The most very dangerous kind of bullshit

benfell

Update, September 17: This post seems to have gotten damaged, in which the last part of the post seems to have gotten cut off, in the process of being copied from where I had initially written it or in being subsequently edited. In the interim, it appears that Saudi Arabia is corroborating the claim that Iran is behind an attack on its oil facilities.[1] Having needed to repair the post anyway, I wrote a new conclusion.

Yesterday [September 16], I wrote of U.S. accusations that Iran had launched an attack on Saudi oil facilities,[2]

I think Donald Trump is running for re-election and may be seeking a “rally ’round the flag” bump like George W. Bush got with the 9/11 attacks. We see that Trump wants to appear at least as tough as John Bolton,[3] who quit or was fired a few days ago,[4] and has declared that the U.S. is “locked and loaded.”[5] That said, I’m waiting for a refutation of the bit about “the scope and precision of the attacks [coming] from a west-northwest direction.”[6] (The site of the attack, which is also near Kuwait, lies to the west, across the Persian Gulf, from Iran.) It could be that the Iranian government has offered Trump a gift, albeit a gift that may come at considerable cost to its own people.[7]

And indeed, it turns out there’s a problem: “Saudi officials said the U.S. didn’t provide enough proof to conclude that the attack was launched from Iran, indicating the U.S. information wasn’t definitive.”[8] (Update, September 17: Saudi Arabia appears to be corroborating the claim on its own.[9])

Really, we’re back to the problem of “classified” evidence, in which a protagonist claims to have evidence s/he will not present. This is, on its face, inadmissable: Evidence is evidence. Excuses for failing to present it are not.

“U.S. officials said they planned to share more information with the Saudis in the coming days.”[10] Which starts to look an awful lot like an earlier (from June) episode in the U.S.-Iran conflict:

Having failed to persuade[11] with its earlier blurry black and white video, purportedly of Iranian forces removing an unexploded limpet mine from a tanker,[12] the Pentagon now has a sharper, color video (available via Politico’s tweet above).[13]

The video still doesn’t show national identification, although “Justin Bronk, a combat technology specialist at the Royal United Services Institute, said the patrol boat shown in the US military’s video was known to be the kind used by the IRGC.”[14] I would advise waiting for independent expert analysis of the new video itself: The color balance seems way off to me, leading me to suspect the color is not in the original, and I don’t understand why the Pentagon would first release a blurry black and white video if it had this much sharper color version available.

This evidence seems post hoc to me—actually, I just think they’re fabricating it just as fast as they can—and I’m thinking about those headlines I’ve seen about “deep-faking,” where anybody can be made to appear to have said or done anything—this doesn’t strike me as even a particularly good example of that. I am now inclined toward number three in my earlier list of possibilities:

Some or all of it is bullshit:

[T]he Japanese operator of Kokuka Courageous said the crew saw “flying objects” just before the attack, suggesting the tanker was damaged by something other than mines. Yutaka Katada, the company president, said reports of a mine attack were “false”.[15]

Avenues of information from the region are limited. The U.S. can pretty much say what it wants, claim whatever it wants to claim, and not many folks are going to question it. Remember, John Bolton, who is now Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor, has been lusting for war with Iran for decades and he has falsified claims in the past.[16] Further remember that journalists have a long history of falling into line even with dubious White House and Pentagon claims on international affairs.[17][18]

Actually, it turns out that lots of people are skeptical—just not enough of them being journalists, and Andrew Butters has a blistering critique in the Columbia Journalism Review of “the hysterical way America’s relationship with Iran is covered in the US press.”[19] Jeff Schogol wrote for Task and Purpose that “not a single U.S. official has provided a shred of proof linking Iran to the explosive devices found on the merchant ships.”[20] An interview on National Public Radio yesterday illustrates the problems that 1) the Trump administration seems determined to sink the Iran nuclear deal that Europe would like to preserve, 2) the U.S. has a history of fabricating evidence in the Middle East (and elsewhere, as Butters points out[21]), and 3) the Trump administration has accumulated a reputation for falsehood.[22] This new video really doesn’t alleviate those doubts.[23]

So here we are again, with the U.S. offering dubious or absent evidence in support of its bellicosity towards Iran. And one has to ask, what’s the end game, here?

