That's News to Me

It never ceases to amaze me how old news can suddenly be recycled as new news. Part of this is undoubtedly attributable to the fact that journalists, especially editors, are in the business of selling news, so whatever they publish, they rely on the fact that people have short memories to peddle their story as the most exclusive, never-been-said-scoop ever to see the light of day. Or perhaps they are terrible researchers who really aren't very good at their own craft. Another cause is that when a story re-breaks, for many people it really is news, even for those who usually have their ear to ground. The latest example of this phaenomenon happened this past weekend with all the "Is the US Planning to Bomb Iran?" stories. A lot of this talk was generated by this London Times exposé, coupled with various other blog threads such as George Packer or Barnett Rubin here and here. This last one is interesting because Barnett says

The Sunday Times of London reports from Washington a story I have not seen in any U.S. media: that "the Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive air strikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days."

Josh Marshall over at TPM picks up on this meme of not seeing the Bomb Iran story in the US media saying

I have a well-grounded skepticism about stories about US politics I read fully-formed and attributed in the British press before any American publications seems [sic] to have caught wind of it.

I take Josh's point about the Times' story being "fully...attributed", in this case to Alexis Debat, but Seymour Hersh broke the news on this same story (is there really any doubt this is the same story?) of there being advanced plans to bomb Iran over a year ago in his April 2006 article entitled "The Iran Plans", which article was discussed by #3 on this blog here. Hersh followed up his April 2006 story with another article on March 5, 2007, which discussed the US's plan to "redirect" its assets against Iran.

After each article appeared in the New Yorker he was invited to make the rounds on several shows and he defended his sources two times. So this is old news warmed twice over.

Hell, even the London Times' story on advanced plans to bomb Iran is old news in Britain. See this BBC story from February 20, 2007.

The only real questions about this old news are:

1. Is it false, but based on purposeful and repeated leaks to give Iran a head fake?
2. Is it real?
3. If real, has a decision already been made to put it into action?

Based on this administration's track record on regime change, 2 seems all but certain and 3 looks like a good bet.