Barack Obama

Noted Bamboozler Behind Latest Obama Smear

Zachary Roth | September 16, 2008, 12:14PM

Since yesterday, the right-wing blogosphere has been all aflutter over a report in the New York Post, written by the Iranian-born journalist Amir Taheri, that Barack Obama has privately tried to delay an agreement between the Iraqi government and the Bush administration on a draw-down of American forces from Iraq.

Here's the key passage:

According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.

"He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington," Zebari said in an interview.

Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in negotiations on the status of US troops - and that it was in the interests of both sides not to have an agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in its "state of weakness and political confusion."

Yesterday evening, the McCain camp sought to get some mileage out of Taheri's report, releasing a statement from Randy Scheunemann, McCain's top foreign policy aide, asserting that: "If news reports are accurate, this is an egregious act of political interference by a presidential candidate seeking political advantage overseas."

But there are a couple reasons why the bloviation looks to be uncalled for. The Obama camp yesterday put out a statement of its own asserting that the story "bears as much resemblance to the truth as a McCain campaign commercial," and charging that Taheri has confused a long-term Status of Forces agreement with negotations over a shorter-term drawdown.

It's worth looking at that distinction more closely to get a sense of what the Obama camp means here and where Taheri may have erred. In terms of a Status of Forces agreement, Obama has consistently made clear that he believes any such agreement should be delayed until after the election -- so that a President Obama or McCain would not be bound by an agreement negotiated by a weakened Bush administration. The McCain camp did not object when, in June, Obama told reporters at a press conference that he had made exactly this argument to Zebari in a phone call.

The Obama campaign's statement released yesterday in response to the report was consistent with this position: "Barack Obama has consistently called for any Strategic Framework Agreement to be submitted to the U.S. Congress so that the American people have the same opportunity for review as the Iraqi Parliament," though, perhaps unwilling to alienate antiwar voters, it artfully omitted the fact that Obama has argued that this should be delayed until the next administration is in charge.

As for a shorter-term drawdown -- which is what Taheri seems to mean by "a draw-down of the American military presence" -- Obama has never suggested that this should be delayed. And again, yesterday's statement backs that up: "Unlike John McCain, he supports a clear timetable to redeploy our troops that has the support of the Iraqi government. Barack Obama has never urged a delay in negotiations, nor has he urged a delay in immediately beginning a responsible drawdown of our combat brigades."

Still, if Taheri's report were accurate, and Obama had indeed talked to Zebari about delaying any shorter-term deal, it would at least represent a change of position for the candidate.

But Taheri doesn't exactly have a reputation for care and precision in his work. In May 2006, he published an explosive story in the Post (since removed from the paper's site), as well as Canada's National Post, about an Iranian law that forced Jews to wear a yellow stripe, stoking fears of a second Nazi Germany. Only problem: it turned out to be a complete fabrication.

That turned out to be typical of Taheri's work. A 1989 review of Taheri's book, Nest of Spies: America's Journey to Disaster in Iran, written for The New Republic by noted Iranian scholar Shaul Bakhash and unearthed by TPMmuckraker in 2006, noted that Taheri "repeatedly refers us to books where the information cited does not exist," and is "capable of generalizations of breathtaking sweep and inaccuracy." According to Bakhash, "[Taheri's] interpretations of the documents are often egregiously inaccurate," and he "has trouble transcribing even the simplest information."

One Iraq scholar told TPMmuckraker after the false yellow-star report, referring to Taheri: "This is a person who doesn't have any credibility."

Doesn't exactly sound like a reliable source.

Amir Taheri

Bamboozler: They'll Welcome Us with Flowers THIS Time

Justin Rood | January 12, 2007, 3:12PM

Remember Amir Taheri? He's the White House favorite who peddled the story that Iran was requiring its Jewish citizens to wear yellow stripes. Chilling story, if true -- which it wasn't. Well, Taheri -- who's prone to claiming non-existent sources and "[making] generalizations of breathtaking sweep and inaccuracy" -- is at it again.

Iraqis can't wait to have more U.S. troops running through their neighborhoods. And guess who's to blame for the internecine violence that's driving the American escalation? Cindy Sheehan! No kidding.

From his op-ed in today's New York Post:

". . . Baghdadis say the population of [war-torn Baghdad neighborhoods] will greet the American troops with sweets and flowers.

The fear that the United States, bedeviled by internecine feuds, might cut and run has been at the root of the violence since Iraq's liberation in 2003.

Jihadists have fought not because they hope to win on the battlefield, but to strengthen the antiwar lobbies in the United States and Britain."

Amir Taheri

Iran Bamboozler Still Hyping

Paul Kiel | July 24, 2006, 11:00AM

Ever since neocon Amir Taheri was caught red-handed fabricating a story about an Iranian law that forced Jews to wear a yellow stripe, we vowed to keep an eye on him. Sure enough, just two weeks after his bamboozle was revealed, he visited the White House with other Middle East "experts" to advise the President.

And lo! If you happened to peruse the pages of The London Times yesterday, under a headline alarmingly titled "God's Army Has Plans To Run the Whole Middle East," you would have found Taheri proclaiming that "The mini war that is taking place between Israel and Hezbollah is, in fact, a proxy war in which Iran’s vision for the Middle East clashes with the administration in Washington."

"The real issue," Taheri wants us to know, "is who will set the agenda for the Middle East: Iran or America?"

As James Wolcott points out, Taheri's column was promptly picked up by the National Review Online and other conservative high traffic sites. Missing in those enthusiastic posts, however, was any mention of the column's author.

Amir Taheri

Iran Bamboozler Invited to White House as "Expert"

Paul Kiel | May 31, 2006, 11:35AM

Two weeks ago, Amir Taheri published an op-ed in Canada's National Post about an Iranian law that forced Jews to wear a yellow stripe. The story, reminiscent of Nazi Germany, quickly provoked outrage, but was just as quickly revealed to be a total fabrication. It also ran in the New York Post.

Apparently this is just the sort of reliable advice that President Bush needs. Yesterday, Taheri had a face-to-face with the President as one of a small group of "experts" on Iraq that visited the White House.

According to Press Secretary Tony Snow, the experts were invited to the White House for their "honest opinions" on Iraq.