Defining "terrorism" and deciding who's behind a "terrorist" attack prematurely as a form of propaganda

of course i've been following the situation in syria and the damascus suicide bombing without the slightest notion of who are the good guys and who are the bad guys (although i am strongly leaning toward the belief that both sides are pretty bad)... i also have no firm idea of who is propping up the assad regime and who is giving support to the rebels... that both the u.s. and israel have their hands in the matter up to their elbows i think is almost a given and that both of them would certainly like to see a regime emerge, no matter how brutal or totalitarian, that would befriend the u.s., tolerate israel and serve as a buffer to iran as well as turn a cold shoulder to russia and china, is hardly in doubt... it's also very interesting to note, as glenn points out, that news reports on the damascus bombing have pointedly avoided labeling it as a "terrorist" attack...

so, how utterly convenient to have the "terrorist" bulgarian bus bombing suddenly occur that, without preamble or investigation, israel can blame first on iran and, on further consideration, iran via hezbollah... israel and the israel-besotted neo-cons steering u.s. foreign policy would like nothing better than to turn loose the dogs of war in the region and will go to any lengths to make it happen... this is just another thing they can point to but, cynic that i am, would not put it out of the realm of possibility that mossad is behind it... true, it's hard to conceive of israel killing its own citizens but, given the total nutcases in charge, it's not out of the question...

glenn, as always, does a masterful job of dissecting the meaning and justifiability of terrorism in the bulgarian bus bombing in similar fashion to the job he did a few days ago with the damascus suicide bombing which, added to the analysis of "terrorism" he has been doing all along, provides a much-needed perspective on the reality of events...

meanwhile, cnn reports this...

In a televised statement Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attack was "perpetrated by Hezbollah, Iran's leading terrorist proxy," as part of a global campaign that has reached a dozen countries on five continents.

But he offered no evidence. Israel's U.S. Embassy said Wednesday that it had no proof that Iran was the instigator of the attack.

mmm-hmmm...

oh, and btw, will the colorado movie theater massacre be labeled "terrorism"...? somehow, i don't think so...

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al Qaeda accuses Iran of planting 9/11 conspiracy theories

really...?!?!? are they fucking SERIOUS...?!?!?! if i've ever read ANYTHING that's led me to believe that al qaeda is a bogus organization, it HAS to be THIS...

from the ap...

Osama bin Laden's chief deputy on Tuesday denied a theory that Israel carried out the Sept. 11 attacks and blamed Iran and Shiite Hezbollah for spreading the idea to discredit the Sunni al-Qaida's strike against the U.S.

The comments in a recording posted on an Islamic Web site reflected the increasing criticism by al-Qaida's No. 2 leader Ayman al-Zawahri against Iran. Al-Zawahri has accused Iran in recent messages of seeking to extend its power in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq and through its Hezbollah allies in Lebanon.

The authenticity of the two-hour audio recording could not be independently confirmed. But the voice sounded like past audiotapes from the terror leader, and the posting where it was found bore the logo of Al-Sahab, al-Qaida's official media arm.

It was the second of two messages answering questions that were posted to Islamic militant Web sites earlier this year.

One of the questioners asked about the theory that has circulated in the Middle East and elsewhere that Israel was behind the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Al-Zawahri accused Hezbollah's Al-Manar television of starting the rumor.

"The purpose of this lie is clear — (to suggest) that there are no heroes among the Sunnis who can hurt America as no else did in history. Iranian media snapped up this lie and repeated it," he said.

oh, my freakin' lord... this is absolutely the most drop-dead hysterical thing i've read in a very long time...

here's how prison planet (not the most reputable, objective or fact-based resource, for sure) views the story...

Al-CIAda Sock Puppet Zawahiri Claims Iran
Behind 9/11 Conspiracy Theories
Intelligence stooge unleashes another PR stunt on behalf of Neo-Cons, AP unable to verify tape, past examples faked

although we would all be advised to look at prison planet with a jaundiced eye, a story like this one moves me ever-closer to the same point of view...

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Attempting to read the tea leaves about a pending war with Iran

william l. polk, writing in juan cole's informed comment, referencing the march 12 article in u.s. news and world report, “6 signs the U.S. may be headed for war in Iran,” carefully lays out the reasons why he thinks the bush administration, either itself or by using israel as a proxy, is poised for imminent war with iran... it's a bit lengthy but quite thorough...

from the u.s. news article, here are the six reasons

1. Fallon's resignation

2. Vice President Cheney's peace trip

3. Israeli airstrike on Syria

4. Warships off Lebanon

5. Israeli comments

6. Israel's war with Hezbollah

here's polk...

