Referring to recent news released by Washington Post , Reuters , CNN and the Chinese newspaper People’s Daily, Cernig goes through a propaganda claim about how 300,000 Iraqis supposedly signed a petition complaining about alleged Iranian involvement in Iraq. The claim is strongly supported by a globally blacklisted terrorist organization, Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO), aka MEK, PMOI, NCRI. It is not the first time that the terrorist group, on the verge of expulsion from Iraq, exaggerates the supposed number of some supporters, this time 300,000. As Cering says:
That’s a lot, isn’t it?
But…
It isn’t as many as when this story was last hawked around, back in June. Then, according to the MeK’s own website, it was 450,000 members of the Iraqi tribes of Diyala who were condemning Iran’s presence as part and parcel of expressing "full solidarity with the Mujahideen Khalq (MEK)"
But…
Even that is nothing compared to the attempt before that to hawk the self-same story. Back in June 2006, the MeK’s political wing – the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which FOX News expert on Iran Alireza Jafarzadeh used to be spokesman for – announced that:
Solidarity Congress of Iraqi People announced the support of 5.2 million Iraqi’s to a declaration condemning Iranian regime’s meddling in their country. The declaration also lends support to People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran [The MeK’s other alias – C] whose presence in Iraq has acted as a major obstacle to mullahs’ fundamentalist ambitions in Iraq. The announcement was made before a huge crowd of Iraqis in Ashraf City on June 17.
Ashraf City, by the by, is the MeK’s own name for "Camp Ashraf" – the rather salubrious location, situated conveniently close to iraq’s biggest munitions dump – where thousands of MeK members are "guarded" by a handful of US and Bulgarian troops.
Back then, the breakdown of the notable signatories to the petition was even more admirable:
121 political parties and social groups, 700,000 women, 14,000 lawyers and jurists, 19,000 physicians, 35,000 engineers, 320 clerics, 540 professors, 2,000 tribal sheikhs and 300 local officials among 5.2 million signitaries of the declaration.
Maybe it was the claim that fully a third of Iraq’s population had signed something supporting such an odious terror group that lead to general disbelief and the story sinking without a trace.
So either the folk supporting the MeK against an alleged infiltration of the Iraqi government from top to bottom are changing their minds – by the millions – or the latest version is just the MeK scaling down their entirely fictitious nonsense to a more believable level.
Were it not for the fact that anti-Iranian rhetoric is currently fashionable, and is being stirred at every opportunity by U.S. neoconservatives both in and out of the White House, this latest story would have sunk without a trace too.
