by CKR
Cernig has been burning up the tubes at Newshog lately on a number of issues. He brought the Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball “retraction” of some of the administration’s accusations against Iran to my attention.
I say “retraction” because I agree with Cernig that it looks like Isikoff and Hosenball are doing the administration’s dirty work for them. Cernig has exposed the internal contradictions in the Newsweek article. But it goes further than that.
It took the administration several weeks to marshal their “evidence” that Iran’s leaders are making trouble in Iraq. It finally came out in the form of a briefing by anonymous briefers, with reporters prohibited from taking photos. The briefers were identified as a “senior defense official,” a U.S. military “analyst” and a U.S. military “explosives expert.”
Judith Miller’s shilling for the adminstration brought the problem of anonymous sources to the attention of the newspapers that continue to use them. The people who used Miller and her colleagues in the buildup to the Iraq war seem to have ignored what anonymity does to credibility. They have one playbook, and they continue to use it.
Karl Rove’s electoral strategy playbook lost the 2006 elections for them. The neocon playbook on using intelligence information to foment wars worked so well for Iraq that they’re using it again, search and replace just one letter. Just as in the elections, it isn’t working so well this time around. So the administration has to find a way to distance themselves from it.
The distancing playbook says find someone who can’t fight back. So it was a highly blameable low-ranking briefer who messed up, just as it was those folks in the photos at Abu Ghraib and Walter Reed’s “lower-ranking officers and noncommissioned officers lacking ‘the right experience and the authority to be able to execute some of the missions!’” Further up the chain of command, responsibility is formulaically accepted, but no, nobody is fired.
[I mostly wrote this post yesterday; there seems to be a small amount of activity up the chain on the Walter Reed problems, extremely poorly reported so far, and not at all related to “current events,” according to administration spokespeople. We can only hope that Dana Priest and others are looking into this.]
But back to that Iran briefing. Isikoff and Hosenball were willing to get the word out:
An anonymous U.S. official, assigned to provide a recent “background” briefing to the news media in Baghdad, strayed from his script and overstated evidence linking Iranian leaders to weapons found in Iraq, according to four U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the matter.Yes, you’ve got it right: those four intelligence officials have to remain, er, anonymous.
A slip of the tongue it was, by one of those anonymous briefers.
the Baghdad briefers were supposed to stick closely to a script and slide show about Iranian weapons shipments into Iraq that had been carefully vetted by the National Security Council in Washington. The slide show's contents also had been approved by U.S. intelligence agencies, including the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA.But the briefer went beyond this to assert, although nobody can be sure what was said because, in keeping with the secrecy of the briefing, no transcript was made,The slide show, which was later e-mailed to NEWSWEEK by a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, includes a flat assertion that "Iran is a significant contributor to attacks on Coalition forces and also supports violence against the Iraqi security Force and innocent Iraqis." It continues with explicit claims that the Quds Force provided weapons and money to Iraqi militants engaged in anti-U.S. attacks.
The briefer claimed that senior Iranian government officials had authorized the Quds Force to supply insurgents with weapons designed to kill Americans. If true, it would be powerful evidence that high-level elements of the Iranian regime were directly involved in the targeting of U.S. soldiers—arguably an act of war.But wasn’t that the way the briefing was being spun in the weeks preceding? Isn’t this what President Bush has been implying, although with some ineptitude?In the absence of an official transcript, the briefer’s precise words are unclear. Most news accounts quoted the briefer as saying that the "highest levels" of the Iranian government had authorized the weapons shipments. The BBC Web site quoted the anonymous U.S. official saying: "We assess that these activities are coming from the senior levels of the Iranian government."
What we do know is that the Quds force was instrumental in providing these deadly IEDs to networks inside of Iraq. We know that. And we also know that the Quds force is a part of the Iranian government. That's a known. What we don't know is whether or not the head leaders of Iran ordered the Quds force to do what they did.I’m quoting the whole thing because it goes back and forth quite a bit. He begins by saying that we don’t know if the “head leaders” of Iran are involved with supplying these weapons and ends up by saying to the Iranian people that their “leaders are making decisions that are isolating you in the world.” The same sort of inferential gobbledygook that included mushroom clouds when it was applied to Iraq. He’ll later say that he never said anything of the kind.But here's my point: Either they knew or didn't know, and what matters is, is that they're there. What's worse, that the government knew or that the government didn't know? But the point I made in my initial speech in the White House about Iraq was, is that we know they're there and we're going to protect our troops. When we find the networks that are enabling these weapons to end up in Iraq, we will deal with them. If we find agents who are moving these devices into Iraq, we will deal with them. I have put out the command to our troops -- I mean, to the people who are commanders, that we'll protect the soldiers of the United States and innocent people in Iraq and will continue doing so.
Now, let me step back on Iran, itself. We have a comprehensive strategy to deal with Iraq [sic]. There's a variety of issues that we have with Iraq [sic]. One, of course, is influence inside of Iraq. Another is whether or not they end up with a nuclear weapon. And I believe an Iran with a nuclear weapon would be very dangerous for world peace, and have worked with other nations of like mind. And it turns out there's a lot of countries in the world that agree with that assessment. After all, we did get a Chapter 7 Resolution out of the United Nations that included EU3, as well as Russia and China. That's a positive development.The message to the Iranian people is that your leaders are making decisions that are isolating you in the world, thereby denying you a brighter future. And I believe Iran is an unbelievably vital nation. It's got a great history, it's got wonderful traditions, it's got very capable, smart people. There is -- I believe there's also a desire to not be isolated from the world. And our policies are all aimed at convincing the Iranian people there's a better way forward, and I hope their government hears that message.
I don’t write many posts working through the administration’s and their stenographers’ words in this way because it gets so confusing, and working through it is so long-winded. But it’s worth doing occasionally. Read Cernig’s post carefully: he pulls out the contradictions.
What I’m saying is that, once again, as for the Abu Ghraib prisoner mistreatment and the Walter Reed inadequacies, the kind of responsibility that brings punishment goes only as far as the noncoms and junior officers. It’s an extension of the plausible deniability that goes back at least to Henry II’s musing “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?” The barons took that rap.
Maybe we should rename this administration’s use of the technique “implausible deniability.” Or maybe we need to wait to do that until the MSM recognizes the tactic and dares to ask about it or investigate it.