Smiles and Denials: Official Israeli and Iranian Statements Demonstrate a Double Standard
By Nima Shirazi | Wide Asleep in America | July 24, 2012
Reacting to the immediate Israeli accusations that Iran was behind the blast that killed Israeli tourists in Burgas, Bulgaria, Foreign Ministry spokesman, Ramin Mehmanparast, insisted, “The Islamic Republic of Iran, which itself is the biggest victim of terrorism, considers any act that endangers the lives of innocent people in order to fulfill illegitimate political objectives as inhumane and strongly condemns it.”
The official IRNA news agency quoted Mehmanparast as saying, “The Zionist regime, which had a direct role in the assassination of our country’s nuclear scientists, is leveling baseless accusations to divert global attention to its own terrorist nature.”
Despite incessant allegations – devoid of evidence, of course – of Iranian culpability, the BBC reports that Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borisov has consistently “declined to back Israeli claims that Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah played a role.”
A bogus story in the Times of Israel which claimed that Iranian President Mahmoud had gloated over the Burgas bus bombing has been successfully debunked by both myself and BBC Persian correspondent Bahman Kalbasi. Still, it may be illuminating to consider the differences between the actual Iranian response to the terrorist attack in Bulgaria that took the lives of Israeli vacationers and the Israeli response to the multiple murders of Iranian scientists on the streets of Tehran, often when they have been accompanied by members of their family, going to work, or dropping their children off at nursery school.
The targeted killings of Iranian professors and scientists have widely been considered to be the work of Mossad, either on its own or in conjunction with Iranian terrorist organizations. Yet, in response to the murders, the Israeli government has never issued an official denial of responsibility.
On January 11, 2012, the day 32-year-old Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan was murdered in his car, Israel’s top military spokesman, Brigadier General Yoav Mordechai, posted on his Facebook page: “I don’t know who settled the score with the Iranian scientist, but I certainly am not shedding a tear.”
What possible “score” could be settled by killing a man who works at a nuclear facility that is fully safeguarded and monitored by the IAEA remains a mystery, especially considering that – as a Reuters Special Report affirmed earlier this year – “[t]he United States, European allies and even Israel generally agree on three things about Iran’s nuclear program: Tehran does not have a bomb, has not decided to build one, and is probably years away from having a deliverable nuclear warhead.”
Responding to the murder of Ahmadi-Roshan, married and the father of a young son, Time Magazine quoted a “senior Israel official” who smiled and said, “Yeah, one more. I don’t feel sad for him.”
Confronted with the claim that Israel was responsible for the targeted killing, an anonymous Israeli official told The Washington Post, “It is not our policy to comment on this sort of speculation when it periodically arises.”
During an interview with CNN shortly after Ahmadi-Roshan’s killing, Israeli President Shimon Peres was also asked about Israel’s involvement. He replied dismissively: “Not to the best of my knowledge.”
Meanwhile, Mickey Segal, a former director of the Israeli military’s Iranian intelligence department, said, “Many bad things have been happening to Iran in the recent period. Iran is in a situation where pressure on it is mounting, and the latest assassination joins the pressure that the Iranian regime is facing.”
Ahmadi-Roshan’s murder came the day after IDF Chief Benny Gantz reportedly told a Knesset panel that 2012 would be a “critical year” for Iran, not least of all because of “things that happen to it unnaturally.”
Now imagine if any of these statements had come from Iranian officials about Israel this past week. And think what we’d be hearing if Iran’s Foreign Ministry had yet to issue a statement about the Burgas bombing, with the claim that it is not Iran’s “policy to comment on this sort of speculation.” Still, Iran’s denials are dismissed as yet another instance of devious Persian duplicity, while Israel’s smug silence is simply ignored, or even admired.
Of course, while denial doesn’t mean absolution and silence isn’t necessarily complicity, the double standards of international expectation, obligation, and suspicion when it comes to Israel and Iran remain as stark as ever.
*****
July 25, 2012 – Addressing a United Nations Security Council meeting today, Iran’s U.N. Ambassador Mohammad Khazaee stated, “It’s amazing that just a few minutes after the terrorist attack, Israeli officials announced that Iran was behind it,” adding, “We have never and will not engage in such a despicable attempt on [the lives of] innocent people.”
Khazaee even suggested that Israel itself was behind the bombing. “Such terrorist operation could only be planned and carried out by the same regime whose short history is full of state terrorism operations and assassinations aimed implicating others for narrow political gains,” he said. “I could provide… many examples showing that this regime killed its own citizens and innocent Jewish people during the last couple of decades.”
While such an allegation is surely reactionary and hyperbolic (the result, one can assume, of a frustrating week of unfounded and unsubstantiated accusations), it is nevertheless grounded in the fact that Israel has engaged in false flag operations many times before.
Related articles
- Iranian bomb in Bulgaria: Cui Bono? (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- Why the Buenos Aires Bombing is a False Indicator on Burgas (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Why the Buenos Aires Bombing is a False Indicator on Burgas
By Gareth Porter | Dissident Voice | July 22nd, 2012
Immediately after the terror bombing of a busload of Israeli youth in Burgas, Bulgaria, both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a “senior U.S. official” expressed certainty about Iran’s responsibility. Since then, the White House has backed away from that position, after Bulgarian investigators warned against that assumption before the investigation is complete.
