Left Side of the Aisle #61 - Part 4

Outrage of the Week: US commits acts of war against Iran; media shrugs

This is a rather curious edition of outrage of the week because I'm not certain against who the outrage should be directed. Let's say for the moment that there's more than enough to go around.

recently, the New York Times published two revealing reports on secret, legally questionable programs by the Obama administration. One had to do with the use of drones, and I talked about that last week.

The other had to do with the fact that after coming into office, the O crowd accelerated a program of increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks on Iran.

On June 1, the Times noted that this "significantly expanded America’s first sustained use of cyberweapons" and that the attacks "appear to be the first time the United States has repeatedly used cyberweapons to cripple another country’s infrastructure, achieving, with computer code, what until then could be accomplished only by bombing a country or sending in agents to plant explosives."

What that bland description slips by without comment - perhaps even without noticing - is that this is an act of war. The United States is seeking to quoting again - "cripple another country’s infrastructure" in a way that previously involved bombing. It is trying to cripple part of the industrial capacity of a sovereign nation. If you doubt this is an act of war, consider what the reaction - what your reaction - would be if it emerged that Iran was doing this to us.

If you still doubt it, consider that last year the White House commissioned a major study of cyberspace, which found that "States have an inherent right to self-defense that may be triggered by certain aggressive acts in cyberspace" and "When warranted, the United States will respond to hostile acts in cyberspace as we would any other threat to our country."

And if you still doubt it, consider that more than a year ago, the Pentagon concluded that computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of war.

And don't bother saying "oh, this is about Iran's nuclear weapons program, so it's actually self-defense." According to the consensus view of the 16 US intelligence services, there is no Iranian nuclear weapons program. There is a nuclear enrichment program, but that can just as easily be used for, and is just as necessary for, nuclear power rather than weapons. In 2007, an intelligence finding concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program years earlier. That finding was reaffirmed in a 2010 National Intelligence Estimate, and it remains the consensus view. There is no Iranian nuclear weapons program.

We're left with the end: The Barack Obama administration, President Hope-Changey, our Nobel Peace Prize winner, has in effect declared war on Iran - and our oh-so-important watchdog media can't even be bothered to notice.

I'm still not sure which one of those is the outrage of the week - but damn straight one of them is.

Sources:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304563104576355623135782718.html
http://www.fair.org/blog/2012/06/01/cyberwar-is-war-white-house-said-but-nyt-didnt-notice/
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ordered-wave-of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/25/world/middleeast/us-agencies-see-no-move-by-iran-to-build-a-bomb.html
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/computer_malware/stuxnet/index.html