Control Freak Steve

It's no surprise that Father Knows Best Harper has been using a tightly controlled message strategery to muzzle his ministers and anyone who represents his government or that they've tried for years to cloak the Canadian involvement in the Afghanistan war as some sort of peacekeeping mission. (See also: 2007: Canadians Will Not be Fooled by War Propaganda).

What is surprising is that they actually allowed this access to information request that uncovered the MEPs to go through considering their blatant contempt for free-flowing information. ("Attack dog" Marleau retired not long after that. We'll see how the new czar does under this repressive regime.)

Anyone who watched question period the past couple of weeks saw the MEP talking points about the Cons' G8/G20 billion dollar security cost boondoggle following Steve's Bouncing Ball of Bullshit as the excuses rolled out day after day:

"We don't want to spend this money. We have to."

"9/11."

And today's rendition after being confronted with the "fake lake" controversy:

"We're proud of Canada."

"Tourism."

The message has been clear: if you oppose spending a billion bucks on security for a 72 hour gabfest, you:

1. Hate Canada.

2. Hate security and the security forces.

Just more of the typical fear-mongering that Conservatives are infamous for.

Poor Steve.

And he wonders why his party can't muster enough support to actually form a majority?

Look in the mirror, honey.

Transparency: a word in Steve's dictionary that comes between tragedy and treason.
 

Sunday Food for Thought: Propaganda

 

“The goal of modern propaganda is no longer to transform opinion but to arouse an active and mythical belief”

- Jacques Ellul

Stop the US Election Coverage and Let Me Off

A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.
-Mark Twain

I don't blog about the daily goings on in the US election race here although I do follow the coverage almost religiously - taking time out when my head feels like it's going to explode or when the spinning gets to the point that I envision Linda Blair's head in The Exorcist. Yes, it is that bad.

Ironically, the great promise of the mainstream "progressive" blogs was to act as a counter to the half-truths and outright lies perpetrated by the MSM. However, this year, with the Democratic race narrowed down to a fierce contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, those blogs (like Daily Kos and others) have shown that their so-called factual standards are no better than the mainstream journalists they've railed against for years. They have become exactly what they claimed to abhor.

It's tiring enough to have to chase down the veracity of MSM stories through trusted venues like FactCheck.org, SourceWatch, Judicial Watch, and CorpWatch. I think we're on the verge of needing a BlogWatch site for some sort of objective analysis of what's being peddled on those sites as truth when what we're really getting is Colbertesque "truthiness" instead.

Additionally, when it comes to judging what the traditional, corporatist American media is trying to sell us, there are handy sites like FAIR, Editor & Publisher, and the Columbia Journalism Review along with several other sites. But when it comes to sorting through what's being peddled about the election on the blogs, once again we're stuck with sorting out the often hyperventilated hyberole for ourselves.

Throw in the cable news opinion shows, and yes - that even applies to the darling of the progressives, Keith Olbermann, who now regularly posts his Obama-biased rants at Daily Kos because he knows where his bread is buttered (there's also a "watch" site dedicated to him and he does need to be watched considering that his "reporting" has become sloppy lately) and those of us who are a) interested in facts and b) have had more than our fill of the spin appear to live in some sort of No Man's land vacated by people whom we thought (at least I did at one time) sought to fight for rationality and common sense. That's been tossed overboard by people who are so incredibly emotionally-invested in their candidate of choice (even though both Dem candidates' platforms are nearly identical) that the "progressive" zone - full of racism, sexism and intolerance in general - has become nothing more than the equivalent of some of the worst right-wing blogs.

We know that the Democratic party will survive this election. The question is, with all of the inter and intra-blog fighting going on, will the so-called "progressive" community make it through this election to go on to focus on who the real enemy is: the right-wingers who may be poised to again run the US government? There are wounds out there in "netroots" land that I don't think will ever be healed.

When I step back from observing all of this though, I have to say that it's useful that these battles have exposed some extremely nasty things about some people who deem to call themselves "progressive". There's a horribly abusive underbelly in the Democratic party, witnessed through reading some of the posts and comments on the various blogs, that reveals just how hypocritical some Democrats who claim the moral high-ground really are. While some people claim to support their candidate's message of unity and all things noble about what the Democratic party supposedly stands for, they clearly show that their personal take is so incredibly far removed from ideals like equality, justice and human/civil rights for all that I don't even know if they are Democrats.