Similary, it is generally assumed that Iran and Hezbollah were responsible for the terrorist bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires on July 18, 1994, because US and Israeli officials, journalists and commentators have repeated that conclusion so often. It was the first reference made by those who were most eager to blame the Burgas bombing on Iran, such as Matthew Levitt and Jeffrey Goldberg.
But that terrorist bombing 18 years ago was not what it has come to appear by the constant drip of unsubstantiated journalistic and political references to it. The identification of that bombing as an Iranian operation should be regarded as a cautionary tale about the consequences of politics determining the results of a terrorist investigation.
The case made by the Argentine prosecutors that Iran and Hezbollah committed that 1994 terrorist bombing has long been cited as evidence that Iran is the world’s premier terrorist state.
But the Argentine case was fraudulent in its origins and produced a trail of false evidence in service of a frame-up. There is every reason to believe that the entire Argentine investigation was essentially a cover-up that protected the real perpetrators.
That is what I learned from my ten-month investigation in 2006-07 of the case, the results of which were published in early 2008.
William Brencick, who was then chief of the political section at the US Embassy in Buenos Aires and the primary Embassy contact for the investigation of the AMIA bombing, told me in an interview in June 2007 that the US conviction about Iranian culpability was based on what he called a “wall of assumptions” — a wall that obstructed an objective analysis of the case. The first assumption was that it was a suicide bombing, and that such an operation pointed to Hezbollah, and therefore Iran.
But the evidence produced to support that assumption was highly suspect. Of 200 initial eyewitnesses to the bombing, only one claimed to have seen the white Renault van that was supposed to have been the suicide car. And the testimony of that lone witness was contradicted by her sister, who said that she had seen only a black and yellow taxicab.
That is only the first of many indications that the official version of how the bombing went down was a tissue of lies. For example:
- The US explosives expert sent soon after the bombing to analyze the crime scene found evidence suggesting that at least some of the explosives had been placed inside the community center, not in a car outside.
- The engine block of the alleged suicide car which Police said led them to the arrest of the Shi’a used car salesman and chop shop owner who sold the car, was supposedly found in the rubble with its identification number clearly visible — something any serious bombing team, including Hezbollah, would have erased, unless it was intentionally left to lead to the desired result.
- Representatives of the Menem government twice offered large bribes to the used car dealer in custody to get him to finger others, including three police officials linked to a political rival of Menem. The judge whose bribe was videotaped and shown on Argentine television was eventually impeached.
Apart from an Argentine investigation that led down a false trail, there were serious problems with the motives attributed to Iran and Hezbollah for killing large numbers of Jewish citizens of Argentina. The official explanation was that Iran was taking revenge on the Menem government for having reneged, under pressure from the Clinton administration, on its agreements with Iran on nuclear cooperation.
But in fact, Argentina had only halted two of the three agreements reached in 1987 and 1988, as was revealed, ironically, in documents cited by the Argentine prosecutor’s report on the arrest warrant for Iranian officials dated October 2006 (unfortunately never made available in electronic form). The documents showed that the Menem government was continuing to send 20 percent enriched uranium to Iran under the third agreement, and there were negotiations continuing both before and after the bombing to resume full nuclear cooperation.
As for Hezbollah, it was generally assumed that it wanted to avenge the Israeli killing of its “ally” Mustafa Dirani in May 1994. But when Hezbollah really wanted to take revenge against Israel, as it did after the Israeli massacre in Qana in 1996, it did not target civilians in a distant country with no relationship to the conflict with Israel; it openly attacked Israel with Katyusha rockets.
It is not clear yet who committed the latest terrorist bombing against Jewish civilians in Burgas, Bulgaria. But the sorry history of that Buenos Aires investigation should not be used to draw a premature conclusion about this matter or any other terrorist action.
~
Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in 2006.
The ARAR model for toppling governments
Mehr News Agency | July 21, 2012
TEHRAN — The recent political and military turmoil in the region is following a predictable pattern, which starts with so-called activism and ends with military intervention to topple sovereign governments.
Following is a brief scenario of the chain of the events:
“A” phase: The pseudo-prodemocracy movement builds up steam and starts to develop. This development is either in the streets or in the media or both. The participants in the movement in this phase are called “activists” and the media starts to call the target government a “regime”.
“R” phase: After weeks and months of trying soft techniques to topple the government, the main approach is escalated to the militaristic stage and those once called “activists” are now called “rebels”. They usually receive assistance from regional military channels. The targeted government starts to react militarily, and the media starts labeling it a “brutal regime” or some other similar tag.
Second “A” phase: The usually decentralized rebel-guerrilla style movement upgrades to the “army” level. The “new army” receives intelligence and military support from extra-regional powers and/or their proxies, a massive amount of disinformation is disseminated, and military personnel are encouraged to defect or join the new army. The media starts comparing the opposition army to the conventional state army.
Second “R” phase: If the opposition army fails to topple the government by itself, plan B is put into effect, in which the media pushes the need for international intervention and the NATO/UN Security Council “raid” starts.
This ARAR formula — Activism/Rebelism/Army building/Multilateral Raid — was first implemented in Libya and is now in its final stages in Syria. The main players behind the game are the media — in this case, Qatari and Saudi media outlets in cooperation with Western media outlets — extra-regional powers such as the United States and Britain and their European allies, and finally, regional proxies such as Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.
The key to foil the plan is both hard and simple: know the phase, inform public opinion about it, build up a coalition, discredit biased media outlets, cut and weaken regional procurement and logistics channels, balance the power, and “resist”.
