Month: February 2012

I wrote recently about how even the mainstream media is coming around to reporting the consensus within the U.S. intelligence community, that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons and has demonstrated no intention of doing so. For example, the New York Times ran a front page story on Saturday entitled “U.S. Agencies See No Move by Iran to Build a Bomb.” Another in the Los Angeles Times last Thursday similarly headlined, “U.S. does not believe Iran is trying to build nuclear bomb.” Even though most of the mainstream media continues to hype threat inflation on Iran and give voice to war hawks, these types of articles are notable. The fact that U.S. intelligence agencies believe Iran is not developing nuclear weapons and the fact that no evidence of a weapons program has been put forth is becoming more widely understood.

Unfortunately, the war hawks have a tendency to believe what they want. Back in 2010, Joe Keohane wrote a piece in the Boston Globe about how political science shows that “facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds.” He cited recent studies which found that

when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.

I have to believe that’s what is happening in this Wall Street Journal Op-Ed, wherein Frederick Kagan and Maseh Zarif from the American Enterprise Institute all but argue war is the only option because Iran is relentlessly building nuclear weapons. Sigh.

P.S. Notice their use of the phrase “nuclear weapons capability,” and see here for the context on that.

Here’s a nice, raucous, Sunday morning debate between Jeremy Scahill and Ann-Marie Slaughter on Up with Chris Hayes.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The imposition of ever stricter sanctions on Iran over its civilian nuclear program has already spilled over in a big way against Iran’s private economy, though it has largely spared the public sector that it supposedly targets.

But we can add another side effect to the US and European sanctions: a spike in the price of German sausages. Unbeknownst to many Germans the popular Nuremberg bratwurst turns out to be intimately linked to Iranian trade, as the sheep intestines into which the sausages are stuffed come almost exclusively from Iran.

The sanctions have made food prices soar in Iran, and with the price of food rising, Iranians are eating a lot less meat, which means less sheep are being slaughtered for food, which means less sausage casings. The cost of the intestines has nearly tripled in the last year and a half.

And like any other halfway famous food in Europe, the EU regulates the absolute piss out of what a Nuremberg Bratwurst has to include. This means that switching to vegetable-based casings or some other alternative simply isn’t an option, and the price of the city’s beloved bratwurst is expected to rise in response to its increased production costs.

The reports downplay the seriousness, as well they might. Its just bratwurst, after all, and Germans can readily afford to pay more for them.

Rather, the story is indicative of how Iran’s economy is linked to the rest of the world’s, and the continued destruction of trade ties with Iran is going to continue to crop up in more and more unexpected ways, some minor, and some not so minor.

Rick Santorum has always seemed a little too good to be true. Michael Ledeen, for one, has fallen right into the trap, in his recent Wall St. Journal piece, “Santorum was right about Iran – When It was Unpopular.” But then one looks at Ledeen’s subtitle, “A grandfather who fled Mussolini taught him to prize freedom.”

That was enough to raise an eyebrow of this wary reader as I slogged through Ledeen’s tortuous prose. Who exactly was this grandfather, Pietro Santorum, the forebear whom Rick often praises on the campaign trail? I wondered. Why would he flee Mussolini anyway? What was he up to?  And exactly what does Ledeen mean by “freedom”?

And sure enough, my suspicions were confirmed. Pietro was a Commie! Rick is a closet Red Diaper offspring. Let us remember that grandfather Pietro is not just any member of the family but the one Rick relentlessly cites on the campaign trail as a humble coal miner who worked in the mines until the age of 72. Is harping on Grandad some sort of signal to other Commie operatives? Now disguised as campaign workers and “good Catholics” for Rick, will they stage a coup once Rick is in the White House and has sent our troops all over the world leaving us defenseless here? What is going on? Herb Philbrick, where are you when we need you.

I always thought Rick Santorum was just a little too good to be true.

The story was picked up by Barbie Latza Nadeau of the Daily Beast who found it in the Italian magazine Oggi. Writes Latza Nadeau:
“In the tiny town of Riva del Garda in northern Italy, 83-year-old-Maria Malacarne Santorum keeps her family’s secrets—including those of her late husband’s cousin, Rick. In an exclusive interview with the Italian weekly magazine Oggi, Mrs. Santorum recalls fondly when Rick visited her in 1985 during his law internship in Florence, and when he came back again in 1986 and 1989.
“But the elder Santorum matriarch doesn’t understand why he has diverged so far from the family’s longtime political stance. ‘In Riva del Garda his grandfather Pietro and uncles were ‘red communists’ to the core,” writes Oggi journalist Giuseppe Fumagalli, likening the family to ‘Peppone’ after a famous fictional Italian communist mayor who fought against an ultraconservative priest known as Don Cammillo and about which a popular television series is based. ‘But on the other side of the ocean, it’s like his family here doesn’t exist. Instead he draws crowds as the head of the ultraconservative faction of the Republican party, against divorce, gay marriage, abortion, and immigration.’
“Those politics don’t play well in Riva del Garda, a community of ultraliberals. On the campaign trail, Santorum often touts his grandfather’s flight from Italy ‘to escape fascism,’ but he has neglected to publicly mention their close ties with the Italian Communist Party. ‘Rick’s grandfather Pietro was a liberal man and he understood right away what was happening in Italy,” Mrs. Santorum told Oggi. ‘He was anti-fascist to the extreme, and the political climate in 1925 was stifling so he left for America. After a few years he returned to Italy with his wife and children, including Aldo, Rick’s father, who passed away late last year. It’s a shame he won’t have the joy to see his son’s success in his bid for the White House.’ She goes on to explain how the family then became pillars of the Communist Party in Italy.”