The bigger question in this reality is, however, whether the party itself even stands for those principles it proudly displays on its mantle. In many ways I don't think it does, which is why I'm under no illusions that a Democratic president will truly come through for the millions who are placing their hopes in a party that's promising major societal changes that will make a big difference in America's current cultural climate. This is, after all, a party that won't even attempt to prosecute Bush for his war crimes. For me, that says it all.

Instead, what we have now are daily pathetic displays of who said what where and when and what did they really mean? As if that ought to pass for an acceptable substitute for what really ails America. It's SpinTainment and there's no doubt that it's a huge industry, just as US elections, with donations to candidates in the hundreds of millions of dollars, are their own industry as well. While Democratic candidates talk about how much money has been stolen from US taxpayers in the name of the illegal occupation in Iraq - money they say could have gone towards education, infrastructure and so many other American needs - they're raking in huge amounts of money for what, exactly? To buy the presidency. A pursuit that goes on, not just for months, but for years. You cannot honestly rail against obscenity if you play a part in purveying it.

This race has shown just how undemocratic and vicious Democrats can be and it has also shown just how little truth is valued on the so-called "left" which, in many too instances is just centrism dressed up in liberal clothing anyway. I'm all for a long Democratic battle. Let the knives continue to come out. Maybe then, after all of the blood has been drawn and the negativity has exhausted Dem party supporters, there will be a long, hard look at exactly what the party has become. In the end, if they're truly willing to admit it, I think they'll find that their ideals have taken a back seat to exactly the kind of divisiveness they accuse the right-wingers of spreading. And they'll also find that their methods - excusing blatant spin as being prized above reality - are just as useless and damaging as those of their political opponents. That's if they're even willing to take that desperately needed long, hard look.

In the meantime, I'll stick to looking for my facts in places that have no axes to grind, no candidate to support and no piper to pay. One head-spinning Linda Blair was enough.
 

America's Need for Enemies

America has a pathological need to have enemies - to play the hero. And when it doesn't have real ones, it creates them.

It's a paranoid way to exist in a world where it has been proven, time and time again, that differences and over-exaggerated threats serve only one purpose: to inflate the importance of America's power. And it's the love of that power that allows so many Americans to buy into the propaganda foisted upon them by successive governments that the idea of "America" must be protected at all costs. It breeds an insecurity so rabid in its citizens that they willingly surrender their own rights in the furtherance of that goal because they are not "the enemy", after all. Or so they think as they fail to acknowledge that their government sees them as exactly that.

Since the country's inception, when native peoples were considered a wholesale threat who had to slaughtered or Americanized in order to be brought into line, when slaves were held as chattel because their un-Americanism made them less than people, when power that women sought by being allowed to vote was seen as a threat to the very fabric of democracy to the internment of Japanese Americans during WW2 followed by the communist witch hunt led by McCarthy, to the need of the powers that be to infiltrate the anti-Vietnam war movement and feel threatened by the civil rights movement to the renewed fear of communists and now the new "terrorists" lurking behind every dark-skinned person who looks at someone differently - Americans have been conditioned to live in fear of the other when, in fact, their friends and family members actually constitute more of an actual threat to them on any given day. Crime perpetrated by strangers ought to be the least of their worries. But that doesn't jibe with the myth that outside forces or from other countries or people who are "different" hold the key to whether or not they will actually live or die.

The Bush administration's successful use of psyops to keep the population living in perpetual fear is still effective - despite the fact that their claims of things like those of Saddam Hussein having WMD or a connection to 9/11 have been proven to be false. And now, the demonization of someone like Iran's president Ahmadenijad and the hysterical reaction it has created in yet another example of how manipulated people will choose to be fooled by a government that has absolutely no track record of credibility.

But, America needs its enemies. Because, when America has enemies, there's power to be grasped and money to be made by those whose business it is to "defend" against those "threats". What ordinary people who refuse to look at why they're being manipulated fail to grasp is that there's a system being fed by their fear and it's not a system that benefits them in any way. It benefits the powermongers, the military-industrial complex, the political operatives, the lobbyists, the arms dealers, the countries the US claims it needs to protect in order to be the keeper of its "interests".