How leftist “anti-Zionists” are allied with Israel against Syria
By Mimi Al Laham (aka “Syrian Girl”) and Lizzie Phelan | July 19, 2012
The Myth
There has been a ridiculous notion amongst numerous left groups and those opposed to the Syrian government, that the Israeli regime does not want to see Assad fall. As self-professed “anti-zionists”, many in these groups are content to delude themselves into believing that both their enemies are on the same side. In the case of several socialist groups, they believe that this forcing of the Syrian crisis into their blanket “anti-authoritarian” narrative (regardless of the state in which they are applying that narrative to) enables them to maintain a façade of anti-imperialism.
London based socialist newspaper The Socialist Review writes: “Israel, although hostile to Syria, could depend on the Baathist regime to keep the frontier quiet. Thus criticism of Bashar is more muted in Tel Aviv.”
And Simon Assaf of the SocialistWorker writes:
The notion that ordinary Syrians struggling to change their country are the pawns of a ‘Western plot’ is absurd… In fact the Arab League is attempting to throw the regime a lifeline.
This view is also pervasive amongst the Islamic opposition to the Syrian government. Rafiq A. Tschannen of the The Muslims Times writes:
Israel believes that it would be safer under Assad regime than the new government whose credentials are unknown or the new Islamic extremist regime that would open a new war front with the Jewish state.
Israeli state media has actively fuelled this manipulation, as it has been beneficial to the Israeli state to both discredit the Syrian government in the eyes of Syrians and Arabs amongst whom cooperation with Israel has historically been a red line. Therefore the goal of these reports has been to create the false perception that Israel is uninvolved in the insurgency against the Syrian government. Similarly to how the NATO powers were keen to portray the Libyan insurgency as a “home-grown revolution”.
In this early 2011 Haaretz article entitled Israel’s favourite dictator, great lengths are taken to paint the Syrian president as a weak stooge of the Israeli state. The article regurgitates common Syrian criticisms and sources of frustration about the Syrian government’s failure to take back the Golan Heights. It even goes as far as to chastise Assad for not attacking Israel. The irony that an Israeli paper would be critical of a president’s failure to attack Israel is apparently lost on many. All the more incredible that these anti-Zionist groups have chosen to believe the spin of Israeli state media.
The Turkish based Syrian opposition, the Syrian National Council (SNC), also jumped on this bandwagon. The now deposed leader of the SNC, Burghan Ghallion told the Israeli paper Ynetnews “We are convinced that the Syrian regime’s strongest ally is Israel”.
Debunking the Myth
However the following facts expose all of the above as merely a part of the psychological warfare machinery directed from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Israel and the NATO countries, which is an essential part of the overall aggression against Syria, and that such leftists have willingly become a part of:
Israel’s most important ally, the US, has been amongst its other allies repeatedly calling for regime change in Syria
Israel’s strongest ally the United States has been pushing for regime change in Syria since before the first signs of insurrection began. Most famously in 2007, General Wesley Clarke, who served as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander between 1997 and 2000 said he had received a memo from the US Secretary of Defense’s Office which read that the Syrian Government would be one of the seven governments the US would destroy in the subsequent five years.
The Guardian’s recent headline “Saudi Arabia plans to fund Syria rebel army” is in the typical style of the liberal media based in the NATO countries, a malignant manipulation. The text of that article is specifically about plans by the US’ and by extension Israel’s most important regional allies, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, to pay the salaries of insurgents. But, buried further down, the very same article also reports that such support began months before. A less misleading headline therefore would replace “plans to fund” with “increases support for”, however a truthful headline would suggest external control over Syria’s insurgency has existed since its onset.
Indeed both Qatar and Saudi Arabia have a long history of hostility to the Syrian Ba’ath Party and Syrian foreign policy, a fact which is reflected in both of their leading medias (Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya respectively) severely distorted coverage of events in Syria from the outset.
But to highlight this context would give too much weight to the Syrian government’s consistent analysis that the crisis within its borders is externally created. A fact which leftist groups also fall over themselves trying to downplay or dismiss with the result of boosting the opposing narrative which imperialism has made dominant through its media machinery.
Why did that same Guardian article, and western leftists who claim that Assad is good for Israel, fail to mention that for example in early April, the US openly pledged to double its assistance to the insurgents to the tune of an additional $12 million, under the cover of “humanitarian aid”? Or the recent US admission that it is actively arming the insurgency using Qatar as a proxy? Or that in February, solid Israeli ally British Foreign Minister William Hague pledged more equipment to the insurgents, insisting there was “no limit on what resources” Britain would provide?
It shouldn’t have to be explained to anti-Zionists that US and Israeli foreign policy is one and the same.
Axis of Resistance
Syria is a member of the Axis of Resistance, which is the only effective military resistance to Israel left. It is made up of Syria, Iran and the resistance inside Lebanon with Hizbullah at the helm. Far from being a ‘safe’ option for Israel, as Al Akhbar writer Amal Saad-Ghorayeb sets out in her three part critique of the third-way position that has seized much of the western left, Syria has consistently put itself on the front line, risking its own survival, and has been involved in every Arab-Israeli conflict since they took power. Syria has been the strongest supporter of the Lebanese resistance movements against Israeli occupation; Hizbullah has repeatedly unequivocally attributed its ability to effectively win the 2006 war against Israeli invasion of Lebanon to its support from Syria and Iran.
