After all of the hysteria the right has been generating, they publicly admit that they have been lying about the threats coming from Iran, something free thinkers and true independents have known for sometime. Fool me once same on you, fool me twice shame on me, fool me three times, you’re a Republican that loves the Kool Aid!
Who are conspiracy theorist now!
source: Think Progress.org
Despite Knowledge That Iran Halted Nuke Program, White House Continued To Warn Of False Threat
The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) released today concludes that “in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.” It adds that “Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007,” and the country is “less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005.”
The assessment, which relies on data collected through Oct. 31, was reportedly completed in 2006, but was blocked by administration officials who wanted it to be more in line with Vice President Cheney’s hardline views.
As The Washington Monthly’s Kevin Drum notes, the NIE’s “basic parameters were almost certainly common knowledge in the White House” at least by last year, when the document was finished. Yet even in the past two months, the administration has continued to push its faulty, inflammatory rhetoric and claim that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons. Some examples:
“So I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. I take the threat of Iran with a nuclear weapon very seriously.” [Bush, 10/17/07]
“Our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions. … The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course the international community is prepared to impose serious consequences.” [Cheney, 10/21/07]
“The problem is Iran, and Iran has not stepped back from trying to pursue a nuclear weapon, and — or reprocessing and enriching uranium, which would lead to a nuclear weapon.” [White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, 10/26/07]
“We talked about Iran and the desire to work jointly to convince the Iranian regime to give up their nuclear weapons ambitions, for the sake of peace.” [Bush, 11/7/07]
“We’re in a position now, clearly, especially when we look at Iran, where it’s very, very important we succeed in our efforts, our national security efforts, to discourage the Iranians from enriching uranium and producing nuclear weapons.” [Cheney, 11/9/07]
“We are convinced that they are developing nuclear weapons.” [Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, 11/13/07]
The White House isn’t yet ready to give up its spin. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley will be speaking to the press at 3:15 PM EST today, and has already claimed that the NIE “confirms that we were right to be worried about Iran seeking to develop nuclear weapons.”
UPDATE: Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently said, “It would be a strategic calamity to attack Iran at this time.”
They Just Don't Give Up
Bush Keeps Up Pressure on Tehran
source: The Huffington Post
WASHINGTON — President Bush said Tuesday that the international community should continue to pressure Iran on its nuclear programs, asserting Tehran remains dangerous despite a new intelligence conclusion that it halted its development of a nuclear bomb four years ago.
"I view this report as a warning signal that they had the program, they halted the program," Bush said. "The reason why it's a warning signal is they could restart it."
Bush spoke one day after a new national intelligence estimate found that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003, largely because of international scrutiny and pressure. That finding is in stark contrast to the comparable intelligence estimate of just two years ago, when U.S. intelligence agencies believed Tehran was determined to develop a nuclear weapons capability and was continuing its weapons development program.
It is also stood in marked contrast to Bush's rhetoric on Iran. At his last news conference on Oct. 17, for instance, he said that people "interested in avoiding World War III" should be working to prevent Iran from having the knowledge needed to make a nuclear weapon.
Bush said Tuesday that he only learned of the new intelligence assessment last week. But he portrayed it as valuable ammunition against Tehran, not as a reason to lessen diplomatic pressure.
"To me, the NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) provides an opportunity for us to rally the international community _ to continue to rally the community _ to pressure the Iranian regime to suspend its program," the president said. "What's to say they couldn't start another covert nuclear weapons program."
He also asserted that the report means "nothing's changed," focusing on the previous existence of a weapons program and not addressing the discrepancy between his rhetoric and the disclosure that weapons program has been frozen for four years.
Bush said he is not troubled about his standing, about perhaps facing a credibility gap with the American people. "No, I'm feeling pretty spirited _ pretty good about life," Bush said.
"I have said Iran is dangerous, and the NIE doesn't do anything to change my opinion about the danger Iran poses to the world."
Bush said the report's finding would not prompt him to take a U.S. military option against Tehran off the table.
"The best diplomacy _ effective diplomacy _ is one in which all options are on the table," he said
The president also said that the world would agree with his message that Iran shouldn't be let off the hook yet.
In fact, Europeans said the new information strengthens their argument for negotiations with Tehran, but they also said that sanctions are still an option to compel Iran to be fully transparent about its nuclear program. European officials insisted that the international community should not walk away from years of talks with an often defiant Tehran that is openly enriching uranium for uncertain ends. The report said Iran could still build a nuclear bomb by 2010-2015.
