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 
Well, I certainly maintain diversity in the responses I provoke. “navydad” maintains the shining, golden tradition of always-disagree-with-someone-by-calling- them-a-name-because-otherwise-you-don’t-look-tuff-enuff by writing, “Nice cut-n-paste libtard!” However, if I may, I’d like to pose him two questions (which, amazingly enough, I can do without calling “navydad” names). One, what is it that I cut-and-pasted since…uh…I didn’t. Two, will you please give me the number that was in my head when I wrote “[o]nly a few people in the world…”? You could write it out in the form of a mathematical relationship if you’d like using the “>=” or “<=” operators. Then, once you’ve done that, you can arrange that in a formal logical statement using the exact number which apparently you possess. Seems straightforward enough to me. Oh, and no need to show your work.
navydad,
I didn’t say I agreed with her. I just wanted to see if you could come up with the 20 names. Nothing like being held accountable.
That said (and this is were you think I’ve really gone nuts), you give me my top 20 students over the last 17 years, 20 million dollars, and a year, and I will give you a nuclear bomb. Like I said, I have worked with some scary smart kids.
Diana Powe,
You always make them show their work.
Of course, as “navydad” growls menacingly at the straw man he’s got cornered in his back yard, he fails to even address the overall point of my post which is that making a nuclear warhead that can be counted on to work is considerably more difficult an undertaking than the average person has ever thought about. So, any hyperventilation about Iran’s efforts in enriching uranium should properly be considered in that context.
P.S. Uh oh, I may have left myself wide open from “navydad” and his mastery of the Iron Claw with that “considerably more difficult” phrase.
Casper,
Thank you very much for the compliment. So long as Matt and Mark are kind enough to have me around, I’ll try to contribute something interesting.
All these people here post stuff and NOT one person mentions the fact that Iran has a right to ANY new technologies it can obtain.
Who cares what the NIE says, or who cares what the US says, Iran has the right to obtain anything it wants.
Kirk, you can go ahead and attack Iran, it won’t make a difference. If you attack, you have to be willing to suffer huge amounts of casualties on the ground. believe me, Iran will not start the war, but they will finish it…any airstrikes will be met with retaliation……let me count the ways…
1. terrorist attacks in dubai, kuwait and other arab nations filled with international business.
2. kuwait will be destroyed by iranian missiles and suicide bombers.
3. israel will be attacked with missiles and through hezbollah, they will force Israel into a ground war just like last summer, and Israel will lose like it did last summer.
4. start hitting Saudi Oil tankers and destroy any ship trying to pass the Hormutz Strait.
5. It won’t matter if you attack Iranian cities, destroy Iranian economic capability, Iranians won’t stop until the US gives up, or until it has the balls to land 2 million men and fight on the ground. Even then, 2 million men need a place to land, a place to stay while being assembled….
6. Iraq will turn into a hellhole for americans. Expect 300-400 dead soldiers a month….better get ready for a draft, cause it will be necessary….
What conservatives don’t get is that Iran is NOT iraq, who had a dictator with no popular support and no military power. furthermore, you cannot use nuclear weapons against Iran for a number of reasons….world opinion will be so much against the US that i would not be surprised if countries like Russia and China started openly helping Iran. Those countries could also nuke their own problems away…afterall, why not them right….
The world is a dangerous place, i hope for the american people’s sake, that conservatives don’t win the next election, because they will lead the US to lose its international influence and dominance in the middle east.
So DP, in response to your “overall point.” What makes you believe there are only a few that can engineer a nuke war head? Do you have any idea how dynamic testing is performed for these war heads? Or are you simply pulling this out of your ass too?
Since you seem to be the expert here, let’s hear your reasoning.
LiberalT,
Link?
Sam,
Your statements end up being arguments in favor of a strike – any nation which would attack innocent bystanders because of an armed conflict with another nation is insane, and needs to be destroyed.
Mark,
ok, with that logic the US needs to be destroyed for killing innocent bystanders in Vietnam, for systematically killing the native americans. Genocide is what we call it. For attacking Iraq with no credible proof for a war. Killing innocent civilians in the attack, during the occupation and now.
I wonder, how do u plan on destroying Iran mr. mark.
http://www.dni.gov/
its on the front page of the department of national intelligence!
Sambo’s even more delusional than he was last year!
Ever get that degree from Georgia Tech Sambo? Or was your visa revoked when they found you were a pedophile.
LiberalT,
Thanks – dimwitted me didn’t even think to look there…anyways…its worse than I thought:
In other words, we’re confident that it stopped, but we don’t know how long it was stopped and there are gaps in the intel which lead part of our group to be less confident that the entire nuke program was halted…and this means we don’t know diddly about what is going on, so our “high confidence” simply must be some bereaucratic BS.
