Search This Blog

Thursday, January 2, 2020

Changing History -- Mainstream Media Style

It's been sad to watch the mainstream media trying desperately to blame President Trump for the attack on the US embassy in Baghdad by an Iranian controlled militia.

At first, outlets like the Washington Post called the attackers "protesters".  They were also described as being a spontaneous mob who went from a funeral to attack the embassy.  That narrative quickly fell apart as the truth came out.  "Protesters" (even in Iraq) don't go to protests armed with firebombs and other weapons.  They don't consist of only young men.  Since both the US and Iraqi governments recognized and described the attackers as a militia, even the media realized it had to come up with something new.  The embassy attack just wasn't spontaneous protest -- no matter what the leftist media wants to believe--it was an organized attack controlled by Iran.

The media needed a new way to blame the USA and Trump for the attack, so today they came up with it.  The attack was now a retaliation for months of attacks on weapons depots by the USA in Iraq.  These attacks were ongoing for at least four months and hit only sites controlled by Iran or Iranian controlled militias.  According to CBS News, the Iranian militias then attacked eleven US/Iraqi bases IN RESPONSE to the American attacks.  That led to the US air force bombing multiple targets that were camps of the Iranian backed militias.  The air attack led to the embassy attack.  According to CBS News, it all goes back to the attacks by the USA on the Iranian and militia weapons depots across Iraq.

Of course, there is a major problem with this new narrative:  there were no American attacks on weapons depots of Iran or Iranian-backed militias.  Over the last six months, there have been attacks on some weapons depots, but they weren't carried out by American forces.  At first, there was an attempt in the region to blame the Israeli air force, but that quickly fell apart.  The camps were simply too far from Israel for the Israelis to launch an ongoing air campaign inside Iraq.  Also, there was no corroboration from any other country with radar in the region that tracked Israeli planes flying the thousands of miles to attack these camps.

Next, local media blamed ISIS remnants, Kurdish forces, Iraqi government forces and Sunni militias for the attacks.  It's unclear whether any of these groups were responsible, and, if so, which one(s).  What is clear, though, is that at no time did anyone lay responsibility for the attacks on the USA.  And let's be clear:  there's no way that American forces would have carried out over a dozen raids on different days without word of that campaign leaking out.  That means, the attacks were not carried out by Americans, no matter what CBS says.

So why would CBS lie?  Or, to tone that down a bit, why would CBS erroneously reports on just who was responsible for the attacks on the Iranian weapons depots?  The answer is rather obvious.  If the embassy attack can be traced directly back to a US (read that Trump) policy of attacking Iran inside Iraq, then the whole thing was Trump's fault.  It fits the corporate policy of CBS News which is in three words, "Trump always bad."

This may not sound important, but it is.  Few Americans care about who attacked a weapons depot in Iraq.  Many care about what caused Iran to launch this attack on our embassy in Baghdad.  The real answer is that the Iranians are trying to provoke a crisis in the region where the USA faces a choice of either going to war or reducing sanctions on Iran.  The mullahs are betting that America will chose retreat rather than yet another war in the Middle East.  In a sad way, the attack on the embassy proves that the Iranians are getting more and more desperate in the face of strict sanctions that have crippled their economy.

No comments: