the contrarian - THE ROAD TO DECEPTION

Last Wednesday, President Bush departed the U.S. on a trip that was scheduled to involve six countries in the Middle East.

Could the timing have been any better.  Tensions had been increasing throughout the area and violence was occurring in greater frequency.  On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had repeated his earlier warning that he would not rule out taking military action against Iran.  Hours before Bush's scheduled arrival, a rocket attack had been launched into northern Israel from Lebanese territory.

And Pakistan, in particular, was still rocking from the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

In fact, the Glasgow Herald had reported on December 31^st that concerns over the situation in Pakistan were so great that U.S. Special Forces "snatch squads" were on standby to attempt to seize or disable the nation's nuclear arsenal in the event the government collapsed or civil war broke out.  The article said that Pakistan had an estimated 60 warheads dispersed in six to 10 locations around the country.

It was, indeed, a perfect time for the president to use his leadership position to provide a calming influence and to attempt to bring back a measure of stability to the region.

Only that's not exactly the way things worked out.

Before the trip even started, the Defense Department revealed the game plan and the intent was anything but peaceful.  Specifically, on Sunday, three days before the president's departure, the Pentagon orchestrated what now appears to have been a bogus report of an incident that was intended to make the world believe that Iran had provoked a near clash with the U.S. Navy in the Strait of Hormuz.

Then, during the trip itself, it became apparent from the president's comments that one of the main purposes of his visit was simply to rally opposition against Iran.

But first, here's a closer look at the facts concerning that nautical incident.

The initial announcement on Sunday indicated that the U.S. had lodged a formal diplomatic protest against Iran for a serious "provocation" on the high seas.

Then, on Tuesday, on the eve of the president's trip, a video was released by the Pentagon which showed Iranian patrol boats approaching American warships and an audio recording which contained the heavily accented threat "I am coming to you. You will explode in a few minutes."

On Wednesday, as the president visited Israel, Iran accused the U.S. of fabricating the video and the audio, which provoked angry responses from the Department of Defense, from National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and from Bush himself who said "There will be serious consequences if they attack our ships, pure and simple."

On Thursday, Iran released its own tape of the incident which seemed legitimate since it showed the U.S. ship that had actually been involved.  The tape depicted a situation that was completely benign.

On Friday, the American position began to crumble.  Admiral Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, finally admitted that there were questions over the origins of the verbal threats. And, on the same day, the Navy Times, which is described as an independent newspaper, reported that "some Navy ship drivers think the threats may have come from a local heckler they call 'the Filipino Monkey.'"

And then, after the fact, the public was informed that the media had failed, for the most part, to mention a briefing following the incident by the commander of the 5th fleet in Bahrain, Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, in which he had made it clear that the ships were never in danger, that they never believed they were in danger, and that they were never close to firing on the Iranian boats.

Moving from the facts to the reaction, "Democracy Now," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 650 stations in North America, interviewed Gareth Porter on the subject on Friday.  Porter is an investigative historian who writes regularly on Iran for the Inter Press Service.  He also authored a book on the Vietnam War.

Porter stated that the story began with leaks from the Pentagon.  Officials were aggressively calling reporters, he said, exaggerating the facts and describing the incident as a near battle, which is exactly the way it was depicted by the networks and the print media.

He said "this is perhaps the worst, the most egregious case of sensationalist journalism in the service of the interests of the Pentagon, the Bush administration, that I have seen so far."

He went on to say "it seems very possible that indeed the Pentagon did splice into the recording, the audio recording of the incident, the two bits of messages from a mysterious voice in a way that made it appear to occur in response to the initial communication from the US ship to the Iranian boats.  And it seems very possible that, in fact, those voices came at some other point during this twenty-minute incident."

And he added "So this is something that really deserves to be scrutinized and, in fact, investigated by Congress, because of the significance, in the larger sense, of a potential major fabrication of evidence in order to make a political point by the Bush administration."

The incident even became a topic during the Republican debate on Fox News when the moderator asked the candidates if they thought we should have blown the Iranian boats out of the water.  In responding, Ron Paul was the only candidate who actually questioned the facts.

Undoubtedly, the circumstances must have impacted on the president's effectiveness during his trip.  If so, however, it didn't moderate his rhetoric.

In Abu Dhabi, the president, once more, called Iran "the world's leading state sponsor of terror," again ignoring the fact that the world's foremost contributor to nuclear proliferation has actually been America's ally, Pakistan.

And ironically, at almost the very same moment the president was castigating Iran, the International Atomic Energy Agency was reporting from Vienna that Iranian representatives had promised to answer key questions within a month about their nation's past covert nuclear activities.

As he traveled through Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Egypt the president also accused Iran of repressing its citizens.  In the process, he totally ignored the long record of human rights abuses, limited political rights and economic disparity within the countries he visited.

In short, one might well consider the trip to be a microcosm of the entire deceptive and adversarial history of the Bush administration since the inception of its war on terror.

 Dave McGill, News Correspondent

Dave's column, "The Contrarian," generally published every Wednesday, to Gather Essentials: News will sometimes present a contrary view to various aspects of the news, or an alternate take on the conventional wisdom of the day, and will occasionally also appear on other days of the week.

Dave has been a senior officer of a large eastern insurance company, involved in economic projections and investment strategy, president of a Midwestern mortgage banking company, and a financial consultant in Southern California, serving clients in the field of commercial real estate development.

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