Why we should fear Iran

[101A]

Linked from Drudgereport (www.dailymail.co.uk (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/newscomment.html?in_article_id=401858&in_page_id=1787))


By ANN LESLIE 23:44pm 22nd August 2006

Why shouldn't Iran have nuclear weapons? We have them, so has America, France, Russia, Israel, China, Pakistan, India and possibly North Korea. So why make such a fuss about Iran?

After all, we gulped, but then decided to accept Pakistan's and India's nuclear bombs. Why? Because we recognised that their bombs are, essentially, a continuation of the Mutually Assured Destruction doctrine which, as a deterrent, kept us from nuclear Armageddon throughout the Cold War.

In fact, it could be argued that, not long ago, the M.A.D. doctrine actually kept Pakistan and India from going to war yet again over Kashmir.

So why shouldn't Iran have nuclear bombs to deter attack from the 'Great Satan', America, let alone the two 'Little Satans', Israel and Britain? Sounds reasonable. But that pre-supposes that the Iranian regime is reasonable.

The mullah-mafia lied through their teeth for 18 years, denying they had a nuclear programme, despite their obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

And all the evidence shows that they are lying now when they say they only want nuclear power for 'peaceful energy purposes', despite sitting on some of the largest oil reserves in the world.

But, alas, there's nothing which we would recognise as 'reasonable' about President Ahmadinejad, the small, bearded blacksmith's son from the slums of Tehran - who denies the existence of the Holocaust, promises to 'wipe Israel off the map' and who, moreover, urges Iranians to 'prepare to take over the world'.

The UN gave him until August 31 to reply to its package of proposals designed to stop his nuclear programme. Significantly he chose yesterday to, in effect, reject the UN ultimatum because yesterday was a sacred day in the Islamic calendar.

It is the day on which the Prophet Mohammed made his miraculous night flight from Jerusalem to heaven and back on Buraq, the winged horse.

As one Iranian exile told me yesterday: 'The trouble with you secular people is that you don't realise how firmly Ahmadinejad believes - literally - in things like the winged horse. By choosing this date for his decision, he is telling his followers that he is going to obey his religious duty.

'And he believes that his religious duty is to create chaos and bloodshed in the "infidel" world, in order to hasten the return of the Mahdi - the Hidden Imam. So don't expect him to behave, in your eyes, "reasonably".'

So who is this Hidden Imam? He was a direct descendant of the Prophet Mohammed who, at the age of five, disappeared down a well around AD940. He will only return after a period of utter chaos and bloodshed, whereupon peace, justice and Islam will reign worldwide.

When I was in Tehran, Ahmadinejad was its mayor, and an Iranian friend with links to the city council told me: 'He's instructed the council to build a grand avenue to prepare for the Mahdi's return.

'I wouldn't mind that, because our roads are rotten - it's just that the motivation for this expensive avenue strikes me as completely crazy.'

On coming to power, in order to hasten the return of the Hidden Imam, the Iranian President allocated the equivalent of £10m for the building of a blue-tiled mosque at Jamkaran, south of the capital, where the five-year-old Hidden Imam was said to have disappeared down the well.

When the President drew up a list of his cabinet ministers, he's rumoured to have dropped their names down the well in order to benefit from its alleged divine connection.

Previous Iranian negotiators from the mullah-mafia elite were corrupt, sinuous and deceitful - but, when necessary, could be pragmatic. You could, to a certain extent, do business with them.

Many of these mullahs would not - despite their rhetoric - welcome the bloody destruction of the Western world, not least because they have stuffed their wealth into secret 'infidel' bank accounts overseas.

The Western-educated nephew of one such wealthy mullah said to me: 'Ahmadinejad's fruitcake theology scares us as much as it should scare you!'

But according to the political editor of Iran's Resalat newspaper, the President's apocalyptic mindset 'makes you very strong. If I think the Mahdi will come in two, three, or four years, why should I be soft? Now is the time to stand strong, to be hard'.

Warm and welcoming

Of course ordinary Iranians are not, on the whole, apocalyptic types: they are warm, welcoming to 'infidels' like me and, frankly, deeply fed up.

They don't obsess about the return of the Mahdi, they don't want nuclear weapons, and they certainly don't want an apocalyptic world war.

As one young Tehrani told me: 'I don't know why we are spending so much time antagonising he West. We're just getting more and more isolated, and our economy is in a complete mess.'

The young are not even that interested in religion: a recent poll of young Iranians showed that only 5 per cent watched religious programmes, and only 6 per cent said that they were interested in religion at all.

Seventy per cent of Iranians are under the age of 30, and what they want is to be able to have fun, to travel and, above all, to have jobs.

But the puritanism, corruption, cruelty and incompetence of the regime induces fatalisticdepression and drives all too many of them to drugs: Iran now has (and, surprisingly, has acknowledged) one of the highest drug addiction rates in the world.

Yearning

So why is Ahmadinejad - as a result of this stand-off with the West - suddenly so popular among the grassroots?

It's partly a matter of Persian nationalist pride: Iranians - who are not Arabs - remember how they once possessed a great empire and were the supreme power in the Middle East.

They share with Ahmadinejad the yearning that they should be so once again. And they remember how the Western powers exploited and manipulated them in the past and fear they may do so again.

Even the most pro-Western of those I have met were horrified at the thought of America attempting to bomb their nuclear plants, let alone mount an invasion.

Ahmadinejad is triumphant about the 'victory' over Israel in Lebanon by Iran's proxy, Hezbollah.

But ordinary Iranians - while shocked at the devastation caused by Israel - have long felt resentful about the amounts of money, let alone weaponry, that Iran shovels into Hezbollah's armed 'state-within-a-state' in southern Lebanon.

After Friday prayers in Tehran one day, which included the ritual 'Death to Israel!' chants, one young graduate, with no hope of a job, told me: 'Look, I don't care about Israel. That's a problem for the Arabs, not for us.'

At a union May Day rally this year, one placard daringly read: 'Forget about Palestine! What about us?'

So what happens next? Sanctions, probably. But the kind of sanctions which hurt ordinary, poverty-stricken Iranians too much would be counterproductive. Those which most hurt the elite would be preferable: international banking restrictions will damage the corrupt mullahs, and a form of oil sanctions may also put pressure on them.

Despite those massive oil reserves, Iran actually has to import over 40 per cent of its refined oil because, thanks to its incompetence, it never got around to building enough refining capacity.

There are no easy answers. But nuclear-weapon technology in the hands of an Iranian President obsessed with ' fruitcake theology' and the destruction of all 'infidels' is something which should keep us all awake at night.

[RandomGuy]

:lol

Yup. I have read this before. There was a good bit on Amedinewhatever on one of those liberal media outlets, that pretty much jives with the description here of his "fruitcake" ideology.

I think he is simply the muslim equivalent of the nutjob evangelicals in this country who rabidly support Israel.

The thing that this analysis misses is that Amedinidork is not the titular head of the theocracy, and that power in Iran is not entirely concentrated in any one individual. The decision to use nuclear weapons would be stifled by those same corrupt mullahs that the article spoke about in the latter portions as they would not find it in their best interest to use them.

Funny how that works... :rolleyes

[RandomGuy]

I did find this article to be a good one though.

It brings up a lot of good background that is important in understanding Iran. Namely the young population, the disfunctional economy, the effect of ancient Persia,and the fact that Persians are NOT arabs.

[101A]

...the young population,

Their attitude is something to take encouragement from.

[RandomGuy]

[The] attitude [of the young] is something to take encouragement from.


Yes it is. That is why taking a hard line against them hurts our cause more than it helps.

One of the few things that most Iranians agree on is that the US is a bully. Like it or not that is the reality.

Having the US as a convenient scapegoat has kept Fidel in power for longer than any other modern leader, and it does the same in Iran as well.

