Democracy Now Interview with Gareth Porter on US Navy-Iran Incident

One of the Iranian Patrol Boats in the so-called "provocation" against the US Navy (source)


Here is a poignant interview by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, on audio and in print, of veteran reporter and historian Gareth Porter discussing the US Navy/Iranian Naval incident of Sunday morning, January 6, 2008. It includes the Arnold Schwarzenegger-type deep voice threatening in a rather un-Iranian accent that "You will explode after a few minutes".

Porter points out that the commander of the 5th Fleet, Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgriff has made it clear that his "ships were never in danger, that they never believed they were in danger, and that they were never close to firing on the Iranian boats."

So what we have been witnessing is YELLOW JOURNALISM at its worst by the major media, who blew this event up into a near sea-battle, with the Navy "seconds away" from firing on the Iranians, without doing the simplest fact-checking or corroborating. The media mindlessly began dragging us down the rabbit-hole again into the world of make-believe. This is why our country is in such a wretched state. The truth gets slaughtered daily by the mass media. If things had gone wrong enough over this incident, we could be at war with Iran today, spilling blood and treasure on both sides by the bucketful. Ready to sacrifice another half a trillion dollars and thousands of loved-ones to the dogs of war again?

And the big question is out of all this, whose voice issued the Terminator-type threat that sent the media into a feeding frenzy?

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You can listen to the transcript of the interview by clicking here.


Here is the printed transcript:

January 11, 2008

Gareth Porter: Official Version of U.S.-Iranian Naval Incident Starts to Unravel
The United States has lodged a formal diplomatic protest against Iran for its “provocation” in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday morning. But new information reveals that the alleged Iranian threat to American naval vessels may have been blown out of proportion. We speak to investigative historian Gareth Porter. [includes rush transcript]

Guest:

Gareth Porter, Investigative historian specializing in U.S. national security policy. He writes regularly on Iran for the Inter Press Service. His latest book is called “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam.”

JUAN GONZALEZ: The United States has lodged a formal diplomatic protest against Iran for its “provocation” in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday morning. But new information reveals that the alleged Iranian threat to American naval vessels in the Strait might have been blown out of proportion.


On Tuesday, the Pentagon released video of Iranian patrol boats approaching American warships and an audio recording of a direct threat in English. The accented voice says, “I am coming to you,” and then adds, “You will explode after a few minutes.”


IRANIAN VOICE: I am coming to you.


US NAVAL OFFICER: Inbound small craft, you’re approaching a coalition warship operating in international waters. Your identity is not know. Your intentions are unclear. You’re sailing into danger and may be subject to defensive measures. Request you establish communications now or alter your course immediately to remain clear. Request you alter course immediately to remain clear.


IRANIAN VOICE: You will explode after a few minutes.


US NAVAL OFFICER: “You will explode after a few minutes.”



JUAN GONZALEZ: That was an audio recording released by the Pentagon along with the video of the encounter between American warships and Iranian patrol boats in the Strait of Hormuz.


But a Navy spokesperson told ABC News Thursday that the threat might not have come from the Iranian patrol boats, but from the shore or another ship passing by. The spokesperson added, “I guess we’re not saying that it absolutely came from the boats, but we’re not saying it absolutely didn’t.”


Iran has denied all allegations of a confrontation and released its own video of the encounter. This is an excerpt of the Iranian video broadcast on Thursday showing what seems to be a routine exchange between an Iranian Navy patrol boat and the American ship.


IRANIAN NAVAL PATROLMAN: Coalition warship 73, this is Iranian Navy patrol boat. Request side number [inaudible] operating in the area this time. Over.


US NAVAL OFFICER: This is coalition warship 73. I’m operating in international waters.



AMY GOODMAN: Gareth Porter is a historian and national security policy analyst. His latest article for IPS News analyzes how the official US version of the naval incident has begun to unravel. He joins us now from Washington, D.C. Gareth Porter, welcome.


GARETH PORTER: Good morning, Amy.


AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about everything that happened from Sunday, what President Bush said, what the Pentagon was alleging, and now what we understand?


GARETH PORTER: Well, this alleged crisis or confrontation on the high seas is really much less than what met the eyes of the American public as it was reported by news media. And the story really began from leaks from the Pentagon. I mean, there were Pentagon officials apparently calling reporters and telling them that something had happened in the Strait of Hormuz, which represented a threat to American ships and that there was a near battle on the high seas. The way it was described to reporters, it was made to appear to be a major threat to the ships and a major threat of war. And that’s the way it was covered by CNN, by CBS and other networks, as well as by print media.


