93crawler

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Turns out they abandoned their nuclear weapons research in 2003, but Bush continues to be stubborn and not able to change his thinking on anything. Iran should definitely watched, but one of the reasons they are so powerful and dangerous now is because of the unnecessary Iraq war we are currently in. What are your thoughts on this?


Wednesday, December 5, 2007
WASHINGTON NEWS
Bush On The Defensive Over New Iran Intel

One day after the release of a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that concludes Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapons program, President Bush held a press conference in which he urged key allies to maintain the current pressure on the Islamic Republic. In fact, the AP reports, Bush said the new intel "contradicting earlier US assessments...would not prompt him to take off the table the possibility of pre-emptive military action against Iran."

Media accounts of the press conference are almost universally negative toward the President. ABC World News, for example, said last night Bush "was instantly and consistently defensive." NBC Nightly News prefaced its report saying, "The 'Washington Post' is running an analysis story on the internet for tomorrow's paper with the headline, 'Neck Snapping Spin' from the President. They're talking about the President's news conference today." (The piece NBC referred to was in fact an online opinion piece not intended for the newspapers' print edition by Dan Froomkin.) NBC also reported Bush was "a president on the defensive."

Print media outlets also suggest the new intel findings and Bush's reaction to them raise questions about the President's "credibility." So much so, says the Capitol Hill newspaper The Hill, that "several" Democrats "said that Congress should investigate the discrepancy between the Bush administration's recent doomsday rhetoric on Iran and the NIE's judgments."

McClatchy says the NIE "has dealt another blow to Bush's credibility -- which already was low over his false claims about illicit weapons in Iraq -- because he was aware of the findings when he warned on Oct. 17 that Iran's quest for nuclear weapons could ignite World War III." USA Today also notes that it was the President's first press conference "since warning in October that a nuclear Iran could lead to 'World War III.'" The President also "said he learned in August that there was new information on Iran's nuclear program that needed to be analyzed. He said he did not see the specific findings until last week." In similar reporting, the New York Times says Bush "opened himself to new criticism over his credibility."

The Chicago Tribune's Mark Silva also says this morning there are "new questions" about Bush's "credibility on...security issues." In her New York Times column, Maureen Dowd mentions that during the news conference yesterday, Silva told the President , "I can't help but read your body language this morning, Mr. President. ... You seem somehow dispirited, somewhat dispirited." Bush is said to have replied, "This is like, all of a sudden, it's like Psychology 101, you know?"

Another major issue this morning is how and why the reversal on Iran on the part of the US intelligence community came about. The Los Angeles Times says that "as US intelligence officials sought Tuesday to explain the remarkable reversal, they pointed to two factors: the emergence of crucial information over the summer, and a determination to avoid repeating the mistakes that preceded the Iraq war." The New York Times, meanwhile, says the intel "reversal" on Iran "was based on 'a great discovery' by American intelligence agencies, but neither he nor other officials would elaborate." The Washington Post, Detroit News and New York Times trace the impetus for the reversal to the lessons learned from the Iraq WMD fiasco.

Conservatives Don't Buy New Intel And Neither Does IAEA. The Wall Street Journal reports the NIE "has reopened long-simmering tensions between military hard-liners in the Bush administration and the intelligence community. A number of American hawks, both inside and outside the administration, charged that intelligence services were playing down the Iranian nuclear threat in an excess of caution after their 2002 reports on Iraq proved to overestimate Saddam Hussein's nuclear ambitions. ... 'Make no mistake: This national intelligence estimate has been written by people who've been reading about Iraq for years,' said a US official working on Iran." He "criticized the report as lacking enough data on Iran to draw meaningful judgments," and "said a number of officials working on the Iranian sanctions were blindsided by the report, only having gotten wind of it Monday afternoon. 'There are a lot of conservatives in this administration who don't believe this report,' the official said."

The conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board, meanwhile, says that its "confidence" in the report "is not heightened by the fact that the NIE's main authors include three former State Department officials with previous reputations as 'hyper-partisan anti-Bush officials,' according to an intelligence source." They are "Tom Fingar, formerly of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research; Vann Van Diepen, the National Intelligence Officer for WMD; and Kenneth Brill, the former US Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)."

