The Senate’s Excuses for Reauthorizing Section 215–and Why They’re Wrong
By Mark Jaycox | EFF | May 19, 2015
Three provisions of the Patriot Act expire on June 1 and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is trying to delay taking action on the issue by calling for a two month or 5-year reauthorization of Section 215—the provision of the Patriot Act the NSA relies on to collect millions of Americans call records.
Before June 1 we expect to see plenty of fear-mongering from intelligence officials and national security hawks. Last year, the Wall Street Journal began the foray with an op-ed by Former NSA Director General Mike Hayden and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey—key architects of many of the NSA’s unlawful activities. This time, the mongering started with op-eds by John Yoo, Senator Marco Rubio, and Senator Tom Cotton.
Here are the top excuses officials will use to continue spying on Americans calling records and why they’re wrong:
Congress Needs Time to Debate
“I don’t know how we have the kind of fulsome debate that is going to be required on NSA without passing a temporary extension,” —Sen. John Cornyn
Congress has had two full years to publicly debate the NSA’s use of Section 215. Indeed, the debate has been vigorous and thoughtful. While Congress didn’t create a separate investigative committee, it was still able to hold over a dozen hearings where Section 215 was discussed. The hearings, which called upon officials like the Attorney General, Director of National Intelligence, and Director of the NSA, included hours of testimony on the programs, what they collect, and their effectiveness.
Congress has also debated Section 215 via Senator Patrick Leahy and Jim Sensenbrenner’s reform bill called the USA Freedom Act. Last year, the House passed a gutted bill of the USA Freedom Act, but debated the legislation for days. This year, the House debated a stronger version of the USA Freedom Act and passed it 338 to 88.
The Senate has also debated the legislation. Last year, after two days of debate, the Senate failed to advance a stronger version of the USA Freedom Act by two votes. Congress has had more than enough time to discuss these authorities and must act.
The Section 215 Program is Effective
“This has been a very important part of our effort to defend the homeland since 9/11.” —Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
There’s one problem: there’s no evidence to support that. Two independent commissions concluded the calling records program was not effective and has not been used to stop a terrorist attack. The first, called the President’s Review Group on Signals Intelligence, concluded “Our review suggests that the information contributed to terrorist investigations by the use of section 215 telephony meta-data was not essential to preventing attacks.”
Like the President’s Review Group, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board also concluded:
Based on the information provided to the Board, including classified briefings and documentation, we have not identified a single instance involving a threat to the United States in which the program made a concrete difference in the outcome of a counterterrorism investigation. Moreover, we are aware of no instance in which the program directly contributed to the discovery of a previously unknown terrorist plot or the disruption of a terrorist attack.
The quotes speak for themselves.
Fixing Section 215 Puts the Nation at Risk
“[The USA Freedom Act] would be rolling [the nation] back to exactly where we were pre-9/11. —Sen. Richard Burr
The Attorney General, Director of National Intelligence, and House Intelligence Chair and Ranking Members do not think reforming the Section 215 program will harm national security. Attorneys General Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper wrote letters (.pdf) to Congress noting that Section 215 reform would preserve both “vital national security authorities” and “essential Intelligence Community capabilities.”
The Program is “Lawful”
“Contrary to irresponsible rumors, the [bulk surveillance] program is lawful, carefully monitored, and protects personal privacy. The program does not conduct mass surveillance of American citizens—or any surveillance at all.” —Sen. Cotton and Rep. Mike Pompeo
Apparently, one of the “irresponsible rumors” Sen. Tom Cotton and Rep. Mike Pompeo reference is a decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. (The circuit courts are the federal courts directly below the Supreme Court). The Second Circuit held that the NSA’s telephone records program went far beyond what Congress authorized when it passed Section 215 of the Patriot Act in 2001. The court rejected the government’s secret reinterpretation of Section 215 that has served as the basis for the telephone records collection program. The Second Circuit’s opinion stands as a clear sign that the courts are ready to step in and rule that mass surveillance is illegal.
In addition, the program is “surveillance.” As we’ve repeatedly said: the collection of metadata matters. It reveals a host of information and context about a person’s habits, traits, and beliefs. The Circuit Court opinion explained that metadata is often a proxy for the content of the communication, and that phone records can “reveal a startling amount of detailed information” about callers. The court also recognized that aggregation of calling records matters because collection of large amounts of metadata plus the application of sophisticated data processing technologies gives the government access to even more revealing portraits of individuals and groups.
