Won't Be Fooled Again

You might remember this breathless announcement by the MSM thata technical document had surfaced showing that Iran was secretly developing a nuclear trigger.  This evidence clearly demonstrated that Iran was  in fact operating a clandestine nuclear weapons program!

"It looks bad -- there is no doubt about it," said David Albright, a former inspector with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, who reviewed the document and other papers for the London newspaper. He said work on a neutron initiator is a "very strong indicator of nuclear work."

Zoinks! OMG!! What shall we do? That evil mastermind, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, denied it all, but of course he would do that. He's just that kind of nasty movie-drama villain who we must oppose at all cost... unless he was, in fact, telling the truth.

U.S. intelligence has concluded that the document published recently by the Times of London, which purportedly describes an Iranian plan to do experiments on what the newspaper described as a "neutron initiator" for an atomic weapon, is a fabrication, according to a former Central Intelligence Agency official.

Philip Giraldi, who was a CIA counterterrorism official from 1976 to 1992, told IPS that intelligence sources say that the United States had nothing to do with forging the document, and that Israel is the primary suspect. The sources do not rule out a British role in the fabrication, however.
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"The Rupert Murdoch chain has been used extensively to publish false intelligence from the Israelis and occasionally from the British government," Giraldi said.

The Times is part of a Murdoch publishing empire that includes the Sunday Times, Fox News and the New York Post. All Murdoch-owned news media report on Iran with an aggressively pro-Israeli slant.

The document itself also had a number of red flags suggesting possible or likely fraud.

Yes, it's a fraud, just like the Nigerian "yellow cake" documents, but I'm sure that it was generated in the best possible faith. After all, Israel is such a small and tiny country, it can't possibly survive on its own against the Arab/Persian menace, given a $2-3 billion per year foreign aid package from the United States, highly trained military forces with state-of-the-art technology, 150 nuclear weapons, sympathetic press and politicians, and the most powerful lobby in Washington DC. And besides, just because this document was a fraud that the entire MSM willfully digested and spit out for the common masses doesn't mean that Iran isn't still trying to conquer the Middle East and nuke American cities someday. Am I right?

Comments

[NVH]

Right. Well at least you didn't trot out your hate and discontent strictly around Fox News this time J. Thanks for opening the blinders. All I thought of reading this is Dan Rather and Bush's Texas Air National Guard record.

That said, with the turmoil going on in Iraq, if we don't have some kind of clandestine boots on the ground their right now fomenting hate and discontent, or Israel, hopefully, then all this fake document and other posturing is just good cover til the students get a few more balls in the next ten years...then the risk is letting students have a nuclear capability and no job to distract them, but I digress...

[Andy]

Jason,

I think it's always a good idea to be wary of claims made in articles based on anonymous sources. While I have serious doubts about the authenticity of the document in question, the fact that some unknown "intelligence officials" say it's a forgery is not proof that the Iranian President is telling the truth.

I've been on the "inside" during similar battles between leakers and "anonymous sources" and invariably the reality was different than the what the selective media leaks indicated. It's also important to point out that often the intelligence community disagrees with itself and it could be that some in the IC think the document is genuine and others think it isn't. These kinds of disagreements aren't uncommon. The point being is that one should be distrustful of anonymous leaks no matter what they say because they very rarely represent the full truth.

[J.]

NVH - I didn't mention Faux News because it's currently fixated on making the fiction that the Detriot underwear bomber is equivalent to the 9/11 team. We can talk about that idiotic notion separately...

Andy - good points. I just thought it was ironic that, for all the blustering and BS that we hear from Ahmadinejad, it might be that he was half-right on this one issue. And yeah, why expect the IC to agree on any one issue, huh? More shame on the MSM and nuke "experts" who were so quick to jump on the bandwagon.

[E_L_P]

Good post JS.