Lied To Again - Iranian Uranium Edition

Liberally excerpted from Juan Cole's Informed Comment: IAEA Inspectors: Iran not Producing Weapons-grade Uranium and a follow up comment at another posting.

(For a complete trip down the "Orwellian memory hole", watch Norman Solomon's War Made Easy: How Presidents and pundits keep spinning us to death. Narrated by Sean Penn.
Torrents are probably available [Here]).

Also see: How To Sell a War, A writeup on the Rendon Group, the folks who brought you the Firdoz Square, Iraq "Saddam Statue 'Teardown'", for more on how the media has a hold on your 'Believe Button', versus what is real and truthful.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

IAEA Inspectors: Iran not Producing Weapons-grade Uranium

As I mentioned yesterday, Iran is not producing weapon-grade uranium, and could not easily do so without detection. The Hindu, which despite its name is left of center (and which is one of India's finest newspapers) writes:

' Iran has not converted the low-grade uranium that it has produced into weapon-grade uranium, inspectors belonging to the International Atomic Energy Agency have said.

The Austrian Press Agency quoted an IAEA expert as saying that the uranium substances that Iran has produced at its Natanz enrichment facility have been carefully recorded and remote cameras have been installed to supervise part of the stockpile.

“If the Iranians intend to transport these uranium substances to a secret location for further processing, agency’s inspectors will find out,” he said.

The expert added that “so far, Iran has carried out good cooperation with us in relevant verifications”.

IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei has said that Iran has slowed down its uranium enrichment programme.'

US newspapers are complaining that they are losing money and may not survive. After they put all sorts of falsehoods about Iraq on their front pages, it may be that they fatally wounded their credibility with the US public. In any case, the above report does not show up anywhere on the web or in Lexis that I can find, except here in The Hindu, which tells me that someone is not doing their job.

(See also Dr. Jeffrey Lewis).

So... HOW IS the Western media 'reporting' on this?
(and I AM using the term 'reporting' rather loosely here...)

Anonymous said...

I don’t think it is entirely correct to say that there has been no press response to the IAEC report. Consider the following headlines:

“Iran holds enough uranium for bomb”
Financial Times 19 Feb 09

“Iran has enriched enough uranium to make bomb, IAEA says”
Guardian 19 Feb 09

“Iran Has More Enriched Uranium Than Thought”
NYT 19 Feb 09

(A Buffalo favorite... RFE/RL makes it sound like a 'sport')
"New IAEA Report Shows Iran Nearing Nuclear Breakout Capability”
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty 20 Feb 09

Clearly there is a difference in slant between the Hindu article and those listed above.

What do you call three crony DOJ lawyers at the bottom end of a taunt rope?

A good start...




by Michael Isikoff
(Newsweek)

An internal Justice Department report on the conduct of senior lawyers who approved waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics is causing anxiety among former Bush administration officials.

H. Marshall Jarrett, chief of the department's ethics watchdog unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), confirmed last year he was investigating whether the legal advice in crucial interrogation memos "was consistent with the professional standards that apply to Department of Justice attorneys."

According to two knowledgeable sources who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive matters, a draft of the report was submitted in the final weeks of the Bush administration. It sharply criticized the legal work of two former top officials—Jay Bybee and John Yoo—as well as that of Steven Bradbury, who was chief of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) at the time the report was submitted, the sources said. (Bybee, Yoo and Bradbury did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

In Full @ Newsweek

"It's Like Deja Vu All Over Again" (AKA "Is Viktor Bout Out Of Jail?") - 1/4 Million Weapons Unaccounted For In Afghanistan

Yogi Berra is my guru and Twitter is his messenger.

BBCNews: US 'lost track of Afghan weapons'

[Afghan soldiers with US-issue automatic rifles]

The US military has failed to keep track of thousands of weapons shipped to Afghanistan, leaving them vulnerable to being lost or stolen, a report says.

The report has been compiled by congressional auditors, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO).

It found that, in the four years up to June 2008, the US military failed to keep complete records on some 222,000 weapons entering the country. [In Full]


Maybe it's the 'Bookkeeping' again... as General David Petraeus claimed when the same thing happened in Iraq...

Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Thursday, August 9, 2007

Bookkeeping problems are to blame for the inability to account for nearly 200,000 weapons issued to Iraqi security forces, the top U.S. commander in Iraq said late Tuesday.

In an interview on Fox News Radio, Gen. David H. Petraeus said he believes the weapons did reach the security forces, but that paperwork deficiencies don’t show their status.

“We believe those weapons all certainly were given to Iraqi units,” Petraeus said, according to a podcast recording on “The Alan Colmes Show.”

Meanwhile, 125,000 sets of body armor and 115,000 helmets intended for Iraqi forces could not be accounted for either, according to a Government Accountability Office report issued July 31.

The report faulted the Pentagon and the U.S. military command in Iraq for not applying the same standards in tracking supplies and weapons that it does elsewhere. The system has since been improved, the report found.

...or could it be.... Blackwater?

A former Blackwater employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the investigation includes a look at whether Blackwater shipped weapons from its Moyock headquarters to Iraq hidden in pallets wrapped tightly in shrink wrap.
.
.
“In December, the prosecutors obtained guilty pleas from two former Blackwater employees, Kenneth Wayne Cashwell of Virginia Beach, Va., and William Ellsworth “Max” Grumiaux of Clemmons, N.C."

"The court files are stingy on details of the crimes…”

“…the federal (Nb. criminal) investigation of Blackwater is proceeding behind closed doors,”

A buffalo's take on the 'whos', 'whats', and, maybe most inportantly, 'whys' here