The list of corporate news media that intentionally lie about U.S.- and Israeli-chosen enemies in order to facilitate the demise of those enemies’ civilian populations is growing every day. We can now officially add to that list the editorial management and ownership of United Press International.

The entirety of UPI’s latest fear-mongering report [1] follows, dismantled excerpt-by-excerpt, starting with the headline:

Study: Strike on Iran nukes just a delay

This is a lie via the intentional use of the wrong wording. The term nuclear sites would have easily fit the headline space and would have been, by far, more accurate.

Furthermore, no evidence of a nuclear weapons program in Iran has been found; the IAEA [2] and all U.S. intelligence agencies [3] have verified as much.

A military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities likely would do little more than delay its development of nuclear weapons, weapons experts warned Friday.

As is typical in mainstream news reports, no factual challenges (e.g., those found in notes 2 and 3) to the weapons claim are alluded to in the balance of the report; thus, in essence, the UPI editor is passively lying to readers via egregious omission and plausible deniability.

Further, the Institute for Science and International Security said in a report, a surprise attack could strengthen Tehran’s resolve to acquire the nuclear arms, the Washington Post (NYSE:WPO) reported.

The analysis said it found Iran’s uranium facilities too widely scattered and protected to be effectively destroyed by warplanes and any damage could be quickly repaired.

“Following an attack, Iran could quickly rebuild its centrifuge program in small, easily hidden facilities focused on making weapon-grade uranium for nuclear weapons,” principal author David Albright, ISIS president and a former U.N. weapons inspector, said.

Again, this is a passive lie.

UPI conceals the fact that no Iranian official has ever expressed the intention to build nuclear weapons. In fact, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — who, unlike the neocon-Likudniks’ favorite boogey man, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, holds ultimate power over both nuclear and military matters — ”has declared repeatedly that Iran will not attack or threaten any country. He has also issued a fatwa against the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons and banned nuclear weapons as sacrilegious. Iran has been a consistent supporter of the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and called for a nuclear weapons free Middle East.” [4]

The credibility of the Ayatollah’s public decrees is reinforced by the aforementioned lack of evidence of said program and Iran’s history of non-aggression; yet, UPI refuses to even hint at these powerful contradictions to Albright’s assertions.

Furthermore, Albright is neither a "former weapons inspector" nor a "weapons expert"; nor is the think tank he founded, ISIS, an authoritative source on the subject. On the contrary, Albright is a charlatan, and ISIS has a history of employing dubious characters and acting as a media-friendly tool for U.S. government officials pushing for war against Iraq and now Iran. [5]

The study is set for release Friday. It says comparisons between a possible Iran airstrike and the Israeli destruction of Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor in 1981 aren’t valid. The 1981 incident dealt a crippling blow to Iraq’s nuclear hopes, but, it said, the Iranian program is much better protected and wouldn’t be vulnerable to elimination in a single blow, the Post said.

Despite heavy fortification, the huge, subterranean Natanz uranium enrichment plant, the core of Iran’s program, could be heavily damaged in an airstrike but the centrifuges could be replaced rapidly, perhaps in hidden underground facilities, the report said.

“Iran would likely launch a ‘crash’ program to quickly obtain nuclear weapons,” Albright told the Post in an interview.

Translation: “The U.S. should not only use precision strikes using nuclear warheads and bunker-busters, but also should execute a ground invasion on those particular sites.”

Summary

This UPI report serves a purpose: not to comprehensively and accurately inform readers of the most vital facts on the issue, but instead, to instill fear in them based on cherry-picked and contrived information from the most unreliable of sources. The goal is to get readers to support the push for insane, Israeli- and U.S.-exacted, aggressive war against another resource-rich, second-world nation. Omitted is the heinous illegality of the pondered aggression against a non-weaponized (nuclear) nation and the catastrophic consequences awaiting the innocent civilian population of Iran and the region, as well as vulnerability of U.S. military and civilian personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The fact that international news agencies such as UPI, AP, et al., and the corporate news outlets depending on them for their breaking news, continue to pedal and parrot this type of extremely dangerous misinformation as verified facts and foregone conclusions — despite their history of committing the same journalistic offenses in the build-up to aggressive war on Iraq — makes them unquestionably complicit in the war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against peace that ensue.

Indeed, the dock at The Hague is filling up with RSVPs. Reverend Sun Myung Moon, Rupert Murdoch, et al., should take heed and study their history; names like Streicher, Rosenberg, and Goebbels come to mind.

Contact UPI

United Press International
1133 19th St. N.W.
Washington, DC 20036

Phone: 1-202-898-8000
Fax: 1-202-898-8048 & 1-202-898-8057
Email: tips@upi.com


Notes:

[1] http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/08/08/Study_Strike_on_Iran_nukes_just_a_delay/UPI-21361218196900/

[2] http://www.antiwar.com/orig/sahimi.php?articleid=13104

[3] http://www.campaigniran.org/casmii/index.php?q=node/3502

[4] http://www.campaigniran.org/casmii/?q=node/2093

[5] http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080626_the_nuclear_expert_who_never_was/

Update

A reader emailed me and doubted my claim that "no Iranian official has ever expressed intention of building nuclear weapons." Now, while the word ever is probably too self-assured, the statement is true. But the reader has good reason for doubt: the person who is reported to have suggested that nuclear weapons are not against Islamic law — Mohsen Gharavian — is NOT an Iranian official, and certainly has NO sway over the issue. He is merely a disciple of one of the most hard-lined clerics — Ayatollah Mezbah Yazdi — who himself has not publicly espoused the same view. But even he does, it is of no consequence: Yazdi, and his student Gharavian, are as fringe as it gets in Iran, and carry virtually NO sway.

Bonus factoid: These reports about Gharavian's sentiment, which in some cases is said to have been a fatwa, are highly dubious at best. What type of outlets are reporting it? MEMRItv, FrontPage Mag, The UK Telegraph, and The Washington Times, which is owned by — guess who — Sun Myung Moon! All of these publications have a rich history of falsifying facts to foment hysteria toward the invasion and carpet-bombing of Arab and Muslim nations. In their reports on this subject, you'll see a bunch of "it is thought to be ..." and "it is believed that ..." in addition to plenty of hearsay from "reformists," but not much in the way of corroborating testimony or evidence. Imagine that, indeed. –D.A.

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