Monday, May 5, 2008

Offering "specifics" about unsunbstantiated allegations doesn't make them facts

Americans would do well to keep that in mind as they absorb all of the rhetoric coming off this administration and their enablers in the press. Remember that the New York Times is complicit in the Iraq clusterfuck because Judith Iscariot sold the invasion on their pages.

So are they at it again, this time with Michael Gordon cheerleading for war?
BAGHDAD — Militants from the Lebanese group Hezbollah have been training Iraqi militia fighters at a camp near Tehran, according to American interrogation reports that the United States has supplied to the Iraqi government.

An American official said the account of Hezbollah’s role was provided by four Shiite militia members who were captured in Iraq late last year and questioned separately.

The United States has long charged that the Iranians were training Iraqi militia fighters in Iran, which Iran has consistently denied, and there have been previous reports about Hezbollah operatives in Iraq.

But the Americans say the reports of Hezbollah’s role at the Iranian camp offer important details about Iranian assistance to the militias, including efforts Iran appears to be making to train the fighters in unobtrusive ways.

Maybe Hezbollah is involved, and maybe Iraqi militants are being trained in Iranian camps. But no one is putting their name to it, and so far it is all just unsubstantiated allegations, so Americans would probably be well served by skepticism where these warmongering, soulless neocon fucks are concerned. Especially when Michael Gordon has the byline. He is every bit as bad as Miller, and the war he is trying to whip up support for would probably involve nukes.

They are not offering specifics, they are offering platitudes and dire warnings and unsubstantiated charges. And they have proven themselves untrustworthy.

They need to be offering solid, independently verified proof of the allegations they level. War is serious business. It isn't romantic and it isn't glorious and we have plenty on our plate right now as it is, because we bought the lies and went to war in Iraq because a bunch of people who never fought one or even completed their time in the Boy Scouts have some fucked up ideas about something they know fuck-all about.

We do not need a war with Iran. Especially since that conflict would undoubtedly involve Russia getting in on the fun and games. And they have as much hardware and manpower as we do, and they aren't bogged down in two wars in the Muslim world.

There is your god-damned nightmare scenario: the US bogged down in Iraq, our forces drawn down in the European theater, and our equipment and manpower both depleted from seven years of war in rugged conditions.

I am starting to wonder if we are going to make it to January.

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