On Iran, Will the Media Pay Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain?

By Tony Karon

"......The fundamental assumption left unchallenged is that military force is a wise, prudent or legitimate response to the proliferation of nasty weapons among regimes hostile to the U.S. It’s precisely that assumption that has been trashed in Iraq, which even if it had had a couple of hundred (or even thousand) mustard gas and VX shells would still be the catastrophic mess it is today......

My reason for revisiting the morbid saga of media complicity in enabling the Iraq war now is that a new, even more catastrophic war is in the works against Iran — but it’s not a done deal. Cheney, quite probably the most dangerous man in the world given the combination of his extremist views and his proximity to real power, would love to make it happen, and so would the neocons and Likudniks, who are agitating for it with increasing alarm.

Not only do we have a steady stream of hysteria pouring out of the Israeli establishment and its American backers making the absurd comparison between Iran and Nazi Germany, routinely exaggerating both Iran’s intentions and its capabilities. There’s also the new trope — equally absurd, but it’s not like there’s a very effective filter in place — of blaming Iran for things going wrong in Iraq......

The U.S. had promised a major roll-out last week of “evidence” showing Iran was contributing towards instability in Iraq, but it was canceled, reportedly after State and Defense Department officials pushed back against the flimsiness of the evidence on offer. But as Juan Cole notes, the pertinent question worth investigating, then, is “who was spearheading this presentation inside the Bush administration?” 

I wish I had more confidence in the Democrats readiness to stand up to the demagoguery on Iran. And also the media’s. Thank heaven, then, for former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brezinski, and his moral clarity on the matter. His recent Senate testimony on Iraq and Iran should be required reading for people covering this story. Extract......

And when you hear the U.S. media echoing half-baked allegations against Iran or flights of fancy about how Washington is building a Sunni Arab united front to push back against the likes of Iran and Hamas, or hawking the same notions that security can be created through the application of military force despite that notion having been so spectacularly discredited in Iraq, remember that it’s often the “expertise” of the same cast of clowns that got the Iraq equation so spectacularly wrong that is now shaping the Iran discussion."