Did Manning Help AVERT WAR In Iran?

[Segami]

Government prosecutors are seeking 60 years in prison for Pvt. Bradley Manning as punishment for his release of classified documents. But little attention is being paid to the benefits from those disclosures, including how he may have helped prevent a war with Iran, writes Robert Parry.

From U.S. embassy cables leaked by Pvt. Bradley Manning, you can easily imagine how the propaganda game might have played out, how Americans could have been panicked into supporting another unnecessary war in the Middle East, this time against Iran. Except that Manning’s release of the documents spoiled the trick. The gambit might have gone this way: One morning, a story would have led the front page of, say, the Washington Post citing how the widely respected International Atomic Energy Agency and its honest-broker Director-General Yukiya Amano had found startling “evidence” that Iran was nearing a nuclear bomb – despite a longstanding U.S. intelligence estimate to the contrary and despite Iranian denials.


Next, the neocon-dominated opinion pages would ridicule anyone who still doubted these “facts.” After all, these articles would say, “even” the IAEA, which had challenged President George W. Bush’s claims about Iraq in 2002, and “even” Amano, who had initially believed Iran’s denials, were now convinced. Neo-con think tanks would rush to join the chorus of alarm, dispatching WMD “experts” to TV talk shows bracing the American people on the need for military action. From Fox News to CNN to MSNBC, there would be a drumbeat about Iran’s perfidy. Then, as hawkish Republicans and Democrats ratcheted up their rhetoric – and as Israeli leaders chortled “we told you so” – the war-with-Iran bandwagon might have begun rolling with such velocity that it would be unstoppable. Perhaps, only years later – after grave human costs and severe economic repercussions – would the American people learn the truth: that the IAEA under Amano wasn’t the objective source that they had been led to believe, that Amano was something of a U.S.-Israeli puppet who had feigned a pro-Iranian position early on to burnish his credentials for pushing an anti-Iranian line subsequently, that after he was installed, he had even solicited U.S. officials for money and had held secret meetings with Israelis (to coordinate opposition to Iran’s nuclear program while maintaining a polite silence about Israel’s rogue nuclear arsenal).



However, because of the actions of Bradley Manning, the rug was pulled out from under this possible ruse. The U.S. embassy cables revealing the truth about Amano were published by the U.K. Guardian in 2011 (although ignored by the New York Times, the Washington Post and other mainstream U.S. news outlets). The cables also drew attention from Web sites, such as Consortiumnews.com. So, the gambit could not work. If it had been tried, enough people would have known the truth. They wouldn’t be fooled again – and they would have alerted their fellow citizens. Bradley Manning had armed them with the facts. And this scenario, while admittedly hypothetical, is not at all far-fetched. When the cables were leaked about a year after Amano’s appointment, his IAEA was busy feeding the hysteria over Iran’s nuclear program with reports trumpeted by think tanks, such as the Institute for Science and International Security, and by the Washington Post and other U.S. news media.



Revealing Cables

According to those leaked U.S. embassy cables from Vienna, Austria, the site of IAEA’s headquarters, American diplomats in 2009 were cheering the prospect that Amano would advance U.S. interests in ways that outgoing IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei wouldn’t; Amano credited his election to U.S. government support; Amano signaled he would side with the United States in its confrontation with Iran; and he stuck his hand out for more U.S. money. In a July 9, 2009, cable, American chargé Geoffrey Pyatt said Amano was thankful for U.S. support of his election. “Amano attributed his election to support from the U.S., Australia and France, and cited U.S. intervention with Argentina as particularly decisive,” the cable said. The appreciative Amano informed Pyatt that as IAEA director general, he would take a different “approach on Iran from that of ElBaradei” and he “saw his primary role as implementing safeguards and UNSC [United Nations Security Council]/Board resolutions,” i.e. U.S.-driven sanctions and demands against Iran. Amano also discussed how to restructure the senior ranks of the IAEA, including elimination of one top official and the retention of another. “We wholly agree with Amano’s assessment of these two advisors and see these decisions as positive first signs,” Pyatt commented. In return, Pyatt made clear that Amano could expect strong U.S. financial support, stating that “the United States would do everything possible to support his successful tenure as Director General and, to that end, anticipated that continued U.S. voluntary contributions to the IAEA would be forthcoming. … Amano offered that a ‘reasonable increase’ in the regular budget would be helpful.”




cont'


http://consortiumnews.com/2013/08/19/did-manning-help-avert-war-in-iran/

[Scuba]

1. Perhaps in this way. Certainly in less direct ways.

[geek tragedy]

2. Except that the Obama administration doesn't want a war with Iran. nt

[greatauntoftriplets]

4. An inconvenient truth!

Think I'll hide out in the Lounge.

