20,000 Brain-injured Troops Not Counted as War Casualties by Pentagon
Sectarian Shiite Tribes denounce Iran
Chretien Proud of Bucking Bush
Whoever is responsible for this disgusting travesty is an automatic candidate for Keith Olbermann's "Worst Person in the World." My guess is that the trail will lead back to Donald "its not a guerrilla war" Rumsfeld and Richard Bruce "most prominent traitor in American history" Cheney. Gregg Zoroya of USA Today reports that 20,000 US troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and suffered brain injuries were never classified as wounded by the Pentagon and are not included in the official statistics for the wounded issued by the Department of Defense. Although some of the under-reporting of this condition could be inadvertent, the scale of it strongly suggests an underlying policy.
Former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien says that it was among the great victories in his life that he stood against US pressure to join in the Iraq War.
Uh, the purpose of a wise and mature US foreign policy is to avoid close allies ending up speaking like that. Bush has destroyed half a century of good will among NATO allies, most of whom now think they are better off not following Washington's lead. Leaders who threw in with Bush, like Aznar of Spain and Berlusconi of Italy, have been ushered off the political stage by enraged publics. As someone who grew up when the US (and its currency) was respected by most Europeans and other North Americans, I am sad to see the way W. has debased our position and humiliated our country.
Among the biggest irritants in NATO countries against the US now is the mission in Afghanistan, which seems both open-ended and ultimately fruitless. Canada did not dodge that bullet, and has lost dozens of soldiers there, though you would not know it from reading US newspapers. On Friday, Pushtun guerrillas killed an Australian soldier in Uruzgan province (Mulla Omar's birthplace), and others killed 3 civilians, attacked a police checkpoint and killed 7 officers and kidnapped 6 others. (What is the mission? If the mission is to get Pushtuns to stop worrying about Islam and start welcoming foreign troops in their country, I wouldn't hold my breath).
The tribal sheikhs of southern Iraq who have gotten up a petition against Iranian influence in their region should be viewed with some suspicion. I heard supporters of the petition interviewed on Aljazeera today and they were looney as the day is long. One was maintaining that hundreds of thousands of Iranians have flooded into southern Iraq (not true if you mean residents; Iran is nice compared to southern Iraq and nobody is immigrating. You could see that level of immigration on satellite photos!)
The other interviewee supporting the petition was, I swear to God, a member of the Army of Heaven millenarian group that is alleged to have marched on Najaf last January with the aim of killing Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and other Shiite clerical leaders in hopes of thereby provoking the coming of the Twelfth Imam, the Promised One of Shiite Islam. This man defended the Army of Heaven as Iraqi and intimated that it had been attacked by the Iranians.
So these tribal sheikhs petitioning against Iran are probably linked to Iraqi nativist and sectarian movements like that of Mahmoud al-Hasani al-Sarkhi (who leads an anti-Iranian offshoot of the Sadr Movement) and even the Army of Heaven. Among their primary targets is the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, led by cleric Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. ISCI was formed by Iraqi expatriates at the suggestion of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1982 in Iran and long received money and training from Tehran. ISCI dominates the provincial governments of most southern Shiite provinces, to the annoyance of local Iraqi Shiites unconnected to them or Iran, who feel excluded from patronage. (The petition may even be a way of extracting more patronage from Iran and ISCI).
No doubt our own American "Army of Heaven" will wax dreamy-eyed about these Iraqi nativists working against Iranian influence. I wouldn't get so excited about it if I were they. Rural sectarian Shiism might not look so attractive in power.
Reuters reports political violence for Friday, including an attack by guerrillas on Mosul police.
Labels: Iraq
posted by Juan Cole @ 11/24/2007 12:30:00 AM
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In re the brain injuries not being included in the casualty count, it seems clear from the USAT article that it is a policy, but it's essentially a statistical one: the rule is that wounds discovered after the soldier has left the war theatre are not counted in the official tally. I'm willing to bet that's a long standing rule. It's easy to see how in the past that would seem like a a reasonable rule, weighted to rosy side, but no more than you expect. But it's not hard to see how the unprecedented combination of body armor plus IEDs now routinely produce lots of brain injuries whose symptoms don't show up until long after soldiers have left. There doesn't seem to be anything nefarious in the army's care of soldiers with this condition -- all these stats are sourced to army hospitals who are clearly routinely running brain checks now precisely for this reason. And now they understand it medically, clearly the statistical rule should clearly be changed, and they should be added to the number of wounded, which would almost double it. But I daresay that wouldn't make a drop of difference to public opinion, which has only ever paid attention to headline death rate, and never to number of wounded except in the most general terms. I think changing 30,000 to 60,000 wounded would have less effect on public morale than going from 4,000 to 5,000 dead.
