It has been revealed that under the Bush administration the United States helped train a terrorist group that has been linked to the deaths of Americans and Iranian nuclear scientists. This was 
revealed after investigative reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh filed a story a blog for “The New Yorker” linking the U.S. to the terrorist group MEK. Members of MEK were trained in Nevada and have been used as “surrogates” in Iran for the U.S., according to Hersh.
Recently, the MEK was linked to the killings of several Iranian nuclear scientists that sparked public outrage by Iranians and some in the U.S. The U.S. claimed it had nothing to do with the murders in Iran, however, since the story has emerged it has been proven that the U.S. helped train the individuals in the group responsible for the killings of the scientists. This presents quite the paradox for the U.S.: We fight terrorism abroad in the name of freedom, yet we train terrorists on our own soil. The irony of this occurring during the Bush Administration, which stripped citizens of basic civil liberties with the Patriot Act, is unexpected, but not surprising.
MEK has been on the state department’s list of terrorist organizations for the last 15 years. There is an overlap here. While the MEK was on the state department’s list, they were being trained secretively in at a Nevada base in 2004 and early 2005. Hersh said the U.S. tends to “encourage insurrection abroad” in Iran by groups like MEK to further its intelligence regarding the Iranian regime. The MEK has also been linked to using explosives that were created by the U.S., most notably in the case of the Iranian nuclear scientist. “It’s not an accident that these weapons can be traced to the Navy Seals,” Hersh said in an interview on “Democracy Now!.” The training of MEK stopped under the Obama administration.
Hersh’s work deserves praise. In an age dominated by corporate media afraid of stories that reveal wrong doings of large businesses and the U.S. government, this story reveals that the U.S. is not how it always says it is. Although we claim to fight terrorism it seems that with this, we bolstered it by training assassins on our own “free” soil.
By The Parthenon – Marshall parthenon
