Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Friday, June 6, 2008

Something to think about!

By Ron Beasley



I will probably accused of antisemitism once again for suggesting that what the politicians in Israel think is in their best interest is not always in the best interests of the United States.  You can send the hate mail to me personally at mejblog@gmail.com .  Below I reported on the McClatchy report that members of the Bush/Cheney administration may have been fed mis-information on Iraqi WMD by Iran through "Iranian exiles."  But What if it wasn't Iran? In the comments section Clive writes:

Everybody is getting this one wrong.



The "foreign intelligence service" in question is likely not Iran, but Israel.



Ghorbanifar's connection to the Iran/Contra transactions (which of course included Israel to Iran arms shipments) should probably be taken into account.



Iranian agents of the Israeli intelligence services are not as rare as one would think.



And besides, nobody has ventured an explanation of why the U.S. didn't get better intelligence on Iraq's WMD from their longtime ally Israel (who are supposed to be on top of such matters) in the run-up to the war.

I remembered that the McClatchy report mentioned that one of the people involved was Larry Franklin - remember him.

Franklin, who, in an unrelated matter, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to prison in 2006 for providing classified information on Iran policy to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, passed the information about the alleged Iranian hit squads to a U.S. Special Forces commander in Afghanistan. Although a DIA analyst told the Senate committee that he couldn't speculate on whether the information had been "truly useful," Ledeen and Pentagon officials claimed it saved American lives, the committee said.

Perhaps Israel was not giving the neocons in the administration mis-information but simply trying to help them justify an unjustifiable war they thought would be in Israel's best interest. As Cernig pointed out below Israel is now trying to push the US into an attack on Iran.



Something to think about!



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5 comments:

  1. andersonJune 6, 2008 at 1:05 PM

    nobody has ventured an explanation of why the U.S. didn't get better intelligence on Iraq's WMD from their longtime ally Israel
    Huh? You mean that same Israel that is, right now, threatening to attack Iran unless they stop their nuclear weapons development, development of which no one can find any evidence? That Israel?

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  2. Enlightened LaypersonJune 6, 2008 at 1:19 PM

    It always struck me as wildly implausible that Iran would try to trick us into invading Iraq. Yes, Saddam Hussein was their enemy, but we, after all, were a much more powerful enemy. The thought of our army on both sides could not possibly have made the Iranian government very comfortable, especially with George Bush calling them one of the "Axis of Evil" regimes that could not be tolerated.
    Israel sounds a lot more believable. Also believable is the possibility that Ghorbanifar is the Iranian equivalent of Chalabi.

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  3. BJ BjornsonJune 6, 2008 at 1:35 PM

    nobody has ventured an explanation of why the U.S. didn't get better intelligence on Iraq's WMD from their longtime ally Israel
    Actually, I'm sure more than a few people have proposed similar scenarios to this one as explanation, but as you say, the charge of anti-semitism tends to be thrown at them pretty quick.
    Besides, Israel may have given the US quite decent intelligence that got stove-piped and ignored the same way the decent stuff from the US agencies did. As the Phase II Senate report shows, these guys knew better. They just didn't care and went ahead and lied about it all.

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  4. pwapvtJune 6, 2008 at 3:12 PM

    I wish we could have a rational discussion about Israel. It's too bad people give you crap for raising questions our relationship with Israel.
    I hated reading about Obama at aipac. Is that the leaverman side of the party, or is it bigger than that?

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  5. CyrusJune 7, 2008 at 3:16 AM

    According to Israeli general Shlomo Brom, was "exaggerating the Iraqi threat" to push the US into attacking Iraq:
    http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-12-04-israeli-iraq-threat_x.htm
    A bigger question is why has McClatcy refused to acknowledge the well-documented role of Israel and Italian intelligence, and instead simply followed the Senate's lead in accusing Iran? An revealing email exchange with Johnathan Landsay on that point will be post on my blog at http://www.iranaffairs.com soon.

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