Posted on 12/05/2007 1:59:30 AM PST by Recovering_Democrat
and we might as well play it for the politics, since that may be all the NIE is anyway. Here's the two-fer-- "we did shut down a WMD program, but it was IRAN'S, not Iraq's."
My guess is that if they did stop, it was only to contemplate taking such actions as described above. They apparently decided that leaving themselves more or less defenseless, as Saddam had done, would give them the same results that Saddam had achieved. They fully realize that once they have a functional nuclear capability, they are untouchable. Reference North Korea for an example.
Every commenter currently on this thread, now and in the future, including the original poster, Recovering Democrat (have you recovered?) and, yes, Glen Beck, all have it right.
This is the most outrageous action by what Rush calls our “shadow government”, guaranteed to make Bush helpless in matters of foreign policy and at our peril.
The problem here is convincing the ladies in the beauty parlor. All they hear are sound bytes and as the hair dryer blows in their ears they think...”sheesh, doesn’t that Bush administration EVER get it right?”
Which is why Bush, however noble he is as Rush Limbaugh tells us, should never have left that mantra about no weapons of mass destruction gone on unchallenged.
If Saddam didn’t have a stockpile of nukes....something I doubt and hey didn’t Syria just get bombed to everyone’s surprise...than he had other ways to get them. Couldn’t Syria have kept Saddam’s stockpile hidden?
And if there was NO stockpile, Saddam had the next best thing. He had lots and lots and lots of bucks. Bucks that would buy nuclear know-how, bucks that would by uranium off the black market, bucks that would have German engineers jumping through hoops to design necessary mechanisms. And centrifuges, goodness, can’t have too many centrifuges. Saddam had many, many little weapons of mass destruction that would have had him an assembled and ready-to-launch nuke within a year of spreading around his corrupt UN-provided bucks.
But oh no, could Bush have explained this to us, the stupid American public? Even the ladies at the beauty parlor would have understood. Instead he let the Drive-bys and Dems and Joe Wilson and Val Plame, et al...have their screaming, lying way and now public opinion is at the whim of the Dems or Drvie-bys as regards Iran and the hell with the right action to take.
Not that a commander-in-chief isn’t suppose to keep the public informed and on his side, silly me.
Further, why haven’t these treasonous bastids buried somewhere in the CIA or the like been taken care of? We all know they were there. We understood that Bush inherited a vipers nest, now fully seven years ago.
Because that NIE was put out by someone in those agencies and damn if the NY Times didn’t get the leak again.
It’s almost deja-vu all over again.
Mark my words, this failure of the president, a man I think history will be far kinder to than current events please know that I understand...but Bush failed in terms of public relations. The Dems and Drive-bys walked over him. This latest episode is going to seriously damage any action a Republican, either now or in the future, will take as regards Iran.
Cause it’s not about national security anymore, Dorothy.
did anything ever come out with those satellite photos of trucks going into Syria just before we went into Iraq?
how about that mystery ship loaded with materials from Iraq and put to sea never to be seen again?
The same agency that was unaware of the Pakistani and Indian nuclear bomb programs until both countries set off test nukes.
If Iran had actually suspended its nuclear weapons program, why would it have endured years and years of tightening sanctions without offering proof that it had suspended them?
It still hasn’t been satisfactorily explained why SH had stockpiles of bio weapons masks and suits when he had supposedly stopped the manufacture of bio weapons.
Hush. Lie quietly and wait. We’re letting Democrats run with the bait, recording every stupid thing they say before they have time to think about it. We’re collecting some nice gems. When the dust settles, there’s going to be some major ammunition for the campaign trail. A picture may say a thousand words, but a dozen words on videotape..well, that’s worth a career.
” Just what does Iran plan to do with this enriched urnaium they are producing? “
It’s possible they decided the full bomb thing doesn’t serve their purposes as well as the capacity for a lot of “dirty nukes”. Lower-tech, more sites possible, very scary, highly disruptive.
Yeah, Iran has no military nuke program, hasn’t had one in 4 years, and has no thoughts of re-starting warhead design and production once they have enriched enough uranium..... that uranium which has no plausible civilian purpose since it won’t work in the reactor the Soviets are building (and supplying the uranium) for them..... oh, and those Shahab-3 and Shahab-4 missile development projects and all the extreme secrecy and lies that Iran has engaged in for many many years..... all this is true because, what, some new “Curveball” type source says it’s true?? or was this NIE just pulled out of someone’s aXX in the State Dept.???
Question: if Iran truly stopped and forswears any military nuke program, WHY WON’T THEY LET THE IAEA OR USA FULLY AND COMPLETELY VERIFY THAT????