Defuse that and you can divide the next generation from the shit-heads in power currently.

[Ya Vez]

I think he is simply the muslim equivalent of the nutjob evangelicals in this country who rabidly support Israel.

On July 18, the Senate unanimously approved a nonbinding resolution "condemning Hamas and Hezbollah and their state sponsors and supporting Israel's exercise of its right to self-defense."

the House version passed by a landslide, 410 to 8.

didn't know there was so many evangelicals in the house..

[101A]

....

Defuse that ...

There's the rub.

Bottom line is the leaders control the media; and as you point out, one of the ways those leaders maintain power is by exploiting the "bully" personal of the USA. Short of launching missles at ourself as an act of penance and contrition; ANYTHING we do will be considered "bullying".

Remember, the plans for 9/11; the 1st bombing, and lots of other crap took place LONG before the "neocons" gained power.

The unreasonable CANNOT be reasoned with - although it sounds like the young in Iran might be reasonable. The reasonable people have to figure a way to get rid of their unreasonable spokespersons.

[RandomGuy]

On July 18, the Senate unanimously approved a nonbinding resolution "condemning Hamas and Hezbollah and their state sponsors and supporting Israel's exercise of its right to self-defense."

the House version passed by a landslide, 410 to 8.

didn't know there was so many evangelicals in the house..


Heh, condemning the muslim nutjobs is a far cry from the rabid support of Israel.

[Ocotillo]

Saw a bumpersticker yesterday that read "Pray President Bush keeps God's covenant with Israel"

I heard a woman on right wing talk radio today say she thanks God everyday that Bush is our president these days.

That the kind of folks you alluding to?

[RandomGuy]

Saw a bumpersticker yesterday that read "Pray President Bush keeps God's covenant with Israel"

I heard a woman on right wing talk radio today say she thanks God everyday that Bush is our president these days.

That the kind of folks you alluding to?

Yuppers.

Faith in its place is all well and good, but when it blinds one to incompetence, it becomes dangerous to all.

[boutons_]

Looks like the USA doesn't really know what it should be fearing from Iran

==================

U.S. Spy Agencies Criticized On Iran
GOP-Led Panel Faults Intelligence

By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 24, 2006; A01

A key House committee issued a stinging critique of U.S. intelligence on Iran yesterday, charging that the CIA and other agencies lack "the ability to acquire essential information necessary to make judgments" on Tehran's nuclear program, its intentions or even its ties to terrorism.

The 29-page report, principally written by a Republican staff member on the House intelligence committee who holds a hard-line view on Iran, fully backs the White House position that the Islamic republic is moving forward with a nuclear weapons program and that it poses a significant danger to the United States. But it chides the intelligence community for not providing enough direct evidence to support that assertion.

"American intelligence agencies do not know nearly enough about Iran's nuclear weapons program" to help policymakers at a critical time, the report's authors say. Information "regarding potential Iranian chemical weapons and biological weapons programs is neither voluminous nor conclusive," and little evidence has been gathered to tie Iran to al-Qaeda and to the recent fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, they say.

The report relies exclusively on publicly available documents. Its authors did not interview intelligence officials. Still, it warns the intelligence community to avoid the mistakes made regarding weapons of mass destruction before the Iraq war, noting that Iran could easily be engaged in "a denial and deception campaign to exaggerate progress on its nuclear program as Saddam Hussein apparently did concerning his WMD programs."

"We want to avoid another 'slam dunk,' " Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) said in an interview yesterday, explaining why the staff report was made public before it had been approved by the full committee. "We think it's important for the American people to understand the kinds of pressures that we are facing and to increase the American public's understanding of Iran as a threat."

Former CIA director George J. Tenet had called prewar intelligence on banned weapons a "slam dunk," but no such arms were ever found.

The House panel's report comes at a time when the Bush administration is scrambling for leverage in its effort to force Iran to suspend its nuclear program. On Tuesday, Tehran rejected a U.N. Security Council resolution requiring it to halt its uranium-enrichment work.

For weeks, the White House has said that it would push for international sanctions if Iran failed to comply with the council's demands. But none of its allies spoke of sanctions yesterday, a day after Iran said it was willing to engage in serious discussions with the United States -- but not if it had to stop its nuclear program first.

The State Department issued a terse response to the Iranian offer yesterday, saying it fell "short" of Iran's obligations but making no mention of sanctions.

Some Republicans privately oppose President Bush's current policy of potential engagement with Iran and believe it is crumbling in the face of European reluctance to impose strict measures.

Jamal Ware, spokesman for the House intelligence committee, said three staff members wrote the report, but he did not dispute that the principal author was Frederick Fleitz, a former CIA officer who had been a special assistant to John R. Bolton, the administration's former point man on Iran at the State Department. Bolton had been highly influential in the crafting of a tough policy that rejected talks with Tehran.

Bolton was appointed ambassador to the United Nations last year, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice changed course when she came to the State Department, choosing instead to support direct European negotiations with Iran. She said the United States would join those talks if Iran agreed to suspend its nuclear work.

Noting "significant gaps" in U.S. intelligence, Fleitz's report suggests that the United States could not effectively engage in talks with Tehran.

Rep. Rush D. Holt (N.J.), the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee that prepared the report, said he agreed to forward it to the full committee because it highlights the difficulties in gathering intelligence on Iran. But he added that the report was not "prepared and reviewed in a way that we can rely on."

The administration has not attributed its assertions about Iran's weapons program to U.S. intelligence, as it had done about Iraq's in the run-up to the March 2003 invasion. Instead, it has pointed to years of Iranian concealment and has questioned why a country with as much oil as Iran would need a huge nuclear energy program.

( faith-based intelligence, what else would you expect from born-again dubya and ostensible Bible-thumpers )

The House report notes several years of findings by international nuclear inspectors that point to the possibility of a nuclear weapons program and suggests that more U.S. intelligence resources should be devoted to finding proof.

"Although Iran . . . with active denial and deception efforts, is a difficult target for intelligence analysis and collection, it is imperative that the U.S. Intelligence Community devote significant resources against this vital threat," the report says.

The report suggests seven areas in which the intelligence community can improve its analysis and collection of information, and it specifically criticizes the office of the director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte. The report says Negroponte needs to "clearly identify his goals for improving Iran-related collection and analysis so members of the Community know what they are supposed to achieve."

John Callahan, a spokesman for Negroponte, said the office is already "taking steps along the lines the committee has recommended and looks forward to working with members and staff to continue to make progress as we address the challenges Iran poses."

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

========================

Looks like the Repugs' "much re-organized and upgraded" intelligence services are as stupid about Iran was they were about Russian and Iraq.

[boutons_]

August 24, 2006

Some in G.O.P. Say Iran Threat Is Played Down

By MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON, Aug. 23 — Some senior Bush administration officials and top Republican lawmakers are voicing anger that American spy agencies have not issued more ominous warnings about the threats that they say Iran presents to the United States.

( but it looks like the spy agencies don't really know what the Iran threat is, and are wary of saying anything because they were so wrong on Russia and Iraq )

Some policy makers have accused intelligence agencies of playing down Iran’s role in Hezbollah’s recent attacks against Israel and overestimating the time it would take for Iran to build a nuclear weapon.

The complaints, expressed privately in recent weeks, surfaced in a Congressional report about Iran released Wednesday. They echo the tensions that divided the administration and the Central Intelligence Agency during the prelude to the war in Iraq.

( where the WHIG/Repugs monstrously, dishonestly overestimated the Iran threat in their rush to get dubya re-elected as war president )

The criticisms reflect the views of some officials inside the White House and the Pentagon who advocated going to war with Iraq and now are pressing for confronting Iran directly over its nuclear program and ties to terrorism, say officials with knowledge of the debate.

