Norman Podhoretz takes note of some questions about it:
…I entertain an even darker suspicion. It is that the intelligence community, which has for some years now been leaking material calculated to undermine George W. Bush, is doing it again. This time the purpose is to head off the possibility that the President may order air strikes on the Iranian nuclear installations. As the intelligence community must know, if he were to do so, it would be as a last resort, only after it had become undeniable that neither negotiations nor sanctions could prevent Iran from getting the bomb, and only after being convinced that it was very close to succeeding. How better, then, to stop Bush in his tracks than by telling him and the world that such pressures have already been effective and that keeping them up could well bring about “a halt to Iran’s entire nuclear weapons program”—especially if the negotiations and sanctions were combined with a goodly dose of appeasement or, in the NIE’s own euphemistic formulation, “with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways.”
Me, too; I haven’t read the actual NIE, but it is reported that while the NIE is highly confident that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003, Iran continues to enrich a sort of uranium which is really only useful in a nuclear weapons program. In technical terms, to say something like that is known as bullsh**. Its like saying that the illegals have stopped trying to cross the border, but are still digging that tunnel under the fence…
Someone at State and/or CIA is merely trying to undercut the President’s stated policy of not allowing Iran to obtain nuclear weapons. Yet another lesson in the absolute necessity of any future GOP Administration to fire each and every person hired or promoted by a previous Democratic Administration. Aside from that, I don’t think this NIE will amount to a hill of beans as far as President Bush is concerned – it won’t be an NIE which decides what to do about Iran, but President Bush after carefully weighing all the available data.
Blogs For Victory 
Okay, I can’t read anymore of the BS that is spewing forth from the old regime here at BFV. I am glad however to see the great number of decenters that have found their way here. Conspiracies seem to be rampant here and not coming from the “leftie kooks” but from the far-right wingers. First it was the CNN thing where all of the questions and facilitators of the debate were fake Republicans out to get the candidates and now this. Saying that all 16 inteligence agencies have conspired togeter against Bush is as ludicrous as saying 9/11 was an inside job. People assume that the number of people it would take carry out such conspiracies are all able to keep their mouths shut and are all on the same page. IMPOSSIBLE!! Another thing that I would like to point out is the pre 9/11 intelligence and Iraq intelligence flawed reports claims. If you people would take the time to do just a smidge of research you would find that both were highly accurate. Both Clinton and Bush received NIEs stating that there were plans for terrorists to comadere planes and fly them into American buildings yet each time it was considered unlikely. The NIE on Iraq always stated that Suddam had not reconstitutes his nuclear weapons program nor was there any proof of WMDs. Envoy after envoy stated the same as well and still Bush insisted on it and so we are where we are now. PLEASE STOP THE MADDNESS!!
MZ – um, so did we. The Manhattan project was so secret that Vice-president Truman didn’t know about it until he became president.
Otherwise, I agree.
But what are the libs bitching about? Libya, Korea, AND Iran stop (or suspend) their programs after we kick ass in Iraq?
Both Clinton and Bush received NIEs–CallMeTeach,
Then that means Bill had to receive the NIEs, first…So, why didn’t Bill act accordingly?
Jeremiah
Callme- envoy after envoy? Name five. Cite their statements.
What’s next, 9/11 was an inside job? Lose the tin foil hat.
Kahn: Truth is, that makes THREE nuclear programs stopped.
And what is the common thread? I would say sanctions. The Libyans were about ready to come to an agreement to end the sanctions against them (stemming from the plane bombing over Lockerbee, Scotland) when they were caught with their hand in the nuclear cookie jar. When that shipment was intercepted by the Italians they were suddenly confronted with the worst of both worlds (no nuclear capacity and no end to sanctions) when they thought they were on the verge of the best of both. Obviously I can’t say that the Iraq invasion had nothing to do with their decision to give up the goods on the Kahn cabal, but it seems to me that there’s enough there without the Iraq invasion to compel them to do what they did. That intercept led to the discovery that both Iran and North Korea were working on uranium enrichment projects. Sanctions were soon imposed on both. But their reactions were different. In the case of North Korea, they responded by kicking out the IAEA inspectors and accelerated their plutonium weaponization (which, by the way, everyone knew they had) to the point where they exploded, well… something. It was very low yield. The question is whether it was meant to be low yield. Likewise, to this day (so far as we commoners are concerned anyway), it’s still not clear how far they got with their hidden uranium enrichment project. My guess is… not very far. But again, it was only through international sanctions, and only when Bush finally agreed to talk with them, that the impasse finally broke. Finally, in the case of Iran, the recent NIE clearly states that Iran has shown every indication of responding to sanctions.
I’m not saying that sabre rattling had no effect, but it seems rather clear that diplomacy, backed by sanctions, has had a significant impact in all three cases.