Because if it’s war, well, I’ve covered that, too, as Trump has previously promised that any war against Iran would be quick and easy:

Where have we heard this[24] before? Oh yes, here it is:

July 11, 2002 – “Support for Saddam, including within his military organization, will collapse after the first whiff of gunpowder.” – Richard Perle, then Pentagon Defense Policy Board chairman. . . .

November 14, 2002 – “The Gulf War in the 1990s lasted five days on the ground. I can’t tell you if the use of force in Iraq today would last five days, or five weeks or five months. But it certainly isn’t going to last any longer than that.” – Then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. . . .

March 16, 2003 – “I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.” – U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney to U.S. television network NBC. . . .

May 1, 2003 – “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.” – U.S. President George W. Bush, aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln under a banner declaring “Mission Accomplished”.[25]

I am also recalling David Halberstam’s description of the “Five O’Clock Follies” in which military officials daily delivered rosy assessments of the war effort in Vietnam.[26]

So okay, let’s play. According the CIA World Factbook:[27]

  1. Afghanistan has a land surface area of 652,230 sq km and a population of 34,940,837 (July 2018 est.).[28] We are still at war there.
  2. Iraq has a land surface area of 437,367 sq km and a population of 40,194,216 (July 2018 est.).[29] The war with the Islamic State has mostly wound down, but I haven’t heard anyone say we’re finished with the war in Iraq.
  3. So now, drum roll, please: Iran has a land surface area of 1,531,595 sq km and a population of 83,024,745 (July 2018 est.).[30] That is, over twice the land area of Afghanistan and nearly four times the area of Iraq. And something approaching three times the population of Afghanistan and over double that of Iraq. “President Trump said Wednesday [June 26] that a war with Iran would not ‘last very long’ or involve ground troops, as he seemingly dismissed warnings that limited U.S. military action could spiral into a larger conflict.”[31] He proposes this while we are still embroiled in George W. Bush’s Global War on Terror (even if we don’t call it that anymore).

Oh yeah, hubris, baby![32]

Whatever the truth of Iran’s involvement in the attack on Saudi oil facilities, and with the Trump administration having invested itself in a claim that Iran was,[33] there’s a layer of bullshit here that can’t be erased no matter what the administration’s allies—Saudi Arabia itself included—finally wind up claiming. That it might be used to justify a war we cannot win is all the more frightening.