A year since the beginning of the insurrection in Syria, the ridiculous notion that Israel was not pursuing regime change in Syria began to crumble. Israeli Intelligence Minister, Dan Meridor was quoted on Israeli radio, pointing out what was obvious all along: Regime change in Syria would break the Iran-Syria mutual defence pact thereby isolating Iran and cutting the supply of arms to Hezbollah. Finally, Israel’s greatest adversary, Syria, would be crippled.
This was not reported in Israeli mass media, which ensured that the lid was kept on the obvious, clearly in the knowledge that it would make the position of the insurgent’s self-professed anti-Zionist cheerleaders in the west and Arab world more untenable. Yet those cheerleaders who maintain that Assad is good for Israel have been unable to reconcile then why Israel relentlessly beats the war drums against one of Syria’s most important allies, Iran.
Aside from wanting to get rid of Assad to secure military hegemony of the region, Israel also has an economic interest in scuppering the Syria, Iran, Iraq oil pipeline which would rival both Israel’s BTC pipeline and the eternally fledgling plans for Europe’s Nabucco pipeline.
Pro-Israel Opposition
With increasing momentum, the already tenuous facade of being pro-Assad in the Israeli media began to crumble and increasingly, voices within the Syrian opposition have been crossing the red line of sounding friendly towards Israel.
MK Yitzhak Herzog, who has previously held ministerial posts in the Israeli parliament, said that Syrian opposition leaders have told him they want peace with Israel after Syrian President Bashar al Assad falls.
Indeed, SNC member Bassma Kodmani attended the 2012 Bilderberg conference where regime change in Syria was on the agenda. Kodmani has previously called for friendly relations between Syria and Israel on a French talk show, going as far as to say: ‘We need Israel in the region’.
Another SNC member, Ammar Abdulhamid declared his support for friendly relations between Israel and Syria in an interview with Israeli news paper Ynetnews.
Earlier this year a telephone conversation between the SNC’s Radwan Ziyade and Mouhammad Abdallah emerged where they begged Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barack for more support.
Outside the SNC the children of former leadership figures now in opposition have joined the pro-Israel rat race. Ribal al-Assad, the son of Bashar Assad’s uncle and exiled former vice-president Rifaat al-Asaad welcomed the possibility of Syria making peace with Israel. And son of former Syrian prime minister Nofal Al-Dawalibi, said in an interview on Israeli radio that the Syrian people want peace with Israel. Dawalibi formed the “Free Syrian Transitional National Government”, another external opposition group rivaling the SNC for power in a situation where the Syrian government falls. The sectarian infighting and disunity, that is a mirror of post-Gaddafi Libya, is now threatening to plague Syria.
Lower down the opposition hierarchy, pro-Israel voices are still to be found.
Syrian Danny Abdul-Dayem, the almost one-hit-wonder unofficial spokesman for the FSA, appeared on CNN begging Israel to Attack Syria.
And in an interview with Israel’s Channel 2, Sheikh Abdullah Tamimi, an exiled Imam from the Syrian city of Homs, said that the Syrian Opposition does not have any enmity towards Israel. Tamimi proceeded to request monetary and military support for Sunnis in Syria and Lebanon.
Anti-Assad Zionists and Israeli Leaders
Socialists have chosen to be blind to the fact that prominent Zionists have been backing the Syrian insurgency since its inception.
US Senator John McCain and Joe Lieberman, both well known to be close friends of the Zionist entity, met with the SNC and Syrian insurgents on the Turkish border, then called for the US to arm them. In fact Joe Lieberman has been calling for war against Syria since 2011.
Another well known Zionist Bernard Henri-Levy, who spear-headed the destruction of Libya by NATO aerial bombardment, has also called for an attack on Syria.
More recently voices within the Israeli government have been more vocal and demanding in their desire to see the Syrian government’s replacement with a more friendly puppet regime.
Israeli President Shimon Peres, upon receiving the ‘Medal of Freedom’ from US President Barack Obama, said that the world had to get rid of Assad. That he was receiving such a medal requires its own article dedicated to psychoanalyzing such an event, but that he could also claim, while being part of a system that is responsible for some of the gravest abuses to humankind in history, that from a “human” point of view Assad must go, should really get so-called anti-Zionists thinking.
Other members of the Israeli government, such as Israeli Vice Prime Minister, Shaul Mofaz, urged world powers to mount a Libya style regime change in Syria.
And Israeli defense minister Ehud Barack called for the ‘world to act’ to remove Assad.
Finally, Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon accused the ‘world’ of wrong doing for failing to act against the Syrian government and then offered Israeli ‘assistance’ for Syrian ‘refugees’. Thin euphemism for arming insurgents on the border.
Conclusion
In spite of the overt desire of the US government for regime change in Syria, which they have made clear time and time again, Israel has obvious economic and military interests for pursuing regime change in Syria, most notably the the break up of the Axis of Resistance and the destruction of plans for rival oil pipelines. Despite numerous public statements by Syrian opposition members that they are pro-Israel and the multitude of Israeli government officials calling for the fall of the Syrian government as well as Zionist lobbyists and key Zionist figures like Bernard Henri-Levy backing the insurgency, so called ‘anti-Zionist’ socialists and Islamic groups persist in their claim that Israel has no stake in regime change in Syria and that the insurgency inside Syria is from the grass roots. Though all information contrary to this delusion is in clear sight, it seems that the socialist and Islamic groups are willfully blind.
This position has become increasingly untenable however, most recently in light of the murder of Syria’s Deputy Defence Minister Asef Shawkat, which along with the simultaneous murder of Defence Minister Raoud Dajiha and Assistant to the Vice President Hassan Turkomani, which the Syrian government laid the responsibility for squarely at the doors of Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, as new information has come to light as revealed by Al Akhbar editor-in-chief Ibrahim al-Amin.
