So this guy with an odd name writes an article in the Asia Times that says Bush plans to run an air strike on Iran by August. Do we ignore it or do we start squirreling away canned pears in the family fallout shelter?
Self described “former broadcast news producer” Muhammad Cohen writes in a May 28 article that “The George W. Bush administration plans to launch an air strike against Iran within the next two months.” This is according to something “an informed source tells Asia Times Online.” We can be reasonably certain that “Asia Times Online” is Mr. Cohen. The identity of the “informed source” is somewhat less scrutable.
The “source,” according to Cohen, is “a retired U.S. career diplomat and former assistant secretary of state still active in the foreign affairs community, speaking anonymously.” What seems to make the source so reliable, in Cohen’s estimation, is that he or she is “echoing other reports that have surfaced in the media in the United States recently.”
Hence, what the source told Cohen seems reliable because it sounds like the noise the rest of the echo chamber is making. That’s the new journalistic litmus test for veracity all right, but Cohen’s the first writer I’ve heard come right out and admit it.
The anonymous former assistant secretary of state, assuming that’s a genuine credential, has to be one of oh, twenty or thirty people, so one has to wonder why he or she felt the need to cling to anonymity. I’m starting to think it’s a status thing in Washington now to be cited anonymously about something electrifying as long as everybody inside the beltway knows the anonymous source was you.
Cohen says the former assistant secretary told him that details of the planned strike “raised alarm bells on Capitol Hill.”
“After receiving secret briefings on the planned air strike,” Cohen writes, “Senator Diane Feinstein, Democrat of California, and Senator Richard Lugar, Republican of Indiana, said they would write a New York Times op-ed piece `within days.'”
Cohen didn’t bother to confirm any of that with Feinstein or Lugar because “Senate offices were closed for the U.S. Memorial Day holiday, so Feinstein and Lugar were not available for comment.”
Senate offices were open on Wednesday the 28th, the day Cohen’s story hit the Asia Times web site, so I called Feinstein and Lugar’s offices. Both senators’ press secretaries said the story was untrue: neither senator had been given a briefing on a strike on Iran, secret or otherwise, and neither senator intended to write a New York Times op-ed piece about the brief they hadn’t received “within days” or any time after that.
Whodunnit?
All we know for certain about the former assistant secretary is that whomever he, she or it may be they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. On Muhammad Cohen we have a bit more granularity.
The first thing I noted when visiting muhammadcohen.com on May 28 was the banner at the top of the page that read “Muhammad Cohne.” Cohen tells us that he’s an alumnus of Yale and Stanford; apparently the criteria for graduating from those bastions of higher learning don’t include knowing how to spell your own name. (Heck, Bush graduated from Yale and Condi Rice taught at Stanford, so the standards can’t be all that high at either place.) Neither, evidently, is spelling one’s name a talent required to be a cable news producer. Cohen worked for CNN and he moved to Hong Kong in 1995 to help start CNBC Asia. Cohen is presently promoting his book Hong Kong on Air which is, as you may have guessed, fiction.
Oh, about the name… Native New Yorker Eliot Cohen married a Muslim woman in 2002 and changed his first name to prove, according to one of his press releases, “that the `Muhammads’ and the `Cohens’ are not all that different. Can’t we all just get along?” A praiseworthy sentiment to be sure, but for the net effect his name change had Cohen might as well call himself Gary Goof.
I hope his goofiness helps him sell a lot of books, but I sure wish he hadn’t written his stupid article on Iran for Asia Times, and I wish his editor buddy at Asia Times had said, “Interesting, but we can’t use this just now. I’m sure you can find other ways to promote your novel.”
Thanks to legitimate investigative efforts by serious journalists like Gareth Porter and Larisa Alexandrovna and Seymour Hersh, we know about the efforts of Dick Cheney and the “crazies” in his Iranian Directorate to sell young Mr. Bush and the American public on a war with Iran the way they peddled the invasion of Iraq. We also (thankfully) hear more and more voices in the information sphere pointing out how the Cheney Gang broadcasts unfounded allegations against the Iranians through compliant media conduits like Michael R. “Anonymous Officials Say” Gordon of the New York Times.
But every time a yahooligan like Muhammad Cohen writes something alarming about the impending assault on Iran that turns out to be as genuine as a blue dollar bill, it makes everybody who’s making responsible efforts to keep Cheney’s crew in check sound like a kook too. The more the public hears false alarms, the more likely it is to ignore the warning when the wolf is really at the door.