One also has to consider the potential effects that “saber rattling” has had on other countries. You can consider that in both larger and smaller contexts. Afghanistan is not very stable. Neither is Lebanon, or Pakistan, or Egypt. The Palestine problem is finally being addressed, but the issues on the table haven’t changed much since they were first proposed in 2002. In the mean time China has strengthened their relationship with many countries in the area — as well as Africa and South America.
“Yet another lesson in the absolute necessity of any future GOP Administration to fire each and every person hired or promoted by a previous Democratic Administration”
…if you don’t want any intellegent people around to stop you devils. You have to fire any desent huh?…your ideas are very weak. Lies probably. Can you comprehend anything I say? Mark, Conservatives? The few devils patting you on your back aren’t going destroy the fact that most of the posters are against you.
Rico – sanctions were PART of OUR solution, yes. But they were ALL in place before Iraq. And all three programs stopped AFTER Iraq.
Give credit where it’s due. Otherwise, well you just look petty.
Just look the posts and open your eyes. Liberals give facts. All the Conservatives can do is post personal insults in the face of proof and convincing counter arguement. Conservatives are worried about apostrophes and tell Liberals they are stupid; which has no substance or fact to it, only a psychological projection of their own stupidity, to deal with thier anxiety of being stupid, so their demonic egos can control their delusional lives.
Conservatives are so crazy, I can say this and conservatives don’t even hear it.
“Mark, Do, please. You’re capable of rational debate.”
No. I have never seen any conservative even begin a debate on any conservative ideology/issue…conservatives always fall flat on their face, everytime.
It doesn’t matter what us intellegent people say to them anyway!…their egos are such a cancer in their head: information & facts & proof will go in one ear and out the other just so their ego can keep from being wrong.
Or like the psychopaths [Conservatives] they are, they will psychologically project.
ah – I love the fact that Mark starts his post with
“I HAVEN”T READ THE REPORT”.. Thats classic. YOU HAVEN”T EVEN READ IT – however you conclude that clearly that it must be a democrat in the CIA trying to undercut the President. Besides the obvious fact that you are delusional beyond belief (care to share any actual evidence that he is trying to be undercut ?).I have got a piece that directly contradicts that – his own national intelligence adviser said yesterday that Bush was told about this as early as August – and that further Cheney had delayed the release of the report for at least a year which indicates that the administration knew full well…
So lets see if we can recap:
(1) Bush lied again about not knowing about this – he is directly contradicted by even people in his administration
(2) Bush continues to beat the war drums despite the fact that all actual evidence is that Iran doesn’t have a viable weapons program
(3) and Mark – doesn’t think its needed to actually read the document because he already knows a priori that it must be a democrat trying to undercut him
I am becoming more and more convinced that you are not just ideologically challenged but severely in need of mental help
USA – Sanctions were PART of OUR solution, yes. But they were ALL in place before Iraq. And all three programs stopped AFTER Iraq.
Give credit where it’s due. Bush policy may have gone into Iraq on false information. But it may well have directly lead to removing three deadly threats. And, it may yet lead to peace in Israel – though honestly I doubt it.
You can read a calender, can’t you? Thats not an insult, is it?
What “facts” do you offer? I noticed none in your post. Please enlighten us!
Kahn,
That was an honest answer and I appreciate it. I obviously don’t share your rejection, but if you considered it, that’s more than what many seem to do.
Unfortunately, I have to turn around and ask you why you’re citing North Korea as a success. They were labeled as part of the Axis of Evil ™ and now have nuclear weapons.
Also, I can’t say I share your enthusiasm for high-school terminology (“…after we kick ass in Iraq”), given that as we close in on five years after invading that country, we’re still hemorrhaging lives (37 last month, 3,883 to date), our military readiness (the desert is hard on expensive equipment) and money (slightly more than $27 million per day). For all of that effort, we have a highly ineffectual Shi’a-dominated government in Baghdad which is on friendly terms with the Shi’a-dominated government in Tehran.
My question to the “we kicked their ass” contingent has always been this, “Why didn’t we quote Julius Caesar and say ‘Veni, Vidi, Vici‘ followed by ‘Don’t make us come back again’ and pack up our gear and leave within the first month, or maybe two?” Assuming that it was a whiz-bang of an idea to invade in the first place, we would have demonstrated the object lesson at infinitely lesser cost and with all our capability preserved to do it again had it been “necessary”. Instead, we’ve borrowed and continue to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars, largely from the Chinese, in U.S. government-issued notes of indebtedness (quaintly referred to as T-bills and government bonds) with no actual end in sight. Anyone tried to trade your dollars for any other major world currency lately. It is not pretty.
LiberaT – don’t you get it? So what? He got them to stop! Your upset about rhetoric when a nuclear thret has been removed. Three threats in fact. Doesn’t that matter? is you hatred of George Bush so great you can’t see he eliminated three enemy nuclear programs?
