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We Do Have Much To Fear From Iran
by joellerose | October 26, 2007 at 05:34 pm
775 views | 10 Recommendations | 20 comments
by joellerose
Some useful idiots have been posting articles that state that the West and America have nothing to fear from Iran. Perhaps it would be useful to listen to someone who actually knows something about this subject and to review some history. Michael Ledeen - Testimony 7/21/2006 U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs:
(Excerpt) from RegimeChangeIran
“The bottom line is that the Islamic Republic of Iran has been at war with us for twenty-seven years, and we have yet to respond.
Fanatical Iranians overran the American Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and subjected diplomats to four hundred forty-four days of confinement and humiliation. Our policy was to negotiate a deal, which was consummated in the last hour of the Carter Administration. In the mid-1980s, Iranian-supported terrorists from Hizbollah killed hundreds of Americans in our Beirut Embassy, and, six months later, killed two hundred forty-one Marines in their barracks there. A couple of years after that, Hizbollah took other Americans hostage, from the CIA station chief in Beirut to Christian priests to a distinguished military man, Colonel Higgins, who had served as General Colin Powell’s military assistant in the Pentagon. The priests were eventually ransomed; Higgins and Buckley were tortured and murdered.
No one should have been surprised that the Islamic Republic waged war against us from its first days in power. After all, the founder of the Iranian clerical fascist state, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, declared America “the great Satan,” an existential threat to the Islamic Republic as to all true Muslims.
They have waged an unholy proxy war against us ever since. They created Hizbollah and Islamic Jihad, and they support most all the others, from Hamas and al Qaeda to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command. Iran’s proxies range from Shi’ites to Sunnis to Marxists, all cannon fodder for the overriding objective to dominate or destroy us.
This point needs to be stressed, since a lot of nonsense has been written about the theoretically unbridgeable divide between Sunnis and Shi’ites, and we should remind
ourselves that the tyrants of the Islamic Republic do not share these theories. The recent terrorist assault on Israel–a coordinated two-front war–was conducted by Hamas and Hizbollah. The one is Sunni, the other, Shi’ite. Both are Iranian proxies. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards–as Shi’ite as they come–were trained in Lebanon’s Bekka Valley, beginning in the early 1970s, by Yasser Arafat’s Sunni al Fatah. Arafat, whose pedigree came from the Sunni Islamic Brotherhood, was the first foreign leader to be invited to Tehran after the overthrow of the shah, proving that when it comes to killing infidels, theological disagreements are secondary to the jihad. Yet for decades, we have been deceived by experts, in and out of government, who maintained that such cooperation–including cooperation between countries like Iran and Syria–was next to impossible.
It was very good news, therefore, that the White House immediately denounced Iran and Syria for Hizbollah’s attack on Israel, just as Ambassador Khalilzad, on the 12th of July, tagged the terrorist siamese twins as sponsors of terrorism in Iraq. One of the best informed people in that country, who blogs under the title of “Iraq the Model” put it very well, if a bit ungrammatically: “Hizbollah is Iran's and Syria's partner in feeding instability in Iraq as there were evidence that this terror group has a role in equipping and training insurgents in Iraq and Hizbollah had more than once openly showed support for the "resistance" in Iraq and sponsored the meetings of Baathist and radical Islamist militants who are responsible for most of the violence in Iraq.” When he says Iran “sponsored the meetings of Baathist and radical Islamist militants...” he is talking about Sunnis, the same Sunnis who, according to CIA deep thinkers and scads of academic experts, cannot possibly work closely with Shi’ites like the mullahs of Tehran. Iraq the Model isn’t burdened by this wisdom, and so he just reports what he sees on the ground in his own country.
It is no accident that, the weekend before the two-front attack on Israel, there was a “security summit” in Tehran, involving all of Iraq’s neighbors, at which Iran’s infamous President Ahmadi-Nezhad issued one of his trademark warnings to Israel. “The existence of this regime will bring nothing but suffering and misery for people in the region,” he raged, and then said that the anger of the people might soon “lead to a vast explosion that will know no boundaries.”
