McCain's "Senior Moments" a Product of Bush's Iran Propaganda

By Gareth Porter, IPS News. Posted March 28, 2008.

Sen. John McCain's confusion in recent allegations of Iranian training of al Qaeda fighters in Iraq is the result of a drumbeat of official propaganda about close Iran-al Qaeda ties that the George W. Bush administration and neoconservatives have promoted ever since early 2002.

McCain, the Republican nominee for the presidency, was confusing the Bush administration's charges of Iranian training of Shi'a militiamen associated with the Mahdi Army with the administration's propaganda theme of Iranian tacit or explicit support for al Qaeda operatives in Iran -- charges which have amplified by right-wing media.

During a press conference in Jordan Tuesday, McCain brought up the charge that Iran with training al Qaeda operatives and sending them to Iraq, then corrected himself after Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a Democrat from Connecticut, whispered in his ear. It was the fourth time in a little over three weeks, however, that McCain had made the same charge.

McCain's confusion has been widely characterized as demonstrating his inability to distinguish Sunni al Qaeda from Shiite Mahdi Army. But more fundamentally, McCain's gaffes were a reflection of how thoroughly he had internalized a favorite theme of the Bush administration and neoconservatives -- that Iran has tolerated and even covertly assisted al Qaeda agents operating inside Iran.

Those administration charges have continued despite the repeated release of information by Iran and other countries about its arrest, detention and repatriation of al Qaeda suspects.

That charge has been given credence by mainstream news media for years.

The theme of an Iran-al Qaeda link first appeared in the wake of the defeat of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Although most al Qaeda cadres escaped to Pakistan, a much smaller number crossed the border into Iran. Despite the fact that U.S. officials later said Iran had been responsive to U.S. communications about intercepting al Qaeda cadres at the border, then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated on more than one occasion in 2002 that Iran was "harboring" al Qaeda officials.

That was same term Bush had used in his Sep. 20, 2001 speech as criterion for considering a nation to be a "hostile regime" in regard to terrorism.

The Bush propaganda line was taken so seriously by the news media that the Washington Post reported Aug. 28, 2002 that "Arab intelligence sources" were saying that two high-ranking al Qaeda officials were being "sheltered in Iran along with dozens of other al Qaeda fighters in hotels and guesthouses in the border cities of Mashad and Zabol."

The Post said the report "supported the Bush administration's long-standing assertion that Iran -- or at least hardliners in the conservative clerical line of authority that controls the army and intelligence services -- is harboring al Qaeda fighters."

In spring 2003, Iran declared that it was holding senior members of al Qaeda but refused to divulge their identities and proposed to exchange information on its al Qaeda detainees in return for the U.S. providing Iran with information on the anti-Iran terrorist group Mujihidden e Khalk (MEK) which had surrendered to U.S. troops in Iraq. But hardliners in the Bush administration rejected such a deal, on the grounds that MEK should be protected from Iran.

After the May 12, 2003 terrorist bombing in Saudi Arabia, which killed eight U.S. citizens and 26 Saudis, Rumsfeld declared, "We know there are senior al Qaeda in Iran ... presumably not an ungoverned area." Then CBS news reported, "U.S. officials say they have evidence the bombings in Saudi Arabia and other attacks still in the works were planned and directed by senior al Qaeda operatives who have found safe haven in Iran."

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