Another aspect:
Some senior Bush administration officials and top Republican lawmakers are voicing anger that American spy agencies have not issued more warnings about the threats they say Iran presents to the United States.
Chicago Tribune/New York Times News Service:
Report slams U.S. intelligence on Iran
I am sure they will make up that deficite as we get nearer election day.
I am rather certain that Mr. Walter Hinteler does not know that we wished to keep the shah in power in Iran. If the shah or more realistically his son were in power in Iran we would not be having any trouble with the maniacs who run Iran now!!
So democracy is really only a hollow word in your eyes
Birds of a feather flock together.
democracy a hollow word? Why no, Walter Hinteler. FDR did not think Democracy was a hollow word when he chose to help Stalin at Yalta. It is called Realpolitik.
Walter Hinteler wrote:Another aspect:
Some senior Bush administration officials and top Republican lawmakers are voicing anger that American spy agencies have not issued more warnings about the threats they say Iran presents to the United States.
Chicago Tribune/New York Times News Service:
Report slams U.S. intelligence on Iran
In other words they want the intelligence agencies to do to Iran what they did to Iraq; use what they know to be bad intelligence to support their preconceived ideas.
We have determined Iran is a threat. Now give us intelligence to support this. None of this crap about letting intelligence speak for itself.
Quote:Some policymakers also said they were displeased that U.S. spy agencies were playing down intelligence reports--including some from the Israeli government--of contacts between Hezbollah and members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard. "The people in the community are unwilling to make judgment calls and don't know how to link anything together," said one senior U.S. official.
Quote:"Analysts were burned pretty badly during the run-up to the war in Iraq," said Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.), who sits on the House Intelligence Committee. "I'm not surprised that some in the intelligence community are a bit gun-shy about appearing to be warmongering."
Earlier this year, the intelligence agencies put new procedures in place to help avoid faulty analyses.
No, no, no! Eliminate these new procedures. When the president and warmongers, Democrat or Republican, want a war you intelligence people support it. You will use all intelligence that support their view, no matter how unreliable it may be, and disregard all that conflicts with it; just like Iraq. And if things go bad you take the blame. Anything outside of that is unpatriotic.
Good conservative values.
They overthrew a democratically elected government to install the Shah in Iran.
Somehow, whenever that abbreviation appears below your name bill, it seems to stand for "BUM".
xingu said
Quote:In other words they want the intelligence agencies to do to Iran what they did to Iraq; use what they know to be bad intelligence to support their preconceived ideas.
That these fukheads would try this again is almost beyond belief. Working for us this time however are a Pentagon community, an intelligence community, a State Department community, a press community, and the citizens who have been burned by the previous iteration of this deceit.
Here's an interesting item from Ha'aretz...
Quote:In a similar vein, consecutive Israeli governments and their U.S. supporters have worked for decades to ensure that Americans recognize the support that Israel provides in the Middle East. Through careful coordination - from important contacts at Defense Department levels, to meticulously managed visits to Israel by members of Congress, as well as by way of grass-roots lobbying and advocacy - Israel's role as a reliable ally and strategic asset of the United States had become an almost unassailable truth.
Yet, Israeli actions over the past 12 months have actually damaged the interests of the United States. The unilateral withdrawal from Gaza was viewed as a reward for terrorism. It led to a government headed by an organization that the United States had labored, largely at Israel's urging, to isolate as a terrorist entity. And now, the striking mismanagement of this war has only further undermined the U.S.-led global war on terror.
Short of erecting a billboard on Rehov Kaplan, it would have been difficult for the Bush administration to have more strongly communicated to the Israeli government its desire for the Israel Defense Forces to crush - forcefully, vigorously and without inhibition - Hezbollah's forces. It was painful to watch the Israeli government start, hesitate, stop, falter and stop again as the American administration increasingly signaled its desire for Israel to complete the task. The administration's disappointment was palpable, even if it remained politely inaudible.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/754726.html
I and others posted re this item yesterday.
Two things of importance to note; first, the "because intel people were burned re Iraq, therefore they are suspect now because they are being over-cautious". Of course, that is a variant (necessarily modified) of the PR line used by Cheney and others around his office and in the neocon community in the runup to Iraq, and second, the author of the paper.
Quote:American fears over Iranian 'threat'
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
Published: 25 August 2006
Concern, especially among Republicans, is growing over a possible intelligence failure on Iran that could rival the one on Iraq but they fear this time Washington may be underestimating, not exaggerating, the threat.
A Republican-led House Intelligence committee report depicts the Islamic regime in Tehran as a mounting danger. It complains that US spy agencies, chastened by the debacle over Saddam Hussein's non-existent weapons of mass destruction, may by adopting an over-cautious view of Iran's presumed drive to acquire nuclear weapons, and of its backing of the Hizbollah in Lebanon.
"Intelligence community managers and analysts ... must not shy away from provocative conclusions or bury disagreements in consensus assessments," the report says, adding that the CIA and other agencies still "do not know nearly enough" about Tehran's nuclear plans, and the state of its chemical and biological weapon programmes.
The document was written by a Republican staff member of the committee who once worked for the John Bolton, the hardline US ambassador to the United Nations, who believes that Washington should address the Iranian challenge head-on.
Concern, especially among Republicans, is growing over a possible intelligence failure on Iran that could rival the one on Iraq but they fear this time Washington may be underestimating, not exaggerating, the threat.
A Republican-led House Intelligence committee report depicts the Islamic regime in Tehran as a mounting danger. It complains that US spy agencies, chastened by the debacle over Saddam Hussein's non-existent weapons of mass destruction, may by adopting an over-cautious view of Iran's presumed drive to acquire nuclear weapons, and of its backing of the Hizbollah in Lebanon.
"Intelligence community managers and analysts ... must not shy away from provocative conclusions or bury disagreements in consensus assessments," the report says, adding that the CIA and other agencies still "do not know nearly enough" about Tehran's nuclear plans, and the state of its chemical and biological weapon programmes.
The document was written by a Republican staff member of the committee who once worked for the John Bolton, the hardline US ambassador to the United Nations, who believes that Washington should address the Iranian challenge head-on.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article1221637.ece
Quote:Russia and Central Asian Allies Conduct War Games in Response to US Threats
Barely acknowledged by the Western media, military exercises organized by Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan under the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, (CSTO) were launched on the 24th of August. These war games, officially tagged as part of a counter terrorism program, are in direct response to US military threats in the region including the planned attacks against Iran.
The Rubezh-2006 exercise, is scheduled to take place from August 24-29 near the Kazak port city of Aktau.
The US government is severely mistaken if they think that Russia will just sit back and allow the US to destroy their assets in Iran.
Cooking intelligence - again
By Gordon Prather
08/26/06 "WND" -- -- Four years ago, President Bush ordered Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet to prepare a National Intelligence Estimate to be used to "justify" to Congress the pre-emptive war against Iraq we now know he had already decided to launch.
Two years later, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that:
Most of the major key judgments in the Intelligence Community's October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate - "Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction" - either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence reporting.
In particular, the assessment that Iraq "is reconstituting its nuclear program" was "not supported by the intelligence provided to the committee."
The committee noted that prior to 1999 our intelligence community had been heavily dependent upon information obtained from United Nations inspectors.
True, in December 1998, President Clinton had warned all U.N. inspectors to get out of Iraq or risk getting killed during Operation Desert Fox.
However, after Clinton quit bombing, International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors had been allowed back into Iraq (in 2000, 2001 and 2002) to inspect all the surviving nuclear-related sites in Iraq - including Kuwaitha, where our "intelligence" had suggested the Iraqis might be doing something untoward - and found nothing untoward.
But Tenet's 2002 NIE didn't even mention those IAEA inspections, much less the subsequent "null" reports made to the UN Security Council.
Why not?
Well, obviously the Cheney Cabal didn't want Congress to know - at least officially - that by 1994 all Saddam's nuclear programs had been verifiably destroyed and that he had made no attempt whatsoever to reconstitute them.
Inexplicably, the Senate Intelligence Committee did not even mention - much less decry - the failure of the intelligence community to base the 2002 NIE "assessments" of Saddam's nuclear program on those IAEA "null" reports.
There were, however, cries of anguish from those sent to Iraq on a fool's errand by Tenet. Never again produce an NIE that completely ignores the "best intelligence," that of on-the-ground inspectors!
Last year the Washington Post's Dafna Linzer reported that the intelligence community had produced an NIE - still highly classified - about Iran:
A major U.S. intelligence review has projected that Iran is about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon, roughly doubling the previous estimate of five years, according to government sources with firsthand knowledge of the new analysis.
The carefully hedged assessments, which represent consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies, contrast with forceful public statements by the White House. Administration officials have asserted, but have not offered proof, that Tehran is moving determinedly toward a nuclear arsenal.
The new estimate could provide more time for diplomacy with Iran over its nuclear ambitions. President Bush has said that he wants the crisis resolved diplomatically but that "all options are on the table."
Linzer doesn't say whether the 2005 NIE on Iran's nuclear programs took into account at all - much less was largely based upon - the quarterly reports the on-the-ground IAEA inspectors had been making to the IAEA Board and to the Security Council.
And a year later, IAEA inspectors have yet to see any "indication" - much less evidence - that Iran has engaged in any activity involving the use of any amount of proscribed nuclear materials in furtherance of a military purpose.
