The Next President’s Iran Dilemma

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• Reader Comments (3)

  Page 1 of 1 pages

  The events in Iraq and reasons for them have already generated enough print to fill a medium size library.

  Let’s make it as simple as possible.

  • Why are we there?

  Probably our oil dependency is the prime reason.

  • Why didn’t the U.N. inspections work?
  
  So many reasons it’s hard to choose — IAEA head, Barradei, admitted while running for re-election their inspections were unsuccessful regarding Iran’s atomic activity for 15 years!  Sec. Albright’s interference alerted Saddam to several “surprise inspections” in Iraq.

  It reminded me of Jimmy Carter’s proposed musical chairs/missile shuffle back in the 1970s. Only the U.S. media could find this shell game to be a genuine attempt to search.

  Even though 60 Minutes revealed Saddam’s admission of claiming to have WMD and full intention to return to producing chemical, biological and nuclear types ASAP this has been ignored by all other media and there has been no, “See, we told you.” from the Bush administration.

  • This silence seems to indicate that perhaps the most important aim was not the threat of WMD, but to be able to build the massive U.S. fortress (embassy) in a strategic Middle East location (Iraq).

  Mission Accomplished (Well, soon.)

  There is little likelihood the next administration will succeed in changing much of anything, since 36,000+ lobbyists have more influence and a far stronger veto power than any president.

  Posted by whattheheck on Feb 6, 2008 at 8:33 AM

  The NIE, in an abrupt reversal of the U.S. intelligence community’s previous best guess, stated that Iran has not had an active program for building the bomb since 2003. A mild euphoria gripped Washington, except the White House where spokespeople were sheepish, and the right-wing think tanks where Iran hawks muttered darkly about State Department derailment of the Bush-Cheney agenda. Within two weeks, however, the euphoria wore off, and the old bipartisan consensus—Iran is a threat—reemerged.

  Well, there was certainly a lot of muttering on many sides.  The “abrupt reversal” from previous intel estimates did attract serious attention.  But interestingly enough, there is no evidence that the White House or the defense professionals joined in the muttering.  After all, the President and his staff and the military are charged with defending the nation, and are not necessarily obligated to deal with some rogue intel people with a leftist agenda.  The USA intel community has a colorful and checkered past, and the latest reorganization does not seem to have helped much. 

  We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program …

  This is the very first sentence in the body of the actual estimate.  Sounds encouraging, no?  But here is the last sentence:

  We assess with high confidence that Iran has the scientific, technical and industrial capacity eventually to produce nuclear weapons if it decides to do so.

  Had these two sentences been reversed, it would have changed the whole tenor of the report, and no one would have any cause to mutter. 

  So, do we need to worry, or not?  In WWII, German physicists were known to be working on nuclear weapons.  The United States built the first nuclear bombs in the Manhattan Project, to great effect in cutting short the slaughter in Asia, but the German bomb got nowhere. 

  Despite the Irani infatuation with magical weapons that don’t work well, the Iran bomb appears to be well on its way, if we can credit the NIE, not to mention the Israelis and the Europeans.

  In fact the Economist just had an article on the confusing and counterproductive results of the NIE’s “mangled message” that sabotaged efforts by Europe and others to control the Irani nuclear effort. 

  http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10601584

  But if the President and the Israelis are paying attention to what the Iranis are doing, and not to what games the spooks are playing, we can be assured that the Iranis will not get the bomb.  Everyone agrees that Iran should not have the bomb, but no one wants to do anything about it.  But Israel will surely do something, if the USA does not get results in its efforts.

  Posted by scorp on Feb 7, 2008 at 8:55 PM

  Scorp,

  I look forward to seeing how their campaign babble may change if either Barack or Hillary are in the hot seat at 1600 and receiving the daily info.

  I fault the Bush administration for many things including their inept PR reating to the Iraq/Iran situation, but with the huge volume of info can simpathize with anyone who must decide what to believe and when. — and then take action.

  Posted by whattheheck on Feb 8, 2008 at 9:54 AM

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• The Next President’s Iran Dilemma
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