The dissonance is surfacing just as the intelligence agencies are overhauling their procedures to prevent a repeat of the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate — the faulty assessment that in part set the United States on the path to war with Iraq.

( which of course was written in a climate where WHIG had already decided to go to war, and were expecting the intelligence agencies to justify it, while suppressing all doubts about Iraq's capabilities )

The new report, from the House Intelligence Committee, led by Representative Peter Hoekstra, Republican of Michigan, portrayed Iran as a growing threat and criticized American spy agencies for cautious assessments about Iran’s weapons programs. “Intelligence community managers and analysts must provide their best analytical judgments about Iranian W.M.D. programs and not shy away from provocative conclusions or bury disagreements in consensus assessments,” the report said, using the abbreviation for weapons of mass destruction like nuclear arms.

Some policy makers also said they were displeased that American spy agencies were playing down intelligence reports — including some from the Israeli government — of extensive contacts recently between Hezbollah and members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. “The people in the community are unwilling to make judgment calls and don’t know how to link anything together,” one senior United States official said.

“We’re not in a court of law,” he said. “When they say there is ‘no evidence,’ you have to ask them what they mean, what is the meaning of the term ‘evidence’?”

The criticisms do not appear to be focused on any particular agency, like the C.I.A., the Defense Intelligence Agency or the State Department’s intelligence bureau, which sometimes differ in their views.

Officials from across the government — including from within the Bush administration, Congress and American intelligence agencies — spoke for this article on condition of anonymity because they were discussing a debate over classified intelligence information. Some officials said that given all that had happened over the last four years, it was only appropriate that the intelligence agencies took care to avoid going down the same path that led the United States to war with Iraq.

( a tacit admission that the intelligence agencies were conscripted into the WHIG's bogus war justifications. )

“Analysts were burned pretty badly during the run-up to the war in Iraq,” said Representative Rush Holt, a New Jersey Democrat who sits on the House Intelligence Committee. “I’m not surprised that some in the intelligence community are a bit gun-shy about appearing to be war mongering.”

( evidence didnt matter to WHIQ. War as immediate and only option to getting dubya re-elected )

Several intelligence officials said that American spy agencies had made assessments in recent weeks that despite established ties between Iran and Hezbollah and a well-documented history of Iran arming the organization, there was no credible evidence to suggest either that Iran ordered the Hezbollah raid that touched off the recent fighting or that Iran was directly controlling attacks against Israel.

( I've read that Iran is very displeased that all their investment in Hezbollah arms and infrastructure was destroyed by the Israelis with nothing to show for it )

“There are no provable signs of Iranian direction on the ground,” said one intelligence official in Washington. “Nobody should think that Hezbollah is a remote-controlled entity.” American military assessments have broadly echoed this view, say people who maintain close ties to military intelligence officers.

“Does Iran profit from all of this? Yes,” said Gen. Wayne A. Downing Jr., the retired former commander of the Special Operations Command and a White House counterterrorism adviser during President Bush’s first term. “But is Iran pulling the strings? The guys I’m talking to say, ‘no.’ ”

Many senior Bush administration officials have long been dismissive of the work of the intelligence agencies. Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon set up an office led by Douglas J. Feith, the Defense Department’s third-ranking civilian official at the time, that sifted through raw intelligence to look for links between terrorist networks and governments like Iraq’s.

In the months before the Iraq war, Vice President Dick Cheney made repeated trips to the C.I.A. and asked analysts pointed questions about their conclusions that Iraq had no direct ties to Al Qaeda. Both the Pentagon office and Mr. Cheney’s visits were roundly criticized, which is why officials said that policy makers were now being careful about circumventing the intelligence agencies to seek alternate analyses.

During his confirmation hearings in May, the director of the C.I.A., Gen. Michael V. Hayden, said he had been “uncomfortable” with the work of the Pentagon intelligence office.