Congress Must Say No to a Short-Term Reauthorization
In the next few days, Congress will begin to debate whether or not they should vote for a short-term reauthorization of Section 215. The answer is clearly no. Join us now in telling your lawmaker to vote against any short-term reauthorization.
You Be the Judge
By Robert Parry | Consortium News | May 20, 2015
The Australian news show “60 Minutes” has angrily responded to my noting discrepancies between the footage that it used to claim it found the spot in eastern Ukraine where a BUK missile launcher passed after the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shoot-down last July and the video taken that day.
Earlier in the “60 Minutes” broadcast, the show made a point of overlaying other video from last July 17 with its own footage to demonstrate that it had found the precise locations passed by a truck suspected of hauling the missile battery eastward before the shoot-down. But the program deviated from that pattern regarding the most important video, which the program claimed proved that Russia had provided the missile that shot down MH-17 and that missile battery was making its getaway through Luhansk.
Correspondent Michael Usher of Australia’s “60 Minutes” claims to have found the billboard visible in a video of a BUK missile launcher after the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on July 17, 2014. (Screen shot from Australia’s “60 Minutes”)
On that crucial point, the program separated the original video of a BUK anti-aircraft missile battery, apparently taken the night after the shoot-down, from the scene in which correspondent Michael Usher claims to have located the same site in Luhansk.
The separation of the two scenes made it difficult for viewers to note the many discrepancies. Indeed, almost nothing in the two scenes matched. In my article about these differences, I posted the two images from the TV show side by side so readers could decide for themselves.
A screen shot of the roadway where the suspected BUK missile battery passes after the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on July 17, 2014. (Image from Australian “60 Minutes” program)
In the “60 Minutes” program, Usher offered no explanation for why the pattern of using overlays was broken in this one instance. Nor did the program make any effort to explain the multiple discrepancies in the two images.
In reacting to my article, however, the show issued a statement saying that – in deciding where locations were – it relied on calculations by blogger Eliot Higgins “done from his house in Leicester,” England. The show then explained the discrepancies between the earlier video, as posted on social media, and the show’s footage in Luhansk, Ukraine, this way:
“We opted to do our piece to camera as a wide shot showing the whole road system so the audience could get the layout and see which way the Buk was heading. The background in our piece to camera looks different to the original Buk video simply because it was shot from a different angle. The original video was obviously shot from one of the apartments behind, through the trees — which in in summer were in full leaf.”
So, the show is acknowledging that it intentionally deviated from the previous pattern of using overlays to demonstrate how precisely its team had located earlier scenes in question. But it’s simply not true that by offering this “wide shot showing the whole road system” that the audience would “get the layout and see which way the Buk was heading.”
All you see is Usher standing on open ground gesturing to a billboard. How any Australian viewer would get a deeper understanding of the geography of Luhansk from this “wide shot” is a mystery. And you don’t get much sense of “the whole road system” either. In other words, the explanation sounds more like an excuse or a cover-up.
Given the pattern of the rest of the show, wouldn’t it have made more sense to try to recreate the angle of the original video to prove the actual location – as best you could – rather than opting for a different angle and simply relying on Usher to make an assertion? There’s an old saying in journalism, “show, don’t tell,” but this was a classic case of telling, not showing.
And this was not some minor point. This was proof cited by the program to say Russian officials were lying when they placed the scene of the “getaway” BUK launcher in the town of Krasnoarmiis’k, northwest of Donetsk and then under Ukrainian government control. Usher dismissed that Russian claim as a lie and cited the billboard scene in Luhansk as the final proof that Russian President Vladimir Putin was responsible for killing 298 people aboard MH-17.
If the show wanted to truly nail down this significant point and was really interested in giving its viewers “the layout” of the scene in Luhansk, wouldn’t it also have made sense to have footage of the apartments where the original video was supposedly shot? That would have provided some explanation for the obvious discrepancies in the two images. Instead, the show simply broke the two video scenes up in a way so a casual viewer wouldn’t be able to detect the discrepancies.
The Australian show also takes issue with me writing that Usher appeared to be standing in “an open field.” The show protests that “he is on a patch of grass by the road” – although it sure looks like an open field in the “wide shot” giving us “the layout.”
The show further protests my characterization of the scene in the original video as “overgrown,” saying “it was simply shot through trees in the foreground.” But note the trees and bushes along the right of the image and in the background. Beyond the positioning of this overgrowth, there appears to be almost nothing comparable between the two images, including the positioning and shapes of the billboards.
