Articles with the Tag National Intelligence Estimate

Manufacturing consent and the NIE

Manufacturing Consent, War on Iran
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I came across two great remarks today on how that National Intelligence Estimate helps shape the received wisdom on Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons ambitions. First quote is from Left I on the News, second quote from Aaronovitch Watch:

One of the successes of the new NIE is that virtually everyone in the “mainstream” (pundits, candidates, corporate media) now accepts as simple fact that Iran had a nuclear weapons program which it abandoned in 2003.

[…]

“News” in the same sense that it was “news” that Iraq didn’t have WMD – ie, it’s not news, it has been available for years, the international inspectors who know what they’re doing and publish their results have been giving exactly this message, but now some sekrit American intelligences have said the same thing, it is no longer possible to pretend otherwise[.]

The news cycle on this issue was from start to finish driven by the American government. The US says Iran is seeking nuclear weapons and the debate is on whether the US should impose sanctions or use military force to stop this, not on whether or not its claims are actually true. When the issue of truth did arise, it was presented as “he said, she said”, with the truth of the matter, that international inspectors had not found any evidence of Iranian wrongdoing, largely not being reported or only glossed over. Only when the NIE confirmed this was it converted to the official truth, though as Left Eye remarks, with the caveat that Iran had a nuclear programme before 2003, again something I haven’t seen any evidence for.

In other words, there have White House originated limits in the reporting on this issue, beyond which the newsmedia, whether approving or disapproving of the US stance on Iran, whether British, American or Dutch, have largely not strayed. And this is not done through some sort of Stalinist censorship, but purely through the news media’s internalised ideas about what is and isn’t acceptable reporting. As Chomsky and Herman discussed so many years ago, the media operate under a set of self imposed filters, filters that hinder its ability to determine the real truth and instead lead it to present a severely skewed image of the world.

US government acknowledges reality, sort of

US foreign policy, War on Iran
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Big news yesterday, as Pradva on the Hudson revealed that “American intelligence agencies” have come to the conclusion that “Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains frozen”. The $64,000 question is how much this actually matters: will it halt or slowdown Bush’s war preparations against Iran (that is, if war with Iran is actually on the cards and is not just used as a convenient threat). Lenny is guardedly optimistic on this, but I’m not so sure. The Bush administration has never let itself be embarassed by inconvenient facts before, so why should this time be different?

In general the report does not say anything new about the whole Iran “crisis”. We already knew that the accusations of nuclear chicanery were bogus. The only new thing is that a segment of the American government has finally managed to acknowledge reality, which is a step forwards, I guess. However since the report does say that Iran had been working on a nuclear bomb back in 2003, in a roundabout way it strengthens the Bushite narrative as Iran as an unreliable, aggressive power.

Now as far as I know, only American or American backed sources have ever said that Iran was working on nuclear weapons, there has never been any independent confirmation of this, so the fact that the US government and the media finally have to acknowledge Iran isn’t working on them
now is decidedly a “glass half empty” situation. Especially since it allows the Bushites to argue that their strongarm tactics have worked, as they’re already doing.