Iran Zonar:
?Real Sign of a Disinformation Operation?
Kurt Nimmo
Another Day in the Empire
May 23rd 2006
Juan Cole, president of the U.S. Middle East Studies Association and thorn in the side of neocons far and wide, has nailed it?the fake news story circulated last week accusing Iran of forcing Jews and other religious minorities to wear identifying badges, thus kindling imagery of Nazis and the Holocaust, was ?typical of black psychological operations campaigns.? A former U.S. intelligence official, cited by journalist Jim Lobe, ?described the article?s relatively obscure provenance as a ?real sign of [a] disinformation operation,?? in fact a fairly transparent and crude ?disinformation operation,? as I noted on the day the article appeared with disgusting fanfare in the corporate media. Naturally, the neocon press, most notably the New York Sun, refused to publish a retraction after it was demonstrated, without much effort, the story was gibberish (although it did mention the Iranian Embassy in Ottawa denied the report). As Lobe reminds us, the New York Sun ?has consistently taken positions consistent with the right-wing Likud Party in Israel on Middle East issues.?
Meanwhile, Amir Taheri, the Iranian neocon described as ?a prominent Iranian journalist under the Shah? by the Financial Times, who initially floated the story in Canada?s neocon friendly National Post, stands by his story. ?Regarding the dress code story it seems that my column was used as the basis for a number of reports that somehow jumped the gun. As far as my article is concerned I stand by it,? Taheri writes on the Benador Associates website. ?I raised the issue not as a news story, because news of the new law was already several days old, but as an opinion column to alert the outside world to this most disturbing development.?
In other words, it is Mr. Taheri?s opinion that the Iranian mullahs will force ?followers of Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism? to wear ?special markers, known as zonnars? (a zonar is a belt or girdle which the Christians and Jews of the Levant were obliged to wear to distinguish them from Muslims, known as Mohammedans in the day). Taheri?s opinion, however, has absolutely no basis in reality, although the corporate media treated the baseless zonar accusation as a fait accompli (as they treated the neocon lies about Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction likewise).
Benador Associates is a neocon clearing house of sorts, a public relations firm that handles the likes of Frank Gaffney, Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen, James Woolsey, and other members of the criminal neocon rabble. In order to put Taheri and Benador into perspective, consider the latter promoted ?Khidhir Hamza, an Iraqi nuclear scientist who fled to the United States in the early 1990s, where he wrote a book claiming that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear bomb. When pressed on the issue, he denied saying that Iraq had a bomb, despite the fact that he says exactly that in his book?s opening pages? (see Catherine Auer, ?A View from Inside,? Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March-April 2001). Hamza and the neocons should be walking the line in orange jumpsuits, convicted of facilitating war crimes of Nazi caliber, but instead they are allowed to walk free, and the neocons are emboldened to pedal more nonsense about Iran in a calculated lead-up to attacking that country.
Meanwhile, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, no stranger to war crimes (under Clinton, she oversaw the murder of over 500,000 Iraqi children), has ?suggested that an official high in the Bush administration should give a speech in response to a letter that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent? to Bush, a letter our appointed ruler apparently used as toilet paper. ?The last thing we need is to invade another country,? Albright told an audience of 800 people during a speech earlier this month. Of course, it is not that Ms. Albright is morally opposed to mass murder and wanton slaughter, but rather that the ?nation?s military forces are overstretched,? as the Associated Press notes.
For the Straussian neocons, breaking the U.S. military is of little concern?in fact, it can be argued this is precisely what they intend to do, and thus pitch the nation into a larger conflagration, necessitating increased militarization of society and eventually conscription, otherwise known as bullet stopper slavery. As Paul Craig Roberts wrote in late 2004, the ?neoconservative godfather Norman Podhoretz?. is worried that mounting U.S. casualties in Iraq and growing public doubt about the wisdom of the failed Iraq invasion will derail the scheme to conquer the Muslim Middle East and to deracinate Islam.?
Podhoretz gives his assurances that ?the obstacles to a benevolent transformation of the Middle East?whether military, political or religious?are not insuperable.? He writes that ?there can be no question that we possess the power and the means.? The only question is whether we have ?the stomach to do what will be required??. To make sure that we have the stomach, Podhoretz blames the 9-11 terrorist attack on American cowardice. He argues that four U.S. presidents (Carter, Reagan, Bush I and Clinton) spent 24 years convincing Muslims that America is a wimp?. We will suffer more devastating attacks, Podhoretz says, unless we find the stomach to fight WW IV?. To pursue the insane agenda of conquering and occupying the Middle East not only requires the stomach for inhumane acts, but also demands millions of Americans taking up arms. Here come the draft and a generation of casualties.
Of course, there is nothing ?benevolent? about Podhoretz?s ?transformation,? as it will arrive in the guise of cruise missiles, bunker-busters, depleted uranium, and possibly even the use of ?mini-nukes? against Iran. In fact, the neocons hate Muslims of all stripes, as do their fascist Jabotinsky mentors in Israel, and wish only to sow destruction and misery within their societies. For as the late Israel Shahak warned in the foreword to Oded Yinon?s Zionist Plan for the Middle East, the ?idea that all the Arab states should be broken down, by Israel, into small units, occurs again and again in Israeli strategic thinking,? and this cruel and criminal idea is at the center of the Straussian neocon ideology.
Amir Taheri?s propaganda ploy against Iran?once again portraying Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the mullahs as latter-day Nazis determined to shove Jews in gas chambers and crematoria?is yet another entr?e in the fetid pi?ce de r?sistance of the Straussian neocon plan to demonize all Muslims and eventually decimate their society and culture. No doubt, in the weeks ahead, we will endure more of this crude propaganda as the neocons prepare for a terrible shock and awe campaign against Iran, a plan designed not only to topple the mullahocracy but also transform American society into a warrior culture the neocons plan to use in their crusade against the enemies of Israel and the Jabotinsky Zionists.
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