  1. [1]Dion Nissenbaum, Summer Said, and Jared Malsin, “U.S. Tells Saudi Arabia Oil Attacks Were Launched From Iran,” Wall Street Journal, September 16, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-tells-saudi-arabia-oil-attacks-were-launched-from-iran-11568644126↩
  2. [2]Sputnik News, “US Officials Claim Yemen Not Behind Saudi Aramco Attack, Houthis Reveal ‘Intel Operation’ – Reports,” Global Security, September 16, 2019, https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2019/09/mil-190916-sputnik01.htm; Sheena McKenzie, et al., “Saudi attacks send oil prices soaring,” CNN, September 16, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/saudi-oil-attack-dle-intl/index.html↩
  3. [3]Tina Nguyen, “Trump Visibly Distressed by Media Describing Bolton as ‘Tougher’ Than Him,” Vanity Fair, September 12, 2019, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/09/donald-trump-vs-john-bolton↩
  4. [4]Anne Gearan, John Wagner, and Robert Costa, “Bolton out as national security adviser after clashing with Trump,” Washington Post, September 10, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-fires-bolton-as-national-security-adviser-saying-he-disagreed-strongly-with-many-of-his-suggestions/2019/09/10/13409e2c-d3b9-11e9-9610-fb56c5522e1c_story.html↩
  5. [5]Bianca Quilantan, “Trump says U.S. ‘locked and loaded’ after attack on Saudi oil,” Politico, September 15, 2019, https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/15/trump-locked-loaded-iran-saudi-arabia-1497452↩
  6. [6]Sputnik News, “US Officials Claim Yemen Not Behind Saudi Aramco Attack, Houthis Reveal ‘Intel Operation’ – Reports,” Global Security, September 16, 2019, https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2019/09/mil-190916-sputnik01.htm; see also Sheena McKenzie, et al., “Saudi attacks send oil prices soaring,” CNN, September 16, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/saudi-oil-attack-dle-intl/index.html↩
  7. [7]David Benfell, “Has Iran given Donald Trump a gift?” Irregular Bullshit, September 16, 2019, https://disunitedstates.com/2019/09/16/has-iran-given-donald-trump-a-gift/↩
  8. [8]Dion Nissenbaum, Summer Said, and Jared Malsin, “U.S. Tells Saudi Arabia Oil Attacks Were Launched From Iran,” Wall Street Journal, September 16, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-tells-saudi-arabia-oil-attacks-were-launched-from-iran-11568644126↩
  9. [9]Summer Said and Dion Nissenbaum, “Saudi Arabia Increasingly Confident Iran Launched Oil Attack,” Wall Street Journal, September 17, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/saudi-arabia-increasingly-confident-iran-launched-oil-attack-11568733861↩
  10. [10]Dion Nissenbaum, Summer Said, and Jared Malsin, “U.S. Tells Saudi Arabia Oil Attacks Were Launched From Iran,” Wall Street Journal, September 16, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-tells-saudi-arabia-oil-attacks-were-launched-from-iran-11568644126↩
  11. [11]Jackie Northam, “White House Struggles To Convince Allies That Iran Is Responsible For Tanker Attacks,” National Public Radio, June 17, 2019, https://www.npr.org/2019/06/17/733497801/white-house-struggles-to-convince-allies-that-iran-is-responsible-for-tanker-att; Jeff Schogol, “As the US sends 1,000 more troops to Middle East, the Pentagon is a rudderless ship caught in a storm,” Task and Purpose, June 17, 2019, https://taskandpurpose.com/pentagon-adrift-iran↩
  12. [12]Nick Allen, Raf Sanchez, and Rozina Sabur, “US releases footage ‘showing Iran removing unexploded mine’ from stricken oil tanker,” Telegraph, June 14, 2019, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/06/14/us-releases-footage-showing-iran-removing-unexploded-mine-stricken/; Julian Borger and Patrick Wintour, “US says video shows Iranian military removing mine from tanker,” Guardian, June 14, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/13/mike-pompeo-iran-gulf-oil-tanker-attacks↩
  13. [13]Al Jazeera, “US releases new images from suspected attacks on Gulf tankers,” June 18, 2019, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/06/pentagon-releases-images-gulf-oman-attack-190618055528966.html↩
  14. [14]Al Jazeera, “US releases new images from suspected attacks on Gulf tankers,” June 18, 2019, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/06/pentagon-releases-images-gulf-oman-attack-190618055528966.html↩
  15. [15]Nick Allen, Raf Sanchez, and Rozina Sabur, “US releases footage ‘showing Iran removing unexploded mine’ from stricken oil tanker,” Telegraph, June 14, 2019, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/06/14/us-releases-footage-showing-iran-removing-unexploded-mine-stricken/↩
