The U.K. Guardian observed Amano's cozy relationship with the United States, but major U.S. news outlets have avoided any critical examination of Amano. Instead, they simply trumpeted the new IAEA report on Iran earlier this month, treating it without skepticism. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Dà �jà vu Over Iran Nuke Charges" and "Big Media's Double Standards on Iran."]
This week, the neocon-dominated Washington Post has continued to pump out anti-Iranian propaganda. On Monday, the Post fronted an article entitled "Iran's role probed in Gaddafi stockpile" suggesting -- with no solid evidence at all -- that Iran had supplied Muammar Gaddafi's Libya with artillery shells for chemical weapons.
Co-produced with the Center for Public Integrity, the Post article said U.S. intelligence is investigating how the shells got to Libya and that "several sources said early suspicion had fallen on Iran. ... A U.S. official with access to classified information confirmed that there were 'serious concerns' that Iran had provided the shells, albeit some years ago.
"In recent weeks, U.N. inspectors [at IAEA] have released new information indicating that Iran has the capability to develop a nuclear bomb, a charge Iranian officials have long rejected. Confirmed evidence of Iran's provision of the specialized shells may exacerbate international tensions over the country's alleged pursuit of weapons of mass destruction."
Troubling Parallel
If any of this is creating a sense of dà �jà vu -- with supposedly objective organizations fanning the flames of confrontation based on little hard proof -- it's understandable. A nearly identical process paved the way to war with Iraq. (Over the years, for instance, the Center for Public Integrity has received substantial funding from liberal foundations, but it has since tilted right.)
In 2002-2003, the U.S. political/media process was similarly overwhelmed with supposedly objective evidence of Iraq's pursuit of nuclear bombs and other unconventional weapons, including disclosure from "scientists" defecting from Iraq who were then funneled to U.S. intelligence analysts and journalists by the dissident Iraqi National Congress.
It was not until 2006 when the Senate Intelligence Committee issued a long-awaited post-mortem on why the U.S. intelligence community performed so badly that details were revealed about how the INC shaped the pro-war debate by coaching Iraqi "defectors" how to lie. Amid the powerful "group think" that gripped Official Washington then, the lies fed the war fever.
Just like today, it was far easier -- and safer -- for politicians and pundits to get all macho against a "designated enemy" in the Middle East than it was to examine the specifics of the WMD claims and risk being called an enemy "apologist."
After all, what if it turned out that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had hid stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons? Anyone who had challenged the WMD "group think" would have been identified as a "Saddam stooge" and might never work again.
By contrast, there was almost no career danger if you ran with the pack, even if it turned out that there were no secret WMD caches. Then, you could simply say that "everyone" was deceived and that no one should be singled out for punishment.
As it turned out -- with very few exceptions -- those who pushed disinformation that justified the Iraq War have maintained their esteemed spots in the Washington establishment.
Of course, some people did end up paying a price for the bogus Iraq-WMD "group think" -- the nearly 4,500 dead U.S. soldiers, the tens of thousands of wounded, and the hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed Iraqis, plus the U.S. taxpayers who got stuck with the bill. But few of those folks attend Georgetown cocktail parties.
Given the self-interest of Washington's WMD-duped insiders, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that the report detailing how the phony WMD case was built got little notice in 2006 when the Senate Intelligence Committee released its finding on how the Iraqi National Congress worked with American neocons to sell the case for war with Iraq.
The History
The official U.S. relationship with these Iraqi exiles dated back to 1991 after President George H.W. Bush had routed Hussein's army from Kuwait and wanted to help Saddam Hussein's domestic opponents.
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