[A] massive build-up of forces inevitably creates the “climate” of war. Troops and the public, on both sides, come to accept its inevitability. Standing down is difficult and can entail loss of “face.” Consequently, political leaders usually are carried forward by the flow of events.

polk quotes from the 2005 national defense strategy of the u.s...

“America is a nation at war…[and] will defeat adversaries at the time, place, and in the manner of our choosing…[rather than employing] A reactive or defensive approach…Therefore, we must confront challenges earlier and more comprehensively, before they are allowed to mature…In all cases, we will seek to seize the initiative and dictate the tempo, timing, and direction of military operations.” In short, as Henry Kissinger pointed out in The International Herald Tribune, April 14, 2006, it is an assertion of the intention to engage in preëmptive or “first strike” warfare.

[...]

Iran is the major perceived adversary capable of doing what National Defense Strategy of the United States of America termed “adopting threatening capabilities, methods, and ambitions…[to] 1) limit our global freedom to act, 2) dominate key regions, or 3) attempt to make prohibitive the costs of meeting various U.S. international commitments.”

if there was ever a time when the bush administration could take advantage of a major global distraction to take the stage and divert people's attention from the massive disaster it has become, it's now... while i'm not going to sit around, soiling my tighty-whities thinking about it, nevertheless, we would all do well to keep it in mind as a serious possibility...

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Bush hypocrisy: Kurds in American Iraq have done much worse things to Turkey than Hizbullah did to Israel

juan cole...

The hypocrisy of the Bush case is obvious when it complains about Iran supporting Hizbullah and Hamas. The Kurds based in American Iraq have done much worse things to Turkey in the past month than Hizbullah did to Israel in June of 2006. Yet when Israel launched a brutal and wideranging war on all of Lebanon, destroying precious infrastructure and dumping enormous amounts of oil into the Mediterranean, damaging Beirut airport, destroying essential bridges in Christian areas, and then releasing a million cluster bomblets on civilian areas in the last 3 days of the war-- when Israel did all that, Bush and Cheney applauded and argued against a 'premature' cease-fire! Yet they are trying to convince Turkey just to put up stoically with the PKK terrorists who have killed dozens of Turkish troops recently and kidnapped 8 (again, more than the number of Iraeli troops that were kidnapped). Bush's coddling of the PKK in Iraq is not different from Iran's support for Hizbullah, except that the PKK is a more dangerous and brutal organization than Hizbullah.

Among the more fantastic charges that Bush made against Iran was that its government was actively arming and helping the Taliban in southern Afghanistan. In fact, the Taliban are extremist Sunnis who hate, and have killed large numbers of Shiites. Shiite Iran is unlikely to support them. [...] The neo-Taliban are being supported by Pakistan...

hypocrisy and lies in the bush administration are so rampant as to hardly be worthy of notice, were it not for the fact that they're deliberate attempts to justify the continual death and destruction perpetrated by the largest state sponsor of global terrorism...

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A helpful summary of current wingnut thinking

honestly, i don't know how this crap keeps ending up in my inbox, but, nonetheless, i'm finding it to be instructive reading... it's from move america forward... no link... you'll have to go dig it out on your own...

The past few days have been very instructive in realizing the stakes in the war on terrorism. Sometimes people in this country try to tell us that there really isn't a war going on - it's just lies by our Commander in Chief, or an intrusive American foreign policy butting our noses where it doesn't belong.

However, we know better. We know for example that the Iranians were able to take 15 British sailors hostage and then the Iranians taunted the world not to put too much pressure on them, or else we could all guess the consequences. The Iranians meanwhile terrorized the British hostages, making them believe they were going to be executed and telling them that if they would only lie and say they were in Iranian waters, they could go home.

In response the British government told the American Navy to stand down in our naval exercises in the region (that were pre-planned and in response to Iran's development of nuclear weapons). A top Iranian terror operative was released in Iraq in a move that the British government insists was not a quid-pro-quo but which many analysts view as exactly that.

The UN did not punish Iran. The European Union did nothing to show Iran that they would face consequences for their actions.

And in this country, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi along with pro-Palestinian Congressman Darrell Issa (a Republican who has been accused of supporting Yasser Arafat and terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah) were in Syria, appeasing the state sponsor of Islamic terrorism.

This has not been a good week for the free nations of the West. Radical, pro-Islamic terrorist factions managed to win on a variety of fronts by showing strength and intimidating the British government and the likes of Nancy Pelosi to bow down to them in submission.

Ronald Reagan once fought against the Communist appeasers in the U.S. by saying that true "peace" could only be found through strength - PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH.

it's fascinating to me how, in a few short paragraphs, literally EVERYONE - Iran, Islam, Britain, Syria, Hezbollah, Palestine, the U.N., the EU, Nancy Pelosi, and Republican Darrell Issa - is characterized as either the enemy or as an enemy appeaser... what a marvelous worldview...

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