So, as of June or so we’re pretty confident that Iran hadn’t restarted its nuke program…but as we don’t know whether Iran even wants a nuke, we’re really just guessing.
Except for the fact that Iran’s entire nuke program is a cost without any benefit given that Iran’s economy is in the dumpster and the money being spent on a spurious nuke program could be better spent improving Iran’s antique oil industry in order to allow Iran to better take advantage of the current high oil prices…
Its a worthless report – though I can see why GW released it: he couldn’t do otherwise, as it would have made it into the public square and any attempt to keep it from the public would be interpreted (falsely) as an attempt to suppress contrarian intel…the people who wrote it are fools of a high order.
so how do you compare the quality of the report with the ones that Bush used as evidence of WMDs. After all they must have been very high quality since “everybody ” thought that they had them…
LiberalT,
Only in the mind of the left did Saddam not have WMDs – he had them and thanks to GW going through the UN song and dance, the French, Russians and Germans had 9 months to get them out of Iraq before we attacked…
At any rate, Iran has a nuke program – that is not in dispute. Iran doesn’t need nuclear power – that is also not in dispute. Iran has threatened to destroy Israel – that is not in dispute. Israel has nuclear weapons – that is not in dispute.
How can Iran even threaten to destroy Israel?
Only with nukes.
Iran has a nuke program is doesn’t need.
The NIE says they halted the program due to international pressure.
The same international pressure which has been applied to force Iran to ease up on the oppression of their own people.
The oppression of the Iranian people has increased.
Do the math, liberal – think about things.
New York Times, December 6, 2007…
AAR
John Gibson, Fox News, December 05, 2007…
AAR
Casper and Navydad, well I know someone – personally. He works for SAIC now. After he got his PhD. in nuclear physics from MIT he designed H-bomb (those are the real scarry ones. Much bigger than mere A-bombs) triggers. He hasn’t been doing that for awhile now, we stopped building new bombs some time ago.
He’s my neighbor and our kids are in Scouts together.
Funny, how when liberals make statements here (not necessarily you Casper) it’s so often from ignorance. Whereas I’ve actually flown missions over Iran. OK, it was almost 30 years ago – but still I have been there. It’s like that allot here. Veteran and experienced conservatives trying to teach non-veteran, poorly traveled, and ignorant liberals.
Liberals – AGAIN – if you argue the report is false then you justify action. If you argue that it’s true then you validate GWB’s brilliant strategy. Imagine, with no sanctions in place but completely surrounded by nations with American forces they stopped working on the nukes for no apparent reason?
Navydad,
“Ummm, I personally can name at least twenty?how about you libtard?”
Then, what makes Iran the biggest threat out of all 20? Because they are muslim?
Nothing like being held accountable.
Which is exactly what the ex-State Dept writers of this NIG avoided. There were a few callers to a certain talk radio show yesterday, one who used to be involved in preparation of NIGs, and one lady who obviously was experienced in the intel field. The ex-CIA guy made an excellent point, and that is that the NIG was based on information that was of a much lower classification than that which the President, his cabinet, and Congressional intel committees had access to. The lady noted that the report was poorly written, a CYA for those who wrote it.
Mark, you pointed out the CYA in your post, #181.
Two questions come to mind: 1) If the Iranians stopped their weapons program in 2003, then why did we just find out, four years later, and why did a 2005 NIG report contradict the most recent NIG report?
2) Iran has always insisted that they had no nuclear weapons program. So why, in 2003, did they “covertly” suspend a covert program, a program that they were not supposed to be doing?
Diana, allow me to eat a little crow, and to assure you that you have nothing to worry about here. While I may disagree with most of your posts, at least you appear not to be out for “gotcha’s” and gloating, as are most of the other trolls here.
Oh, btw, Diana, you probably couldn’t care less at this point, but you’re no longer on my “axis of cows” list. As of now, and possibly forever, Plainjane, Sunny, and Linda are B4V’s “Three Mooges…”
Every time I hear the Bush/Cheney saber rattling anymore, I just ignore it. They have zero credibility here and in Europe. France’s new President just said nice things about us, we were getting back to enjoying French fries and what does this administration do, hang him and other European allies out to dry. Sarkozy welcome to the world of the neocons.
If you as a Republican are so afraid in this world it is high time for you get a dog. There are plenty waiting for adoption after Katrina.
plainjane,
If you just ignore the saber rattling, why are you here. Your claim that our President and Vice President have zero credibility is completely baseless.
Your above statement, once again, is full of non-sensical babble. How in the hell do you go from a debate about Iran to pushing for the adoption of Katrina dogs? Also, what does being a Republican have to do with adopting dogs. I am a Republican and I have three dogs (all rescued).
Sorry for the typos. I just cannot believe plainjane’s post.