Yet, instead of grappling with these differences or trying to recreate the angle of the original video as closely as possible, the show opts for some meaningless “wide shot,” makes it difficult for anyone watching the show to compare the two scenes that flash by fairly quickly, and simply asserts as flat fact something that is still dubious – that Usher and his team had located the right spot.
That strikes me as journalistically negligent if not willfully misleading. But look at the images. You be the judge.
~
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
The Washington Post and the “Nuclear Weapons Program” That Wasn’t
By Nima Shirazi | Wide Asleep in America | May 20, 2015
Back on April 27, the Washington Post updated an article about a new poll showing that, despite ongoing multilateral talks, over one-fifth of Republicans currently support a military attack on Iran. The short piece referenced John McCain’s infamous 2007 “bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb Iran” quote (sung by a terrible old man to the tune of “Barbara Ann”), but soon after it was published the Post issued the following humble correction and clarification:
Kudos to the Post for forthrightly addressing and correcting such an appalling mistake. It’s comforting that the author is as embarrassed and remorseful as he seems. He should be. Yeeesh. (Still, it’s questionable whether The Beach Boys should ever be described as oldies, in the “Golden Oldies” sense, and even more suspect to place The Beatles in that – or any – category.)
The article, written by Aaron Blake for the paper’s “The Fix” blog, contains another egregious error – and this one has yet to be remedied.
In describing the recent Quinnipiac poll in which bombing Iran is supported by 13% of Americans (including 21% of self-identifying Republicans) over continuing nuclear negotiations, Blake notes that, in official circles, “basically nobody is talking about the United States taking military action to rein in Iran’s nuclear weapons program — at least at this point.”
At this point, it should be perfectly clear to professional journalists and their editors that international intelligence assessments consistently affirm that Iran has no nuclear weapons program. What Iran does have, however, is a nuclear energy program with uranium enrichment facilities, all of which are under international safeguards, strictly monitored and routinely inspected by the IAEA. No move to divert nuclear material to military or weaponization purposes have ever been detected. This is consistently affirmed by U.S., British, Russian, and even Israeli intelligence, as well as the IAEA. In fact, the IAEA itself has said there is “no concrete proof” Iran’s nuclear program “has ever had” a military component.
The poll, albeit misleading and speculative, is more careful in its language than Blake’s summary. Here’s the full question posed to respondents: “Would you prefer military intervention against Iran’s nuclear program or a negotiated settlement to reduce its nuclear potential?”
The conflation of Iran’s nuclear energy program with a nonexistent nuclear weapons program, as Blake demonstrates here, has plagued the news media for years and served to grossly misinform the public on the realities of Iranian intentions and capabilities. Though you wouldn’t know it from Blake’s report, Iran has no “nuclear weapons program” for the United States “to rein in.”
Perhaps more disappointing is that Blake’s offending phrase was published in the first place, especially considering that this precise issue of conflation, journalistic shorthand, and loose language has been specifically addressed before by Blake’s own paper.
In December 2011, Patrick B. Pexton, then The Washington Post‘s ombudsman, challenged the paper’s routinely irresponsible and alarmist reporting on Iran’s nuclear program, writing that the IAEA “does not say Iran has a bomb, nor does it say it is building one,” and warned that such misleading characterizations of such an important issue “can also play into the hands of those who are seeking further confrontation with Iran.”
Others in similar roles at leading media organizations concur. The following month, in January 2012, New York Times Public Editor Arthur Brisbane responded to reader complaints that the paper’s reporting on Iran’s nuclear program was misleading and that the use of shorthand phrases legitimized and perpetuated false narratives. Brisbane agreed.
“I think the readers are correct on this…In this case, the distinction between the two [a nuclear energy program and a nuclear weapons program] is important because the Iranian program has emerged as a possible casus belli,” he wrote.
Days later, National Public Radio ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos weighed in. “Shorthand references are often dangerous in journalism, and listeners are correct to be on the alert for them,” he noted. “Repeated enough as fact – ‘Iran’s nuclear weapons program’ – they take on a life of their own.” Schumacher-Matos added that, at the behest of NPR’s Senior Editor for National Security Bruce Auster, “NPR’s policy is to refer in shorthand to Iran’s ‘nuclear program’ and not ‘nuclear weapons program'” and concluded, “This is a correct formula.”
The next year, in June 2013, The Guardian‘s Readers’ Editor Chris Elliott reached a similar conclusion, agreeing that the use of the term “nuclear weapons program” with regard to Iran is misleading and should be avoided.
