We heard these canards leading up to the 2003 war in Iraq. Twenty-two years later they have been resurrected. Anyone who advocates for negotiations, for diplomacy and peace, is a stooge for terrorists.
Deja Voodoo — by Mr. Fish
There are few differences between the lies told to ignite the war with Iraq and the lies told to ignite a war with Iran. The assessments of our intelligence agencies and international bodies are, as they were during the calls to invade Iraq, airily dismissed for hallucinations.
All the old tropes have been resurrected to entice us into another military fiasco. A country that poses no threat to us, or to its neighbors, is on the verge of acquiring a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD) that imperils our existence.
The country and its leaders embody pure evil. Freedom and democracy are at stake. If we do not act now the next smoking gun will be a mushroom cloud. Our military superiority assures victory. We are the saviors of the world. Massive bombing, an updated version of Shock and Awe, will bring peace and harmony.
We heard these canards leading up to the 2003 war in Iraq. Twenty-two years later they have been resurrected. Anyone who advocates for negotiations, for diplomacy and peace, is a stooge for terrorists.
Did we learn any lessons from the fiascos in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, not to mention Ukraine?
All the ghouls who sold us these past wars on false pretenses, such as conservative talk show host Mark Levin, Max Boot — who writes, “that strategic imperative argues for bombing Fordow,” where Iran’s nuclear enrichment program is buried underground — David Frum, John Bolton, Gen. Jack Keane, Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity and Thomas Friedman, have returned to saturate the airwaves with breathless fearmongering.
Never mind that their grand plan to topple the Taliban in Afghanistan and then invade and replace the regimes in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia — and finally in Iran — blew up in their faces. Never mind that their lust for war left hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions dead and drained trillions from the U.S. Treasury.
Never mind the sheer idiocy of their arguments. Their megaphones are secure. They are dutiful shills for the war industry, brain dead neoconservatives and genocidal Zionists, who believe in the magical regeneration of the world through violence, ignoring catastrophe after catastrophe.
Forget the intelligence community’s Annual Threat Assessment that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme leader Khomeini has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003,” something reiterated by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi this week.
Forget that Benjamin Netanyahu, for almost three decades, has been breathlessly warning that Iran is on the cusp of producing a nuclear weapon. Forget that the preemptive attack on Iran by Israel is a war crime, not to mention the bombings of a hospital, ambulance and journalists.
Forget the hundreds of Iranian civilians Israel has slaughtered in its waves of airstrikes. Forget that Israel launched its attack on Iran as the sixth round of negotiations on nuclear enrichment between the U.S. and Iran were set to take place in Oman.
Forget that it is the Israeli prime minister, not the leader of Iran, who is subject to an arrest warrant, accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Forget that Israel, in the midst of carrying out a campaign of genocide against the Palestinians, possesses at least 90 nuclear weapons — built in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) — and blocks inspections by the IAEA. Forget that Donald Trump ripped up the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018, an agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear program, which Iran was abiding by.
Forget that Washington and London orchestrated the 1953 coup to topple Iran’s democratically elected government, the first in the region, and installed the compliant Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi into power. Forget that the U.S., along with Israel, trained and equipped the SAVAK, the Shah’s savage secret police.
Bomb! Bomb! Bomb!
C.I.A. Director George Tenet speaks to Vice President Dick Cheney, with President George W. Bush and his chief of staff Andy Card in Oval Office, March 20, 2003, at the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. (Wikimedia Commons)
Iran’s purported nuclear weapons program is the evidence-free equivalent of Saddam Hussein’s mythical WMDs and alliance with Al-Qaeda.
The invasion and occupation of Iraq, which led to the deaths of over 4,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, resulted in widespread destruction, regional instability and gave birth to a range of fanatical extremist groups, including the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
The assurances — that our invasion would implant democracy in Baghdad, which would emanate outwards across the Middle East, that we would be greeted as liberators and that the oil revenues would pay for the reconstruction — were a fantasy dreamed up by the George W. Bush administration and Washington think tanks.
These shills for endless war do not grasp the mechanism or the consequences of war. They are culturally, historically, and linguistically illiterate about the countries they attack. Iraq. Afghanistan. Libya. Syria. Iran. I doubt they can tell the difference.
These cheerleaders of war, once they are proven wrong, are adept at issuing mea culpas. They assure us of their good intentions. They did not mean to peddle disinformation. They only wanted to keep the world safe from “evildoers” and protect our national security.
No one, even those within the Bush and now Trump administrations, are intentionally dishonest. It is not their fault if they act on flawed intelligence. The problem is one of judgment, not virtue. They are good people.
But this, perhaps, is the biggest lie. The intelligence assessments used to justify the war against Iraq were cooked up by a cabal of lunatic neoconservatives and rabid Zionists because they did not like the assessments of the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.) and other intelligence agencies.