Perhaps he had a hint of what would soon explode. And well he should, because Iran has been quite busy in Lebanon of late. The Lebanese Tourism Ministry’s Research Center announced an amazing statistic in early July: in the first six months of the year, 60,888 Iranian tourists visited Lebanon. No other Asian country came close (the Philippines ranked second, with a bit over 12,000). Iranians are poor, suffering under the predations of greedy rulers and the usual miseries of a controlled economy. It is hard to believe that more than 12,000 Iranian “tourists” headed for the Beirut beaches each month without a considerable subsidy. Many of them were undoubtedly working for the Revolutionary Guards Corps, or were Hizbollah operations people.
Iran is invariably atop the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism, and we know from public court records in Italy and Germany that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi created a European-wide terrorist network in the latter years of the last century from a stronghold in Tehran. Among the evidence introduced by the prosecution were intercepts of phone conversations between terrorists in Europe and Zarqawi in Tehran.
We also know–from abundant evidence ranging from documents to photographs captured by American forces in both Fallujah and Hilla–of the intimate working relationships between terrorists in Iraq and the regimes in Tehran and Damascus. Indeed, the terror war in Iraq is a replay of the strategy that the Iranians and the Syrians used in the 1980s to drive us and our French allies out of Lebanon. Those Americans who believed it was possible to wage the war against terrorism one country at a time, and that we could therefore achieve a relatively peaceful transition from Saddam’s dictatorship to an elected democracy, did not listen to the many public statements from Tehran and its sister city in jihad, Damascus, announcing in advance that Iraq was about to become the “new Lebanon.”
It is open knowledge that Iran is making bigger and badder IEDs–the roadside bombs that are the single greatest cause of death and injury to our sons and daughters in Iraq–and sending them to the terrorists across the border. The British press has long reported this fact, which has been confirmed by Secretary of State Rumsfeld, and by Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism chief, who put it bluntly: "I think it's very hard to escape the conclusion that...the Iranian government is knowingly killing U.S. troops."
There are still those in Foggy Bottom, Langley or academia who believe that somehow we can sort out our differences with the Islamic Republic. I wish they were right, but the Iranians’ behavior proves otherwise. Religious fanatics of the sort that rule Iran do not want a deal with the devil. They want us dominated or dead. There is no escape from their hatred, or from the war they have waged against us. We can either win or lose, but no combination of diplomatic demarches, economic sanctions, and earnest negotiations, can change that fatal equation. It is not our fault. It is their choice.
THE NUCLEAR QUESTION
A few months ago, the CIA concluded that Iran could not produce nuclear weapons in less than a decade, but given the history of such predictions, we should be very skeptical of that timeline. Some Russian experts reportedly think it could be a matter of months, and they probably have better information than we do.
Numerous Iranian leaders have said that they intend to use nuclear weapons to destroy Israel, and contemporary history suggests that one should take such statements at face value. A nuclear Iran would be a more influential regional force, and since its missiles now reach deep into Europe, it would directly menace the West. Moreover, once Iran manages to put nuclear warheads on their intermediate range missiles, they might even be able to direct them against American territory from one or more of the Latin American countries with which the mullahs are establishing strategic alliances.
I would be the last to suggest we should not do everything possible to prevent the emergence of a nuclear Iran. But the nuclear question simply adds urgency to the Iranian threat, which is already enormous, and which should have prompted our maximum thought and energy long since.
The mullahs don’t need atomic bombs to kill large numbers of Americans; they have long worked on other weapons of mass destruction, and they have an imposing network of terrorists all over the Western world. Hardly a day goes by without chest-pounding speeches from the mullahs warning us about the wave of suicide bombers headed our way. I am afraid that the obsession with the nuclear question often obscures the central policy issue: that the Islamic Republic has waged war against us for many years and is killing Americans every week. They would do that even if they had no chance of developing atomic bombs, and they will do that even if, by some miracle, the feckless and endlessly self-deluding governments of the West manage to dismantle the secret atomic facilities and impose an effective inspection program. The mullahs will do that because it is their essence. It is what they are.
