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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton could perhaps track down those graphic artists who offered up the "artist renderings" of Iraq's non-existent mobile biological weapons labs that Secretary of State Colin Powell used to such good effect in his infamous United Nations speech on February 5, 2003. Artist renderings are the next best thing to real images which are the next best thing to real weapons
And if war with Iran does come as many powerful people seem to hope and if there's no subsequent discovery of any nuclear weapons program, perhaps President Barack Obama can blame the Iranians for not proving their program didn't exist, much as President George W. Bush blamed Iraqi leaders for failing to prove the negative--not convincing him that they really didn't have weapons of mass destruction.
Or retired Gen. James R. Clapper, who's now Obama's Director of National Intelligence, might reprise his explanation for not finding any WMD caches in Iraq, namely that they must have been shipped to Syria -- or in Iran's case, perhaps Turkmenistan. Clapper is well known in intelligence circles for his unusual relationship to truth.
NYTimes : Case Study in Creative Writing
Consider this: The Times had several weeks to get the "long-range missiles from North Korea" story right, or at least to include the doubts from missile experts. But authors William J. Broad, James Glanz and David E. Sanger decided to cherry-pick the evidence within one WikiLeaks-released cable to highlight one version -- the version U.S. officials were pushing with their Russian counterparts who, the same cable makes clear, didn't believe them.
And the Times has yet to let its readers in on the fuller story.
To its credit, on Dec. 1, the Washington Post decided it had to be a tad more honest. "Experts cast doubt on Iran missile cache" was the headline of a surprisingly contrite article placed above the fold on page one, no less! Post writers John Pomfret and Walter Pincus laid out so many problems with the U.S. side of the case that attentive readers are likely to have reacted with the same incredulity as that displayed by the Russians regarding the missile claims.
"There is no indication that the Musudan [the "missile" paraded by the North Koreans on Oct. 10] is operational or that it has ever been tested," the Post article noted. "Iran has never publicly displayed the missiles, according to experts and a senior U.S. intelligence official, some of whom doubt the missiles were ever transferred to Iran. Experts who analyzed Oct. 10 photographs of the Musudan said it appeared to be a mock-up."
Does Not Check OutThe Post article goes on to quote a senior U.S. intelligence official saying, "There has been a flow of knowledge and missile parts" from North Korea, "but sale of such an actual missile does not check out."
And those familiar with the dubious reputation of the German tabloid Bild Zeitung may be more than a little surprised that U.S. government officials told their Russian counterparts that Washington was relying "on news reports" -- specifically from Bild Zeitung "as proof" of the sale of 19 advanced missiles by North Korea to Iran. It turns out that U.S. officials were being even more creative than Bild , which quoted German intelligence sources as saying that Iran had purchased 18 kits made up of missile components -- not 19 of the missiles themselves.
Greg Thielmann, formerly State Department intelligence director for strategic systems and now with the Arms Control Association, posted his own take on the case of the "mysterious missile" on Nov. 30:
"Bilateral interagency discussions about Iranian and North Korean missiles with a Russian delegation in Washington on December 22, 2009, revealed significant differences between U.S. and Russian assessments of the threat, according to a SECRET State Department cable released by WikiLeaks. The substance of the detailed discussions challenged some of the missile threat estimate timelines most commonly heard in U.S. political circles"
"So far, the U.S. press seems to have passed over some of the most interesting elements in the cable, highlighting instead the U.S. claim that Iran had obtained 19 missiles from North Korea, based on the R-27 (SS-N-6), a Russian submarine-launched design from the 1960s. Notable exceptions to this common story line can be found in the commentary of David Hoffman and Gareth Porter." [See Consortiumnews.com's "NYT Takes US Side in Iran Missile Flap."]
Thielmann continued: "Both the New York Times and the [initial] Washington Post coverage led with the 19 imported missiles angle and left an impression of imminent danger not merited by the specifics in the cable. For example, The New York Times declared: "[Iran] has in its arsenal"'
"The Washington Post carried an Associated Press story, leading with: "[Iran] has received advanced North Korean missiles capable of targeting Western European capitals and giving the Islamic Republic's arsenal a significantly farther reach than previously disclosed.'
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