In September 2013, after leaving the Post, Pexton chimed in again, doubling down on his assessment that speculating on Iranian intentions had no place in news reporting, especially when there is no evidence of a weapons program.
Offhand, erroneous descriptions repeated constantly in the media clearly go a long way toward turning an evidence-free speculation and hawkish talking point into an assumed fact. Throughout his own post, Blake’s tone is that of disbelief that over a tenth of the America public would want to bomb Iran rather than support diplomacy. Perhaps the problem is that they’ve been reading – and believing – reports like the one Blake himself wrote.
Considering the Post‘s well-known editorial line on Iran and past disregard for the suggestions of its former ombudsman (a position the paper eliminated permanently following Pexton’s departure in early 2013), there is little hope that Blake’s phrase will be corrected.
But, hey, at least they eventually got the Beatles thing right. For chrissake, people.
Neocon mouthpiece Ayaan Hirsi Ali exposed as mythomaniac
By Brandon Martinez | Non-Aligned Media | May 18, 2015
The vulgar Neocon-Zionist agent Ayaan Hirsi Ali, darling of Zionist media venues for her anti-Muslim invective and genocidal calls for a “war on Islam,” is exposed thoroughly in this Dutch documentary as a mythomaniac who fabricated entire parts of her past to gain fame and fortune in the West.
The documentary shows that she opportunistically married a Somali-Canadian man in Kenya and then used him to pay her way to Europe where she promptly ditched him and demanded a divorce. Ali invented a story about being a civil war refugee from Somalia when she in fact lived out her childhood peacefully in Kenya. She did this so that she’d meet the requirements to gain residency in the Netherlands. She further invented a fable about fleeing a ‘forced marriage,’ an outright lie she told to a slew of media outlets which has earned her fame and book deals. All of her sanctimonious fibbing eventually paid off when she became an MP in Holland in 2003.
Despite all of her past lies and debauchery, American neocons and Zionist-controlled media outlets (Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, FOX News’ The Megan File, AEI, The Guardian, Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report, The Daily Caller, The Richard Dawkins Foundation, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, and The Economist) have promoted her as a legitimate commentator. She is nothing more than an extremely mercenary opportunistic megalomaniac who will say anything to get attention. She is a willing tool of the neocon, Zionist warmongers and their agenda for world domination.
Cleveland Police Charged Tamir Rice With “Aggravated Menacing” a Week After Killing Him
By Carlos Miller | PINAC | May 20, 2015
It took two seconds for a Cleveland police officer to shoot and kill 12-year-old Tamir Rice for playing with a pellet gun, claiming he was in fear for his life.
It took another week for police to charge the boy with “aggravated menacing” and “inducing panic,” according to documents published today by the Daily Kos.
But even six months after the controversial shooting that was captured on surveillance video last November, investigators have yet to interview the cop who shot and killed him, a man named Timothy Loehmann who has a history of emotional instability and disciplinary problems.
A man who should have never been hired.
However, that hasn’t stopped Loehmann and his partner, Frank Garmback, from asking a judge to delay a lawsuit filed by Rice’s family until after the “pending investigation” is complete.
Not that they’re doing anything to help that investigation along, refusing to speak to investigators about it.
Nevertheless, the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Office, which is handling the investigation, says it is almost done.
According to CNN:
Sheriff Clifford Pinkney provided what he said was a timeline of the investigation, which his department took over in December before beginning its investigation “in earnest” in mid-February. He told reporters that he and his investigators had resolved to leave “zero stones unturned” when the investigation is handed to prosecutors.
The Gray family’s legal team criticized what it said was the torpid pace of the investigation and said the drawn-out process is fueling suspicions that a coverup is in the works.
“It’s been now spanning three seasons, going up on 6 months, and sometimes justice requires just a little more diligence,” family attorney Walter Madison said. “What can be taking so long when you have the entire event there on video? A crime fighter’s dream.”
It is obvious that investigators are doing their usual coverup to protect themselves from any liability, trying to paint Rice as a dangerous menace to society when he was just a kid playing with a toy gun.
The real menace was the cop they hired, as Cleveland.com reported two weeks after the shooting.
A Nov. 29, 2012 letter contained in Tim Loehmann’s personnel file from the Independence Police Department says that during firearms qualification training he was “distracted” and “weepy.”
“He could not follow simple directions, could not communicate clear thoughts nor recollections, and his handgun performance was dismal,” according to the letter written by Deputy Chief Jim Polak of the Independence police.
