Saturday, September 26, 2009

Reuters and its Obama pom-poms

In a fawning puff piece, Steve Holland of Reuters writes:
"President Barack Obama scored twin diplomatic coups on Friday, seizing the world stage to forge a new allied call for action against Iran and a framework for global economic growth."
And:
"From the United Nations in New York to a Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh, it was all Obama all the time."

While Holland hyperventilates with Obamania, Politico reports that the Obama administration was only forced to announce the latest example of Iranian violations of the NPT when it learned (probably via the Associated Press) that Iran had just sent a letter to the IAEA acknowledging existence of its uranium enrichment facility near Qom.

Whereas Holland describes the intelligence data as "fresh", AP indicates that the US, French, and British have actually known about the facility for years. Notwithstanding, Obama specifically chose not to place Iran in the dock by refusing to bring the matter before the UN Security Council when he had a golden opportunity to do so as recently as Thursday.

Why? Well, rather than taking effective action to prevent a regime which threatens its neighbors with destruction from obtaining nuclear weapons, perhaps what is important to this president (as Holland inadvertently suggests) is "dramatic effect" and "shoring up his standing among Americans".

At least we know the strategy is working on the cheerleaders at Reuters.

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