The things you read in the newspapers

One huge reason why people in this country remain perpetually confused can be found in the utter depravity passed off as normal discourse in the corporate media.

This LA Times story, titled Strike on Iran still possible, US tells Israel, describes how US officials must gingerly talk Ehud Barak down off a high limb over the possibility that the US is softening its stance on Iran, horror of horrors!!

WASHINGTON -- Bush administration officials reassured Israel's defense minister this week that the United States has not abandoned all possibility of a military attack on Iran, despite widespread Israeli concern that Washington has begun softening its position toward Tehran.

In meetings Monday and Tuesday, administration officials told Defense Minister Ehud Barak that the option of attacking Iran over its nuclear program remains on the table, though U.S. officials are primarily seeking a diplomatic solution.

Is it me, or does that have the same ring of search parties reluctantly giving up hope of finding the lost victim? In this case the search parties have looked high and low for a good reason to attack Iran for Israel, but they just can't find one that would justify unleashing hell on earth. Poor Ehud Barak must be so disappointed.

At the same time, U.S. officials acknowledged that there is a rare divergence in the U.S. and Israeli approaches, with Israelis emphasizing the possibility of a military response out of concern that Tehran may soon have the know-how for building a nuclear bomb.

...Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said in an interview that U.S. officials have often made it clear to Israeli officials that Washington prefers to try to mitigate the threat from Tehran by applying economic pressure.

"The military option, although always available, is not our preferred route," Morrell said.

"We have made that point clear to them and the world in our public statements and private meetings."

Barak left Israel for Washington amid reports in the Israeli press that he would try to talk the Bush administration out of what many Israelis perceive as a more conciliatory policy toward Iran.

On Tuesday, the Israeli Defense Ministry released a statement saying that Barak had told Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates that "a policy that consists of keeping all options on the table must be maintained."

Which is all a very gentle way of noting that the Pentagon, or at least some people there, are telling the Israelis that we're not doing their crazy cuckoo plans this time, and Israel is saying back, oh yes you are.

On the one hand, I think it's really great that this cavernous rift, here euphemistically described as a polite and diplomatic 'rare divergence,' has opened up between Israel and the US. Without your Conspiracy Facts brand 3D glasses and decoder ring on, you'll never know that the fate of the world hangs in the balance.

Meanwhile, the NYT does it's level best to keep everyone in America on Israel's side by publishing some crap on July 18th from Benny Morris, a Jewish 'historian.' You can read the deconstruction of Benny's work here.

Morris's July 18^th op-ed, with the catchy and oxymoronic title "Using Bombs to Stave Off War," should tip its hat to Herodotus because it is a good story that is virtually devoid of facts, an attribute also ignored by the Times editors. Morris, who is exceptionally truculent for a bookworm, may or may not be a good example of what passes for scholarship in Israel, but he is certainly not interested in cutting the Iranians any slack. He argues that Iran must be attacked, that Israel will almost certainly do so in the next four to seven months, and that it will not be Israel's fault because the rest of the world has refused to do what is right. [in classic psychopathic fashion -- deflecting blame - ed.] Per Morris, attacking Iran's nuclear program might bring peace and not doing so will inevitably lead to Israel's eventually staging a preemptive nuclear strike to solve the Iranian problem once and for all, which would be a worse outcome. As Morris is well connected to the Israeli government, his doomsday scenario must be taken seriously, even if it is bluff or deliberate disinformation. Having given warning of what might happen, the purpose in writing the piece is clearly to frighten the rest of the world into doing the dirty work so that Israel will not have to act. Obviously, the only country that can carry out the mission in a thorough fashion using non-nuclear weapons is the United States. That makes Morris's op-ed a strident call to arms from a leading Israeli for the United States to start yet another war on Israel's behalf because Israel feels threatened. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Yes, it does. And it appears that some people in the Pentagon are telling Israel that it's not going to happen this time, and that is a very big deal. But what does it mean that nobody is talking openly about the long-awaited solid pushback against Israel, and instead, legitimizes the specter of a nuclear holocaust to satisfy Israel?

What does the publication by the New York Times of an article, which calls for the nuclear incineration of 70 million Iranians and the contamination of the better part of a billion people in the Middle East, Asia and Europe, tell us about US politics and culture? For it is the NYT, which informs the ‘educated classes’ in the US, its Sunday supplements, literary and editorial pages and which serves as the ‘moral conscience’ of important sectors of the cultural, economic and political elite.... The question of Zionist power in America is not merely a question of a ‘lobby’ influencing Congressional and White House decisions concerning foreign aid to Israel . What is at stake today are the related questions of the advocacy of a nuclear war in which 70 million Iranians face extermination and the complicity of the US mass media in providing a platform, nay a certain political respectability for mass murder and global contamination. Unlike the Nazi past, we cannot claim, as the good Germans did, that ‘we did not know’ or ‘we weren’t notified’, because it was written by an eminent Israeli academic and was published in the New York Times.