The letter recommended that the department part ways with Loehmann, who went on to become a police officer with the Cleveland Division of Police.
“I do not believe time, nor training, will be able to change or correct the deficiencies,” Polak said.
Loehmann was forced to resign from the Independence Police Department in December 2012. He was then hired by the Cleveland Police Department in March 2014, which claims they never reviewed his personnel file, essentially placing the public at risk by handing him a badge and a gun.
Seconds after he shot Rice, his partner, Garmback, tackled the boy’s 14-year-old sister, who was running towards her brother, handcuffing her before stuffing her in the back of a patrol car.
Meanwhile, both cops did nothing to save the boy’s life.
Saudi Arabia’s Nuclear Bluster
By Jonathan Marshall | Consortium News | May 19, 2015
As if the Mideast weren’t troubled enough, we now learn from Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Times that Saudi Arabia has apparently “taken the ‘strategic decision’ to acquire ‘off-the-shelf’ atomic weapons from Pakistan.”
This and many recent similar stories blame the emergence of Saudi Arabia’s alleged nuclear ambitions on President Barack Obama’s perceived failure to check Iran. “Saudi Arabia is so angry at the emerging nuclear agreement between Iran and the major powers that it is threatening to develop its own nuclear capability — one more indication of the deep differences between the United States and the Persian Gulf Arab states over the deal,” commented The New York Times in an editorial on May 15.
Saudi Arabia has been playing the nuclear card for years, however. In 2003, the Saudis leaked a “strategic review” that included the option of acquiring a “nuclear capability” as a deterrent. The Guardian, which broke the story, called it a “worrying development” that reflected “Riyadh’s estrangement from Washington” and “worries about an Iranian nuclear programme.”
In 2006, Saudi Arabia announced its interest in developing a nuclear energy program with other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council. As journalists reported at the time, “Few observers doubt that promoting the idea of a joint atomic energy program between the predominantly Sunni Arab states is a way for Saudi Arabia to send a message to the United States that the Arab state will match Tehran’s nuclear power if it needs to.”
Years have passed without the Saudis making good on these threats. And, there are strong reasons to question the veracity of leaks about Riyadh’s nuclear intentions now. Many experts seriously doubt whether the Saudis really intend to break their treaty obligations and risk international sanctions by trying to acquire nuclear weapons, particularly when they have lived with a nuclear-armed Israel for years.
Saudi Arabia would require many years to build nuclear weapons from scratch; the country has only a very modest atomic energy research program, not a single nuclear power reactor, and no known enrichment facilities. Thus Riyadh’s nuclear ambitions only make sense if Saudi Arabia has, as often claimed, arranged with Islamabad to obtain fully armed nuclear weapons in exchange for financing Pakistan’s nuclear program.
Such claims, while not totally implausible, remain “speculation,” according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a leading NGO devoted to proliferation issues. Stories about the Pakistan connection originated with a former Saudi diplomat who defected to the United States in the 1990s. He also claimed that Saudi Arabia provided almost $5 billion to Saddam Hussein to finance an Iraqi nuclear weapons program.
“Riyadh has denied the veracity of Khilewi’s statements, and most experts dismiss their credibility,” according to NTI. “Most analysts believe it highly unlikely Pakistan would ever follow through with such an agreement, were it to even exist, given a host of disincentives.”
The story has been kept alive over the years by Israeli intelligence leaks. As BBC news reported in 2013, “it is Israeli information – that Saudi Arabia is now ready to take delivery of finished warheads for its long-range missiles – that informs some recent US and NATO intelligence reporting. Israel of course shares Saudi Arabia’s motive in wanting to worry the US into containing Iran.”
Pakistan called the claim of a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia “speculative, mischievous and baseless.” Of course, Islamabad would say that even if the deal were real. But Pakistan would face “huge disincentives” against transferring nuclear weapons, including the threat of international sanctions and the loss of military aid from Washington, notes Philipp Bleek, a proliferation expert at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
“Moreover,” Bleek writes, “Pakistan is locked in an arms race with archrival India, and New Delhi’s long-term nuclear weapon production capabilities significantly exceed those of Islamabad, so the latter can ill-afford to spare a meaningful number of nuclear weapons.” Pakistan’s recent refusal to send troops to support Saudi Arabia’s attacks on Yemen is further evidence that it is no puppet of Riyadh.
