"Walk back the cat" is spy slang for retracing the train of evidence and assumptions until the double agent, the false source or the analytic error is identified.
The false "Iran Eyes Badges for Jews" story headlined boldly in Friday's National Post (no longer available) echoed within minutes through media all over the world. Iran would require Jews to wear identifying badges, claimed unidentified "human rights groups". Within hours the story was debunked as false by by a Jewish member of Iran's parliament. There were no "human rights groups" after all. The sole source for the pile of crap was Amir Taheri, an Iranian-born journalist with ties to warmongering neo-cons, who wrote a companion piece to the main story.
Update [2006-5-22 7:24:51 by LondonYank]:: Please Unrecommend this diary and Recommend today's WBTC: Fakhravar the New Curveball?
This story was so clearly a Psy Ops plant that it made me want to "walk back the cat".
Familiar names aplenty: Michael (yellowcake from Niger) Ledeen, Richard Perle and David Frum.
My fellow Kossacks, we need to start walking back the cat on all the false stories, because it's always the same crowd creating hysteria in the run up to war.
So here's how it works. Taheri is in cahoots with Ledeen, Perle and Frum and is even a columnist for the National Review, their organ for warmongering swill. Taheri writes the incendiary op-ed piece "A color code for Iran's infidels" and himself sends it to the Simon Weisenthal Center. When someone there makes a fuss, it becomes news in a Likudite-linked paper where David Frum got his start as a columnist and where he is coincidentally publishing a weekly column again today. Viola! Effective psy ops delivery of a nasty calumny which makes Ahmadinejad look like Hitler!
This cannot be allowed to keep happening day after day, creating a stronger hysteria for another destructive and dangerous war plunging the world into chaos.
There's already plenty about the role played by Michael Ledeen and Richard Perle in staging the Iraq War fiasco with false intelligence and hyped hysteria fed to a compliant media by Ahmad Chalabi. It is worth noting, however, that Perle was also a director of Hollinger International, and was implicated in the fraud, embezzlement and other crimes now charged against Conrad Black. But now let's look closer at Frum and Taheri.
David Frum was plucked out of relative obscurity as a columnist for the National Post in 2000 and given a job as speechwriter in the Bush White House. Frum became a naturalised US citizen in 2002. Who got him the job in the White House? What role was played by Ledeen and Perle? Did Frum have a visa for the job, or was Frum employed illegally without proper documentation? On what basis was he given US citizenship? Was his application handled in the usual, slow, tortuous fashion or was it given the special, expedited, hand-walked-around-Washington-offices Rupert Murdoch treatment?
Amir Taheri was the editor of Tehran's biggest daily newspaper until 1979, and staunchly pro-Shah. Now he claims to be pro-democracy. Hunh. It's more likely he wants to follow the example of Ahmad Chalabi in Iraq - another close pal of Ledeen, Perle and Frum - looting tens of billions from raping his homeland after supplying the excuse for war.
As to my assertions about the National Post, here's some substantiation:
- The National Post was founded by Conrad Black because he felt other Canadian newspapers were too liberal. It was sold in 2003 to Israel Asper's CanWest empire. The Aspers, like Black, have ties to Likud.
- Bil Marsden, veteran Montreal Gazette journalist, said that the Aspers have an editorial policy which forbids criticsm of Israel's actions.
- Reuters protested after CanWest changed the content of Reuters stories on Iraq and the Palestine-Israel conflict to reflect CanWest bias, labelling some groups referenced in the articles as "terrorists" in accordance with corporate editorial policy.
I'd like to propose a DailyKos running project of Walking Back the Cat on each and every suspected psy ops story falsely appearing in the press. It's always the same people, following the same script, but the pattern requires substantiation over time to completely discredit these evil double agents in the heart of Washington who are determined to spend more American blood and treasure in another war against our national interest. Kossacks are uniquely good at unravelling these schemes with collective research, as evidenced by the wonderful work we did last year on outing Jeff Gannon as a Bushista shill.
If we keep showing the world the same men behind the curtain pulling the levers on every false story, eventually the media will have to be damn careful about swallowing the warmongering swill from Ledeen, Perle and Frum.
Update [2006-5-21 8:14:15 by LondonYank]:: For another example of more Psy Ops Fun and Games from the same crowd, see Goinsouth's diary today, Neocons Claim Iranians See Bush As "Saviour".
Update [2006-5-21 9:4:51 by LondonYank]:: Wow! This shot up to the top of the Rec List! Let's use the comments section to collectively strategise on how we might implement the WBTC Project and collect a repository of WBTC examples of warmonger PsyOps stories.