Wednesday Hodgepodge

Even those who admit that the United States helped start Iran’s current nuclear development claim that two factors make a difference in how Iran should be treated today as opposed to the 1970’s: Iran’s concealment of nuclear energy development activities in the past and President Ahmadinejad’s remarks on Israel.

What White House officials never tell the American public is that President Ahmadinejad’s remarks have little or no connection with any probable action on Iran’s part regarding Israel (or “the Zionist regime” to be strictly accurate regarding his reference). President Ahmadinejad has no effective power in this area, and his remarks aren’t even embraced by Iran’s clerical leaders. His remarks are widely understood as a clumsy attempt to pander to his own right-wing base in an attempt to shore up his faltering power within the Iranian government.

However, the second proposition is equally specious. It is fruitful to examine the now conventional wisdom that Iran had “regularly hidden information about its nuclear program” etc. as if this in and of itself was proof of a nuclear weapons program. Of course, it is not, although many breathlessly cite it as the principal smoking gun.

Roger Wright, UNICEF’s Special Representative for Iraq, lamented that children were confirmed as the major victims of food insecurity. “The chronic malnutrition rate of children in food insecure households was as high as 33 per cent, or one out of every three children malnourished,” he stated. Chronic malnutrition affects the youngest and most vulnerable children, aged 12 months to 23 months, most severely. “This can irreversibly hamper the young child’s optimal mental and cognitive development, not just their physical development,” he said. Acute malnutrition was also of concern, with nine per cent of Iraqi children being acutely malnourished. The highest rates (12-13 per cent) were again found in children aged under 24 months.