Bleek observes that the very frequency of leaks about Saudi Arabia’s nuclear intentions weighs against the seriousness of that threat:
“History suggests that while some states have trumpeted their potential desire for nuclear weapons — think Germany in the early years of the Cold War, or Japan more recently — they tend not to be those that later went on to actually acquire them. And for good reason: calling attention to proliferation intentions is counterproductive if one is intent on actually proliferating. Instead, states tend to draw attention to their potential proliferation in the service of another goal: rallying others to address the security concerns that are motivating potential proliferation, and especially securing protection from powerful allies.”
Saudi Arabia’s latest nuclear leaks may be having their intended effect of bolstering the Arab monarchy’s bargaining leverage with Washington. Although President Obama stopped short of promising a formal military alliance at the recent summit with members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, he reaffirmed America’s “ironclad commitment to the security of our gulf partners,” and promised more wide-ranging military aid, including creation of “an early-warning capability for a regional missile defense system.”
The Obama administration should stop making such concessions in the face of dubious Saudi proliferation warnings. It should simply stick to its course of seeking a comprehensive nuclear agreement with Iran. Such an agreement remains the best guarantee of Saudi Arabia’s long-term security. And in the short term, the Saudis have no legitimate reason to fear Iran’s nuclear program, which is one of the most closely inspected on Earth.
Iran has no known nuclear weapons capability and has enriched uranium only to levels useful for medical or peaceful atomic energy applications. The International Atomic Energy Agency has uncovered no substantiated evidence of Iran attempting to break out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to which Saudi Arabia is also a signatory.
If the Saudis ignore such evidence and really do seek nuclear weapons from Pakistan, the White House should take a hard line and follow the example set by the Ford administration in 1976, which warned South Korea that it would “review the entire spectrum of its relations” if Seoul moved to develop nuclear weapons.
Ideally, the United States should also begin exploring a more productive strategy for reassuring both Saudi Arabia and Iran without making concessions to either one. Instead of selling more arms, reaching new defense pacts, or cracking down further on Iran, why not get behind Saudi Arabia’s longstanding support for a nuclear weapon free zone in the Middle East?
That goal was endorsed by the UN General Assembly in 2012. It may be a political non-starter for now in Washington, but the surest way to reduce the risk of proliferation in the Middle East would be to inspect, control, and eventually eliminate the region’s one existing nuclear arsenal — in Israel.
Larry Mendte Gets It So Wrong: How Persistent Iraq Mythologies Inspire Bad Analysis on Iran
By Nima Shirazi | Wide Asleep in America | May 8, 2015
Earlier this week, Kayvon Afshari, communications director for the American Iranian Council, appeared on Another Thing with veteran broadcaster Larry Mendte to discuss the state of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program and the prospect, in the face of powerful opposition, of a final deal being reached in the coming weeks.
While Afshari’s pro-diplomacy optimism was backed up by important facts not often heard in the media, Mendte made a number of comments that betrayed his role as an ostensibly objective and informed interviewer.
Right off the bat, for instance, Mendte describes the ongoing talks as a negotiation about an “Iranian nuclear arms deal.” That’s a bizarre – albeit revealing – way to begin, namely because that’s not what this is. If anything, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is a nuclear arms deal, one signed back in 1968 by Iran and ratified two year later, as it proscribes all non-nuclear weapons signatories to forever forgo the acquisition of nuclear weapons.
What Iran is negotiating with six world powers about is accepting verifiable limits and constraints on its peaceful, civilian, non-weaponized, non-military, safeguarded nuclear energy program in exchange for the lifting of international and unilateral sanctions and the normalization of its nuclear dossier.
This is not an “arms deal,” as Iran has no “arms” to give up. The United States intelligence community and its allies have long assessed that Iran doesn’t even have a nuclear weapons program, let alone nuclear weapons. Iranian officials, for decades, have consistently maintained they will never pursue such weapons on religious, strategic, political, moral and legal grounds. The IAEA has found no credible evidence that Iran has ever had a nuclear weapons program.
As the conversation gets underway, Mendte repeats the tired claim that Iran is just biding its time under intense and intrusive scrutiny until – years from now – when it will suddenly emerge with a deadly nuclear arsenal manufactured out of thin air:
The way I understand the deal, and I think some of the people that are critical of it, is that there’d be a decade-long moratorium and then, the president has admitted in an article, in an interview, that after that decade-long moratorium, Iran could start up a nuclear program just like that. As a matter fact, they could advance the program during that decade and then be able to start up, for 10 years. This just puts off the inevitable. Is that fair?
