There is no doubt we are in the last days of the Iran “store closing!” sales pitch that has been screamed at the American public by Israel, Washington, and created by the public relations firms. After all, they get paid to manufacture hysteria and tell the public unconsciously what to say. In this case, the neo-conservatives, the Israelis, and the public relations firms have been hard at work for a number of years crafting all sorts of stories. It seems like a good time to round them up and put them in one place, and that way you can see for yourself someone isn’t telling the truth.

I was going to avoid the Iran articles because it’s such a big, ugly subject; I knew I would have to tackle it when Benjamin Netanyahu went off the deep end earlier this week with the United Jewish Communities General Assembly speech he gave. Here are a few eyebrow raising quotes:

"It’s 1938 and Iran is Germany. And Iran is racing to arm itself with atomic bombs.”

“He [Ahmadinejad] is preparing another Holocaust for the Jewish state.”

"’No one cared then and no one seems to care now,’ he [Netanyahu] said, again drawing on the Nazi parallel.”

Now if that’s not deliberately peeing on the electric fence to start a fire, I don’t know what is! After I dug my jaw out of the floorboards, I realized I couldn’t avoid it any longer; this needs to be answered before American and Israeli politicians wind up giving the United States public the “gift that keeps on giving” – radioactive fallout. I like glow in the dark underwear as much as the next pervert, but, I don’t want a PERMANENT glow in the dark.

Fareed Zakaria wrote a stellar piece for Newsweek a few months ago called “ The Year of Living Fearfully ” that compares and contrasts between Iran and Nazi Germany. One quote says it all: “ Washington has a long habit of painting its enemies 10 feet tall—and crazy . ” No truer words have been spoken! Let’s face it, if our enemies were painted in the image of cute Easter bunnies, who would be afraid of them? It’s an absolute must to envision a monster that eats Rover and Fluffly for snacks, uses your prized flower bed as a toilet, rapes your women, and scares the men so much, they have permanent urine stains on their pant legs.

The fact is Iran doesn’t fit that profile. There is something to be said about the morality of those who use fear to push forward an agenda that otherwise would not flow on its own; this is manipulation of “the end justifies the means”. If you hammer a square peg into a round hole, it’s still oddly enough, a square in a round hole – that fact cannot be changed. The more Washington and Jerusalem attempts to demonize someone, you can guarantee that country is covertly scheduled for some “unauthorized landscaping” in their future, while Americans foot the bill. Again.

Just in time for the last three months prior to the midterm elections, the Pentagon released their finding that Iran is within five years of possessing a nuclear weapon . Other estimates from another intelligence review put the time frame at approximately ten years , which fly in the face of the Administration that is trying to manipulate the situation to generate an artificial panic, and obtain a green light from the public. They didn’t count on one thing getting in their way again: IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei .

In September, the IAEA threw a knock out punch at the Bush Administration for their categorization of the fuel as being weapons grade when it most certainly was not. They called the rhetoric “outrageous and dishonest”, making it front page news for days on end. It was then the tapestry of lies started to unravel in a serious way.

The punch was well deserved and not a politically motivated cheap shot. According to a report from the Washington Post:

“’American intelligence agencies do not know nearly enough about Iran’s nuclear weapons program’ to help policymakers at a critical time, the report’s authors say. Information ‘regarding potential Iranian chemical weapons and biological weapons programs is neither voluminous nor conclusive.’ Noting ‘significant gaps’ in U.S. intelligence, Fleitz’s report suggests that the United States could not effectively engage in talks with Tehran.

This is very bad news all around. If the gaps are severe enough to suggest we can’t talk to the Iranians, then it also stand to reason the accusations the White House have leveled against Iran being non-cooperative in talks, is a moot point. The administration is effectively sending out the blind to lead the blind, which could also explain why the Middle East road map is so hard to follow – it’s in Braille.

Reuters also published an interesting blurb in a similar story: “ The Bush administration said it was handling the problem. ” Can you say, “YIKES”? This approach is like trying to study five minutes before the final exam after having been at a frat party all night long. The gap of information on Iran opens a nasty door we have been hit in the ass with before: cooked intelligence to launch an illegal war , and it’s happening again.

In this whole picture, it would also be wise to disclose Halliburton has secretly doing business with Iran for quite awhile. American companies are not allowed to do business with Iran , however, if they create a subsidiary holding, that company can do business – especially it is not located in the United States . Halliburton went into immediate public relations damage control when this information came out, but how many people really heard it – or remember it? Is anyone else looking at this and thinking, “a new war in Iran would give Halliburton a great source of revenue – from both sides?”

Let’s assume for a moment if there were credible, reliable intelligence; the experts are saying no good options exist on the table regarding a confrontation with Iran . We are walking on all too familiar thin ice of made up risk assessments , and turns out some of the same people who fabricated this information the first time around in the Office of Special Plans are working on Iran; this group is the Office of Iranian Affairs , of course minus its most famous Zionist cheerleader, Douglas Feith .

Those walking the halls of power often forget – or don’t care – past statements come back to bite them squarely in the seat cushion and expose the plots they’re up to. The more bold hawks tend to flaunt it rather than obscure it. All a reader needs to see is a litany of statements placed end to end to make up their own minds regarding which way the political winds are blowing.

“Asked by Chirac if Israel could attack Iran to prevent it getting the bomb, Bush reportedly said: ‘We cannot rule this out. And if it were to happen, I would understand it.’”

“Reuel Marc Gerecht… said this morning on ABC’s This Week that the mid- to long-term fallout from Israel-Hezbollah conflict could be a good thing because it may prompt Bush to take military action against Iran.”

“Speaking to a Los Angeles Jewish forum on Tuesday, the prime minister called upon moderate Arab nations, too, to act against Iran, warning that the point of no return has arrived.”

“ For that matter, we might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions–and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement. ”

“ I think we could be in a military confrontation with Iran much sooner than people expect. I don’t think this is an issue that’s going to wait two and a half years until President Bush leaves the presidency. I think he will decide at some point next year — in 2007 — he’ll have to make some very tough decisions about what the U.S. and the world can tolerate in terms of this regime ”

I don’t know how many drum beats someone needs to hear before war starts, but they have been banging for quite some time, thanks to the same principle players – the neo-conservatives (they are worried we have gone “ soft on Iran ” with the realists, who have been brought in to fix Bush’s foreign policy fiascos). T he Project for a New American Century , an ultra-right wing think tank that brought us the Iraq War (and working on it since 1992), has many attention-grabbing documents on their website that don’t shy away from their desire to see regime change.

Think tanks, in general have been a source of incredibly bad ideas foisted on this country, and Iraq is the biggest one they dumped in our laps and ran from. If you want a good basic look at the think tank game, Bill Berkowitz at Working For Change has a great article (“ Richard Perle’s posse: Right-wing ‘think’ tanks dominate discourse ”) that sheds light on the connections and biases. A good list of think tanks, political action committees, and Religious Right organizations can be found here (scroll down past the extensive list of front page stories and go to the bottom of the page).

In all the ducking and running for cover, the neo-conservatives, Zionists, and Religious Righters who have controlled the think tanks, they have pulled the favorite trick of President Bush: remain loyal as long as it’s convenient, and then cut and run . Since it’s no longer cool to be on board with the war, they have started turning against each other to save their own reputations.

Under the Bush administration, there have been concerted efforts to undermine the state of Iran in multiple ways. Most people do not know about a special group Secretary Rumsfeld established in the Pentagon called the Proactive Pre-emptive Operations Group (PPOG/P2OG), and by definition, they have multiple goals. They want to provoke terrorists to strike, which is nothing short of a sadistic idea. The more they provoke, the more it destabilizes a situation and undermines the country’s leaders to effectively govern. This group is nothing more than the “poke the snake” thug crew. “Its purpose is to ‘bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception’. The PPOG’s role is to manufacture the terrorism that is to be combatted.”   People will automatically discount this theory, however, it’s hard to sweep under the rug the many accusations that American and British troops have been busy causing strife instead of calming it. Iraq is a prime laboratory for this group. The actions of the PPOG have successfully resulted in an all out civil war with American troops caught in the middle, while covert troops are producing the perfect storm.

When the Pentagon isn’t busy fabricating an enemy , it is busy working with the State Department in a quiet behind the scenes propaganda game. The Iran Freedom and Support Act went from a $10 million dollar idea to a $100 million idea overnight , thanks to the recently ousted Sen. Rick Santorum.

There are many fascinating tidbits in this bill, namely, it automatically presumes Iran has a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction (but again, the security agencies know diddly about Iran and they admitted it in September). I think the world got a flat tire driving down the WMD road once before and will not be anxious for another scenic trip. Some politicians and right wing media types were caught perpetuating a lie . Bush was finally forced to admit in a press conference there were no weapons of mass destruction , but Iraq only had the capacity to, which is exactly what the Charles Duelfer report said. Of course with the intelligence being so wrong, it’s hard for anyone to trust this administration again when they boldly proclaim Iran has these weapons. This would all be a moot point if the White House hadn’t gagged intelligence personnel who questioned the quality of the intelligence being offered up as a “slam dunk” (in George Tenet’s own words).

It also states the group(s) applying for funding must renounce terrorism. That’s kind of a bogus statement when you take into account the CIA keeps training these groups! If you want to stop terrorism, make it a crime for the CIA to fund and train them instead of supporting them through black operations and cocaine sales . I won’t go into the Iran-Contra I or Iran Contra II scandals and how most involved in illegal clandestine operations were given Christmas Eve pardons or not prosecuted at all.

“ Assistance to dissidents in Iran is complicated by the Iranian regime’s demonstrated brutality toward its critics — writers, bloggers, trade union members and human rights activists — much less anyone perceived to be receiving U.S. aid. For that reason, the State Department does not publicly disclose whom it funds .” Although this is sound reasoning on some level, it also creates the infamous cloak of secrecy the Bush administration has done exceptionally well, costing America over $9 billion last year. It also sets up the program for enormous fraud without oversight. The American taxpayer has the right to know what they are getting for $100 million, and who it is being dispersed to. We’re tired of the crony connections like Halliburton, who have been raping the public for five years. It is important to have transparency!

One other aspect of such a program is there might be additional funds redirected from black ops projects; there is no way to determine how deep this project goes. You might dismiss such as conjecture, however, there are some directly accusing the White House of staging covert troops in Iran without a declaration of war. “ Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner (Ret.) said, ‘We are conducting military operations inside Iran right now. The evidence is overwhelming.’ ”

You might again want to dismiss this as tripe, but then you’d have to come up with why the US Navy has been parked in the Persian Gulf and performing war exercises , as reported in October. There has been a substantial build up of military hardware after the election, too. “ The U.S. Navy has gathered aircraft carriers and troop transports for entry in the central Gulf. Included, officials said, were at least 10 warships that would arrive in the region over the next few days . ” Besides the overt attempt to put pressure on Iran, this has all the signs of a trick Lyndon Johnson played on Vietnam: the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Bush is trying to provoke Iran into any sort of incident to justify just like the PPOG group would. If the President was praying for a pre-election day incident (could this have been the “October Surprise” they were speaking of?) to scare voters, he didn’t get it – Iran isn’t falling for Washington’s games . Iran’s Foreign Ministry called the actions “ adventurous ”, hinting they would do little for security in the region.

There are a lot of strange threads in this quilt from hell, and one more I’m going to pull loose has to deal with US foreign aid to Israel. In the beginning of October during the Mark Foley scandal, the Congress was asked for $270 million for a missile and rocket defense system. The Republican Congress, exceptionally loose with the cash, gave them $500 million – nearly double the requested amount! If you’re going to give away nearly twice as much cash for a missile and rocket defense system, chances are there’s a rush on this. I would suspect the Congress did this, knowing the Navy was going to be parked at the “back door”, not for the Palestinian problem. Why do I say that? “ Under the allocation, Israel could launch a program to develop systems for medium- and long-range rocket defense. ” This isn’t because of a Palestinian threat; this is for protection from other Arab states.

There are always security threat estimates floating all over, all saying Iran is a mortal threat. “ Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte provided his assessment in his 2006 Annual Threat Report that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons. ” This may be true, however, the source leaves a lot to be desired considering John Negroponte isn’t coming to the table with clean hands. He was neck deep in the Iran-Contra scandal, and he was involved in a cover-up of CIA-trained operatives guilty of human rights abuses. If you’re going to tell me someone is a threat, credibility and character is essential. In this case, Negroponte has absolutely no credibility or character in which to make such accusations. Have you ever noticed how many Iran-Contra people from Reagan’s administration are serving under Bush?

Time for a scorecard assessment:

•  The US intelligence agencies have little to bad information on Iran.

•  The IAEA has called the White House on lying about Iran’s capabilities.

•  Bush has said he would fix the intelligence gaps. This opens us up to manufactured intelligence to fit another war the administration wants through the Office of Special Plans and the Office of Iranian Affairs

•  The Proactive Pre-emptive Operations Group is known to be at work in Iraq and possibly in Iran.

•  The Iran Freedom and Support Act has been working towards the goal of regime change by funding covert groups as well as sending propaganda over the airways through the Voice of America radio and TV networks (they have been criticized by the Pentagon for not being hard enough on Iran in their broadcasts).

•  By its nature, the Iran Freedom and Support Act has taken the posture Iran has weapons of mass destruction, when in fact the IAEA cannot confirm this. They recognize something is going on, but it is too early to say if the results are weapons grade or energy grade nuclear material.

•  The neo-conservatives who once supported the war are running for the exits.

•  While the White House screams for war with Iran, most have forgotten Halliburton is doing business with Iran.

•  The US has several war ships parked in the Persian Gulf, claming to be engaged in war exercises. The exercises started in late October, and ten more ships were sent after the election. No one is reporting why additional ships were sent nearly a month after the first group. There is an unexplained time gap. Iran commented on the war games on October 29 th , 2006, and the second wave of ships sent to the Persian Gulf had an arrival date of November 15, 2006. Why send additional ships nearly three weeks after the war games have ended?

•  Israel received double the requested aid for a missile and rocket defense system for medium to long-range threats.

There only one thing left to do tackle: the public relations aspect of this mess, which is no small task considering the vast number of players frantically beaming their “talking points” into our homes and in our newspapers.

The first thing you need to be aware of in this game is the propaganda styles and techniques so you don’t get suckered into their thought trap. Here you will find an impressive collection of articles over a two-year period all having to do with propaganda, paid punditry, and the mainstream media’s unwillingness to ask the tough questions. Strategically, the next part of the puzzle is to know who the enemies are: name the public relations firms involved. Players to watch in this unfolding drama are:

1. Benador Associates [ 1 ], [ 2 ], [ 3 ], [ 4 ], [ 5 ] You may not know these people by name, but their known speakers list reads like a neo-conservative’s wet dream. This outfit is behind a story that circulated back in May of this year claiming Iran was going to make Jews and Christians wear colored badges to identify them. The story was proven to be false and planted by one of their speakers, Amir Taheri, who has a regular issue with telling the truth. He was later rewarded with a trip to the White House as an “expert”.
2. The Lincoln Group [ 1 ], [ 2 ], [ 3 ], [ 4 see “under the radar” section], [ 5 ], [ 6 ] These guys are responsible for the largest amount of “spin” in Iraq. They have paid Iraqi TV reporters and journalists to plant stories, using college interns to do it.
3. The Rendon Group [ 1 ], [ 2 ], [ 3 ], [ 4 ], [ 5 ], [ 6 ], [ 7 ], [ 8 ] John Rendon is widely credited for the most creative spin (along with Hill & Knowlton) during the first Gulf War. He has been very involved in selling Gulf II. He is credited with the idea for the Iraqi National Congress, and personally picked Ahmed Chalabi to be put forward as its defacto leader. Chalabi’s house was later raided by US forces; he was accused of sharing US intelligence with Iran, and the $300,000 plus per month payments he was receiving to run the operation were shut off. It also appears there might have been an inappropriate relationship between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a Rendon Group employee, Francis Brooke, who it was later discovered, was the right hand man of Chalabi.