Those interests are power and money that come via the pillaging of the world's resources and the cost of those exploits is the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in foreign lands along with those who willingly sacrifice their lives in the name of the myth. Those sacrifices are the trade off that those in power are willing to make to secure their treasure. Those sacrifices are nothing but names and numbers to people like Bush, Cheney and the neocons. They're expendable people who only serve to keep the oppressive system functioning. The Iraq war is nothing but a modern act of piracy with more sophisticated weaponry.

And Ahmadenijad? The Iranian president who actually has very little power beyond his words and whose government is cooperating with the IAEA's inspections while asserting it his country's right to have nuclear energy and weaponry? He's the new Saddam, according to the Bush administration and leaders of other countries like France and Canada who are acting like nothing more than puppets in order to whip up the same hysteria about him that Bush and his cadre did about Hussein and Iraq. We've been here before. Once again, we have the same warnings from Mohammed elBarardei to let the process work. Once again, we have a compliant world press more than eager to sell an attack on Iran as being justifiable.

This time, however, having been there, we know that the Bush administration can and will do whatever it wants to about Iran because it has proven that it has absolutely no regard for the consequences it foists upon the world as a result of implementing its neocon policies or world dominance and influence.

So we wait.

There's no point in discussing whether or when an attack might happen. What needs to be discussed is the pathology, the history ie. how America has reached this point - because that's the only way it can begin to be changed. That change won't come with a new president in the White House in 2009. The pathological need for an American belief in its own power is ingrained in every single candidate running for office (except perhaps for Dennis Kucinich - but he won't win anyway.)

America is sorely in need of a paradigm shift. Will that come from within or will a country like China finally call in the debt America owes it to actually force a change? Just how much more does American democracy need to self-destruct before the people actually stand up strongly and take notice? More importantly, are they willing to really defend America by insisting that the power games are over - that America is about them - not some stuffed egos in suits in DC who are only in it for themselves?

Perhaps the bottom line is this: do they even care? Or have they been so beaten into submission that the idea of "America" no longer matters any more when all they can muster is enough energy to survive as they flip on the tv everyday to see if this is the day that America has, once again, attacked another country in their name that is no threat to their security? And if it has, what then?

Related:

"Petty and Cruel Dictator" by Cindy Sheehan (h/t Madman in the Marketplace)

A Feeling I'm Being Had by Scott Adams at The Dilbert Blog

Turning Ahmadinejad into public enemy No. 1 by Juan Cole
 

Video: Olbermann - Surge Protectors & The Great Conflation

All of the buzz leading up to the surge report to be given by Petraeus next week has been like watching movie trailers in which the major action shots released show, for all intents and purposes, the entire content of the movie.

There won't be any surprises.

Olbermann has a look at how "insurgent" numbers have been fixed around the surge policy and Jonathan Alter of Newsweek discusses 'The Great Conflation" ie. the continual, nauseating linking of the Iraq war with 9/11.



The situation in Iraq is such a farce that an independent report this week called for disbanding Iraq's national police force which is rife with sectarian Shiite bias. The Democrats, meanwhile, couldn't put a coherent policy plan together about how to deal with the Iraq war if their lives depended on it. Maybe that's the problem: their lives don't depend on it. They might be singing a different tune if they were all forced to live in the middle of Baghdad for a month or so. In the meantime, they just cobble together whatever they think might make their base happy while blaming those nasty Republicans for not being able to get anything done. (And those Republicans are nasty, but at least they know how to put up a real fight when they go after something they want.)

Dana Milbank, in what is perhaps a precursor to what will surely be the reactions from both parties to the WH/Petraeus report next week, shows how Democrats and Republicans are using the independent commission's report to try and sell the same old schtick about the war. No one, it seems, has any new ideas.

Madeleine Albright seems to think that if only Bush would admit his mistakes, some major corner would be turned for US allies to come in and save the day. It's long past time for that to mean anything and Bush won't do it anyway, so what's the point?

As for what Olbermann and Alter were talking about, here is the WaPo story about how the surge numbers have been manipulated.

The intelligence community has its own problems with military calculations. Intelligence analysts computing aggregate levels of violence against civilians for the NIE puzzled over how the military designated attacks as combat, sectarian or criminal, according to one senior intelligence official in Washington. "If a bullet went through the back of the head, it's sectarian," the official said. "If it went through the front, it's criminal."

