The February 11 2007 Pentagon briefing against Iran is another lowlight in how the US Administration is now no longer even making an effort in trying to convince the world; it is going through the motions of disinformation, to get its war.

In the list of how to stage disinformation campaigns, the February 11 briefing on how Iran is responsible for smuggling in weapons into Iraq must be seen as another low. Whereas with Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction some effort was made to create a report, though largely copy and pasting from a student’s thesis, the Bush Administration seem so intent on bombing Iran, that no effort has been made to convince anyone; they are going through the motions.
The announcement was just days after a federal judge ruled that a CIA agent identified only as "Doe”, who was allegedly fired after he gathered pre-war intelligence showing that Iraq was not developing weapons of mass destruction, can proceed with his lawsuit against the CIA. The day before the Iran briefing, the US Department of Defense itself stated that a special Pentagon office created in the run-up to the Iraq war engaged in "inappropriate" activities by providing misleading intelligence to policymakers. The very next day, it all got repeated.

Back in 2002, Bush could rely on Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith and his Office of Special Plans – the group exposed by the Pentagon's own inspector general, who told Congress that Feith had made up most of what his rogue intelligence unit had created. There was I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, based in Vice President Dick Cheney's office, to carry out a co-ordinated effort to distribute these lies to the media. Libby’s trial, which is coinciding with the propaganda against Iran, is exposing how deep the seeding of disinformation went and how closely a man like the Vice President was involved. This will not come as a surprise, but perhaps we should not see it as so self-evident that Vice-Presidential office is involved and used in this manner.
Since January, the Democrats have held more than four dozen hearings to investigate the White House's Middle East policy and 2008 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is warning that Bush keeps out of Iran, stating: "It would be a mistake of historical proportions if the administration thought that the 2002 resolution authorizing force against Iraq was a blank check for the use of force against Iran." It seems, the administration is not listening.

So what was “the evidence”? The reporters present noted that "On two tables in a briefing room in Baghdad, military officials laid out tubular rocket propelled grenades, football-shaped mortars, a cylindrical EFP, and about 40 tail fins of exploded mortars, which they say are manufactured in Iran – just a 'smattering' of the examples they have found in Iraq, said the defense analyst. Iran is the only country in the region that produces these weapons, the officials said."
Only Powerpoint presentations were made available for reporters to present “the evidence” to the world and hence no independent verification can be made of this evidence.
As early as October 16, 2005, the British The Independent on Sunday wrote how “Terror devices used by the IRA in a vicious murder campaign in Ulster [Northern Ireland] blew up British servicemen as the world blamed Iran.” At the time, eight British soldiers were killed during ambushes in Iraq. They died after being attacked with bombs triggered by infra-red beams. The bombs were developed by the IRA using technology passed on by the security services in a botched "sting" operation more than a decade ago. But rather than follow this trail, the British government simply claimed that Iran's Revolutionary Guard had been helping Shiite insurgents to make the devices. But the newspaper went further and revealed that the bombs and the firing devices used to kill the soldiers, as well as two private security guards, were initially created by the UK security services as part of a counter-terrorism strategy at the height of the troubles in the early 1990s. So how did they find their way into Iraq? Or if indeed Iran was behind it, to Iran?

Similar doubts have been cast over the new evidence. Some have argued that the 81mm mortar shell offered up as evidence was an obvious ruse, as the date on the shell did not use the Muslim calendar and other markings are in English when it only makes sense they would appear in Persian script if Iranian fabricated. Perhaps. But it was then claimed that Iran does not manufacture 81mm mortar shells. According to a report offered by the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, the smallest mortar produced by Iran is the 107mm M-30. This center is one of the most authoritative sources on the subject, and whereas Iran could of course produce smaller mortar shells than they know of, on balance – on the available evidence – it appears the presented evidence is hence not of Iranian origin. It thus appears that the briefing is lie and the demand of anonymity is hence perfectly understandable.
Some “supporting evidence” for the US claims was a website, waved around to “prove” that Iran did make 81 mm mortar shells. Sceptics wondered why, if this was an Iranian site, this site looked so “unIranian”? The soldiers didn’t look Iranian and why did an Iranian company put together a webpage where their own country was obscured from view on that world map? On the contact page, Tehran was even spelled "Tahran". Was this web page assembled in a rush? Was it fake? What to think of the fact that directories and images on the server were all in English? But most bizarrely, the phone numbers on the contact page are all 7 digit numbers though in July of 2005, Iran switched over to an 8-digit phone system. (It should be noted that the page does not appear to be updated after 2005 though.) But most intriguingly, the IP was traced back to a university, not a business.

Three days later, on February 14, President Bush held his first press conference of the year, stating that he was certain that the Iranian government was supplying Iraqi fighters with weapons, but said he could not prove the orders came from the highest level in Tehran. Bush: “What we do know is that the Quds force was instrumental in providing these deadly IEDs to networks inside of Iraq. We know that. And we also know that the Quds force is a part of the Iranian government. That's a known. What we don't know is whether or not the head leaders of Iran ordered the Quds force to do what they did.” After Pace expressing his doubts, Bush obviously could not blankly accuse the Iranian government, so watered the accusation down. Still, he was pressed on the issue, replying: “Either they knew or didn't know, and what matters is, is that they're there. What's worse, that the government knew or that the government didn't know? ... What's worse, them ordering it and it happening, or them not ordering it and it happening?” With his usual smirk that indeed it did not matter whether the Iranian government was behind it or not, he in essence stated that he could also bomb them because they were ignorant of such attacks being carried out. With such obvious logic, should Bush bomb himself for not being aware of 9/11? Indeed, what matters “is that they’re there”… so Bush can attack them.