Why You Don't See an Iranian Spokesman on "Meet the Press"

Remember Baghdad Bob?” He was the comical Iraqi military spokesman whose ridiculous assertions of American military “defeats” during the two weeks of “major combat operations” in May of 2003 made him an ubiquitous bad joke on American late night teevee for months afterward.

There was the face of the Iraqi regime for all Americans to see: A clownish toady of Saddam Hussein mouthing absurdity and lies as obvious as the summer sun. He fit so well with the template of the Iraqi government that most Americans had long ago been imprinted with on their frontal lobe, namely: a government of evil corrupt craven liars whose word was to be automatically dismissed without the least bit of examination.

This template image of the Iraq government would have had Americans questioning an Iraqi spokesman if he said the sky was blue.

So there was “Baghdad Bob” to confirm this image more than perfectly. Of course the larger absurdity of this entire sorry folly was the war itself. What was more absurd? The sad attempts of a dying regime’s toady to bolster what little morale there remained in the Iraqi armed forces as they faced the mightiest military machine the world has ever known or the preposterous notion that this tiny impoverished country nearly land locked with an economy 1/500th the size of the United States – that couldn’t make their own prop planes much less tanks or any of the modern gear of warfare themselves- was a “threat” to the United States? That larger absurdity somehow never seemed to cross the minds of the Jay Leno’s of the US media.

But who was the face of the Iraqi government in the US media before the onset of the war? Think hard. Any faces or names come to mind? Who was the Iraqi government toady who made the rounds of the Sunday morning panel shows to act the clown like “Baghdad Bob” did during the short formal war?

There wasn’t one. There was no Iraqi face or voice in the US media of any note before this war. Everything an Iraqi or Iraqi government official said was vetted and filtered by our federal government regulated and highly consolidated corporate media.

Where was Tariq Aziz? You remember that name? I do. He was the foreign minister of Iraq during the lead up to the first Gulf War back in 91. His face was everywhere on US media. The man made the rounds of all the Sunday network gab shows for weeks to represent the Iraqi position on the invasion of Kuwait.

He had one fundamental problem in defending his master’s invasion of Kuwait. Namely, his master invaded Kuwait. Iraq was the aggressor. Yes, say what you will about slant oil drilling by Kuwait into Iraqi oil fields and boosting production to lower the price of oil during a time when Iraq sorely needed it to be higher (after accumulating massive debt from the 8 year long war with Iran)- but the simple fact remains, Iraq invaded a smaller neighbor- even weaker than itself. They started it, and in the simple world of sound bite propaganda that is tough to overcome.

So where was the Iraqi spokesman, the “Baghdad Bob” of Iraq in America before the second war of 2003? Aziz was barely heard from. The Iraqi UN ambassador? Know his name?

There was no such spokesman for Iraq in American media. None. And the reason is that any spokesman from Iraq that appeared regularly in the American media would have demolished the Beltway’s “case” (if you can call it that it all) for war. At a very minimum, in this world of Internet bloggers, how embarrassing would it be for a Condi Rice or John Bolton or any of the Beltway oligarchy that collectively hatched this war with the complicity of its lapdog MSM to be confronted with exchanges about “WMDS” they had with an Iraqi spokesman on “Meet The Press” or “Face the Nation” today?

It is one thing for the US government and its media to make all manner of absurd made up lies about Iraq to justify this war; talking among themselves . . . confirming each other’s pre-conceived notions . . . leaking to the media lies, and then going on the talk shows to site those very same lies as “proof”. But it would be quite a different picture today if there was an extensive record of an Iraqi spokesman consistently denying these allegations categorically and clearly to their faces or in widely broadcast soundbites.

The reason why there was no Iraqi representative or media champion allowed in the American media during the lead up to this war is that, quite simply, the American rationales for it were pathetic, absurd on their face, and couldn’t stand the scrutiny of a mundane mind much less a quick witted, English speaking, Iraqi foreign minister. Any exposure to any informed passionate challanger and the tissue of lies and just down right comical none sense being spewed as the justification to invade Iraq would have crumbled.

