Target Iran

A few months ago I quoted Gene Healy's post at Cato@Liberty

For the neoconservatives, it’s not about Israel. It’s about war. War is a bracing tonic for the national spirit and in all its forms it presents opportunities for national greatness.

With the congress and most of the American people preoccupied with Bush's surge in Iraq we are reminded that the neocons and the Bush administration are preparing to fulfil their testosterone requirements by attacking Iran. The first warning comes from the always shrill conservative Republican Paul Craig Roberts.
Bush Is About To Attack Iran
Why Can’t Americans See It?

Rather than winding down one war, Bush is starting another. The entire world knows this and is discussing Bush’s planned attack on Iran in many forums. It is only Americans who haven’t caught on. A few senators have said that Bush must not attack Iran without the approval of Congress, and postings on the Internet demonstrate world-wide awareness that Iran is in the Bush Regime’s cross hairs. But Congress and the Media – and the demonstration in Washington – are focused on Iraq.

What can be done to bring American awareness up to the standard of the rest of the world?

In Davos, Switzerland, the meeting of the World Economic Forum, a conference where economic globalism issues are discussed, opened January 24 with a discussion of Bush’s planned attack on Iran. The Secretary General of the League of Arab States and bankers and businessmen from such US allies as Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates all warned of the coming attack and its catastrophic consequences for the Middle East and the world. Writing for Global Research (January 24), General Leonid Ivashov, vice president of the Academy on Geopolitical Affairs and former Joint Chief of Staff of the Russian Armies, forecast an American nuclear attack on Iran by the end of April. General Ivashov presented the neoconservative reasoning that is the basis for the attack and concluded that the world’s protests cannot stop the US attack on Iran. There will be shock and indignation, General Ivashov concludes, but the US will get away with it. He writes:

"Within weeks from now, we will see the informational warfare machine start working. The public opinion is already under pressure. There will be a growing anti-Iranian militaristic hysteria, new information leaks, disinformation, etc. . . . The probability of a US aggression against Iran is extremely high. It does remain unclear, though, whether the US Congress is going to authorize the war. It may take a provocation to eliminate this obstacle (an attack on Israel or the US targets including military bases). The scale of the provocation may be comparable to the 9-11 attack in NY. Then the Congress will certainly say "Yes" to the US President."

And posting at The Left Coaster Col Sam Gardiner paints a similar picture.

The President said he not going to attack Iran. If that’s true, I am left wondering why the outrage effort. Why has the White House created an interagency working group whose mission is to build outrage in the world about Iran? The whole effort is so much in the pattern of message preparation for Gulf II that I am left concerned.

In other words, not only does it look as if there are military preparations for striking Iran, it looks as if the White House is doing public opinion preparations for a strike on Iran. Three items stand out this week.

The British Daily Telegraph quotes a senior European defense official: “North Korea had invited a team of Iranian nuclear scientists to study the results of last October’s underground test to assist Tehran’s preparations to conduct its own possibly by the end of this year."

I don’t know a single serious student of the Iranian nuclear program who would give the report any credibility. I talked to a Newsweek reporter about the story. He said the same about the Telegraph guy wrote the article. The story, however, is extremely important.

Using the playbook on strategic communications, when you want to plant a false story, you first find a reporter or a newspaper that will accept what you give them. With just one plant, you can achieve an echo that will support your cause.

It has not been usual for stories to be planted in UK newspapers. There is a great deal of message cooperation between the US and the UK.

In the early part of the fighting in Afghanistan, Cherie Blair and Laura Bush were both telling the press, using exactly the same words to argue why we had initiated the attack. They both said if you wear polish on you nails you could have your nail pulled out. The obvious conclusion was that we should be enraged.

During Gulf II preparations, we saw leaks from officials to UK newspapers with wonderful pieces of information such as the fact that Saddam Hussein was given a passport by France so he could leave Iraq. We read that the reason Saddam Hussein was not found was because the Russian Embassy had allowed him sanctuary. Stay enraged with Iraq, the French and the Russians.

US reporters maintain their integrity by writing that it was “reported in the Telegraph” and don’t have to violate any standards of journalism. With this story, the echo appeared in over 300 outlets over the course of the week. It was immediately reported on Fox News.

There are now many in the world who are outraged that Iran is less than a year from a nuclear weapon.

The other significant item has been some short ads that have appeared on television stations in the Washington area. These ads say things like, “Iran sent thousands of children marching to their deaths to clear minefields, armed with only plastic keys to unlock the gates of heaven.” Obviously, we are to be enraged.

As with the planted story, I can’t prove this is coming from the Media Outreach Working Group, but the pattern makes me very suspicious. Tracing individual and group connections to the ads, the DNA is Republican. During the preparation for Gulf II, we saw the same kind of ads. We also know the RNC has spent money for ads supporting White House policy positions in other cases.

Finally, the Holocaust surfaced in a major way this week. Certainly, the President of Iran whose mouth exceeds his authority in the country created the opening. I fear the strategic communications teams will exaggerate to build outrage.

Both Roberts and Gardiner are pointing out how the media propaganda organ is being fired up once again, reporting the lies and deceptions of those who want war at any cost.

Escalation of the failed effort in Iraq is nothing but a decoy at this point. It's Iran that probably always was the necons target. It was Iran after all that has kicked sand in their faces more than once. And George W. Bush made it clear yesterday that he is still the King and that congress is not only irrelevant but according to Secretary of Defense Gates traitorous.