The nuclear threat is inseparable from the nature of the regime. If there were a freely elected, democratic government in Tehran, instead of the self-selecting tyranny of the mullahs, we would in all likelihood be dealing with a pro-Western country that would be more interested in good trade and cultural relations than in nuclear warheads.
In other words, it’s all about the regime. Change the regime, and the nuclear question becomes manageable. Leave the mullahs in place, and the nuclear weapons directly threaten us and our friends and allies, raising the ante of the terror war they started twenty-seven years ago.” **************************** Some of the details of terrorist acts attributed to Iran or to Iranian support: — November 1979: Muslim extremists (Iranian variety) seized the U.S. embassy in Iran and held 52 American hostages for 444 days.
— 1982: Muslim extremists (mostly Hezbollah) began a nearly decade-long habit of taking Americans and Europeans hostage in Lebanon, killing William Buckley and holding Terry Anderson for 6 1/2 years.
— April 1983: Muslim extremists (Islamic Jihad or possibly Hezbollah) bombed the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, killing 16 Americans.
— October 1983: Muslim extremists (Hezbollah) blew up the U.S. Marine barracks at the Beirut airport, killing 241 Marines.
— December 1983: Muslim extremists (al-Dawa) blew up the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait, killing five and injuring 80.
— September 1984: Muslim extremists (Hezbollah) exploded a truck bomb at the U.S. Embassy annex in Beirut, killing 24 people, including two U.S. servicemen.
— December 1984: Muslim extremists (probably Hezbollah) hijacked a Kuwait Airways airplane, landed in Iran and demanded the release of the 17 members of al-Dawa who had been arrested for the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait, killing two Americans before the siege was over.
— June 14, 1985: Muslim extremists (Hezbollah) hijacked TWA Flight 847 out of Athens, diverting it to Beirut, taking the passengers hostage in return for the release of the Kuwait 17 as well as another 700 prisoners held by Israel. When their demands were not met, the Muslims shot U.S. Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem and dumped his body on the tarmac.
— November 1995: Muslim extremists (possibly Iranian "Party of God") explode a car bomb at U.S. military headquarters in Saudi Arabia, killing five U.S. military servicemen.
— June 1996: Muslim extremists (13 Saudis and a Lebanese member of Hezbollah, probably with involvement of al-Qaida) explode a truck bomb outside the Khobar Towers military complex, killing 19 American servicemen and injuring hundreds.******************
The Des Moines Register (Link no longer works)By JOHN CARLSON
Published December 28, 2005 (Excerpt)
"It's been 20 years since most of us thought about a young man named Robert Stethem.
A U.S. Navy diver, he was one of those people who in an instant moves from obscurity to the front page. The pictures from that June day in 1985 on the tarmac of Beirut International Airport bring it all back: The captain of the TWA jet poking his head through the window as the masked terrorist waved a gun in the background. And the body of an American sailor being thrown onto the pavement.
Passengers and crew were beaten and terrorized for days, but Stethem, 23, who was shot in the head, was the only passenger on Flight 847 to die. It came two years after terrorists bombed the U.S. Embassy and a barracks full of Marines in Beirut.
Those two attacks killed more than 300 people, but the Stethem murder — an innocent young man singled out for a public execution because he was in the American military —stuck in people's minds. For a while anyway.
The hijackers got away. The Navy named a destroyer after Stethem. The sailor's family — including his father, Richard, who grew up in Marathon — grieved and got on with their lives.
Two years after the hijacking, German authorities arrested Mohammed Ali Hamadi after locating explosives in his luggage at the Frankfurt airport. Hamadi was tied to the crime and put on trial in Germany after authorities there refused America's demands that he be extradited to the United States for trial."