Most of these sky-is-falling-on-Tehran stories involve a “revelation” that someone is planning a military action of some kind on Iran. Everybody needs to understand that there are probably more than 10 thousand people on active duty whose full time job it is to plan operations. When they don’t have any new operations to plan they pull out old plans and re-plan them. I’m not shocked that there’s a plan for any and every conceivable kind of operation against Iran. I’d be shocked if there weren’t.
If you’re shocked that we have standing war plans for Iran, it’s a good thing you don’t know about all the other military operations we have in the can. You’d be so scared you’d never get up off the toilet.
Don’t worry too much, though, there’s good news in all this. When I visited muhammadcohen.com around noon on the 29th, “Cohen” was spelled correctly. The guy’s former assistant secretary pal must have tipped him off.
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes at Pen and Sword . Jeff’s novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books) is on sale now.
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While in Hong Kong he has also worked for Bloomberg, the South China Morning Post and the Hong Kong Standard and has been a contributor to Time, The Columbia Review of Journalism, Asiaweek, Slate, Salon and Asia Times Online.
He is on the advisory board of the New Foundations for Peace, a registered non-profit, in the United States, that seeks to resolve the `clash of civilizations’ and modern day conflicts. Link website.
He is now residing in Indonesia and currently working on the first edition of the Lonely Planet Borneo Guide to be released in 2008.
U.S. Gov’t IRS contract – $3,000
By any chance Muhammad Cohen wouldn’t be the son of … Neocon Eliot A. Cohen? Excellent entry to John Bolton perhaps …
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."The thought crossed my mind. That would be one explanation about why this piece, and why his somewhat spotty media credits. But I haven’t found anything on that yet.
As someone with extensive contacts and experience in the U.S. military…do you think that there is a contingent of really high-level military people who have simply set their feet and said (in one way or another, and certainly not in any way that could result in their mass firing) “No more. This is NOT going to happen on our watch. We will wait you out.”
When Admiral Fallon resigned after making quite a bit of fairly public noise about his own resistance to the Iran War ideas, was this not simply the visible tip of this systemic military iceberg that is literally forcing the hawk crazies to NOT be able go ahead with their plans?
That’s the way it looks from the outside.
Enlighten us, please.
This administration certainly has not gone forward with substantial military action against Iran no matter how extreme their posturing may have been over the last couple of years, and it can’t be entirely an internal U.S. political position that is dictating their actions because how could they lose much more public support than they have already lost? In fact, an Iraq-style war hysteria public relations buildup and subsequent shock-and-awe, by-the-rockets’-red-glare TV coverage would most likely stampede another 15% or 20% of the American sleeple public back right into their pockets.
So why hasn’t it happened?
Something like that takes about a month or even two of buildup to really be effective, and here it is June already.
Who’s got their finger in the dike?
Just wondering…
AG
Arthur,
Can’t remember where else we discussed this today offhand, but yes there are a few Dutch Boys left in the DoD. Whether there are enough I don’t know.
A lot of the admin’s actions these days seem to hinge on how well they think they’ll be able to rewrite history after they’re out of power.
It was on MLW, Jeff.
And here are your responses, for the benefit of the BooTribbers:
and
But I wonder if the last statement in your response here is accurate.
Is it not possible that they do not much care what might be said about them after they are no longer in power because they do not plan on EVER being out of power?
Was Hitler concerned with so-called “history”?
Not really, because he could not conceive of losing and thus thought that he and his admirers would be the ones who were writing it.
I fear the same mindset in this group.
And I use the word “fear” advisedly.
I expect some sort of an attempt at an October (or earlier) Surprise directed at Iran, probably driven in a covert manner by whatever segments of the Intel system remain loyal to the Neo-Cons.
My fervent hope is that there is enough resistance in positions of power within the armed forces to make the success of an operation like this a clear impossibility, thus hamstringing the whole idea.
If this resistance is not in good position…I do not believe that we have seen the end of the last 8 years of bad times.
Not by a LONG shot.