The House Intelligence Committee report released Wednesday was written primarily by Republican staff members on the committee, and privately some Democrats criticized the report for using innuendo and unsubstantiated assertions to inflate the threat that Iran posed to the United States.

The report’s cover page shows a picture of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran speaking at a lectern that bears the message “The World Without Zionism.”

Page 3 of the report lists several public comments from Mr. Ahmadinejad, including his statement, “The annihilation of the Zionist regime will come. . . . Israel must be wiped off the map.”

Earlier this year, the intelligence agencies put new procedures in place to help avoid the type of analysis that was contained in the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq and to prevent another “Curveball” — the code name of the Iraqi source who fed the United States faulty intelligence about Iraq’s biological weapons program. “I think that the intelligence community is being appropriately cautious,” said John E. McLaughlin, a former director of central intelligence.

“I think that what is going on is that people are holding themselves to a higher standard of evidence because of Iraq.”

( well is that just fucky ducky! but just one phony war too late! )

Thomas Fingar, the deputy director of national intelligence for analysis, said analysts now had much more information about the sources of raw intelligence coming from the field.

“Analysts have to know more about the sources than was generally the case before the Iraq estimate,” Mr. Fingar said.

Analysts also are required to include in their reports more information about the chain of logic that led them to their conclusions about sensitive topics like Iran, North Korea and global terrorism — “showing your work,” as Mr. Fingar put it.

At the same time, Mr. Fingar dismissed the notion that intelligence analysts should try merely to connect random intelligence findings. “As a 40-year analyst, I’m offended by the notion of ‘connecting dots,’ ’’he said. “If you had enough monkeys you could do that.”

The consensus of the intelligence agencies is that Iran is still years away from building a nuclear weapon. Such an assessment angers some in Washington, who say that it ignores the prospect that Iran could be aided by current nuclear powers like North Korea. “When the intelligence community says Iran is 5 to 10 years away from a nuclear weapon, I ask: ‘If North Korea were to ship them a nuke tomorrow, how close would they be then?” said Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives.

“The intelligence community is dedicated to predicting the least dangerous world possible,” he said.

Some veterans of the intelligence battles that preceded the Iraq war see the debate as familiar and are critical of efforts to create hard links based on murky intelligence.

“It reflects a certain way of looking at the world — that all evil is traceable to the capitals of certain states,” said Paul R. Pillar, who until last October oversaw American intelligence assessments about the Middle East. “And that, in my view, is a very incorrect way of interpreting the security challenges we face.”

[boutons_]

History, Repeating Itself

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Thursday, August 24, 2006; 11:56 AM

There is a popular sentiment among the Washington elite that what went wrong in the run-up to the war in Iraq has been sufficiently examined, and that it's all water under the bridge anyway.

It's popular in the White House and among Republicans for obvious reasons. But it's also remarkably popular among top Democrats and the establishment media, because they aren't all that eager to call any more attention to the fact that they were played for suckers.

There are, however, some people who believe that what led this country to launch a war of choice under false pretenses must be examined in detail -- over and over again if necessary -- until the appropriate lessons have been learned.

Otherwise, one might argue, history is doomed to repeat itself.

Enter history, stage right.

Once again, powerful neoconservative politicians who just know in their hearts that there is a terrible threat posed by a Middle Eastern country they have identified as part of the axis of evil are frustrated by the lack of conclusive evidence that would support a bellicose approach. So they are pressuring the nation's intelligence community to find facts that will support their argument.

This time, that scenario is being played out right in front of our eyes. Maybe that will make a difference?

Mark Mazzetti writes in the New York Times: "Some senior Bush administration officials and top Republican lawmakers are voicing anger that American spy agencies have not issued more ominous warnings about the threats that they say Iran presents to the United States. . . .

"The complaints, expressed privately in recent weeks, surfaced in a Congressional report about Iran released Wednesday. They echo the tensions that divided the administration and the Central Intelligence Agency during the prelude to the war in Iraq.