And this refusal to allow foreigners on American teevee or widespread media exposure to confront American claims continues on with Iran today. And not just Iran, but Russia, China, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, North Korea . . . nearly no voices from those countries are known by even Americans who fancy themselves to be more up on the news than most. Can anyone put a face to a spokesman from anyone of those countries? I am old enough to remember Gromyko from the Soviet Union and to remember the Soviet Ambassador of the day being interviewed and quoted widely. Do we ever hear directly from any spokesman from Russia today?

Indeed everything we are told these countries say is filtered and paraphrased for us. Direct appearances and quotes are rare. And sometimes they are just flat out lies as with the case of the “wipe Israel off the map” phrase that appears in every story about Iran or Ahmadinejad.

What do we know about Ahmadinejad? Well we “know” he wants to destroy Israel. We “know” that he is a dictator. We “know” that he “denies” the Holocaust.

All of that is at best, alarming creative interpretation and exaggeration, and at worst just a flat out lie.

The hysterical reaction to Ahmadinejad’s visit was quite on purpose. That became the story. Not what he said. Oh sure- they picked up on his “gaffe” about the gays. But the story about his visit was about him even being allowed to visit at all much less listen to what he says.

And don't for a moment think that Lee Bollinger's purpose in that unprecedented attack on the invited Ahmadinejad was anything but an attempt to make the media story about him and his attack and how Iran's President reacted to it rather than about anything he had to say.

What was effectively drowned out by the misdirection of the American media were the main points that Ahmadinejad keeps repeating to no avail: Iran does not want nor will it ever acquire nukes, Iran will not attack Israel unless attacked, and Iran seeks peace not war.

The case for war being made against Iran rests on nothing but lies and propaganda. They don’t even have threatening rhetoric from Iran! Quite the opposite in fact. This truth has to be hidden and flubbed over with dis-information which mostly takes the form of simply omitting most if not all pertinent information and concentrating on minutia and mis-quotes if not just making them up. Have an Iranian on “Meet the Press” to challenge this thin gruel? No way in heaven. It can’t be allowed. That is how weak their lies and thin the veil of propaganda is on this Iran nuclear “crisis”.

On the few occasions when an Iranian voice is heard from, it is never in the first tier of Mainstream American Corporate Media but rather far down the food chain and never gets any larger play. But when it does occur it becomes clear why Iranian voices in our media are quite deliberately black balled. This interview by NPR’s Robert Siegal with former UN ambassador from Iran, Javad Zarif, is a case in point. Even in the dryness of a transcript one senses the increasing anxiety and nervousness of Siegel as Zarif quite devastatingly demolishes each loaded question. At the end all an obviously rattled Siegel can do is bring up non sequiturs like the appearance of David Duke at the “Holocaust denying” conference hosted by Iran last year.

Have Zarif sit across from Bonkers Bolton, whose accusations about Iran are easily the most irresponsible and without foundation of anyone in Washington (and that is saying a lot), on “Face the Nation”? No way in hell can that ever be allowed and you will NEVER see anything even approaching that. What we get instead for our “balance” is a Bolton and a Biden bickering over minutia of when and where Iran should be bombed while the reasons for such a bombing are never even remotely challenged.

Occasionally an organ of the DC war state like the "New York Times" will publish the odd editorial or two written by an Iranian diplomat that calmly lays out a well reasoned position. But who reads the editorial page of the Times anyway? And it is never given wider media play unless it is to mis-represent or misquote such a piece.

The picture of the world we get in our media is nearly as narrow and parochial as that of a Soviet Citizen’s concept of the world under Stalin. We are daily treated to a “debate” parameter on foreign issues that couldn’t fill a phone booth (not that our parameter is any larger on domestic issues either). DC wonks talking to DC wonks on how best to expand an increasingly evil and depraved empire based on murder and theft with the thinnest of veneers of do-gooderism masking it all. Foreigners? Well they all just hate America and they are liars. Why listen to them? Indeed all foreign criticism of the American Warfare Regime is labeled “anti Americanism” and simply dismissed. If that wasn’t enough now our Federal Government is even criminalizing foreign militaries by labeling them “Terrorist organizations”. Thus defending your country from America is a “crime” now as well.

And what makes this all the more creepy and bizarre is that our isolated navel gazing elite that couldn’t care a wit for the opinions of the outside world and actively seeks to minimize the exposure of Americans to foreign opinion calls people like Ron Paul who seek normal relations with the world “isolationists”.