"Serial Fabricators" helping to spread hate and distrust of Iran.

Courtesy of Truthout:
 
Behind a mysterious December 22 Associated Press story about "finding of fact" by a District judge in Manhattan Friday that Iran assisted al Qaeda in the planning of the 9/11 attacks is a tapestry of recycled fabrications and distortions of fact from a bizarre cast of characters. 

The AP story offers no indication of the nature of the evidence in the case except that former members of the 9/11 Commission and three Iranian defectors provided testimony. What it didn't say was that at least two of the Iranian defectors have long been dismissed by US intelligence as "fabricators" and that the two "expert witnesses" who were supposed to determine the credibility of those defectors' claims are both avowed advocates of crackpot conspiracy theories about Muslims and Shariah law who believe the United States is at war with Islam. 

The only real effect of the case is to promote right-wing political myths about Iran. One of the peculiarities of such cases is that the witnesses are not subject to cross examination in court. The witnesses have every incentive, therefore to indulge in false testimony, knowing that there will be no one to challenge them. 

The lawyers and the "expert witnesses" behind the accusation of Iran in regard to 9/11 hoped to sell the press and public on recycled claims first made by Iranian "defectors" several years ago that they had personal knowledge of Iranian participation in the 9/11 plot. The lawyers produced videotaped affidavits by three such defectors who were identified, with a dramatic flourish, as Witnesses "X," "Y" and "Z." 

I would imagine that this is the same kind of "intelligence" that has convinced those bat-shit crazy Politichicks that Iran is going to attack America at any moment, and that Sharia Law is already being used in courtrooms all across our country.

However the facts about Iran, how they in fact deal with al-Qaeda, and how they tried to reach out to America after 9-11, are significantly different than what we have been lead to believe by the GOP warmongers.


US Ambassador Ryan Crocker revealed last year that, in late 2001, the Iranians had been willing to discuss possible surrender of the senior al Qaeda officials it was detaining to the United States and share any intelligence they had gained from their investigations as part of a wider understanding with Washington. But the neoconservative faction in the administration rejected that offer, demanding that Iran give them the al Qaeda detainees without getting anything in return. 

Iran's crackdown on al Qaeda continued in 2002-03 and netted a number of top officials. One of the senior al Qaeda detainees apparently detained by Iran during that period, Saif al-Adel, later told a Jordanian journalist that Iran's operations against al Qaeda had "confused us and aborted 75 percent of our plan." The arrests included "up to 80 percent" of Abu Musab al Zarqawi's group, he said, and those who had not been swept up were forced to leave for Iraq. 

In further negotiations with the Bush administration in May 2003, Iran again offered to turn over the senior al Qaeda detainees to the United States in return for the MEK captured by US forces in Iraq. The Bush administration again refused the offer. 

By 2005, a "senior US intelligence official" was publicly admitting that 20 to 25 top al Qaeda leaders were in detention in Iran and that they were "not able to do much of anything." 

In 2008, one US official told ABC news that administration officials had not been raising the al Qaeda issue publicly, because "they believe Iran has largely kept the al Qaeda operatives under control since 2003, limiting their ability to travel and communicate." 

But in the world of the right-wing Islam-hating extremists and others pushing for confrontation with Iran, reality is no obstacle to spinning tales of secret Iranian assistance to al Qaeda. 

Not quite the picture that the Neo-cons tried to paint of Ahmadinejad and the Iranian people, now is it?

And as you have seen recently even the current crop of  GOP presidential hopeful are going well out of their way to vilify Iran, and make it the new "terrorist bogeyman" in order to frighten Americans into voting one of them into the White House, so that THEY can protect us from another false threat to "our freedoms."

Look Iran is indeed a potential threat to Israel, and could really make life hell for them, but they are not a threat to America in any substantive way. Even if they were to get a nuclear weapons that would still not significantly increase their influence in the Middle East, nor make them anymore dangerous.

Remember Israel has nuclear weapons as well, and it is ridiculous to entertain the notion that Iran is considering an act that would result in their mutual destruction.

And let's not forget how this same type of fraudulent information impacted how we dealt with Iraq.

I certainly hope that by this time Americans have finally started to notice that one of the political parties in this country is determined to keep America in a perpetual state of war.

Here's a hint: It's NOT the Democrats!

(P.S. There is much more in the Truthout article and I encourage all of you to read it.)