NIE Report is Propaganda Victory for Iran

RealClearPolitics - Articles - NIE Report is Propaganda Victory for Iran: “All that the new NIE does is to add a prominent statement that Iran suspended its covert enrichment program–which Iran then exchanged for an open, ostensibly civilian enrichment program. But this makes little difference; uranium enriched by a civilian program can still be diverted to make a bomb. And then the NIE adds its opinion that this relatively minor change was in response to ‘international pressure.’ This is an exercise in the power of a few top-level bureaucrats to shape the meaning of the work of hundreds of others, simply by re-writing the headlines. We should be used to this from the global warming reports periodically issued by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change–reports whose body, which is prepared by scientists, is always far less alarmist than the ’summary for policymakers’ tacked on to it by politicians and diplomats and then amplified in the press. The Wall Street Journal and a few other sources have speculated that some of the NIE’s authors, who have a reputation as ‘hyper-partisan anti-Bush officials,’ deliberately set out to sabotage the administration. Whatever the case, the authors certainly knew that their lines about Iran allegedly suspending its weapons program and not ‘rushing’ to produce a weapon would be picked up by the media. And they must have realized that this would eclipse the rest of the substance of the report.”