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Now another cabal, dominated by Israel-firsters, is concocting bogus intelligence assessments to justify a war with Iran. These wars are not prosecuted in good faith. They are not based on a careful and rational assessment of verifiable intelligence. They are utopian visions severed from reality where our own intelligence agencies are ignored along with international bodies such as the United Nations, WMD inspectors or the IAEA.
The history of modern Iran is the history of a people battling tyrants propped up and funded by Western powers. The brutal crushing of legitimate democratic movements over the decades resulted in the 1979 revolution that brought the Iranian clerics to power.
The new Islamic government of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini championed Islam and argued for standing up to “arrogant” world powers and their regional allies, who would oppress others – including Palestinians – to serve their own interests.
“The central story of Iran over the last 200 years has been national humiliation at the hands of foreign powers who have subjugated and looted the country,” Stephen Kinzer, the author of All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, told me.
“For a long time the perpetrators were the British and Russians. Beginning in 1953, the United States began taking over that role. In that year, the American and British secret services overthrew an elected government, wiped away Iranian democracy, and set the country on the path to dictatorship.”
“Then, in the 1980s, the U.S. sided with Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war, providing him with military equipment and intelligence that helped make it possible for his army to kill hundreds of thousands of Iranians,” Kinzer said. “Given this history, the moral credibility of the U.S. to pose as a promoter of democracy in Iran is close to nil.”
You can see an interview I did with Kinzer about Iran here.
How would we react if Iran orchestrated a coup in the U.S. to replace an elected government with a brutal dictator, who for decades persecuted, assassinated and imprisoned democracy activists? How would we react if Iran armed and funded a neighboring state, as we did during the eight year war with Iraq, to wage war against us?
How would we react if Iran shot down one of our passenger jets as did the USS Vincennes (CG49) — caustically nicknamed the “Robocruiser” by the crews of other American vessels — when in July 1988 it fired missiles at a commercial aircraft filled with Iranian civilians, killing all 290 passengers, including 66 children?
How would we react if Iranian intelligence services sponsored terrorism within the U.S., as our and Israel’s intelligence services do in Iran? How would we react if these state-sponsored terrorist attacks included suicide bombings, kidnappings, beheadings, sabotage and “targeted assassinations,” of government officials, scientists and other Iranian leaders?
How would we react if, like Israel, a country attacked us based on a hypothesis, an attack that is illegal under the U.N. charter, which forbids preemptive war?
The pimps of war who orchestrate these military fiascos have risen once again from the crypt. They migrate like zombies from administration to administration. They are ensconced in think tanks — Project for the New American Century, American Enterprise Institute, Foreign Policy Research Initiative, The Atlantic Council and The Brookings Institution — funded by corporations, the Israel lobby and the war industry.
They are puppets jerked up and down by their masters, given megaphones by a bankrupt media, urging us forward from one quagmire to the next.
The old faces and the old lies are back, exhorting us into another nightmare.
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor and NPR. He is the host of show The Chris Hedges Report.
This article is from Scheerpost.
NOTE TO READERS: There is now no way left for me to continue to write a weekly column for ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show without your help. The walls are closing in, with startling rapidity, on independent journalism, with the elites, including the Democratic Party elites, clamoring for more and more censorship. Please, if you can, sign up at chrishedges.substack.com so I can continue to post my Monday column on ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show, “The Chris Hedges Report.”
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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I don’t think the situation between, Iran, the U.S. and the terrorist state of Israel could be summed up any more accurately. Thank you Mr Hedges. the article should be required reading in every school in America. It should be read as part of the half time show at the next rigged Super Bowl.
Wars for any available excuse lacking facts is the western warfare civilizations form of social planning and urban renewal by refugee flight and population control.
“To conflate Iran with Iraq and Afghan is the same as the pro-war in Ukrainers comparing to Hitler marching into Poland.” To be somewhat tangential, you mention Poland and I think of Gaza as having been a slow motion Warsaw ghetto….until quite recently-Not so slow motion now. Sometimes wonder how the Zionists are able to maintain this level of cognitive dissonance
“They are dutiful shills for the war industry, brain dead neoconservatives and genocidal Zionists, who believe in the magical regeneration of the world through violence, ignoring catastrophe after catastrophe.”
What catastrophe? The past 24 years have been an utter bonanza for the war industry, which these people do indeed serve; and the future looks very bright for continued multitudes of lucre.
That millions are dead and our home country is hollowed and poverty stricken and angry is NOT their problem … they have served their masters well and are very well rewarded for that service.
Anyone remember Lawrence Franklin?
It is not “WAR” being conducted.
It is business as usual.
Get thee back to the seminary.
