Why you can't trust Mid-East reporting
The US claim that Syria was developing nuclear weapons has hit the headlines. Check out the New York Times' curious piece on the site Israel bombed. Notice that you have to wait until the bottom of the page to read what Syrian officials said. But what's been almost entirely ignored is the fact that Israel bombed another sovereign nation when there was no immediate threat. Now what would happen if Syria bombed Israel's nuclear facilities, which we happen to know already have at least a hundred nukes?
The International Atomic Energy Agency has said it "deplores the fact that this information [alleging the existence of a nuclear facility]... was not provided to the Agency in a timely manner... to enable it to verify its veracity and establish the facts." That is diplomatic speak for 'not happy Jan'.
Most importantly, you'd think the fact that the US launched a murderous war in Iraq on the back of faulty intelligence would warrant a bit of skepticism towards the present claims. Yet most of the reporting has, at best, skirted around this. Surely allegations concerning nuclear weapons from the country with the most powerful military force in the world, not to mention largest stockpile of nuclear weapons, ought to be treated with significant skepticism?
posted by Iqbal Khaldun @ 6:22 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Good old war journalism. Too little context, too much emphasis on the us and them component.
PS Have you seen the war journalism world map?
Haha thanks this, quality. You know there's a lot of that here in Israel. Like there are a lot of people who honestly and earnestly seek to learn about the Arab/Muslim threat but they have this unconscious (and sometimes not so unconscious) racism and hypocritical filter. For example, there's an obsession here with the 'psychological' or subjective motivation of suicide bombers but very little from a purely cause and effect approach.
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