Today’s Washington Post article on a new intelligence report that Iran is ten years away from nuclear weapons is almost a burlesque of the mainstream media reliance on unnamed sources – there at least three, possibly as many as five (hard to tell) in the fifteen-hundred word story. But amongst the miasma of phrases like “Top policymakers are scrutinizing the review, several administration officials said…” (same people? different? who knows?) my absolute favorite for comedy value is:
“It’s a full look at what we know, what we don’t know and what assumptions we have,” a U.S. source said.
A U. S. source!? They actually printed that with a straight face. (I assume they did anyway.) What, pray tell, is a “U. S. source”? I guess they mean someone in the government, but it could just as well be your Aunt Fanny in Nome, Alaska. And they say bloggers don’t have editors!
But even more disturbing than this obfuscation is the subject of this story itself – the leak of tidbits from an intelligence report which the public, of course, is not trusted to see. Leaving aside the atrocious record of our intelligence agencies over recent decades (something it is hard to do since I suspect the current housecleaning at said agencies is motivating this leak), let’s look at the substance of what little of this report we know.
These intelligence agencies are asking us to believe – in, naturally, “carefully hedged assessments” (Post’s words) – that Iran is ten years away from nuclear weapons. Now I make no claim even to the slightest expertise in this area, but I know what we all do – that our country had such weapons over sixty years ago, that the Russians, British, French, and maybe others had them only slightly thereafter, that the Indians and the Pakistanis have had them for over a decade and that Saddam was about to build one himself when he as so rudely interrupted by the Israelis in 1981. We also know Dr. A. Q. Khan was running around passing nuclear information to the North Koreans, the Libyans and who knows who else throughout the 1990s.
But not – we would have to assume from this report – his next door neighbors the Iranians. Or perhaps these intelligence agencies are implying the Mullahs and their scientists are too dim-witted to comprehend what is now, relatively speaking, ancient technology (a highly racist assumption, if you think about it). Or perhaps, the report is actually implying (or someone is implying – again hard to tell from the article) the Mullahs have simply decided not to build nuclear weapons. According to one of the Post’s myriad sources, all those clandestine nuclear installations were distributed throughout Iran because the Mullahs feared the U. S. and the Israelis would attack them even though the reactors were for peaceful purposes only. Does that make sense? Not to me, but, well, I’m not an intelligence analyst, so what do I know?
Of course I am being disingenuous. To be clear – and I know you already know this – I find journalism of this sort to be repellent and dangerously close to pure disinformation. When I see a quote atttributed to something like a “U. S. source,” I would trust my Aunt Fanny in Nome, Alaska over the speaker or the writer of the article – even though I don’t have an Aunt Fanny in Nome or anywhere else. It’s time for the Washington Post and the rest of the Mainstream Media establishment to put an end to this nonsense.
I find it interesting that this article would come up at this very moment. And I would dearly love to know just who this source is. Someone at CIA who’s secretly being paid off by certain folks abroad?
Would ‘Joe Wilson’, qualify as a US Source?
My postman says we are working with aliens, but it might be sexier if I say, “A government agency representative confirmed collaboration with aliens.”
Next up after “a U.S. Source” will be “a source from Earth.”
I don’t think that we can count on Israel to take out Iran’s program.
As you note, the program is spread around.
Additionally, Iran is much further than Iraq, which would require in-air refueling, a capability that I don’t think that Israel has.
Furthermore, the size of the Israeli airforce makes it unlikely that the task could be accomplished without multiple sorties, perhaps over several days.
Any attack would also occur over areas protected by modern SAMs, making it unlikely that it would succeed completely.
Finally, Iran has long range ballistic missiles and chemical WMD that it could use to retailliate, and any Israeli attack might spark a general conflict. Of course, an American attack might spark retalliation against Israel or a general conflict as well.
Very dicy situation… I recommend Ken Pollack’s The Persian Puzzle.
I know who there source is. It’s an unnamed (and unnamable) woman who works at the CIA as an analyst working on WMD’s. You can torture me, but you’ll never get her name, because her husband is a retired Ambassador and best-selling author with a lot of clout and he could cause me a lot of problems.
Lola, you hit the nail on the head. Why now? Looks like the losers of the Iraq debate–CIA and State– are trying to prewrite history on this one: tie Bush’s hands if the European negotiations fail. Arg!