These are the main players in Iraq propaganda war but not all of them; watch for public relations announcements regarding contract awards. In some cases, it has been intimated Rendon is already involved in selling the P.R. for an Iranian offensive. To put it simply, a GAO report has shown under President Bush, public relations spending from 2000 to 2004 increased 128%; in real numbers t he Bush White House paid $1.6 billion to public relations firms. If your need for P.R. is that costly, it can only mean one thing: the product you are selling is complete trash.

The public relations vultures have a job to do: create a perceived need – in this case, through fear. They have been wasting no time whipping people into hysterical frenzies so they leave their critical thinking at the door.

I used to enjoy the Fox Network when it first came on; by 2003, I couldn’t stomach the network anymore because they had become the home for the White House’s junkyard dogs. To watch it became an exercise in vitriolic hatred, and at some point you wake up and decide “Fair and Balanced” is anything but. Some will say Fox has little power to persuade the people, however, it doesn’t take a genius to realize that statement is disingenuous. Fox may have single handedly turned more voters over to the Republican Party in the year 2000 ; they are claiming in Florida alone it may have given Bush an extra 10,000 votes. That’s real clout, and in some ways, really dangerous. Consider the case of Oliver North, who claimed Iran was very close to having a nuclear weapon . He was clearly spouting lies – there’s no way he could be in possession of that information, when the IAEA, the watchdog, can’t even confirm it. He is simply parroting back the talking points of the day; that is irresponsible. What does that mean for Fox? If four million people were watching that segment, they would be discussing it as if his position were fact.

Another case in point related to the Fox Network (multiple shows) is the rhetoric Newt Gingrich has been using. His rhetoric this summer was part inflammatory and part pre-2008 presidential toe dipping. He wasn’t one who started the notion we were in “World War III”, but his voice was quite loud in spreading it.

“Gingrich also maintained that the use of the term ‘World War III’ could re-energize the base of the Republican Party . He pointed out that public opinion can change ‘the minute you use the language" of World War III. The message then, he said, is "OK, if we’re in the third world war, which side do you think should win?’”

Fox has been actively selling a pre-emptive attack on Iran for quite some time, but I suspect most viewers have become anesthetized to it. When the aim of a network is to create and editorialized propaganda instead of actual news reporting minus the commentary, they have lost their perspective as journalists and are no longer an unbiased source that can be trusted to inform.

I know Gingrich and North aren’t the only ones spreading the “political fertilizer” around – the Religious Right has been doing that for quite awhile, too. Pat Robertson is a great example of why politics and religion should never be mixed; the sheep who watch him tend to believe what he says. After all, would you expect a “man of the cloth” to lie to you? Generally the answer would be no…until we look at Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggert, Oral Roberts, and now Ted Haggard as examples of why a Christian needs to read the Bible for themselves and stop listening to liars.

Poor Pat Roberson. He tries so hard and yet he opens his mouth long enough to switch out feet. “ It’s amazing that Iran has come to the fore as it has with a president who says Israel should be wiped off the map, who — it now has atomic weapons. ” This was said in May – a full three months before Mohamed ElBaradei came out and called the intelligence the White House was peddling, “outrageous”. Again, here is the case of a man with a large TV audience following on multiple stations all over the country, spouting a lie. Normally I’d like to give him the benefit of the doubt, but after his “ Christian fatwah ” on Hugo Chavez last year, then the denials he said any such thing, and finally calling for it again this year, it’s kind of hard to justify what comes out of his mouth. He was caught lying to a broad audience he has influence over, and that’s worthy of concern.

“ We call our stuff information and the enemy’s propaganda, says Col. Jack N. Summe, former commander of the Fourth Psychological Operations Group. ” Wow, talk about hypocrisy! When our government engages in propaganda, the idea is that it’s good, but when the enemy does it…it’s bad. I’ll give him style points for falling somewhere on the scale between politically correct and incredible mileage on a euphemistic term.

