Perpetuating The Powerpoint Lies

The White House was told twice to redo the Powerpoint presentation purporting Iranian ties to American deaths. According to The National Journal the intelligence community demanded that the presentation be rewritten and washed of overstated claims:

At least twice in the past month, the White House has delayed a PowerPoint presentation initially prepared by the military to detail evidence of suspected Iranian materiel and financial support for militants in Iraq. The presentation was to have been made at a press conference in Baghdad in the first week of February. Officials have set no new date, but they say it could be any day.

Even as U.S. officials in Baghdad were ready to make the case, administration principals in Washington who were charged with vetting the PowerPoint dossier bowed to pressure from the intelligence community and ordered that it be scrubbed again.

This still wasn't enough scrubbing top get the facts straight and so some of the misinformation still persists. The NewsTimes provides one of the many arguments to support Murtha's plan to require fully trained and EQUIPED American soldiers before they can be deployed in theater:

News Times Live Editorial:
"Almost four years later, the armor problems remain. It's not a matter of money; it's a matter of planning.

This week, the Pentagon admitted that there is a shortage of armor to protect troops involved in the president's so-called 'surge' that will add more than 20,000 American military personnel to the Iraq war.

The president spent part of Wednesday's news conference alleging that Iran is supplying new deadly weapons to Iraqi insurgents. But what is he doing to require that American troops have the armor they need to protect themselves against these new weapons?

Known as 'explosively formed penetrators,' these weapons are now inflicting 70 percent of the American casualties in Iraq."

Yes the armor problems still remain, but so does the misinformation campaign that the lying Bush administartion intended to seed in the news. There are two major problems with the "evidence" supplied by the military and the Bush administration.

1. About 170 out of the over 3000 American deaths are POSSIBLY attributable to the Iranian supported Shia militias. Why? Because that is the total number killed by all shite in that time. A drop in the bucket. And certainly not all of the US forces killed by Shia insurgents are not all linked to Iran. A drop in the bucket. The vast MAJORITYof the IED's and other weapons used to kill Americans are planted or used by the Sunnis. A group that Iran does not support. However, Saudi Arabia sends truckloads full of money to the Sunnis is Iraq, the Sunnis that are largely responsible for the most deaths and injuries of American soldiers in Iraq. I don't think the Sunnis are buying cakes and cookies with that Saudi money.

2. Some of the weapons that the military showed as evidence of being supplied by Iran had markings written in English. Iranians mark weapons they manufacture in Farsi, although, Pakistan manufactures the same/similar weapons and marks them in English. Other weapons, like EFPs, that are purported to be too sophisticated to have been made by the Shia or the Sunnis, and therefore "must be coming from Iran", are similar to weapons that many other groups like Hezbollah and the IRA have made in the past, according to Middle East expert Juan Cole. (Scroll down, click on the Juan Cole video)

The Danbury NewsTimes bit on the EFPs lie, and blaming Iran. As noble as the real thrust of the Editorial may be, it is still perpetuating Bush propaganda.

The evidence clearly points to countries that are known supporters and financiers of the Sunnis (IE: Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc.) and/or just the easy spreading of information on typically used weapons amongst terrorism groups everywhere. And just whose name pops up to reenforce this manipulation of inteligence?

U.S. military commanders in Iraq have shown members of Congress explosive devices that bear Iranian markings as evidence Tehran is supplying Iraqi militants with bombs, a senior U.S. government official said Saturday.

One of the lawmakers, independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, said he has seen some of the evidence, though he would not be specific. “I’m convinced from what I’ve seen that the Iranians are supplying and are giving assistance to the people in Iraq who are killing American soldiers,” said Lieberman, who was attending an international security conference in Munich.

Republican Neocon extremist and propagandist Joe Lieberman. And pushing a lie that was already laid to rest over year ago:

Against the inference that this all comes from Iran is the concept that Iraqis themselves would be capable of copying a design and therefore do not need to get bombs from Iran.

And there have been a number of news reports over the last year expressing scepticism, even among military personnel, about the link to Iran.

The Washington Post reported last October that British troops in the south doubted the claim.

A year ago, the London Times said that British officers in Basra had stopped making any such claim, saying only that the technology matched bomb-making found elsewhere in the Middle East, including Lebanon and Syria.

While reporters and news agencies across the country are starting to catch whiffs of Bush Neocon propaganda, and pointing out some of the stinkers, they are still missing some of the really BIG lies. And most of them relate to the Drumbeat for War with Iran that is just a repeat of Iraq lies all over again:

Much of the intelligence on Iran's nuclear facilities provided to UN inspectors by US spy agencies has turned out to be unfounded, diplomatic sources in Vienna said today.

The claims, reminiscent of the intelligence fiasco surrounding the Iraq war, coincided with a sharp increase in international tension as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Iran was defying a UN security council ultimatum to freeze its nuclear programme.

That report, delivered to the security council by the IAEA director general, Mohammed ElBaradei, sets the stage for a fierce international debate on the imposition of stricter sanctions on Iran and raises the possibility that the US could resort to military action against Iranian nuclear sites.

I'm just waiting for the fictitious mushroom clouds to start to reappear...