[Peace-discuss] Obama lies -- about Iran

[C. G. Estabrook]

	The Iran ‘bombshell’: Obama knew all along

President’s supposed disclosure about another Iranian nuclear facility was 
horribly reminiscent of Colin Powell and Iraq, says Alexander Cockburn

	BY ALEXANDER COCKBURN SEPTEMBER 28, 2009

Half close one's eyes and we could have been back in Bush-time, amid the ripest 
hours of the propaganda barrage for the US-led onslaught on Iraq. The familiar 
backdrop: the UN General Assembly, in this instance migrating to the G20 meeting 
in Pittsburgh. The theme: disclosure of fresh, chilling evidence of the 
duplicity of a pariah nation and of the threat it poses to the civilised world.

Then it was GW Bush's Secretary of State, Colin Powell, enthusiastically 
relaying a string of lies and blatant forgeries. Last week it was President 
Barack Obama, flanked by his Euro-puppets, dispensing an equally mendacious 
press release that was swallowed without a hiccup by the Western press.

There is no quarrel about the actual sequence of events, concerning the supposed 
bombshell disclosure of another Iranian nuclear facility near Qom.

US intelligence knew about the site back in Bush time. Obama was briefed about 
it during the transition. Last spring US surveillance  from satellites and maybe 
from spies on the ground  concluded that a speed-up in the plant's construction 
was underway. US intelligence then supposedly learned that the Iranians knew the 
plant was under US observation.

After that it was all news management. The White House was readying Obama's 
dramatic disclosure. Maybe someone tipped off the Iranians, maybe not. In any 
event, Tehran sent a note about the facility to the International Atomic Energy 
Agency a week ago notifying it that the plant was under construction. (The 
Iranians insist they were under no obligation to do so earlier because the plant 
was only in preliminary stages of construction.)

On Thursday Obama seized the headlines with his threat that "Iran is on notice 
that when we meet with them on October 1 they are going to have to come clean 
and they will have to make a choice". The alternative to giving up their 
programme, he warned, was to "continue down a path that is going to lead to 
confrontation".

Obama duly got his reward: positive press for his "forceful" performance and 
instant support from President Medvedev of Russia, thus delivering a quid pro 
quo for Obama's cancellation of the missile bases in Poland and the Czech 
Republic. Indeed the timing of that cancellation suggests that the entire 
scenario had been tightly scripted well in advance. China was much more reserved.

In reality the public disclosure of something the US knew about years ago -- 
knowledge it shared with its prime Nato allies and Israel -- changes nothing. 
The consensus of US intelligence remains that there is no hard evidence that 
Iran is actively seeking to manufacture nuclear weapons. Iran has agreed to an 
inspection of the plant at some appropriate point.

The absurdity of Obama thundering against Iran, which has signed the nuclear 
non-proliferation treaty and has allowed inspections, while remaining entirely 
silent about Israel, is so blatant that here one can catch scattered references 
to it in news commentaries.

Remember: Israel has refused to sign the non-proliferation treaty and has 
adamantly refused all inspections. Yet it is known to have an arsenal of 
somewhere between 200 and 300 nuclear weapons about which  Prime Minister Gordon 
Brown might care to note - it has been serially deceptive for nearly half a 
century. They allegedly have a delivery range that can reach Kiev.

Obama's policy remains tightly in sync with that of his predecessor in the White 
House. Spasms of ferocious bluster towards Iran raise public anxiety. Stories 
about imminent Israeli raids on Iran are balanced by leaks to the effect that 
the White House is keeping Israel on a leash. Then sanctions are tightened on 
Iran. These have the effect of causing great misery to the general population, 
while strengthening the political hand of the theocracy, which can put extra 
muscle into its repression on the grounds that the country is under siege.

Meanwhile this supposedly rational president is already having to pay the 
political bills for the reckless espousal during his election campaign of a 
wider war in Afghanistan. Anyone wanting to understand how JFK plunged into the 
Vietnamese quagmire, and how LBJ got in even deeper, has only to follow the 
current fight over Afghan policy. Insanity effortlessly trumps commonsense.

It is generally agreed that the situation in Afghanistan from the US point of 
view is rapidly getting worse. In terms of military advantage the Taliban have 
been doing very well, helped by America¹s bizarre policy of trying to 
assassinate the Taliban's high command by drones, thus allowing vigorous young 
Taliban commanders to step into senor positions.

According to Ahmed Rashid, in a savage and well-informed piece in the New York 
Review: "For much of this year the Taliban have been on the offensive in 
Afghanistan. Their control of just 30 out of 364 districts in 2003 expanded to 
164 districts at the end of 2008, according to the military expert Anthony 
Cordesman, who is advising General McChrystal. Taliban attacks increased by 60 
per cent between October 2008 and April 2009.

"In August, moreover - as part of their well-planned anti-election campaign - 
the Taliban opened new fronts in the north and west of the country where they 
had little presence before."

To have even a remote chance of prospering, Obama's policy requires a very 
costly commitment of troops and civil advisers for well over two years. 
Democrats know perfectly well that if an Obama administration is at war in 
Afghanistan in the fall of 2010, it will cost them dearly in the mid-term 
elections. Liberals will stay home in droves, and the Republicans may well 
recapture at least one house of Congress.

After months of derision about Iran's "faked elections", Karzai's fakery in the 
recent Afghan election was too blatant to permit even pro forma denial. The 
oft-announced goal of training an Afghan army and police force is faring no 
better  in fact considerably worse  than the efforts at 'Vietnamisation' 40 
years ago. Once furnished with a few square meals, some new clothes and a 
weapon, the recruits - some of them having been sent by the Taliban to get basic 
training - promptly desert.

The expedition to Afghanistan is not popular, either here or in Europe. But of 
course it has powerful sponsors, starting with Obama who made it a campaign 
plank. He may be having second thoughts now, but he is showered daily with 
demented counsels to "stay the course" by his Secretary of State and about 80 
per cent of the permanent foreign policy establishment.

So the involvement will get deeper and the disasters will mount and powerfully 
assist in the destruction of Obama's presidency, as some of his erstwhile 
influential liberal fans, such as Frank Rich of the New York Times, are now 
conceding.

Alas, we have a president who turns out to have painfully few fixed principles 
but an enthusiasm for news management that gave him his moment of glory in 
Pittsburgh last week, but which leaves more and more sensible people wondering 
if he has any constructive long-term strategy to lower tensions and reduce the 
likely prospect of savage bloodletting across the Middle East. The passing 
months have been brutally unkind to such expectations.

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/54019,news,the-iran-nuclear-bombshell-barack-obama-knew-all-along-about-secret-facility