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The Democrats from Harry Reid on down better pray this political dictated manufacture collection of wishful thinking is true. IF the Iranians end up getting a nuke, there will be NO way for them to lie their way out from under responsibility for it.

Also, interesting what everyone on the Left is avoiding. 1st off the NIE states the Iranians DID have a nuke weapons program and they ended it in 2003. The same year the Libyans gave up their nuke program.

What happened in 2003?

Iraq was liberated. Seems the Liberation of Iraq has all ready fundamentally changed the ME.

So once again, Bush was right and Old Boy Washington was all wrong.

We are so child like. Iran is an enemy, run by fanatics, enriching a lot of uranium. An intelligence report can't change that reality, or stop Iran if it turns that uranium into a bomb. That's reality, not a headline.

The left acts as though reality is a never changing snapshot. It took Hitler and Japan a good while before they plunged the entire world into war, but they did it.

Something seriously weird is going on here.

And whatever it was, it started about a month and a half ago.

President Bush, who had looked serious and depressed suddenly became light on his feet and happy.

All US carrier fleets suddenly departed the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman and haven’t been back since.

Most al-Quds operations in Iraq stopped.

With this announcement, Bush has not come out swinging, instead he issued just a mild caution. Israel did the same (so they probably know about whatever it is as well). Russia, China and Europe haven’t said a whole lot.

Iran is bragging victory. But in the Mid East, that often means you just got your butt kicked. The US hasn’t said anything about their declaring victory.

The three most influential intelligence heads to issue this report are “strong, anti-Bush partisans”. Who are making a 180 degree turn from four months ago. Allegedly based on the information provided by one source in Iran (unnamed).

In fact, no senior US political leader has come out to support or oppose the NIE. Only partisan leaders, like Howard Dean, who really isn’t in the government loop. No senior Democrat or Republican senator has said much of anything.

THIS DOES NOT COMPUTE, WILL ROBINSON.

Lets see if Iran suspended their nuclear program in 2003. And that makes us safe thats good. Next fast forward to June 2005 Iran elects Imanutjob as President and we are to beleive that their nuclear program is still idled. I will stick with President Bush fully beleiving that they are still actively manufacturing nuclear material. I will put about as much stock in my belief that their nuke program is currently idled as I will in beleiving that Imanutjob was really elected.

"The Key Question about the NIE's Key Judgment"

Irrelevant. The hard part about developing nuclear weapons is producing the fissile material; bomb design is little more than a physics major's senior thesis. The Allies stopped Nazi Germany's atomic bomb program by destroying its heavy water plant (the cornerstone of plutonium production). Israel stopped Iraq's atomic bomb program by destroying the Osirak reactor, which was designed to produce plutonium. When North Korea announced it was resuming its atomic bomb program, what it specifically announced was that it was resuming plutonium production. What matters is the material, not the design.

So the key question is this: Is Iran enriching uranium? And the answer is, yes, in ever-increasing quantity, by Iran's own admission! The NIE does not contest that at all.

When Iran has 20 kilograms of highly-enriched uranium, it will have a nuclear weapon, whether or not the "program" is "active." It will take the 3,000 centrifuges Iran—by its own admission—now has online between 4 and 9 months to produce 20 kilograms of HEU. Thus, even if everything in the NIE is the gospel truth, Iran will have a nuclear weapon sometime next year. That's simply a fact, and no one is going to do anything to stop it.