You wrote >our own American "Army of Heaven" will wax dreamy-eyed<
Not very likely. You may remember that when they marched on Najaf last January, they claimed they were attacked by the police (ISCI) without provocation. They said they came for pilgrimage: ISCI's later story had the assassination attempt on Sistani. Anyway, ISCI-police called in US military help, and our gunships killed over 200 men, women, and children.
The US army may have forgotten, but I doubt that the millenarians have.
The Sadrists are Iraqi nativists
Here and in the last post, calling Iraqis "nativists" is to suggest that they are in some way primitive, and is condescending. It looks to me like a way of avoiding calling them nationalist, which is what they are. The Sadr tendency is nationalist, among other things. You have been avoiding admitting the importance of the revival of national sentiment. Separatism except among the Kurds seems to me to have nearly entirely disappeared.
speaking of traitors
Richard Perle: ‘I Don’t Believe I Was Wrong’ About Iraq
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/11/23/perle-iraq-wrong/
Appearing on BBC’s Hardtalk, Iraq war architect Richard Perle attempted, on the one hand, to distance himself from the failures of the Iraq war, and on the other hand, to claim it was a fantastic success.
“I’m not happy about the way events have unfolded in Iraq,” Perle began. But when asked whether he felt a “sense of personal responsibility” for what has happened in the aftermath of the invasion, Perle said “I certainly don’t consider myself responsible” for the disastrous post-war occupation of Iraq.
Asked whether he was wrong on Iraq, Perle gave this response:
Well, I don’t believe I was wrong. Let me be very clear about that. What I think happened is that a successful invasion was turned into an unsuccessful occupation. I didn’t favor the occupation strategy. I think the occupation was a mistake.
Perle also defended his pre-war claim that regime change in Iraq would bring about “dancing in the streets.” “Essentially,” there was, said Perle. “The Iraqis actually tend to shoot weapons in the air rather than dance in the streets,” he observed. “But we were regarded as liberators at the beginning.”
Before the war, Perle advocated simply bombing and leaving Iraq. “We do not have to go into Baghdad,” he said in October 2002. “We do not have to engage in door-to-door, street-to-street fighting.”
But once the war began, Perle specifically endorsed the Paul Bremer-led occupation of Iraq. And repeatedly claimed it was producing good results. Appearing on Fox News on April 7, 2004, Perle said, “We’re making so much progress with most Iraqis that those who feel threatened by the progress are more devoted and more energetic than ever to try to destroy the progress we’re making.”
' As someone who grew up when the US (and its currency) was respected by most Europeans and other North Americans, I am sad to see the way W. has debased our position and humiliated our country. '
I certainly am as saddened as you are by the developments in the US since the turn of the century. But frankly the Democrats have been holding Bush's coat since he began his run, and now they've taken over the war(s) in the Middle East as proprietors themselves.
It is true that they will pursue the exact same policies in the Middle East with a more measured gait, as opposed to the pedal-to-the-metal of the Neocons. But in the long run the Democrats are judged to be more effective in pursuing the interests of Big Israel, Big War, and Big Oil than the Republicans, although none of the 'Bigs' are complaining about the windfalls they've received, too good to even have hoped for pre-Bush.
The Republicrat-Demoblican Amalgam are the Blue Cheer and Tide of the marketeers. Same soap inside the box, different ad campaign around it.
Unless and until we the people turn off our TVs and drop the big bought-up rags like the NYTimes, the Washington Post and the LATimes, and assess politicians according to our own interests... well we'll get the politicians we're told are 'electable' by the MSM.
In short... it's all our own fault.
Gravel, Kucinich, Paul. The only real candidates to choose among. Vote for the rest and blame yourself for all that ensues. I know I will.