Then I think the next major thing that happened was a briefing by the commander of the 5th fleet in Bahrain, the Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, which is very interesting. If you look carefully at the transcript, which was not reported accurately by the media, or not reported at all practically, the commander—or rather, Vice Admiral Cosgriff actually makes it clear that the ships were never in danger, that they never believed they were in danger, and that they were never close to firing on the Iranian boats. And this is the heart of what actually happened, which was never reported by the US media.


So I think that the major thing to really keep in mind about this is that it was blown up into a semi-crisis by the Pentagon and that the media followed along very supinely. And I must say this is perhaps the worst—the most egregious case of sensationalist journalism in the service of the interests of the Pentagon, the Bush administration, that I have seen so far.


JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Gareth Porter, there have been some reports about the apparent splicing of audio onto the actual video that appear to be from two different sources. Could you talk about that?


GARETH PORTER: Well, that’s right. I mean, we don’t yet know exactly what the sequence of events was in this incident. We don’t know exactly when the voices that we hear making what appear to be a threat to the American ships, where—when that occurred in the sequence of events in this incident. And it seems very possible that indeed the Pentagon did splice into the recording, the audio recording of the incident, the two bits of messages from a mysterious voice in a way that made it appear to occur in response to the initial communication from the US ship to the Iranian boats. And it seems very possible that, in fact, those voices came at some other point during this twenty-minute incident.


So this is something that really deserves to be scrutinized and, in fact, investigated by Congress, because of the significance, in the larger sense, of a potential major fabrication of evidence in order to make a political point by the Bush administration.


AMY GOODMAN: Gareth Porter, what about the timing of this, on the eve of President Bush’s visit to the Middle East?


GARETH PORTER: Well, of course, there’s no doubt that the motivation for the Pentagon to blow this incident up was precisely the timing of President Bush leaving on a trip to the Middle East, in which one of his major purposes was to try to keep together a coalition of Arab states, which—a very, very loose and shaky coalition to oppose Iran and to support, hopefully, according to the administration’s policy, the US pressure on Iran through diplomatic and financial means, through the Security Council and through its allies in Europe. So this is definitely part of the reason, very clearly, that what was a very minor incident which did not threaten US ships, as far as we can tell from all the evidence so far, was turned into what was presented as a confrontation and a threat of war.


JUAN GONZALEZ: Gareth Porter, I’d like to ask you, I was watching the Republican debate last night on Fox News and was astonished to see one of the moderators spend quite a bit of time on this topic, questioning every one of the candidates as to whether they believe the Navy commander on the scene did the right thing by not blowing the Iranian boats out of the water. Surprisingly, only Ron Paul, the maverick, even questioned some of the facts of the incident as reported. Your response to this suddenly becoming a topic for the presidential debates?


GARETH PORTER: Well, I think it’s astonishing that you have this incident being regarded as a test of whether the United States is being belligerent enough, when the commanders of the ships themselves clearly did not regard this as a threat to the safety of their ships. This is the point, again, that the commander of the 5th fleet made very clearly. He was asked by reporters whether the commanders were close to firing on the Iranian ships, and he said, “No, that was not the case,” that at no point were they about to fire on the ships and that they did not feel threatened by the Iranian boats. Bear in mind, what has not been reported by the media, that these are essentially small speedboats that are at most armed with machine guns, not with any weapons that were capable of harming those ships.


AMY GOODMAN: Gareth Porter, this also comes right at the time that new documents have—newly declassified documents have revealed that the Johnson administration faked the Gulf of Tonkin incident to escalate the war in Vietnam, to provide a pretext for increased bombing and increased troops there.


GARETH PORTER: Well, you know, this is an incident—the Gulf of Tonkin incident and the policy shenanigans surrounding it are something that I wrote about in my book, Perils of Dominance, about the US involvement in the Vietnam conflict. And what actually happened regarding the Gulf of Tonkin was that the ships, because of anxiety on the part of the crew of these ships in the Gulf of Tonkin, they thought they were under fire originally. They sent back messages saying that.


But within a matter of a couple of hours, the commander of the flotilla had decided that they had been mistaken, and he passed that message on to the Pentagon, and the Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara was informed by early afternoon on the same day. And it is my interpretation, based on the evidence, that he failed—he refused to inform President Johnson of that fact, and that’s why Johnson went ahead with a decision to bomb North Vietnam, which had already been made at noontime.


JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you, going back to the incident also, one of the key contradictions now that have surfaced between the initial reports and certainly after the Iranian release of their own video is that initially the public was told that these were Revolutionary Guard boats, and now the Iranian government has said no, that they were actually boats of the Iranian Navy, and they clearly identified themselves as such.