Obviously this is not “fair” and Mendte’s understanding of the deal, or anything having to do with Iran or its nuclear program for that matter, is effectively nonexistent.
Afshari rightly points out to Mendte that Iran already has a nuclear program, one that is legal and guaranteed under the NPT, also noting, “It’s not as though there’s going to be no inspections after ten years. There’s still going to be strict inspections, but they’ll be loosened after that initial ten years.”
Mendte is quick to jump in. “We had strict inspections in Iraq. That didn’t turn out really well,” he patronizingly tells Afshari, continuing, “The reason we went into Iraq, people forget, in the first place, is because the inspectors were thrown out and not allowed in. [There were] supposed to be UN inspections and he [Saddam Hussein] didn’t allow it.”
When Afshari replies that the analogy is a stretch as Iran has never kicked out inspectors and that Iraq’s nuclear program was very different than Iran’s, Mendte is undeterred, insisting on playing out his analogy. “There was a nuclear arms deal in place” before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, he says, “and what I’m saying is that lead to the Iraq War. I mean, I know there [were] other factors including 9/11, including President Bush wanting to go after Iraq, but that was the catalyst: the fact that they left out UN inspectors, if you remember at the time.”
While Afshari is a gracious guest and tries to steer the conversation back on track, he really shouldn’t have been so accommodating to Mendte’s version of history. Basically, he should have told him was flat-out wrong. Beyond the fact that Mendte seems to have forgotten that Bush administration claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were false (and that there was no “nuclear arms deal in place” with Iraq), his claim about international inspectors is also completely and totally bogus. How so, you ask?
Saddam never kicked inspectors out of Iraq.
This claim is a canard, a wholesale myth, a straight-up falsehood. It was built up by the Bush administration to justify the invasion of Iraq and dutifully reinforced by the mainstream media. In fact, between late November 2002 and mid-March 2003, weapons inspectors from the IAEA and the U.N. Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) conducted more than 750 inspections at 550 sites in Iraq.
In January 2003, UNMOVIC chief Hans Blix told reporters that inspectors had been “covering the country in ever wider sweeps” for months but “haven’t found any smoking guns.” An Associated Press dispatch from the time noted, “In almost two months of surprise visits across Iraq, U.N. arms monitors have inspected 13 sites identified by U.S. and British intelligence agencies as major ‘facilities of concern,’ and reported no signs of revived weapons building.”
IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei delivered a report to the U.N. Security Council on March 7, 2003, during which he spoke of increased Iraqi cooperation with international inspections and thoroughly dismantled Bush administration claims about aluminum tubes, high-strength magnets, and importing yellowcake from Niger. ElBaradei concluded, “After three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapon program in Iraq” and clearly stated the intention “to continue our inspection activities.”
Inspections ended abruptly eleven days later, on March 18, 2003, for one reason: the United States was about to start dropping bombs all over the place.
“In early March,” Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post‘s “Fact Checker” blog wrote in 2011, Blix “began getting warnings from senior U.S. and British officials about the safety of the inspectors. Then the company that supplied helicopters for the teams withdrew its equipment from Iraq.”
News reports at the time leave no doubt as to what really happened.
“In the clearest sign yet that war with Iraq is imminent, the United States has advised U.N. weapons inspectors to begin pulling out of Baghdad, the U.N. nuclear agency chief said Monday,” reported the Associated Press on March 17, 2003. The article continued:
Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the recommendation was given late Sunday night both to his Vienna-based agency hunting for atomic weaponry and to the New York-based teams looking for biological and chemical weapons.”
“Late last night… I was advised by the U.S. government to pull out our inspectors from Baghdad,” ElBaradei told the IAEA’s board of governors.
Within hours, the evacuation began. “U.N. weapons inspectors climbed aboard a plane and pulled out of Iraq on Tuesday after President Bush issued a final ultimatum for Saddam Hussein to step down or face war,” AP reported the next day. “U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Monday ordered all U.N. inspectors and support staff, humanitarian workers and U.N. observers along the Iraq-Kuwait border to evacuate Iraq after U.S. threats to launch war.”
“[A]t no time did Iraq throw out the inspectors,” wrote Kessler, in an attempt to forever put these talking points to rest. “[I]nspectors voluntarily ended their mission because of the threat of military action by the United States and its allies.
Larry Mendte’s regurgitation of Rumsfeldian propaganda – 13 years after the illegal and disastrous invasion of Iraq – should cast doubt on his credibility as a broadcaster. Let’s hope a correction and mea culpa are forthcoming – not to mention an apology to Afshari.