On that anti-Iranian "petition":
As Cernig at the Newshoggers points out, this is the third such "petition" peddled over the years before the international press and these are sponsored by the MEK which the State Department (rightly) characterizes as a terrorist group.
Still it has the support of the neocons because it is also anti-Iran.
The numbers of signatories on these "petitions" are dubious at the very best.
Former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien says that it was among the great victories in his life that he stood against US pressure to join in the Iraq War.
Probably that Chirac and Schröeder are as proud of it as well. At least as an European, I'm proud of what they did.
Uh, the purpose of a wise and mature US foreign policy is to avoid close allies ending up speaking like that. Bush has destroyed half a century of good will among NATO allies, most of whom now think they are better off not following Washington's lead. Leaders who threw in with Bush, like Aznar of Spain and Berlusconi of Italy, have been ushered off the political stage by enraged publics. As someone who grew up when the US (and its currency) was respected by most Europeans and other North Americans, I am sad to see the way W. has debased our position and humiliated our country.
I want to emphasize what you say. As a student I remember our numerous demonstrations against the US imperialism during the seventies : against the Vietnam and Indochina war, against US meddling in South America (especially at the time of the Pinochet coup and then in Nicaragua etc..), against the Shah of Iran, mainly supported by the US, etc. etc. However, we weren't a majority in the EU opinion. Especially, the generation who had made the WWII remained supportive of the Americans and still believed their coldwar propaganda. Things progressively changed with the accession of Bush to the presidency. The US stance concerning ecology and global warming, its refusal to sign the Kyoto protocol created a first rift. You like to say that when 9/11 struck NY, you had the sympathy of the rest of the world. It may be a good political argument for the Dems, but it's not true. Many, many here in the EU shared the opinion that somehow the US with its arrogance was looking for it. At the time it succeeded, I asked my nephews about the reaction at school : it was quite surprising, their classmates were split, about half of them thinking that the US had got what it deserved.
By the time of the US invasion, the US had even lost the support of the WWII generation. The main media in the EU were against the war. My parents, who tend to vote rather conservatively, now (rightly) see the US as a destabilizing factor in the world, as a conqueror, favoring the law of the strongest, not as a defensor of freedom and human rights. It was already clear to my eyes during the seventies, but it is now clear for most other Europeans.
Juan,
It is comforting to be able to put all our troubles in bag and call it "Bush", than in some pagan rite immolate the bag at a solstice and return thus purified to feasting.
My reading Bush is thus. If we walked into a building and noticed a strong smell of advanced putrification we would say to each other, "there is a large, dead animal in here!", we would then investigate the source of the odor knowing that if it was a large dog or a horse we would have to call the health authorities, and if it were a human cadaver, we would have to call the police. In my opinion, Bush is not the "body", he is only the "smell".
The smell alerts us to death and petrifaction, to a health hazard or crime to be investigated. An autopsy is in order.
I had coffee Saturday with a important political consultant from the Democratic Party who was visiting Madrid. Some of the things he said were very interesting and some were quite disturbing... to me at least.
The most disturbing impression I got was that, while the Republicans are very comfortable with their base, the Democratic establishment are afraid and embarrassed by theirs. If there ever was a formula for losing that is it. The consultant also said that winning Congress was more important for the Democrats than winning the presidency, which gave me a curious impression of premature sour grapes, especially since this Congress's approval ratings are even lower than Bush's.
The Democrats seem to exist to neutralize progressive trends in the USA. This Congress was an important, perhaps a final chance to make clear that a real difference exists between the parties and this opportunity has been lost.
It is important to remember at this point that the Democrats are not going to be running against Bush, he'll be gone and he is so exceptionally inept that very few voters are going to to associate his historic, amazing and very personal incompetence with Republicans in general... Certainly not with Giuliani.
And speaking of Rudy, it is also important to remember that what the voters have always liked most about Dubya is that he is a mean son of a bitch and Rudy is even meaner than Bush and unlike the Shrub is seen to be sharp and competent. Bush was reelected comfortably because the frightened American people wanted a bad assed prick for President... but they wanted a competent bad assed prick. They are still frightened, but they are disappointed by Bush's performance, not, repeat, not, by his selling proposition. One bomb from Osama in an American shopping center (one video did it four years ago) could swing the election to Giuliani against either Hillary or Obama... I think only Gore would have been able to withstand that. (remember I live in Madrid).
I think the Democrats are going to lose, because they are not true to their base, they haven't learned the Kerry lesson yet and probably never will. I don't think the people who finance the Democrats will ever allow them to be true to that base. The Republicans don't have that problem. What you see is what you get.
I'm sorry to say this, but it is clearer to me every day that the Democratic Party has become little more than a Judas Goat for progressives. The path to change is not going to be found leading through this version of the Democratic Party, I'm afraid.
Un abrazo
David
RE:"The tribal sheikhs of southern Iraq who have gotten up a petition against Iranian influence in their region should be viewed with some suspicion."
Is it possible that some of America's lost billions $$$ are being used to buy the temporary allegiance of tribal chiefs? A few million bucks probably makes a nice impression on a chief. What it does for the future of Iraq might be another story.
On the CNN anti-Iranian sheiks story:
Looks like more bought-off sheiks to me. They said a couple of months ago they were going to take the Anbar strategy into Shi'ite areas. This is the result. If we ever get a real accounting of where our money went in Iraq -- if such an accounting is even possible -- we're going to be floored.
As someone who grew up when the US (and its currency) was respected by most Europeans and other North Americans, I am sad to see the way W. has debased our position and humiliated our country.
Well, Bush isn't the only one to bear that guilt. First, Bush was reelected to a second term, after he invaded Iraq. Four years should be enough to make an informed judgement about what your leader stands for, or is it not ? Secondly, the problem isn't only Bush's reelection. It's the American value system, which emphasizes competition plus individualism over solidarity and material wealth plus consumption over other imaterial, yet more important values in the social and intellectual spheres. Wild capitalism (the law of the strongest) isn't better than totalitarian socialism. The European countries were trying to find a third/middle way, that of the "social state". Yet, the crolling of the former URSS and the other socialist countries seems to have reopened the door to wild capitalism in the manner of the US.
As for US currency, the US has such a huge debt toward other countries, especially China and other Asian countries, that it is trying to pull part of the cost of those debts on other's shoulders, letting the dollar fall to new depths every week.
My vote for the most under-rated blog covering Iran is iranaffairs.com , a one person show run by Cyrus Safdari.
About the 300,000 signatures (the ultimate source for this is another blog called newshoggers):
This supposed petition is an MEK production that is actually shrinking.
In June 2006, the MEK announced that 5.2 million Iraqis expressed support for this declaration.
In June 2007, the MEK on its website claimed it had 450,000 signatures on this petition blaming Iran for Iraq's troubles.
So it seems like the number of signatories the MEK has been making up has gotten down to the level believable by CNN.
US support for MEK isn't as directly disastrous to US long-term interests as the its support for PKK but if the US had been fighting a war on terror this would be hypocrisy.
Instead, the US is fighting a Global War Over the Legitimacy of Israel and in this war, PKK and MEK are both allies against Iran. Iran not coincidently is both the most democratic country in the Middle East and most effective threat to Israel.
PKK certainly and MEK probably are not effective enough as irritants to Iran to be worth material and propaganda costs of supporting them.
ref : “Among the biggest irritants in NATO countries against the US now is the mission in Afghanistan, which seems both open-ended and ultimately fruitless... What is the mission?”
excellent question, Professor; and i am so glad to see you bring this, ‘The Forgotten War,’ to the forefront of the conversation ~ and it is my hope that you will continue to report frequently on Afghanistan, as you do so well ref: IRAQ.
AFGHANISTAN : “Since the late 1970s, Afghanistan has suffered continuous and brutal civil war, which included foreign interventions in the form of the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan, in which the ruling Taliban government was toppled.”
“In December 2001, the United Nations Security Council authorized the creation of an International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). This force, composed of NATO troops, has been involved in assisting the government of President Hamid Karzai in establishing authority across the nation. In 2005, the United States and Afghanistan signed a strategic partnership agreement committing both nations to a long-term relationship. In the meantime, about 40 billion US dollars have also been provided by the international community for the reconstruction of the country.”
From the POV of a detached observer, we modern students of history ~ it would appear that the US/NATO Occupation Forces' primary "mission" is to sustain the de facto Western puppet government of Hamid Karzai in the historical "capital city" of Kabul.
