Julian Assange and Wikileaks, a warning: How to hide an elephant

The reports make it clear that the lethal contest between Iranian-backed militias and American forces continued after President Obama sought to open a diplomatic dialogue with Iran’s leaders  New York Times

It seems to me that the most significant revelations from the massive WikiLeaks document dump is the apparent extent of Iran’s nefarious role in Iraq. Toby Harnden - Telegraph

Famous riddle: "How do you hide an elephant in the middle of 5th avenue? Answer: In a parade of elephants."

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Most of the present discussion about Wikileaks and its founder and leader, Julian Assange, centers around whether he is a hero or a villain. I would tentatively offer an alternative view based entirely on intuition, that Assange is a vain man, now world famous, who is being manipulated by a party or parties unknown, in order to help create public opinion favorable to the United States joining Israel in an attack on Iran, or the United States facilitating an Israeli attack on Iran.

What do I base this alternative view of mine on?

It goes like this:

Israel's oft stated maximum priority is to stop Iran from developing an atomic bomb and they have made it perfectly clear on innumerable occasions  that they will stop at nothing to prevent this happening. I believe them.

On the contrary, at this point in time, the American people are obsessed with the economy, with debt and especially unemployment. At the same time, the Obama administration is trying to extricate US armed forces from two wars that rival each other for the longest, most expensive and most inconclusive conflicts in the nation's history. The consequences of a third war, this time with Iran, would be hard to calculate, but the most predictable would be an enormous rise in the price of oil, which might send the economy off into the abyss. 

I don't think that it is exaggerating to say that there is a certain divergence in US and Israeli priorities at this moment.

Suddenly, like the "ghost of Christmas past", we are confronted with all the Bush horror again.

This particular Wikileak consists of an enormous "dump" of uncorrelated data, some 391,832 documents, much of which simply confirms atrocities and crimes that we already knew about. Things that we have been hearing and reading about for years. In the midst of this unmanageable flood of data incriminating American troops in war crimes, are new incidents incriminating Iran.

What better wrapping for an Iranian "smoking gun", than an endless flood of confirmable stories of Americans torturing and killing Iraqis? What better place to "hide an elephant". And what more willing and ingenuous tool for disseminating the package than the newly created, world superstar, Mr. Julian Assange. If he hasn't been manipulated yet, he is certainly ripe for it.

The most difficult question to answer would be if the right wing coalition that governs Israel is crazy enough use agents of the Mossad or rogue elements in the US intelligence community to deliberately blacken Israel's best friend's world reputation in order to create hostile opinion against Iran in the USA?

I don't know the answer, I only know that it is difficult for Americans, obsessed with the economy to realize how obsessed the Israelis are with Iran's atomic program and it is even more difficult for most Americans to understand how entirely and obsessively self-referential much of Israel's ultra right wing is.

Israel is torn right now between very sane people like Shlomo ben Ami and dangerous extremists like Avigdor Lieberman and there is no sign that the ben Amis of Israel are winning the argument.

All we can do is wait and see if this story stops being about Americans torturing and killing and turns into a story about Iran. DS