Furthermore, if IAEA inspectors are allowed to continue "safeguarding" Iran's nuclear facilities, the Iranians will never succeed in producing any amount of weapons-grade enriched uranium, much less enough to make a nuclear weapon.
Nevertheless, the members of the Cheney Cabal continue to forcefully assert - without offering any proof whatsoever - that Iran has a nuclear weapons program that has already "reached a point of no return."
Why?
Apparently because we have pledged not to use nuclear weapons against those signatories to the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons who don't already have nukes.
So, when Bush says "all options are on the table," he's telling the Iranians that our no-nuking pledge won't keep him from nuking them because he has it on authority - God Almighty, apparently - that the Iranians have nukes.
Now comes Linzer to tell us the House Intelligence Committee has just issued a staff report - authored principally by Frederick Fleitz - that uses information contained in the IAEA "null" reports to come to conclusions diametrically opposed to those of the IAEA.
You may recall that Undersecretary Bolton and his chief of staff, Fleitz, were point men in the largely successful attempts by the Cheney Cabal to "cook" the intelligence in the run-up to the pre-emptive attack on Iraq.
Looks like they're at it again.
Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. He also served as legislative assistant for national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico.
Why attacking Iran would be an incredibility stupid thing to do.
The scary thing is if it is incredibility stupid we may assume Bush will do it. Attacking Iraq was stupid and Bush did it with incredible incompetence resulting in thousands of dead Americans.
SOURCE
I rebutted Xingu's previous post but he did not feel he could reply to my facts which showed that his presentation was clearly in error.
The Xingu posted some NONSENSE from a source called CHATHAM HOUSE---Examination of the contributors to that source shows that at least half of the contributors are Middle Eastern.
This, of course, renders Xingu's post as one that is quite biased and, as such, ineffective in bringing real light to the argument!
Quote:The Xingu posted some NONSENSE from a source called CHATHAM HOUSE---Examination of the contributors to that source shows that at least half of the contributors are Middle Eastern.
Since this piece is about Iran and its neighbors it makes sense to get input from Middle Easterners. The only thing we have seen from Bush and the conservatives about the Middle East is ignorance and stupidity. The present situation in Iraq and Afghanistan should make that plain.
blatham wrote:oralloy wrote:
They seem to oppose the proposed arrangement to bring India's power reactors under IAEA inspections. That seems an odd position. They'd prefer India's power reactors were unsupervised?
Your use of "they seem to" is an interesting way of introducing a claim or inference which has no warrant in the text.
It looks to me like a petition against the plan to bring India's power reactors under IAEA inspections because they are under the impression that it will undermine the current international system.
I don't see how this deal undermines the current system.
However, it seems clear that the system is being undermined by the world's failure to do anything as Iran ramps up its illegal nuclear program.
blatham wrote:You took issue with my statement that Iran may well perceive little reason, either moral or legal or strategic, to comply with either their NPT agreement or with UN resolutions as their main opponents in this matter (the US and Israel) have themselves violated treaties and remained non-compliant with UN resolutions. You didn't address the latter, of course, and inquired as to US treaty violation. You acknowledge you can "see" US treaty violations as regards the Conventions on Torture....
OK, so if Iran uses our violation of the torture treaty to justify their violation of the NPT, the question remains, what is our response?
Dropping just one B61-11 on their bunker outside Isfahan will produce fallout on a scale reminiscent of Chernobyl.
A slightly less damaging option will be to use high-yield airbursts over all their cities, reducing their population by 20 million and making it difficult to sustain a nuclear program. However, this will probably cause at least a regional nuclear winter, and will do
severe damage to the ozone layer.
Or we can invade them on the ground and destroy all their facilities, then pack up and go home.
Ramping up Israel's nuclear arsenal so that they have an effective deterrent against Iran seems the best way to go, so far as I can see.
blatham wrote:But, as you and Randy Newman remind us, we can always just drop the big one and all that fancy democracy stuff becomes moot.
Nuking Iran would cause an environmental catastrophe.
freedom4free wrote:Quote:Russia and Central Asian Allies Conduct War Games in Response to US Threats
Barely acknowledged by the Western media, military exercises organized by Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan under the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, (CSTO) were launched on the 24th of August. These war games, officially tagged as part of a counter terrorism program, are in direct response to US military threats in the region including the planned attacks against Iran.
The Rubezh-2006 exercise, is scheduled to take place from August 24-29 near the Kazak port city of Aktau.
The US government is severely mistaken if they think that Russia will just sit back and allow the US to destroy their assets in Iran.
I don't think any planned bombing campaign will be aimed at Russian assets.
However, there isn't much they could do about it, other than whine feebly at us.
