Goddamn Lying Bastards: A Critical Reappraisal

Yesterday, I discussed an apocryphal Iranian magazine article called "Electronics to Determine Fate of Future Wars," which supposedly threatened the United States with an electromagnetic pulse attack, via aerial detonation of a nuclear weapon. I wasn't able to find the article online, and wondered whether it actually existed.

Well, it does. And thanks to the awe-inspiring munificence and sagacity of Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, I now have a copy of it.

There are a couple of interesting things about it. First and foremost, it contains no discussion of an EMP attack against the United States.

For that matter, it contains no discussion of an EMP attack against anyone.

In fact, it contains no mention of nuclear weapons whatsoever.

Yes, friends, you heard me correctly. This eight-year-old article, which a gaggle of "defense experts" is currently presenting as evidence for Iran's intention to launch an EMP attack using nuclear weapons, does not discuss the use of nuclear weapons, and does not discuss EMP attacks. Not once.

What it does talk about - in general terms fairly similar to those of Western articles on the subject - is cyberterrorism. Personally, I'd be hard pressed to see its discussion of that issue as a veiled threat, let alone an explicit one. But even if I did see it that way, it'd do little more than remind me that three of BushCo's top cybersecurity experts have resigned in two years, complaining that they had virtually no official support for their work.

In his piece on the Iranian article, Joseph Farah lifted this quote:

Even worse today when you disable a country's military high command through disruption of communications, you will, in effect, disrupt all the affairs of that country. If the world's industrial countries fail to devise effective ways to defend themselves against dangerous electronic assaults then they will disintegrate within a few years. American soldiers would not be able to find food to eat nor would they be able to fire a single shot.

Oops...did I say "Farah lifted this quote"? I'm sorry. I meant to say "Farah stitched this quote together dishonestly, with malice aforethought, like the shameless jackal he is."

In the original article, these three sentences have little or nothing to do with one another. Worse still, the final sentence is missing eight of its original words, and is completely out of context. Have a look at these sentences in their original context:

Once you confuse the enemy communication network you can also disrupt the work of the enemy command and decisionmaking center. Even worse, today when you disable a country's military high command through disruption of communications you will, in effect, disrupt all the affairs of that country.

[snip - one paragraph missing]

If the world's industrial countries fail to devise effective ways to defend themselves against dangerous electronics assaults, then they will disintegrate within a few years. What is worse, in the information technology warfare there is no longer any distinction between civilians and combatants.

[snip - three paragraphs missing]

In an analysis of the current electronics warfare situation, the American daily, The Washington Post recently wrote that if the enemy forces succeeded in infiltrating the information network of the US Army, then the whole organization would collapse. It said in such a case that the American soldiers could not find food to eat nor could they be able to fire a single shot.

Isn't it droll that the ominous quote about American soldiers turns out to have been paraphrased from an article in the WaPo? I wonder why Farah left that bit out. After all, it proves that the WaPo - like most liberal papers - takes its marching orders from Islamofascist mullahs.

Oh, and for the benefit of the good folks at Rapture Ready, the standard Christian theological term for lying is "bearing false witness." You're not supposed to do it, last time I checked.