in the 101st Airborne.

The scary thing? Goldfarb's rants are merely less refined variations on the concerns of much of the foreign policy establishment, as evidenced by this Post article detailing anonymous "concerns" regarding Japan's new leader on the part of U.S. officials and allies -- the official leaks offering cataclysmic predictions for the security of Asia as a result of the new Japanese government's rather overdue steps towards asserting greater sovereignty over its affairs. Be comforted in the knowledge that no one in the U.S. government is seriously contemplating war with Japan, though: as FDR demonstrated, it doesn't have any oil. Now Yemen, on the other hand . . .*

[*Yemen is actually rapidly running out of oil. Neighboring U.S.-ally Saudi Arabia, which has been bombing parts of Yemen in recent months, still has a rather lot.]

Our police state and theirs

Torture. Extrajudicial killings. Arbitrary detention. The United States and Iran have a lot in common, really. But there’s a key difference: while the Iranian regime tends to undertake its crimes against humanity within Iran, the U.S. does it _all over the world_, from Lithuania to Egypt, and condones and/or enables countless more abuses on the part of its allies. Predictably, though, rather than discuss that uncomfortable truth politicians and major news outlets in America take a keen interest in Iran’s human rights abuses while only mentioning, say, “Gaza” if they mispronounce the name of their kids’ favorite musician -- it helps focus attention on the next Hitler du jour instead of America’s own shaky relationship with the rule of law, providing an easy opening for some shameless moral exhibitionism on the part of the ruling class and its media parrots.

Take State Department spokesman Philip Crowley’s statement at a press briefing on Wednesday that "Iran is increasingly showing itself to be a police state.” Now, there is no question the Iranian government has a horrendous record on human rights. And we are right to laugh when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad's attempts to equate the two, as it would be ridiculous to at all suggest that Iran’s record is in any way comparable to that of the United States. Indeed, their records are as far apart as could be -- after all, here in the U.S. we imprison people at a per capita rate three times that of Iran (pdf), with more than one in 100 American adults behind bars.

And while using illegal drugs is liable to get one thrown in prison in these United States, something called PBS (an acronym for a terrorist organization, most likely) reports the Iranian government has been “remarkably pragmatic” with regard to its drug policy, funding needle exchanges and methadone clinics rather than private prisons for a steady supply of non-violent drug offenders like some other countries. Further, though the U.S. government admits to having had more than 100 of its prisoners die in its custody -- many murdered during the course of one of those infamous we-were-just-defending-freedom “harsh interrogation techniques” -- the Obama administration has generally decided to "look forward, not backward" on such crimes, whereas Iran is set to prosecute a dozen officials in the deaths of several opposition protesters (though let's be honest, both countries would never go after the big guns -- something in common!). And, of course, the U.S. committed the ultimate human rights violation and war crime with the invasion of Iraq, killing at a least a quarter million people and driving millions more from their homes in the name of WMDs, or democracy, or . . . something (in the last two centuries Iran has invaded no one). So again, really, it would be terribly unfair to conflate Iran’s human rights record with that of the United States, with its almost 2.5 million people held as cattle behind bars.

(It should be said, though, that U.S. officials, unlike their swarthy counterparts, are careful not to violate any statutes when they torture or kill someone, a task made a bit easier when the state’s finest legal minds all agree that arbitrarily defined “enemy combatants” are not “persons” under the law.)

But! You know, those Iranians! Don't they know all civilized nations turn to private security firms to do their dirty business?

Off the record, I didn't talk to you

The words "off the record" are thrown about so often in Washington that it's sometimes evident the employer of the phrase is unfamiliar with its actual meaning, instead just habitually repeating savvy-sounding jargon they heard their colleagues or the serious-looking people on TV say. Other times it seems its sheer arrogance -- or perhaps a genuine lack of awareness -- at play, like when an aide to Senator Barbara Boxer declared his comments during a panel discussion before hundreds of policy wonks and energy industry officials were not to be reported by any member of the press.

The latest case clearly falls in the former category: Seeking a comment from an industry trade group for a story, I emailed the group's spokeswoman asking her if she'd like to weigh in. Moments later, I got a response declaring that -- "OFF THE RECORD" -- her organization was declining to comment. Try conveying that in a story.

"A request for comment from the group was received."
"Asked to comment on the controversy, the group's spokesperson responded."
"A spokeswoman for the group replied to a request for comment. Or didn't."

Tempted to go with, "A spokeswoman for the group, responding to a request for comment, became incoherent", I settled with, "A spokesperson for the group declined to comment." I'm confident the journalism gods (gods . . . ha!) won't be sending a lightning bolt my way.

History, as told by the U.S. government

"We think we have a strategy that will create the space and time for the Afghans to stand up their own security forces and take responsibility.  But we're not going to be, you know, walking away from Afghanistan again.  We, we did that before, it didn't turn out very well.  So we will stay involved, we will stay supportive, and I think that's exactly the right approach."

-- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Meet the Press, December 6, 2009

Advocates for a “strong” foreign policy of U.S. empire, beyond suffering the ills of projection and overcompensation, possess a remarkable capacity for ignoring inconvenient aspects of history. That is, while those of the bomb-them-‘till-their-free school of thought can point to a long list of countries and conflicts where they argue an American intervention could have prevented massive loss of life -- Rwanda, Darfur, etc. -- they are remarkably unconcerned with any of the negative consequences befalling a policy of constant war (such as the establishment of permanent and sizable constituency directly benefitting from empire and armed conflict that might agitate for wars not always on the basis of Samantha Power’s superior moral sensibilities) or the demonstrated failings of past U.S. interventions (Vietnam, Cambodia, East Timor, Iran, Iraq...). Conveniently, these are often the same people ordering the bombs to be dropped in the first place.

So when Hillary Clinton, alluding to the presence of al Qaeda in Afghanistan before 9/11, suggests that was a result of the U.S. “walking away” from the region, she’s conveniently gliding over more than a decade of American arms and funding that went to groups we now collectively label “the Taliban” -- and a few folks, like Osama bin Laden, that would later on make a name for themselves turning their fire against their former patrons -- as one would expect from a person in her position. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who as a high-ranking CIA official helped direct funding to the Afghan mujahideen beginning in 1979, has made the same self-serving claim, arguing the the hypothetical actions the U.S. did not take in Afghanistan are more responsible for its present state that the demonstrable, having-actually-occurred actions successive American administrations did take. For those who gain power and prestige from the maintenance of a global American empire -- people like Gates and Clinton, and the countless hangers-on at Washington think tanks and within the State and Defense bureaucracies -- it serves one’s interests well to contrast make-believe accounts of interventions that could be with the less than holy interventions of the real world.

Preferring a fairy tale straight out of Hollywood, Gates and Clinton neglect to mention the very real blowback that came about as result, not of some policy of backwards isolationism, but imperial Cold War proxy fighting aimed at undermining the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan by arming and funding -- via the always reliable Pakistani intelligence service, financial backing courtesy of our theocratic friends in Saudi Arabia -- many of those we now call the Taliban and al Qaeda (who, mind you, are not the same thing). Rather than a failure to build more schools and playgrounds following the Soviet exit, it was a proactive U.S. policy aimed at strengthening the mujahideen with money and arms that ultimately led to their being strengthened. One needn't possess a PhD in international affairs to grasp that cause and effect. The staggering number of Muslims the U.S. government has killed since the late 1980s has only further strengthened those groups by fueling opposition to the United States, often labeled "anti-Americanism" by the media as if it were some sort of irrational religious phenomenon and not a perfectly understandable reaction to American policy in the Middle East.