The US government has its own P.R. factory, and those who do not have any concept of this are doomed to fall for the lies produced out of the machine. There’s the Office of Media Outreach , the White House Information Group (also known as the White House Iraq Group), Operation Home front , Office of Strategic Communications , Office of Strategic Influence , Office of Reconstruction and Stabilization , Counter Information Team , and the Coalition Information Center (also known as the Office of Global Communications). These are only the most common groups and is by no means should not be viewed as a complete listing. It is meant to whet your awareness appetite.

There have been a lot of notable news stories I’ve come across while writing this piece, but apart from the beginning, I haven’t touched on the Israeli politicians and the fear they are manufacturing.

“ Thus, without prior warning, the Israeli barometer has soared to 10 on the panic scale. Ten out of 10. The warnings came in rapid succession from Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh, Olmert and Netanyahu. At the General Assembly, the annual convention of the UJC, which was almost entirely devoted to Israel, they spoke about the last war, in Lebanon, but were thinking scary thoughts about other wars. ”

It is one thing to inform, it’s another thing to instill terror. This speech wasn’t given in Israel, it was given in the United States by Israeli politicians. By influencing American Jews, it would seem they are hoping they will rise up and scream for the President to do something for a land they won’t live in, but enjoy visiting once in awhile. The other reason this speech was given in America versus Israel might be the credibility gap Olmert lacks at home. Polls show him to be a very unpopular man based upon the poor performance of the Lebanese war he engaged in. He also has hints of scandal hanging over his head surrounding a real estate deal .

Olmert’s rhetoric has been high for quite some time now; he seems to enjoy the idea of screaming about Iran wanting to wipe Israel off the map. He seems to thoroughly love the idea of the United States doing it for him. The logic is twisted; if the United States initiated a first strike attack on Iran, Israel would be the recepient of a barage of missiles, possibly even nuclear warheads if they actually possess them. I personally fail to understand how a first strike by Israel or the United States would not end in the destruction of Israel – it is a complete lose-lose scenario. In addition to the annihilation of Israel, Iran would be the the recepient of incredible hated from the rest of the Arab world should the Dome of the Rock be destroyed. They would also be the unfortunate beneficiaries of radioactive fallout in the region, causing massive health problems. No matter how you view Iran, it cannot be dealt with in a first strike scenario.

The irony of the situation would be entertaining when you take into account the fact Israel had to fight the war in Lebanon instead of US troops marching in and doing their bidding. Olmert’s cabinet denied any pre-planning for the Lebanon invasion had taken place, but later blamed Bush for their war . Can you imagine the bloody murder screaming on a pre-emptive attack?

Of course try telling that to AIPAC, who has been seriously angered with President Bush over some of his decisions.

“ In lengthy news releases and talking points circulated to supporters on Capitol Hill, AIPAC describes the Bush administration’s recent policy decisions on Iran as ‘dangerous,’ ‘disturbing’ and ‘inappropriate.’ One background paper suggests that White House policies are actually helping Iran — a sworn enemy of the Jewish state — to acquire nuclear weapons . ”

This is a very bold accusation, and AIPAC should know better. They do hold a strange amount of weight in America’s foreign affairs policy making, which is completely unacceptable and flat out wrong. If one takes into account all the Christian groups who are supporting Israel, it’s akin to slapping every Christian supporter squarely across the face since many believe Bush to be a Christian man. Their political reach inside this country cannot be denied , although I am lost to understand why they hold such power beyond a voting bloc.

The best thing we can do for humanity is to see all the screaming as nothing more than paid for rhetoric working hard to install a climate of fear, and call them on it. We do need to watch Iran, but we have to stop clubbing them as if they were a baby seal. This is smelling like another oil grab, shrouded under the WMD game, pissing billions into the back pockets of political donors and war profiteering hacks.

quazen.com articles by this writer can be found here
socyberty.com articles can be located here
relijournal.com articles are here
picable.com photographic images are here