GARETH PORTER: I do not know what the provenance of these Iranian boats was, whether it was IRGC or Iranian Navy. We do have pictures, photographs of the IRGC small speedboats that clearly resemble the boats that are depicted—at least one of them—depicted in the video. But from the evidence that we have right now, it’s really impossible to say what—whether these boats belonged to be on IRGC or not. It is the case, however, that the IRGC does have, apparently, the primary responsibility to patrol in this area of the gulf. I heard yesterday a former commander of the IRGC state very clearly that they do in fact have the primary responsibility to patrol in that area. So it’s certainly the—it’s a possibility, a good possibility, that these were IRGC boats.


AMY GOODMAN: Gareth Porter, I want to thank you for being with us, investigative historian, writes for Inter Press Service. His latest book is called Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam.

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U.S Navy Ship and Iran Boats Stand-off - Iranian's Video

Here is The Great Confrontation between the Evil Iranian swift boats and the poor little ole' US Navy as fimed from an Iranian boat. Even the US Navy footage just shows the boats approaching and tailing the flotilla for several minutes. The only source of controversy is a separate audio the Navy released where someone is stating that "You will explode after [indecipherable] minutes."

Listen to this video and determine for yourself if this seemed like a threat to world peace and the US Navy, as the Great Demagogue, George Bush, has alleged. It sounds more to me like the only thing missing was some tea and cookies as the Iranian commander and an American radio operator exchanged inane information for several minutes. How does this get transformed into a grave provocation to the US Navy?"

Now the Navy is saying that they are not sure who made the alleged threatening comment. Something is quite askew here. Have we got a little creative audiotaping going on by someone who wants to stir up trouble between the US Navy and Iran? In otherwords, was this more than just a routine incident, but rather a cynical attempt to make something sinister out of nothing?

The Demon Persian of Tehran Does New York

Wow, what an orgy of emotion was unleashed in New York City Monday, most of it rather nasty and negative, when President Ahmadinejad of Iran arrived to begin his Big Apple itnerary, which included a speaking engagement at Columbia University yesterday (where its president rudely attacked his guest for several minutes as an introduction) and a speech at the United Nations today, Tuesday September 25. AIPAC and other pro-Israel organizations brought out their phalanxes of troops and ratcheted up the propaganda machinery to try to will him off the planet, which didn't work, and they probably would have torn him to pieces if there hadn't been lots of cops protecting the motor entourage to boot. For Ahmadinejad is, you see, the Demon Persian of Tehran, this image largely based on the infamous statement attributed to him that Israel should be "wiped off the map".

Unfortunately, it is hopelessly lost on those locked into total hatred of the man that this was never what he said. The original, above diabolical phrase was actually a terrible translation of what he had recited in Farsi (Persian language). He had originally quoted an old Ayatollah Khomeini statement that I am now going to let Arash Norouzi enlighen us about from his article dated January 18, 2007. Here is the original statement and Norouzi's commentary.

"Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad."

That passage will mean nothing to most people, but one word might ring a bell: rezhim-e. It is the word "Regime", pronounced just like the English word with an extra "eh" sound at the end. Ahmadinejad did not refer to Israel the country or Israel the land mass, but the Israeli regime. This is a vastly significant distinction, as one cannot wipe a regime off the map. Ahmadinejad does not even refer to Israel by name, he instead uses the specific phrase "rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods" (regime occupying Jerusalem).

So this raises the question.. what exactly did he want "wiped from the map"? The answer is: nothing. That's because the word "map" was never used. The Persian word for map, "nagsheh", is not contained anywhere in his original farsi quote, or, for that matter, anywhere in his entire speech. Nor was the western phrase "wipe out" ever said. Yet we are led to believe that Iran's President threatened to "wipe Israel off the map", despite never having uttered the words "map", "wipe out" or even "Israel".


THE PROOF:

The full quote translated directly to English:

"The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time".

Word by word translation:

Imam (Khomeini) ghoft (said) een (this) rezhim-e (regime) ishghalgar-e (occupying) qods (Jerusalem) bayad (must) az safheh-ye ruzgar (from page of time) mahv shavad (vanish from). (Reference: click here)

So, we have been brought to the edge of war with Iran based largely on, as with Iraq, Neocon-hyped bullshit like this. To the global, maniacal Neocon movement, this of course doesn't matter. Any excuse will do to attack Iran. The Cheney faction in the White House and the Israeli Right-wing, which basically controls Israel these days, both simply want a cowed and broken Iran smoldering in ruins, just as Rome continuously had it in for Carthage in ancient times. Rome ultimately destroyed the entire city of Carthage after decades and decades of war and salted all its farming fields so crops would not grow again.

