Michael Ledeen Lies During FOX News/White House Iran War Push

[laststeamtrain]

Michael Ledeen Lies During FOX News/White House Iran War Push

As I posted Monday, The New Yorker’s George Packer wrote that the White House was reportedly planning a post-Labor Day PR blitz to promote a war against Iran. According to Packer’s source, FOX News was to be part of the co-ordinated effort. Sure enough, following Bill Kristol’s morning warmongering on FOX & Friends, chickenhawk Michael Ledeen was the sole guest in a Hannity & Colmes discussion devoted to the war effort. Alan Colmes confronted Ledeen with his flip-flop on the war in Iraq and Ledeen told an outright lie by way of “explanation.” With video.

Ledeen told Sean Hannity during the first part of the discussion, “It could be almost any day now” until we have to make a choice whether to attack Iran militarily or allow them to have nuclear capability “with all that implies.” It was very reminiscent of the "mushroom cloud" argument during the run-up to the Iraq war.

“Forgetting” that by removing Saddam Hussein we removed an enemy of Iran and installed an Iranian-friendly government in its place, Ledeen complained, “We have yet to respond seriously to Iran in anyplace except Afghanistan and Iraq where it’s basically defending our people and our friends against them.”

Chickenhawk Hannity, of course, was all ears. He resurrected his concern for women’s rights, (rarely, if ever, seen except during his demagoguery against Islam) and praised Ledeen’s warmongering book as “terrific.”

During Colmes’ portion, he mentioned that in 2006, Ledeen wrote in the National Review that he had opposed the war in Iraq before it happened. Then Colmes put up a 2002 quote from Ledeen about Iraq, “One can only hope that we turn the region into a cauldron.”

Caught in his contradiction, Ledeen told a bald-faced lie. “Well, if you read it in context, Alan, you’ll see that the cauldron I was talking about was political, not military. And what I was arguing for and what I have argued for all along is that we started in the wrong place. It should have been Iran, not Iraq. And the methods used should have been political, not military.”

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http://www.newshounds.us/2007/09/05/michael_ledeen_lies_during_fox_newswhite_house_iran_war_push.php

[EVDebs]

1. Chalabi was an Iranian spy and STILL Bushco used him...

http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/62/21434

and

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001935950_iranchalabi22.html

Treason. Period.

[The_Casual_Observer]

2. They'd like nothing better than to shoot up Iran a little

bit before they get their asses kicked the hell out of Washington once & for all. It'll happen too, some morning when you least expect it.

[TomInTib]

3. Ledeen is an idiot.

Doesn't he realize that if we mix it up with Iran that they will use our own weapons against us?

You know, the ones he arranged the sale of thru middleman Israel during Iran-Contra?

And to think that he is the neocons' go-to guy on Iran, a country in which he has yet to set foot.

[pingzing58]

5. Thanks for the insight. We need the history of the situation as you present it.

[laststeamtrain]

6. Some interesting material here: Ledeen and Contragate (thirdworldtraveler.com)

Ledeen and Contragate

Ledeen's role in Iran-a-scam and Contragate begins with his secret missions to Israel. But it is unclear who was urging whom to do what. According to leaked portions of a Senate Intelligence Committee report, the sale of arms to Iran was planned and implemented by the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad. Each time that the United States rejected further participation in the Israeli plan, some Mossad agent was urgently dispatched to the United States to put their plan back on track. Throughout the leaked Senate report, there are references to "the Israeli plan." And the text of a memo by Lt. Col. Oliver North titled "Covert Action Finding Regarding Iran" reads: "Prime Minister Peres of Israel secretly dispatched his special adviser on terrorism (Amiram Nir) with instructions to propose a plan by which Israel, with limited assistance from the United States, can create conditions..."

But instead of trying to shift the blame to Israel, the White House sought to delete all references to the Israeli role from the Senate report and the media accounts followed suit.
Naturally, the New York Times placed the initiative with the National Security Council: President Reagan contended that the program had its inception in mid-1985 when McFarlane sent a U.S. consultant, Michael Ledeen, to Israel.
The Israeli press depicted Ledeen as an U.S. agent who got Israel invoked as a broker in a deal between the United States and Iran. Defense Minister and former Director General of Foreign Affairs David Kimche told the Los Angeles Times that the purpose of his July 1985 visit to Washington was to confirm Ledeen's bona fides. However, there were a number of glaring problems with the Israeli cover story. Kimche had already met with McFarlane in January 1985 to urge arms sales to Iran.

He had been pushing for this policy since 1981.

And Ledeen was hardly a stranger to Israeli officials. In fact, the ludicrous part of the Israeli cover story is the allegation that Kimche, who lived in New York for five years in the 1960s as chief of Mossad's Western Hemisphere operations division, had to travel to Washington to establish Ledeen's bona fides. David Kimche and Amiram Nir spent their professional lives in the Mossad, an agency not unknown to Ledeen.

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http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA/Iran_Contra_Israel_CA.html
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[Roland99]

4. Batshit. Insane.