Do you understand what nukes do? I mean really, in terms of radius of damage? People killed? People maimed and burned? People with radiation poisoning? It’s the single biggest accomplishment of the decade.
I say, you may not agree with or understand his technique – but you CAN’T argue with the results.
Or do you prefer that Iran, North Korea, and Libya still be working on nuclear weapons?
Mark – sorry bud, but I think you missed the point of this announcement. It means the GOP literally saved us. All of us.
Sing it from the hillsides.
USA,
“Liberals give facts. All the Conservatives can do is post personal insults in the face of proof and convincing counter arguement.”(57)
“Or like the psychopaths [Conservatives] they are, they will psychologically project.” (58)
So tell me how you are better than many of the conservatives on this blog? I’m not saying you are any worse, I just don’t see raising the conversation level.
Casper,
Sadly, I must agree. Aside from the fact that it’s just ill-mannered and undignified, it doesn’t do anything but play directly into the authoritarian mindset requirement of feeling persecuted to throw insults and call names.
Kahn,
The only people who really know why Iran and Libya stopped their nuke programs are members of the governments of those two countries. You could be right or you could be wrong, but it is hardly a slam dunk.
Diana and USA – you offer no facts while saying we don’t.
I give you three. Under George Bush and after we invaded Iraq; Iran stopped developing nuclear weapons, Libya stopped developing nuclear weapons, and North Korea stopped developing nuclear weapons.
Now Casper makes a point.
I don’t know if watching the American military chew up and spit out the armed forces of Iraq had anything to do with it.
I don’t know if the Sixth Fleet (passing by Libya), or the new American divisions on Iran’s border had anything to do with it. I don’t know that the the reasoning we gave for crushing Iraq’s government (developing nukes) had anything to do with it.
Perhaps seeing Sadaam living in a hole didn’t phase them. Perhaps, they knew they would take solace in the guerrilla warfare that might destroy their people should they fall. Perhaps.
But it sure looks like maybe, just maybe Iraq might have been on their minds.
But continue YOUR insults please.
I just realized why you don’t have a counter to this argument. Ya see, i thought it up on my own. This is the only blog I post at. I don’t get my arguments and my ideas ready made from a hate site.
Go get your programming. Post my story and see how it’s attacked.
Remember, you’ll be arguing that stopping nuclear weapons is bad. Might take so elaborate logic.
The inability of liberals to argue beyond childlike ad hominems continues to amaze me. Even after all of these years. But then again, when seeking to somehow minimize the risk of the most persistenly anti-American nation on Earth does leave the advocate grasping for straws so I can’t say that I should be surprised after all.
Has the intellegence community not been leaking classified information that frustrates administration policy, and doing it for years?
As for the Iranian fans, why is Iran continuing to spin those centrifuges? So they have nuclear fuel ready to go when its safe to start building nukes.
By the way, the Iranians seem to have stopped working on nukes when we occupied their neighbor Iraq. Maybe the presence of 150,000 US combat soldiers next door, and the willingness to invade and destroy Saddam, might have just terrified the thugs in Iraq.
Kahn,
Who was arguing that stopping nuclear weapons is bad?
Not you Casper.
Oh, and liberals. Better check your dates. UN sanctions were not yet in place when Iran supposedly stopped their nuclear weapons program.
However, the Pakistani nuke secrets ring was busted (by us), We were in Iraq, and we were on the other side of Iran in Afghanistan. Note, we had access to air bases in both Iraq and Afghanistan (still do, by the way).
“I haven’t read the actual NIE,”
What a suprise.
“but it is reported that while the NIE is highly confident that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003, Iran continues to enrich a sort of uranium which is really only useful in a nuclear weapons program.”
Of course if you had actually read the report you would know that it says nothing of the sort.
Let me help you out here,
“D. We continue to assess with low confidence that Iran probably has imported at least
some weapons-usable fissile material, but still judge with moderate-to-high confidence it
has not obtained enough for a nuclear weapon. We cannot rule out that Iran has acquired
from abroad—or will acquire in the future—a nuclear weapon or enough fissile material
for a weapon. Barring such acquisitions, if Iran wants to have nuclear weapons it would
need to produce sufficient amounts of fissile material indigenously—which we judge
with high confidence it has not yet done.”
But when you live in a fact free world, Marky, this stuff doesn’t really matter does it? You want your glorious war (for others to fight that is) and you will do anything to get it.
Note to Mark and other conservatives – my arguments above are the way to go with this. This could be used in the ’08 campaign. Libya, Iran, and North Korea. Think about it. This isn’t a defeat, it’s evidence of victory.
Look how it shut up the ultra libs above. They immediately degenerated into insults and logged off. We should spread this story far and wide.