FWIW Ledeen says Iran are months away announcement or test: http://www.nationalreview.com/ledeen/ledeen200508010809.asp
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From my perspective, two important points are at play here:
1. How credible is this information? If there is a chance Iran will have nuclear weapons in 10 months instead of 10 years, can we afford to risk trusting that the analysts are correct? Given the nature of the regime, its hatred for us and the potential consequence of being wrong here, I submit that we have to err on the side of assuming they will get nuclear weapons sooner rather than later.
2. It is apparent that there are rogue elements in the CIA doing everything they can to frustrate the civilian leadership’s policies. It was always my understanding that under our system the elected officials set policy and the bureaucrats executed it. Any CIA official who disagrees with the elected leadership should make his views known (to his political masters not the news media), then either live with it or resign if he doesn’t get his way. Leaks to the press by CIA bureaucrats designed to undermine the elected officials and play politics are unacceptable and must be punished. I would think that our friends on the Left would be horrified by this sort of thing rather than cheering it on.
The gist of the article is summed up by the sub-headline:
“U.S. Intelligence Review Contrasts With Administration Statements”
which is then expanded in the text as:
“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.”
Yet two paragraphs later we find:
“The estimate expresses uncertainty about whether Iran’s ruling clerics have made a decision to build a nuclear arsenal, three U.S. sources said. Still, a senior intelligence official familiar with the findings said that “it is the judgment of the intelligence community that, left to its own devices, Iran is determined to build nuclear weapons.”
Quite a contrast: moving determinedly vs. determined. I didn’t even bother to finish the article.
I didn’t even bother to read past the headline. By and large, these days you have to read the WaPo “A” section the way you used to read Pravda. Nothing appears there without some propaganda purpose, but inadvertant truths can nevertheless be revealed by close analysis.
But the big thing to me is, even assuming the article is completely true, the intelligence report itself smells like something to send straight to the waste basket. Not only because our “top men” have such a wretched track record with this sort of analysis, but also… ten years? That’s so far down the line compared to the rate of technological progress that it seems inherently suspect, like it’s premised on the assumption that the world will remain entirely static from now to 2015.
My postman says we are working with aliens, but it might be sexier if I say, “A government agency representative confirmed collaboration with aliens.”
Radio talk show host Tony Snow was merely a presidential speech writer during the Bush Seniorís administration. Journalists, however, would convey the impression that Snow held a much higher role within the White House when they quoted him anonymously.
I am all for the occasional use of anonymous sources. There are simply times when there is no other realistic option. Still, it should be the exception to the rule—and not a convenient way for a disingenuous reporter to slant a story to favor their own personal ideological inclinations.
You really must read this NYT article to get a handle on the leaked NIE. Please note the phrase “to a recent highly classified intelligence report on Iran” in conjunction with the description concerning the breadth of the assessment(s) which stipulate “no National Intelligence Estimate will be approved until each agency whose sources are being used as a basis for the findings articulates to all others its “confidence in the source.”"
This is a recipe for a kludge – a product of a committee of committees. Negroponte has chosen to accrete an additional layer of bureaucratic stifle rather than paring information to the essence.
The fact that al-WaPo in its role as one of the top two Copperhead outlets in the country does not disclose sources for a propagandistic lift from what its sister in sedition refers to as a “highly classified intelligence report” is hardly surprising. After all, exposing a traitorous source opens that source to spending a fair amount of time in the stony lonesome. Given the papers tight affinity with its source(s), circumspection on the paper’s part is to be expected.
I would not expect the source(s) to be from the intelligence community. Goss (and Negroponte, in all probability) will be ordering a massive series of lie detector examinations on the basis of the al-WaPo story and security agency staff would have to realize the probability of that occurence.
Look to Congressional staff weasels as the probable source. The NIE’s client(s) for this assessment include the intelligence committees and their is not a shortage of Copperhead staffers always ready to place potential party advantage above what remnants of patriotism that they might possess.
Perhaps Jane Harman might look into it.
I’m assuming everyone here realizes the “U.S. source” quoted above is Rumsfeld. No one else in the gov’t talks like that.
Or maybe someone who wants to make it look like it came from Rumsfield, Hoving?
Related to the overall MSM, Insapunnit points us to New York Times Editor Makes Definitive Statement on Newsroom Bias; Yet MSM All But Ignores It.
