Keeping track of the oddities
One started sounding reasonable. AP:
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that it was “a step forward” that U.S. intelligence agencies had concluded that Tehran stopped developing its nuclear weapons program four years ago. Ahmadinejad told reporters that an “entirely different” situation between the United States and Iran could be created if more steps like the intelligence report followed.
“We consider this measure by the U.S. government a positive step. It is a step forward,” Ahmadinejad said. “If one or two other steps are taken, the issues we have in front of us will be entirely different and will lose their complexity, and the way will be open for the resolution of basic issues in the region and in dealings between the two sides,” he said.
Another started sounding irrational:
“Iran is dangerous,” Bush said after an Oval Office meeting with Italian President Giorgio Napolitano. “We believe Iran had a secret military weapons program, and Iran must explain to the world why they had such a program…Iran has an obligation to explain to the IAEA why they hid this program from them”…
A little late to be so insistent, if the horse left the barn four years ago. And if the 2007 NIE was itself wrong, then in a sense it is later still. The jury is still out on whether this entire episode has been clever or insipid. But we can’t say we have a good feeling about this.
December 12th, 2007 at 10:57 am
What if the audience for this NIE was the domestic US voter leading up to the 2008 Presidential election? What if President Bush buried this NIE and it surfaced at a later date… would that not be very damaging? The talking points in the MSM would be about “What did he know and when did he know it?”
The NIE is clearly a piece of deprecating organic material and has depreciated the value of the NIE process and the actors that take part in that process. The NIE was written by Chicken Little. The next NIE will be seen through that filter. The NIE process will not survive. That may not be a bad thing.
Common sense will prevail when “new” evidence shows that Iran was playing games during this time period.
What if this NIE spin job was in consideration of an agreement with a group of Iranians who are not the current leaders of Iran? How have the deck chairs been arranged in Iran?
December 13th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
Ok, the U.S. decides who is to be trusted with nuclear technology when they are the ones who have dropped nuks on Japan. They use depleted uranium still in Iraq (which will cause radiation poison in Iraqi people). They call Iran government corrupt (well I would like to know how much money Bush has made and his friends since coming to office). Ok for one thing the U.S. sold Iran their first nuclear reactor but hey thats when America had their puppet in Iran draining Iran’s resources and economy, so things change right? The U.S. and U.S companies sold dual use chemicals to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war then came after Iraq for it and getting Saddam for war crimes, funny. The CIA has used brainwashing and drug tactics to force statement and have also helped topple governments such as Iran’s first democratic government in 1953, that is terrorism. Anyways the list goes on.