"Depending on which numbers you pick," he said, "you get a different outcome." Analysts found "trend lines . . . going in different directions" compared with previous years, when numbers in different categories varied widely but trended in the same direction. "It began to look like spaghetti."

"spaghetti".

There you have it.

I'm sorry, but aren't we talking about dead people here?

Related:
Most of world wants U.S. out of Iraq in a year: poll

New Twist In Saga Over ‘Petraeus Report’: There Will Be No Report
 

Oh, Ari

Spinmeister and spokespuppet extraordinaire. How I have not missed you.

Iraq, Bush, Vietnam & The Cheerleading Democrats

If you can't beat 'em (even when you have the majority in congress and choose to not even try), join 'em.

You could smell this coming from a mile away:

The leading Democratic candidates for the White House have fallen into line with the campaign to praise military progress while excoriating Iraqi leaders for their unwillingness to reach political accommodations that could end the sectarian warfare.

"We've begun to change tactics in Iraq, and in some areas, particularly in Anbar province, it's working," Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) said in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Monday.

"My assessment is that if we put an additional 30,000 of our troops into Baghdad, that's going to quell some of the violence in the short term," Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) echoed in a conference call with reporters Tuesday. "I don't think there's any doubt that as long as U.S. troops are present that they are going to be doing outstanding work."

Advisers to both said theirs were political as well as substantive statements, part of a broader Democratic effort to frame Petraeus's report before it is released next month by preemptively acknowledging some military success in the region. Aides to several Senate Democrats said they expect that to be a recurring theme in the coming weeks, as lawmakers return to hear Petraeus's testimony and to possibly take up a defense authorization bill and related amendments on the war.

It didn't take a political genius to figure out that when the Dems crowed about really pushing back against the Iraq war in September they would, as usual, just cave. Somehow, Nancy "Everything opposing Bush is off the Table" Pelosi and "Give 'em hell" Harry Reid (who can't even manage a "heck" or a "darn" most days) thought their ingenious strategy of siding with the WH and Republicans was going to give them leverage. (Don't ask me - I didn't invent that game plan.)

The Dem leadership (and I use that term loosely) justifies this Good News™ about Iraq burst as a "preemptive strike" (hmmm...where have I heard that before?) against a barrage of right-winger war pimping ads that will play the next month. A $15 million budget? They'll need a helluva lot more money than that to turn things around in the polls. And that is what has people like me scratching our heads and wondering why the Democrats are so damn afraid to pick a position and stick to it. Cut the funding. Get it over with. Can't do that though if you're beholden to oil and military industrial complex lobbyists, right?

Meanwhile, Bush Saint Dubya (patron saint of chickenhawks) invoked the Vietnam war as a warning today during a speech he gave to vets. Now, all you need to know about that is this:

1) Bush speeches are carefully calculated fearmongering propaganda. I don't doubt that Bush actually believes the shit that he spews, but trying to reignite a debate about the Vietnam war is just a distraction. If he was so damned concerned about the Vietnamese people, he wouldn't have been playing a game of Where's Dubya in the US during the war and would have bucked up to actually go over there to fight.

2) Bush is an idiot.

Here's what he said:

"One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary, new terms like 'boat people,' 're-education camps' and 'killing fields.'"

Here's a reality check:

Few Americans realize that close to two million people died, that none of the perpetrators have been brought to justice and that the United States helped bring about the crisis that lead to the Khmer Rouge takeover.

And, of course, war criminal Henry Kissinger is one of Bush's Iraq war advisers. So there actually is a similarity between then and now. Unfortunately, for Saint Dubya, it doesn't work in his favour.

I'm sure the newly rekindled Vietnam war debates will be quite lively in the next little while, but Bush's predictions about what will happen in Iraq when troops withdraw have no basis in current reality. Different war. Different time. Different circumstances. And, as CNN analyst David Gergen put it, you really have to wonder why Bush would refer to Vietnam when his administration hasn't even bothered to learn the lessons of that war ie. the "quagmire" predicament. So, what is there to argue about and why are the Dems still cowering when it comes to Iraq?