I’ve reached the point of wondering what portion of State, CIA, and the MSM have actually been hired as agents by Slafist holders of large numbers of petro-dollars. Despite the excellent explanations by the likes of ShrinkWrapped, Neo-neocon, and Jamie Irons, I’m reaching the point of believing this goes beyond human nature and psychology and into the realm of cold, hard, dollars paying for services rendered.
On the other hand. A story like this can be used to prove that North Korea, developed thier bomb, mostly during the Clinton years, not because of Bush’s diplomacy.
Michael Ledeen’s column yesterday:
“… That tracks with claims I have received in the past few days, saying that the last technical problems have been overcome, and that, in the next month or two, Khamenei will either announce that Iran has the bomb, or one will be detonated to remove any doubt.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/ledeen/ledeen.asp
Hovig,
That could have been sourced from anyone ranging from the “intelligence” employee tasked with making sure the document was coherently organized to a congressional staffer tasked with reading and summarizing to his congresscritter.
And when Iran tells us in the next year that they’ve got nuclear weapons, the same Wa-Po reporters will write a snarky article chiding the Bush administration for overlooking all the “obvious” intelligence that showed Iran was moments away from having nukes.
I don’t know why the MSM is willing to resort to self-parody in order to reassure us that Iran is not a serious threat, but even if they were 10 years away from nuclear weapons, I would not be very reassured. Ten years goes by pretty fast.
10 years.
Why does that strike me as suspicious?
Hmm, it’s always 10 years down the road isn’t it. Sort of indefinite, can mean most anything. Not like a definite estimate, 4 years, or 7 1/2 years, just some ballpark guesstimate, sure 10 years. Almost as if they have zero real intel just a broad guess.
Also, it’s safely “away” to allow us to be distracted to other issues. We can fix things in 10 years so it won’t be a problem.
Tollhouse, I’m with you: “10 years” is the modern American equivalent of the Aramaic Biblical phrase that’s translated as “40 days and 40 nights.”
The important thing to remember is that this supposed document is an NIE, or National Intelligence Estimate. That means that all the agencies have to agree, including State Department I&R. In my previous life (~10 years ago) it was “common knowledge” that I&R would regularly take any bite out of an NIE, especially if it caused the report to contradict existing State Department policy or approach.
While I certainly have no inside information, in this case I can easilly see CIA or DIA or NSA saying 2 years, 5 years or 10 months but I&R holding out and refusing to sign on to the NIE unless it said 10 years. What this really tels me is that there is no concensus among agencies on how close they are.
ìWhat this really tels me is that there is no concensus among agencies on how close they are.î
Or they already have it and will conduct a nuclear test tomorrow. It happened in case of India, didnít it, and, as I recall, everybody was lamenting how we had no idea that it was coming.
I sleep well at night knowing that my guess is as good as any of these people who have vast Intel resources at their disposal. Valerie Plames of this world work hard to protect me, I am sure of it.
The 10 year estimate was probably, “{‘if the clerics want to carry the nuke the bought from the former Soviet State, by mule, or push the nuke they bought from North Korea across the ocean floor’}…it would probably take them ten years.”
I’m convinced, but I will need Judy Miller to remove all public doubt.
Barry Dauphin, you are right on the mark. And, if God forbid a terrorist does manage to bomb OUR subways, all the nitwits in the Democratic Party, the MSM, and “Human Rights community” who agonized about the evils of “profiling” will be the loudest voices demanding to know why “Bush” didn’t protect us! We don’t need to send in the clowns, they live among us. Nay, they are some of the most influential leaders among us!
Why is a profoundly just society like ours suffer such an abundance of fools who try to “make the world better” by pretending evil has a conscience? And when evil smacks them, who have the temerity to start blaming those who tried to defeat it against their strident opposition! They are not only sickening, they are downright dangerous.
Yes, I mean you Teddy, and you Jimmy, and you “Pinch”!
This article aside, I think we should accept that anonymous sources should not be abolished. It’s obvious that these sources have an agenda, or they wouldn’t be talking. Our problem is that the Bush administration isn’t too good at this game so what we hear is usually something that grates on us.
Anonymous sources can also be used to talk to other nations and spread disinformation and these sources can also leak data favorable to an administration. Though in the current climate those kind of leaks possibly would be ignored.
In either case the press is being manipulated, not the other way around.
