Apparently, now that Judith Miller is in jail, the New York Times found another reporter willing to carry water for the neoconservatives. This morning the Times published
"Some Bombs Used in Iraq Are Made in Iran, U.S. Says by
Eric Schmitt that has
no named sources for any of its main claims. Where have we seen this before?
In the article, unnamed "United States military and intelligence officials" made the following
unattributed claims:
- powerful new IED devices have been designed in Iran for use in Iraq;
- powerful new IED devices have been shipped from Iran to Iraq;
- that Hezbollah is involved (this is particularly incendiary as Hezbollah has a formal policy of not targeting Americans or American interests)
- that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is involved (which, despite disclaimers later in the article, means that they are charging that even if the Iranian "government" isn't invovled, the top-level clerics are, which in Iran means the same thing);
- that these devices are in fact new to the theater and not just the normal improvements to be expected as bomb makers become more experienced.
The article also completely avoids mention of the elephant in the room: why isn't it more logical that as local bomb makers become more experienced (and obtain more education, possibly from outside sources) that they are more able to use the thousands of tons of munitions looted after the fall of Baghdad when Secretary Rumsfeld left the munitions dumps unguarded.
The information in this article is clearly published with the approval of, perhaps even at the behest of, the Administration. I cannot understand why none of the sources are identified. This is outrageous!
We need to demand names, dates, places, quotes, pictures. War with Iran is seen as desireable by some neoconservatives and I worry that this type of reporting, which we saw before with the Judith Miller WMD stories, is part of the drumbeat to war. People have been writing about the neocon plan to remake the entire Middle East - specifically including war with Iran - for years. See, for example, this article by Josh Marshall from April 2003.