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 
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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…
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wait – so now your argument is that the reasons we didn’t find WMDs in Iraq is that somehow he got rid of all of them out of Iraq? Just so that I understand you – this is seriously your argument? Rather than accept that you are just wrong you are willing to believe with something which is highly difficult to do, which we would have seen them doing with all of the satellites and other spying we were doing . Something which we have no evidence for? While on the other hand all of the evidence for WMDs have been debunked completely or are highly suspect…
Bizarre world you live in Mark…
Mark – you just pick and chose what you want to listen to. What you call “thinking” is just selective bias towards your ideological belief. I mean seriously – all though there is now good evidence that Iraq had WMDs you would rather believe that there was (even though we have no actual evidence that there was) and that they somehow got magically removed (again no evidence for) rather than the simplest explanation that they were just never there…
Iran doesn’t need a nuclear program? But we do? I am all for Iran giving up its nuclear weapons program – but the US has no right to demand this until we get rid of every single nuclear weapon that we have.
libby,
Do you realize the Bushs “sabre rattling” has resulted in Libya and NK abandoning their WMD programs, which may now include Iran?
So using the carrot and stick approach, Bush has defeated the Democrats at every turn by deposing Saddam, and forcing Iran, Libya and NK to rethink, or abandon their WMD programs.
Not bad for someone who isn’t as smart as you, right?
>>>>>Mark – you just pick and chose what you want to listen to. – libT<<<<<<<
Pot, meet kettle.
LiberalTwit, the UN still has documention stating that 1000s of Iraqi WMDs are UNACCOUNTED…..you know MISSING. Up until 2001 libs publicly stated that Saddam and his WMDs were a threat.
Funny what political expediency does…….
You are still a USEFUL IDIOT.
Male Zampolit–Dittohead4Life!!!,
Thank you for kind words! You are correct. I’m not interested in gotcha’s or gloating by anyone, but rather to try to bring multiple points of view to the forum that Matt and Mark have created and I appreciate their allowing me to be part of the discussion.
Now, as to no longer being a member of the Axis of Cows, would it make any difference if I admitted that I was operating a clandestine heavy cream program with a goal of creating a Baked Alaska? I mean there’s pretty good security around the hacienda here and so I’m thinking that the HUMINT is probably not that good.
So neocon, you agree with liberalT that Mark does just pick and chose what he wants to listen to. Interesting.
Tired of lib shit,
Makes an excellent point it took 9 months and 17 UN resolutions to move forward in Iraq. What would it take to throw some shit on a few trucks and get it out of there. A few days. if that.
Sam make a good point about Iran not being Iraq.
I’ll add on to what he said.
China and Russia are Iran’s Allies. What Bush said about WW3 is right on the money. Global large scale war
It is plausible that one of two things could have happened to the missing weapons. First, they could have been moved to a bordering country. Second, they could have been buried in the vast Iraq desert, which is the size of California. Both of these scenarios are very plausible and highly likely to have occurred. The weapons went somewhere.
Duncan Hunter’s stance on trade and economic warfare. Is far superior to anything I have heard from the democrats. But on this topic of Iran. I think the country has to be united and work together and not play games with funding for political reasons.
I see a NAFTA Hillary or NAFTA Rudy selling out all of our countries prime assets to impress foreign banks, corporations, and investors. And leaving the country defenseless against some very powerful forces.
Fool,
I was pointing out libs hypocrisy. She projects onto others what she is most guilty of.
Mark, although biased, usually has reasoned, fact based arguments. libT’s posts are usually emotional, baseless talking points.
There is a difference, not that you would know.
It took 4 years for intelligence “experts” to incorrectly “conclude” that Iran stopped it’s nuclear weapons program in 2003.
How long will it take for intelligence “experts” to conclude they restarted it in 2004?!!!
AAR
Looks like Iran even “fooled” the French!
Anyone who believes that Iran has ended it’s nuclear weapon’s program is a fool!
In reality, the only ones Iran has fooled are Democrats!!!
