A Blow to Bush's Tehran Policy

[Steve Gardner]

No wonder the latest intelligence report was delayed - it wasn't sufficiently anti-Iran. Credit to the intelligence services for sticking to their guns though - it seems they refused to 'sex' this report up.

Source: The Washington Post

A Blow to Bush's Tehran Policy


By Peter Baker and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, December 4, 2007; Page A01

President Bush got the world's attention this fall when he warned that a nuclear-armed Iran might lead to World War III. But his stark warning came at least a month or two after he had first been told about fresh indications that Iran had actually halted its nuclear weapons program.

The new intelligence report released yesterday not only undercut the administration's alarming rhetoric over Iran's nuclear ambitions but could also throttle Bush's effort to ratchet up international sanctions and take off the table the possibility of preemptive military action before the end of his presidency.

[Steve Gardner]

So now that the US has been forced to admit that its claims about Iran's nuclear ambitions were er... 'sexed-up', the goalposts have been moved. Now the emphasis is Iran's alleged missile threat.

Expect the goalposts to move again once most rational people realise this is more hyperbole. Watch for a shift to accusations that Iran possesses the 'knowledge' needed to build a nuclear weapon.

Source: The Associated Press

By DESMOND BUTLER

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States says it will not alter plans to build a missile defense system in Europe despite findings by U.S. intelligence agencies that Iran does not have an active nuclear weapons program.

Since U.S. officials have said the threat from Iran was the main reason for building the defense shield, however, the Americans may have a harder time persuading European allies that it still is necessary.

Already, a Czech official responsible for explaining the need for the missile defense system to the public in his country says his job has become more difficult after Monday's release of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. The report, reflecting analyses of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, concluded that Iran suspended its attempt to build a nuclear weapon four years ago.

"Czech newspapers are full of headlines saying there is no longer a need for missile defense," said Tomas Klvana, the Czech government's coordinator for missile defense communication, who is in Washington for talks with administration officials and lawmakers. "It is hard for complex arguments to win against simple headlines."

The proposed system would include radar installations in the Czech Republic and interceptors based in Poland.

Klvana says the potential threat from ballistic missiles aimed at Europe remains, whether Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons or not.

That view is shared by the Bush administration.

"The missile threat from Iran continues to progress and to cause us to be very concerned," said Undersecretary of State John Rood, lead U.S. negotiator on European missile defense issues. "Missile defense would be useful regardless of what kind of payload, whether that be conventional, chemical, biological or nuclear."

Rood said the United States still hopes to build the system, which would include radar installations in the Czech Republic and interceptors based in Poland and have it online by 2013.

The United States has said that those sites were chosen to position the system to counter a threat from Iran, but Russia has objected strenuously to the plans, arguing that the system could undermine the deterrence of its nuclear arsenal. The disagreement has led to the worst friction in U.S.-Russian relations since the Cold War.

On Tuesday, Rood reiterated the U.S. position on the threat from Iran in talks with one of the most vocal critics of the U.S. plans, Russian Army Chief of Staff Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky. Baluyevsky is in Washington at the invitation of his U.S. counterpart, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen.

Rood has pointed to Iran's announcement this month that it has manufactured new missiles with a range of 1,200 miles. That distance would put parts of southeastern Europe in targeting range. U.S. officials have said they recently provided Russia with intelligence on the developments in Iran's missile program.

Rep. Ellen Tauscher, the California Democrat who a heads a congressional panel that has steered money bills for U.S. missile defense programs, also says the National Intelligence Estimate will not affect funding considerations for the project.

"The NIE does not play into our consideration," she said. "Nothing has changed."

Tauscher successfully pushed to withhold financing for construction of the site in Poland in a bill passed last month that provided most of the money requested by the Bush administration for the overall program. She says she would consider seeking to restore it in future legislation if the interceptor system were tested properly and if the administration won approval for the plans from the Polish and Czech governments.

That effort now seems more complicated by a perception in those countries that the administration has oversold the threat from Iran.

"The United States has been adamant in not tying missile defense plans in Europe to a threat from Russia," says Julianne Smith, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Europe program. "If you knock down the threat from Iran, it complicates the communications strategy."

Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved

[Steve Gardner]

How refreshing to see a US politician talking sense for a change.

Source: Information Clearing House

By Ron Paul

12/11/07 "ICH" -- -- The latest National Intelligence Estimate has been greeted by a mixture of relief and alarm. As I have been saying all along, Iran indeed poses no quantifiable imminent nuclear threat to us or her neighbors. It is with much alarm, however, that we see the administration continue to ratchet up the war rhetoric as if nothing has changed.

