Of Iran and Hype
01 July 2008 5:55 pm by Taylor Marsh
Israel will attack Iran! Yesterday, ABC reported “senior
Pentagon officials” are concerned Israel could strike.
No, they won’t, said Charles Krauthammer today, they don’t have the equipment.
But we do, wink-wink.
Brit Hume was all over the story today on Fox, putting it all in the context
of an Obama presidency. If it happens before the election Obama will have to
support it, of course, or risk losing. Oh, but Brit reminds everyone, this is
all simply speculation. Ya think?
Seymour
Hersh has been writing about it for years, including just recently again.
The
State department said nonsense:
And for the second time this week, it fell to the State Department to respond.
Tom H. Casey, deputy spokesman, provided Reuters with the U.S. government’s
reaction to the ABC News report:I have no information that would substantiate that, and I think it’s
rather foolish of people who often have no clue what they’re talking
about to assert things and not even have the courtesy to do so on the basis
of their name.Later in the day, he elaborated on the question with a useful observation.
Despite Israeli rehearsals and saber rattling on all sides, the final decision
to attack will come down to a handful of officials who are not exactly open
books on their military plans.“It’s always amazing that there are lots of anonymous sources
out there who profess to know the inner will of officials in other countries,
Israel or otherwise,” Mr. Casey said.… .. Having reasoned with reporters, Mr. Casey turned to comedy. “You
know, I need to find this guy, because apparently he’s an expert on
the Israeli military, an expert on Iran and an expert on nuclear issues at
the same time,” he said. “Let’s get him a Nobel Prize.”ABC News, for its part, offered a follow-up article today that included doubts
that war was on the horizon. Hirsch Goodman, a national security analyst in
Tel Aviv, dismissed the story as “just the latest in the hype that has
been generated in the last few weeks.”
Juan
Cole on the “senior Pentagon” sources, who no doubt will never
be named:
… This second “red line” is pure bullshit. There is no evidence
that Iran is enriching uranium to weapons grade at all, much less that it
is making enough highly-enriched uranium that it will be able to make a bomb
in 2009.You can’t use low-enriched uranium to make a bomb.
The IAEA says that there is no evidence–zilch, zero, nada– that Iran has
facilities for enriching to weapons grade or that it is trying to do so.
Instead we get rumors about bomb, bomb, bombing Iran. But in an election year,
no one should get too comfortable.
This
tidbit from Laura Rozen is also interesting.
Meanwhile, any of these guys talking about Pakistan or Central Asia? Not a
word.