October 26, 2007 at 05:34 pm by joellerose, 775 views, 20 comments
Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (20)
at 20:34 on October 26th, 2007
Someone who knows what he's talking about?
You don't know Michael Ledeen very well.
Ledeen: "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business."
Arguing in favor of the war against Iraq that a large majority of U.S. citizens opposed at the time, and again now: "One can only hope that we turn the region into a cauldron, and faster, please. If ever there were a region that richly deserved being cauldronized, it is the Middle East today."
Much more on Ledeen and his inaccuracies and warmongering.
What does it take for us to recognize evil when it speaks our language, testifies before our Congress, and is treated with respect in our establishment media?
The illegitimate rulers of both our countries, Iran and the United States, are evil and power-mad. Unfortunately for my peace of mind, it is the government of my country, the United States, that has repeatedly intervened in Iranian politics, opposing national progress (as powerful governments do everywhere a nation's self-determination threatens power and profits). U.S. subversion of secular nationalism in Iran led directly to the the right-wing religious fundamentalism that, nevertheless, U.S. neoconservatives including Ledeen have been able to work with (think Iran-Contra). It is the regime of my country (and quite a few of the aspiring replacements in the presidential race) who openly threaten to use nuclear power.
Your list of ten attacks over 28 years have often very tenuous links to Iran at all. It pales in comparison to almost any year in the past 30 of United States linked terrorism in Latin America. And that unsubstantiated list is supposed to be justification for the millions of Iranian civillians who would die in a U.S. bombing campaign? A possible war that most media outlets are justifying with distortion and lies of ommission every hour.
From the perspective of the most narrow self-interest of people in the United States, let's try to ensure our government does the least possible damage as it squanders our riches and strengths on a very old, tired bid for world domination.
at 03:25 on October 27th, 2007
I think when you refer to the elected President of the United Staes as "illegitimate", it says everything we need to know about where you are coming from.
- reply
raqqashat 21:18 on October 26th, 2007
Useful idiots? Well, so much for respecting other's opinions. You are so fast in assessing guilt to others, but just try for once to take a look at what Western countries have done to the rest of the world. Will you ever? Tho I guess all you know of "democracy" is calling names to other people.
at 05:54 on October 27th, 2007
It's a term first used by Lenin to describe western apologists who continually excused and glossed over the atrocities committed by Communist Russia. We had them then; we had them with respect to Hitler; we had them with respect to Saddam; and we have them now.
at 22:18 on October 26th, 2007
Michael Ledeen is borderline insane. What Rosa Brooks wrote about Bush in the following article applies equally to Ledeen:
STRAITJACKET BUSH: THE PRESIDENT'S WARMONGERING REMARKS ON THE IRANIAN
THREAT SUGGEST HE IS PSYCHOTIC. REALLY - ROSA BROOKS (LOS ANGELES TIMES, OCTOBER
25): We're in the middle of a disastrous war in Iraq, the military and political
situation in Afghanistan is steadily worsening, and the administration's
interrogation and detention tactics have inflamed anti-Americanism and fueled
extremist movements around the globe. Sane people, confronting such a situation,
do their best to tamp down tensions, rebuild shattered alliances, find common
ground with hostile parties and give our military a little breathing space. But
crazy people? They look around and decide it's a great time to start another
war.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-brooks24oct25,0,7749742.column?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
at 22:28 on October 26th, 2007
MADNESS AS METHOD - MAUREEN DOWD (NEW YORK TIMES, OCTOBER 24): The
hawks are pounding the drums on Iran as they once did on Iraq, acting as if the
hourglass is running out and we have to act immediately or, as the president
apocalyptically suggested last week, we could be facing World War III.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/24/opinion/24dowd.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print
at 22:30 on October 26th, 2007
PRESIDENT BUSH NEEDS A TIME OUT - VIVIAN SALAMA (WASHINGTON POST,
OCTOBER 25): To use an old Vietnam War slogan, Ahmedinejad is winning the
"hearts and minds" of those across the Muslim world with his anti-West,
anti-Israel speech -- something that many of the Sunni regimes have failed to do
given their pro-West stances and, in the cases of Egypt and Jordan, treaties
with Israel. Sticks and stones from the West WILL break bones, but they will not
solve a thing. How about some diplomacy for a change?