Total transparency of sourcing is not only impossible, it is counter-productive. I truly believe we have to take the bad with the good. Who knows what the next administration will be like and anonymous sourcing may be the only way to truly whistleblow something that SHOULD be known.
Syl
The problem with anonymous sources is that nothing is known. This is spreading rumours, nothing more.
The definition of whistleblowing is that the whistleblower actually comes forward with their information, which can then be examined and either verified or refuted. These “news” stories from unknown sources sidestep the fact verification process completely.
flenser,
Is it that nothing is known or is it that nothing can be verified? I get very tired of trying to figure out what game is being played when “high government officials” are purportedly quoted. If you’re a G-4 in maintenance a G-14 is a high government official.
The two year old Plame game is going to become a model of what “professional” (snigger, giggle) journalism is all about. Propaganda with a thin veneer of supposition based upon the delusional projections of the writer. It’s a shame that Novak isn’t sharing a cell with Miller. The two are twin esemplars of how high a hack can rise.
Rolodex wizards grinding ideological axes – true journalistic professionals.
“The definition of whistleblowing is that the whistleblower actually comes forward with their information, which can then be examined and either verified or refuted.”
This is the point I kept making during the “Deep Throat” unveiling that just happened to coincide with the “Quran flushing” tripe. In one case an individual pointed the reporters to additional information that allowed them to bust a story, while the other was someone peddling rumors. The first is worthy of a world-class news organization while the latter is worthy of People magazine or the World Weekly News.
“It’s a full look at what we know, what we don’t know and what assumptions we have,” a U.S. source said.
As far as unintended comedy, I think “a full look at what we don’t know” has a lot going for it.
Um…if you don’t know, how do you know the look was full?
If the source is a WMD analyst, presumably they know their stuff, but I can’t help thinking that the US produced a bomb from scratch in 3 years in WW2. Today many of the technical issues are generally known, so even given that Iran doesn’t have the resources the US has, it would seem the thing could be done in less than 10 years.
Iran is further along in its nuclear capabilities than Iraq ever was. And if the Brit’s JIC estimated that Saddam could have had nukes in as little as four years, then this 10 years idea is pure crap.
Iran has indigenous uranium deposits. They have the means to convert yellowcake into uranium hexafluoride. They also experimented with plutonium separation, without declaring it to the IAEA. And this is just what we do know. Not all they’re hiding.
Nothing is known by us. I expect that the reporters and the “high government officials” have a fairly good idea what is going on, they simply allow us to see that part of the picture which they think we should know.
Memo ro PJ media. Your primary responsibility is to the consumer of your product, not to forming a cozy relationship with governemnt sources.
The MSM making a decision to put an end to this nonsense? Not a chance, IMHO. One could just as well expect a heroin addict nodding off in the park, blissful with a conduit to a lifetime supply of the stuff, to spontaneously rise from the bench and kick the habit.
Anonymous sources are the heroin of the MSM, I’m afraid. It started more or less with Watergate. Now their widespread use allows the MSM to shape the news as they wish, all the while pretending that it is objective.
The only hope here, I believe, is that the public will get wise to the game. I think that is happening more and more, and blogs have a role in that process.
Yes, anonymous sources are sometimes worthwhile. But their value rests on the integrity of the journalist in evaluating whether the source is reliable and objective. At this point, there are precious few journalists I would trust to make that judgment.
Here’s an article I wrote a back in May tracing the history of the use of the anonymous source. Note that for quite some time there have been very reasonable guidelines on their use that would curb the worst excesses. Unfortunately, these guidelines are rarely followed.
Roger and pjw come close to making this point–if someone has, and I overlooked it, my apologies.
But historically, has it ever taken any nation ten years to make a nuke, from the date they started trying with any seriousness? I ask before Googling, but I don’t think so.
If Iran test fires a nuclear weapon tomorrow, then by the end of the week another leak will reveal that Bush was warned that their achieving nuclear capability was imminent.
Can we just abolish the CIA already and rebuild from the ground up?
The US Manhattan Project took about 3 years, 1942-45, and had to discover and/or invent virtually everything, including pursuing dead ends, and no one really knew if it was even going to work. To say that a fairly wealthy country of what, 60+ million people, with legal and extra-legal access to everything relevant some 60 years later would take over 3 times as long is, well, don’t insult my intelligence. The only way this would make any sense is if we knew knew knew that they weren’t even trying.
