Left I on the News

WMD in Iraq? Nuclear weapons program in Iran? Cyber-hackers in North Korea? Why wonder about U.S. "intelligence" about complicated things like that when the U.S. government can't even determine the existence of buildings?

"The Iranians are building a huge embassy in Managua," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned in May. "And you can only imagine what that's for."

"Iran recently established a huge embassy in Managua," Nancy Menges of the Center for Security Policy told a House committee last year. "Iran's embassy in Managua is now the largest diplomatic mission in the city," wrote Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute.

The truth?

Nicaraguan Chamber of Commerce chief Ernesto Porta laughed and said: "It doesn't exist." Bayardo Arce, a senior economic adviser to Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, likened the elusive "mega-embassy" to the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. "It doesn't exist. They deceived the secretary of state," Arce said. "We don't have an Iranian mega-embassy. We have an ambassador in a rented house with his wife."

The truth? There isn't a single word that comes out of the collective mouths of the U.S. government that you can or should believe.