  16. [16]Dexter Filkins, “John Bolton on the Warpath,” New Yorker, April 29, 2019, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/06/john-bolton-on-the-warpath↩
  17. [17]J. Herbert Altschull, Agents of Power: The Media and Public Policy, 2nd ed. (White Plains, NY: Longman, 1995); David Halberstam, The Powers That Be (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 2000); Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon, 2002).↩
  18. [18]David Benfell, “John Bolton’s wet dream may turn real,” Irregular Bullshit, June 14, 2019, https://disunitedstates.com/2019/06/14/john-boltons-wet-dream-may-turn-real/↩
  19. [19]Andrew Lee Butters, “What the press gets wrong on the US-Iran relationship,” Columbia Journalism Review, June 17, 2019, https://www.cjr.org/opinion/what-the-press-gets-wrong-on-the-us-iran-relationship.php↩
  20. [20]Jeff Schogol, “As the US sends 1,000 more troops to Middle East, the Pentagon is a rudderless ship caught in a storm,” Task and Purpose, June 17, 2019, https://taskandpurpose.com/pentagon-adrift-iran↩
  21. [21]Andrew Lee Butters, “What the press gets wrong on the US-Iran relationship,” Columbia Journalism Review, June 17, 2019, https://www.cjr.org/opinion/what-the-press-gets-wrong-on-the-us-iran-relationship.php↩
  22. [22]Jackie Northam, “White House Struggles To Convince Allies That Iran Is Responsible For Tanker Attacks,” National Public Radio, June 17, 2019, https://www.npr.org/2019/06/17/733497801/white-house-struggles-to-convince-allies-that-iran-is-responsible-for-tanker-att↩
  23. [23]David Benfell, “Just substitute an ‘n’ for the ‘q’ in ‘Iraq’ and try it again, but (oh!) with a bigger, more populous, and (oh!) different country,” Irregular Bullshit, June 18, 2019, https://disunitedstates.com/2019/06/18/just-substitute-an-n-for-the-q-in-iraq-and-try-it-again-but-oh-with-a-bigger-more-populous-and-oh-different-country/↩
  24. [24]John Wagner and Dan Lamothe, “Trump says war with Iran would not involve ground troops or last long,” Washington Post, June 26, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-says-war-with-iran-would-not-involve-ground-troops-and-not-last-long/2019/06/26/9a0e9918-9813-11e9-830a-21b9b36b64ad_story.html↩
  25. [25]Dean Yates, “Iraq war, the notable quotes,” March 11, 2008, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-war-quotes/factbox-iraq-war-the-notable-quotes-idUSL212762520080311↩
  26. [26]David Halberstam, The Powers That Be (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 2000).↩
  27. [27]Central Intelligence Agency, “World Factbook,” n.d., https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/the-world-factbook/↩
  28. [28]Central Intelligence Agency, “World Factbook,” n.d., https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/the-world-factbook/↩
  29. [29]Central Intelligence Agency, “World Factbook,” n.d., https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/the-world-factbook/↩
  30. [30]Central Intelligence Agency, “World Factbook,” n.d., https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/the-world-factbook/↩
  31. [31]John Wagner and Dan Lamothe, “Trump says war with Iran would not involve ground troops or last long,” Washington Post, June 26, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-says-war-with-iran-would-not-involve-ground-troops-and-not-last-long/2019/06/26/9a0e9918-9813-11e9-830a-21b9b36b64ad_story.html↩
  32. [32]David Benfell, “Forever war and inhumanity, delusional raging narcissist-in-chief style,” Irregular Bullshit, June 27, 2019, https://disunitedstates.com/2019/06/27/forever-war-and-inhumanity-delusional-raging-narcissist-in-chief-style/↩
  33. [33]Dion Nissenbaum, Summer Said, and Jared Malsin, “U.S. Tells Saudi Arabia Oil Attacks Were Launched From Iran,” Wall Street Journal, September 16, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-tells-saudi-arabia-oil-attacks-were-launched-from-iran-11568644126; Sputnik News, “US Officials Claim Yemen Not Behind Saudi Aramco Attack, Houthis Reveal ‘Intel Operation’ – Reports,” Global Security, September 16, 2019, https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2019/09/mil-190916-sputnik01.htm; Sheena McKenzie, et al., “Saudi attacks send oil prices soaring,” CNN, September 16, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/saudi-oil-attack-dle-intl/index.html↩

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