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/vivian_salama/2007/10/president_bush_needs_a_time_ou.html
at 23:26 on October 26th, 2007
joellerose, good stuff.
I think that the best part of the whole thing was his synopsis of the mullahs of Iran whom some point to as being the true and "moderate" voice of Iran:
at 11:13 on October 27th, 2007
Yah right like the mullahs would tell him if they were or that a crackpot like him would be privy to such deep intelligence. Paranoid hogwash.
at 05:09 on October 27th, 2007
Why would anyone with any sense NOT think that Iran, a signer of the UN Non-proliferation Pact, was developing a nuclear weapon when it refuses to permit full inspections?
Why would anyone, then, with any sense ignore Iran's threat to "incinerate" Israel and destroy the United States?
at 09:31 on October 27th, 2007
Because Iran has never threatened to "incinerate" Israel with atomic bombs, nor has it ever threatened the USA.
The Mullahs in Iran and the Iranian people are not suicidal, but they feel they need to defend themselves against your country and indeed they do.
I guess since Lenin and Soviet Communism are long gone the term "useful idiots" would best be applied in a more current context to western apologists who continually gloss over the atrocities committed by the USA all over the globe.
Ledeen is and has always been a complete crackpot with no credibility to anyone who has even a modest amount of intelligence or logical ability.
The idea that using his opinions as credible to prove a point with anyone of any calibre is totally self-defeating.
LOL!!
at 09:39 on October 27th, 2007
...and Dorothy tapped her heals three times and repeated three times, "There's no place like home" and was able to make it back from Oz to Kansas.
...oh wait, that was a dream, not reality!
Isn't there some song that has a line, "living in a fantasy"?
at 11:01 on October 27th, 2007
Yup you hit the nail on the head Ruski. My thoughts exactly!
Oooooo! Wook out! Those BIG BAD scawy Iwanians are coming to get us!
- reply
raqqashat 10:13 on October 27th, 2007
This is the "war on terror" you are waging: Depleted uranium reducing to a radiactive wasteland everything and to diseased and leukemia-ridden every population, including the very same soldiers you send there, the very same soldiers you claim that you have to support. Is this support? Is this democracy? How do you expect the Middle Eastern nations to feel anything but hatred towards the Western countries?
It is due time for everyone to open their eyes and understand this is a senseless massacre, the blood of countless hundred thousands shed because of mad and power-hungry paranoid persons in power. And because the citizenry, with their votes, won't give a damn about it.
at 10:53 on October 27th, 2007
The Kuwaitis and the Saudis who begged for our help when Saddam took over Kuwait wouldn't agree with you. Some of us have pretty good memories.
- reply
raqqashat 11:28 on October 27th, 2007
Tell it to the 200.000 USA soldiers who are dying because of Depleted Uranium. But it is so easy to talk when comfortably seating on a chair in your safe house. Tell them depleted uranium improved their lives and those of millions of americans. Tell them there was no better way to defend much coveted oil sources for the power-hungry.
Tell it to the people who will freeze and get sick this winter because money goes to war instead of welfare and home heating.
at 12:29 on October 27th, 2007
Raggash, I suggest you calm down and follow the following advice:
How to Identify Misinformation
How can a journalist or a news consumer tell if a story is true or false? There are no exact rules, but the following clues can help indicate if a story or allegation is true.
Does the story fit the pattern of a conspiracy theory?
Does the story claim that vast, powerful, evil forces are secretly manipulating events? If so, this fits the profile of a conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theories are rarely true, even though they have great appeal and are often widely believed. In reality, events usually have much less exciting explanations.