In Kabul, Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates reinforced the U.S. position that the new U.S. intelligence assessment shows that Tehran remains a possible threat. He said it shows that Iran has had a nuclear weapons program and that as long as the country continues with its uranium enrichment activities, Iran could always renew its weapons program.
The U.S. intelligence assessment "validated the administration's strategy of bringing diplomatic and economic efforts to bear on Iran," Gates said Tuesday, speaking at a news conference with Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai.
Bush called the news conference, his first in nearly seven weeks, to intensify pressure on lawmakers amid disputes over spending and the Iraq war. Taking advantage of his veto power and the largest bully pulpit in town, Bush regularly scolds Congress as a way to stay relevant and frame the debate as his presidency winds down.
Democrats counter that Bush is more interested in making statements than genuinely trying to negotiate some common ground with them.
Specifically, Bush again on Tuesday challenged Congress to send him overdue spending bills; to approve his latest war funding bill without conditions; to pass a temporary to fix to the alternative minimum tax so millions of taxpayers don't get hit with tax increases; and to extend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
"Congress still has a lot to do," Bush said. "It doesn't have very much time to do it."
On another matter, Bush was asked about a rape victim in Saudi Arabia who was sentenced to prison and 200 lashes for being alone with a man not related to her _ a violation of the kingdom's strict segregation of the sexes. Saudi Arabia has faced enormous international criticism about the sentencing.
"My first thoughts were these," Bush said. "What happens if this happens to my daughter? How would I react? And I would have been _ I'd of been very emotional, of course. I'd have been angry at those who committed the crime. And I'd be angry at a state that didn't support the victim."
Bush, however, said he has not made his views known directly to Saudi King Abdullah, an ally. But he added: "He knows our position loud and clear."
The president said the U.S. economy is strong, though he acknowledged that the housing crisis has become a "headwind." He said administration officials are working on the issue, but he is wary of bailing out lenders. "We shouldn't say, 'OK, you made a lousy loan so we're going to go ahead and subsidize you.' "
Asked about the 2008 election, Bush steered himself back out of commenting on politics. "I practiced some punditry in the past _ I'm not going to any further."
On other issues, Bush said:
_"The Venezuelan people rejected one-man rule" when they rejected a constitutional provision that would have enabled Hugo Chavez to remain in power for life and drive changes throughout Venezuelan society. "They voted for democracy."
_He talked by telephone Tuesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin and briefed him on the new Iran intelligence estimate. Bush also said he told Putin that "we were sincere in our expressions of concern" about irregularities in the voting that produced a sweeping parliamentary victory for Putin's party.
He has "cordial relations" with Democratic leaders of Congress despite the sharp words between the White House and Capitol Hill. He blamed Democrats for the lack of compromises, saying, "In order for us to be able to reach accord, they got to come with one voice, one position."
source: The New York Times.com
December 4, 2007, 9:46 am
The Skeptical Camp Emerges on Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions
By Mike Nizza
Tags: intelligence, iran. nuclear proliferation, washington
The National Intelligence Estimate released on Monday resounded with the authority of 16 American spy agencies in agreement that Iran halted its nuclear arms effort in 2003, a conclusion meant to “ensure that an accurate presentation is available.”
But strong contrary opinions on the accuracy of the assessment are emerging from two intertwined camps that have always viewed Iran’s nuclear claims with suspicion: American neoconservatives and the Israeli government.
Leading the way is Michael Ledeen, a conservative scholar at the American Enterprise Institute with a long track record in the Iran policy area, from the Iran-contra affair in the Reagan administration to meetings with Iranian dissidents living abroad that surprised George Tenet, who was then the director of central intelligence, in 2002.
Mr. Ledeen’s first critique — published on his blog under the title “The Great Intelligence Scam” — dismissed the new intelligence estimate as “policy advocacy masquerading as serious intelligence.” The document is riddled with “blatant unprofessionalism,” he says, citing the intelligence community’s consensus answer to a very good question:
Why would the Iranians abandon a program that had been in the works ever since the late 1980s? The IC replies: Because the Iranians are rational, and they respond to international pressure. They shut down the program because the pressure was too great. They couldn’t take the risk of even more pain from the international community.
That was his deadpan way of saying, “yeah, right.”
“If this N.I.E. is true, the evidence would have to be awfully good,” he continued in another version of the argument, posted to the right-leaning National Review’s website. “And evidence of that quality has been in famously short supply.”
Similar doubts are voiced in the Weekly Standard, the conservative weekly, which is asking, “What has changed since 2005,” when the last assessment was published?
The answer comes in two parts from the McClatchy newspaper chain’s Washington bureau, which painted the broad picture:
Senior U.S. intelligence officials said the judgment that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in mid-2003 emerged four to six months ago as a result of fresh intelligence, some of it from open sources and some from a “very rigorous scrub” of 20 years of information, some of which informed the 2005 N.I.E.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the analysts who drafted the report also had applied lessons learned from an erroneous 2002 N.I.E. on Iraq.
The Washington Post mentions an interesting glimpse of what that “fresh intelligence” may have been:
Senior officials said the latest conclusions grew out of a stream of information, beginning with a set of Iranian drawings obtained in 2004 and ending with the intercepted calls between Iranian military commanders, that steadily chipped away at the earlier assessment.
In one intercept, a senior Iranian military official was specifically overheard complaining that the nuclear program had been shuttered years earlier, according to a source familiar with the intelligence. The intercept was one of more than 1,000 pieces of information cited in footnotes to the 150-page classified version of the document, an official said.
After top administration officials expressed doubts about the revised view of Iran’s nuclear weapons effort, the intelligence community “spent months examining whether the new information was part of a well-orchestrated ruse,” the Post article continued.
Whether doubts from the right are shared by Vice President Cheney and other like-minded senior administration officials remains to be seen.
But Israel’s prime minister and defense minister are openly questioning the assessment’s conclusions, according to a former Israeli intelligence officer interviewed by USA Today:
“This is a matter of interpretation of data. I do believe that the U.S. and Israel share the same data, but the dispute is about interpreting the data. … Only a blind man cannot see their efforts to put a hand on a nuclear weapon. They are threatening the world.”
The defense minister, Ehud Barak, offered his own take on Israeli Army Radio: he agreed with the banner-headline conclusion that Iran had stopped its nuclear program in 2003, but asserted that it had since been restarted. Mr. Barak, though, unlike Mr. Ledeen, was content with agreeing to disagree with the intelligence assessment. “Only time will tell who is right
Who are conspiracy theorist now!
source: Think Progress.org
Despite Knowledge That Iran Halted Nuke Program, White House Continued To Warn Of False Threat
The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) released today concludes that “in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.” It adds that “Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007,” and the country is “less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005.”
The assessment, which relies on data collected through Oct. 31, was reportedly completed in 2006, but was blocked by administration officials who wanted it to be more in line with Vice President Cheney’s hardline views.
As The Washington Monthly’s Kevin Drum notes, the NIE’s “basic parameters were almost certainly common knowledge in the White House” at least by last year, when the document was finished. Yet even in the past two months, the administration has continued to push its faulty, inflammatory rhetoric and claim that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons. Some examples:
“So I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. I take the threat of Iran with a nuclear weapon very seriously.” [Bush, 10/17/07]
“Our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions. … The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course the international community is prepared to impose serious consequences.” [Cheney, 10/21/07]
“The problem is Iran, and Iran has not stepped back from trying to pursue a nuclear weapon, and — or reprocessing and enriching uranium, which would lead to a nuclear weapon.” [White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, 10/26/07]
“We talked about Iran and the desire to work jointly to convince the Iranian regime to give up their nuclear weapons ambitions, for the sake of peace.” [Bush, 11/7/07]
“We’re in a position now, clearly, especially when we look at Iran, where it’s very, very important we succeed in our efforts, our national security efforts, to discourage the Iranians from enriching uranium and producing nuclear weapons.” [Cheney, 11/9/07]
“We are convinced that they are developing nuclear weapons.” [Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, 11/13/07]
The White House isn’t yet ready to give up its spin. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley will be speaking to the press at 3:15 PM EST today, and has already claimed that the NIE “confirms that we were right to be worried about Iran seeking to develop nuclear weapons.”
UPDATE: Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently said, “It would be a strategic calamity to attack Iran at this time.”
They Just Don't Give Up
Bush Keeps Up Pressure on Tehran
source: The Huffington Post
WASHINGTON — President Bush said Tuesday that the international community should continue to pressure Iran on its nuclear programs, asserting Tehran remains dangerous despite a new intelligence conclusion that it halted its development of a nuclear bomb four years ago.