However, it would be naive not to think that Iran is a rival of Israel, but a rival not because it is a pseudo-Nazi enclave of not-so-blond Aryans who fanatically hate Jews (they have their own Jewish population which is not being oppressed), but basically because it supports the cause of Moslem Palestinians trapped in the giant concentration camp called Palestine, as well as being in strong solidarity with the large Shiite Moslem faction in Lebanon, whose spokesgroup is Hezbollah.

Just as most Jews around the world tend to act in solidarity when Israel is attacked, is it surprising that most Moslems tend to act in solidarity when Palestine or Lebanon are attacked? Of course not! The trick then is to stop the polarization between these two largely religiously-defined bodies, to get everyone to learn to live as harmonious neighbors, so that the Middle East is precisely not divided into armed camps. That means dialogue, dialogue, dialogue, trade, trade, trade, exchanges of students, culture, literature, and on and on.

Moreover, it is impossible for one side to vanquish the other militarily and live happily ever after atop a large pile of skulls and bones, because violence just sets mighty new problems in motion. You know, bad Karma, and all that.

Enough said now from my point of view. At this point I want to let you share the perspective of one of the most astute and well-sourced writers on the planet about what just transpired in New York with President Ahmadinejad. I am referring to Pepe Escobar, the ROVING EYE reporter for the widely read Asia Times, who just wrote a new piece entitled:

The Roving Eye:

'Hitler' does New York

By Pepe Escobar

Here are some excerpts from Escobar's article. I am inserting more than I would normally, but this is an exceptional situation, what with war against Iran a few stupid mistakes away. Note that Escobar is pointing out the larger, positive impact the Iranian President is making globally from this trip, no matter how many tomatoes may have hit him here in New York. I quote:

[The new "Hitler", at least for a while, has lodged in a prosaic midtown Manhattan hotel. Contrary to a plethora of demonizing myths, this Persian werewolf did not evade his abode to eat kids for breakfast in Central Park. Instead, he turned on a carefully calibrated public relations charm offensive. Whatever his polemical views, for a now-seasoned head of state like Ahmadinejad to turn astonishing US disinformation on Iran, the Middle East and US foreign policy for his own advantage ended up as a string of slam-dunks.

Articulate, evasive, manipulative, the Iranian president - even lost in translation -was especially skillful in turning US corporate media's hysteria upside down consistently to paint those in the administration of President George W Bush as incorrigible warmongers. Both at the National Press Club, via video-conference, and live at Columbia University, Ahmadinejad even had the luxury of joking about fabled Western "freedom of information" - as so many are still "trying to prevent people from talking".

He scored major points among the target audience that really matters: worldwide Muslim public opinion. Contrasting with a plethora of corrupt Arab leaders, Ahmadinejad has been carefully positioning himself as a Muslim folk hero capable of standing up to Western arrogance and defending the rights of the weak (the Palestinians). The way he deflected US ire on the enemy's own turf will only add to his standing.....

He was also clever in preempting ear-splitting rumors of a next war: "Talk about war is basically a propaganda tool." One of his key points may not have made an impact in the US, but resonated widely around the world, and not only in the Muslim street: "We oppose the way the US government tries to rule the world"; there are "more humane methods of establishing peace". He assured that no Iranian weapons are flowing into Iraq, adding that "regional countries in the Middle East don't need outside interference".

On uranium enrichment, he repeatedly stressed that it is Iran's right, as a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to conduct a "legal" and "peaceful" nuclear program. "Why should a nation depend on another?" But if the US would engage in peace talks, so would Iran: "International law is equal to everyone." As for the US and France, they "are not the world" - a reference to both the Bush administration's and the French saber-rattling. "France is a very cultured society, it would not support war." Humanitarian imperialist French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner was summarily brushed aside: he needs to attain "higher maturity".

On Israel, Ahmadinejad said, "We do not recognize a regime based on discrimination, occupation and expansionism," and he said that country "last week attacked Syria and last year attacked Lebanon"; pretty much what most of the Middle East agrees with. He may have granted that the Holocaust did take place, but the world needs "more research on it". The Holocaust is not his main point: it always serves as an intro to one of his key themes - why should the Palestinians pay the price for something that happened in Europe? He said he wanted a "clear" answer. No one deigned to provide it.....