Surprisingly, the New York Times reports the International Atomic Energy Agency "on Tuesday publicly embraced the new American intelligence assessment stating that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons effort, but in truth the agency is taking a more cautious approach in drawing conclusions about Iran's nuclear program." A "senior official close to the agency" said, "To be frank, we are more skeptical. ... We don't buy the American analysis 100 percent. We are not that generous with Iran."

BackdoorJesus

the second-to-last paragraph kind of discounts the rest of the report doesn't it?

I am no hawk in any sense of the word, but I think they should be closely monitored because I don't think they have dropped their nuclear program at all.

Don't believe anything you read & only half of what you see...

___________________________________________

ddoubleez

Even if they were a threat, if they wanted a weapon, they could just buy it.... Actual tons of materal and actual weapons were 'lost' in the collapse of the former USSR.... Iran has some oil left and they do not want to use it to power their homes and businesses, they want to stretch it out, so they can export it longer...... No one will listen when they make the point that, even if, they supercharged their program, they would be 10 to 20 years away from a weapon that would have to be hand delivered to its target, and there is no possibility of a short or long range weapon that could be a treat to us....

Now, if your government or media was trying to inform you and not just find support for the next oil region to take, they would report on the military exercizes that China is preforming.... They already shot one of their satelites out of the sky, in preperation for disarming our starwars program... In addition, they are building nuclear subs that can bypass our protection systems and launch a few hundred miles of our west coast..... They followed a navy ship in a military exercise and no one here reported on it, cause we love our wal-mart prices....


The uninvited guest: Chinese sub pops up in middle of U.S. Navy exercise, leaving military chiefs red-faced

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/li...in_page_id=1811


MANY PEOPLE are assuming that they are waiting for us to exhaust our military might and then walk over us.....

fmb

Very good thread and some good posts to go along with it! It's about time we see a different view of the Iranian nuclear threat. I am no fan of the Iranians, but it's nice to see an opposing assessment of their capabilities. You have to see both sides to make an informed decision. An example of this are the last two paragraphs of the article (as BDJ pointed out).

Most forget (or don't understand) trickery is used by most countries to over and/or underestimate capabilities. If this is true, I see it as an Iranian success.

93crawler

The last three paragraphs are the conservatives/neo-cons rebuttal against the recent findings, as you may or may have not noticed. I'm not saying we don't need to still watch them closely, but they have never been the threat we were lead to believe. China, as deez has stated is a bigger threat than Iran, currently, and will be even more so in the coming years. I form my own opinions from the information available at the time, so no I don't believe everything I read, or watch for sure. Here's another article on this matter.


Analysts: New Intelligence May Spark Change in US, Iran Policies
By Gary Thomas
Washington
07 December 2007


For months, Bush administration officials have said Iran was actively pursuing a nuclear weapons program and called on collective international action, including sanctions, to force Tehran to stop. But a new U.S. intelligence report says Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003, and that as of mid-2007, at least, had not restarted it. As VOA correspondent Gary Thomas reports, the public release of the estimate may alter perceptions and policies in both Washington and Tehran.

At some points, the rhetoric coming from Washington and Tehran was so harsh that it fueled speculation that the United States was planning to attack Iran.

But a new U.S. intelligence estimate on Iran's nuclear program stands in sharp contrast to earlier pronouncements by Bush administration officials that Iran is in active pursuit of nuclear weapons. The National Intelligence Estimate, which represents the collective judgment of the 16 U.S. agencies that deal in intelligence, says that Iran may not be as determined to develop nuclear weapons as the U.S. previously believed.

President Bush insists that the new intelligence report represents no change in U.S. policy or attitude towards Iran. If anything, he says, it should reinvigorate joint international efforts to keep nuclear arms knowledge out of Iran's hands.

"Our policy remains the same," said President Bush. "I see a danger. And many in the world see the same danger. This report is not an 'OK, everybody needs to relax and quit' report. This is a report that says what has happened in the past could be repeated and that the policies used to cause the regime to halt are effective policies, and let's keep them up. Let's continue to work together."

Vali Nasr, a senior fellow on Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, says the new National Intelligence Estimate undercuts U.S. efforts to get support for more sanctions against Iran.

"The mistake of the Bush administration was that it overreached," said Nasr. "In overstating Iran's capability, in overstating Iran's threat, it created a house of cards that has all of a sudden fallen down."

But Larry Wilkerson, who was former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff, says that Washington may be sending a signal to Tehran by the release of the report.

