Debunking NY Times - Iran Report

The New York Times claimed an allegedly "secret" IAEA report that supposedly claims that Iran has the "knowledge" or "information" to build nukes -- nevermind that the IAEA has already debunked (look below the excerpt from recent IAEA press release) the media claims about such a "secret report" (the job of the NYT, after all, is to participate in the echo-chamber, and give this sort of propaganda a veneer of journalistic legitimacy, with what little legitimacy the NYT has left after the Iraq war and Judith Miller debacle.)
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Question regarding news reports by the Associated Press (mostly inaudible)

As I have said many times, and I continue to say today, the Agency has no concrete proof there is an ongoing weapons programme in Iran. There are allegations that Iran has conducted weaponization studies; however, these are issues which we are still looking into. And we are looking to Iran to help us clarify. We are looking to those suppliers of information to help us on the question of authenticity, because that is really a major issue. It is not an issue that involves nuclear material; it's a question of allegations, paper work studies, and of course the key issue there is authenticity. We are seeking clarification from Iran; we are seeking clarification from the supplier of the information. But we don't have any information that nuclear material has been used. We don't have any information that any components of nuclear weapons have been manufactured. That is why I continue to say that we are concerned but we are not in any way panicking about the Iranian nuclear programme. However, we need to continue to work with Iran to clarify these issues. This is an issue that has to do with war and peace, and the Agency has to work on the basis of fact and facts only.

On the other question that the Agency has information that has been withheld, and that there is information which has (not) been shared with the Board: this is maybe for the hundredth time that I have been saying and the Agency has been saying that this is totally baseless, totally groundless.

All information that we have received that has been vetted, assessed in accordance with our standard practices, has been shared with the Board. If any country has more information that they would like to share with us or with the Board, they are welcom to do that. But we stand by our statement that all information that has been corroborated, assessed, critically assessed, has been shared with the Board and on the basis of that I make my statement that we have no concrete evidence that Iran has an ongoing programme. There are concerns by the international community and we are working on these. But there is a difference between concern and a statement that Iran has an ongoing weapons programme. As to the pressure, I think our record throughout the years -- including before the Iraq war, when we made it very clear that we had not seen any evidence that Iraq had revived its nuclear weapons programme, despite a lot of allegations and assumptions -- I think that our record
speaks for itself.

Source: www.iaea.org...


The "knowledge to build nukes" is in fact pretty accessible and has been for decades:

In fact, in the early 1960s, the Lawrence Livermore Labs (which designs and makes nukes) decided to conduct an experiment called the Nth Country Experiment to see how easy it would be for "amateurs" to come up with the design of The Bomb using only open-source material. So they hired a couple of recent physics graduates to do exactly that. They were probably quite surprised when the students managed to come up with what was apparently an accurate design of a nuclear weapon, using nothing more than pencils and their public library cards.

And

To top if off, since then both the US and UK governments (and presumably others) have inadvertently declassified and released highly detailed nuclear weapons design information, made freely accessible to anyone who wanted to see them.

It is precisely these sorts of vague and meaningless accusations -- Iran sees the "option" to build nukes, "intends" to have the "capacity" to do so, or has the "knowledge" to build nukes ... which proves that there is in fact no real evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program.

[edit on 5-10-2009 by December_Rain]

i have a tendency to agree with you. about the only real evidence that they have is what we sold to the shaw back in 1967

reply to post by tatersalad


Lol I agree...it's laughable but also raises concern how media tries to manipulate time and again such false stories under the pretence of news reporting.

edit..

[edit on 9-10-2009 by December_Rain]