[limpyhobbler]

26. except Obama isn't going to be President forever

[villager]

29. An inconvenient truth!

For those so uncritically supporting an unchecked, ask-no-questions executive....

[geek tragedy]

31. At which point all of the Manning stuff will be forgotten nt

[limpyhobbler]

32. how can it be forgotten? It's already it the public domain.

[Scootaloo]

37. Policy is bigger than presidency

Something to bear in mind - our policy towards Iran hasn't changed in decades. we want a pliant dictatorship in charge of Iran, just as we do in the rest of the middle east. And if we can't get the plaint dictatorship we want, well, we'll just beat the shit out of Iranians until they either accede to our demands, or their nation collapses.

You don't think we sold chemical weapons to Saddam because we thought he was going to spray Iraqi apple groves for aphids, do you? You don't think we're applying sanctions because we think it'll hurt the Ayatollah, do you?

[geek tragedy]

38. Policy changes with the Presidency. nt

[Scootaloo]

39. You would think that, but no

At least, not when it comes to foreign policy.

Our foreign policy hasn't changed in any notable way since the Truman administration, Geek. There have been some shifts and nudges, but the main thrust remains the same.

- Leftism is an evil that must be extirpated at any human cost
- Pliable dictatorships are preferable to noncompliant democracies
- Nations must serve US interests first and foremost; independence is to be crushed or suborned
- Any method of eliminating noncompliants is acceptable in scale to how well their "evil" has been sold to the US public
- The interests of business stand before the interest of either the people of the United States or the people of the targeted nations
- Encourage "Allied" nations to follow these exact protocols.

You will find this mirrored in the foreign policy practices of every single US president since Truman. Even the "good guys" like Carter or Obama held (hold) to these principles, though they don't advocate them so boldly as some others. Both parties revolve their foreign policy stances around these principles, and no president can hold power long enough or find a Congress compliant enough to alter it even if we assume they wanted to.

[geek tragedy]

40. Do you think Gore would have invaded Iraq? nt

[Scootaloo]

41. Invasion isn't policy

Invasion is a specific action you take in relation to a policy.

Refer back to my previous post;

- Pliable dictatorships are preferable to noncompliant democracies
- Nations must serve US interests first and foremost; independence is to be crushed or suborned

Saddam was our buddy. Our pal. Out #1 dude. He was pretty much the model of the "pliant dictator," and we very pointedly did not give a shit how he went about with his dictating, so long as he had that going for him. He was SO compliant that, nice guy that he is, he approached the United States about invading Kuwait before he did it... and we told him that we didn't care. (we saw it as consolidating two pliable dictatorships into one). However, Saddam then went off the script - He invaded our better buddy Saudi Arabia, and then cinched it by launching missiles at our other better buddy Israel. Saddam was suddenly noncompliant, so we went to war against him.

We then put in place crushing sanctions that very clearly were a living horror to the people of Iraq. There's no fucking argument about who suffered from these things and it was NOT Saddam. Our message here, punctuated by frequent missile strikes, was that we would continue cranking the vice on Iraq until either the people overthrew Saddam, or Iraq broke. Of course our happy partnership with Saddam had allowed him to reduce the people of Iraq to a point where even if they got desperate enough to rise against him, he'd just crush and destroy them as he did to the Shia uprising immediately following the Gulf War.

The presidency changes hands in 2000. Does the policy change? NOPE! The demands for pliancy continue. The crushing sanctions continue. The threats of military action continue. Everything carries on as it had for the previous two administrations. 9/11 Happens, and suddenly the American people are going to be more accepting of "getting those bastards." So began the year-long ad campaign for "finishing hte job" in Iraq.

- Any method of eliminating noncompliants is acceptable in scale to how well their "evil" has been sold to the US public

The policy was to either force Iraq into compliance, or to destroy it. Whether this is done by continuing the sanctions until the nation crumbles into desperate anarchy, or creating that desperate anarchy through an invasion is simply a matter of taste - the goal and the end are the same fucking thing.

Would Al Gore have invaded? I don't know. Given the policy of the Clinton era however, I'm pretty certain he would have kept ratcheting the sanctions and throwing the occasional bombs and missiles. He would have continued the policy of destroying Iraq until it gave the US what it wanted.

