Funny how the IAEA made a u-turn after Mohamed ElBaradei

it took 'em almost 24 months to move the iaea from a respected, objective watchdog to a shill for u.s. propaganda...

see jim white at emptywheel...

Two Years After ElBaradei’s Departure, IAEA Joins Anti-Iran Drumbeat

and, sure enough...

U.N. Finds Signs of Work by Iran Toward Nuclear Device

United Nations weapons inspectors released a trove of new evidence on Tuesday that they say makes a “credible” case that “Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear device” and that the project may still be under way.

The long-awaited report relies on evidence whose scope and depth is far greater than any the agency has made public before, and represents the harshest judgment that the International Atomic Energy Agency has ever issued in its decade-long struggle to pierce the secrecy surrounding the Iranian program. The findings have already rekindled a debate among the Western allies and Israel about whether increased diplomatic pressure, sanctions, sabotage or military action could stop Iran’s program.

robert parry offers a rapid response as well as some context on the bogus "authority" behind this equally bogus return bout of u.s. and media hyperventilation on iran, the same guy who sold us a bill of goods on iraq's non-existent wmd...

An Iraq-WMD Replay on Iran?

The American public is about to be inundated with another flood of “expert analysis” about a dangerous Middle Eastern country presumably hiding a secret nuclear weapons program that may require a military strike, although this time it is Iran, not Iraq.

In the near future, you will be seeing more satellite photos of non-descript buildings that experts will say are housing elements of a nuclear bomb factory. There will be more diagrams of supposed nuclear devices. Some of the same talking heads will reappear to interpret this new “evidence.”

You might even recognize some of those familiar faces from the more innocent days of 2002-2003 when they explained, with unnerving confidence, how Iraq’s Saddam Hussein surely had chemical and biological weapons and likely a nuclear weapons program, too.

For instance, back then, former United Nations weapons inspector David Albright was all over the news channels, reinforcing the alarmist claims about Iraq’s WMD that were coming from President George W. Bush and his neocon-dominated administration.

Today, Albright’s Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) is issuing a flurry of alarmist reports about Iran’s nuclear bomb progress, often accompanied by the same kind of satellite photos and diagrams that helped persuade many Americans that Iraq must possess unconventional weapons that turned out to be fictitious.

imho, this is nothing more and nothing less than another fabricated diversion to get us to stop focusing on real issues and keep us cowering under the bed in fear of yet another boogeyman... (pay no attention to ows... look over here at what iran's doing...!)

what's particularly disturbing about this turn of events isn't the patently propagandistic nature of the breathless revelations, it's the leaking scuttlebutt about israel's plans for attacking iran which would be ever so much worse than iran actually having the bomb...

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Was Bradley Manning the one to finally end the Iraq War (among other things)?

some solid cause for speculation...

glenn...

[T]he high-profile release of the cable by WikiLeaks generated substantial attention (and disgust) in Iraq, which made it politically unpalatable for the Iraqi government to grant the legal immunity the Obama administration was seeking. Indeed, it was widely reported at the time the cable was released that it made it much more difficult for Iraq to allow U.S. troops to remain beyond the deadline under any conditions.

In other words, whoever leaked that cable cast light on a heinous American war crime and, by doing so, likely played some significant role in thwarting an agreement between the Obama and Maliki governments to keep U.S. troops in Iraq and thus helped end this stage of the Iraq war (h/t Trevor Timm). Moreover, whoever leaked these cables — as even virulent WikiLeaks critic Bill Keller repeatedly acknowledged — likely played some significant in helping spark the Arab Spring protests by documenting just how deeply corrupt those U.S.-supported kleptocrats were. And in general, whoever leaked those cables has done more to publicize the corrupt, illegal and deceitful acts of the world’s most powerful factions — and to educate the world about how they behave — than all “watchdog” media outlets combined (indeed, the amount of news reports on a wide array of topics featuring WikiLeaks cables as the primary source is staggering). In sum, whoever leaked those cables is responsible for one of the most consequential, beneficial and noble acts of this generation.

[...]

And yet (or more accurately: therefore) the person accused of accomplishing all of this, Bradley Manning, has been imprisoned for more than a year without trial, and, if convicted, is almost certain to remain in prison for many more years (with the possibility, albeit unlikely, of death, and as the Obama administration continues to block an unmonitored visit by the U.N. official investigating what had been the inhumane conditions of his detention).

maybe bradley manning should be awarded the nobel peace prize...

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A helpful summary of current wingnut thinking

honestly, i don't know how this crap keeps ending up in my inbox, but, nonetheless, i'm finding it to be instructive reading... it's from move america forward... no link... you'll have to go dig it out on your own...

The past few days have been very instructive in realizing the stakes in the war on terrorism. Sometimes people in this country try to tell us that there really isn't a war going on - it's just lies by our Commander in Chief, or an intrusive American foreign policy butting our noses where it doesn't belong.

However, we know better. We know for example that the Iranians were able to take 15 British sailors hostage and then the Iranians taunted the world not to put too much pressure on them, or else we could all guess the consequences. The Iranians meanwhile terrorized the British hostages, making them believe they were going to be executed and telling them that if they would only lie and say they were in Iranian waters, they could go home.

In response the British government told the American Navy to stand down in our naval exercises in the region (that were pre-planned and in response to Iran's development of nuclear weapons). A top Iranian terror operative was released in Iraq in a move that the British government insists was not a quid-pro-quo but which many analysts view as exactly that.

The UN did not punish Iran. The European Union did nothing to show Iran that they would face consequences for their actions.

And in this country, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi along with pro-Palestinian Congressman Darrell Issa (a Republican who has been accused of supporting Yasser Arafat and terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah) were in Syria, appeasing the state sponsor of Islamic terrorism.

This has not been a good week for the free nations of the West. Radical, pro-Islamic terrorist factions managed to win on a variety of fronts by showing strength and intimidating the British government and the likes of Nancy Pelosi to bow down to them in submission.

Ronald Reagan once fought against the Communist appeasers in the U.S. by saying that true "peace" could only be found through strength - PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH.

it's fascinating to me how, in a few short paragraphs, literally EVERYONE - Iran, Islam, Britain, Syria, Hezbollah, Palestine, the U.N., the EU, Nancy Pelosi, and Republican Darrell Issa - is characterized as either the enemy or as an enemy appeaser... what a marvelous worldview...

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