"I view this report as a warning signal that they had the program, they halted the program," Bush said. "The reason why it's a warning signal is they could restart it."
Bush spoke one day after a new national intelligence estimate found that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003, largely because of international scrutiny and pressure. That finding is in stark contrast to the comparable intelligence estimate of just two years ago, when U.S. intelligence agencies believed Tehran was determined to develop a nuclear weapons capability and was continuing its weapons development program.
It is also stood in marked contrast to Bush's rhetoric on Iran. At his last news conference on Oct. 17, for instance, he said that people "interested in avoiding World War III" should be working to prevent Iran from having the knowledge needed to make a nuclear weapon.
Bush said Tuesday that he only learned of the new intelligence assessment last week. But he portrayed it as valuable ammunition against Tehran, not as a reason to lessen diplomatic pressure.
"To me, the NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) provides an opportunity for us to rally the international community _ to continue to rally the community _ to pressure the Iranian regime to suspend its program," the president said. "What's to say they couldn't start another covert nuclear weapons program."
He also asserted that the report means "nothing's changed," focusing on the previous existence of a weapons program and not addressing the discrepancy between his rhetoric and the disclosure that weapons program has been frozen for four years.
Bush said he is not troubled about his standing, about perhaps facing a credibility gap with the American people. "No, I'm feeling pretty spirited _ pretty good about life," Bush said.
"I have said Iran is dangerous, and the NIE doesn't do anything to change my opinion about the danger Iran poses to the world."
Bush said the report's finding would not prompt him to take a U.S. military option against Tehran off the table.
"The best diplomacy _ effective diplomacy _ is one in which all options are on the table," he said
The president also said that the world would agree with his message that Iran shouldn't be let off the hook yet.
In fact, Europeans said the new information strengthens their argument for negotiations with Tehran, but they also said that sanctions are still an option to compel Iran to be fully transparent about its nuclear program. European officials insisted that the international community should not walk away from years of talks with an often defiant Tehran that is openly enriching uranium for uncertain ends. The report said Iran could still build a nuclear bomb by 2010-2015.
In Kabul, Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates reinforced the U.S. position that the new U.S. intelligence assessment shows that Tehran remains a possible threat. He said it shows that Iran has had a nuclear weapons program and that as long as the country continues with its uranium enrichment activities, Iran could always renew its weapons program.
The U.S. intelligence assessment "validated the administration's strategy of bringing diplomatic and economic efforts to bear on Iran," Gates said Tuesday, speaking at a news conference with Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai.
Bush called the news conference, his first in nearly seven weeks, to intensify pressure on lawmakers amid disputes over spending and the Iraq war. Taking advantage of his veto power and the largest bully pulpit in town, Bush regularly scolds Congress as a way to stay relevant and frame the debate as his presidency winds down.
Democrats counter that Bush is more interested in making statements than genuinely trying to negotiate some common ground with them.
Specifically, Bush again on Tuesday challenged Congress to send him overdue spending bills; to approve his latest war funding bill without conditions; to pass a temporary to fix to the alternative minimum tax so millions of taxpayers don't get hit with tax increases; and to extend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
"Congress still has a lot to do," Bush said. "It doesn't have very much time to do it."
On another matter, Bush was asked about a rape victim in Saudi Arabia who was sentenced to prison and 200 lashes for being alone with a man not related to her _ a violation of the kingdom's strict segregation of the sexes. Saudi Arabia has faced enormous international criticism about the sentencing.
"My first thoughts were these," Bush said. "What happens if this happens to my daughter? How would I react? And I would have been _ I'd of been very emotional, of course. I'd have been angry at those who committed the crime. And I'd be angry at a state that didn't support the victim."
Bush, however, said he has not made his views known directly to Saudi King Abdullah, an ally. But he added: "He knows our position loud and clear."
The president said the U.S. economy is strong, though he acknowledged that the housing crisis has become a "headwind." He said administration officials are working on the issue, but he is wary of bailing out lenders. "We shouldn't say, 'OK, you made a lousy loan so we're going to go ahead and subsidize you.' "
Asked about the 2008 election, Bush steered himself back out of commenting on politics. "I practiced some punditry in the past _ I'm not going to any further."
On other issues, Bush said:
_"The Venezuelan people rejected one-man rule" when they rejected a constitutional provision that would have enabled Hugo Chavez to remain in power for life and drive changes throughout Venezuelan society. "They voted for democracy."
_He talked by telephone Tuesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin and briefed him on the new Iran intelligence estimate. Bush also said he told Putin that "we were sincere in our expressions of concern" about irregularities in the voting that produced a sweeping parliamentary victory for Putin's party.
He has "cordial relations" with Democratic leaders of Congress despite the sharp words between the White House and Capitol Hill. He blamed Democrats for the lack of compromises, saying, "In order for us to be able to reach accord, they got to come with one voice, one position."
source: The New York Times.com
December 4, 2007, 9:46 am
The Skeptical Camp Emerges on Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions
By Mike Nizza
Tags: intelligence, iran. nuclear proliferation, washington
The National Intelligence Estimate released on Monday resounded with the authority of 16 American spy agencies in agreement that Iran halted its nuclear arms effort in 2003, a conclusion meant to “ensure that an accurate presentation is available.”
But strong contrary opinions on the accuracy of the assessment are emerging from two intertwined camps that have always viewed Iran’s nuclear claims with suspicion: American neoconservatives and the Israeli government.
Leading the way is Michael Ledeen, a conservative scholar at the American Enterprise Institute with a long track record in the Iran policy area, from the Iran-contra affair in the Reagan administration to meetings with Iranian dissidents living abroad that surprised George Tenet, who was then the director of central intelligence, in 2002.
Mr. Ledeen’s first critique — published on his blog under the title “The Great Intelligence Scam” — dismissed the new intelligence estimate as “policy advocacy masquerading as serious intelligence.” The document is riddled with “blatant unprofessionalism,” he says, citing the intelligence community’s consensus answer to a very good question:
Why would the Iranians abandon a program that had been in the works ever since the late 1980s? The IC replies: Because the Iranians are rational, and they respond to international pressure. They shut down the program because the pressure was too great. They couldn’t take the risk of even more pain from the international community.
That was his deadpan way of saying, “yeah, right.”
“If this N.I.E. is true, the evidence would have to be awfully good,” he continued in another version of the argument, posted to the right-leaning National Review’s website. “And evidence of that quality has been in famously short supply.”
Similar doubts are voiced in the Weekly Standard, the conservative weekly, which is asking, “What has changed since 2005,” when the last assessment was published?
The answer comes in two parts from the McClatchy newspaper chain’s Washington bureau, which painted the broad picture:
Senior U.S. intelligence officials said the judgment that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in mid-2003 emerged four to six months ago as a result of fresh intelligence, some of it from open sources and some from a “very rigorous scrub” of 20 years of information, some of which informed the 2005 N.I.E.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the analysts who drafted the report also had applied lessons learned from an erroneous 2002 N.I.E. on Iraq.
The Washington Post mentions an interesting glimpse of what that “fresh intelligence” may have been:
Senior officials said the latest conclusions grew out of a stream of information, beginning with a set of Iranian drawings obtained in 2004 and ending with the intercepted calls between Iranian military commanders, that steadily chipped away at the earlier assessment.
In one intercept, a senior Iranian military official was specifically overheard complaining that the nuclear program had been shuttered years earlier, according to a source familiar with the intelligence. The intercept was one of more than 1,000 pieces of information cited in footnotes to the 150-page classified version of the document, an official said.
After top administration officials expressed doubts about the revised view of Iran’s nuclear weapons effort, the intelligence community “spent months examining whether the new information was part of a well-orchestrated ruse,” the Post article continued.
Whether doubts from the right are shared by Vice President Cheney and other like-minded senior administration officials remains to be seen.
But Israel’s prime minister and defense minister are openly questioning the assessment’s conclusions, according to a former Israeli intelligence officer interviewed by USA Today:
“This is a matter of interpretation of data. I do believe that the U.S. and Israel share the same data, but the dispute is about interpreting the data. … Only a blind man cannot see their efforts to put a hand on a nuclear weapon. They are threatening the world.”
The defense minister, Ehud Barak, offered his own take on Israeli Army Radio: he agreed with the banner-headline conclusion that Iran had stopped its nuclear program in 2003, but asserted that it had since been restarted. Mr. Barak, though, unlike Mr. Ledeen, was content with agreeing to disagree with the intelligence assessment. “Only time will tell who is right
