Independent senator Joe Lieberman just told Bob Schieffer today on
"Face the Nation" that the Iranians are training Iraqi terrorists to kill Americans at a location in Iraq. Joe made it sound like the Iranians are training al Qaeda and that we have to take out the training location as a part of the Global War on Terror. Bob responded to Joe's assertion by saying "I think you have made some news here today."
I find several things wrong with this. First, Joe Lieberman seems to be a strange person to provide this information to the public. I would have expected something like this to come from the White House, or at the lowest level, from the Pentagon. Why would the administration give this story to Joe Lieberman to put out on Sunday Morning, particularly a Sunday Morning in which Tony Snow has been on the talk show circuit? Second, I don't really trust Joe Lieberman. If he says it is raining, I'm going to walk to the window and look outside, and if it looks like rain, I'm going to double-check to see if it is really wet.
So I decided to check this story out on the Internet.
First Story: From today's
The Independent we get a reprint of a story written by Phil Sands in Baghdad and originally published April 15, 2007. It is entitled "Iran trains 'thousands' of Iraqi insurgents.
Thousands of Iraqi Shias are being trained in advanced guerrilla warfare tactics at a secret camp near the Iranian capital, according to militants who say they have spent time there.
Through an Iraqi intermediary who also went to Iran, The Independent on Sunday spoke to two seasoned guerrilla fighters. They said large numbers of Mahdi Army volunteers loyal to the maverick Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr had gone to the base in Jalil Azad, near Tehran, for instruction.
Abu Amer, a 39-year-old Mahdi Army fighter who asked that his full name not be used, said he had been trained by instructors he believed were from Iran's Revolutionary Guard. "Shia fighters are being trained in modern fighting methods, such as use of powerful explosives and bringing down helicopters," he told the IoS. [Note: IoS is "Independent on Sunday."]
So it is an old story, and it involves an assertion that the Iranian Shia Revolutionary Guard is training members of Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's militia in terrorist methods of fighting.
Besides being an old story, what is the surprise? The Mahdi Army is the major Iraqi Shia militia, is a well-known ally of the Iranian Shias, and has coordinated with the Iraqi government very little. The Mahdi Army is also a major opponent of the
Sunni insurgents and can be expected to be fighting the Sunni militias as soon as the U.S. military stops fighting them. If there is any significant connection between al Qaeda, al Qaeda-in-Iraq, or any of the terrorists who have been involved in 9/11 or in the terrorist incidents in Europe it certainly has not been reported in the news. The Mahdi Army and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are long-time allies. This support for the Mahdi Army is no surprise, and no significant threat to America.
Second story: On April 11, 2007
FOX News published an AP story entitled "U.S. Military: Iran Training Iraqi Insurgents in Using Roadside Bombs."
BAGHDAD — Iran has been training Iraqi fighters in Iran on the assembly of deadly roadside bombs known as EFPs, the U.S. military spokesman said on Wednesday.
"We know that they are being in fact manufactured and smuggled into this country, and we know that training does go on in Iran for people to learn how to assemble them and how to employ them. We know that training has gone on as recently as this past month from detainees debriefs," Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the U.S. military spokesman, said at a weekly briefing.
EFP stands for explosively formed penetrator, deadly roadside bombs that hurl a fist-size lump of molten copper capable of piercing armor.
In January, U.S. officials said at least 170 U.S. soldiers had been killed by EFPs.
Caldwell also said on Wednesday that the U.S. military had evidence that Iranian intelligence agents were active in Iraq in funding, training and arming Shiite militia fighters.
OK. EFPs. There has been a consistent stream of misinformation in the American Press (and especially pushed by FOX) that has tried to claim that Explosively Formed Projectiles (EFP's) are so sophisticated that they can only come from Iran. I have previously debunked this at:
Third story, this time from
CNN published April 12, 2007. The title is "Iraqi insurgents being trained in Iran, U.S. says."
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iraqi insurgents are being trained in Iran to assemble weapons and Iranian-made weapons are still turning up in Iraq, the U.S. military said Wednesday.
The statement comes two months after the United States said it had asked Tehran to stop the flow of weapons into Iraq.
Coalition forces found a cache of Iranian rockets and grenade launchers in Baghdad on Tuesday, spokesman U.S. Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said Wednesday.
What can I say? This is more of the same effort to whip up war hysteria in the U.S. against Iran. First - rockets and grenade launchers are ubiquitous around the world. Like EFPs, any partially industrialized nation can make them. It is rarely necessary because the two largest arms suppliers in the world (the U.S. and Russia) are always ready to supply one side or the other of every conflict. When one of those two aren't ready to send out new weapons, the supply of used small arms that hangs over the market is tremendous. Every temporary peace treaty or armistice adds to it.
Second - Iran is sitting on the extremely long border of an unstable nation that is being pressured by its occupier and most significant enemy to become a base for an attack on Iran. Any nation that wanted to survive would be arming, training and supporting its allies in Iraq. That's exactly the same as our training and arming of the military and police in Mexico, Colombia, Haiti, and dozens of other states. The purpose of that effort is to make the supported nations more stable and less of a threat to the defending nation. Iran is one of the longest existing civilizations on Earth, and is not run by fools. They
will take the necessary actions to defend themselves. The same is true for Moqtada al-Sadr. al-Sadr's Mahdi Army is the necessary militia intended to defend a minority Shia sect in an unstable, probably failed, nation state. The Mahdi Army needs to take its allies where it can find them, and the U.S. need not apply for ally status. Not that the Bush administration ever would. But the thing is, the actions of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are defensive, as are the actions of Mogtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. They and their small arms are not threats to the American Homeland, and wouldn't bother the U.S. military if we didn't have them in Iraq for the purpose of threatening Iran.