*“Time is a figure eight, at its center” the ‘War Deja Vu’. Chris Hedges, “The old faces and the old lies are back, exhorting us into another nightmare.” i.e.,*“Deja Voodoo.” No doubt, *“day in, day out. That same old voodoo follows “US” about.”
“Deja vu, tell you what I’m gonna do, when reminiscing about “the who-do voodoo” that US Presidents, 42-47, do,” deliver the “Blues.” Where there should have been scientific objectivity there has been voodoo medicine, i.e., POTUS #46, Joe Biden-Comma La Harris, the Duopoly’s Democrat Duo’s 4 years of blatant image manipulation voodoo. Leaving Comma La Harris tweaking HER image, identity & bank account; &, the dementia addled, truth challenged Jo$eph R. Biden in REHABoth. IMO, Obama’s, Harris’ & Biden’s “got”amnesia & deja vu @ the same time. Conveniently, forgetting that *“Joe Biden owns this, OCTOBER 19, 2023, The US president owns every despicable aspect of the calamity unfolding in Gaza perpetrated by his country’s ever reliable and obedient proxy, Israel.” Andrew Mitrovica, Al Jazeera @ hxxps://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/10/19/joe-biden-owns-this
M.I.A., in MSM & in Mr. Fish’s “Deja VooDoo” is that other “big voodoo daddy,” #44, Barack Obama. However, his legacy, “Forever Wars” like his “Obama Doctrine” lives! It’s Obama’s mystical voodoo, “No Boots On The Ground!” Hence, Obama said, “Everybody in Washington gets all wee-weed (ph) up.” The killers in high places saying their prayers out loud.
Concluding, “Deja Vu” is not about predicting the future but rather a feeling of reliving a past experience,“ i.e., Voodoo Economics. Plato attributed Deja Vu to the remembrance of knowledge from past lives; Aristotle saw it as a result of similar sensory experiences triggering familiar memories.” no doubt, Chris Hedges’ “precognition implies a sense of foresight; & “War Deja Vu” is about an overwhelming sense of familiarity in the present moment!!!” TY, Chris Hedges.
……“I noticed that all the prayers I used to offer to God, and all the prayers I now offer to Joe Pesci, are being answered at about the same 50% rate. Half the time I get what I want, half the time I don’t… Same as the four-leaf clover and the horseshoe…same as the Voodoo Lady who tells you your fortune by squeezing the goat’s testicles, it’s all the same: 50-50. So just pick your superstition, sit back, make a wish, and enjoy yourself.” George Carlin
TY, Chris Hedges, Mr. Fish, CN. “Keep It Lit!”
*Robert Breault
*Johnny Mercer
I came to say the “deja voodoo” has to be Mr. Fish’s best cartoon yet.
I can’t add anything to your voodoo, whodoo, (goat) doodoo, (he probably doodood after she squeezed his testicles), or to Mr. Hedges unstinting grasp of reality and eloquent summary.
Xxxx//m.youtube.com/watch?v=mCvHwgTbZOU&pp=ygUbc29uZyB5b3UgZG8gc29tZXRoaW5nIHRvIG1l
A “voodoo” song.
I came to say the “deja voodoo” has to be Mr. Fish’s best cartoon yet.
I can’t add anything to your voodoo, whodoo, (goat) doodoo, (he probably doodood after she squeezed his testicles), or to Mr. Hedges unstinting grasp of reality and eloquent summary.
Xxxx//m.youtube.com/watch?v=mCvHwgTbZOU&pp=ygUbc29uZyB5b3UgZG8gc29tZXRoaW5nIHRvIG1l
A “voodoo” song.
Valerie,
No doubt, that little goat’s “got” this, “$hit, happens!” &, it’s got Trump-Vance, Inc., written all over it!!! “DejaVu,” tells us “we” got to do, 1) DUMP, TRUMP-Vance, Inc.; 2) FREE the GOAT! 3) POST, Publish, Repeat, Valerie’s summary, “Mr. Hedges unstinting grasp of reality and eloquent summary.” 100%, “ Top Shelf!” It’s SFO, Valerie. “Keep It Lit!”
I just found your comment. of June 21, 225 @ 12:14. on my comment of June 17, 2025 @22:19.
We often hear this about love ones lost, especially when no explanation can describe our pain. And yes he was a kind gentle large man.
But here is a twist my son and I talked on the phone most evenings during a quiet time ( 9:30 10:30 pm). and what we discussed was world affairs and how our government was draining the country by insane wars of choice and society dumbed down farther that ever before in history. We also discussed the state of the human condition.
He had, via the internet a few contacts around the world including one dating back to Serbia and learned from these discussions what life was like for them during the periods of conflict dealing with snipers etc.
He gained first hand knowledge and it changed him. During that period we discussed more and more and he “got it”. He learned why the Vietnam war was so different from those since. The major difference was how the draft affected enlistments, enlisted or drafted you were subjected to the same brain conditioning. And the change of mentality among those who enlisted. Things had changed for the worst.