Later…
AG
the hyocrisy…the stupidity, in fact…of BushCo™’s policies, vis-a-vis iran’s “nuclear program” are absolutely mind boggling.
the bellicose posturing goes on, even as he returned form his most recent ME excursion with an agreement to supply the saudis with enriched uranium, for reactors they don’t have.
this interesting bit from the recent amy goodman show from Democracy NOW! with harvey wasserman:
h/t to chris floyd at Empire Burlesque…who lays out more damning background in his essay: Uranium Enrichment: The Bushes, The Saudis and The Bomb
relying on the military to prevent a disasterous outcome is misplaced optimism, imo. the neoCON’s have set things in motion, that will in all likelihood, hamstring any efforts to achieve a peaceful resolution.
this is the definition of insanity.
منتديات–شات–دردشة–دردشه–شات
كتابي–دردشة كتابية–شات
صوتي–دردشة صوتية–شات
سعودي–دردشة سعودية–شات
الغلا–منتديات الغلا–تحميل
العاب–برامج كمبيوتر–كتب
مجانية–برامج جوال–مقاطع
بلوتوث–مسجات–نغمات–ثيمات–العاب
جوال موبايل–تصاميم–هكر–صور–صور
انمي–اخبار الفن–صور
فنانين–افلام–افلام
اجنبية–اناشيد–صور
سيارات–كاس امم اوروبا–تحميل
اهداف–محمد–سياحة
وسفر–منتدى النقاش–منتديات
عامة–منتديات اسلامية–صور
كاريكاتير–منتدى تعارف–نكت–الغاز–خواطر–قصائد–شعر–قصص–اساطير–روايات–حكم
وامثال–ازياء–منتديات
عروس–المطبخ–اطفال–طب–علم
النفس–منال العالم–مركز
تحميل–دليل مواقع–1–2–3–4–5–6–7–8–9–برق–19–p1–p2–p3–p4–78–71–20–21–59–60–58–61–67–53–56–9–a9–a1–a8–a12—a15–a16–a18–ماسنجر–صور
بنات–51–26–a–b–c–d–e–e–f–g–h–j–l–29–43–47–13–6–dd–p18–f8–12–62–65–49l–f11–f86–مسجات
حب–مسجات عتاب–مسجات
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حب–صور بنات–شات
بنات–دردشة بنات–شات
الحب–دردشة الحب–دردشة
كويت 25–اغاني هيفاء وهبي–دردشة
بنت السعودية–عمرو خالد–ناصر
الفراعنة–صور نانسي عجرم–ياسر
القحطاني–شات بنات عوانس–نغمات
نوكيا–قصص–هشام
الراشد–تامر حسني–العاب–
منتديات–شات–دردشة–دردشه–شات
كتابي–دردشة كتابية–شات
صوتي–دردشة صوتية–شات
سعودي–دردشة سعودية–شات
الغلا–منتديات الغلا–تحميل
العاب–برامج كمبيوتر–كتب
مجانية–برامج جوال–مقاطع
بلوتوث–مسجات–نغمات–ثيمات–العاب
جوال موبايل–تصاميم–هكر–صور–صور
انمي–اخبار الفن–صور
فنانين–افلام–افلام
اجنبية–اناشيد–صور
سيارات–كاس امم اوروبا–تحميل
اهداف–محمد–سياحة
وسفر–منتدى النقاش–منتديات
عامة–منتديات اسلامية–صور
كاريكاتير–منتدى تعارف–نكت–الغاز–خواطر–قصائد–شعر–قصص–اساطير–روايات–حكم
وامثال–ازياء–منتديات
عروس–المطبخ–اطفال–طب–علم
النفس–منال العالم–مركز
تحميل–دليل مواقع–1–2–3–4–5–6–7–8–9–برق–19–p1–p2–p3–p4–78–71–20–21–59–60–58–61–67–53–56–9–a9–a1–a8–a12—a15–a16–a18–ماسنجر–صور
بنات–51–26–a–b–c–d–e–e–f–g–h–j–l–29–43–47–13–6–dd–p18–f8–12–62–65–49l–f11–f86–مسجات
حب–مسجات عتاب–مسجات
شوق–مسجات مقالب–مسجات
نكت–مسجات حلوة–صور
حب–صور بنات–شات
بنات–دردشة بنات–شات
الحب–دردشة الحب–دردشة
كويت 25–اغاني هيفاء وهبي–دردشة
بنت السعودية–عمرو خالد–ناصر
الفراعنة–صور نانسي عجرم–ياسر
القحطاني–شات بنات عوانس–نغمات
نوكيا–قصص–هشام
الراشد–تامر حسني–العاب–