A HILARIOUS GUARDIAN HIT PIECE or HOW TO TWIST THE FACTS WHEN THEY ARE ALL BAD

A few words on The Guardian before jumping in. The Guardian is the leading far left newspaper in Britain. Its politics lie somewhere in between the Communist Workers Party and the New York Times. Much of its straight reporting is some of the finest out there. The really whacky stuff comes in the Opinion pieces, but occasionally the reporters and editors can't help themselves and they let their leftist bent bleed heavily into their straight reporting. Such is the case with this gem, "US intelligence on Iran does not stand up, say Vienna sources."


The situation in Iran is nearly the polar opposite of that of Iraq prior to the invasion in 2003. Iran is openly, now at least, developing nuclear capacity. They have built a facility to make heavy water. Heavy water is necessary for making weapons grade plutonium. If Iran's goal is simply peaceful harnessing of atomic power for energy, they would use the safer and less waste producing light water reactor. Most power reactors worldwide, and all in the United States are cooled by ordinary “light” water. The question of whether Iran has a "right" to develop a full fuel cycle with heavy water is really Ahmadinejad's red herring. The penultimate question is Iran's motivation for doing so. If Iran is not developing a nuclear weapon, they have nothing to hide. There is no reason whatsoever to keep the IAEA from inspecting and documenting its nuclear development. On these facts alone, even a blind man could see that Iran is attempting to build nuclear weapons. Add in plans for ICBM's and enriched uranium spheres whose only use is in nuclear weapons . . . well, you decide.

With all of that in mind, let's dissect the Guardian article.

THE GUARDIAN SAYS:

Much of the intelligence on Iran's nuclear facilities provided to UN inspectors by American spy agencies has turned out to be unfounded, according to diplomatic sources in Vienna.

The claims, reminiscent of the intelligence fiasco surrounding the Iraq war, coincided with a sharp increase in international tension as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Iran was defying a UN security council ultimatum to freeze its nuclear programme.

TRANSLATION: Those CIA numbnuts are at it AGAIN. Can you believe these guys. They need to put down their spy decoder rings before they hurt themselves. They got it wrong on Iraq nuclear weapons program, and this is just a repeat. Any U.S. intelligence -- and any reasonable inferences from information in the public domain -- are to be ignored. Like any good journalist, ours gets his main premise out early.

THE GUARDIAN SAYS:

At the heart of the debate are accusations, spearheaded by the US, that Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons. However, most of the tip-offs about supposed secret weapons sites provided by the CIA and other US intelligence agencies have led to dead ends when investigated by IAEA inspectors, according to informed sources in Vienna.

"Most of it has turned out to be incorrect," said a diplomat at the IAEA with detailed knowledge of the agency's investigations. "They gave us a paper with a list of sites. [The inspectors] did some follow-up, they went to some military sites, but there was no sign of [banned nuclear] activities."

TRANSLATION: What actually appears to be going on here is that the U.S. is trying to turn over all the rocks where they have any suspicion that there might be problems. Sounds like the right way to do things to me. Not to our intrepid reporter and his reliable source. They spin this like Linda Blair's head in the Exorcist. Thoroughness now equals incompetence.

THE GUARDIAN SAYS:

One particularly contentious issue concerned records of plans to build a nuclear warhead, which the CIA said it found on a stolen laptop computer supplied by an informant inside Iran. In July 2005, US intelligence officials showed printed versions of the material to IAEA officials, who judged it to be sufficiently specific to confront Iran.

Tehran rejected the material as forgeries and there are still reservations about its authenticity in the IAEA, according to officials with knowledge of the internal debate inside the agency.

TRANSLATION: Hey, if Iran says its a forgery, that's good enough for me. I mean, as anyone with a tinfoil hat knows, the CIA regularly falsifies intelligence about the nuclear programs of Middle Eastern countries in order to provide BushHitler with the cover he needs to continue his imperialistic march towards world domination.

THE GUARDIAN SAYS

"First of all, if you have a clandestine programme, you don't put it on laptops which can walk away," one official said.

whoa. WHOA. WHOA-GD-WHOA. How did they keep a straight face writing that one. Secret documents in this day and age almost invariably originate from and are stored on a computer medium which, then itself becomes classified. And laptops with classified information get lost or stolen all the time, as this snippet from THE GUARDIAN'S archives of last year attests:

Secret military/intelligence documents and laptops seem to have an alarming tendency to end up accidentally left in pubs or abandoned in ditches. From such places, their next destination is often the newsrooms of national tabloid newspapers.

How embarrassing.

Damn those archives.

But then again, the author here is only quoting his highly reliable "source." So would the "source" consider the plans to be credible only if hand drawn with a crayon? For some reason, I am picturing stick figures, a mushroom cloud, and several arrows pointing out the direcions. At any rate, perhaps that is typical of security precautions in the "sources" home country, but it does not seem to hold true for the rest of the known world. Who the hell is this source, Borat?

And now for the grand finale . . .

THE GUARDIAN SAYS

One of the "outstanding issues" listed in yesterday's report involves a 15-page document that appears to have been handed to IAEA inspectors by mistake in October 2005. That document roughly describes how to make hemispheres of enriched uranium, for which the only known use is in nuclear warheads. Iran has yet to present a satisfactory explanation of how and why it has the document.

Last night Iran, which says its nuclear fuel programme is designed only to produce electricity, remained defiant.

TRANSLATION: OHHHH NOOOOOO . . . . the SMOKING GUN.

Now, to the author's credit, he did include mention of this smoking gun in his article, but he just couldn't bring himself to identify which party gave the document to the IAEA inspectors in the lead sentence. Maybe he hopes we won't notice.

Can't you feel the author's pain and anguish in the tortured language of this paragraph? I for one am sympathetic. I think it is just very fortunate that the author had a literary palliative that he could quickly pen to assuage his pain -- that of Iran explaining the true, peaceful nature of its nuclear (weapons) program to the incompent Americans.

This one has to go down as a classic of leftist literature. Our author displays an absolute refusal to draw any reasonable inferences from the facts that he must face up to, and he gets an alternate take on the facts wherever he can -- an alternate take even more reliable then the IAEA report itself, apparently. This is truly a work of art. And because of all his effort, his is able to maintain the purity of his ideological equations:

BushHitler = Evil; CIA = Incompetent; Iran = Peace Loving, Honest and Democratic Mullahs.

I have my own equation. LEFT'S POSITION ON IRAN = SUICIDE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION.