1115.org

Anne Gearan’s byline describes her as the “National Security Writer” at AP. Either they don’t use the word correspondent at AP any more, or they’re embarrassed enough about Gearan’s article that they don’t want to dignify her with that term. Gearan thinks that “In his first major test of international leadership, President Barack Obama is struggling for the right response to Iran’s postelection upheaval”.

There’s a whole plethora of prominent conservatives who are willing to stand up and publicly announce that they don’t buy that shit, including:

George Will:

The president is being roundly criticized for insufficient, rhetorical support for what’s going on over there. It seems to me foolish criticism. The people on the streets know full well what the American attitude toward the regime is. And they don’t need that reinforced.

Peggy Noonan:

To insist the American president, in the first days of the rebellion, insert the American government into the drama was shortsighted and mischievous. The ayatollahs were only too eager to demonize the demonstrators as mindless lackeys of the Great Satan Cowboy Uncle Sam, or whatever they call us this week. John McCain and others went quite crazy insisting President Obama declare whose side America was on, as if the world doesn’t know whose side America is on. “In the cause of freedom, America cannot be neutral,” said Rep. Mike Pence. Who says it’s neutral?

Sen. Richard Lugar:

When popular revolutions occur, they come really from the people. They are generated from people power within the country. For us to become heavily involved in the election at this point is to give the clergy an opportunity to have an enemy and to use us, really, to retain their power.

Henry Kissinger:

…I think the president has handled this well. Anything that the United States says that puts us totally behind one of the contenders, behind Mousavi, would be a handicap for that person. And I think it’s the proper position to take that the people of Iran have to make that decision.

Of course, we have to state our fundamental convictions of freedom of speech, free elections, and I don’t see how President Obama could say less than he has, and even that is considered intolerable meddling. He has, after all, carefully stayed away from saying things that seem to support one side or the other. And I think it was the right thing to do because public support for the opposition would only be used by the — by Ahmadinejad — if I can ever learn his name properly — against Mousavi.

R. Nicholas Burns, George Bush’s top negotiator with Iran:

President Ahmadinejad would like nothing better than to see a very aggressive series of statements by the United States that would try to put the U.S. in the center of this.

Even Pat Buchanan, for crying out loud:

Obama should not heed the war hawks howling for confrontation now. When your adversary is making a fool of himself, get out of the way…

Obama, with his outstretched hand, [has] stripped the Ayatollah and Ahmadinejad of their clinching argument — that America is out to destroy Iran and they are indispensable to Iran’s defense…

Somehow Gearan fails to mention any of these views in her article (though she does manage to scrape up a tepid, low-impact quote from Lugar). What doggedly determined oversight!

And all in the pursuit of peddling discredited neocon batshit. Since who does subscribe to the point of view that writer-but-not-correspondent Anne Gearan works so hard to present as news-fact? John McCain and Lindsey Graham as political mouthpieces, and Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, and Paul Wolfowitz as intellectual heavyweights.

It will shock you and surprise you that Gearan manages to quote both Graham and McCain calling President Obama a wimp.

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Here’s another little gem from Gearan:

It also followed a false note from Obama last week, when he said he saw little difference between Ahmadinejad, the hard-liner who claims a landslide re-election mandate, and his conservative but pro-reform challenger. That left the impression that Obama discounted the votes of Mir Hossein Mousavi’s supporters or the bravery of protesters who marched to say their votes were stolen.

The false notes — or do I mean falsehoods? — seem to be Gearan’s. For the record, this is who Mousavi really is:

Mr. Moussavi began his political career as a hard-liner and a favorite of the revolution’s architect, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Although he has long had an adversarial relationship with Iran’s current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, his insider status makes him loath to mount a real challenge to the core institutions of the Islamic republic. He was an early supporter of Iran’s nuclear program, and as prime minister in the 1980s he approved Iran’s purchase of centrifuges on the nuclear black market, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

“Little difference between Mousavi and Ahmadinejad” is probably a more accurate assessment than the runaway deification of Mousavi we have seen all over the media.

And how can anyone with a shred of intellectual honesty — or even a pretense to intellectual honesty — claim that saying you see little difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi means you are discounting the votes of “Mousavi’s supporters or the bravery of protesters who marched to say their votes were stolen”?