As becomes more obvious the more you observe those in power, it simply pays to be blissfully unaware -- or to appear that way -- if one wishes to rise to the top of the hierarchy. Consider Gates’ comments rejecting there being any historical comparison between the Soviet and American occupations of Afghanistan:

"First of all, the Soviets were trying to impose an alien culture and, and political system on, on Afghanistan.  But more importantly, they were there terrorizing the Afghans. They killed a million Afghans.  They made refugees out of five million Afghans.  They were isolated internationally.  All of those factors are different for, for us, completely different.  We have the sanction of the U.N. We have the sanction of NATO.  We have the invitation of the Afghan government itself.  We have 42 military partners in Afghanistan."

Boiled down, Gates' defense of the U.S.-led war is this: we’ve got more friends, which I doubt would pass good old St. Augustine’s litmus test. And spoken by a man who oversees another U.S. war that has created five million refugees and, by some accounts, led to the deaths of more than one million people -- to say nothing of the very real death and destruction U.S. policy has wrought on Afghanistan in the last decade alone that Gates so blithely elides -- the remarks are offensively asinine. Again, though, that’s just par for the course, to be expected.

And given the historical illiteracy of much of the major media's celebrity journalists, why should Gates be bothered with repeating uncomfortable truths that don't help the preferred U.S. narrative? It's not like he will ever be challenged on his history, certainly not by the likes of NBC's David Gregory, whose idea of a tough question is asking Gates -- no joke -- "Is failure an option in Afghanistan?" Well, David, no it isn't, I suppose. Practicing real journalism isn't one either, from the looks of it.

A tax for the military-industrial complex

British economist Arthur Cecil Pigou is famous for arguing that governments should correct perceived "externalities" imposed upon society by the production some good -- think pollution from a coal plant -- by imposing taxes on the producer of said good that, ideally, should be commensurate to the damages caused by the product. Keeping with that logic, it follows that if one thinks wars are something inflicted on society by people like defense contractors, generals and the living dead elder statesmen, then it ought to be they who pays for said wars. So when politicians propose imposing a new war tax on wealthy Americans to pay for the war in Afghanistan, I can't help but think they're a bit off the mark.

First: imposing a new progressive tax on the rich does not a "just war" make. Taxing the rich might please one's liberal sensibilities, but given that money will be used to inflict death and destruction upon innocent Afghans, sacrificing their lives just so some executive at Goldman Sach's pays a few more cents to the IRS would make one kind of a dick. Second: while I grant there's probably a good deal of overlap, a true Pigouvian tax would be one imposed on Lockheed Martin, those who voted for the Iraq war resolution (and those who approve funds for a military escalation in Afghanistan) and the staff of The Weekly Standard, not just the rich in general. Since I'm assuming such a tax would have to be awfully high -- too high for senior fellows at AEI and Brookings -- it would of course also necessitate the return of debtors' prisons, an unfortunate but necessary stick to go along with the carrot of endless war and appearances on Meet the Press, I think.

NYT: Japanese press corps too much like us

Peter Hart of Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting catches The New York Times, the premier vehicle for  disseminating establishment disinformation in the U.S. for the better part of a century -- The Washington Times the preferred outlet for those unable to get their crackpot conspiracies published in respectable papers like the central Georgia Penny Pincher -- reporting on the odd arrangement in Japan between the major media and the state:

". . . in which reporters from major news media outlets are stationed inside government offices and enjoy close, constant access to officials. The system has long been criticized as antidemocratic by both foreign and Japanese analysts, who charge that it has produced a relatively spineless press that feels more accountable to its official sources than to the public. In their apparent reluctance to criticize the government, the critics say, the news media fail to serve as an effective check on authority."

Rest assured, though, dear reader: it could never happen here.

The 'conspiracy' to debunk a smear campaign

Taking a page from her allies with the MEK, Jennifer Rubin of the neoconservative Commentary magazine has written what journalist Daniel Lubin accurately characterizes as a “paranoid post” (approvingly linked by Washington Times hatchetman Eli Lake) accusing a range of writers of various ideological stripes – including Andrew Sullivan, Spencer Ackerman, Matt Yglesias and Glenn Greenwald – of engaging in a secret campaign coordinated by some Washington PR firm to defend the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) and its president, Trita Parsi, from the slanderous and unsubstantiated claim from the likes of Rubin and Lake that the group is a front for the Iranian government.