US corporate media's treatment of the new "Hitler" seemed to have been scripted by the same ghostwriter lodged in the same (White) House. On 60 Minutes, the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) was firing on all cylinders for a casus belli - from "There's no doubt Iran is providing the IEDs" (improvised explosive devices, in Iraq) to "Why don't you just stop denying that you're building a nuclear bomb?" Ahmadinejad was bemused, to say the least. CNN for its part could not resist proclaiming, "His state even sponsors terrorism ... in some cases even against US troops in Iraq."

Ahmadinejad succinctly unveiled to the Associated Press the reasons for so much warmongering - in a way that even a kid would understand: "I believe that some of the talk in this regard arises first of all from anger. Secondly, it serves the electoral purposes domestically in this country. Third, it serves as a cover for policy failures over Iraq."

An even more appalling measure of Western arrogance - also speaking volumes about "us" when confronted with the incomprehensible "other" - is the diatribe with which the president of Columbia University, Lee Bollinger, chose to "greet" his guest, a head of state. Bollinger, supposedly an academic, spoke about confronting "the mind of evil". His crass behavior got him 15 minutes of fame. Were President Bush to be greeted in the same manner in any university in the developing world - and motives would abound also to qualify him as a "cruel, petty dictator" - the Pentagon would have instantly switched to let's-bomb-them-with-democracy mode.

Ahmadinejad, to his credit, played it cool. Stressing, in a quirky fashion, his "academic" credentials, he unleashed a poetic rant on "science as a divine gift" just to plunge once again into the Palestinian tragedy. He stressed how Iran "is friendly with the Jewish people" - which is a fact (at least 30,000 Jews live undisturbed in Iran). Then back to the key point: Why are the Palestinians paying the price for something they had nothing to do with? Iran has a "humanitarian proposal" to solve the problem - a referendum where Palestinians would choose their own political destiny.

In the absence of informed debate, Ahmadinejad stressed his points the way he wanted to. Iran does not need a nuclear bomb. Iran does not want to manufacture a nuclear bomb. But telling other countries what they can and cannot do is another matter entirely. He is more than aware that the nuclear dossier is "a political issue" - a question of "two or three powers who think they can monopolize science and knowledge". It's up to a sovereign Iran to decide whether it needs nuclear fuel. "Why should we need fuel from you? You don't even give us spare parts for aircraft."

He also stressed that Iran is a victim of terrorism - a reference to the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a micro-terrorist group by any other name, formerly protected by Saddam, now supported by the Bush administration; but he was also referring to destabilizing black ops by US special forces in the strategically crucial provinces of Khuzestan and Balochistan.

Ahmadinejad was not questioned in detail on internal repression, intimidation of independent journalists, what his Interior Ministry is up to, from a crackdown on women not wearing the veil properly to more sinister, unsubstantiated "collaboration with America" charges. When executions were mentioned, he quipped, "Don't you have capital punishment in the US?" - and defended them on the ground that these were drug smugglers.

Nobody questioned him on his disastrous economic policies, on the competence of his ministers, on an embryonic pact between Iran and Saudi Arabia to prevent another war in the Middle East, on the upcoming, pivotal summit of the Caspian littoral states in Tehran where Ahmadinejad, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Vladimir Putin will discuss what happens next - from technical aspects of Iran's nuclear program to Bush's warmongering impetus. Anyway, Ahmadinejad made it clear: Iran is "ready to negotiate with all countries". The same could not be said about the Bush White House........]

To read Escobar's entire article, please click here.

Why you need to act to prevent an Iran invasion...

Read this

Contact your Senator and Representative and DEMAND that Congress stand up and state that Iran CAN NOT be invaded without Congressional approval.

FACT IS that Iran will not have a nuclear bomb in the foreseeable future. There is no immediate threat. There may not even be a threat in the next few decades. IF we leave Iran alone it will give the secular citizens more time to change their government....If we attack we will guarantee an Islamic dominated Iran for a very long time to come.

It's another corporate media scandal...spreading the Bush propaganda so that Bush and Cheney can invade Iran.... An invasion that holds no benefits for America or her citizens. It is madness and will only result in weakening American democracy, enrichening the corporations at the expense of American citizens. It's OUR pockets that are being robbed. Stand up and contact your elected officials and demand that they support the WEBB Amendment which only authorizes an invasion with Congressional approval. (Note: The ability of the President to act in Self Defense with Iran is not affected by this legislation)

Hitler, Propaganda and Recycling Iraq as Iran

How many of you know that the very propaganda techniques employed with devastating effect by the White House and worldwide Neocon apparatus were first articulated by Adolf Hitler back in 1925 in his autobiography, Mein Kampf? His spiritual heirs are employing them today to manipulate us into war against Iran. Read on:

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"The people in their overwhelming majority are so feminine by nature and attitude that sober reasoning determines their thoughts and actions far less than emotion and feeling."
-Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Ralph Manheim translation, p.183)

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Adolf Hitler expounded upon propaganda considerably in his massive autobiographic polemic against the Jews, Bolshevism and most things civilized, Mein Kampf (My Life), first written in 1925. Actually, Hitler was the director of propaganda for the Nazi Party for a time.