AAR
Neocon, I understood what you were TRYING to do. But the saying “Pot meet Kettle” means that both parties being discussed are guilty of the same thing. In this case, only listening to what they want and ignoring all other evidence that contradicts their beliefs.
As for Mark’s fact based arguments, have you read his latest global warming post?
navydad,
I never claimed the mantle of expert unless you define it as did the character of Dr. Heywood Floyd in the novel, 2001: A Space Odyssey. He describes himself as an expert meaning someone who “knew nothing about absolutely everything.” Of course, this is an interesting discussion in and of itself since there is a great deal of high-handed scoffing and dismissal of the public portion of the latest NIE by the various intelligence experts (or at least those who can repeat from memory what they heard on a call-in radio show) here in the comments section of Blogs For Victo(r)y. As Deputy Secretary of State (and first Director of National Intelligence) Negroponte said in an interview with Jim Lehrer last night, an NIE is a tool which is a part of making policy “not the policy itself”. It’s fascinating to see the highly emotionally-charged reactions to this document as typified by that of self-appointed expert (and senior policy advisor to the Giuliani campaign) Norman Podhoretz who is on record as saying this:
(my emphasis)
Of course, Podhoretz’s anguish is easily understandable in this context as he wants the bombs to fall. He is always Johnny-on-the-spot with “brutal truth” exhortations that we use the American military to tell the world what they should do so that we don’t feel threatened here Stateside. Sort of like Michael Ledeen (as described by Jonah Goldberg) here:
Source: http://tinyurl.com/35nlhg
Anyway, to come back to your question, my rationale for writing that there are “only a few…” (sorry, I know that phrase distresses you greatly) “people in the world [who] have the mathematics down to design reliable nuclear warheads…” (emphasis original) it is what I think are reasonable inferences from, among other things:
– The history, size and scope of the original Manhattan Project.
– The size and scope of the current National Nuclear Security Administration ($6.4 billion 2007 budget request for “weapons activitites”). (http://www.nnsa.doe.gov/index.htm)
– The requirement of testing weapon designs so thoroughly.
– The relative paucity of nuclear-armed states relative to the number of states who might wish to be so armed.
– The distinct possibility that the recent North Korean nuclear weapons test may have been a “fizzle” despite the fact that Kim Jong-il is not hampered by any political constraints in the number of personnel and materials he can divert to that country’s nuclear weapons program.
As I said, the larger point is that the Iranians engaging in unmonitored uranium enrichment, while a significant problem, does not mean that they automatically have the intellectual and industrial capacity to manufacture a nuclear weapon that not only exists in a bunker but may be relied upon to detonate as hoped should it be employed. If anyone follows the link I provided to the splash page of the NNSA, they may note that the word reliable appears three times just on the splash page.
As a hypothetical, let us assume that on the 20th anniversary of the end of the Iran-Iraq war next year, that the Iranian Supreme Leader Âyatollâh Ali Hoseini-Khamenei has a secret meeting with the Council for the Discernment of Expediency and informs them that in Khamenei’s capacity as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces he is pleased to inform them, despite his own fatwa of August 9, 2005 ruling that such an act is forbidden under Islam, that Iran has assembled a nuclear warhead. For Khamenei and the Expediency Council, the next questions are many, among others:
– Who has the authority, either singly or jointly held, to authorize even the movement of the weapon from its assembly point in an underground facility?
– Should the weapon be moved at all?
– Who is responsible for the security of the weapon from unauthorized access now that it is assembled? Should it be the Air Force of the Military of the Islamic Republic of Iran or the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps?
– Is the weapon to be carried by an aircraft such as the MiG-29 or Tu-22 or is it of a size that it can be fitted in the nose of a Ghadr-110 IRBM?
– Who has the authority, either singly or jointly held, to authorize the use of the weapon? Does the Council of Guardians of the Constitution have a voice in that decision and how does that square with the fatwa prohibiting such an act?
– Given the fatwa, will Iran be jeopardizing its hoped-for leadership in the Middle East among Shi’a Muslims, if the existence of the weapon becomes public? Can the fatwa be changed without jeopardizing Iranian religious credibility?