The U.S. military or intelligence community is a favorite villain in many conspiracy theories.
For example, the Soviet disinformation apparatus regularly blamed the U.S. military or intelligence community for a variety of natural disasters as well as political events. In March 1992, then-Russian foreign intelligence chief Yevgeni Primakov admitted that the disinformation service of the Soviet KGB intelligence service had concocted the false story that the AIDS virus had been created in a US military laboratory as a biological weapon. When AIDS was first discovered, no one knew how this horrifying new disease had arisen, although scientists have now used DNA analysis to determine that “all HIV-1 strains known to infect man” are closely related to a simian immunodeficiency virus found in a western equatorial African chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes troglodytes. But the Soviets used widespread suspicions about the U.S. military to blame it for AIDS. (More details on this.)
In his book 9/11: The Big Lie, French author Thierry Meyssan falsely claimed that no plane hit the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. Instead, he claimed that the building had been struck by a cruise missile fired by elements within the U.S. government. No such vast conspiracy existed and many eyewitness accounts and evidence gathered on the scene confirmed that the hijacked airliner had struck the building. But, nevertheless, the book was a best-seller in France and has been translated into 19 languages, demonstrating the power that even the most groundless conspiracy theories can have. (More details on 9/11: The Big Lie.)
Does the story fit the pattern of an “urban legend?”
Is the story startlingly good, bad, amazing, horrifying, or otherwise seemingly “too good” or “too terrible” to be true? If so, it may be an “urban legend.” Urban legends, which often circulate by word of mouth, e-mail, or the Internet, are false claims that are widely believed because they put a common fear, hope, suspicion, or other powerful emotion into story form.
For example, after the September 11 attacks, a story arose that someone had survived the World Trade Center collapse by “surfing” a piece of building debris from the 82nd floor to the ground. Of course, no one could survive such a fall, but many initially believed this story, out of desperate hope that some people trapped in the towers miraculously survived their collapse. (More details on this.)
Another September 11 urban legend is that an undamaged Bible was found in the midst of the crash site at the Pentagon. In reality, it was a dictionary. But, if a Bible had survived unscathed, that would have seemed much more significant, and been seen by many as a sign of divine intervention. (More details on this.)
Since 1987, the false story that Americans or others are kidnapping or adopting children in order to use them in organ transplants has been widely believed. There is absolutely no evidence that any such event has ever occurred, but such allegations have won the most prestigious journalism prizes in France in 1995 and Spain in 1996. (More details on this.)
This urban legend is based on fears about both organ transplantation and international adoptions, both of which were relatively new practices in the 1980s. As advances in medical science made organ transplantation more widespread, unfounded fears began to spread that people would be murdered for their organs. At the same time, there were also unfounded fears about the fate of infants adopted by foreigners and taken far from their home countries. The so-called “baby parts” rumor combined both these fears in story form, which gave it great credibility even though there was absolutely no evidence for the allegation.
In late 2004, a reporter for Saudi Arabia’s Al Watan newspaper repeated a version of the organ trafficking urban legend, falsely claiming that U.S. forces in Iraq were harvesting organs from dead or wounded Iraqis for sale in the United States. This shows how the details of urban legends can change, to fit different circumstances. (More details in English and Arabic.)
Highly controversial issues
AIDS, organ transplantation, international adoption, and the September 11 attacks are all new, frightening or, in some ways, discomforting topics. Such highly controversial issues are natural candidates for the rise of false rumors, unwarranted fears and suspicions. Another example of a highly controversial issue is depleted uranium, a relatively new armor-piercing substance that was used by the U.S. military for the first time during the 1991 Gulf War.
There are many exaggerated fears about depleted uranium because people associate it with weapons-grade uranium or fuel-grade uranium, which are much more dangerous substances. When most people hear the word uranium, a number of strongly held associations spring to mind, including the atomic bomb, Hiroshima, nuclear reactors, radiation illness, cancer, and birth defects.
