The other day I saw journalist Lara Logan on Jon Stewart's Daily Show, and was very impressed. I had not seen any of her actual reports previously, so I was delighted when I ran across the piece below on another blogger's site:



This is very powerful and worth viewing.

Lying about Iran, Lying about America

The Brittanic Blog, has done an admirable job this week of providing a forum in which a diversity of views about Iran and U.S. interests in Iran could be aired. However, the majority of the pieces in this forum, support the view that military engagement with Iran is unwarranted, unneccessary and/or would have disasterous consequences. Pieces by Barbara Slavin, Steven Kinzer, Ervand Abrahamian, and three articles by Scott Ritter (Chief weapons inspector for the United Nations Special Commission in Iraq) provide very thoughtful reading.

One of the articles in the group, by Mitchell Bard, was riddled with inaccuracies -- most of which are pointed out by various commentors on the piece. In the article Bard made the claim that "Americans are not averse to using force against Iran. Though nonmilitary options are preferred by most, majorities are also starting to favor targeted strikes according to a survey by The Israel Project in September 2006." Given the current American view on Iraq, I found Bard's claim difficult to accept.

On the day the post was made (Monday 10/8/07) the reference to the Israel Project survey included a link -- one presumed -- to the research that supported Bard's contention. I followed the link, and found that the research it pointed to was NOT a survey of American public opinion. It was a survey of 500 "opinion elites," who had a minimum of a college education (and many of whom had post-graduate degrees), and who had a minimum household income of $75,000. Given that the 2006 median income in the United States was $48,201, and that more than two-thirds of American households fall below $75,000, to use this data to state anything at all about "American" opinion is at best disingenuous.

So I posted a comment to the Brittanica Blog, noting the information given above. Within twenty-four hours I received a personal (not automated) e-mail from the moderator of the Brittanica, telling me that he believed that Bard had merely given an incorrect link, and that this would be corrected and he would let me know the outcome. My comment was NOT posted to replies. Today (Wed. 10/10/07), I went back to see if either my comment had been posted or a corrected link had been posted.

What I found was that Bard had "corrected" the link by removing it altogether, and, as might be expected my comment had not appeared. I am left to conclude that Mitchell Bard does not wish for his readers to be able to check his source and discover that he does not have support for his claims about "American opinion." More lies.

I have submitted yet another comment to Brittanica Blog pointing out all this. I shall be surprised if they post this one.
[Fri. 10/12/07 -- to Brittanica Blog's credit my comment did get posted.]

Dancing with Devastation

Talk of bombing Iran is nothing new, so the horror and dismay that I feel when the topic is broached is also nothing new. Yet for some reason today's New York Times piece on the debate over Iran strategy for some reason seemed more chilling and foreboding than usual.

It should not need to be said, but sometimes people come to bizarre conclusions, but I do not want Iran to have nuclear weapons. Hell, I don't want the U.S. to have nuclear weapons, and never have. I did "Ban the Bomb" protests as a child in the early 1960's, and attended peace oriented anti-nuclear summer camp (run by the Methodist Church!) in 1968, and was a member of anti-nuclear organizations in the 1980's. That said, I'd rather accept Iran as a nuclear power than ever see the U.S. engage in preemptive military action against Iran (or any other country).

Assuming that the reports are accurate, there are still members of the Bush admininstration (the article suggests primarily in Vice President Cheney's office) that are "are pressing for greater consideration of military strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities."

This leaves me sitting here thinking -- with everything we know about Iran, with all our history with Iran in the past nearly 30 years -- what might happen if the U.S. flew in bombers and reduced all their nuclear facilities to rubble?

Iran has a population of 65+ million people, more than twice that of Iraq. Iran has a standing army of more than 350,000 soldiers, and is well equipped to fight desert warfare. At least 80 percent of Iran's militiary forces are deployed on the Iran/Iraq border. In position where they could sweep into Iraq where the U.S. currently has 160,000 troops, the result of the "surge" which has severely stretched U.S. combat combat capacity. And all of those 160,000 have their hands full with the insurgency and incipient civil war in Iraq. Moreover, it would not be too much of a stretch to imagine that Iran might be able to mobilize others in the region (say Syria) who would be outraged by U.S. military action against Iraq.

And then there is the affect an attack on Iran would have on world wide terrorism. You think terrorists are motivated with hate for the U.S. now? Just wait and see what would happen after a preemptive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities!

One thing in today's New York Times article, really jarred me:

When the North Koreans threw out international inspectors on the last day of that year and soon declared that they planned to reprocess 8,000 rods of spent fuel into weapons-grade plutonium, President Bush had to decide whether to declare that if North Korea moved toward weapons, it could face a military strike on its facilities.

The Pentagon had drawn up an extensive plan for taking out those facilities, though with little enthusiasm, because it feared it could not control North Korea’s response,, and the administration chose not to delivery any ultimatum. [Emphasis added].

What on God's green earth makes anyone in the administration (or any where else) think they could "control" Iran's response? They certain haven't been able to "control" things in Iraq yet!