I'm not saying that Iran could not be a real threat to the United States, though I really doubt that Iran would ever be as big a threat as North Korea (which can't currently effectively attack the U.S. due to distance) or Pakistan, or Libya, or India for that matter. I am saying that the propaganda being pushed on the American public to allow military strikes against Iran do not address that possibility of a threat in any way.
That the Revolutionary Guard might train Mahdi Army members is no surprise and no real danger to the American Homeland, and for all the scary headings, this is all the reports have to offer. Iranians providing low-level military training to their Iraqi co-religionists. The same Mahdi Militia members could get the same training (and on much the same equipment, interestingly enough) from the U.S. military if they joined the Iraqi Army or Iraqi Police Forces, and many of them do exactly that. The only likely difference is that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards probably don't need to offer as much training on defusing EFPs as the Americans do. Just building them.
Other related stories: Additional similar stories can be found at
Google, but they are all older than the ones from April 2007 or from the same time and repeat the same material.
My conclusionI don't think that Joe Lieberman did make any real news today. He seems to be attempting to recycle the anti-Iranian propaganda stories that popped up in the American Press last April. So the question is why is he attempting to recycle the old stories? [Note: this may be the first of several efforts to recycle the old stories. That's how I would manage this kind of propaganda operation. Sourcing it with Sen. Lieberman makes me suspicious that there is no new Intelligence being marketed and will be none.]
My best guess is that Joe is practicing as the Independent Senator from Connecticut and from Israel. He wants the U.S. to attack Iran because Iran is the direct source of much of the Middle East threat to Israel. While I don't think Iran is a really significant threat to the U.S., it is a major source of danger to Israel. Israelis have a really good reason to fear Iran, and if they can get someone to take Iran on they at least feel safer. As a result, I suspect that someone handed Joe the previous stories from April and has been trying to get him to recycle them. Joe's motivation is very similar to that of the NeoCons in general (or the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee) who really believed that if America were to attack and occupy the clearly weak nation of Iraq then America could put long-term military pressure on Iran and keep Iran bottled up as a threat to its neighbors.
Widespread public fear tends to bring right-wing militarists to the surface in politics. Those same right-wing militarists do not want interference from others who would sacrifice some of the ability to conduct military activities in order to reduce tensions between opposing nations. Iran has been supporting Hamas and increasing the fear in Israel, and the Israeli militarists have found allies in the American militarists who were surfaced by the attack on 9/11.
Joe Lieberman has found a home in the right-wing militarist elements of both America and Israel, (as have the
American NeoCons) and I doubt that he sees much Joe sees much distinction between the two nations.
That's why Joe dropped his (dated) so-called Intelligence on "Face the Nation" today. That's also why we can safely ignore it.
Addendum June 11, 2007 8:13 AM CDT
Here is a report from "The Newshoggers" about The Sen. from Israel's ridiculous statement on "Face the Nation" yesterday. In it Cernig points to the new article at NRO by the well-known NeoCon,
Michael Ledeen, advocating an American attack on Iran in support of Israel. [Note: this is the same NeoCon "Michael Ledeen" who has long-term close connections with Italian Intelligence services as well as with Dick Cheney and
is suspected of connection with the forged "Niger Letters" used by the Bush administration as justification for the peremptory invasion of Iraq.]
The speed with which
Ledeen got his article out in support of Joe Lieberman demonstrates the fact that Lieberman's statement on FtN yesterday really was the opening salvo of a propaganda effort to get America to attack Israel's enemy, Iran.
Glenn Greenwald also identified the sources of Lieberman's propaganda effort. What I found particularly interesting was these quotations:
"Israeli Minister Avigdor Lieberman (whose duties include strategic affairs and Iran) visited the U.S. earlier this year, and gave an interview to The New York Times in which he said this: "Our first task is to convince Western countries to adopt a tough approach to the Iranian problem," which he called "the biggest threat facing the Jewish people since the Second World War.” [Minister] Lieberman insisted that negotiations with Iran were worthless: "The dialogue with Iran will be a 100-percent failure, just like it was with North Korea."
The same month, the current Israeli Prime Minister echoed those sentiments: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Friday compared Iran's nuclear ambitions and threats against Israel with the policies of Nazi Germany and criticized world leaders who maintain relations with Iran's president. . . .
Israel has identified Iran as the greatest threat to the Jewish state. Israel's concerns have heightened since the election of Iran's hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who frequently calls for the destruction of Israel and has questioned whether the Nazi genocide of 6 million Jews took place.
It should be clear that the panicky propaganda of the Israeli right-wing militarists do not really create a problem that the U.S. needs to go to war with Iran to solve. In fact, the opposite is much more likely to be the case. The militaristic panic out of the Israeli right-wing extremists and their American fellow-travelers is very likely the source of many of the problems America is facing, and much of the solution will involve getting those right-wingers out of American decision-making and expose their propaganda every time they surface.
