A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Kristina Borjesson

Cue The Threats. Cue The Incident. Cue The High Level Reactions. Cue The Confrontation With Iran?

Late last December, an unauthenticated audiotape, purportedly of bin Laden threatening Israel, made the rounds of the press and was, by and large, treated as if it were real [0]. Then, right before President Bush’s trip to the Middle East, a videotape was released of a young Jewish man named Adam Pearlman now purporting to be al Qaeda, encouraging sympathizers in the region to greet Bush with bombs. That was reported without much, if any, questioning either. Then came the videotape of the Hormuz incident.

The Defense Department literally produced (as in what TV and filmmakers do) a mini-documentary of the incident between US Navy and Iranian vessels in the Strait of Hormuz. The actual incident, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said, was 15 to 20 minutes long. The Defense Department’s mini-doc—a bit over four minutes. Asked for a preliminary assessment of the tape, Dartmouth’s forensic video analyst, Hany Farid, said that while it does not appear to be doctored in any way, "it is clear that this video has been spliced together from several clips, probably from different cameras, and that the audio and video are not synchronized."

The Iranians immediately claimed that the tape was a fake. New York Times reporter Nazila Fathi, went to the Pentagon to press for more details on their production and wrote that DoD officials couldn’t really say from where came the dire threat—"I am coming to you. ... you will explode after a few minutes"--heard at the very end of the tape. "Pentagon officials said they could not rule out that the broadcast might have come from shore," added Fathi, "or from another ship nearby, although it might have come from one of the five fast boats with a high-quality radio system."

In a bizarre twist, a report by the Navy Times suggested that the voice might have come from the politically incorrect nicknamed "Filipino Monkey," a "mysterious but profane voice. ... likely more than one person, who listens in on ship-to-ship radio traffic and then jumps on the net shouting insults and jabbering vile epithets."

Realizing that public skepticism was reaching critical mass, the Defense Department decided to report that there had been other similar incidents in the past that they just hadn’t mentioned. Then they released what they said was their raw footage of the incident. Loudly absent, of course, was the highly provocative audio of mysterious provenance. This has only served to highlight the fact that their first release was a highly deceptive—and manipulative bit of business.

President Bush rushed to use the tape to promote his Iran agenda. He quickly went before TV cameras and microphones to talk about the Iranian "provocation," and dredge up that dreaded "all options are on the table" buzz phrase for describing a scope of responses that could include military action. Then US National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley—remember him?—piled on with a dark warning: "It could have—and came very close to—resulting in an altercation between our forces and their forces," he said, "They’ve got to be very careful about this, because if it happens again, they are going to bear the consequences of that incident."

An altercation seems to be what Mr. Hadley and President Bush might be looking for. Hadley was a member of the White House Iraq Group that worked to manufacture consent for the Iraq War. He was responsible for allowing the bogus claim, about Saddam looking for nuclear material in Niger, to be included in President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address. So this is deja vu with Mr. Hadley. His long-time ally, the currently low-lying Vice President Cheney, is probably thrilled by the renewed potential for hostilities with Iran.

Meanwhile, President Bush says he’s looking "to bring peace to the Middle East" and to contain Iran’s "hostile aspirations." Writing for Asia Times Online, M.K. Bhadrakumar reported that the President told the Israeli newspaper, Yediot Ahnronot, that "Part of the reason I’m going to the Middle East is to make it abundantly clear to nations in that part of the world that we view Iran as a threat, and that the National Intelligence Estimate [NIE] in no way lessens that threat, but in fact clarifies that threat." Here, Bush invokes the very NIE that contradicted his claims that Iran was a dire nuclear threat into a supporting document for his claims that Iran is a dire threat.

Recent events, the trail of audio and videotapes, Hadley’s comments and Bush’s comments all seem like cues. The "peace part" of the president’s mission seems like a cover story. What he’s really seeking, it seems, is a confrontation with Iran.

Kristina Borjesson is an investigative reporter and the author of FEET TO THE FIRE, The Media After 9/11: Top Journalists Speak Out.

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION

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