Et tu, Papa Aldo? What exactly did Rick learn at Papa’s knee?

Well Rick, the cat is out of the bag. Cousin Bruno was obviously talking about a little more than family fondness when he said, “When (Rick) wins, he will send the American presidential airplane and take all the Santorums to the White House.” And then Bruno and the rest of the Santorum reds will be running our lives. Rick your intent to deploy the troops to Iran and leave us defenseless upon your election stands exposed. And since Michael Ledeen is peddling your candidacy, we have to wonder about him also. He always seemed a little too good to be true.

John V. Walsh can be reached at John.Endwar@gmail.com For those who have any doubts about this piece, the family history is true – but the part about the Manchurian candidacy is satire. To you I apologize since it must have taken you hours to read to this point.

As I wrote about in today’s news section, the so-called “Friends of Syria” conference of almost 70 nations in Tunisia is calling for (1) a cease fire and (2) a subsequent UN “peacekeeping” force to have unrestricted access to Syria. While I have no illusions about how much peace  – they said it would be a “non-military operation” – such a force would actually be keeping, I tend to think today’s plan is more talk and posturing than anything else.

First of all, the statements explicitly said any UN force would come after a ceasefire and would require the Assad government’s permission before entering. Neither of those things seem likely to happen. As Nir Rosen told Al Jazeera today, “The regime knows that Russia, Iran and Iraq will back it to the end.” This whole conference seems much more about the perception that Assad is isolated, must step down, and so forth, rather than an actual prelude to international invasion.

But Clinton and other Western officials did make a lot of insinuations about covertly aiding the Syrian opposition and even supplying them with weapons. And that is exactly where we were at prior to this conference.

More from Nir Rosen, who has been inside Syria talking with the opposition as well as Assad officials:

Contrary to conspiracy theories, until now the Obama administration has not made the policy decision to aid the opposition on the ground, as far as I know, let alone provide it with weapons. US and European officials who would like to intervene in Syria complain that there is no “silver bullet” or easy option for them. They don’t even know who to support inside Syria. The exiled opposition, such as the Syrian National Council, are too busy fighting among themselves and too disconnected from events on the ground, so the outside powers do not even have a convenient local collaborator or proxy to deal with. They also complain that the SNC has completely failed to reach out to minorities, especially Alawites. They agree that opponents of the regime will have to pry Alawite community from the administration. The Alawite pillar must be removed, they say. The United States, like the United Kingdom, reportedly has envoys among the Syrian opposition. It is only a question of time, in my opinion, before the SNC is officially recognised by them as the main interlocutor, but they are pressuring the SNC to get its act together first.

There is pressure from fervent interventionist to already hitch the wagon to the star of the SNC. But, as Daniel Larison writes:

In what sense can the SNC be the country’s “rightful” leaders? If they fully represented the opposition inside Syria, they might provide necessary provisional leadership, but they are at best a temporary umbrella organization whose claim to legitimacy is based solely in its hostility to the current government. Some of the opposition inside Syria doesn’t see the SNC as representing them, and the council itself is badly divided.

Aside from the unfit SNC, actually choosing who to send arms to would be an exercise in futility. Sending in arms so carelessly would almost certainly end up in disaster. Such a move wouldn’t be enough to actually tip the balance in favor of the opposition and it would probably escalate the bloodshed by causing the regime to double down and the opposition to become more reckless. And as we saw with Libya, militarizing the situation simply ends in more American support for extreme and unaccountable militias.

Also complicating the issue, and mentioned in the Rosen piece, is Assad’s possession of chemical weapons. The more destabilized things get, the greater threat those weapons become, either in the hands of the Assad regime or the opposition. Josh Rogin reports that “the State Department sent a diplomatic demarche to Syria’s neighbors Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia, warning them about the possibility of Syria’s WMDs crossing their borders and offering U.S. government help in dealing with the problem.” This indicates as much concern about Assad as about the opposition, who the U.S. so benevolently roots for.

Malou Innocent has a worthwhile piece arguing against intervention.