Target Iran

Yesterday on ATC, Eric Westervelt's piece on Iran might have well have been written by Dick Cheney or the Israeli Defense Forces. Consider these statements that formed the substance of the report:

Melissa Block: "....some Iranian leaders have called for Israel's destruction....and Israel is within the reach of some Iranian missiles."

Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz: "We want to make sure we're prepared for every option. We don't want war, we want peace. But we will not let that second Holocaust take place."

Westervelt: [Dr. Shmuel Bar, who directs Israel's Institute for Policy and Strategy] "says Iran is renowned for using diplomacy as a stall tactic."

Bar: "I don't think that anybody really does believe that there's a diplomatic solution. The Iranians are well known for attrition and wearing down their opponents with never-ending negotiations that can go on and on. This is their strategy and has been their strategy forever."

Bar: "Iran is a country which is openly committed to destroying Israel, is committed to performing another Holocaust. I think that what's happened in Israel the third generation after the Holocaust has sort of gone back to a Holocaust mentality, sense that 'yes this could happen again.' The statements coming from Iran have exacerbated that feeling."

Westervelt: "...it's not clear whether direct engagement will prevail, or how long Israel is willing to wait. As Deputy Prime Minister Mofaz put it recently, 'it's a race against time and time is winning.'"

Wow, kind of makes you want to climb in cool stealth bomber with Ripper and head for Tehran. Too bad we can't hear about the less than stellar behavior of US/Israel regarding the Non Proliferation Treaty and how the "West's" hypocrisy is driving proliferation.

(apologies to Gary Larson)

A Grain of Salt with my Prime Rib Please

Any half-witted reader knows that it is the nature of governments to lie, and then to lie some more, and finally to lie again. People of all ilks have pointed out Goebbels' pointed remarks about the power of the big lie (ironic link warning!). Of course, the US is as guilty as any promoting lies that have dire consequences: from Vietnam and El Salvador to secret prisons and torture. The Bush administration, however, has taken this tendency and turned it in to a stock in trade.

So you might expect any thinking person, and especially a journalist, to be extremely skeptical about the latest Bush Administration presentation of "intelligence" on the Syrian facility destroyed by Israel back in September. You might expect it, but not NPR. To serve up this latest dish from the White House, NPR turns to Tom Gjelten. Here's just a sample of his hard-hitting skepticism evidenced on Thursday's ATC :

• "...the amazing thing Melissa is that they have photos...that were taken inside the reactor by somebody, a spy presumably..."
• "...photos show definitively that what was being built there was in fact a nuclear reactor."
• "...however they did have a very interesting picture of a senior North Korean official..."
• "...they also said that they could support all of these pictures and the conclusions they drew from them with other evidence."

I'm not claiming to know whether or not Syria was building a nuclear reactor or not. The silly video that the Bush folks produced makes a dumbed-down case, but are the photos real, current, actually from the bombed site, etc? NPR doesn't express a hint of doubt, but, as Glenn Greenwald has pointed out, joins the rest of the mainstream media in just repeating whatever the administration claims. For a bit of salt on this juicy story you can read the Greenwald piece, take a look at Larisa Alexandrovna on Huffington Post, David Kurtz on TPM, or Steve Benen on Carpetbagger Report. Or you can just sit at the counter with NPR and gobble it up - yum.

Update (4/27): Juan Cole (through an informed reader) pokes more holes in the US/Israel case against Syria. In his post he also recommends this Farley article in Counterpunch (which spanks Gjelten and National "Pentagon" Radio).

Oh My God, As Little as a Year...

As the fallout from the NIE report on Iran's lack of a nuclear bomb program as of 2003 dominates the headlines (and don't even look for the virtually unreported details of Iran's nearly complete cooperation with the IAEA), NPR bends over backward this morning to stoke the fires of FEAR. Here's the blow by blow of this little neocon remix from NPR's science reporter, Christopher Joyce.

• Montagne: "Iranian engineers continue to make uranium fuel....Experts point out that enriching uranium for fuel leaves a big part of the weapons apparatus intact."
• Joyce: "You make fuel for a nuclear power plant or material for a bomb the same way."
• Joyce: "...even if Iran has in fact stopped designing a weapon, the enrichment process is really the biggest single step toward making one."
• Pierre Goldschmidt (being interviewed): "And clearly Iran is still working and making progress on nuclear material production and on delivery systems with their ballistic missiles."
• Joyce citing Goldschmidt: "He says there's no evidence that Iran has abandoned efforts to get that capability [nuclear weapons capability] and President George Bush noted in his press conference..."
• Joyce (wrapping up the story): "could take Iranian scientists as little as a year to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a bomb."

What are we waiting for? Let's load up the bunker busters and stop them while there's still time!

Rogue Nations, Rogue Reporters

This from a reader was in my inbox today:

This morning at about 8:10, one of the NPR regulars interviewed a NYTimes reporter about how the illegal US nuclear deal might not pass muster in the Indian parliament.

Nowhere did either reporter discuss that the Bush Admin's deal is illegal under the US constitution (as it violates the NPT, which is the Law Of The Land). Indeed, they very carefully skirted around the NPT issue, at one point saying that the deal angers 'some' non-proliferationists. No, it angers MOST NPT supporters and is seen as a way for Bush to undermine the Rule of Law and encourage more illegal nuclear technology transactions outside of the NPT and IAEA framework.

The most dishonest report on this issue outside of Faux Noose.

Indeed, if you can stand hearing it the report is here. My favorite moment comes when Somini Sengupta, South Asia Bureau Chief for The New York Times, says that if India scraps the deal, it "would certainly rob the Bush administration of a significant foreign policy legacy." So now demolishing nonproliferation international law is "a significant foreign policy legacy"! Amazing.

For information on the story you might skip this nonsense from NPR and look at this recent piece by Noam Chomsky or this Arms Control Association site.