Afghanistan has no OIL or other "extraction wealth" to reward any colonial/military occupier (though it is/has been a traditional trade/pipeline, etc., route through which treasure could flow).
Apparently there have always been Warlords/Pirates who reigned either in the City or the Mountains: Every generation or so, there is some catalyst / power struggle, such that the result is a kind of "role reversal," whereby one group assumes control of the City, while the remnants of the 'government' flee to the Hills.
It is all too easy to forget that The Taliban, a label now synonymous with terrorist, were simply an oppressive, fundamentalist Islamic Theocracy (probably not much different than an unbridled Judaic or Christian Theocracy would be, fwiw) of little interest to the West: it was that genuine terrorist, and very real threat, Bin Laden / Al-Qaeda that we sought to quell.
in my opinion, the issue of Afghanistan is vital, perhaps even moreso than IRAQ; ie., we occupy Afghanistan now simply to cover our failure to bring the real criminals of 9/11 to justice, for if we were to resolve Afghanistan = 9/11 : there would no longer be ‘War Powers’ under which President Bush, et al, could operate.
There was violence all across Iraq yesterday, and all the Propaganda-catapulters can think of to do is blame Iran...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071124/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq
...blaming it on the usual suspect interrogations and the usual mysterious "forensic evidence". When it comes to warmongering, this administration sure puts that drumming bunny to shame.
Thank you for the mention of Jean Chretien, Professor Cole, and his historic opposition to (or at least non-participation in) the invasion of Iraq.
As a Canadian I was so damn proud of him for not sending our soldiers in with yours in March 2003. Immeasurably proud.
After Powell's disgraceful presentation in February at the UN, a scrum of stellar US TV journalists surrounded Chretien and treated him like a teenager, and not the elected leader of a sovereign country.
Chretien held firm. My recollection of the scrum is roughly as follows: In a pretty snooty tone, Chretien was asked "How much proof do you need?". He responded with "Well proof is proof, and what I have seen is not proof (of WMDs)."
I'd like to note that Jean Chretien's decision was easier as he had already announced his retirement, and was not running for reelection. I suspect he would have won reelection nonetheless -- there was abysmally low support among Canadians for joining the American venture.
Both Canadian Prime Ministers since Chretien would certainly have sent soldiers in the invasion, a point which petrifies me often. Harper, leader of the opposition at the time, and currently the PM, wrote a sycophantic piece for the Washington post assuring Americans that if he were leading, Canadians would be fighting with Americans.
It's funny how he never mentions that piece these days, now that the Iraq war has been shown to be the biggest mistake ever made on earth.
Few people are painting halos above Jean Chretien's head in Canada, but so many of us appreciate his wise and correct positions on the major issues of the day, the largest of which was sending Canadian soldiers into battle based upon the obvious lie that Iraq, even under Saddam, was a threat to us, or to you.
At a time when millions of Iraqis have fled Iraq to escape the violence, we're to believe that hundreds of thousands of Iranians have set up homesteads in the south...
On the other hand, Iranian influence in the south is only natural, given historical as well as current circumstances. Trumped up stories and false petitions won't change that which is fact.
"Bush has destroyed half a century of good will among NATO allies"
As others have said above, it wasn't just bush - and really, bush was just a figurehead.
It is a symptom of a sickness that runs very deep in this country - a belief that violence is the way to solve problems, that Americans are somehow "better" than others and a population dedicated, DEEPLY dedicated to being dumb as rocks.
And the corporations are running the show completely, with the two party system just two sides of the same coin as far as they are concerned.
We are in for some dark times, and we have worked very hard to get there.
As you've pointed out, the Bush failure has been a failure of public relations. The policy - from Chedju Island in 1948 through the genocidal wars against civilian populations in Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Guatemala, and many other places - has always been whatever oppression and slaughter has been needed to keep the world subservient to American interests, defined by control and exploitation of others.
But before Bush, the empire often contrived to look good, these routine acts being made to look like exceptions in the same way that for so many years Communists managed to convince so many that the deeds of Stalin and Mao were deviations from real Communism instead of the inevitable consequences of the ideology.
Bush has simply revealed the nature of the empire and its ideology in the way of the HItler-Stalin Pact of 1939, the Hungarian invasion of 1956, and the suppression of liberal Communism in Czechoslovakia in 1968.
But these outrages only showed the truth to certain suckers, truth already known well enough to those that died in the White Sea Canal or the Ukrainian famine long before.
In this, at least, Bush and Cheney have performed a similar service. Bill Clinton was able to supervise a genocide by embargo in Iraq and have most people respond with the indifference of liberal British intellectuals in the 1930s to GULAG and Ukrainian famine.
Lots of liberal Democrats, including my own mother, have no problem with Clinton's wife becoming President, in which case she could be expected to pursue the same criminal policies once again, but with better public relations.
But I persist in the belief that the question is what we do, not how good we can look doing it.
It's especially horrifying to see that Bush and Cheney have drawn all this wrath for making the US look bad in its criminal conduct, not for actually behaving that way. It's not a problem to terrorize and dominate, to massacre innocents in their hundreds of thousands, and to rob other nations by corrupting their economies and subverting their free institutions in favor of compliant dictatorships - but to fumble as Bush and Cheney have so that the mask slips and reveals the truth is unforgivable. Now we need Hillary Clinton or someone like that to bring back the good old days, when we knew better how to package our abominations.
The Bushies don't perceive the damage they have done. They see the elections of Sarkozy and Merkel as Europe coming around to their side, while forgeting Berlusconi, Avnar, and Blair's rejections, that were far more explicity linked to foreign policy.
Also, I doubt they worry too much about rural shiites. As long as there are enough factions fighting in Iraq to keep any one from dominating, they are pleased with themselves.
That dear old right-wing rag, The Indianapolis Star, amazingly put this story on the front page:"Analysis: 24 thousand troops suffering brain injuries." Since the elections in 2006, The Star has avoided putting any headlines or stories about the War in Iraq on the front page. Too embarrassing to the Republican Party. Evidently, this statistic lit some kind of fire under them, as well it should. So, if the Pentagon thinks no one has noticed their attempt to hide the truth, they are now getting the cold shower of reality. "The data, provided by the Army, Navy and Department of Veterans Affairs, show that more than five times as many troops suffered brain trauma as the 4,471 officially listed by the Pentagon through Sept. 30. These cases also are not reflected in the Pentagon's official tally of wounded, which stands at
30,327." Is this purely a matter of differing methods of tallying the wounded? Perhaps, but I tend to lean more to a decision by the powers-that-be to use methods that would hide reality. Look at how they have refused to allow pictures to be taken of the returning caskets. There has been a concerted effort on the part of this Administration, in collusion with the corporate-owned Media, to soften the harsh realities of the War. And harsh those realities are. Having worked with brain-injured patients, I can tell you that most will never regain pre-trauma abilities. Many will be severely disabled. There is also the fact that about 12 to 15% of individuals with serious brain trauma will commit suicide. Neurotransmitters are disrupted, and the frustration and misery of dealing with the disability can be overwhelming. I seem to remember Barbara Bush saying that her son couldnt be worried about the death toll. So, he most certainly isnt concerned about the brain injuries.
He says he sleeps well at night. That is a luxury many of our returning troops will not have.
As for the injury to our international reputation, Bush supporters have never been able to look beyond their own avarice and greed. As long as they get enough oil to fire up their SUV's, they dont give a rat's hairy heiny about our international reputation. They like to envision the U.S. as the Lone Ranger. What will get their attention is the oncoming recession, fueled by the subprime crisis, and the unfolding credit card crisis, on top of Bush's deficit spending and insane tax cuts for the wealthy. Once their tushies get kicked real hard in the personal budget, they will rethink their alliances. Being armchair chickenhawks, the War has not touched most of them personally. The harsh realities of economics will do what casualty statistics have failed to do.
Remember, according to the MKO, the 300000 signature petition also supposedly expresses support for the MKO in addition to condemning Iran.
This has all the hallmarks of a publicity campaign by the MKO which has had the benefit of advice and participation of the US media who probably told them to make the number more believable and then put the "sheikhs" out front and downplay the MKO connection so as to sell it better. And just watch how CNN and Washington Post ran with this story, no questions asked!
But in fact the MKO has a history of passing off these sorts of "petitions" in which the signatories all condemn Iran and express their support for the MKO.
Now, does anyone really believe the report that the 300000 signatories actually support the MKO as the organization claims?
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