I agree with other posters, at some point it becomes hard to just credit ignorance or stupidity and one starts to suspect some media people are “in the pay of a foreign power” and/or have treasonous intent. No other explanations seem believable.
Interesting note on the use of anonymous sources in the story Roger blogged about: I am 95% certain that the Post has a policy that when such sources are used, the reporter is supposed to explain why the source cannot be named and, I think, the motive of the source. In practice this usually boils down to “because he doesn’t want to lose his job” though it’s never put exactly that way!
However, in a live chat just concluded with the reporter who wrote the story–Dafna Linzer–one participant did directly say that the Post should be more forthcoming about the leakers’ motives. She provides no explanation in the story and did not reply to that point in the live chat.
Intelligence agencies are notoriously bad at determining exactly when a power will go nuclear. The CIA got caught flat-footed by the Soviets, Indians, Iraqis (1990) and just about everyone else, too. The fantasy is that the CIA will be able to tell us that the Iranians will go nuclear on March 21st, 2006, at 7:50 AM. It doesn’t work that way, and odds are that they’ll underestimate the Iranians.
The main Iranian nuclear research facility is near the Straits of Hormuz. The Israelis have special long-range F-16s, but they’re at extreme range for that mission. They’d need air-to-air refueling at least once and more likely twice. They can do air-to-air refueling, but the problem is getting the tankers to where they’re needed. Sending a big, slow tanker across Saudi Arabia and having it orbit for a couple hours is problematic. Plus they’d need more than one strike.
You guys are chasing the wrong ball — as this admin would have you do.
Iran could have a nuclear weapon today, and it would hardly matter. Why?
Because they don’t have any viable means to DELIVER it. And as soon as they do, it can be destroyed (by Israel).
You’re letting others determine the terms of the debate, rather than thinking through what any of this really means. Ever heard of IRAQ? Tiny drone planes that could launch WMD in 45 minutes?
C’mon, use your heads.
Tubino, the problem is that if what you want to do is blow up, say, Washington DC, and either don’t care about the consquences or believe that the consequences would be the collapse of the West or the “inevitable” cultural war that the warriors of Allah would inevitably win, then any delivery system is feasible, down to and including sending the bomb Federal Express.
It’s different if you’re thinking about a stand-off, MAD war; you have to have missles and bombers. Two guys in a rowboat could put a bomb within five minutes walk of Wall Street.
tubino:
“Because they don’t have any viable means to DELIVER it. And as soon as they do, it can be destroyed (by Israel).”
So that ballistic missile program of theirs–that’s nothing to worry about?
And, while I’m very much in favor of missile defense, I wasn’t aware that any nation had one up that we could be confident in. Link, please?
Meantime, I’ll just go on accepting uncritically whatever the administration tells me. Sadly, I can’t use my head like you, otherwise I might have come up with this “don’t be silly, there’s obviously nothing to worry about!” analysis.
It’s funny how everyone (well, at least the nay-saying ‘everyone’s) seems to forget that the bulk of the delivery distance of the first two atomic bombs was handled… by ship. And the only reason we didn’t deliver them the rest of the way by ship was that we wanted our ship back. (And even that went wrong.)
“No means to deliver.” Huh. How hard would it be to weld one inside the oil tankage of a tanker and sail it into New jersey? All the x-raying of (already delivered!) containers inthe world wouldn’t matter, would it? And several inches of steel (and possibly several feet of lead – - ships can carry megatons) Would render our fancy detectors useless, as well.
Tracked down this via Chris Fotos site. Interesting additional commentary, insofar as it provides insight into the WaPo mindset.
Arlington, Va.: I’ve been told that the leaking of the name of a CIA desk jockey is treasonous. Now we have a leak of our most sensitive information regarding Iran. Do you expect an investigation of this leak like there is an investigation of the Plame leak? Are you prepared to go to jail to protect your sources?
Dafna Linzer: I feel very confident that today’s story didn’t include the most sensitive information on Iran. It didn’t identify sources and methods, intelligence community personnel or anything of that nature.
The mere fact that Dafna did not disclose “sources and methods” does not mean that laws were not broken and security compromised. The Washington Post does have security clearence, and its having access to this documentation is problematical in its own right, regardless of whether they run a story or not.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2005/08/01/DI2005080100998.html
Are these the same people that were completely blind sided by Pakistan’s nuke program?
