To: Editor of The New York Times

Response to "Iran is Expanding Its Nuclear Program, Agency Reports" - August 31, 2007

By: Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich

They say history repeats itself; yet we fail to learn from our mistakes. *The New York Times* report by ELAINE SCIOLINO and WILLIAM J. BROAD  "Iran Expanding Its Nuclear Program, Agency Reports" (August 31, 2007) was a sad reminder of 1917.   America. 

Almost a century later and once again the United States government feels the need to explain itself to its public and overseas.  Wars have always demanded explanations.  This was something that Woodrow Wilson realized when the United States entered into the 'Great War' in April 1917.   He felt compelled to sell the war to the U.S. public, as such, he established a substantial propaganda known as the Committee on Public Information (CPI).   It became necessary for the propaganda machine CPI, referred to as "the fight for the mind of mankind", to go global.  The goal was to wire general news as well as 'crafted' for target  audiences around the world and be distributed by CPI officers.  Papers were asked to carry the provided information; those that did not carry CPI stories found themselves in short of supplies of paper from the United States.

Today, it appears that the newspapers in this country have faced several paper shortages; in the spirit of the Great War and the propaganda apparatus set up to 'explain war', the stories we see in print are not based on accuracy, but rely on the Bush White House agenda to justify wars - one after another.   The most recent example of this is the Sciolino and Broad 'interpretation' of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)'s report on Iran which they presented so very inaccurately.

Their dangerous distortion of the IAEA report is alarming for the Agency not only lauds Iran's cooperation, and underscores the fact that Iran's uranium enrichment program is operating well below capacity, but more to the point of the Sciolino and Broad article, a  senior U.N. official's remarks were obviously twisted for it was stated that given the Iranian's point by point cooperation with inspectors and Tehran's lack of significant enrichment progress it is "likely to blunt Washington's push for painful sanctions." 

The Great War saw to itself 8.5 million dead, and a staggering number of casualties; A tragedy so incompressible that historians are still debating the cause/s which sparked such madness even long after the widows and orphans have taken their resting place alongside their dead heroes.   One historian, F.H. Hodder observed: It is one of the minor compensations of the great war that it enriched our vocabulary by giving us new words.... and giving new meaning to old ones' .  In the first category he cited 'camouflage', in the second he cited 'propaganda'.  I must ask the editors of *The New York Times*, are you 'camouflaging' the truth from the readers so that we wage war on Iran, or is this 'Propaganda' so that Mr. Bush's war on Iran is accepted by the American and foreign public?