{"id":3403,"date":"2007-04-02T13:11:37","date_gmt":"2007-04-02T20:11:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2007\/04\/02\/ask-the-experts\/"},"modified":"2007-04-02T13:11:37","modified_gmt":"2007-04-02T20:11:37","slug":"ask-the-experts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2007\/04\/02\/ask-the-experts\/","title":{"rendered":"Ask the Experts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gene Callahan reads up on the Iranian threat<\/a>:<\/p>\n

[T]he next inspiration to bang my head on my keyboard came from an article entitled, “Paper Tigers in West Let Fanatical Regime Roar<\/a>.” Note: This was not on the op-ed page! No, to the [NY Daily] News<\/em>, this is news. The story leads off claiming: “Iran keeps getting away with outrageous bullying behavior because the West has no stomach for confronting the fanatical Islamic Republic.”<\/p>\n

Then it throws in the qualifier, “That’s how experts on Iran see the standoff.” See, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not the reporter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bias; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what the experts are saying. Every last one of the two “experts” quoted in the article says this, in fact.<\/p>\n

The first Iran “expert” is “Thomas McInerney, a retired Air Force general and staunch conservative.” Well, if retiring from the Air Force and being a staunch conservative doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make you an expert on Iran, what would?<\/p>\n

McInerney, according to the News<\/em>, “said letting the mullahs get away with pro-terrorism foreign policy amounts to appeasement of a regime potentially worse than the Nazis, should they succeed in making nuclear weapons\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.” No, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not actually worse than the Nazis right now, but they could be, ya know, so\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 better bomb \u00e2\u20ac\u2122em just in case.<\/p>\n

The article continues: “Critics point to Iran’s drive to build nuclear weapons.” So they do, but let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not mention the lack of any real evidence that that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re doing, OK? “The UN imposed sanctions last weekend, but Iran turned around and seized 15 British sailors this week. \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcWe’re going to appease these guys and lose 200 million people,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 McInerney predicted ominously.” Well, General McInerney, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a lot of people to lose. You ought to keep better track of them.<\/p>\n

The qualifications of the next “expert”? He is “a more liberal observer.” I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know why the News<\/em> didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t also seek out “a more dull-witted observer,” and, perhaps, “a more statuesque observer,” in order to achieve a complete survey of expert opinion. In any case, Lawrence “more liberal” Haas says, “Iran is preparing for a much bigger war with us. We have a naive belief that we’ll negotiate our way out of this.” Iran is preparing for a much bigger war than what? Than the covert war the US has been waging against Iran for some time?<\/p>\n

The clincher on the case is: “Haas said he fears that many experts have concluded Tehran can’t be stopped from getting nuclear arms and \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcit doesn’t matter because we can contain Iran like we contained the Soviets.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122” And obviously, that will never work, because, while the USSR had hundreds of nuclear warheads that they could deliver to US cities, in a decade or so Iran might have one or two it could shoot a few hundred miles. So take that, clown ship of na\u00c3\u00afve appeasers! [\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gene Callahan reads up on the Iranian threat: [T]he next inspiration to bang my head on my keyboard came from an article entitled, “Paper Tigers in West Let Fanatical Regime Roar.” Note: This was not on the op-ed page! No, to the [NY Daily] News, this is news. The story leads off claiming: “Iran keeps […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-3403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3403\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3403"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}