{"id":6362,"date":"2012-02-25T07:53:04","date_gmt":"2012-02-25T14:53:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=6362"},"modified":"2012-02-25T07:53:04","modified_gmt":"2012-02-25T14:53:04","slug":"media-spin-and-the-iranian-nuclear-crisis-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=6362","title":{"rendered":"Media Spin and the Iranian Nuclear Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Slanting the Case on Iran\u2019s Nukes<\/strong>
\n23 February, 2012 – Consortium News – By Robert Parry<\/p>\n

As Washington\u2019s political\/media class rises up in arms over new WMD allegations against Iran, it might be worth recalling how a similar process played out nearly a decade ago when the U.S. public was drawn into a war with Iraq. It wasn\u2019t just that George W. Bush told some lies; it was more complicated than that.<\/p>\n

In 2002-2003, Official Washington professed a deep faith in the professionalism of the CIA\u2019s analytical division, which accepted enough of the bogus intelligence being pushed by neocon war hawks to create a basis for Bush\u2019s invasion of Iraq. Only later did it become clear how politicized the CIA\u2019s analysis had become.<\/p>\n

Yukiya Amano, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, speaking to the United Nations<\/p>\n

Today, a similar role is being played by the United Nations\u2019 International Atomic Energy Agency, which \u2013 during the run-up to war with Iraq and under different management \u2013 was one of the few international bodies with the courage to reject some of Bush\u2019s claims about Iraq.<\/p>\n

However, in the past two years, the IAEA has become deeply politicized under its new director general, Japanese diplomat Yukiya Amano. Yet, you wouldn\u2019t know that from how the U.S. news media is accepting what the IAEA says about Iran, much as the U.S. press corps avoided questioning the CIA\u2019s assessments on Iraq.<\/p>\n

The evidence of the IAEA\u2019s politicization can be found in confidential U.S. diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks and published last year by the Guardian newspaper in the U.K. In those cables, the IAEA\u2019s new leadership indicated it was willing to give Washington what it wanted on Iran, just as the CIA\u2019s hierarchy bent to Bush\u2019s needs on Iraq last decade.<\/p>\n

According to the U.S. embassy cables from Vienna, Austria, the IAEA\u2019s headquarters, Americans diplomats in 2009 were cheering the prospect that Amano would advance American interests in ways that outgoing IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei wouldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

In a July 9, 2009, cable, American charg\u00e9 Geoffrey Pyatt said Amano was thankful for U.S. support of his election. \u201cAmano attributed his election to support from the U.S., Australia and France, and cited U.S. intervention with Argentina as particularly decisive,\u201d the cable said.<\/p>\n

The appreciative Amano informed Pyatt that as IAEA director general, he would take a different \u201capproach on Iran from that of ElBaradei\u201d and he \u201csaw his primary role as implementing safeguards and UNSC [United Nations Security Council]\/Board resolutions,\u201d i.e. U.S.-driven sanctions and demands against Iran. …more<\/a><\/p>\n

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Slanting the Case on Iran\u2019s Nukes 23 February, 2012 – Consortium News – By Robert Parry As Washington\u2019s political\/media class rises up in arms over new WMD allegations against Iran, it might be worth recalling how a similar process played out nearly a decade ago when the U.S. public was drawn into a war with more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[1469],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6362"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6362"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6364,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6362\/revisions\/6364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}