In an article published today, Amin writes of Shawkat, that in spite of the incessant attempts by the US, Israel et al to demonise him, he in fact,
played a major role in resisting Israeli occupation in and around Palestine. Right to the end, he took practical charge of meeting the needs of the resistance forces in Palestine and Lebanon, and of their members and cadres in Syria. He oversaw everything from their accommodation and transportation, to their training camps and provisions, and arranging for cadres from inside Palestine to come to the country secretly for training.
For the resistance in Lebanon, Shawkat was a true partner, providing whatever assistance was needed without needing orders or approval from the leadership. He was a central player in the June 2006 war. He spent the entire time in the central operations room that was set up in line with a directive by Assad to supply the resistance with whatever weapons it wanted, notably missiles, from Syrian army stocks. Shawkat and other officers and men of the Syrian army – including Muhammad Suleiman who was assassinated by the Mossad on the Syrian coast in 2008 – spent weeks coordinating the supply operation which helped the resistance achieve the successes that led to the defeat of Israel.
Despite the accusations levelled against Asef Shawkat regarding security, political or other matters, for Imad Mughniyeh, the assassinated military leader of Hezbollah, he was just another comrade, a modest man who would bow when shaking hands with Hassan Nasrallah, and liked to hear the news from Palestine last thing at night.
However anti-Zionist one proclaims to be, there are few in this world that can claim to have done as much as the above for the Palestinian resistance to the Zionist entity. But having proven to willfully ignore all of the facts and history of Syria’s long history of resistance to Israel, it is a great tragedy that those who cling to the argument dealt with in this essay, would only perhaps be able to let go of it should Syria fall and then the reality of Palestine’s total military abandonment would be all too devastatingly clear to see.
Update by Aletho News:
The Ziocons promoting wars for Israel have been abetted by these self described “intellectuals” on 8 April 2013:
We, the undersigned, stand in solidarity with the millions of Syrians who have been struggling for dignity and freedom since March 2011. We call on people of the world to pressure the Syrian regime to end its oppression of and war on the Syrian people. We demand that Bashar al-Asad leave immediately without excuses so that Syria can begin a speedy recovery towards a democratic future.
Since March 2011, Asad’s regime has steadily escalated its violence against the Syrian people, launching Scud missiles, using weapons banned by the Geneva Convention such as cluster bombs and incendiary munitions, and using aerial bombardment. The regime has detained and tortured tens of thousands of people and committed untold massacres. It has refused political settlements that do not include Asad in power, and it has polarized the society through strategic acts of violence and by sowing seeds of division. The regime has also, since the early days of the uprising, sought to internationalize the crisis in order to place it within geopolitical battles that would only strengthen the regime. Staying true to the logics of an authoritarian regime, Asad could never accept the legitimate demands of the Syrian people for freedom and dignity. Thus, there is no hope for a free, unified, and independent Syria so long as his regime remains in power. … Full text
Frederic Jameson (Duke University, United States)
Tariq Ali (British Pakistani writer, journalist, and filmmaker, United Kingdom/ Pakistan)
Ilan Pappe (University of Exeter, United Kingdom)
Etienne Balibar (Columbia University, United States/ France)
Nigel Gibson (Emerson college, United States/ Britain)
Norman Finkelstein (American researcher and writer, United Sates)
John Holloway (Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, United States/ Mexico)
Vijay Prashad (Trinity College, United States/ India)
Salameh Kaileh (Intellectual, Syria/Palestine)
Bill Ayers (University of Illinois at Chicago, United States)
Bernardine Dohrn (Northwestern University, United States)
Rashid Khalidi (Columbia University, United States/Palestine)
Lieven de Cuater (Philosopher, Belgium)
Jihane Sfeir (l’Université Libre de Bruxelles, Lebanon/ Belgium)
Jean-Pierre Filiu (Institut d’études politiques de Paris, France)
Farouk Mardam Bey (Intellectual, Syria)
Faraj Bayrakdar (Poet, Syria)
Ziad Majed (American University of Paris, Lebanon/ France)
Kamal Bandara (Intellectual, Tunisia)
Francois Burgat (CNRS, France)
Adam Shapiro (Activist, United States)
Razan Ghazzawi, (Activist, Syria)
Yassin el-Haj Saleh (Intellectual, Syria)
Thierry Boissière (Institut français du Proche-Orient, France)
Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison (universitaire, France)
Jens Hanssen (University of Tornoto, Canada/ Germany)
Ghassan Hage (The University of Melbourne, Australia/ Lebanon)
Hani al-Sayed (American University of Cairo, Syria/ Egypt)
Hazem al-Azmeh (Intellectual, Syria)
Sadri Khiari (Intellectual, Tunisia)
Oussama Mohamad (Film maker, Syria/ France)
Jihad Yazigi (Journalist, Syria)
Saad Hajo (Cartoonist, Syria)
Wendy Brown (UC Berkeley, United States)
R. Radhakrishnan (UC Irvine, United States/ India)
Ann Ferguson (Philosopher, United States)
Samir Aita (Le Monde Diplomatique editions arabes, Cercle des Economistes Arabes)
Santiago de Rico Alba (Philosopher, Spain)
Asef Bayat (University of Illinois, USA)
Chela Sandoval (University of California, Santa Barbara)
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CNN expert’s civilian drone death numbers don’t add up
By Chris Woods | The Bureau of Investigative Journalism | July 17th, 2012
CNN’s national security expert Peter Bergen speaking at a recent event (Miller Center/ Flickr)
Following recent revelations by the New York Times that all military-aged males in Waziristan are considered fair game by the CIA in its drone strikes, many US journalists have been reassessing how they report on deaths in the attacks.
