Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Nuclear nasties and collective amnesia

Ozzy Bee says: i was going insane this morning reading the splash to haaretz: "Mossad chief: Iran will not get nuclear bomb before 2009".
i was sure the mossad chief was saying something very different last year.
i admit that i have a bit of a nervous tick when it comes to talk about the bomb. i think this comes from growing up in the shadow of the cold war and the nuclear arms race and being fed a diet of holocaust films. so this morning for my sanity i did a bit of googling. It seems that mossad's boss has done a backflip with pike, yet this spectacular manouvre has not aroused much journalistic interest, it seems. today he says there's no such thing as a "point of no return" but last year he was certain that iran was within striking distance of this in its nuclear program. there's not even one paragraph reminding readers of this background/history... so the question i have is this just more hyperbolic spin from the israelis or are they telling us the truth? .... the first half of this year - in fact till the war erupted - was a steady diet of alarm raising stories about iran and its deadly intent. ... this kind of political jerking around really, really irritates me because it really makes me feel very unsure and very threatened. but hey, maybe this is what it is to be israeli. australian politicians backflip on taxes and health and australians gripe, groan and sulk. israeli politicians and their servants backflip on war and conflict and israelis, well, they feel like they are constantly under existential threat. i don't blame them.

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