Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who in 2002 accurately debunked the Bush administration’s case for war in IRAQ, sheds light on this year’s campaign to incriminate IRAN using the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Here are a few excerpts from Hersh’s interview on DemocracyNow earlier this year (6/3/11):
“What the IAEA said is something it’s been saying repeatedly, even under ElBaradei. And I must say, the new director general, Mr. Amano, is, I think, more willing to please us than ElBaradei was, just in terms of speculating more.
“…The word ‘evidence’ was nowhere in the report. It’s been going on a long time… the IAEA has put out… report after report that say one thing, that’s the most important thing: NO EVIDENCE of any diversion of enriched materials, NO EVIDENCE that they’re squirreling away enriched uranium to make a secret bomb. They have a lot of uranium enriched, the 3.7 percent, yes, but there’s NO EVIDENCE they’re doing anything more than storing it up to run a civilian nuclear reactor… And so, it’s the same thing that’s been going on. You can look at the questions raised and lead your story with that, or you can look at the fact they say consistently that there’s been no diversion.”
Regarding the mysterious, electronic (not original) documents fed to the IAEA late in the Bush years — the same SECRET-SOURCE, unauthenticated junk that’s been recycled for today’s warmongers (now that there’s a Western stooge at the agency’s head) — here’s an excerpt from an IAEA press release in September 2009:
“…the IAEA reiterates that it has no concrete proof that there is or has been a nuclear weapon programme in Iran. At the Board of Governors´ meeting on 9 September 2009, Director General Mohamed ElBaradei warned that continuing allegations that the IAEA was withholding information on Iran are POLITICALLY MOTIVATED AND TOTALLY BASELESS.”
So now, in 2011, eleven days prior to the publication of the newly politicized IAEA’s much ballyhooed (if already discredited) report, we have the National Security Council holding secret meetings with the Neocons’ preferred IAEA director, Mr. Amano — meetings the Obama administration declines to confirm. Evidently, the politicians and MSM are again on the brink of plunging the world into chaos and putting millions of lives at risk — again based on a pack of lies.
And the evidence supporting that unfortunate conclusion is both abundant and transparently documented (providing a study in contrast).