Drumbeats normally make me smile. They’re an inducement to dance; drumming inspires friendship. There’s a marvelous drum class in my community that inspires thousands when they play in public like last New Years eve. Smiles as far as you can see across the crowd.
There’s another kind of drumbeat that alarms me. It occurs when a country wants to go to war without justification. They “frame” another country for crimes that never happened; they manufacture evidence of crimes by the intended victim.
My own country has done this twice in the recent past. In 2002 George Bush 2nd used false information of “Weapons of Mass Destruction” to get us into a trillion dollar war in Afghanistan and then Iraq. In 1991 George Bush the 1rst used false information from one of the US’s biggest Public Relations firms to get us into Kuwait. (The “Incubator Baby Hoax”).
Now contrary to Obama’s reasoned articulation on why it is a bad idea, it seems the Obama administration is beating the drums to go to war with Iran. Every week you hear another reason why the US should go to war with Iran – or why Israel would be justified in “Pre-emptively” attacking them as the US did to Iraq.
Remember when Iran caught one of our CIA spy drones flying over their country. Yet the US was outraged that Iran caught it and even landed it without crashing. They demanded it back as though it was as harmless as a baseball accidentally thrown over a fence.
That’s as “unreasonable” (aren’t I a master of understatement?) as if you caught a burglar snooping in your home – but the burglar is outraged and demands you give him his housebreaking tools back !
Here’s an expose of this week’s incompetent attempt to get us into a War with Iran in the latest Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. (Expose by Yousaff But and Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress of MIIS)
“This week the Associated Press reported that unnamed officials “from a country critical of Iran’s nuclear program” leaked an illustration to demonstrate that “Iranian scientists have run computer simulations for a nuclear weapon that would produce more than triple the explosive force of the World War II bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.” The article stated that these officials provided the undated diagram “to bolster their arguments that Iran’s nuclear program must be halted.”
The graphic has not yet been authenticated; however, even if authentic, it would not qualify as proof of a nuclear weapons program. Besides the issue of authenticity, the diagram features quite a massive error, which is unlikely to have been made by research scientists working at a national level.
To summarize – like a spitball fired when the teacher’s back was turned, the diagram was a school-boyish attempt to convince the world public that Iran has a secret nuclear program, but
- the drawing has no evidence connecting it to Iranian engineers,
- Even if there was evidence – it is not “proof of a nuclear program”
- Even if it was proof of a nuclear program – it show gross incompetence – meaning nuclear bombs made by the diagram author would not work – they would just fizzle.
Call your Congressman and tell him about the expose so he can laugh at the fabricated evidence.
You might alert him how bad drummers can ruin your whole day.
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References:
1. Article in Bulletin of Atomic Scientists: http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/op-eds/diy-graphic-design
2. Analysis Author credits
Yousaf Butt
Butt is a research professor and scientist-in-residence at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute for International Studies. Previously, Butt was a scientific consultant to the Federation of American Scientists and a physicist in the High-Energy Astrophysics Division at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He was on the instrument operations team responsible for the main focal plane instrument aboard NASA’s orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory from 1999-2004. He has also been a fellow in the Committee on International Security and Arms Control at the National Academy of Sciences and a research fellow in the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress
Dalnoki-Veress is scientist-in-residence at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. He holds a PhD in high energy physics specializing in ultra-low radioactivity background detectors and has professional experience in the field of astroparticle physics, primarily neutrino physics. He has been involved in several major discoveries in the field of neutrino physics and has worked on several international collaborations in Canada, Germany, Italy, and the United States.
Dalnoki-Veress is scientist-in-residence at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. He holds a PhD in high energy physics specializing in ultra-low radioactivity background detectors and has professional experience in the field of astroparticle physics, primarily neutrino physics. He has been involved in several major discoveries in the field of neutrino physics and has worked on several international collaborations in Canada, Germany, Italy, and the United States.