"We're releasing this National Intelligence Estimate which more or less reverses our previous appraisal of you as a monolithic entity that is absolutely impossible to talk to," he said. "We're actually saying it might be somewhat to our advantage to talk to you. We're actually saying you might be persuadable if we talk to you in the right way. If my optimistic side is interpreting it correctly, it's an incredibly sophisticated effort to lay down a carpet, so to speak, to eventual diplomacy and negotiations with Iran."

The report has upset some conservative American politicians and commentators who favor keeping up a hard line against Iran, including possible military action. Some Republican lawmakers have called for a commission to examine the estimate's findings.

The publicly released version is a carefully worded document that rates key points as having a high, moderate, or low degree of confidence. John McLaughlin, former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, says that, having been burned by its mistakes about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, the intelligence community is being very careful, especially on an issue as sensitive as Iran.

"One of the things to which intelligence agencies pay particular attention these days is making clear their levels of uncertainty," said McLaughlin. "This is one of the lessons of the Iraq WMD experience. And so for the agencies to say they believe this with high confidence is very noteworthy. It tells me that they have sources who have a demonstrated track record of producing accurate information, or they would not be saying that."

Not surprisingly, the report was welcomed in Iran, where it was termed a "victory" by officials, who have consistently denied that Iran seeks nuclear weapons. But some analysts believe there could be some domestic political fallout in Iran for the hardline president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Vali Nasr says President Ahmadinejad has used the nuclear issue to rally political support and divert attention away from the country's continuing economic woes of high unemployment and inflation.

"Now, if war is off the table, it doesn't matter what Ahmadinejad says and how much bluster he puts out," he said. "If war is off the table, the Iranian electorate may pay a lot more attention to issues that don't favor Ahmadinejad in the elections. I think it might have a positive effect within Iran, ironically, of refocusing everybody on domestic issues at a time when elections are around the corner."

Iran's parliamentary elections are due in March, and the presidential election in 2009.

fmb

Thanks for the extra info, 93Crawler. Remember, somewhere in the middle of all things presented is the truth. SOmetimes, it may take awhile to dig down to it!

I agree China is a much larger threat than Iran, especially over the long term. Any nation with a booming economy, lots of cash, and a stated goal of becoming a superpower requires watching!

Tairos

Nonsense. The truth is what it is, regardless of what people are saying. If one guy claims that a triangle is four sided, and another says that they are three sided, is the truth somewhere in between? Obviously not.

ddoubleez

IAEA POV:



UN WEAPONS INSPECTOR, SCOTT RIDDER:

Juan.©amaney

As with anything else, I'd rather err on the safe side. When Osama could have been easily caught, we gave him the benefit of the doubt and let him be. Few years later...well we all know what happened.

___________________________________________

joerockhead

I am tired of people saying Iraq was not necessary, It Was!

I guess people do not care about mass killings of religious Sects, and that Saddam WAS working on getting weapons of mass destruction.
No, they never found any, but they had traces of the chemicals that are ONLY used to design these weapons.

People forget the country was in RUIN when we entered, and WE - THE USA have rebuilt it. Providing MORE Power, MORE Water, MORE Roads, and a safer environment then thye have had in our lifetimes!!! THE USA has done this.

No one wants to read about how the Iraqi people are SICK and TIRED of the BS going on, and are starting to take charge.
No one wants to read about how the Iraqi people are truly grateful the USA came in.

For those that read the Media, Negative Sells better then positive.

I get my Iraqi info from people that are there!!!

As for IRAN, Yeah, lets not be a little paranoid. Lets Just ignore them now and not say anything. God forbid they jump up and BOOM!!! Bite us in the ass with a small weapon.

Just like Iraq, Iran is 75% plus of good people, that just want to have a normal life. It is the government that hates America so much. And let us not forget they hate ANYONE that is not of the Islamic faith!!! That is the driving factor.

I say we keep an Eye on them, who knows, the story may have come from a Democrat that wants to ensure the Republicans do not stay in office.
And yet, it may be true, Iran has not been trying since way back, even though the president said he is.

___________________________________________


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93crawler

Not to get off subject and hijack my own thread but---Iraq was never necessary. They never were a threat to us, only to themselves. The Iraq-Iran war crushed their military, and the first Gulf war finished it off. And the chemicals you speak of--are you referring to the Sarin, Mustard, and Nerve gases they found? Once again they could only use them on their own people. They never had a delivery system capable of using it against anyone else at least not us. The sanctions and no fly zones imposed after the first Gulf War pretty much locked that country down. Face it, we were lied to, plain and simple.