Think about that one, folks — Iran could get out of all threat of sanctions quite easily if this NIE were true, and they don’t have Saddam’s paranoid reasons for any pretence on WMD programs — all their advantages would come from openness and inspections, UNLESS THEY REALLY ARE TRYING TO PULL ONE OVER ON THE WORLD.
Didn’t War in Iraq Coincide with
Qadhafi giving up all his WMD’s?
Qadhafi gives vital information to the Coaltion Forces so he can get out of Sanctions.
Remember the Nuclear Scientist Dr. Khan?
Khan helped the Iranians.
http://www.parapundit.com/archives/2003_12.html
First “Curveball.” Now, “Knuckleball.” Or is it “Nuclurball”?
Can't be. Sunnis won't help Shi'ites. It's right there in the CIA Bible....look it up
Are you being funny?
Iranians helped the AQI to kill our troops.
"nuclear program"
as something that is either definitively "started" or "ongoing" or "stopped". I had the same problems with most discussions of whether Saddam Hussein had "weapons programs" (chemical weapons "programs", bio weapons "programs", etc) or whether he "stopped" them.
Question: just what, exactly, is a "nuclear program" that it can be so easily "stopped"? Everyone seems to acknowledge, including Iran, that she is busy enriching uranium. This sort of uranium has only one plausible purpose, and that is for use in a nuclear weapon. So why isn't the action of enriching uranium considering a "nuclear bomb program"? How is it not, exactly? Does a nuclear "program" have a precise definition and enriching uranium doesn't count? why not?
Digging deeper, let me stipulate for sake of argument that Iran "had" a nuclear bomb "program" and then "stopped" it in 2003. Question. What exactly did the "stopping" of the program consist of. I mean, apparently prior to 2003, the state of Iran employed some number of scientists and workers in the development of a nuclear bomb. Those scientists studied, learned, went to conferences, bought pamphlets, whatever... they gained all or at least some of the knowledge of the development and logistics required to build such a bomb. That knowledge was in their heads, and their notebooks, and on their computers. Meanwhile the workers toiled. Presumably, prior to 2003, together they made at least some progress - in manufacturing, setting up facilities, purchasing parts, etc.
Does this knowledge and progress no longer exist because the "program" was supposedly "stopped"? Were the scientists executed or at least their brains washed clear? Were the computer hard drives formatted? Were the parts thrown away? Were the facilities destroyed? If not, then what the hell does "stopping" really mean? What exactly was "stopped" that couldn't be started again at a moment's notice? I mean are we talking about the scientists' paychecks? Was the Iranian Secret Nuclear Bomb Department officially disbanded and all former employees transferred to the Iranian Post Office? what?
Recall also that up until very very recently we were repeatedly told by anti-war types how "hardened" Iran's nuclear facilities were (!), which was considered at the time by them to be a tactically-clever argument for not bombing Iran ("it won't work anyway because their facilities are hardened").
But now I am left to wonder, what facilities? The ones that no longer exist and haven't existed since 2003 because the "program" was "stopped"?
If there's any truth to the "stopped" meme, it's the same as was presumably with Iraq: "stopped" really just means paused. For tactical reasons, logistical reasons, political reasons, whatever. For example, I could buy that Iran looked at the situation in 2003 and said "we're not going to make enough progress to get the bomb by 200x anyway, and our timeline is hung up on [such and such logistical benchmarks] anyway, so let's play it cool on the nuke thing for a while, and maybe it will even buy us some PR points against the Americans". I could buy that.
What I don't buy is that this somehow constitutes "stopping the program" in any meaningful way, i.e. in any way that an intelligent person could possibly conclude "therefore Iran isn't trying to and won't try to get the bomb".
You make excellent points throughout!! This NIE is a crock, that is obvious. If some one warhead program really was paused or cancelled in 2003, even if THAT info is reliable, it is preposterous to infer from that that Iran has stopped any movement forward in a “military” nuclear program. They have proudly ANNOUNCED their 3000 centrifuges are operational, in a uranium enrichment program that has only military purposes, no matter what the liars of Tehran and the Democrats here may say. They have not other use for that uranium enrichment except to work the process until they can enrich to a high enough purity for weapons-grade uranium. They have no civilian reactor program which can use it.
I am going to apply gun control logic here. I think you have it backwards. The war did not cause the Iranians to stop their nuclear weapons program. Quite the opposite is true. The Iranians stopped their nuclear weapons program WHICH THEN CAUSED THE WAR IN IRAQ! (/gun control logic)
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