From Sean McCormack’s State Department briefing yesterday:
QUESTION: I mean, Sean, sort of a follow-up on all these questions. In a general sense, the big (inaudible) at the moment we’ve seen, you know, cover of Newsweek, cover of Economist saying Iran could be next, a lot of speculation about military action. Can you give me any reaction to that?
MR. MCCORMACK: It seems to be the news media that is whipping up that storyline, not us….
…President Bush has made it very clear that we, as has Secretary Gates — Secretary of Defense Gates has made it very clear that while we don’t take option — no President takes options off the table, our force protection actions are focused on activities inside of Iraq. We have no plans to attack Iran.
So I’ll put it to you that it might be — you might look amongst yourselves and your colleagues within the journalistic community in terms of people who are whipping this up. It’s certainly not the U.S. Government.
McCormick is right, of course. It was the media that issued an order for the U.S. military to attack Iranian assets in Iraq; the media that’s been raiding Iranian offices in Iraq; and the media that’s deploying additional naval carrier groups to the Persian Gulf. How could anyone think otherwise?