If we went in there for humanitarian reasons, as you sort of hinted at--then why didn't we invade North Korea? Millions upon millions of people homeless and starving, and without even the most basic care, not to mention they already had nuclear capabilities, and the delivery system capable of hitting at least Japan. Oh, and they are also a Communist country, the cherry on top of the desert of reasons for invading, and changing a country.

We went into Iraq for basically one reason--OIL! That and the opportunity to set up a network of bases in key, oil-rich countries. This war has never been about anything that the Bush administration has told us it was for. I'm tired of conservatives wining about not enough good news coming out of Iraq, if there was a lot of good news it would be reported, but there isn't much.

There are so many other countries we could've helped, but they were no where near as energy-rich as Iraq was. The neo-cons had planned this war for over a decade, because they thought we hadn't gone far enough in the first Gulf war, research this if you don't believe it--look at the Project for a New American Century thread I posted. Enough about that non-sense though.

Iran, as I stated earlier, should continue to be monitored very closely, but Bush's rhetoric should be toned down. We are in no condition to fight anyone right now, or even years from now, as the unnecessary Iraq war has bogged us down--as your earlier thread has highlighted. China, and Russia should be watched more closely than Iran. They are already nuclear powers, and will challenge us more so than any other nation in the coming years.

93crawler

Here's another interesting article on this matter, just goes to show how Iraq was all the administration even cared about at the beginning.

Behind The NIE
By Kevin Drum

Dec 9, 2007
Answers.com

(Political Animal) BEHIND THE NIE....I don't know if you'd call this backlash or irony or something completely different, but can you guess at the ultimate source of last week's NIE concluding that Iran halted work on its nuclear bomb program in 2003? Turns out it was largely the result of a CIA program called "Brain Drain," which sought to persuade Iranian defections from the ranks of its nuclear program, which in turn was part of a "major intelligence push against Iran" ordered by the White House two years ago. Greg Miller has the story in the LA Times today:

Intelligence gathered as part of that campaign provided much of the basis for a U.S. report released last week that concluded the Islamic Republic had halted its nuclear weapons work in 2003.

....The White House ordered the stepped-up effort in hopes of gathering stronger evidence that Tehran was making progress toward building a nuclear bomb. The Bush administration "wanted better information" on Iran's nuclear programs, said a U.S. official briefed on the expanded collection efforts.

"I can't imagine that they would have ever guessed that the information they got would show that the program was shut down," the official said.

And why did we need a "major intelligence push" in the first place? According to Miller, it's because Bush dismantled the Iran Task Force set up during Bill Clinton's administration in order to focus all his attention on — surprise! — Iraq. "When Bush came in, they were totally disinterested in Iran," said a former CIA official who held a senior position at the time. "It went from being a main focus to everything being switched to Iraq."

Great stuff. Still, once "Brain Drain" produced its unexpected (and unwelcome) results, couldn't Bush simply have buried it? Why release it publicly at all? Via Matt Yglesias, former spook Pat Lang provides his take:

The "jungle telegraph" in Washington is booming with news of the Iran NIE. I am told that the reason the conclusions of the NIE were released is that it was communicated to the White House that "intelligence career seniors were lined up to go to jail if necessary" if the document's gist were not given to the public. Translation? Someone in that group would have gone to the media "on the record" to disclose its contents.

That would have been quite a sight, wouldn't it?

ddoubleez

The safe side would be to stop arming Saudi Arabia, and cut ties with walmart and china(Iran and korea's allie and source for funds).. Americans are more willing to wadge an unwinnable war with a country they know nothing about, than to wage a battle with ones self over desire and selfishness........... The biggest war that american's need to fight, is the realization that the american way of life, as we now know it is over, out of date and selfdefeating......

I agree, with you that we need to watch our backs, juan, just not how to do it....

Saudi Arabia is the most aggressive in the mid-east so we continue to arm them as we wadge a war with Iran and Iraq (two countries that we have installed dictators in in the past)........

YOU ARE BEING SOLD ANOTHER WAR THAT NO SIDE CAN AFFORD, our presend level of dept may unfold to be our undoing, we can't risk to raise it another 10%.....

And to the others that say that Iraq was a necessity, one would have to know what it has gotten us, to prove it was necessary........ We took one leader who did some awful things and replaced him with a region that want us all dead..........