(no subject)
However, even as the American people remained rightly skeptical of Iran in the last year of President Obama’s first term, the Obama White House had begun secret talks with the Ahmadinejad regime, which would result in the world’s acquiescence to Iran’s nuclear program.
How would the American people react to knowing that an administration, then still stinging from Republican critiques of its anti-Americanism and weakness on the world stage, was holding secret negotiations in Oman with the most powerful still-standing member of George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil”?
As Rhodes explained to his bemused interviewer, David Samuels, in a New York Times Magazine profile this weekend, it was first necessary to lie to a corrupted and inexperienced American media about all sorts of things, beginning with the nature and intentions of the enemy Iranian regime. Subsequent lies were caked on, as the White House took advantage of a dangerous mix of journalists’ ignorance, their ideological and partisan commitment to the administration, and, finally, their career aspirations.
Rhodes said, “The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns… They literally know nothing.” Thus they will believe what he tells them. He also tells friendly non-governmental organizations and think tanks what he is telling the journalists. Those outlets produce “experts” whose expert opinion is just what Rhodes wants it to be. These ignorant young journalists thus have quotes that look like independent confirmation of the White House’s lies. Here’s how Samuels describes the scene:
In the spring of last year, legions of arms-control experts began popping up at think tanks and on social media, and then became key sources for hundreds of often-clueless reporters. ‘We created an echo chamber,’ [Rhodes] admitted, when I asked him to explain the onslaught of freshly minted experts cheerleading for the deal. ‘They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.’ (emphasis added)
Nuland’s successor, Jen Psaki, would later admit that, as Fox’s James Rosen reported, “the meetings stretched back to 2011.” By that time, as New York Times Magazine makes clear, Rhodes had fashioned a new origin story for the administration’s negotiations: that a “thaw” in American-Iranian relations was made possible by the election of Iranian “moderates” in the summer of 2013. Samuels writes of Rhodes:
He is adept at constructing overarching plotlines with heroes and villains, their conflicts and motivations supported by flurries of carefully chosen adjectives, quotations and leaks from named and unnamed senior officials. He is the master shaper and retailer of Obama’s foreign-policy narratives, at a time when the killer wave of social media has washed away the sand castles of the traditional press. (emphasis added)
Now, as Samuels reports, the White House knew it had enough political will and ideological accomplices in the media to jam the story down Americans’ throats and score a political victory:
Rhodes has become adept at ventriloquizing many people at once. Ned Price, Rhodes’s assistant, gave me a primer on how it’s done. The easiest way for the White House to shape the news, he explained, is from the briefing podiums…. ‘But then there are sort of these force multipliers,’ he said, adding, ‘We have our compadres, I will reach out to a couple people, and you know I wouldn’t want to name them-‘
‘I can name them,’ I said, ticking off a few names of prominent Washington reporters and columnists who often tweet in sync with White House messaging.
Price laughed. ‘I’ll say, “Hey, look, some people are spinning this narrative that this is a sign of American weakness,”’ he continued, ‘but-’
‘In fact it’s a sign of strength!’ I said, chuckling. (emphasis added)
[...] Samuels is chuckling because the game is so obviously rigged,
"This brings us to al-Monitor’s Laura Rozen. Perhaps no other reporter in Washington is as identified with voicing the point of view of both the Iranian regime and the White House. Unfortunately for the American people, this is anything but a difficult balancing act: the party line, in both cases, is almost always identical. "
"Iran was allowed to make a deal with the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect itself, and the terms of this deal were never turned over to Congress as the Corker-Cardin law required. Once again, friendly media action covered illegal action. Ignorant journalists who knew nothing but what they had been fed were willing partners in shutting down the debate. This gave cover for the president’s few allies in the Senate to stage their filibuster. It was successful, as the Senate never voted to accept or reject the Iran deal. The failure to disclose the side deals’ terms to Congress violated the Corker-Cardin law.
Similarly, the White House’s pet journalists fell all over themselves making sure that every outlet in America described the post-deal elections in Iran as a victory"
"Abandoning longtime allies while embracing states that have long been enemies is a massive strategic shift more momentous than what can ordinarily be explained as “foreign policy”; in a free society, it requires the assent of the American people. Like its manipulation of the Constitution’s treaty process, this White House subverted that assent to convince Americans that they live in a different, less dangerous world.
Operating as if we live in that different world, though, is a treacherous illusion. Some of the tangible results, not yet a year after the Iran deal: the consolidation of hard-liner power in Iran; the collapse of the ban on Iran’s testing of ballistic missiles; the collapse of the arms control regimes preventing Iran from buying heavy weapons and missiles from Russia; Iran’s staging of multiple new ballistic missile tests; and, finally, that Iran has generated so much new enriched uranium, they’ve had to ship tons to Russia."
http://thefederalist.com/2016/05/09/ben-rhodes-reveals-how-obama-duped-america-into-the-dangerous-iran-deal/
How would the American people react to knowing that an administration, then still stinging from Republican critiques of its anti-Americanism and weakness on the world stage, was holding secret negotiations in Oman with the most powerful still-standing member of George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil”?