Now, one should never be surprised to read something bat-shit crazy from Commentary magazine, but this is a truly bizarre instance of projection -- mirroring the MEK approach of accusing all their opponents of being Iranian spies -- wherein one of the very right-wing operatives defaming NIAC and Parsi suggests something shady and conspiratorial is at play in the effort to respond to her libels. This after it was well-publicized that the smear campaign against NIAC originated with a coalition of wacky neocons and agents of the anti-Iranian terrorist group the MEK. The only remarkable aspect of her post, really, is that she never gets around to explaining how George Soros was orchestrating the whole defense of NIAC all along from his liberal fortress in the sky (but I guess Michael Goldfarb beat her to it).

“Weeks before the story actually broke, the groundwork for the defense was being laid,” Rubin writes, reproducing a November 2nd email from Parsi alerting supporters to the coming smears. Weeks later, that smear campaign has unfolded, culminating in Lake's remarkably weak hit piece in the Times accusing Parsi of being an Iranian agent based on documents provided him by a neoconservative ideologue and a reported MEK agent – but it is Parsi and the “Left blogosphere” that is engaged in a conspiracy, Rubin says, suggesting those defending NIAC all go their talking points handed them by PR firm Brown Lloyd James (who?).

“That sort of smooth-running rebuttal doesn’t just happen on its own, it is fair to conclude,” Rubin writes, one eyebrow raised, “and you can’t say Parsi and NIAC aren’t getting their money’s worth from their PR team.”

Again we see how these ever-so-brave neoconservatives aren't willing to debate actual facts, like Luban's evidence the source of the Parsi/NIAC smear is a member of a foreign terrorist organization, so they reflexively fall back to the tactic of smearing, suggesting all who disagree with them are controlled by others. NIAC opposes sanctions and war against Iran? Well, then they must be directed by Iran, goes the line. Unimpressed with Lake's pathetic, evidence-free smear of Parsi as a foreign agent? Why, you must be directed by NIAC (and its spooky public relations team). Of course, the tact is juvenile and asinine, and more than a bit played out, but then so is the neoconservative world view.

Writes Luban:

“While I don’t want to get in the way of a good theory, I would suggest that Rubin could benefit from the judicious use of Occam’s Razor. It is indeed possible, I suppose, that every commentator who has disputed the charge that NIAC lobbies for the Iranian regime has only done so because they are receiving talking points and unmarked cash-filled envelopes from Brown Lloyd James. But let me venture what I think is a simpler explanation: commentators from across the political spectrum have argued that NIAC is not a tool of the Iranian regime because, well, it is utterly obvious that NIAC is not a tool of the Iranian regime.”

Obvious, at least, to those with half a brain (agents of Tehran, one would think, wouldn't send out press releases like this).

But Rubin isn't exactly the brightest bulb in the blogosphere, as she demonstrates with her claim that lefty bloggers “struggled mightily to paint Parsi as the innocent victim and somehow the friend of the Greens (neatly sidestepping the conspiracy to defund the same)” in their efforts to defend NIAC, thus their needing to rely on a PR firm's talking points. Except it really isn't so hard to defend Parsi's “conspiracy” to end U.S. aid to Iranian “opposition” groups. In fact, allow me to just quote Iranian dissident and journalist Akbar Ganji on the matter, via the BBC:

"The US democracy fund was severely counterproductive. None of the human right activists and members of opposition in Iran had any interest in using such funds, but we were all accused by Iran's government of being American spies because a few groups in America used these funds."

See? Not so difficult. But people like Rubin don't actually care about facts, the Iranian opposition, or the Iranian people, for that matter. What they care about is U.S. hegemony – that's it – and the Iranian regime's refusal to become a client state. If the mullahs in Tehran allowed a few U.S. bases in their country, then neocons would speak out about Iran's human rights situation about as much as they do Uzbekistan's – which is to say, not at all.

