Sam Gardiner*, 6 May 2008

Yesterday's New York Times contains an article by Michael Gordon in which he reveals information from "an American official" that Hezbollah has been training Iraqi militia fighters in a camp near Tehran.  UGH!  This is so deja vu that it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

Remember Salman Pak?  That was the terrorist training camp in Iraq that was used over and over again to justify the invasion.  The parallels to this new story are striking.

First of all, it feels like the story is part of a strategic communications plan.  It is not something that happened last week.  The individuals who revealed this information were captured between September and December of last year.  A key piece of information came from a Hezbollah commander who was captured in March 2007.  He is just now talking according to the article.

At Salman Pak the story was that Hezbollah was being trained.  In the new version, Hezbollah terrorists are the trainers.

In the new story, the group size is 16 militants.  At Salman Pak, the groups were smaller, around five individuals.

At Salman Pak the foreigners were trained on the other side of the facility.  In the Iranian camp, these foreigners are close enough so informants can hear their "other dialects and languages."

I expect the American officials - at the beginning of the article, it was one official, but by the end there were officials - expected an echo from the story.  The echo from the Salman Pak story was repeated by CENTCOM briefers during the invasion and FOX news hosts were even repeating it a year later.  This morning's New York Times piece has already been echoed by Reuters, Bloomberg and UPI.

If the pattern of Gulf II repeats, we would expect the White House web site to begin to link to the article in the area that deals with Iran.

It is hard to understand why Gordon did not make a parallel in his article to Salman Pak after all the problems the Times had in being used before Gulf II.  It is hard to believe Reuters, Bloomberg and UPI were so quick to repeat the story.  It is hard to believe American officials are using the same old techniques.

*Spinwatch is pleased to announce that Sam Gardiner (Colonel, USAF (retired)) has agreed to blog on Spinwatch on the heightened threat to Iran over the coming weeks.