He understood why I hate war, violence and the harsh treatment of innocents. We discuss the waste of human life, the earths gifts to mankind and the tremendous pain in our world today. Most of it senseless.
He helped me with research and tips on material he had come across on the net. He earned his living working with and on computers and helped my, help I needed badly.
Now I’m all in on this endeavor, I do it in his memory and I don’t plan to stop ever. He would want me to carry on,
thank you for replying and thank you for caring so much about the human condition. Resist the greed headed billionaires at all costs.
PEACE My Brother.
TY, Robert E. Williamson, Jr. Sooo true, “no explanation can describe our pain.” BUT, Robert, at the f/least, “the powers that be” could ease the pain, w/an answer for, imo, the yet unexplained phenomena, “sons, fathers, friends, young men, in their 40’s, suddenly sick, beyond a cure, consequently, dying NOT in war, in hospitals.”
Best Friends, FOREVER!!! “He had, via the internet a few contacts around the world including one dating back to Serbia and learned from these discussions what life was like for them during the periods of conflict dealing with snipers etc. He gained first hand knowledge and it changed him.” i.e., The ask, *“WHAT IS” the Divided $tates of Corporate America, today, if not diseased, aching, and wounded?”
“[WHAT] is the Muslim body today if not diseased, aching, and wounded?” Farah El Sherif, Islamic Scholar @ “Arab Regimes & the Betrayal of Palestine,” 2.7. 25 *https://consortiumnews.com/2025/02/07/the-chris-hedges-report-arab-regimes-the-betrayal-of-palestine/
……“So these security states have our people strangulated, whether it is through surveillance, repression or intimidation.” Farah El Sherif, “So again, this ecosystem of fear not only surveils and kind of mutes people who are so-called not in, who are kind of not in the genocidal atmosphere, but I like what, [THERE WAS] an Egyptian taxi driver in the video that went kind of viral, he was, he rode with a gentleman from Gaza and when he found out that he was from Gaza, he started crying and he said, no, no, no, I won’t take your money. And this is the least I could do not to take your money. Forgive us, forgive us for we are occupied too,” he said.
“Write On,” Robert!!! Keep It Lit, “Now I’m all in on this endeavor, I do it in his memory and I don’t plan to stop ever. He would want me to carry on!” Robert E. Williamson Jr.
Indeed, “Carry onward, like some songbird, beautiful stranger.” Kevin MoRby @https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mgsc_VyQ2PI&pp=ygUfYmVhdXRpZnVsIHN0cmFuZ2VycyBrZXZpbiBtb3JieQ%3D%3D
Reason in the face of a war of lies is no vice.
Today our Zionist supremacist media have chosen to emphasize the fact that the three Iranian nuclear energy sites that were hit by Trump’s Saturday bombing campaign are actually now only a few months away from being able to construct nuclear weapons. This is all true, but it’s beside the point.
What our Zionist supremacist media are doing is trying to unnerve and drum up fear among the American population to get us to support a near future heavier bombing run on Iran. They’re also attempting to essentially humiliate Trump to a certain extent in order to prick his ego for him to again wage another missile attack on the sites.
As I’ve known for decades and have expressed in various forums, these Zio supremacists will never be satiated. Their bloodlust and paranoia know no bounds; just ask the Palestinians who they’ve been massacring for the past 20 months. Their ultimate goal is regime change in Tehran. They desire a quisling regime that poses absolutely no perceived threat to a neurotically anxious and hegemonic Israel. Then of course it’ll be on to more regime change in Pakistan, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt; anywhere these paranoid freaks feel the slightest bit threatened.
People often think of the mainstream media as a supporter of the Mil-Ind economy where they are actually a primary mover. After all, the mainstream media are owned by the same people behind the Complex. No wonder the media are the central and indispensable element of MICIMATT.
Exactly. Great comment. They’re an integral component of the Washington-Zio-militarist empire builders.
If actually TERRORISING an entire people, as Israel is doing to Palestine isn’t TERRORISM and rejecting them and their ILLEGAL war of aggression is mislabeled as “terrorism” we’ve gone way beyond 1984 levels of doublespeak and dishonest disinformation. I dare any of the Zionist TERRORISTS to try that shit on me! They damn sure better be hiding behind a keyboard.
To conflate Iran with Iraq and Afghan is the same as the pro-war in Ukrainers comparing to Hitler marching into Poland.
This bombing maps Dresden, Hiroshima, Panama, and Grenada, with a lot more mercy than we showed two nations NOT threatrning nukes.
Even Morning Joe, the official mouthpiece of the bluest Dems, who supported Biden until Kamala and who still charge Trump with being a “threat to democracy,” chides Dems who are caviling about processes leading to the “most successful military operation” in at least this century.