Indeed nothing has changed from the administration's perspective, as they have had this latest intelligence report for some time. Only this week has it been made known to the public. They want it both ways with Iran. On the one hand, they discredit the report entirely, despite it being one of the most comprehensive intelligence reports on the subject, with over 1,000 source notes in the document. On the other hand, when discrediting it fails, they claim that the timing of the abandonment of the weapons program, just as we were invading Iraq, means our pressure must have worked, so we must keep it up with a new round of even tougher sanctions. Russia and China are not buying this, apparently, and again we are finding ourselves on a lonely tenuous platform on the world stage.

The truth is Iran is being asked to do the logically impossible feat of proving a negative. They are being presumed guilty until proven innocent because there is no evidence with which to indict them. There is still no evidence that Iran, a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, has ever violated the treaty's terms – and the terms clearly state that Iran is allowed to pursue nuclear energy for peaceful, civilian energy needs. The United States cannot unilaterally change the terms of the treaty, and it is unfair and unwise diplomatically to impose sanctions for no legitimate reason.

Are we to think that Iran hasn't noticed the duplicitous treatment being received by so-called nuclear threats around the globe? If they have been paying attention, and I think they have, they would see that if countries do have a nuclear weapon, they tend to be left alone, or possibly get a subsidy, but if they do not gain such a weapon then we threaten them. Why wouldn't they want to pursue a nuclear weapon if that is our current foreign policy? The fact remains, there is no evidence they actually have one, or could have one any time soon, even if they immediately resumed a weapons program.

Our badly misguided foreign policy has already driven this country's economy to the brink of bankruptcy with one war based on misinformation. It is unthinkable that despite lack of any evidence of a threat, some are still charging headstrong into yet another war in the Middle East when what we ought to be doing is coming home from Iraq, coming home from Korea, coming home from Germany and defending our own soil. We do not need to be interfering in the internal affairs of other countries and waging war when honest trade, friendship, and diplomacy are the true paths to peace and prosperity.

[Steve Gardner]

Bush is truly a clown, isn't he?

During his tour of the Middle East, he made what for me is a remarkable admission - that he's free to effectively dismiss the NIE and continue his aggression towards Iran on the basis that it didn't reach the conclusions he wanted!

The question is: if he doesn't get his intelligence re: Iran from his own intelligence reports, on what basis does he assert that Iran is a threat?

Source: Yahoo News

AFP - Wednesday, January 16 06:57 am

RIYADH (AFP) - US President George W. Bush on Tuesday appeared to distance himself from what he called an "independent" US intelligence finding widely seen as dousing the likelihood of armed confrontation with Iran.

"I just made it clear that all options are on the table, but I'd like to solve this diplomatically -- and think we can," Bush, in Saudi Arabia as part of a week-long Middle East trip, said of talks with Saudi King Abdullah.

The US president said he told his host he still viewed Iran as "a threat" despite last month's US National Intelligence Estimate, which concluded that Tehran had shelved its nuclear weapons program in 2003.

The NIE, the consensus finding of all 16 US spy agencies, undermined the Bush administration's claim that the Islamic republic was actively seeking to get an atomic arsenal -- though it also noted that Tehran has refused to suspend uranium enrichment, which can be a key step in that direction.

"I defended our intelligence services, but made it clear that they're an independent agency; that they come to conclusions separate from what I may or may not want," said the president.

Bush said he had also told the king that the Iranians "were a threat, they are a threat, and they will be a threat if we don't work together to stop their enrichment."

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal however avoided any forceful criticism of Iran when asked by a journalist if he considered the country a threat, as Bush said it was.

"Iran is a neighboring country and important in the region," he said. They had nothing against the country but hoped that Tehran responded to UN calls for it to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Iran should avoid escalating its dispute with the UN and the IAEA, he added. "It's not in its interests."

Citing an anonymous senior US administration official, Newsweek magazine reported Monday that Bush had all but disowned the NIE in talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

"He told the Israelis that he can't control what the intelligence community says, but that (the NIE's) conclusions don't reflect his own views" about Iran's nuclear-weapons program, the weekly quoted the official as saying.

Asked whether Bush doubted the findings, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino did not answer directly, saying instead that the president had "complete confidence in the intelligence community."

"He does not believe that the NIE that was produced ... should provide anyone any comfort that Iran is not a threat," she told reporters.