as much as I’d trust, well, Judy “Kneepads” Miller at the Times; we know the playbook, and we’ve seen the play before. If Bush wants to outsource his casus belli to a winger billionaire, good for Him, but as for me, I’d want to see a chain of evidence of positively forensic quality on this, and even then I’d want the IAEA to check that even that wasn’t faked.
These guys are desperate for the next war, and they’ll do whatever it takes to get one. Everybody knows this, though nobody at Versailles on the Potomac will say it out loud.
And I notice even the wingers are putting question marks after their headlines on this.
NOTE The story is that “informed sources” in Israel told Murdoch that they seized North Korean nuclear material in Syria. Axis of evil, and all. It will be interesting to see if this shows up in the WSJ next. Eh?
Front page
Here's the question -
Why on earth didn’t the Bush administration and Israeli government go public with their nuclear material findings, and submit samples to the IAEA for verification, if that’s really what they’ve got?
Just the other day, Syria became co-chair of the IAEA’s Governing Council as part of a rotation of chair nations known long in advance. Immediately, Iran called for IAEA inspectors to examine Israel’s nuclear arsenal and programs and Egypt moved a resolution calling for a nuclear-free Middle east (which would mean only Israel having to actually disarm). All of this brought immediate fake outrage from Israel and the Israel lobby in the U.S.
But if they had really had this evidence, they wouldn’t need to leak it to a British newspaper’s neocon shill. They could have gone public, had the data verified and stopped all of the happenings at the IAEA that Israel is so upset about dead and almost certainly have gained a UNSC resolution to boot. Then, if the air attack had gone ahead, many nations who are suspicious of anonymous leaks and scanty evidence would have stood up and cheered. There wouldn’t have to be a whisper campaign for a war which might begin with an Israeli pre-emptive attack but is surely designed to drag the U.S. in, willingly or not.
So why didn’t they do that? Why did they rely on this cycle of leaks and innuendo - with a nuclear and North Korean element fuelled entirely by Bush administration officials who spoke both on and off the record, sometimes on the same day - to muddy the waters at the IAEA instead?
Not one mainstream reporter has sought an answer to this obvious question. The answer, though, can only be that when it comes to actual evidence and material they have nothing, nada, zip.
Regards, C
Beautiful, Lambert
Excellent.
Cernig at Newshoggers picks up a quote from you as a complement to his own skeptical take on the story; maybe you should link to it.