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By Root 2702 0

civilian casualties (the same media that had been so focused and indignant on the much smaller casualties in Bosnia-Herzegovina), the swallowing of a series of Pentagon propaganda lies (the alleged heroism and mistreatment of Jessica Lynch, the heroic death of Pat Tillman), the lagged and modest interest in rendition and the torture gulag (and wide substitution of the word “abuse” for “torture”),41 and the reluctant and low-key treatment of the Downing Street Memo, allegedly “old news” although confirming Bush lies that had not been so described by the MSM at the time.42 One of the more embarrassing disclosures testifying to media failure, except as agents of propaganda, has been the level of public ignorance shown in polls, with about half of the U.S. public in 2002-2005 believing that Iraq had provided substantial support to Al-Qaeda and possessed WMD, or at least had a major WMD program.43 Interestingly, large majorities said that the United States shouldn’t have gone to war if Iraq didn’t have such weapons or provide aid to Al-Qaeda, so that the MSM’s cooperation with the Bush administration in putting over their lies was essential war-propaganda service.

Iran’s Weapons of Mass Destruction and Threat

In the wake of mounting and ultimately incontestable evidence that during the U.S. and British governments’ year-long buildup towards their March 2003 Iraq war, the New York Times and Washington Post had funneled Bush’s and Blair’s pro-war propaganda along to their readers, both these newspapers published quasi-apologies in 2004.44 “We have examined the failings of American and allied intelligence, especially on the issue of Iraq’s weapons and possible Iraqi connections to international terrorists,” the editorial voice of the Times stated. “[W]e have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been . . . Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged—or failed to emerge.”

But long before the Times, Post, and other media began to issue these weak and understated admissions that they had pushed official claims too hard and given inadequate attention to counter-evidence, they had already begun performing in exactly the same mode as the U.S. government turned its attention to an alleged nuclear weapons program in Iran. Once again a state was targeted and demonized, and here alleged to be “developing nuclear weapons in violation of its commitments under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.”45 Once again an inspections process was initiated under the auspices of the IAEA by the United States to harass the targeted state and to mobilize its own population and the “international community” to justify another attack and attempted “regime change.” And once again the MSM got on board, following the official spin about a nuclear-weapons threat almost without deviation, ignoring the inconvenient context of U.S. nuclear policy and political opportunism, and the locus of the real threats of mushrooms clouds.

One part of the relevant but ignored context was the earlier treatment of Iran’s nuclear program under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The Shah, who had been installed as ruler by the United States in 1953, was positively encouraged by top U.S. officials (Kissinger, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz) to develop a nuclear capability, and for the same reason that Tehran cites today: to provide sufficient electrical power to meet the needs of the country’s rapidly growing population, and to free up as much of its oil for export-earnings as possible.46 After his overthrow in 1979, however, the United States changed course: the new rulers of Iran were now a declared enemy, and in the U.S. official view Iran no longer retained the nuclear rights it had when ruled by a U.S. client, or as it legally possesses under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) that Iran signed. The U.S. MSM rarely mention this shift in Iran’s rights that are a function strictly of U.S. political preference. That would interfere with the notion that