bush Caught In Lies About Iran

The Bush administration has been caught red-handed in manufacturing evidence of a “provocation” off the Iranian coast on Jan. 6, in which five small Iranian open-air speedboats were alleged to have threatened three massive U.S. guided missile warships. The U.S. Navy now admits that audio and videotape given to the media and widely publicized had been spliced together.

What is most ominous in all this is that no major U.S. politician or institution, or any international body, has denounced this dangerous and deceptive move, nor have they called for an inquiry or investigation. Neither the U.S. Congress—now in session—nor any of its committees, all of them now controlled by the Democratic majority elected on an anti-war vote, took action.

With almost half the U.S. Navy hovering off the coast of Iran, this war provocation must be challenged and confronted.

The media is giving wall-to-wall coverage to both Democratic and Republican politicians campaigning in primary elections. Each of these politicians could and should be confronted on where they stand on this Pentagon fraud and what steps they personally plan to take to pursue the matter.

The corporate media in the U.S., which gave the story days of coverage, should also be challenged.

For three days before Bush departed on an eight-day trip to the Middle East, the media were full of denunciations of Iran by Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and top generals and Navy commanders, all denouncing Iran for a “dangerous provocation” and “a threat to world peace” based on this phony incident.

On arriving in Israel, even as the story was unraveling, Bush again threatened Iran and ominously warned that “all options are on the table to protect our assets.”

The U.S. Navy has now admitted that the video of the “incident” between the U.S. warships and the Iranian patrol boats was heavily edited and that the threatening voice on it warning “You may explode” may not have belonged to any Iranian sailors. Yet this video was the basis for the latest threats against Iran.

Who manufactured this video? Who spliced together completely different sound and video footage? Who signed off on it? Who distributed it to all the major media?

It was viewed and commented on at the highest levels of the bush administration.

This is hardly the first time that a manufactured U.S. crisis has launched a war.