This Scare Terra Headline Speaks Volumes

Boy, the supposed “paper of record” is having one really bad day.

Greg Mitchell of Editor and Publisher notes here that Michael Gordon of the Times is back again to do his “steno” thing for the military as he did back during the runup to the Iraq war (with help from Judy! Judy! Judy! also, of course).

This time, of course, you can just substitute the “q” in the country name for an “n.”

As Gordon “reports” today (along with writer John F. Burns)…

Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner, the military spokesman here, said an elite unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, a force under the control of Iran’s most powerful religious leaders, had used veterans of the Lebanese Islamic militia group Hezbollah as a “proxy” to train, arm and plan attacks by an array of Shiite militant cells in Iraq.

One high-ranking Hezbollah commander from Lebanon was captured in Basra in March, and after weeks of pretending that he could not hear or speak, he gave American interrogators details of the Iranian role, the general said.

And who was this ever-so-helpful Hezbollah commander?

Much of the briefing centered on the captured Hezbollah agent, known to the American command as “Hamid the Mute” because Hamid was part of the false name he gave after his capture and because of the weeks he spent after his capture pretending that he could not speak or hear. The man, identified as Ali Musa Daqduq, was said by General Bergner to be a Lebanese citizen with a 24-year history in Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group based in southern Lebanon.

And how exactly did we find out about the Iranian role from “Hamid the Mute”?

The official said the shift had been achieved without harming Mr. Daqduq. “We don’t torture,” the official said. “We follow scrupulously the interrogation techniques in the Army’s new field manual, which forbids torture, and has the force of law.”

I sometimes wonder how stupid some in our military and political command, to say nothing of our corporate media, think we really are (I know I’m covering some of what Mitchell has already pointed out).

So we’re just supposed to assume that after a few weeks of perfectly legal detention, “Hamid the Mute” (wasn’t that the name of Terry Jones’ old man character hiding behind the bush in “Life of Brian”? ...smirk) just spontaneously started passing notes to us telling us that, yes, he really can talk and intends to be ever so cooperative in linking Iran to the catastrophe in Iraq?

This administration (and, apparently, The Times also, since it’s still shilling for Bushco) apparently wants war with Iraq in the worst way (and if you think Iraq is catastrophic, and it is, it would be exponentially worse against Iran, with a strong military and an ever-more-sophisticated nuclear capability, to say nothing of the stupidity of us even contemplating war with our depleted forces).

Is Iran capable of dirty work like this? Of course, and of course they would deny it. But given the record of this administration when it comes to lies and evasions prior to and during war, why should be believe them or anyone in the military “beating the war drum” for them?

(Looks like my "A" list "betters", including Atrios, were all over this already and I'm just echoing them...that's OK.)