UNCRITICAL MAINSTREAM MEDIA DRIVEL War Plan Iran: Endemic US/Israeli Double-Think Is Now "Normal Discourse"
By Finian Cunningham
Global Research, February 1, 2012
URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=29012
Thanks
to a subservient mainstream media, we are now fed a constant diet of
preposterous double-think from American political leaders and their
Israeli minions with regard to Iran and its alleged threat to world
security. In this inadvertently valuable service, the pliant uncritical
mainstream media is giving full vent to the most outrageous drivel
dressed up as serious discourse.
By acting as mouthpieces rather than critical interlocutors, the media are allowing such political figures to indict themselves with their own baseless, contradictory and hypocritical words. A few recent examples: Director of US National Intelligence James Clapper Jr in congressional testimony this week asserted that Iranian leaders are “now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived US actions that threaten the regime”.
By acting as mouthpieces rather than critical interlocutors, the media are allowing such political figures to indict themselves with their own baseless, contradictory and hypocritical words. A few recent examples: Director of US National Intelligence James Clapper Jr in congressional testimony this week asserted that Iranian leaders are “now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived US actions that threaten the regime”.
The Washington Post reported the “intelligence”
briefing with the headline: ‘Iran, perceiving threat from West, willing
to attack on US soil, US intelligence report finds. Yet Clapper, the US
nation’s supposed intelligence supremo, presents no evidence to support
his reckless claim that Iranian forces are preparing such attacks.
Indeed, the Washington Post notes in the same paragraph quoting the
Director of National Intelligence: “US officials said they have seen no
intelligence to indicate that Iran is actively plotting attacks on US
soil.”
Then the paper goes on to amplify the unfounded
accusations and assertions, by writing: “The warning about Iran’s more
aggressive stance was included in written testimony that Clapper
submitted to Congress”. Note how the paper in the space of few words
moves effortlessly from acknowledging that there is no evidence to
support Clapper’s claptrap premise to peddling the claptrap conclusion
that Iran has taken a “more aggressive stance”.
Rather than taking Clapper to task to justify his
hyperbole about Iranian “threats on American soil” and possibly
misleading Congress and the American people, the Washington Post
passively goes along with the flow of what appears to be out-and-out
propaganda. This meekness and complicity of the media in conditioning
public opinion for a baseless war on Iran has echoes of the elusive,
non-existent weapons of mass destruction that US President George W.
Bush and British Prime Minister were allowed to lie about by the same
media for their criminal war on Iraq. But, as noted, this abject
“churnalism” may eventually be a good thing. For it allows political
leaders and their advisors to hang themselves with their own words.
Another recent star-turn on the propaganda stage was that of US Defense Secretary Leon E Panetta who told CBS 60 Minutes programme at the weekend that Iran may be “one year away” from acquiring an atomic bomb. “That’s a red line for us, and it’s a red line, obviously, for the Israelis,” said Panetta. Yet only a few weeks ago Panetta admitted on national media that Iran was not trying to build a nuclear weapon. “
Another recent star-turn on the propaganda stage was that of US Defense Secretary Leon E Panetta who told CBS 60 Minutes programme at the weekend that Iran may be “one year away” from acquiring an atomic bomb. “That’s a red line for us, and it’s a red line, obviously, for the Israelis,” said Panetta. Yet only a few weeks ago Panetta admitted on national media that Iran was not trying to build a nuclear weapon. “
Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No,” he
said then. However, in no time at all, Panetta has pirouetted over Iran,
and yet the mainstream media permit the farce to be aired instead of
ripping it apart, exposing what could be criminal misinformation. Only
last week the pirouetting Panetta told the Wall Street Journal that the
Pentagon needs to redesign its 30,000-pound bomb known as the Massive
Ordnance Penetrator in order to take out Iranian nuclear facilities. US
workers and their families will be throwing more of their taxes into the
coffers of Lockheed Martin to facilitate the Pentagon’s phallic
fantasies – all on account of lies and deception, or at least no
evidence to provide a modicum of justification. Finally, Israeli
President Shimon Peres weighs in with this ridiculous rant, given
prominence by the Haaretz newspaper. This week Peres claimed that Iran’s
‘evil’ leaders cannot be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons, calling the
Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions the world’s single most important
issue, according to Haaretz.
“Nuclear weapons mustn't be allowed to fall into the
hands of Iran's Ayatollah regime,” Peres said, calling Iran's religious
leadership the “most morally corrupt regime in the world... It is the
duty of the international community to prevent evil and nuclear
[weapons] from coming together. That is the obligations of most of the
leaders of the free world, one which they must meet.”
Reality check. These are words from the leader of a
country that has for decades violated international and committed
systematic crimes against humanity on the Palestinian people; that has
invaded and occupied foreign territories; that runs clandestine murder
and terror operations in foreign states; and that, to boot, possesses up
to 300 nuclear weapons in contravention of international law. This
rogue, criminal state along with its patron in Washington is maligning
another state over its legitimate pursuit of civilian nuclear energy and
trying to precipitate a war that could most likely escalate into a
global nuclear conflagration – all based on lies. Talk about lunatics
running the asylum.
The propaganda fog over Iran in particular is
becoming so thick it is almost laughable – because the political leaders
who are spouting this fog don’t even seem to realize just how much they
are tripping up over their own absurd statements. And thanks, in a way,
to the pathetically servile mainstream media, the lies and deceptions
of these political figures are being exposed for all their worthlessness
and criminality.
Finian Cunningham is Global Research’s Middle East and East Africa Correspondent