I would like to know why the whole Plame/Wilson/Vanity Fair/Africa/Rove soap opera is of national importance but the incessant leaking of socalled classified intelligence is not.
“I feel very confident that today’s story didn’t include the most sensitive information on Iran.”
Because the most sensitive information would not have advanced my thesis.
Aside from the basic question “Who the hell is she to make a determination concerning classified material?” If al-WaPo does have a security clearance it should be pulled pending identification of the leaker. I’m still betting on a schmuck IC staffer.
Dafna has the sound of every sanctimonius journalist prig I’ve ever heard.
Roger:
C-SPAN had a panel discussion with a group of scientists discussing the nuclear capabilities of Iran and possibly Korea, I can’t remember. Much of it was technical and thus above my head. There was no agreement on a timeframe, some said 2 to 3 years, some said 10. One of the gentleman said something that brought no disagreement from any of the panel members. He said that with the intelligence capabilities that we had, mainly airborne surveliance, the information that we get would be too late. The signs that we could get from the air that would prove that Iran could build the bomb would be at a point when they already had it finished or nearly finished. Anyone who is good at searching C-SPAN’s files could dig it up. If I remember it correctly there was no general agreement but the discussion was generaly apolitical. It left me with the impression that we were fumbling in the dark and had no way to stop Iran other then counting on them being honest about their intentions or attacking their sites.
I hate to be cynical but the Mullahs are going to get the bomb and the E.U. and the U.S. have to either accept that fact or go to war. All the negotiations are window dressing for the fact that the E.U. is going to get strung along by the Mullahs and they will hand out economic carrots that the Mullahs will swallow and then when they are full they will announce their Islamic weapon of defense against the Crusading Westerners and the demonic Jews. The E.U. will make diplomatic noises but will do nothing. The U.S. and Israel will have to decide to accept the fact or blow up the sites. And with that jolly thought in your head I will end my post.
Kevin Peters
I do have a (Great) Aunt Fanny in Nashville, NC. Should I call her?
Kevin P.,
the Mullahs are going to get the bomb
You’re right as rain. One problem is that Bush has blown most of his credibility in Iraq. Any attack on Iran is going to be very unpopular.
Say hello to nuclear Iran.
With that step, I think non-proliferation can be almost completely forgotten. How long until Cuba, Zimbabwe, and Venezuela get the bomb? In fact, come to think of it, just about the only countries that won’t have it in 10 years will be American allies such as Japan, Taiwan, and S. Korea.
Now, with the bomb in the hands of all those countries, what’s the mean time till an explosion in DC?
I found this excerpt interesting:
The new estimate extends the timeline, judging that Iran will be unlikely to produce a sufficient quantity of highly enriched uranium, the key ingredient for an atomic weapon, before “early to mid-next decade,” according to four sources familiar with that finding. The sources said the shift, based on a better understanding of Iran’s technical limitations, puts the timeline closer to 2015 and in line with recently revised British and Israeli figures.
The estimate is for acquisition of fissile material, but there is no firm view expressed on whether Iran would be ready by then with an implosion device, sources said.
An enriched uranium bomb does not require “an implosion device.” Plutonium bombs do. The Manhattan Project assessed the design of a uranium bomb as being too straightforward even to require testing. We “tested” our first enriched uranium bomb over Hiroshima. Iran could conceivably elect to test theirs over Tel Aviv or D.C.
This rather fundamental physics blooper is probably the best objective evidence in favor of the notion, expressed by several above, that the main source for this piece was, indeed, some weasel Democrat staffer from one of the intelligence committees. These sorts of people, in my experience, fall into “the only physics I know is Ex-Lax” category. So, apparently, do WaPo reporters as Ms. Dafna obviously missed the catch as well. Perhaps I’m just a starry-eyed optimist, but I figure an actual CIA analyst-leaker would at least get the elementary physics right.
WB,
How would you suggest that Bush could have maintained his “credibility” in the face of a press consisting of oppositional mouthpieces? There are damn few things that I can think of that he said he would try to do and hasn’t actually tried to do. He’s neither omnipotent nor omniscient and he has compromised some of his stated objectives but I don’t hold much stock in purity codes for pols and as far as I’m concerned he’s given it a hell of a lot better try than most.
