Friday, October 14, 2011

The ‘Terrorist’ Who Couldn’t Think Straight


(Cartoon by Carlos Latuff)

Iranian 'terrorist' plot unravels

AN EXCELLENT ANALYSIS

By Justin Raimondo

"Would Iran recruit a used car salesman with a memory problem to conduct assassinations in the US? This is a question you have to ask yourself when evaluating the alleged Iranian "terrorist" plot supposedly uncovered by Attorney General Eric Holder the other day.....

Less than 24 hours after Holder’s press conference, the whole fantasy began to unravel under closer scrutiny....

But as Ayn Rand once said: "Don’t bother to question a fallacy, ask yourself only what it accomplishes." The idea is to target Iran as the next al-Qaeda: with the late unlamented Osama bin Laden out of the picture, the US has to find a replacement – and quick! – in order to justify its decade-long post-9/11 rampage across the Middle East and much of the rest of the world. What’s a war without an enemy? Iran has always been the War Party’s ultimate Middle Eastern target, and now they are making their move....

Which non-Iranian intelligence agencies and/or terrorist organizations would stand to gain from such a confrontation? I can think of two: the Israelis and al-Qaeda. The former, after all, have been agitating for war quite openly; and as for al-Qaeda, those vultures are likely to be found circling over any Middle Eastern battlefield.

In choosing between these two as the likely culprit, I’ll await fresh evidence before making a final judgment. I would note, however, that al-Qaeda isn’t in very good shape these days, with their top leadership mostly dead, and their ranks scattered and demoralized.

The Israelis, on the other hand, have both the means and the motivation: they are desperate to provoke a war between the US and Iran, and have been for years. Moreover, there are elements of Netanyahu’s government who would stop at nothing to achieve this end. Remember that Avigdor Lieberman is the Foreign Minister, and controls a good chunk of the Israeli national security bureaucracy: his extremist party, the successor to the infamous Kach movement, which wants to deport all Arabs and create a "Greater Israel," is the electoral expression of the radical "settler" movement, which is now defying the Israeli army and carrying out terrorist attacks within Israel. In Weimar Israel, the extremists are on the rise – and they have their supporters within the establishment and the government itself, including the intelligence services.

Analysts often point, almost by default, to the option of attributing the alleged plot to a "rogue faction" of the Iranian government, but it’s just as likely – if not more likely – that this "rogue faction" is Israeli. It wouldn’t be the first time the Israelis have been strongly suspected of carrying out extensive covert activities in the US.....

In any case, what you need to know about this case is that it’s one-hundred percent baloney, from start to finish. It’s the crudest sort of war propaganda, the kind that insults the intelligence of the audience it is supposed to convince – and that, too, is a clue to its provenance."

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