Left I on the News

"No he wasn't saying anything like that."

- Miri Eisen, spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert

And what was Ms. Eisen talking about? This, from her boss:

"Iran...are aspiring to have nuclear weapons, as America, France, Israel, Russia."

A simple enough statement. But not to Ms. Eisen, who rushed to claim that by this straightforward statement, "[Olmert] did not mean to say that Israel possessed or aspired to acquire nuclear weapons." Well, whether he meant to (as in "was planning to before he opened his mouth") say it may indeed be an open question. That he did say it, rather clearly, isn't. Not to another prevaricator, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev, who claimed that "Olmert had meant to categorize the four nations as democracies to set them apart from Iran, and was not referring to their potential nuclear capabilities or aspirations." Ri-i-i-i-i-ght. The phrase "aspiring to have nuclear weapons" was just an metaphor.

While we're counting the lies, let's add two more - Iran is a democracy, and, contrary to Olmert's claim (and the claim of every corporate media outlet and mainstream pundit) that "Iran, openly, explicitly and publicly threatens to wipe Israel off the map," Iran has merely predicted (and certainly hoped) that the state of Israel (as a political entity, not a physical place) will not exist forever, but never once threatened any kind of military action to bring that about. Not once. Not with non-existent nuclear weapons, and not with any other kind of weapons.