If the Senate had as effective leadership as the House does, more would have been accomplished. If the press wasn’t chock full of Copperheads the dirtbag terrorists would be hiding in deeper holes. And if I had wings I could save money on airplane tickets.
You play the hand dealt, not the hand hoped for, and Bush hasn’t done badly at all with the cards he has.
I hate to be cynical but the Mullahs are going to get the bomb and the E.U. and the U.S. have to either accept that fact or go to war.
Absent and invasion or revolution, I agree with you. It is clear that the Mullahs *want* the bomb. Given that, there is really no way to buy them off.
An enriched uranium bomb does not require “an implosion device.”
Yep. The big technical problem in WWII was the uranium enrichment, a problem that is much more tractable today, what with centerfuges and all. I suspect even implosion devices are easier because with modern electronics, computers, and explosives it is less of a problem to get the timing and shape right. And most of all, for many of these things the simple knowledge that it can be done is 80% of the battle. The Germans, for instance, thought it impractible to extract sufficient quantities of purified U235 to construct a simple bomb, and this “knowledge” skewed their whole program. The Farm Hall transcripts show that Heisenberg quickly understood the bomb after it had been dropped and implication of its small size sank in. All that was needed was the revelation that the allies *must* have used highly purified U235 in order to construct such a small bomb.
WichitaBoy:
“One problem is that Bush has blown most of his credibility in Iraq. Any attack on Iran is going to be very unpopular.”
It would have been anyway, even if we’d never gone into Iraq. Suppose we’d declared, as Madeleine Albright did, that Saddam Hussein was “in his box,” and decided to deal with the threat of Iran.
We’re talking about a country four times the size of Iraq, with three times the population. Seventy million people. Oh sure, there’s a lot of discontent. But from those who’d remain loyal, not to mention those who hate their regime but would rally to it for nationalist reasons, we’d get an insurgency that would make Iraq’s look like a minor annoyance.
In retrospect, looking back at Iraq, opponents or skeptics of preemption have set the bar for “justifiable” at certainty. What that amounts to, though they vehemently deny it, is “Wait til it happens, then respond.”
Because as long as you dread war–and what decent person doesn’t?–you can always come up with a compelling-sounding argument that it might not be necessary; it might all work out if we just stay vigilant, and wait. Even now I hear decent, well-meaning people try to take the Iranians at their word, or cast about for ways to avoid a crisis: We don’t know their uranium enrichment is for nukes; it could be for power like they say. You think our government’s always truthful, or right? Besides, how can we tell them they can’t have nukes when Israel has them? etc.
Now I happen to think war against Iran may be necessary. But it would be more painful, by an order of magnitude, than Iraq. The temptation to argue that it might not have been necessary would be that much stronger. And no matter how he’d conserved his “credibility”, Bush wouldn’t have enough to take on Iran–or, rather, to see it through–right now. No president would.
Because they don’t have any viable means to DELIVER it. And as soon as they do, it can be destroyed (by Israel).
It would seem they do: Israel asks Ukraine to demand Iran return illegally-sold cruise missiles
Call me simpliste, but I do think any spy agency that can’t keep abreast of nuclear capabilities in the “nations of concern” isn’t worth much more than a bucket of spit, warm or otherwise.
Kyda,
Don’t rely on the report of a Copperhead journalist in making your determination. She was lying when she wrote the first word and still lying when she wrote the last.
I don’t want to see the NEI – it’s classified – but I refuse to measure the status of our intelligence providers by this stupid twits piece.
Kyda’s right. The Shahab 3 was their version of the No Dong 1 they bought from N. Korea almost ten tears ago. Range – 1300km. This brings them within “range of the capitals and most of the territories of the states of the Near and Middle East; the Caucasus; Pakistan; most of Central Asia and Turkey; and part of India” (from the JIC report). Not only that, but the technical drawings the IAEA saw of their gas centrifuge (the P-2) were the same as the drawings that were acquired by Libya from AQ Khan. My question is that if they have no nefarious intentions, why purchase technology quietly and secretly from a source like AQ Khan?
Ten years my butt.
Roger:
Be careful, you could receive the same nasty comments I did when I wrote a post on the book, Atomic Iran, and the organization IranFree.org. If you dare to read the comments, go to my post, NUKE IRAN IN 2015?.
All the Best,
Martin Lindeskog – American in spirit.
Gothenburg, Sweden.