So when CNN’s national security analyst Peter Bergen produced a graph claiming that no civilians have been killed in Pakistan this year by US drones, his views were bound to attract criticism. Conor Friedersdorf, a columnist at The Atlantic, accused CNN and Bergen of running ‘bogus data‘, for example.
Bergen is also a director of the New America Foundation, which for more than three years has run a database on CIA drone strikes in Pakistan and produces estimates of numbers killed. That data is the most frequent source of statistics for the US media, including CNN itself. So the accuracy of its material is important.
Yet there are credible reports of civilian deaths in Pakistan this year. And unlike the New America Foundation the Bureau actively tracks those claims.
Up to July 16 for example, between three and 27 civilians have been reported killed in Pakistan this year, out of 148 – 220 deaths. Some were actively defined as civilians by news organisations including Reuters and AFP. But these are not necessarily the only civilian deaths. Ambivalent reports might sometimes refer only to ‘people’ or ‘local tribesmen’ killed. More research is needed. And of the remaining alleged militants killed, we have so far been able to name just 13 individuals.
Bergen’s claim of zero reported civilian casualties this year is therefore factually inaccurate.
To be so categoric is also problematic. The Bureau’s own data shows that of at least 2,500 people killed by the CIA in Pakistan since 2004, we publicly only know the identities of around 500. Most of the others were reported to be alleged militants by local and international media. We can say no more than that.
It is not just in NAF’s 2012 data that credible reports of civilian deaths have been missed or ignored. NAF’s Pakistan data also contains many other inaccuracies. A number of confirmed strikes are omitted, for instance, and its overall estimates of those killed are significantly below even the CIA’s own count. The consequence is a skewed picture of drone activity which continues to inform many opinion-makers.
Subjective choices
On July 13 Peter Bergen responded to his recent critics in a CNN article which stated that reported civilian casualties in Pakistan are in decline – as the Bureau itself recently noted. He also repeated his claim of no civilian casualties in Pakistan this year. And he attacked the Bureau for its own recording work in this area:
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s high estimate of 24 civilian deaths in 2012 came in part from reports provided by an unreliable Pakistani news outlet as well as the claims of a local Taliban commander, which contradicted all other reports.
It’s worth unpicking Bergen’s claims in some detail.
His comments appear to refer to a CIA drone strike on February 9 in which local Taliban commander Badar Mansoor died. Citing just four sources, NAF’s data reports only that three to five ‘militants’, including Mansoor, died in the attack.
But this is a misrepresentation which ignores credible claims of civilian casualties, as the Bureau’s own Pakistan database makes clear.
Among 18 unique sources we cite, the Bureau links to a story by Reuters, the international news agency. Reuters notes a Taliban commander’s claims that Mansoor’s wife and child died in the February 9 attack. Local paper The News also reported that Mansoor’s wife and children were either injured or killed; and a Bureau field researcher reported anecdotal claims from the town that some of the leader’s family had died.
As the Bureau notes, these overt claims of civilian deaths on February 9 remain contested. We state that between zero and two civilians reportedly died in the strike. It is not clear either way. What cannot be stated is that no civilians died.
Bergen’s reference to an ‘unreliable Pakistani news outlet’ is also confusing. Dawn, The Nation and The News are all reputable Pakistani dailies, cited on occasion by CNN and NAF themselves. And Central Asia Online states clearly that ‘a woman and a girl child were injured’ in the strike, not killed.
In fact Bergen’s comments undermine further the credibility of the NAF data he constantly cites. A partial list of media reports has not been updated since the day of the attack – despite a number of salient facts since emerging. And as Bergen notes in his CNN article, the Reuters report of civilian deaths is rejected as a NAF source on the (inaccurate) grounds that it involved ‘the claims of a local Taliban commander, which contradicted all other reports.’
In their CNN article Bergen and co-reporter Jennifer Rowland make no mention of a second strike in which civilians were also reported killed in Pakistan this year. According to credible media, along with a number of alleged militants between three and eight worshipers died when a mosque was struck (possibly accidentally) on May 24.
That claim is independently supported by Britain’s Channel 4 News; by Pakistan’s The News (generally the most accurate local source for information on casualties); and by French news agency AFP. The Bureau cites 17 unique sources overall in its coverage, noting reports of damage to the mosque and of civilian casualties.
Bergen’s New America Foundation, relying on just four sources, says only that 10 ‘militants’ were killed in a ‘compound.’
NAF’s claims of ‘zero civilians killed’ by the CIA in Pakistan in 2012 is reached by the simple expedient of not including in its data any of the credible reports of civilian deaths.
Full of errors
When the Bureau began looking in earnest at US drone strikes in summer 2010, we started to work with NAF’s data, and that of the Long War Journal. At that time we had no interest in the time-consuming (and expensive) effort of compiling and maintaining accurate data on covert US strikes.
But the more we worked with NAF’s material, the more troubled we became. In February 2011 for example, the Bureau wrote to NAF noting a number of errors.
We pointed out a strike that it had missed entirely (November 5 2005). The Bureau also drew NAF’s attention to a number of date errors. The Foundation claimed a strike had taken place on May 14 2005, for example. In fact that attack took place on May 8th.
Bergen personally acknowledged the email, saying ‘thanks for drawing attention to these.’ Yet almost 18 months on, those errors – easily verifiable – remain uncorrected.
Our concerns about the data – particularly on the question of civilian deaths – ultimately compelled us to start from scratch, re-examining every US drone strike in Pakistan to try and understand what had really been going on.
We now know, for example, that eight years in to the CIA’s bombing campaign in Pakistan, NAF still lists the wrong date (June 18 2004) for the very first strike. Citing just one source, NAF also makes no reference to the civilians killed that day, including two children.
That first attack actually took place on Thursday June 17 as CNN and many other sources correctly noted at the time. Militant commander Nek Mohammed died along with up to eight others. These included, it was widely reported, the two young sons of Sher Zaman Ashrafkhel.
On another occasion in October 2006, an attack on a seminary killed at least 81 people. New America Foundation does not count these ‘militants’ in its data, reporting that the attack was
Allegedly conducted by Pakistani military, but may have been conducted by US forces. Noted here for the record but not included in above fatality totals.’
Claims that the Pakistan military carried out this attack were long ago dismissed. A senior aide to Pakistan’s then-leader Pervez Musharraf told the Sunday Times within weeks that ‘we thought it would be less damaging if we said we did it rather than the US.’ Last August former ISI director General Asad Durrani confirmed in an interview that the CIA carried out the strike. And just weeks ago General Musharraf himself pointedly refused to deny US involvement.
There are also reports that up to 69 children died in the October 2006 attack. While some contest this claim, local media has listed the full names, ages, family details and home villages of every child reported killed.
Bergen and New America Foundation continue to make no reference to any of these salient facts. Nor do they count these 81 deaths in their figures.
‘Civilian deaths not new’
The New America Foundation regularly publishes definitive numbers on the overall civilian death tolls in Pakistan.
On March 27 for example, Bergen and co-worker Jennifer Rowland claimed that ‘according to our data, 7% of the fatalities resulting from drone strikes [in Pakistan] in 2011 were civilians.’ The duo lowered that estimate on June 10, now claiming that civilian deaths in Pakistan ‘averaged 5.5% in 2011.’
The Bureau has been unable to replicate either of NAF’s recent statistical claims from the Foundation’s published data.
In contrast, our own data shows that between 465 and 659 people died overall in 2011. Of these between 75 and 127 were reportedly civilians. Since we cannot know where, within these ranges, accurate figures lie, the best that can be said is that reported civilian deaths account for between 11% and 27% of all of those killed by the CIA in Pakistan last year.
In July 2011 the Bureau issued a major report based on its first field investigation in Pakistan. This directly challenged US claims that it wasn’t killing civilians in the tribal areas, presenting the CIA with the details of 45 civilians killed in the specified period and raising significant concerns about a further 66 deaths.
Initially the Bureau’s report received little coverage in the US, not only by the mainstream US media but also by the influential AfPak Channel, which is edited by Bergen and Rowland. When we challenged this omission, New America Foundation senior advisor Patrick Doherty shed some light in a July 19 email on why our study had been ignored:
One reason is that the tallies on civilian deaths in PAK is not particularly new. We’ve been monitoring drone strikes for a few years and tracking civilian and militant deaths. The mainstream media has been reporting on our numbers, quite thoroughly, in fact. The gotcha on John Brennan, as a result, kind of rings hollow.
In fact no US media organisation had challenged US intelligence community assertions that civilians were no longer being killed by the CIA in Pakistan. Those extraordinary claims went uncontested for six months, when the Bureau published its investigation.
Snapshot nature
Perhaps the greatest issue with New America Foundation’s data is its incomplete, snapshot nature.
Public understanding of US covert drone strikes changes all the time. That’s why the Bureau’s eight databases change constantly, incorporating the latest understanding of each attack – and seeking information from as wide a pool of credible sources as possible.
Last year, for example, we learned that a 2009 attack in Pakistan which had initially been reported as killing alleged militants, women and children appeared to have been a strike on a child suicide bomber training camp, run by the Taliban. More recently, we incorporated evidence from sworn affidavits filed in the London High Court, relating to the deaths of many civilians in March 2011.
In contrast NAF’s data represents at best a partial snapshot of an attack, often based on just a few media reports on the day. No effort appears to be made to update, amend or correct its data.
In his most recent article for CNN looking at civilian deaths in Pakistan, Bergen cites a major Associated Press investigation into drone strike casualties published in February of this year. As the Bureau reported at the time, that investigation, based on 80 witness statements, uncovered previously unknown evidence of civilian deaths in a number of strikes. We amended our data records accordingly, to reflect these findings.
NAF has yet to change any of its records – despite Bergen citing AP’s study in his own defence. So while AP reports that seven civilians died alongside seven Taliban on August 14 2010, NAF continues to state only that ’7-13 militants were killed.’
The cumulative effect of all these omissions and errors is that NAF’s data substantially under-estimates both the overall numbers of those killed, and the reports of civilians who have died in Pakistan strikes.
In August 2010, in response to the Bureau publishing its Pakistan data, the US government issued its first overall estimate of the numbers killed in CIA drone strikes since 2001, stating that approximately 2,050 had died – all but fifty of them combatants.
Eleven months on, and 47 strikes later, a minimum of 262 further deaths have occurred in Pakistan. Yet the New America Foundation still gives a low estimate of 1,870 killed. That indicates that its estimates are some 400 below the CIA’s own numbers.