Oh, and one more thing:

Democrats Would Want Australian Troops To Stay In Iraq As Long As Possible

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - Sources close to Sens. Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama have said a Democratic president would ask Australia to maintain its troop presence in Iraq for up to a further three years. A Democratic administration would also look to use Australian assistance in training Iraqi forces and seek its assistance worldwide.

So no, Dem supporters, your precious top tier candidates don't plan to bring US troops home any time soon. Sorry to burst that bubble, but someone has to do it.
 

Video: Go to Iraq and fight, Mr President

transcript

Excerpt:

Sen. Clinton has been sent — and someone has leaked to The Associated Press — a letter, sent in reply to hers asking if there exists an actual plan for evacuating U.S. troops from Iraq.

This extraordinary document was written by an undersecretary of defense named Eric Edelman.

“Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq,” Edelman writes, “reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia.”

Edelman adds: “Such talk understandably unnerves the very same Iraqi allies we are asking to assume enormous personal risks.”

A spokesman for the senator says Mr. Edelman’s remarks are “at once both outrageous and dangerous.” Those terms are entirely appropriate and may, in fact, understate the risk the Edelman letter poses to our way of life and all that our fighting men and women are risking, have risked, and have lost, in Iraq.
[...]
This, sir, is your war.

Sen. Clinton has reinforced enemy propaganda? Made it impossible for you to get your ego-driven, blood-steeped win in Iraq?

Then take it into your own hands, Mr. Bush.

Go to Baghdad now and fulfill, finally, your military service obligations.

Go there and fight, your war. Yourself.

Amen to that.
 

Canadians Will Not be Fooled by War Propaganda

When it comes to talking about the Afghanistan war, Allan Gregg's Strategic Council prefers this method:

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
- Joseph Goebbels

And one big proponent of that strategy is the boy king to the south:

“See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."
- George W. Bush

From Friday's Globe & Mail:

OTTAWA — The Harper government has been told to stop referring to “fighting terrorism” and the Sept. 11 attacks, and to banish the phrase “cut and run” from its vocabulary if it is to persuade a skeptical public that the military mission in Afghanistan is worth pursuing.

A public-opinion report says only 40 per cent of respondents across Canada, and almost none in Quebec, support the deployment. To change the perceptions, it recommends putting the emphasis on “rebuilding,” “enhancing the lives of women and children,” and “peacekeeping.”

The report to Foreign Affairs was prepared last month by The Strategic Counsel . It paints a bleak picture of weak public support for the military mission, for which the firm blames “unbalanced, mostly negative” media coverage of the war and misperceptions about the mission's purpose.

Only 40 per cent of Canadians support the mission, according to Strategic Counsel data. And the firm says the public views information from Ottawa “through a thick lens of cynicism.”

“They feel that much of what government says is propaganda, intended simply to appeal to the voting public and to spin stories in a positive manner,” the report points out.

Because that's exactly what it is. Much to the chagrin of the Harper government, Canadians aren't stupid.

In January of this year, the Harper government thought they could push Canadian involvement in the Afghanistan war as "Democracy Promotion". Forget the fact that Afghanistan has already held democratic elections and that our forces aren't exactly over there teaching the Afghans about how to vote. You don't need guns and tanks to do that.

And when our completely inept foreign minister supports something like building a fence on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border, despite the fact that the Afghan government was opposed to it, framing what we're doing there as "Democracy Promotion" is nothing but a joke.

The Strategic Council apparently agrees with NATO's secretary general who just last month was trying to convince Canadians that we were involved in something resembling "defend[ing] basic universal values". Square that with the huge number of civilians NATO and US forces have killed this year through multiple air strikes along with harsh criticism of Canada's International Development Agency being accused of undermining military success in Afghanistan.

This is reality in Afghanistan.

CIDA's "limited achievements" are undermining Canadian military efforts and compromising the likelihood of mission success, the report says.

Kandahar’s refugee camps are growing steadily and its hospital is dilapidated and filthy, the report states.

As well, there is no functioning food aid distribution system, and legal money-making opportunities remain extremely limited, according to the report.

"The failure to demonstrably address the extreme poverty, widespread hunger and appalling child and maternal mortality rates in Afghanistan — let alone boost economic development — is decreasing local Afghan support for Canada’s mission and increasing support for the insurgency."