[geek tragedy]

42. Saddam was never our buddy.

He played us against the Soviets, from whom he got most of his weapons.

Saddam was a loose cannon. Invaded two of his neighbors, etc. US couldn't tolerate that much disruption of oil supplies.

[Scootaloo]

43. Oh boy.

I suggest you do more reading on the subject of US-Iraq relations. Our involvement in the Iraq / Iran war, our part in the invasion of Kuwait, our role in Saddam seizing power, our place in the Shia uprising and Saddam crushing it... We're all over that shit.

But that's just an illustration of the greater point of what US policy is. You could trade out Iraq for, say, just about any nation in Latin America, and it still fits the pattern. You can plug in Vietnam and Cambodia, it still makes total sense. So on and so forth.

You could make an argument that that's just how international politics is, a cutthroat struggle for dominance or influence with the dominant, and you wouldn't be wrong. However, my point is that this is what US policy is, and that this president or the other does not make a significant change in any way to that policy.

[cali]

3. sigh. no. there was never going to be an attack on Iran

so bored with the endless and endlessly wrong predictions about this.

[limpyhobbler]

28. We might consider it an act of war if another country did this to us

Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran

From his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America’s first sustained use of cyberweapons, according to participants in the program.

Mr. Obama decided to accelerate the attacks — begun in the Bush administration and code-named Olympic Games — even after an element of the program accidentally became public in the summer of 2010 because of a programming error that allowed it to escape Iran’s Natanz plant and sent it around the world on the Internet. Computer security experts who began studying the worm, which had been developed by the United States and Israel, gave it a name: Stuxnet.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ordered-wave-of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

[snappyturtle]

5. Very interesting. There was a time that McCain, Lieberman and

Graham were doing their war mongering best to steer us toward
conflict with Iran. imho Then it 'went away'....maybe Manning's
disclosures were the reason for the change....something to think
about.

[Harmony Blue]

6. The U.S. was very close

to engaging in a war with Iran. Cooler heads prevailed though.

[geek tragedy]

7. When were we 'very close' to a war with Iran? nt

[Maedhros]

24. Some believe that Stuxnet was an act of war.

Namely our own Pentagon, who warned other countries not to do something like that to US or we could consider it such.

[JEB]

8. I guess we'll just have to stir up shit someplace else to keep the money flowing

out of the US Treasury into the hands of the MIC.

[Segami]

9. Don't guess it,...expect it!

[JEB]

13. We need an army of Mannings.

[Cryptoad]

10. I love that Demotarian logic,,,

if kinda like that big rock in my yard that keeps Unicorns away. It has never let me down. I must believe!

[msanthrope]

11. Well, there's a big rock, and no Unicorns, right? RIGHT? Why do you hate Bradley Manning? nt

[Cryptoad]

14. Thanks for illustraing my point

I don't hate him ,, he is thief and should receive his Justice for his Crimes.

[msanthrope]

15. I was being sarcastic. Sorry, I should have been clearer. nt

[Cryptoad]

18. I know

and your sarcasm illustrated my post perfectly for which i was giving thanks, but I wanted to make clear, I didn't hate him!

[msanthrope]

12. I think Mr. Parry ought to forward this on the judge. I'm sure she will be persuaded. nt

[backscatter712]

16. That explains why the feds are cracking down so hard on whistle blowers.

They were fucking up billions of dollars of profit for the war profiteers.

[karynnj]

17. No - look at Obama's positions on Iran in the 2008 debates -- or even look back to Kerry's in 2004

The thrust was doing everything possible to avoid war - mostly by working with the EU and the rest of the world on trying to deal with this through sanctions or diplomacy. There are SFRC hearings in 2009 on Iran that are open - thus on the web site. The Obama position was clearly to seriously monitor Iran, not to start a war.

Before I would credit Manning with that, I would like to see something showing that BEFORE Manning's revelations the Obama position was more militant and that it changed AFTER Manning's revelations. (I would even take a major change on the part of SOS Clinton - again - I didn't see that. ) Even more, the country was already war weary and already knew of Abu Ghraib and other transgressions. Manning's releases were from April to November 2010. Looking at the polling, there were no huge shifts in US opinion on the Iraq war in that time period. More to the point, looking at pollingreport.com on Iran http://pollingreport.com/iran.htm - the only poll that asked the exact same question over a long time period (NBC/Wall Street Journal) - showed a very constant measurement on support for possible action.


