(cross-posted at C&L)
Tuesday night PBS Frontline aired "Showdown with Iran," which completely laid bare the failures of the Bush administration's foreign policy. While I can't urge you enough to go watch the complete episode at the PBS website, I have made a two-part highlight mashup of many of the more startling revelations.
Watch Part 1:
Despite the U.S.'s long history with Iran beginning with its overthrow of their secular democracy in 1953 and the installation of a US puppet dictator that resulted in the blowback in the form of the '79 Iranian Revolution that brought the current Islamic Republic to power largely based on its hatred of America, Iran had reached out to the U.S. after 9/11, denouncing terrorism and became an important ally of the coalition against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Iran's leaders had even tendered "a secret proposal for a grand bargain resolving all outstanding issues between the U.S. and Iran, including Iran's support for terrorism and its nuclear program" which Bushco simply ignored (or forgot?), opting instead to include them in his "Axis of Evil" on his 2002 State of the Union Address, which once again angered the nation, completely discrediting their moderate reformist leadership and ultimately helped bring the hard-line party of Ahmadinejad to power.
Much of the evidence presented in the documentary was first revealed in a heavily redacted NYT Op-Ed by Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann, both of whom are prominently featured in this PBS special. Despite the White House's attempt to muzzle them from even mentioning information, all of which had already been reported in a variety of media sources that exposed the Bush Administration's incredulous undiplomatic push to keep Iran from ever getting off its enemy list, PBS was able to gain "unprecedented access" to video footage and interviews with Iranian officials that leaves little no doubt that this administration simply refuses to accept any path that would deviate from its decade-old neo-con Middle East war plans.
Watch Part 2:
Perhaps the most damning evidence of Bushco's hell-bent-for-war-with-Iran-insanity from the film is the revelation that the Bush administration bypassed Congress and has actually been harboring a terrorist organization (that's acc'd to our State Dept) known as Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), that has killed U.S. soldiers and civilians in the past and has been utilizing them for cross border operations inside Iran. WaPo even reported that our soldiers have been playing chauffeur for some of them! What the hell ever happened to Bush's "If you harbor terrorists, you are terrorists"? Once again the proof is irrefutable that Republican hypocrisy truly knows no bounds.
Watch the entire episode on the PBS website here.
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