ISRAEL - IRAN - SYRIA - HAMAS - HEZBOLLAH - WWWIII?

COMPLETELY UNKNOWN?????

The consensus of the intelligence agencies is that Iran is still years away from building a nuclear weapon. Such an assessment angers some in Washington, who say that it ignores the prospect that Iran could be aided by current nuclear powers like North Korea. "When the intelligence community says Iran is 5 to 10 years away from a nuclear weapon, I ask: ?'If North Korea were to ship them a nuke tomorrow, how close would they be then?" said Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives.

"The intelligence community is dedicated to predicting the least dangerous world possible," he said.

"It reflects a certain way of looking at the world ?- that all evil is traceable to the capitals of certain states," said Paul R. Pillar, who until last October oversaw American intelligence assessments about the Middle East. "And that, in my view, is a very incorrect way of interpreting the security challenges we face."

Thomas Fingar, the deputy director of national intelligence for analysis, said analysts now had much more information about the sources of raw intelligence coming from the field.

"Analysts have to know more about the sources than was generally the case before the Iraq estimate," Mr. Fingar said.

Analysts also are required to include in their reports more information about the chain of logic that led them to their conclusions about sensitive topics like Iran, North Korea and global terrorism ?- "showing your work," as Mr. Fingar put it.

At the same time, Mr. Fingar dismissed the notion that intelligence analysts should try merely to connect random intelligence findings. "As a 40-year analyst, I'm offended by the notion of ?'connecting dots,' ''he said. "If you had enough monkeys you could do that."

I think that the intelligence community is being appropriately cautious," said John E. McLaughlin, a former director of central intelligence.

"I think that what is going on is that people are holding themselves to a higher standard of evidence because of Iraq."

"There are no provable signs of Iranian direction on the ground," said one intelligence official in Washington. "Nobody should think that Hezbollah is a remote-controlled entity." American military assessments have broadly echoed this view, say people who maintain close ties to military intelligence officers.

"Does Iran profit from all of this? Yes," said Gen. Wayne A. Downing Jr., the retired former commander of the Special Operations Command and a White House counterterrorism adviser during President Bush's first term. "But is Iran pulling the strings? The guys I'm talking to say, ?'no.' "

The new report, from the House Intelligence Committee, led by Representative Peter Hoekstra, Republican of Michigan, portrayed Iran as a growing threat and criticized American spy agencies for cautious assessments about Iran's weapons programs. "Intelligence community managers and analysts must provide their best analytical judgments about Iranian W.M.D. programs and not shy away from provocative conclusions or bury disagreements in consensus assessments,"

It least officvially, according to the latest news from the office of the German Federal Procecutor .... updated 69 minutes ago.

I will be happy to read it--ALL OF IT!!!

Jamal Ware, spokesman for the House intelligence committee, said three staff members wrote the report, but he did not dispute that the principal author was Frederick Fleitz, a former CIA officer who had been a special assistant to John R. Bolton, the administration's former point man on Iran at the State Department. Bolton had been highly influential in the crafting of a tough policy that rejected talks with Tehran.

Bolton was appointed ambassador to the United Nations last year, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice changed course when she came to the State Department, choosing instead to support direct European negotiations with Iran. She said the United States would join those talks if Iran agreed to suspend its nuclear work.

Taking what might be considered the moderate neocon position on the Israel/Hezbollah war, the editors of The New Republic demand that the Bush Administration "move ruthlessly to prevent Iran from acquiring the deadliest arsenal of all," while their contributor Michael Oren calls only for an Israeli, rather than an American, attack on Syria. Next door at The Weekly Standard, William Kristol sees no point in playing coy. Having already called for an American attack on Syria twenty months ago, he is now beating his bongo for an immediate "military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities." Concerned about retaliation against American citizens in the form of terrorist attacks around the world? Don't worry. Any and all "repercussions," he promises, "would be healthy ones." Kristol even imagines that such an attack could cause the Iranian people "to reconsider whether they really want to have this regime in power," as if the natural reaction of people who see their country attacked, their families killed and their property destroyed is to side with the people who are bombing them (just like in, um... Iraq).

"Hey, I TOLD you I could do it but you heebie jews didn't believe me, betcha you're all skeered now, nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah, nyah....."

'This is an act of war'

But Olmert insisted there would be no negotiations.

"This was an act of war without any provocation on the sovereign territory... of the state of Israel," said Olmert, facing the most serious test of his leadership since his government took office in May.

On Wednesday, Israeli fighter jets, gunboats and artillery pounded Lebanon, hitting Hezbollah targets and about 10 bridges, cutting off the highway linking Beirut to the south.

After an emergency meeting, the Israeli cabinet gave the green light to unspecified retaliatory action against Lebanon, which has been mired in its own political crisis since the murder of ex-premier Rafiq Hariri in 2005 and is still rebuilding after the devastating 1975-1990 civil war.

"Israel must respond with the necessary severity to this act of aggression... Israel will respond aggressively and harshly to those who carried out, and are responsible for, today's action," a cabinet statement said.

More Hezbollah propaganda

Do people still think the pictures from Qana were all fakes?

You can't have it both ways, either the pictures were fakes and therefore there was no reason for human sheilds since it was made up or the pictures were not fakes.