Banging the War Drum #1

MEDIA NOTES: The U.S. and Iran and the Growing Threat of War. NPR On Point 020507

My local NPR station doesn’t broadcast On Point live at 10:00 a.m. It rebroadcasts a tape at midnight, which seems like a weird way to listen to a live talk show. If I wake ‘round midnight I switch on the clock radio next to my bed and check out what I missed earlier in the day. Sometimes I fall back to sleep. Not tonight.

The topic was the growing threat of war with Iran. Tom Ashbrook said in his lead, “Some say it's a U.S. bluff. Some fear an accidental and devastating war. Some believe White House hardliners want a war with Iran, and are going for it.”

One of the guests was Sam Gardiner, a retired Air Force colonel and professor at the National War. He believes the Bushies are going for it:

It looks like a strike on a nuclear facility… the President’s red line looks like it’s being crossed… Something is going on within the National Security Council that raises a very strong red flag with me. There’s a working group in the National Security Council that’s called something like the Media Relations Group. [Its] mission… is to create outrage in the world over Iran. I don’t find any logic to creating outrage as the basis of negotiations. Outrage is the foundation for a strike… There are ads in the Washington area now on television that go over horrific things Iran has done. Somebody is encouraging think tanks to pay for commercial ads to build outrage against Iran.

“Four years ago today Colin Powell was before the U.N. making his case for evidence over WMD in Iraq and you’re suggesting something like that may be afoot right now,” Ashbrook interjected.

“The unfolding of the storyline is so much like the pre-Gulf II storyline, the hair on the back of my neck stands up,” Gardiner replied.

That’s when I got out of bed and started to blog. It’s War Drum Flash Back Time again.

Gardiner’s source on the NSC Media Relations Group was an unidentified article in the Boston Globe, maybe this one from 010207: US unit works quietly to counter Iran's sway. The article refers to the Iran Syria Policy and Operations Group, or ISOG.

OTM on the Mainline

MEDIA NOTES: On the Media NPR 020207

There are so many good pieces in this weeks On The Media, I don’t know where to begin. Maybe I’ll start with Brook Gladstone’s story about Scooter Libby’s perjury trial. She interviews Dana Milbank, who reports on Washington political theater for WaPoBrook’s #3 reason for caring about Scooter’s trial: “It gives news junkies the chance to mainline some high-octane gossip.” Yeah. Pass that needle, Nina Totenberg. Listen to the rush in Nina’s voice as she recaps this weeks testimony, including these nuggets from Scooter’s notes on a strategy chat with Mary Matalin: “Tell Tim (Russert). Tim (Russert) hates Chris (Matthews)” and “Wilson’s a snake.” Dan Schor takes the high road (really, no pun intended now, he sounds like the wise man he is): the Libby trial fascinates because it reveals details of a “failed cover-up.”

Back to OTM. Crossed Wires mashes up a montage of sound bites documenting cable news hysteria as the Boston bomb story broke on Wednesday. Listen to CNN nimbly shift attention away from its parent company (Turner Broadcasting) to those “third-party” bottom-feeders Interference Media. Bob Garfield injects some snarky tidbits along the way, decrying the saturation coverage as one more “display of the media beast consuming its own tail.”

Seriously now. Great Expectorations explores the mythology of war protesters spitting on war veterans. “It’s hardly the first time we’ve heard about returning soldiers getting showered with saliva. Sociologist Jerry Lembcke says the ‘spitting myth’ is both older and more recent than you might think.”

And finally, Anonymous Sects is an interview with Vali Nasr, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He briefed Bush last year about the differences between Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq. Bush’s rhetoric in the State of the Union speech played up the sectarian split, but it doesn’t reflect a newfound grasp of nuance, according to Nasr. Instead, it signals the administration’s effort to shift attention away from the intractable problems of stability in Iraq to a more appealing target: Iran.