In the above quotation, he is cynically observing that for mass propaganda to work on the masses, one has to throw logic out the window and hit them with images and rhetoric that provoke fear, anger, patriotism, disgust, etc., and on a more primal level, by triggering their archetypal longings through symbols like the Swastika. However, I would hesitate to say that the Nazis themselves understood all the attractions of the Swastika, especially its sexual connotations, other than on a subconscious level.

To circumvent logic for emotions was a critically important point for a movement that was itself illogical at its core. Nazi ideology depended on a mystical belief system to promote its notion of Aryan superiority, which, like eugenics in general, it could only disguise as science.

Hitler also underscored several other key propaganda tenets, such as repetitiveness and simplicity:

"But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success." (ibid, p.184)

Then there is what may be described as the Nazis' grand propaganda principle:

"All this was inspired by the principle - which is quite true in itself - that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation."
-Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (James Murphy translation, p. 134)

The world has seen how effective the above principles were in the Nazis' ultimate goal, the "victory of the idea". They succeeded not only in Nazifying Germany, but spread their toxic ideology across Europe and even overseas, America itself seeing the rise of such Fascist organizations as the American Bund Movement in the 1930s:

"Propaganda tries to force its doctrine on the whole people.....Propaganda works on the general public from the standpoint of an idea and makes them ripe for the victory of this idea, while the organization achieves victory by the persistent, organic, and militant union of those supporters who seem willing and able to carry on the fight for victory."
-Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Ralph Manheim translation, p. 582)

Thus, all the above principles must be implemented by a strong propaganda apparatus, a dedicated and single minded organization that brooks no internal dissent, and ultimately no external dissent. Reality has been pigeonholed and the pigeons must not be allowed to debate the shape of their hovels.

Enter the Bush Administration
Whether or not Karl Rove and the apparatiks in the White House have actually read Mein Kampf I do not know. Have they incorporated those same propaganda principles espoused by Hitler? The answer is a resounding YES!

Let us look at the run-up to the war in Iraq after 9/11 as a case in point, although I will not get into the raging debate as to whether 9/11 was the American Reichstag fire. However, let me ask, soon after the lightning collapse of the Towers, was a dominant idea promoted that had to be indoctrinated into the American people as widely as possible? Yes, the idea that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat who must be dealt with immediately before he could strike with "weapons of mass destruction", a good, chilling phrase meant to terrify mothers and children and alarm the men.

Was going to war justified primarily by reason or appeals to emotions? Emotions largely. Balanced, reasoned debate based on real facts was largely absent. Debate was skewed to begin with by false reports about alliances between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, non-existent chemical/biological mobile stations, "yellow cake and aluminum tubes", and so forth. I won't even dwell on the obvious fact that Saddam Hussein's military capacity was largely impotent in 2003, especially against the United States. Emotionally speaking, there were strident appeals to patriotism, always against the looming background of the vaporized Twin Towers of 9/11, not to mention the great fear, anger and disgust this evoked in the average American. The mindset became, for millions of Americans: 9/11=al Qaeda=Iraq, so protect ourselves and get revenge!

Was this mantra that Saddam's regime was an evil, al Qaeda-loving threat to international security repeated constantly? Yes is not a strong enough term. Repetition was 24/7 from multiple sources: government, radio, TV, websites, newspapers, magazines, Right-wing pulpits, and on and on.

Was the Big Lie utilized? Yes again, as already inferred above. Everything was a lie except for Hussein's track record as a tyrant, and even this was embellished. How much bigger a whopper, to mention just one, can you contrive than the B-movie scenario that Iraq planned to use unmanned drones launched from merchant ships to spray American cities with deadly chemicals. We are half-way to Orson Welles' famous 1938 radio show, War of the Worlds, which scared the Hell out of countless Americans, with concoctions like this. All told, this was a rather fantastic fairy tale, all explained away after the fact as the product of faulty intelligence. Of course, some, such as diehard Congresswoman Thelma Drake, are still striving to depict several hundred degraded, 20-year old chemical artillery shells recovered from the Iraqi desert as the missing WMDs. Good luck.

Was there a singularly focused propaganda apparatus driving the entire campaign? Only one of the most massive in history. The White House, State Department, Pentagon, co-opted portions of the CIA and NSA, all the Right-wing think tanks, all the Neocon-biased media owned by the likes of Rubert Murdoch, Sun Myung Moon and others worked relentlessly in lockstep to vilify Saddam Hussein as the great threat to America.

Enter the American Foreign Policy Council
Where am I leading with all of this? Well, on January 23, 2007, the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC), the esteemed (largely in Neocon and Right-wing circles) "think-tank" announced that it was launching a week-long TV advertising campaign aimed at "educating" the American public about the growing threat posed by a nuclear Iran. This has subsequently run on CNN, MSNBC, Headline News and the Fox News Channel in Washington DC, Maryland and northern Virginia. The campaign consists of two rather nasty 30 second TV commercials. This just happened to coincide with 1) the State of the Union address in which Bush demonized Iran; 2) the heightening build-up of American Naval forces in the Persian Gulf, a second carrier group (the Stennis) having just sailed from the West coast, 3) orders to allow American soldiers in Iraq to shoot to kill Iranian "combatants" (how they will be able to tell who these shadowy Iranians are before shooting them is not explained, or will they arrest them, interrogate them and then execute them?); and 4) the recent acrimonious arrests of Iranian diplomats in Iraq by American forces, actions that have antagonized both the Kurdish and Iraqi authorities, to only partially list all the current initiatives against Iran.

In other words, Hitler's propaganda principles have now been turned against a new victim, Iran, and incorporated into the larger, multi-faceted escalation of hostilities, with the AFPC serving as an appendage of the American government, either directly or vicariously.

This is rather unprecedented, a private think tank trumpeting and financing hysterical propaganda against a foreign nation on TV. And just who is the AFPC? To quote from their own website: "AFPC is a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing information to those who make or influence the foreign policy of the United States and to assisting world leaders, particularly in the former USSR, with building democracies and market economies. AFPC is widely recognized as a source of timely, insightful analysis on issues of foreign policy, and works closely with members of Congress, the Executive Branch and the policymaking community. It is staffed by noted specialists in foreign and defense policy, and serves as a valuable resource to officials in the highest levels of government." (See: www.afpc.org/ ) Within the AFPC, a program called the IFI or Iran Freedom Initiative, apparently spearheaded by AFPC Vice President for Policy, Ilan Berman, has commissioned the advertisements.

Hmmm. Everyone toots their own horn, but AFPC is so important to leaders in Russia that when you run their name in the Russian Pravda and Itar-Tass search engines, they register zero hits, although their website, to be fair, does list some glowing comments by several members of the Russian Duma. And indeed, one gets the impression from their website of wise, tweed-suited senior professorial types pontificating expertly on crucial matters of State. But after you review the scripts of their two anti-Iranian commercials, you suddenly begin to imagine half-naked lunatics dancing around a bonfire, chanting, "Disembowel Iran, disembowel Iran, font of all evil!"

The first commercial's script conjures up Iran as a nuclear threat and accuses it of being the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism, killing hundreds of Americans, nurturing 25,000 suicide-bombers against the United States and Europe, as well as developing a dangerous nuclear capability. Then, with true Orwellian panache, the ad asks the audience to "Stand up for peace. Call up the White House and tell them to enforce sanctions against Iran today." We have seen how well coercive sanctions against Iraq "stood up for peace" in that luckless country.

The first script also dutifully lists "references" for its allegations, the first dig, that "Iran is the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism" being backed up by a BBC article reporting that Condoleezza Rice has charged that Iran is the central banker for world terrorism. And that's it. NO EVIDENCE, NO EXPOSE, just her disingenuous statement! What terrific research, enough to make a 6th grader blush with embarrassment.

The next allegation is that the Iranians have supported attacks that have killed Americans, basing it on a lawsuit against Iran by American families who lost loved ones when the Marine Barracks was blown up in Lebanon in 1983 during the Lebanese civil war. Iran ignored the lawsuit, considering it specious, and U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth awarded the judgment to the plaintiffs by default, coupled with the prosecutor's investigation.

However, a case where there are no defense arguments and cross-examination alleges much but proves nothing. What AFPC is really referring to is an attack on the Marine barracks in direct retaliation for President Reagan ordering the battleship USS New Jersey, with its massive guns, to lead deadly naval sea and air bombardments of pro-Syrian Druse villages and positions on the Lebanese coast-line. Reagan, thus, was directly taking sides in the raging civil war. At that point, America ceased to be a neutral peacekeeper.