– If the existence of the weapon is kept secret, then how can its existence be used as a threat of force, for example: (from Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb):
– If the weapon is not to be used as a threat, but as a weapon, what is the target?
– What if the weapon is delivered to the target and doesn’t work? Will it be traced back to Iran and doesn’t that automatically invite immediate massive retaliation against which Iran has little moral or physical defense?
These are just some of the questions that the Iranian leadership would have to deal with. In the end, any complete discussion of attacking the sovereign nation of Iran without provocation must also consider the legitimate reasons that Iran might be telling the truth when they say they don’t want a nuclear weapon, because it’s not even clear that having one would be any kind of advantage to them.
Do you not realize that Mark is pulling the liberals legs on the GW thread?
You’re not that gullible are you?
Diana – you’ve got me convinced. So Bush’s policy is already successful and it worked way back in 2003. Write him a letter thanking him.
Kahn,
That’s fine. However, every factor that might cause the mullahs to not want to build a nuclear warhead has existed since April 1, 1979 when the Iranian Revolution was fulfilled by 98.2% of the Iranian people voting to establish the country as an Islamic republic. None of the technical hurdles or the overall geopolitical considerations of being a nuclear-armed state have changed significantly since then. I suppose I could write a letter to President Carter, President Reagan’s estate, President George H. W. Bush, President Clinton and the current President Bush if that would make you feel better about things.
Of course, that prompts another question. According to what we’re now being told we know by the White House, in the spring of 2003 Iraq did not have a nuclear arms program, but Iran did. So, did we invade the wrong sovereign nation?
Diane
What all made Korea give up its nuclear program.
Is there something that worked there that can be applied to Iran
Eric T,
It’s certainly a good question, if they have in fact given up their nuclear arms program. The opaqueness of North Korea makes Iran look like a glass house by comparison. Part of it must surely be the sheer weirdness of Kim Jong-il who, though he is treated as such, is technically not even the country’s head of state.
Part of it may be the outcome of their nuclear weapons test. Whether they got a “fizzle” or not, perhaps they learned what they needed to know for assembling other weapon(s). Perhaps they decided, after confirmation that reliable nuclear weapon design is more difficult than they thought, that having nuclear weapons isn’t worth the hassle. Everyone would love to know the real answer, that’s the only certainty, I’d say.
Eric T,
What made North Korea give up its nuclear program was diplomacy and sanctions.
Did you hear anything about preemptively attacking them like you do about attacking Iran? Nope.
Joe,
Point well taken. The absolutely stark contrast in approaches to the two countries by the Administration is quite interesting.
That energy bill they are talking about the in the Senate in everybody needs to pass and make it so good and include alot of offshore drilling so it makes a statement to the world that we have the technology, electric cars, and alternatives to Opec ripping us off. We are in the region protecting allies, like Kuwait, Israel, Lebanon. The UAE, Abu Dhabi. And nobody ever wants to step up and help out the U.S unless they are getting rich doing it.
George Bush is out on his Crawford Ranch clearing brush when he notices a metalic gleam. On closer inspection, he sees an ancient lamp. While brushing off the dirt, a genie appears.
“I am the genie of the lamp”, he roared. “For releasing me, I will give you one wish. Now what will it be, President Bush? I can either deliver Osama Bin Ladin to you, or I can fix the economy, or I can stop global warming”.
Bush responded, “I can’t ask to to bring me Osama Bin Ladin. We always release one of his videotapes whenever we need more military spending. He scares the money out of Congress.”
“And if you fix the economy right now, I won’t have any excuse to ask for more tax cuts”.
“And as for global warming, I don’t want to waste a wish on something that doesn’t exist.”
The genie was discouraged that Bush wouldn’t accept such a generous offer. “Well is there ANYTHING that you want?”
Bush looked up hopefully. “Can you give Iran a nucular weapon?”
Agentfear,
If that wasn’t so sad… it would be funny as hell!