Robert Parry: New Weasel Word on Iran Nukes

[marmar]

from Consortium News:



New Weasel Word on Iran Nukes
February 15, 2012

Exclusive: The U.S. news media has consistently created the impression that Iran is building a nuclear bomb and that its denials shouldn’t be taken seriously. However, U.S. and Israeli intelligence assessments may finally be eroding that smug certainty, Robert Parry reports.

By Robert Parry


What can one say when the Washington Post’s neoconservative editorial writers more correctly describe the U.S. and Israeli assessments on Iran’s nuclear program than does a news story in the New York Times? In a Wednesday morning surprise, a Washington Post editorial got the nuances, more or less, right in stating: “U.S. and Israeli officials share an assessment that, though Iran is building up nuclear capability, it has not taken decisive steps toward building a bomb.”

You could still say the Post is hyping things a bit, skewing the wording in an anti-Iranian direction, but the sentence is essentially correct on where U.S. and Israeli intelligence judgments stand, that Iran has NOT made a decision to build a nuclear bomb.

But then there’s the New York Times. It continues to mislead its readers, albeit with a new weasel word inserted to avoid being accused of completely misstating the facts. In a news article on Wednesday, the Times reported that “the United States, Europe and Israel have all called [Iran’s nuclear] program a cover for Iranian efforts to develop nuclear weapons capability, an accusation that Iran denies.”

The key weasel word now is “capability,” which is a very elastic concept since any work on nuclear research for peaceful purposes, such as low-level enrichment of uranium, could theoretically be used toward a weapons “capability.” (The word also appeared in the Post editorial.) ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2012/02/15/new-weasel-word-on-iran-nukes/

[teddy51]

1. What I want to know is, how long are Russia, China, and India going to let these

Western F***up's with the help of lunitic right wing Israeli Government neocon's going to let them be led into this clusterfuck.