Full Disclosure: This post was dictated by George Soros at the request of Ayatollah Khamenei.

Faux journalism from a quasi-journalist

Few would confuse a publication owned by a messianic cult that requires its editors to attend creepy mass weddings with a credible news organization. And fewer still would mistake a hack reporter who uncritically regurgitates allegations from a reported member of a terrorist organization once closely allied with Saddam Hussein as part of an orchestrated smear campaign with an actual journalist. So it’s with some hesitation that I even bother addressing Eli Lake of The Washington Times’ recent piece suggesting the president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), Trita Parsi, is actually a foreign agent working on behalf of the Iranian regime -- a claim Lake, bent on learning only that which he has already concluded, forgets to find any evidence for.

But the article's worth addressing for a couple of reasons, mostly because it provides a case-study in how the militarist right seeks to deflect efforts to engage in actual nuanced, intelligent debate on foreign policy with attacks on their opponents character and motivations -- and demonstrates how, as with the fairy tale about Iraq's fictitious weapons of mass destruction, these right-wing operatives seek to create a narrative by planting dubious stories in the media. That the stories are almost instantly debunked matters not, a headline and a fantastical lede being all that matters when one's seeking to boost a flimsy smear for political ends.

Indeed, the evidence, so to speak, for Lake’s most sensational claim -- that Parsi is a foreign agent lobbying on behalf of Tehran -- is remarkably weak, even by Times standards, amounting to this: Parsi and his organization openly oppose sanctions and military action against Iran -- just like Iran’s government! -- ergo, he is an unregistered foreign agent of Iran. While arguing Parsi is thereby violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, Lake doesn’t bother to dig any further than emails handed him by crazed neoconservative Kenneth Timmerman and Hassan Daioleslam, a reported agent of the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) terror-cult, a group that allied itself with Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war and which continues to enjoy pockets of support in Washington despite its presence on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations. The smoking gun?

E-mail correspondence between Mr. Parsi and Mr. Zarif show Mr. Parsi suggesting that the Iranian diplomat meet with members of Congress.

"Happy to hear that you will meet with [Rep. Wayne] Gilchrest and potentially [Rep. James] Leach. There are many more that are interested in a meeting, including many respectable Democrats," Mr. Parsi wrote in an Oct. 25, 2006, e-mail.

And that’s pretty much it, which shows neither that Parsi was operating at the behest of the Iranian government nor that he received any financing from it. The rest of the story is just obfuscatory filler. The weakness of Lake’s case is further demonstrated by former Bush speechwriter David “axis of evil” Frum’s restatement of it:

Here we have a national of a hostile foreign power [ed. note: Parsi left Iran at age 4]. That national has gained important access to U.S. government and media. He has used that access to advocate an agenda remarkably coincident with the wishes of his home government.

-----

It’s basic curiosity to wonder: Who is this guy? By seeking to answer that question, Eli has committed real journalism.

Of course, real journalism would also seek to differentiate between fact and fiction. A real journalist might also be aware that the MEK and its supporters -- who favor sanctions against Iran and ultimately the installing of MEK leader Maryam Rajavi as Iran's "president" -- are notorious for claiming anyone who doesn't back their warped interpretation of Iranian politics and their specific agenda for bringing down the current regime is an agent of Tehran. When I wrote a piece this summer noting Reps. Bob Filner (D-CA) and Dana Rohrabacher's (R-CA) avowed solidarity with the MEK despite its status as an officially designated terrorist organization, I was immediately accused by one of the group's outspoken agents of being part of a plot by Ayatollah Khamenei and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad aimed at "using U.S. media to attack its arch-enemy" the MEK. And I'm a nobody!

An articulate, credible advocate for dialog with Iran like Parsi will naturally attract vociferous, overwrought opposition from these MEK operatives, as we now see unfolding with the attack led by Daioleslam, who first accused Parsi and the NAIC of being Iranian agents back in 2007. A trip to Dailoselam's website reveals he has in fact written little else over the past several years other than purported expose's of the "pro-Tehran lobby", a obsessive fixation in keeping with what one would expect of an MEK member with an ax to grind. It also reveals his ties to the Foundation for Democracy in Iran (FDI), founded by Timmerman, Joshua Muravchik and other extreme neoconservatives back in 1995, and which once claimed that "sources" -- within the MEK, no doubt -- had informed the group "that the Iranian regime is planning a nuclear weapons test before the Iranian New Year on March 20, 2006." So much for that. And so much for claiming Dailoselam and his cohorts have anything in the way of credibility.

As for the claim that Parsi's activities could loosely be defined as in the "interests" of Tehran, making him a foreign agent, well . . . I don't think Lake and his neocon allies want to go too far down that road, as whatever broad interpretation of the foreign agents act employed against a little known group like NIAC and its president would apply in spades to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which has long been dogged by claims it acts as a foreign agent. Of course, when AIPAC critics have argued just that, its defenders discovered the merits of a limited interpretation of the law.

Examining the question of whether AIPAC could be forced to register as a foreign agent back in 2004, the Jewish daily The Forward reported that legally "it would be difficult" to prove, according to experts.

“Lots of ethnic organizations throughout America are representing Americans who support foreign countries or political parties in foreign countries. None of those have in the past been considered foreign agents or required to register as such,” Tom Susman, chair of the the American League of Lobbyists’ ethics committee (don’t laugh), told the paper. “[AIPAC] doesn’t advocate on behalf of the government of Israel, but the nation of Israel.” Susman also said the law allowed for some coordination with foreign governments: “a substantial independence [of the lobbying group] is all that’s needed. Not total independence.”

If we’re to expand what it means to be a foreign agent, redefining it as merely acting in the “interests” of another country regardless of whether one’s financed or directed to do so or not, then by all means NIAC should register. But so should AIPAC. The likes of Lake and Frum, however, only appear to want to talk about the so-called Iran Lobby and its supposed influence in Washington, an extreme irony I need not elaborate on, almost as if they have an ideological fixation on one country, Iran, to the exclusion of others. I mean, when’s the last time either of them changed their Twitter avatars to express solidarity with human rights activists in say, Gaza, or Colombia?

The focus on Parsi is illuminating, though. Here we have neoconservatives yet again supposing they know what’s best for another country -- and that they of all people are most in touch with the mood on the ground in those other countries the U.S. somehow always ends up needing to bomb -- confronted with an outspoken guy who actually knows something about Iran outside of what you might hearing at an AEI lecture openly opposing sanctions and war based on the well-supported belief they’re likely to harm average Iranians more than their leaders. Knowing they can’t beat him on the merit of their by now discredited arguments, they turn to the only tools left when reasoned discourse is abandoned: venom and bile. One can’t merely have a difference of opinion, one must be a traitor, or a spy!, or another nefarious foreign agent of some sort dedicated to the unmitigated evil of furthering international dialogue. That they haven’t attacked Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner who also believes “sanctions would only aggravate the people’s hardship,” is likely because she isn’t as active in the Washington think tank community as Parsi (though every good neocon knows George Bush was robbed in ’03).

As Kevin Sullivan at the blog Real Clear World writes:

Anyone who could possibly argue that it's somehow pro-regime to support rapprochement and question Western democracy promotion inside Iran isn't really an honest broker in this policy debate. I happen to disagree with Parsi on sanctions, but I'm not about to call him "Iran's man" in Washington. That's irresponsible, and it speaks volumes about how truly disinterested hawkish pundits are in a conversation absent of bombs and regime change. It simply bores them.

In other words, war -- either on another country or on a perceived enemy like Parsi -- is the force that gives neocons like Lake meaning as they battle on the frontlines of Twitter. How very sad.

Misleading headline of the week

. . . courtesy of the Christian Science Monitor: "Irish priest kidnapped in Philippines released by MILF."

Reading the story one finds that the priest was released by the "Moro Islamic Liberation Front", not an attractive mature woman with whom . . . well, never mind.