Turbino:
Ummmm….
Right now, Iran has missiles that can reach Israel and essentially all of the capitals of Europe.
I’d say that that is a delivery systen, no?
And they will shortly have true ICBM capability.
Rick,
I wasn’t trying to dis Bush. I agree with your statement. No one could have done a better job, as far as I can see, and the press is actively hostile to the interests of the nation as a whole. Neither of his two Democratic opponents could have done as good a job, in my opinion.
But, the fact remains that by vociferously claiming that we had to invade because Iraq had a WMD program and then turning up practically nothing, the administration has egg on its face and has lost political capital. There is now a boy-who-cried-wolf effect in operation. This weakens our position.
To expound a bit on my precipitous post on a similar thread below. The ‘genie’ is out of the bottle. I agree that Iran will have the bomb and an adequate delivery system within the next several years. I also feel that we have no real way to stop it. And, as pointed out above, there will be many more countries with the same capability coming up soon. The point of my ‘nuke ‘em all’ comment in the thread below, was that we need to impress upon these various countries that we will ‘in future’ be operating under a modified version of MAD. But in this iteration we will not have an absolute surety of who was/is responsible for us or one of our allies being subject to a nuclear explosion. We will respond in kind, to all countries who have not met a ‘standard’ of accountability and openness in which we make the rules. We ‘somehow’ (yes, that’s a big somehow) impress upon the non-democratic, dictatorial, and essentially fascist states who posses such weapons that if we or one of our allies is struck, we will respond with certain destruction of their main political/population centers. All of them. At once. Let them work out how they will ensure that these weapons are not used in a callous or precipitous manner, nor sold/given to those who would do so. Let every one of them live under the sword. It is ridiculous that the most powerful country in the world, in concert with its also powerful allies, can be dictated to by such a group of preposterous losers, which is where I place NK, Syria, Iran and any other who would care to join that group.
WB,
I agree. Not just Bush, but the world was let down by the slovenly analysis concerning WMD. I’m just afraid that the new “intelligence czar” has chosen a path that will lead to the same place.
We simply don’t have quality humint resources due to the Church committee idocy. Sigint won’t cut it.
There’s times when it sucks to be a democracy. It should be possible to “salt” a weapon pit with trace elements to suggest an Iranian origin and to make an updated “Little Boy” using components captured from KQ Khan’s network and stuff the lot of it into a BLU-113, then load it into a B-2 and create a credible “work accident” at one of the Iranian research labs. Only problem is that you’d have to be abosultely certain that no one involved leaked, and there’s only one way of doing that… As I’m not posting this at Democratic Underground, I sincerely doubt that we’d go that far.
Luther,
I am in favor of US policy moving to holding each member of the Axis of Evil hostage to the behavior of all – and the behavior of all their proxies, agents, siblings and offspring.
US policy, to paraphrase Richard Boone’s John Fain character in Big Jake – Dr. Rice makes a tour of key points on the globe repeating, with suitably cold stare and the slightest of murderous sneers, “There’s only one thing you need to understand. If anything goes wrong – your fault, my fault, nobody’s fault – you die, your children die, and all your friends die.”
Thanks ‘Knuck’. That makes two of us at the least
Extreme dangers call for extreme measures. Of course, you now have me fantasizing about Dr. Rice delivering the “Jake” line to all those who need to hear it. I’d pay good money to be present at such a conversation. I’d pay more money to see our policy shift in such a direction. We will be forced, one day, to draw that huge line. I just hope it is before and not after.
In two years when Iran detonates its firt bomb the wapo headline will read: Bush Administration Caught off Guard by Iranian Nuclear Explosion
An Israeli attack by plane would require refueling, and I suspect our facilities in Iraq could be helpful in accomplishing this.
reading some of these comments reminds me why our country is going to hell in a handbasket. you are all such a cowardly bunch of chicken hawks who would like to nuke and manipulate the entire world from you sofa. oh yeah how can we strike iran? how can the isrealis defend themselves? excuse me. From what I have heard Isreal already has around 300 nukes. I think they can defend themselves. By your logic any country that “might” be a threat MUST be attacked. You are all insane. You should be ashamed but because I think so little of you and you pathetic logic I expect nothing at all and wont waste my breath trying to appeal to your better senses which you dont even have. Get a job in the new propaganda/media, they like people like you. The End.