It’s likely that I should apologize for the snarky reference to the Bacall/Grable/Monroe film in the title, but I won’t.  It proved too hard too pass up considering the subject at hand.  I will apologize for the diary’s length, but this a huge subject area, and gravely important, IMO.  Prizes will be awarded to those who read to the end.  Seriously; it’s like… homework, man!

In another diary last week, I had linked to a Robert Parry piece, ‘America’s Debt to Bradley Manning’, in which he spotlights some of the relevant 2009 Wikileak cables that demonstrate the tenor of the American campaign for the appointment of now Inspector General of the IAEA, Yakiya Amano.  The media drumbeats for war are growing ever louder and more strident as MSM ‘journalists’ fail to perform any due diligence in reporting on the facts already in evidence concerning Amano’s being elevated to that powerful position.  That he is in obvious lock-step with the Western Powers’ need to ratchet up the world’s fear about Iran, and fill our heads with visions of mushroom clouds over Israel and whatever-the-hell else they feel like ‘wiping off the map’ (Ahmedinejad uses the Farsi word for ‘regime’ according to some reports.) is clear.

That the major ‘news’ organizations report as undeniably credible the recent report alleging that Iran has restarted its weapons program, never mind the Fox News and Christianist outlets ratcheting up war fervor, it’s starting to reach past the ‘lazy-stenographers-for-the media/Congressional War Complex’ into ‘Wipe-out-theAxis-of-Evil’ conspiracy territory.

I’ll come back to the cables, but this morning while cruising a little online before writing this up, I found an eye-popping little warning at Bloomberg News by Robert Kelley, a nuclear engineer who for nine years was a director at the IAEA, and was a member of the Iraq Action Team.  I applaud Bloomberg for posting it.

He writes that the withholding of facts and evidence he ‘wasn’t allowed to speak’ about, both contrived and debunked evidence, led to massive amounts of blood being shed (he mentions both ours and theirs, I was glad to see), and that he feels a shared responsibility for that war.  He indicates a need to speak out now about the dearth of evidence that is actually contained in Yakiya Amano’s November IAEA report about Iranian nuclear weapons ambitions.  He describes his sick sense of déjà vu, and expresses concern that withheld evidence could lead to another similar conflagration, this time with Iran.

At the end of his piece he is clearly covering his bases by saying that Iran deserves scrutiny over these matters, and admits to some skepticism about Iranian claims that they haven’t resumed their weapons program, but they act as though they have something to hide, tra la la….,but that he wants the true facts on the table.  But before that disclaimer, he reminds us that before 2003, it was accepted that Iran had a nuclear weapons program, and pointed to Natanz, and Arak as evidence, yada, yada.  And then this (emphasis mine throughout):

“However, it must be remembered that in the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, U.S. agencies concluded that Iran halted its nuclear-arms program in 2003 under international pressure. It’s rare for intelligence officials to determine that they have sufficient evidence to say a program has ended, so their information presumably was very good. Similarly, until this year, the IAEA has consistently reported that it had no information suggesting Iran had a nuclear-weapons program after 2004.

So the issue is not whether there is evidence of such a program, but whether there is evidence that it was restarted after being shut down in 2003.

The Nov. 8, 2011, report of the IAEA, under the leadership of Director General Yukiya Amano, is long on the former and very short on the latter. In the 24-page document, intended for a restricted distribution but widely available on the Internet, all but three of the items that were offered as proof of a possible nuclear-arms program are either undated or refer to events before 2004. The agency spends about 96 percent of a 14- page annex reprising what was already known: that at one time there were military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program.”

Kelley goes on to explain why the ‘new’ evidence is highly suspect, and two pieces claiming that Iran undertook  a four-year weapons program in 2006 to create a nuclear trigger, are unattributed, suspected forgeries, and…crap.  Kelley says that those documents were centralto an earlier ‘campaign of misinformation’.  (We would call it worse names.)

“In 2009, the IAEA received a two-page document, purporting to come from Iran, describing this same alleged work. Mohamed ElBaradei, who was then the agency’s director general, rejected the information because there was no chain of custody for the paper, no clear source, document markings, date of issue or anything else that could establish its authenticity. What’s more, the document contained style errors, suggesting the author was not a native Farsi speaker. It appeared to have been typed using an Arabic, rather than a Farsi, word-processing program. When ElBaradei put the document in the trash heap, the U.K.’s Times newspaper published it.”

He then faults ElBaradei for not yelling foul over the Niger Yellow Cake Forgeries, thus allowing George Dubya Bush to utter his famous sixteen words in his 2003 SOTUS, which zipped us into shock-and-awe in Iraq.  My stars; I went to find a link to them for you, and discovered that FactCheck.org…was doing Gatekeeper Duty even in 2004.  Oy.  He also mentions other forgeries provided to the watchdog agency over the years that ElBaradei ‘neglected’ to out as what they were: blatant and amateurish forgeries.

He sincerely low-balls much of this, and claims that ElBaradei was a good man between the proverbial rock and a hard place, hampered because the US provides 25% of the funding to the IAEA.  Well, jeez Louise.  ‘Tough nay-nays’, as my godmother used to say.  Silence can be deceit, as we’ve so often seen, and at that level, often leads to untold war horrors.  And if the IAEA isn’t rigorous and honest, then…The truth really isn’t out there, or at the very least, no one knows what it is.

But he admonishes the current IG, and in light of what he’s said about withheld evidence and it’s insane danger, I charge him with being far too sotto voce; but at least he’s speaking out now (yes; this time.)

“ElBaradei’s successor also has fallen short by failing to note in his report the earlier doubts that Iran was continuing to develop a neutron-producing device. If Amano has found new reasons to overlook the many questionable aspects of this story, he should present them. Given past doubts about the episode, the agency’s reporting on it should be above reproach.”

Let me use the ‘IAEA funded by___’ meme as a segue to the Wikileak cables concerning the hiring of Amano.  You may know (I didn’t, or at least had forgotten), that these cables surfaced in 2010, and apparently melted into obscurity.  Parry discusses a few of the pertinent ones here:

(Discussing his support by the US, et.al.): “The appreciative Amano informed Pyatt that as IAEA director-general, he would take a different “approach on Iran from that of ElBaradei” and he “saw his primary role as implementing safeguards and UNSC Board resolutions,” i.e. U.S.-driven sanctions and demands against Iran.

Amano also vowed to restructure the IAEA’s senior ranks in ways favored by the United States. In return, Pyatt promised that “the United States would do everything possible to support his [Amano’s] successful tenure as Director General and, to that end, anticipated that continued U.S. voluntary contributions to the IAEA would be forthcoming.”

For his part, Amano stuck out his hand seeking more U.S. money, or as Pyatt put it, “Amano offered that a ‘reasonable increase’ in the regular budget would be helpful.”

Amano also rushed to meet with Israeli officials “immediately after his appointment,” consulting with Israeli Ambassador Israel Michaeli and leaving Michaeli “fully confident of the priority Amano accords verification issues.” That was another indication Amano’s IAEA would take a hard line against Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions while ignoring Israel’s undeclared nuclear arsenal.

Michaeli also revealed that Amano’s public remarks about “no evidence of Iran pursuing a nuclear weapons capability” were just for show, designed “to persuade those who did not support him about his ‘impartiality.’” In reality, Amano intended to be anything but impartial.

Amano agreed to private “consultations” with the head of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission, Pyatt reported. The purpose was to hear Israel’s purported evidence about Iran continuing its work on a nuclear weapon, not to discuss Israel’s refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or to allow IAEA inspectors into Israeli nuclear sites.

In a subsequent cable dated Oct. 16, 2009, [snip] “Amano also continued to indicate that he needed to hide his true intentions. “More candidly, Amano noted the importance of maintaining a certain ‘constructive ambiguity’ about his plans, at least until he took over for DG ElBaradei in December” 2009, the cable said.

All indications are that the report is essentially a lie, which leads me to wonder what the pay-off was for Amano’s perfidy.  We have two indications that money is involved; with ElBaradei, total funding, I suppose.  With Amano, funding increases.  You could make the case that finding the truth could cost some dough; I get that.  But there seems to be a subtext of quid pro quo in the cables.  So I’ve kept wondering: for Amano, is it ideological, financial, a job he sees as a springboard to something more lucrative in the future?  Help me out here.  Juan Cole sees him as informed by Japan’s past with atomic bombs:

“Reading between the lines, it seems clear that London and Washington intended to get hold of Amano as soon as Elbaradei had departed, and twist his arm to be more alarmist in his reports on Iran. Surely from Washington’s hawkish point of view, any “success” of the IAEA would be in demonstrating an Iranian weapons program and giving evidence that could be used to ratchet up sanctions at the UN Security Council. Ironically, the 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate on Iran had supported Elbaradei’s careful approach. Amano may have been predisposed to be suspicious of Iran because of his own country’s experience of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and his consequent personal commitment to non-proliferation.”

He’s properly pissed about this attempt at this crazy bulls**t:

“There is also a passage about tying Iran’s nuclear program to that of North Korea, said to be urged by then National Security Adviser Gen. Jim Jones. That strategy is shot through with propaganda, since North Korea went for broke to get a nuclear warhead and has a handful of them now. North Korea conducted underground nuclear detonations in 2006 and 2009, as confirmed by seismic activity. In contrast, Iran has no bomb. All Iran can be shown to have done is to whirl radioactive material around to produce about two tons of uranium enriched to 3.5% and a very small amount enriched to 19.75%, intended for use in Iran’s small medical reactor, given it by the US in 1969. Both these levels of enrichment are considered Low-Enriched Uranium (LEU) and are irrelevant to bomb-making unless they are further processed to 95%– something there is no evidence of the Iranians trying to do or even being able to do. Remember, their facility at Natanz is being inspected. So, Iran is just not like North Korea. The latter is a known violator (like Israel, Pakistan and India) of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Nothing Iran has done since 2003 violates the NPT, which it signed– unlike Israel.”

And do take note that the recent hysterical announcements about the facility at Qom about to go ahead with 20% enrichment. Cool spin; thanks Reuters.

I’ve wondered if Robert Kelley clicked into Bloomberg today, and appreciated the irony of an associated story:

“An Iranian nuclear scientist was killed in a Tehran bomb blast, state media reported, in at least the third assassination targeting the nation’s atomic program which the U.S. and Israel have vowed to halt.

Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a director at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in Isfahan province, and another person died, Fars said. Tehran Deputy-Governor Safar-Ali Bratlou told the state-run agency that a magnetic device was placed under Roshan’s car by a person on a motorcycle. He said the method was similar to previous attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists and blamed Israel for the killing.”

And…so it goes.

~ Kurt Vonnegut

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied : and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. Those truths are well established.

~ James Madison

(cross-posted at kgbloz.com)