WASHINGTON, May 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — U.S. veterans were shocked and dismayed that the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) refused to publish retractions, corrections or responses to an article by Michael Ledeen published in the April, 2010 edition of VFW Magazine. Three veterans hailing from different parts of America provided timely input, corrections, concerns, and supported multiple letters to the editor which Richard K. Kolb refused to print in the May edition.
According to Dr. Sam K. Abul Haj of Ventura, CA, a highly decorated former chief surgeon and pathology consultant of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Michael Ledeen’s “Iran’s ‘Foreign Legion’ Takes on America” was “riddled with serious misrepresentations.” Ledeen stated: “Although relatively small in numbers total manpower is estimated at less than 150,000 the [Iranian National] Guards control a vast arsenal, ranging from surface to surface missiles to the covert nuclear weapons program. When and if Iran comes to possess nuclear armed missiles, the Guards will be in charge of them, too.”
The April 21, 2010 Department of Defense “Unclassified Report on Military Power of Iran” states that Iran has no nuclear weapons program for Revolutionary Guards to control. This is also the consensus view of the International Atomic Energy Agency. According to Abul Haj, “Ledeen relies on dubious and discredited sources, such as Manuchar Ghorbanifar, who the CIA placed on its ‘burn list’ as a serial fabricator long ago. In the 1980s Ledeen and his Israeli colleagues’ drive to get the U.S. to sell arms to Iran led to a now largely forgotten constitutional crisis known as the Iran Contra Affair. Today’s veterans expect to read the work of experts with honest track records of assessing true threats in America’s premier veteran’s magazine. Ledeen is clearly not one of those experts. Unchallenged, Ledeen’s disinformation has the potential for again steering U.S. policy into tragedy.” More