Depleted uranium is what is left over when natural uranium is enriched to make weapons-grade or fuel-grade uranium. In the process, the uranium loses, or is depleted, of almost half its radioactivity, which is how depleted uranium gets its name. But facts like this are less important in peoples’ minds than the deeply ingrained associations they have with the world “uranium.” For this reason, most people believe that depleted uranium is much more dangerous than it actually is. (More details on depleted uranium in English and Arabic.)
Another highly controversial issue is that of forbidden weapons, such as chemical or biological weapons. The United States is regularly, and falsely, accused of using these weapons. (More details on this in English and Arabic.)
In the same way, many other highly controversial issues are naturally prone to misunderstanding and false rumors. Any highly controversial issue or taboo behavior is ripe material for false rumors and urban legends.
Consider the source
Certain websites, publications, and individuals are known for spreading false stories, including:
(More details on Islam Memo and Jihad Unspun in English and Arabic.)
There are many conspiracy theory websites, which contain a great deal of unreliable information. Examples include:
Extremist groups, such as splinter communist parties, often publish disinformation. This can be especially difficult to identify if the false allegations are published by front groups. Front groups purport to be independent, non-partisan organizations but actually controlled by political parties or groups. Some examples of front groups are:
(More details on Muhammad Abu Nasr in English or Arabic.)
Research the allegations
The only way to determine whether an allegation is true or false is to research it as thoroughly as possible. Of course, this may not always be possible given publication deadlines and time pressures, but there is no substitute for thorough research, going back to the original sources. Using the Internet, many allegations can be fairly thoroughly researched in a matter of hours.
For example, in July 2005, the counter-misinformation team researched the allegation that U.S. soldiers in Iraq had killed innocent Iraqi boys playing football and then “planted” rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) next to them, to make it appear that they were insurgents.
Using a variety of search terms in “Google,” a researcher was able to find the article and photographs upon which the allegations were based. Because weapons did not appear in the initial photographs, but did appear in later photographs, some observers believed this was evidence that the weapons had been planted and that the boys who had been killed were not armed insurgents.
The researcher was also able to find weblog entries (numbered 100 and 333, on June 26 and July 15, 2005) from the commanding officer of the platoon that was involved in the incident and another member of his platoon. The weblog entries made it clear that:
Thus, an hour or two of research on the Internet was sufficient to establish that the suspicions of the bloggers that the weapons had been planted on innocent Iraqi boys playing football were unfounded.
Finally, if the counter-misinformation team can be of help, ask us. We can’t respond to all requests for information, but if a request is reasonable and we have the time, we will do our best to provide accurate, authoritative information.
http://usinfo.state.gov/media/Archive/2005/Jul/27-595713.html
at 23:20 on October 27th, 2007
- by Felicity Arbuthnot - 2007-10-27
at 21:34 on October 28th, 2007
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071028/wl_mideast_afp/irannuclearpoliticsiaeaus_071028162940&printer=1;_ylt=AhCANQzuANwCnPUrBGba_CubOrgF
No evidence Iran is making nuclear weapons: ElBaradei
by Jitendra JoshiSun Oct 28, 12:29 PM ET
Chief UN atomic watchdog Mohamed ElBaradei said Sunday he had no
evidence that Iran is building nuclear weapons and accused US leaders
of adding "fuel to the fire" with recent bellicose rhetoric.
"I
have not received any information that there is a concrete active
nuclear weapons program going on right now," the director of the
International Atomic Energy Agency told CNN.
"Even if Iran were
to be working on a nuclear weapon ... they are at least a few years
from having such a weapon," he said, citing assessments by US officials
themselves.
"At this stage we need to continue to work through
creative diplomacy ... as I don't see any other solution than diplomacy
and inspections," ElBaradei said.
at 07:48 on October 29th, 2007
The UN also had no idea Hezbollah was attacking Israel last summer or that their soldiers were raping and molesting African women. The UN had no idea that Saddam was bribing UN leaders. The UN is a joke.