*****
UPDATE:
May 10, 2015 – I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised by Larry Mendte’s inability to grasp basic facts. A quick look at some of his past rants on Iran makes clear he’s long bought into the most bellicose and alarmist propaganda pushed by Iran hawks and is incapable of any semblance of critical thought. He sees the U.S. invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq as warnings to other nations, not as lessons to be learned about jingoism, faulty intelligence, war crimes, and imperial adventurism. He thinks Iran has a “nuclear weapons program.” He thinks sanctions “brought Iran to the negotiating table.” He says he knows that Iran wants a nuclear bomb.
Larry Mendte bloviates like he’s in a Darrell Hammond sketch. With one exception: he should be taken far less seriously.
Obama lying about Osama bin Laden’s death: Seymour Hersh
Press TV – May 11, 2015
US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh says President Barack Obama’s narrative of the killing of former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was false.
In an article published on the London Review of Books website on Sunday, Hersh wrote that high-level lying “remains the modus operandi of US policy, along with secret prisons, drone attacks, Special Forces night raids, bypassing the chain of command, and cutting out those who might say no.”
Citing a retired senior US intelligence official, the journalist explained that how the killing of bin Laden was the “high point of Obama’s first term, and a major factor in his re-election.”
“The White House still maintains that the mission was an all-American affair, and that the senior generals of Pakistan’s army and Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) were not told of the raid in advance. This is false, as are many other elements of the Obama administration’s account,” Hersh said.
“The most blatant lie was that Pakistan’s two most senior military leaders — General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, chief of the army staff, and General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, director general of the ISI — were never informed of the US mission. This remains the White House position despite an array of reports that have raised questions,” Hersh wrote.
He also said bin Laden had been a prisoner of the Inter-Services Intelligence agency at the Abbottabad compound since 2006.
“Kayani and Pasha knew of the raid in advance and had made sure that the two helicopters delivering the Seals to Abbottabad could cross Pakistani airspace without triggering any alarms… that the CIA did not learn of bin Laden’s whereabouts by tracking his couriers, as the White House has claimed since May 2011, but from a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer who betrayed the secret in return for much of the $25 million reward offered by the US, and that, while Obama did order the raid and the Seal team did carry it out, many other aspects of the administration’s account were false,” according to the journalist.
Washington announced on May 2, 2011 that bin Laden was killed by US forces in his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
A number of media reports later said the US government was moving to hide files about the US military’s suspected raid on Osama bin Laden.
The lack of transparency over bin Laden’s death has cast further doubt over the announcement.
Regarding President Obama’s announcement of the raid to Americans, Hersh said, “Obama’s speech was put together in a rush.”
He also said the White House refused to respond to his requests for comment.
Featured Video
Armando Mema: Finland Used as New Frontline Against Russia
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
New Documentary
Hospital Horror
Documented in the film,“Bad Medicine”
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Poland and Bulgaria put brakes on Ukraine weapons funding
- Russia Reaffirms Its Support for Sovereignty, Territorial Integrity of Lebanon – Russian MFA
- Araghchi: Failure to punish aggressors against Iran endangers all nations
- Iran tells UN Security Council to stop reversing roles of ‘aggressor and victim’
- Disgraced neocons Feith & Libby: stop whining about ‘endless war’
- CENTCOM rejects Israeli claims of preparations for new Iran attacks
- Your Shopping Bag Runs Through Hormuz
- Armando Mema: Finland Used as New Frontline Against Russia
- Gestapo 2.0? Germany grants spy agencies sweeping new powers
- Franco-Palestinian group seeks court ban on Israeli real estate fair in Paris
- If Americans Knew
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Barents Sea Temperatures Were Warmer And Sea Ice Less Extensive In The 1700s Than Today
- German Authorities Start Initiative To Evaluate Public Register For Climate “Disinformation” Spreaders!
- Zonal Asymmetry of Temperature Change in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current
- New Study: The Net Fossil Fuel Contribution To Rising Atmospheric CO2 Has Been Zero For 500 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Transition Becoming Increasingly Expensive…Another 6 Trillion Euros!
- Sudden Stratospheric Warming, Powerful El Niño Combination May Lead To Extreme Europe Cold, Energy Crisis!
- Two New Studies Find Thwaites Glacier Melt Cannot Be Driven By Human Activity Or A Warming Ocean
- E-Cars Reduce CO2 Emissions By Only 41% Compared To Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles
- Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Professor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
