Obama claims sympathy for Iranian victims without mentioning that the U.S. funded their killers

Andrew Steele
America 20xy
December 17, 2010

Suicide bombers killed 39 people during a Shi’ite religious ceremony in Iran this week. The terrorist group “Jundallah” has taken responsibility, saying that the attack was retaliation for the Iranian government’s execution of their leader last summer.

According to Reuters:

U.S. President Barack Obama, who has sought to engage diplomatically with Iran while pushing through tougher sanctions on Tehran over its disputed nuclear programme, condemned what he said was a “disgraceful and cowardly act.”

“The murder of innocent civilians in their place of worship during Ashura is a despicable offence, and those who carried it out must be held accountable,” he said in a statement.

A d v e r t i s e m e n t

You may be able to overlook the notion that the current administration’s continuation of Bush’s propaganda war against Iran and its hypothetical nuclear weapons is somehow considered diplomatic engagement. However, in his call for accountability, Obusha failed to mention the United States’ support of Jundullah as recently as 2007, funneling money to the group through Iranian exiles in an attempt to cause chaos and destabilize the country, according to a report by ABC News in April of that year:

U.S. officials say the U.S. relationship with Jundullah is arranged so that the U.S. provides no funding to the group, which would require an official presidential order or “finding” as well as congressional oversight.

The article later concludes:

Some former CIA officers say the arrangement is reminiscent of how the U.S. government used proxy armies, funded by other countries including Saudi Arabia, to destabilize the government of Nicaragua in the 1980s.

Rather than giving generic, Bush-like condemnations of “disgraceful” and “cowardly” acts, (like predator drone bombings?) the president perhaps could “diplomatically engage” Iran by telling us whether or not his administration continues to fund Jundullah and whether or not the blood of those 39 people he claims to have sympathy for is also on his hands. Since Bush’s wars haven’t ended under Obama, since the police state has grown, and since the pleasant promises of the election have turned out to be less campaign bluster than all out lies, the president hasn’t earned the benefit of the doubt. Unless he addresses this issue we can assume that the U.S. support of Jundullah is another practice of the last administration that hasn’t changed, though the official empty suit overseeing it has, and that the long term plan to destabilize Iran before an opportune time comes to take it is still in full swing.

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In this video from last year Webster Tarpley talking about the U.S.