Same as It Ever Was: Talking Head in Pittsburgh

Obama is by nature a booster--like the first stage of a missile lofting its payload into the upper atmosphere. A huge bang, a mighty whoosh and then, a few miles up, a fizzle as the Obama-booster burns out and drops back to earth. He doesn't seem to have much stamina or even strategy for getting useful things done. No wonder he leaped on the "secret Iranian nuclear facility." It was a perfect setup up for a booster.

Half-close our eyes and we could have been back in Bush-time, amid the ripest hours of the propaganda barrage for the US-led onslaught on Iraq. (Though this time the venue was the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh, not the UN General Assembly, since Obama wanted to reserve that for a message of uplift.) Theme: disclosure of fresh, chilling evidence of the duplicity of a pariah nation and of the threat it poses to the civilized world. Then it was Secretary of State Colin Powell obediently dispensing lies and blatant forgeries about Iraq's WMDs. On September 25, it was Obama flanked by his Euro-puppets, rolling out alarms that were relayed to the world by a compliant press, albeit sometimes with sidebars puncturing the essential claims. Within minutes of Obama's Pittsburgh ambush, the White House's scenario about a terrifying new nuke factory near Qom began to crumble; a few days later, it was rubble.

US intelligence knew about the mountainside site back in Bush-time. Work had started on it, then stopped. Obama was briefed about it during the transition. Last spring, US surveillance--from satellites and maybe from spies on the ground--concluded that the plant's construction was nearly complete. US intelligence then supposedly learned that the Iranians knew the plant was under US observation. Of course they did. Who doesn't know about American eyes in the skies?

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