So, tell me again about this humanitarian mission we're supposedly involved in.

Contrary to that Strategic Council report, the Harper government has tried to push the Good News™ in Afghanistan. The problem is, as I explained last September in this post which dissects Peter MacKay's Good News™ talking points, the Canadian people want the truth - not the half-baked lies dressed up as "progress".

Back to the G&M article:

The report warns that the Afghan mission could be “a lightning rod” for the government. And because of “continuously negative” media reports on casualties and lack of results, the legitimacy of Canada's involvement could be questioned. “Suspicion and cynicism are taking hold in the absence of hard facts and positive stories about progress,” the report states.

“There is a growing belief that the government is trying to avoid talking about the issue to play down the grim reality that the mission is failing.”

The mission is failing and we will not be drawn into an illusionary Rumsfeldian parallel universe where the actual truth is to blame for legitimate opposition to an endless war.

The report states that the biggest communications challenge is to change the perception that the mission is a departure from Canada's tradition of peacekeeping. In fact, the authors claim the Afghan mission simply adapts peacekeeping to “the changing nature of global conflict.”

In other words, the 60% of Canadians who oppose this war must be taught that peacekeeping equals going to war in a foreign country.

This was Canada's mission in Afghanistan when it was announced in October, 2001:

Defence Minister Art Eggleton said Monday that Canada is sending warships, planes, and special forces troops to join in the U.S.-led anti-terrorism campaign in Afghanistan. The mission is dubbed Operation Apollo.

So the Harper government can try and twist words as much as they want to. The truth will prevail.

(h/t to Impolitical for the G&M story)
 

Bush Cites Iraq the Model Blog

There has been an ongoing controversy about who might really be behind (or at least, supporting) the Iraq blog, Iraq the Model. As noted in this linked article, even Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Ca) was suspicious after two of the original three brothers (one bowed out after feeling like an American propaganda tool, which he felt put his family's lives in danger) who own that blog were guests of the White House in 2004.

So, it's not surprising that during a speech Bush gave today to the Cattleman's Association (in which his Texas drawl was very exaggerated for the cowboy crowd), he used that blog's views as an example of "success" in Iraq.

"I want to share with you how two Iraqi bloggers -- they have bloggers in Baghdad just like we got here -- (laughter) -- describe -- 'Displaced families are returning home. Marketplaces are seeing more activity. Stores that were long shuttered are now reopening. We feel safer about moving in the city now. Our people want to see this effort succeed. We hope the governments in Baghdad and America do not lose their resolve.'"

That's exactly the kind of message ITM puts out every day. That could be written off as just being optimism on the part of a couple of Iraqis who just want everything to turn out well and who really do believe that the American occupation is the best path. One has to wonder however, why out of all of the bloggers in Iraq, that one is the most connected to the White House and is the darling of the warbloggers who defiantly reject any criticism of the blog or the occupation.
 

New Evidence of Iranian Weapons in Iraq? Not Exactly.

The New York Times headline says this: 'U.S. Says Raid in Iraq Supports Claim on Iran' but, once again, the fine print reveals the details:

Major Weber said the use of precision copper discs combined with passive infrared sensors amounted to “a no-brainer” that the explosive components were of Iranian origin, because no one has used that sort of configuration except Iranian-backed Shiite militias.

Could copper discs be manufactured with the required precision in Iraq? “You can never be certain,” Major Weber said. But he said that “having studied all these groups, I’ve only seen E.F.P.’s used in two areas of the world: The Levant and here,” meaning in Hezbollah areas of Lebanon and in Iraq. Hezbollah is thought to be armed and trained by Iran.

If, as the article states, US officials believe the weapons cache found in Hilla amounts to the "best evidence yet", they still don't have much to stand on, do they?

Just how much more of this propaganda will we have to put up with while the Bush administration tries so desperately to make a case for Iranian government involvement in Iraq so it can justify an attack on that country?

Maybe the US military should just focus on fighting the damn war in Iraq instead of producing these dog and pony weapons shows for the media.
 

Public Safety Website: Opposition Parties "soft on terrorism"

An interesting question came up during question period on Monday asking why the government's Public Safety website is being used for Tory propaganda against the opposition parties.

