Here's the declassified portions of the New Iran NIE about how the Iranian nuclear hype is mostly hype.
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Iran NIE
03 Dec 2007 01:18 pm
Comments (8)
Clicking over to memeorandum, I think you need to do another post in the on-again, off-again series of "What the American public actually thinks about evolution." There's a moderate voice post getting attention that talks about whether professing belief in ID will hurt Huckabee.
Why should we believe that Iran EVER had a nuclear weapons program at all?
From IranAffairs.com:
Iran NIE report: Are you lying now, or were you lying then?If the 2005 NIE report was wrong when it claimed with "high confidence" that Iran had a active nuclear weapons program, why should the 2007 NIE be any more credible when it claims that Iran had a nuclear weapons program until 2003? If Iran really had a nuclear weapons program until 2003 as the new report claims, then why has the IAEA found no evidence of it?
Correct. This NIE is a weasel-worded attempt to say: 1) Iran had a weapons program; 2) Iran stopped its weapons program under threat from the US; 3) we were right all along.
None of which do they establish as true.
I suspect that the Iranian military had their own little program of researching what it would take to build a nuke, but I doubt the Iranian leadership ever authorized a full-on nuclear weapons program.
Long time ago I used to work on the Iran desk for an allied nation. Still stay in touch with what is happening. I can say with complete confidence that the first the US will know about any real Iranian nuclear program will be when you wake up one morning and see Israeli air strikes taking place on CNN.
The US intelligence community has demonstrated time and again that it cannot be relied upon to provide timely and accurate assessments.
What Fred said. Proof, if more were needed, that the "intelligence community" is, at best, guessing about nearly everything. And usually guessing wrong.
These are the same groups that told us it was a good idea to parachute agents behind the Iron Curtain, that Chaing Kai Shek was winning the Chinese civil war, that the North Koreans wouldn't invade the South, that the Chinese wouldn't come into the war if we advanced to the Yalu, that it was a good idea to support Diem in South Vietnam, and shortly after that it was a good idea to go along with his assassination; that supporting a coup in Guatemala and the Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba was okay; that we should overthrow Mossadeq and put the Shah on the Peacock Throne; that we should support terrorism in Central America, and jihad in Afghanistan; that the Soviet Union was getting stronger, and that found out India and Pakistan were working on nukes when the set them off.
This puts Bush's October WWIII statement regarding preventing Iran from having "the knowledge to develop nuclear weapons in perspective." Sure Iran doesn't have an active nuclear weapons program, but we must wage war nevertheless because they still possess the knowledge.
Now we know why the goalposts moved, leaving the goalposts where they were wouldn't result in the policy outcome he prefers, war.
If the intelligence community is "guessing at everything" why should we believe it when they say that Iran represents a threat?
Why is the "intelligence community" to be believed only when it says bad things about Iran?
Comments closed December 17, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
what can we do to help the Iranians to get nukes? maybe the Russians or the Chinese could be of assistance, selling them some enriched uranium, or maybe even selling them some short-range missile technology.
the sooner the Iranians actually get nukes the safer the rest of us will be. we could start a fund? hold some bake sales, maybe, or ask directly for contributions? personally, I think some Chinese nukes and some North Korean missiles would be sufficient, but whatever we can do to get nukes into the hands of the Iranians we should be doing.
Posted by mrs. ibrahim al-jafaari | December 3, 2007 1:40 PM