Israel Matzav: Mullen: Strike on Iran would go a 'long way to delaying' Iran's nuclear threat; but Reuters and MSNBC don't want you to know that

Mullen: Strike on Iran would go a 'long way to delaying' Iran's nuclear threat; but Reuters and MSNBC don't want you to know that

Admiral Michael Mullen, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters after a conference at Columbia University on Sunday that a US strike on Iran would go a 'long way to delaying' Iran's nuclear threat.

"Military options would go a long way to delaying" Iran's nuclear program, Mullen told reporters after a Columbia University conference, Reuters reported.

"That's not my call, that's going to be the president's call," Mullen continued. "But from my perspective ... the last option is to strike right now."

Iran achieving a nuclear weapons capability "has unintended consequences" including that "other countries in the region will then seek .... nuclear weapons as well," Mullen said. "That spiral headed in that direction is a very bad outcome."

"I worry, on the other hand, about striking Iran," he continued. "I've been very public about that because of the unintended consequences of that."

"The diplomatic, the engagement piece, the sanctions piece, all those things, from my perspective, need to be addressed to possibly have Iran change its mind about where it's headed," Mullen said.

But here's the funny part. Laura Rozen's blog piece, from which I cut and pasted the above, links a Reuters article on Mullen's appearance, which is at the MSNBC web site. MSNBC is known these days for being a little left of center....

If you go to the MSNBC web site, the words 'long way' and 'delay' don't appear. Instead, you're left only with the impression that Mullen said that a US strike on Iran is an option, but that we have to exhaust diplomacy first because of the unintended consequences of a military strike. There is no indication of how good an option that military option might be.

Since I doubt Rozen would have cited Reuters had she been at the conference and attended Mullen's press conference, I can only conclude that Reuters and/or MSNBC scrubbed the article clean. Whose decision was that and why?

Hmmm.

Israel Matzav: Mullen: Strike on Iran would go a 'long way to delaying' Iran's nuclear threat; but Reuters and MSNBC don't want you to know that