US Special Forces inside Iran?

Is it only the US government that likes to tell lies?

The famous story of the famous journalist nominated for famous Pulitzer prize for an infamous load of crap sticks into the minds of all journalists who strive to seek for the Truth. Today, breaks the story of US Special Forces operating inside Iran, for six months.

Seymour Hersch, who writes for the New Yorker magazine, quotes unnamed former intelligence officials and anonymous consultants who work with the Pentagon. What reliable sources.

How about "Unnamed sources, who insisted on remaining anonymous, said to be close to the White House by local gossips, claim to have seen President George Bush being kidnapped by aliens from the Oval Office, while wearing a green tunic smothered with swastikas, from where he was taken to a flying saucer and gang-raped by triple-breasted jelloid octopuses wearing orange wigs and screaming 'We hate Baseball!' "

Or how about "US Secretary of State shows satellite photos of Iraqi WMD to UN Security Council, complete with arrows and labels, claiming that the USA knows where these systems are, but that they are waiting for Hans Blix to find them". Later, Colin Powell, when confronted with growing evidence that WMD did not exist because Saddam had indeed destroyed them a decade earlier, defended himself by stating that they were being driven around the desert, "in vehicles".

Then there was always the one which stated that Niger had sold yellowcake uranium to Iraq for Saddam Hussein to make nuclear bombs, the documents being complete with signatures of the ministers of Niger and Iraq which when shown to Mohammed El Baradei and were greeted with the loudest Egyptian snort in history, with the disclaimer "They are forged". End of story. Only Pravda.Ru has been reporting this one since then.

The question is, anyone who has access to an internet site can write what he or she wants and pass it off as credible until someone finds to the contrary. In this case, the evidence appears at least a trifle flimsy, because either you quote reliable and accredited sources, or else the whole piece falls flat, into the "they told me so" heap, along with the rest. The question is how many readers believe it.

Certainly Seymour Hersch is not a nobody, yet this does not mean anything. Hence the references at the beginning of this piece to other well documented cases of journalistic fraud.

Certainly nobody these days would be surprised if the USA had operationals inside Iran targeting future strikes. However, for six months? Although CIA operationals these days do not have to wear dark suits, dark glasses, have a bulge in the left inside pocket of the jacket and wear an arrow on their backs, saying "CIA agent" and while such agents these days would be  
recruited among Iranian professionals working inside Iran, six months is a long time for such an unnecessary "operation".

After all, the US satellites would only have to look at their photographs to know where the strike areas are.

To begin with, the Iranians have refuted the news by quoting this time a named source, the Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesperson Masood Khan, who denies that there is any collaboration between the Pakistanis and Americans, as Hersch's unnamed sources state.

"There is no such collaboration" he stated, adding that "I categorically reject the report".

As for Washington, the White House spokesperson Dan Bartlett has stated that the report is "riddled with inaccuracies". After the hype and lies concerning Iraq, Washington these days is favouring the diplomatic channel, which it should have used first time around, however, full marks for the turnaround in policy. All George Bush had to do was listen to the international community.

Finally, if such were the case, Moscow would already have got wind of what was going on in its back yard and traditional area of influence.

The feeling in the journalistic community is that Hersch is a well-known name, having had many famous scoops, among which was Abu Ghraib. But this time maybe his unnamed and anonymous sources got the wrong flying saucer and the wrong triple-breasted aliens.