I understand that people want to find some real purpose to Manning's sacrifice, but this is just unsupported. (I think that he was a whistle blower in putting out the Iraq tapes. I think he was misguided with his mega dump of unfiltered State Department wires - even though I found many of them fascinating.)

[yurbud]

20. the foreign policy differences between Dems and Republicans are mostly matters of style

Even if Obama manages to delay war with Iran, what has he done to make it IMPOSSIBLE or at least much harder, for his successors to go there?

[karynnj]

23. I think it is more than just style

From my perspective, the longer war can be avoided, the more likely it will never happen. What I would hope is that sometime in the next 3 years Obama relations with Iran will become more normalized and the nuclear issue dealt with. If that happens, then the 8 years of Obama will represent more than a delay - but a change in relationship that makes an attack never happen.

If you believe that the two parties are the same on fp, do you agree that public opinion can do even less. That would seem to be the case if there is one FP that is run beyond the parties and beyond the current President.

[yurbud]

33. it is not entirely beyond public opinion, but the big pieces mostly are

which is why a Democratic president might delay a war, but not call bullshit on the arguments and evidence for that war.

On nukes, the only reason Iran would want them is because we and Israel threaten them, and we have invaded countries that border Iran on two sides.

If they get them, they will use them the way every other country that gets them has--as a deterrent.

Iran MIGHT give them up though in exchange for a non-aggression treaty, but that would spoil everything wouldn't it?

[Segami]

34. "Non-aggresive treaties" are 'profit-killers for many.

The economics of perpetual conflicts.

[yurbud]

19. this is the most important story in a while and shows why gov't and elite so freaked

about Manning, Snowden, and their hopefully many future copycats.

[yurbud]

21. this is the revolution: ending the ability of leaders to LIE us into war and spin us into policies

that benefit the rich and screw the rest.

No matter how crappy the rich make our public education system (and they are trying mightily to do so and profit from doing it), their monopoly on certain information, and the ability to keep it secret for their own benefit is coming to an end.

When that is finally gone forever, the benefits of the industrial revolution that they have increasingly hoarded for themselves will be spread a bit more evenly, and the rest of us won't have to scramble like kids in a coal mine to keep up our house and student loan payments, and food on the table.

It's coming. It's just a matter of time.

[Hydra]

22. Mannings revelations disturbed the plan for Iraq

We might still be there the way Bush put us there had the records of US wrongdoing not come out around the time they were asking the Iraqi Gov't for continuing immunity for US troops.

The plan for Iran was blown by the 2007 Intel estimate that said there was no bomb and there wouldn't be soon. I LOVED using that to shut people down who were pushing for it.

[struggle4progress]

45. *snork* A majority of folk in the US have regarded the Iraq war as a mistake since Fall 2006

or before, and there was never a majority in favor of it after Summer 2005

Bradley Manning has had no discernible impact on the numbers, which have been reasonably stable since early 2009

[limpyhobbler]

25. Possibly. If not under this President, maybe he helped avert a future war 10 or 20 years from now.

Nobody knows.

[Egalitarian Thug]

27. It is frequently held that images from Vietnam were a major factor in forcing us to

abandon that nascent forever war. In light of that, this proposition is credible.

"If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America."

We have become much more isolated, mean, and ignorant, but those images, and perhaps even more disturbing, the audio, broke through many carefully constructed bubbles.

[idwiyo]

30. K&R

[liberal_at_heart]

35. I hope so, but the war profiteers are determined. They will still try and may still succeed.

[struggle4progress]

44. Perry must be desperate for excuses to justify Manning's bizarre behavior, because this theory

is just silly

Manning has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that we haven't invaded Iran

It's true the RW hawks spent most of the Bush II years trying to turn Iraq/Afghanistan into a more general conflagration in the Middle East, involving Iran and Syria and other countries, in order to justify US military domination of the region. Their plans were pretty clear in this respect: they built a huge battle-hardened embassy complex in Iraq to serve as a command-and-control center for such operations. But enough people finally caught on to forestall that, and they would have had no support had they made serious moves in that direction, beyond floating their constant trial balloons to see who saluted

But Bush II was a memory, and there was little chance of such adventurism, by the time Manning did his document dump

Of course, the next time the wingnuts are back in office, they'll bring back all their crazy dreams, and we'll be struggling against some species of the same dark monster again

[yurbud]

46. Obama might not start the hot war part, but like Bill Clinton before him, he won't pour cold water

on the whole thing and reset the policy.