Technically and Legally Wrong

Amid all the hype about the latest Iranian plot to wipe us all off the map, Britain's leading liberal newspaper has published, with due discretion, this piece by Scott Ritter, the man who pre-emptively plagiarised all those revelations by sceptical mainstream journalists about Iraq's weapons of mass nonexistence. The piece deals with Obama's claim that "Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow" (it isn't), with Israel's claim that Iran's voluntaryish revelation of the existence of the Qom plant vindicates Israel's position (it doesn't), with the claim that Iran is now closer than ever before to constructing a nuclear weapon (it isn't), with the idea that Iran has run rings around the IAEA while diverting nuclear material for apocalyptic purposes (it hasn't), with the political and journalistic convention that the context of Western belligerence in both rhetoric and action over the past six years can be ignored in a proper appraisal of the situation (it can't) and with the claim, advanced elsewhere in today's edition of Britain's leading liberal newspaper, that "the difference this time is that the US wants diplomacy to work". Well, it must want that, of course. It has said so.