Iran's Nuclear Program: Smoke and Fire? or Smoke and Mirrors?

Here we go again.

The slow drumbeat of "Invade Iran" has begun, and this is another beat on the tom-tom. "International investigators" say 18 years ago, Pakistan's seller of nuclear weaponry -- which still hasn't resulted in our putting Pakistan on the "against us" list, in Bush's "with us or against us" world -- offered a nuclear weapons program to Iran. Iran said, "No, Thanks."
They wanted nuclear power, not weapons, they say.

And yet, the slant of the article is to paint Iran has having a sustained effort to get nuclear weapons, spanning decades. Why?

"The offer is the strongest indication to date that Iran had a nuclear weapons program, but it doesn't prove it completely," said one Western diplomat who is familiar with the details of the offer and would comment on the investigation only on the condition of anonymity.

Completely? Since when does being offered something you don't want rise to being proof that you wanted it? If someone offers me drugs, and I say, "no thanks", the western diplomat would conclude I'm a drug addict.

We've seen this before. "Iraq. Terrorism. Terrorism. Iraq. Iraq Iraq Terrorism." went Bush's argument, and the American people concluded, "Gosh, Iraq and Terrorism are used in the same sentence frequently. They must be related." We are now hearing the same kind of argument: "Nuclear Weapons, Iran. Iran Nuclear Weapons Iran Iran. Nuclear Weapons."

This is going to be played up into so much smoke that, yet again, Americans will be tricked into thinking, "Where there's smoke, there's fire", instead of it being Bush/Rumsfeld/Cheney's smoke and mirrors. Or so does Bush, Condi, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, and others of that ilk, hope.