Is the US Already at War With Iran?
Maybe – But You Wouldn’t Know It by Reading the News
by Charles Davis
by Charles Davis
DIGG THIS
Until the recent
tragic massacre on the campus of Virginia Tech, the media’s
previous obsession was covering what was undoubtedly the most important
story since the paternity test results were revealed for Anna Nicole
Smith’s baby: Don Imus, the favored "shock jock" of the
Washington political establishment, is something of a bigot. Of
course, this
isn’t news to anyone who has paid passing attention to the man
over the past few years, but it did provide national news outlets
with a much-needed excuse to avoid reporting on all of those depressing
stories
from Iraq, which are just too much of a distraction from the truly
important work that remains to be done in this country – like electing
the
next American Idol.
By giving
Don Imus more coverage than any single human being deserves, news
outlets were able to shelve stories that had started to grow a little
stale – like that one about the United States government supporting
terrorist attacks in the Middle East. Oh wait, you didn’t hear that
one? Well imagine this: a group described in news reports as "part
drug smuggler, part Taliban, part Sunni activist," operates in a
remote region of Pakistan and receives covert backing from a major
regional power player in order to conduct cross-border terrorist
attacks involving the kidnapping and videotaped execution of a neighboring
country's military and intelligence officials. Now if the country
involved were say, Syria or Iran, such a story might make the front
page of the New York Times or the Washington Post.
But as it is the United States government that his been implicated,
the nation’s leading news outlets are silent.
According
to an April
3rd piece published by ABC News, the United States is backing
a Pakistani tribal group called "Jundullah," or, "the
Army of God," in what ABC calls a "secret war against
Iran." The group operates in a region called "Baluchistan,"
a lawless area of Pakistan not controlled by the central government.
They have claimed responsibility for several deadly attacks near
the southeastern part of Iran that borders Pakistan, including a
February
bombing in the town of Zahedan that killed eleven people. Iran
has accused the CIA of supporting the group, but the United States
government has denied any involvement. But according to the ABC
News report, the support is arranged in such a way "that the
U.S. provides no funding to the group, which would require an official
presidential order or 'finding' as well as congressional oversight."
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV),
when asked about the report, said he believed the Bush administration
"would go to any lengths" to conceal the activity from
Congress. Pressed on what he could do as Intelligence Chairman to
investigate the matter, he responded:
"Don’t
you understand the way Intelligence works? Do you think that
because I’m chairman of the Intelligence Committee that
I just say ‘I want it, give it to me?’ They control
all of it – all of it – all the time. I only get,
and my committee only gets, what they want to give me."
The arrangement
is eerily similar to the
backing that the Afghan mujahadeen received in the 1980s from
both the Carter and Reagan administrations. At that time the United
States was engaged in a proxy war not against Iran, but the Soviet
Union. In
a 1983 proclamation, President Ronald Reagan went so far as
to declare March 21st "Afghanistan Day," praising
the Islamic groups, which included Osama bin Laden and others who
would later form Al Qaeda, as "valiant and courageous Afghan
freedom fighters" for their resistance to the Soviet occupation.
But the
news that the United States may be backing militant extremists should
come as no surprise. Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh revealed
in the New Yorker back in January 2005 that President
Bush signed several executive orders permitting Special Forces and
commando units to target "suspected terrorist sites" in
at least ten different countries. The units operate under the Pentagon’s
command structure so as to bypass restrictions and oversight requirements
that are placed on the CIA. According
to Hersh, Pentagon advisers said the covert activities could
involve the recruitment of local citizens in the Middle East "to
join up with guerillas or terrorists," and involve "organizing
and carrying out combat operations, or even terrorist activities."
As a former military official familiar with the plan put it, "We’re
going to be riding with the bad boys."
So why
has the media afforded such extensive coverage to "Imus-gate,"
yet found no time to cover allegations of American-sponsored terrorism?
Outside of ABC News, it’s a struggle to find any discussion of U.S.
support for anti-Iranian extremist groups in the major media outlets.
While the New York Times was quick to speak about the Imus
affair in an April
11th editorial, there has been not so much as a mention of the
Jundullah story in their paper, much less a critical look at how
the story undermines the White House’s moral authority to criticize
Iran for its supposed "meddling" in Iraq. The same goes
for the Washington Post, where
a search for "Jundullah" reveals only two wire articles
on the subject. One finds no editorials questioning the policy,
no reaction from lawmakers, no introspective takes on the morality
of such a policy – one finds next to nothing. In contrast, the paper
has run over
200 articles on the Don Imus story, examining it from every
possible angle until the point where the mere mention of the name
"Don Imus" is enough to cause one’s mental faculties to
shut down in protest.
This isn’t
the first time that the major news outlets, namely the Washington
Post, have downplayed reports that may be detrimental to the
Bush administration’s claims against Iran. In fact, on April 7th,
the Post simply rewrote history. As a number
of blogs have noted,
the Post extensively rewrote a Reuters
article that directly contradicts administration claims
that deadly devices known as "explosively formed penetrators,"
or EFP’s, could only be supplied by Iran. The Reuters piece describes
a recent battle in the southeastern Iraqi town of Diwaniya, and
quotes a U.S. military spokesman describing how troops there "discovered
a factory that produced ‘explosively formed penetrators’ (EFPs)."
A Google News screenshot shows that the Post initially included
this information: [H/T Eschaton]
But it only
took a few moments before the offending paragraph was removed. In
its updated
version, the Post neglects any mention of the EFP factory,
choosing instead to include details about a roadside bombing near
Baghdad that involved an "explosively formed projectile, a
particularly deadly type of device which Washington accuses Iran
of supplying Iraqi militants."
More than
just a mere oversight, the Post’s rewriting of history is
just further evidence that the news media has failed to learn from
the mistakes that played a major role in leading the country into
war with Iraq. Then, as now, the news media failed to ask the hard
questions of misleading
and deceptive
statements made by the Bush administration. Reporters, like the
New York Times' Judith Miller, uncritically reported administration
claims in breathless stories that graced the front page, often with
no mention of dissenting views or conflicting evidence. If the media
had been more critical of claims of an "imminent threat"
and weapons of mass destruction, then perhaps the country would
not have been so easily led into war. But since 9/11, the American
media has often been too afraid to be seen as unpatriotic to ask
the hard questions. This has left some news outlets to conduct themselves
more as an appendage of the American government and less as an independent
body worthy of a democracy (a topic explored in depth in a new
PBS documentary by veteran journalist Bill Moyers). As bombs
fell on Baghdad at the beginning of the U.S. invasion, cable news
anchors regaled viewers with images of "shock and awe,"
too busy adjusting their American flag lapel pins to do much else
but read Pentagon press releases. Today, many Washington reporters
still seem more comfortable socializing with congressional staffers
and watching Karl
Rove rap than they are asking the vital, informed questions
that could prevent another conflict.
Journalists
can, and should, do a better job questioning the assertions made
by the political elite, and not fall prey to the all too common
inside-the-Beltway mentality and its often-misguided "conventional
wisdom" (see: Iraq).
The fundamental goal of journalism – exposing deception and speaking
truth to power – can occur only when journalists aren’t afraid to
offend those in power or to take a risk in asking questions that
may prevent them from attending Washington’s swankiest cocktail
parties. While the United States government continues to struggle
with the disastrous occupation of Iraq, it should be the duty of
every news outlet that propagandized for the invasion of that country
to ensure the public is fully informed of any and all attempts to
embroil this nation in another conflict in the Middle East – but
don’t hold your breath.
April
20, 2007
Charles
Davis [send him mail]
is
a freelance journalist in Washington, DC. More of his work may be
found on his personal
website.
Copyright
© 2007 LewRockwell.com
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