"The criticisms reflect the views of some officials inside the White House and the Pentagon who advocated going to war with Iraq and now are pressing for confronting Iran directly over its nuclear program and ties to terrorism, say officials with knowledge of the debate."

Mazzetti writes that "privately some Democrats criticized the report for using innuendo and unsubstantiated assertions to inflate the threat that Iran posed to the United States. . . .

"Some veterans of the intelligence battles that preceded the Iraq war see the debate as familiar and are critical of efforts to create hard links based on murky intelligence.

" 'It reflects a certain way of looking at the world -- that all evil is traceable to the capitals of certain states,' said Paul R. Pillar, who until last October oversaw American intelligence assessments about the Middle East. 'And that, in my view, is a very incorrect way of interpreting the security challenges we face.' "

Dafna Linzer writes in The Washington Post that the report was "principally written by a Republican staff member on the House intelligence committee who holds a hard-line view on Iran," and "fully backs the White House position that the Islamic republic is moving forward with a nuclear weapons program and that it poses a significant danger to the United States. . . . [I]it chides the intelligence community for not providing enough direct evidence to support that assertion."

Linzer writes that "the principal author was Frederick Fleitz, a former CIA officer who had been a special assistant to John R. Bolton, the administration's former point man on Iran at the State Department."

Translation: That means Fleitz is Vice President Cheney's man.

Here's a little taste of the Fleitz way of doing business, from The Post in May 2005:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/10/AR2005051001264.html

[RandomGuy]

The consensus of the intelligence agencies is that Iran is still years away from building a nuclear weapon. Such an assessment angers some in Washington, who say that it ignores the prospect that Iran could be aided by current nuclear powers like North Korea. “When the intelligence community says Iran is 5 to 10 years away from a nuclear weapon, I ask: ‘If North Korea were to ship them a nuke tomorrow, how close would they be then?” said Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives.



Gingrich's comments to me reflect the general lack of nuanced understanding from many on the right, and to some extent a few on the left about the world.

China doesn't want Iran to have a nuke. North Korea may occasionally do something to piss China off, but that would be beyond the point at which China would likely depose Kimmy with the full support of the rest of the world.

The simplistic thinking that would lead Newt to think that Kimmy giving Amedinedork a nuke is a realistic possibility and then berate the intelligence community for not agreeing is like a guy who just learned how to cook hot dogs lecturing a chef at a 5 star restaurant on how to make the chef's signature dish. pfft.

[Nbadan]

Nothing, except for it's part of -- and nobody has ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack. Iraq was a -- the lesson of September the 11th is, take threats before they fully materialize, Ken. Nobody has ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq. I have suggested, however, that resentment and the lack of hope create the breeding grounds for terrorists who are willing to use suiciders to kill to achieve an objective. I have made that case.

- Dubya, August 21 press conference

Oppsss...


March 18, 2003

Dear Mr. Speaker:


Consistent with section 3(b) of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 (Public Law 107-243), and based on information available to me, including that in the enclosed document, I determine that:

(1) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic and other peaceful means alone will neither (A) adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq nor (B) likely lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq; and

(2) acting pursuant to the Constitution and Public Law 107-243 is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

Sincerely,

GEORGE W. BUSH

Whitehouse.gov (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/08/20060821.html)

[Nbadan]

Report In Connection With Presidential Determination Under Public Law 107-243 (http://www.c-span.org/resources/pdf/Report107_243.pdf)

Here are the good parts...


This report also explains that a determination to use force against Iraq is fully consistent with the United States andother countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

------

4. Use of Force Against Iraq is Consistent with the War onTerror In Public Law 107-243, Congress made a number of findings concerning Iraq’s support for international terrorism. Among other things, Congress determined that:

• Members of al Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq.

• Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations, including organizations that threaten the lives and safety of United States citizens.

• It is in the national security interests of the United States and in furtherance of the war on terrorism that all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions been forced, including through the use of force if necessary.