As Rhodes explained to his bemused interviewer, David Samuels, in a New York Times Magazine profile this weekend, it was first necessary to lie to a corrupted and inexperienced American media about all sorts of things, beginning with the nature and intentions of the enemy Iranian regime. Subsequent lies were caked on, as the White House took advantage of a dangerous mix of journalists’ ignorance, their ideological and partisan commitment to the administration, and, finally, their career aspirations.
Rhodes said, “The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns… They literally know nothing.” Thus they will believe what he tells them. He also tells friendly non-governmental organizations and think tanks what he is telling the journalists. Those outlets produce “experts” whose expert opinion is just what Rhodes wants it to be. These ignorant young journalists thus have quotes that look like independent confirmation of the White House’s lies. Here’s how Samuels describes the scene:
In the spring of last year, legions of arms-control experts began popping up at think tanks and on social media, and then became key sources for hundreds of often-clueless reporters. ‘We created an echo chamber,’ [Rhodes] admitted, when I asked him to explain the onslaught of freshly minted experts cheerleading for the deal. ‘They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.’ (emphasis added)
Nuland’s successor, Jen Psaki, would later admit that, as Fox’s James Rosen reported, “the meetings stretched back to 2011.” By that time, as New York Times Magazine makes clear, Rhodes had fashioned a new origin story for the administration’s negotiations: that a “thaw” in American-Iranian relations was made possible by the election of Iranian “moderates” in the summer of 2013. Samuels writes of Rhodes:
He is adept at constructing overarching plotlines with heroes and villains, their conflicts and motivations supported by flurries of carefully chosen adjectives, quotations and leaks from named and unnamed senior officials. He is the master shaper and retailer of Obama’s foreign-policy narratives, at a time when the killer wave of social media has washed away the sand castles of the traditional press. (emphasis added)
Now, as Samuels reports, the White House knew it had enough political will and ideological accomplices in the media to jam the story down Americans’ throats and score a political victory:
Rhodes has become adept at ventriloquizing many people at once. Ned Price, Rhodes’s assistant, gave me a primer on how it’s done. The easiest way for the White House to shape the news, he explained, is from the briefing podiums…. ‘But then there are sort of these force multipliers,’ he said, adding, ‘We have our compadres, I will reach out to a couple people, and you know I wouldn’t want to name them-‘
‘I can name them,’ I said, ticking off a few names of prominent Washington reporters and columnists who often tweet in sync with White House messaging.
Price laughed. ‘I’ll say, “Hey, look, some people are spinning this narrative that this is a sign of American weakness,”’ he continued, ‘but-’
‘In fact it’s a sign of strength!’ I said, chuckling. (emphasis added)
[...] Samuels is chuckling because the game is so obviously rigged,
"This brings us to al-Monitor’s Laura Rozen. Perhaps no other reporter in Washington is as identified with voicing the point of view of both the Iranian regime and the White House. Unfortunately for the American people, this is anything but a difficult balancing act: the party line, in both cases, is almost always identical. "
"Iran was allowed to make a deal with the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect itself, and the terms of this deal were never turned over to Congress as the Corker-Cardin law required. Once again, friendly media action covered illegal action. Ignorant journalists who knew nothing but what they had been fed were willing partners in shutting down the debate. This gave cover for the president’s few allies in the Senate to stage their filibuster. It was successful, as the Senate never voted to accept or reject the Iran deal. The failure to disclose the side deals’ terms to Congress violated the Corker-Cardin law.
Similarly, the White House’s pet journalists fell all over themselves making sure that every outlet in America described the post-deal elections in Iran as a victory"
"Abandoning longtime allies while embracing states that have long been enemies is a massive strategic shift more momentous than what can ordinarily be explained as “foreign policy”; in a free society, it requires the assent of the American people. Like its manipulation of the Constitution’s treaty process, this White House subverted that assent to convince Americans that they live in a different, less dangerous world.
Operating as if we live in that different world, though, is a treacherous illusion. Some of the tangible results, not yet a year after the Iran deal: the consolidation of hard-liner power in Iran; the collapse of the ban on Iran’s testing of ballistic missiles; the collapse of the arms control regimes preventing Iran from buying heavy weapons and missiles from Russia; Iran’s staging of multiple new ballistic missile tests; and, finally, that Iran has generated so much new enriched uranium, they’ve had to ship tons to Russia."
http://thefederalist.com/2016/05/09/ben-rhodes-reveals-how-obama-duped-america-into-the-dangerous-iran-deal/