Here's the page in question:

OTTAWA, February 23, 2007— Minister of Public Safety, Stockwell Day, issued the following statement on the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision regarding the constitutionality of the security certificate process as set out in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA).

“We have just received the Supreme Court’s decision. We are reviewing it carefully.

The Government intends to respond in a timely and decisive fashion to address the Court’s decision. The Court has given the Government one year to address the concerns it has raised with respect to the process for hearing confidential information. In the interim, the security certificate process remains in place.

The security certificate process has been in place since 1978 to protect Canadians against threats to their safety and security.

At a time when the Opposition Parties are being soft on security and soft on terrorism, Canada’s New Government remains unwavering in its determination to safeguard national security and is committed to working with all its partners to protect the safety and security of Canadians.”

Harper responded by basically saying they'd change the website but...blah blah blah...terrorism...security...blah blah blah...

Stockwell Day said the news release contained a "direct quote" that he made. No big deal then, right? Wrong. It's his department's site owned by all Canadians and he's responsible for what it contains.
 

On Iran: Mind Your Sources Pt 3

The conservative British newspaper The Daily Telegraph is running a story about the Israeli government supposedly negotiating with the US military for permission to use Iraqi air space in an eventual attack against Iran, according to anonymous sources. The Israeli government was quick to issue a denial.

Asked if Israel had turned to the U.S. to use Iraqi airspace in any possible attack, Ephraim Sneh [Israel's deputy defense minister] told Israel Radio: "No such approach has been made -- that is clear."

"Those who do not want to take political, diplomatic, economic steps against
Iran are diverting attention to the mission we are supposedly said to be conducting," Sneh said.

"(They) are anxious to spread the idea that we are planning to attack Iran in order to absolve themselves of the need to do the things that have been requested of them," he added.

As I've written before in Mind Your Sources (April 2006) and Mind Your Sources Pt 2 (January 2007), this public saber-rattling against Iran through the use of anonymous sources is nothing new. (Remember the recently bizarre Baghdad briefing that the Bush administration had to back off from?). Neither is the "publicize, deny" method of taunting ones enemies.

There is no doubt that the US and Israel have drawn up war plans against Iran. They've both said that all options are on the table. Cheney reiterated that position on Saturday in Australia.

This was the Iranian government's response:

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran said Saturday the United States was not in a position to take military action against it and urged Washington and its allies to engage in dialogue.

"We do not see America in a position to impose another crisis on its tax payers inside America by starting another war in the region," Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told reporters.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran has prepared itself for any possibility, but insists on constructive cooperation, Mottaki said.
[...]
Mottaki said negotiations, not threats, were the only way left to resolve the standoff over Iran's nuclear activities and urged the U.S. and its allies to return to dialogue when they are scheduled to meet in London next week.

"The only way to reach a solution for disputes is negotiations and talks. Therefore, we want the London meeting to make a brave decision and resume talks with Iran," Mottaki told reporters during a press conference with Bahrain's visiting foreign minister.

There is an obvious push/pull relationship between the US and Israel that is often played out in the media - just as it has been between the US and the UK. It doesn't take much to plant a story in a newspaper, forcing your ally to respond, all the while working in tandem to apply pressure to a third country like Iran. And while the Bush administration will call for tougher sanctions against Iran this week, it will have an uphill battle convincing other countries that do business with the regime to endorse such measures.

As for military attacks, the US and Israeli governments know that they don't have much to stand on in the international community. The wars with Afghanistan and Iraq have already drained allies' resources and the idea that so-called surgical strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities would be a quick and easy fix unmet by Iranian retaliation is a fool's dream. Militarism has not worked in Afghanistan or Iraq. Both situations require political remedies - a fact sorely missing from the neocons' empire-building playbook.

So, whether or not the government of Israel is seeking US cooperation for Iraq overflights is beside the point. There is war planning going on. Everybody knows that. What's important to focus on when unsourced stories like these come up is the propaganda value behind them and there certainly has been no shortage of coordinated efforts on that front pertaining to the situation with Iran. That's one of the few things the neocons actually do well: spreading the message of fear and intimidation. What they don't seem to realize, however, is that very few people are actually buying what they're trying to sell anymore. Bush would do well to set aside My Pet Goat to start reading The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

Related: 26.02.07 New Evidence of Iranian Weapons in Iraq? Not Exactly.