The Unknown Candidate: Ratcheting Up the Rhetoric Against Iran

Thursday, February 01, 2007

Ratcheting Up the Rhetoric Against Iran

Received a link to this Juan Cole article from my friend Al with this comment:

"Iran ratcheting has begun; will people buy this crap again?"

Not being clairvoyant, I can't say for sure. But given the blatant cooperation -- once again -- of the mainstream media to report whatever the White House is feeding them, without bothering to find out if there are any facts to back up those assertions, without digging for the truth, without referencing the fact that they were fooled during the build-up to the Iraq war into reporting propaganda and lies-- without this, chances are good that, yes, "people will buy this crap again."

The sad fact is that if we can't trust our own government to dispense the truth -- and they have proven themselves incapable to doing so -- we as citizens must depend on a free media to expose those untruths. With few exceptions, our mainstream media continues to fail us, putting us in a completely untenable position: we can't determine the truth unless we decide to give up our jobs and become investigative reporters and find out for ourselves.

We must, at the very least, question everything this administration says, question everything our representatives say, and question everything the press says while we demand an end to a now well known foreign policy based on colonialism, domination, war, and imperialism. Peace will never be achieved by these ends. Neither will Democracy. The White House and Congress know this. But they reassuringly tell us otherwise. In their world of double-think, war equals peace. In my world, and the world I want for my children and grandchildren, there is only one way to achieve peace -- and it is not by waging wars of aggression.

Must Read: Juan Cole: Informed Comment

Also See:

The Unknown Candidate: Iran War Alert: Rhetoric vs. Reality

Cindy Sheehan: The Fifth Estate
"The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers... [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper."

--Thomas Jefferson to G. K. van Hogendorp, Oct. 13, 1785.
TomPaine.com - Bush's Trash Talk About Iran
Robert Dreyfuss, TomPaine.com, writes that
the administration and its salivating neoconservatives are manufacturing a crisis.
Think Progress: � Concerns over Iran bombing grow:
U.S. News: “Democrats on Capitol Hill are increasingly concerned that President Bush will order air strikes against targets in Iran in the next few months or even weeks. … [T]hey suspect Bush will order the bombing of Iranian supply routes, camps, training facilities, and other sites that Administration officials say contribute to American losses in Iraq. Under this scenario, Bush would not invade Iran with ground forces or zero in on Iranian nuclear facilities. But under the limited-bombing scenario, Bush could ask for a congressional vote of support…which many Democrats would feel obliged to endorse or risk looking like they weren’t supportive of the troops.”
Stephen Gowans: The War on Iran:
"The war has already begun and it has nothing to do with nuclear weapons and threats against Israel and everything to do with who rules America...."
Paul Richter: U.S. delays report on Iranian role in Iraq:
"The Bush administration has postponed plans to offer public details of its charges of Iranian meddling inside Iraq amid internal divisions over the strength of the evidence, U.S. officials said...." (TUC Comment: (Sarcastically) Geez, I wonder why ....)
Times Online: Britain plays down claims of Tehran role
"Senior British officials, citing mistakes over Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, are voicing scepticism about US efforts to build an intelligence-based case against Iran...."