The New America Foundation has undoubtedly done valuable work in recent years in bringing to the attention of the US public the scale of America’s covert wars. Its data represents a useful snapshot of most strikes, a helpful base upon which further research can be built.
But NAF cannot claim that its data represents an accurate record of what we publicly know about US drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere. And without radically overhauling its methodology, Bergen and NAF cannot credibly continue to offer up such precise estimates of ‘civilian deaths’ in Pakistan.
Follow @chrisjwoods on Twitter.
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French journalist killed by Syrian opposition: Report
Slain French journalist Gilles Jacquier (file photo)
Press TV – July 19, 2012
French journalist Gilles Jacquier, who lost his life in central Syria earlier this year, was killed by the Syrian opposition’s mortar fire, a report says.
“This investigation was carried out by French intelligence and based on a ballistic study carried out in the area. According to my contact, the mortar fire came from the Sunni rebel zone,” wrote Georges Malbrunot, a member of the editorial board of Le Figero, in the French newspaper.
This is while Western reports have put the blame on Damascus, saying Jacquier was killed by a Syrian army shell.
On January 11, Jacquier, 43, was killed in the central Syrian city of Homs.
The Western journalists were on a government-authorized trip to the city at the time of the attack.
Gilles Jacquier, working for France 2 TV, was the first Western reporter to die since the beginning of the unrest in Syria in mid-March 2011. He had covered conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo.
The Syrian government had previously blamed armed groups for the attack.
Syria has been experiencing unrest since mid-March 2011. Many people, including large numbers of security forces, have been killed in the turmoil.
While the West and the Syrian opposition accuse the government of killing protesters, Damascus blames ”outlaws, saboteurs and armed terrorist groups” for the unrest, insisting that it is being orchestrated from abroad.
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- Opposition offensive on Damascus a lie – Syrian gov’t (english.ruvr.ru)
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Obama’s Justice Department Rushes to the Rescue of LIBOR Criminals
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford | July 18, 2012
The Obama Justice Department is in theater mode, again, pretending to threaten the bankster class with criminal penalties – prison time! – for their manipulation of the global economy’s benchmark interest rates. The Justice Department claims to be building criminal and civil cases in the LIBOR scandal, which in sheer scope is the biggest fraud by international capital in history. But that’s all a front, a farce. Barack Obama has spent his entire presidency protecting Wall Street, starting with his rescue of George Bush’s bank bailout bill after it’s initial defeat in Congress, in the last days of Obama’s candidacy. He packed his administration with banksters, passed his own bailout and, in collaboration with the Federal Reserve, channeled at least $16 trillion dollars into the accounts of U.S. and even European banks – by far the greatest transfer of capital in the history of the world. Obama has reminded the banksters that it was he who saved them from the “pitchforks” of an outraged public. He pushed through Congress so-called financial reform legislation that left derivatives – the deadly instruments of mass financial destruction that were at the heart of the meltdown – untouched.
Wall Street may or may not remain loyal to Obama, but Obama has been loyal to Wall Street, the guys who gave him the campaign cash to become a viable candidate. His Attorney General, Eric Holder, a corporate lawyer to the core, is busily staging a pre-emptive LIBOR prosecution of bankers in order to shield them from legal action by a host of other government agencies and, ultimately, from the global universe of parties that have been harmed by the bankster’s schemes– a list that stretches to infinity. Holder’s job is to monopolize the LIBOR case, to the extent legally and humanly possible, grabbing jurisdiction and consolidating the cases against the banks with the aim of reaching a settlement that does not further destabilize the financial system.
Holder and his boss already pulled that trick earlier this year with settlement of the bank “robo-signing” scandal – a scheme that would have ranked as the “crime of the century” until LIBOR came along. A small group of state attorney generals were holding up an administration-brokered settlement that effectively gave the banksters immunity from prosecution, in return for a measly $25 billion payout. Obama used every power of his office to pressure the state law officers into line. The last one capitulated with a promise from Obama that a “special unit of prosecutors” would expand the investigation into abusive mortgages practices. You haven’t heard a peep about it, since.
Now Obama and Holder are playing the same diversionary game, making tough noises about criminal investigations of the LIBOR conspirators. But the Justice Department has already given immunity to Barclay’s Bank, of Britain, and to the Swiss banking giant UBS. More immunities will follow. The reason Eric Holder is staging criminal investigations is because that’s the only way he can protect the bankers, through immunities and by gradually narrowing the scope of the case. In the end, there will be settlements all around, and the banksters will move on to even more fantastic heights of criminality – thanks to the loyal, protective hands of President Obama.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
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- Richard (RJ) Eskow: Crooked Bankers Are Corrupting Government: The Real LIBOR Story (huffingtonpost.com)
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From the Archives
Left-leaning despisers of 9/11 Truth movement: Do you really believe in miracles?
David Ray Griffin | Global Research | 06 Jul 2010
An Open Letter to Terry Allen, Noam Chomsky, Alexander Cockburn, David Corn, Chris Hayes, George Monbiot, Matthew Rothschild, and Matt Taibbi.
[1]According to several left-leaning critics of the 9/11 Truth Movement, some of its central claims, especially about the destruction of the World Trade Center, show its members to be scientifically challenged. In the opinion of some of these critics, moreover, claims made by members of this movement are sometimes unscientific in the strongest possible sense, implying an acceptance of magic and miracles. … Full article
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