Left Flank

Joseph Cirincione takes Glenn Kessler to task for his WaPo article claiming North Korean-Syrian cooperation on WMD, calling the claims «nonsense».

This is a political story, not a threat story. The mainstream media seems to have learned nothing from the run-up to war in Iraq. It is a sad commentary on how selective leaks from administration officials who have repeatedly misled the press are still treated as if they were absolute truth.

Once again, this appears to be the work of a small group of officials leaking cherry-picked, unvetted «intelligence» to key reporters in order to promote a preexisting political agenda. If this sounds like the run-up to the war in Iraq, it should. This time it appears aimed at derailing the U.S.-North Korean agreement that administration hardliners think is appeasement. Some Israelis want to thwart any dialogue between the U.S. and Syria.

The rest is also interesting, and Kessler also responds. What is it with the WaPo and the Gray Lady snatching any Defense Department trash they can grab? Here's the tail-end of the regrettable Washington press corps job starting with Syria accusing Israel of violating its airspace:

Then, Kessler merges the two stories on September 15 when he cites(I am not making this up) a prominent U.S. expert on the Middle East, not a government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid compromising his sources, claiming that some Israelis told him (or her) the target of the attack appears to have been a northern Syrian facility, that Syria was using it to extract uranium from phosphates. We'll talk about this later, too, but that statement about phosphates is technical nonsense (such a facility would have little relevance to a weapons program). The explanation for the leak about DPRK-Syrian nuclear cooperation is evident from the title of the story, «Syria-N. Korea Reports Won?t Stop Talks» (as in Six Party Talks).

Talk about creating a scare, and then covering your ass!