Several Shiite militias claimed responsibility for the assault, including the Free Islamic Revolutionary Movement, which even named the two suicide bombers. Hezbollah was not even an official organization at this point (being founded in 1985 as an amalgam of Shiite militias), yet Judge Lamberth finds in his ruling that, amazingly, YET TO BE CREATED Hezbollah carried out the bombing on orders from Iran, rather sloppy scholarship indeed. However, this is good enough for the AFPC.

I can go on and on against each of the AFPC's allegations, especially the main broadsides that 1) President Ahmadinejad of Iran wants to wipe Israel off the map and 2) that they are on the verge of developing a nuclear bomb that, to hear the Israelis shiver and prattle about it, the Iranians will apparently immediately hide in a goat cart, sneak into Tel Aviv and detonate. Ahhh yes, paranoia, it makes deranged fools of us all. Meanwhile, Israel possesses some two hundred to six hundred nuclear weapons, according to various intelligence agencies. Nothing like the teapot calling the kettle black.

Regarding the "wipe out Israel" quote, it has now been proven by, not one, but many investigators and scholars that Ahmadinejad was only quoting an old Ayatollah Khomeini prophecy in Persian to the effect that the regime occupying Jerusalem shall vanish from history, a far cry from the skewed translation, ironically by an Iranian news agency that later retracted it, that the state of Israel itself should be wiped off the map - regime collapse versus the annihilation of an entire people, quite a big difference.

As for the terrifying specter of a nuclear-armed Iran, no one (except of course the always self-serving and imaginative Israeli intelligence services and Dick Cheney's X-ray vision) can find any direct proof that Iran even has a nuclear weapons program, let alone a viable one, not the AEIA, not the CIA, not anyone halfway credible. As for the industrial nuclear program that Iran is so proud of and stubborn about, this just came out in The Observer in England this past Sunday, January 28:

"Iran's efforts to produce highly enriched uranium, the material used to make nuclear bombs, are in chaos and the country is still years from mastering the required technology. Iran's uranium enrichment programme has been plagued by constant technical problems, lack of access to outside technology and knowhow, and a failure to master the complex production-engineering processes involved. The country denies developing weapons, saying its pursuit of uranium enrichment is for energy purposes.

"Despite Iran being presented as an urgent threat to nuclear non-proliferation and regional and world peace - in particular by an increasingly bellicose Israel and its closest ally, the US - a number of Western diplomats and technical experts close to the Iranian programme have told The Observer it is archaic, prone to breakdown and lacks the materials for industrial-scale production." ( )

The article only gets more embarrassing for Iran as it continues, not to mention for the AFPC and its "timely, insightful analysis" of realities in Iran. Yes, it is tough being a propagandist in the era of the blogosphere.

Combating the Propaganda
However, the AFPC probably really doesn't care because it is working within the Hitlerian framework of peddling the Big Lie, and if past history be the judge, the new wave of fear propaganda, in essence recycling and retooling the same lies used against Iraq for use against Iran, will succeed in staining America with yet more innocent blood, both American and Iranian, while the Neocon ideologues and merchants of death cackle in the shadows, rejoicing in their sadistic handiwork, unless.....

Unless we turn Hitler's principles against them. For example, in opposition to the Big Lie, we should loudly trumpet the full truth about Iran, warts and all, exposing all the Neocon lies ferociously, providing trustworthy sources and promoting honest scholars, while welcoming Iranians into our hearts as well, for the Biggest Truth is, of course, that God, or the infinite creative consciousness, is in all beings (even Neocons), and that we are all, in the deepest respect, brothers and sisters. When you assume that perspective, you gradually abandon the demonization of others and begin to think in terms of real diplomacy and reconciliation.

We must also incessantly reaffirm and reinforce the truth, because it is not enough to expose a lie once and rest on our laurels, for the totalitarian hardcore out there will regroup like Hydras. And we must enlarge our platform for speaking the truth. That means we must continue to obstruct the strident and ongoing Fascistic attempts to monopolize and control all aspects of the media, to pigeonhole Americans' minds, and continue to build or restore our own venues for presenting the truth to the world.

Finally, to put the lie to Hitler's observation that the "feminine", unthinking masses are persuaded primarily by pushing emotional hot-buttons, we must extol our fellow citizens to really wake up. This will require some detoxification and consciousness raising, but it will be worth it if we can truly awaken the sleeping American giant to its higher, spiritual destiny.

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