My comment — unprinted — responding to the following New York Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/sunday-review/the-secret-war-with-iran.html
To the editors of The New York Times:
With this article it seems the Times has reverted to its 2002-03 mindset: blithely peddling Neoconservative claptrap that doesn’t remotely stand up to scrutiny. (Why don’t you just tell us again that “we can’t have the smoking gun be a mushroom cloud?” The Beltway crowd bought it, even if the experts didn’t.)
But you never quote the experts — the vindicated naysayers of eight short years ago — in fluff pieces like this one. The Times apparently can’t spare a line for Juan Cole, Sy Hersh, or Mohammed El-Baradei; you’re too busy regurgitating Neocon nonsense.
Anyone halfway familiar with U.S. foreign policy over the past decade knows that the so-called “Iranian plot” to kill the Saudi ambassador absolutely REEKS of a frame-up (was Rocco Martino involved in this one, too?).
We also know that Mr. El-Baradei (the Nobel Prize-winning former head of the IAEA who had the integrity to refute 2003’s warmongers) has repeatedly cast doubt on the SECRET-SOURCE “evidence” that today’s IAEA, under its new “leadership,” is about to present in its report. According to the Times, that alleged evidence “suggests” (your word, as opposed to “reveals”) an Iranian weapons program — but it is apparently the same junk that was met with derision a few years ago, merely recycled for the present confrontation we’re forcing with Iran.
Although you allude to the U.S./Israeli campaign of assassination in Iran, you say nothing of America’s open support for the MEK, the State Department-designated TERRORIST organization that’s been killing Iranian civilians for years with U.S. funds.
And you consistently fail to mention the vital historical context the rest of the world knows all too well: the 1953 CIA coup that replaced a globally-celebrated democratic leader, Mossadeqh, with the torturing, secret police-employing Shah (you also neglect to mention that after the Iranians overthrew the Shah the U.S. elevated Saddam and sicced him on his neighbor, launching a war that cost over a million lives).
I know there was real regret at the Times after it became clear that your 2003 editorial policy amounted to selling Bush’s lies. PLEASE, eight years later, don’t sell Obama’s.
————————– ADDENDUM 1 (submitted to the Times once it became apparent that they had censored the above comment — which, to be fair, they consistently do when comments are critical of their paper):
I’m not sure why the NYT is willing to print Comment #95 and refuses to publish mine. It is hardly controversial to state that the Times routinely peddles Neoconservative propaganda (the bogus case for war on Iraq being only the most notorious example).
I’m getting awfully tired of this publication censoring comments that are NOT abusive, use NO profanity, and are precisely on point. While you may print THIS comment (because it goes into no detail about egregious errors in the article by Mr. Sanger or the NYT’s past abuses), I would really appreciate if you printed my first submitted comment in its entirety. I have, after all, been a faithful reader for more than a decade.
Please try to remember that you’re supposed to be the “newspaper of record” in an alleged democracy — and stop screening comments as if you were the House Un-American Activities Committee, so terrified of articulate dissent that you refuse to permit such dissent to ever see the light of day.
————————– ADDENDUM 2 (excerpted from my corrective to claims in the 2008 bill, H.Con.Res.362, in the U.S. House of Representatives which, had it passed, would have authorized an act of war against Iran; this excerpt references the “SECRET SOURCE” evidence that today’s IAEA is using to allege the appearance of an Iranian weapons program):
2) “Whereas” (No. 3) states that “the IAEA has confirmed… importation of designs to convert highly enriched uranium gas into metal and shape it into the core of a nuclear weapon.”
This assertion is FALSE. H. Con. Res. 362 falsely attributes this claim to the IAEA. It is actually from the 18 electronic documents (not original documents) supplied to the IAEA by various states favoring strong action against Iran. The IAEA’s June 2008 report refers to such documents as “alleged” and “purported,” stating explicitly that they have not been authenticated.
Of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, the IAEA report states: “The Agency currently has no information… on the actual design or manufacture by Iran of nuclear material components, or of other key components, of a nuclear weapon. Likewise, the Agency has not seen indications of the actual use of nuclear material in connection with the alleged studies.”
Regarding the alleged documents, the IAEA was not provided with original copies of the documents, but only electronic versions which they were not authorized to share with the Iranians in order to prevent Tehran from responding to the alleged evidence.