Iran: February 2008 Archives

You think that's hyperbole, don't you?  Try this story on for size:

Mohammad Mohaddessin, a representative of the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran...claimed that, for the first time, Tehran had established a command and control center to work on a nuclear bomb and that southeast of the capital it was also setting up a center to produce warheads....

Four years ago, the group disclosed information about two hidden nuclear sites that helped uncover nearly two decades of covert Iranian atomic activity. But much of the information it has presented since then to back up claims that Iran has a secret weapons program has not been publicly verified.  

Public verification of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program.  My, but the good folks at Haaretz are dim of bulb.  Unless, I suppose, they have more confidence in NCRI's covert intelligence-gathering capabilities than that of the vaunted U.S. "intelligence" community, which is trying like the devil to pretend that the mullahgarchy is as nuclearphobic as Jane Fonda and just waiting to be our good, close, personal friends if we'll only fill the air with enough diplovomit and make enough concessions.  Almost like the CIA and like agencies have become wholly owned subsidiaries of Foggy Bottom - which they have.  Rest assured, if our so-called spooks do have proof of what is already patently obvious, they will dig a hole to the planet's core in order to bury the "verification" of Tehran's atomic treachery where nobody will EVER find it.  We can't go publicly embarrassing our aspiring good, close, personal friends, after all.

Our bosom buddy Adolph Ahmadinejad had some more kind words for his beloved neighbors down the Middle East block yesterday:

In yet another verbal attack against Israel, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the Jewish state a "filthy bacteria" whose sole purpose was to oppress the other nations of the region.

"The world powers established this filthy bacteria, the Zionist regime, which is lashing out at the nations in the region like a wild beast," the Iranian president told supporters at a rally in southern Iran.

"[Israel] won support [from the other nations] which created it as a scarecrow, so as to keep the people of this area under control," Ahmadinejad said.

Oh, yeah, it's just words, hot air from a buffoon, right?  Sure; so was Mein Kampf.

The Geico caveman lookalike wasn't the only Iranian stooge to send the Jews his best regards:

Last week, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported that Commander-General Muhammad Ali Jafari of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps wrote in a letter to Hizbullah head Hassan Nasrallah that he was convinced "that Hizbullah's might is increasing with every passing day, and that in the near future, we will witness the disappearance of this cancerous growth called Israel."

Later that day, the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of Iran, Major-General Hassan Firouzabadi, said in his own letter to Nasrallah that "the hero-breeding land of Lebanon... [would] nurture hundreds and thousands of such heroes... and that combatants of the Lebanese and Palestinian Islamic resistance [would] continue the struggle until the complete destruction of the Zionist regime and liberation of the entire Islamic land of Palestine."

Maybe it would just be impotent spittle if the mullahs didn't possess a growing arsenal of medium- and long-range ballistic missiles, and weren't within as little as six months of turning out their first home-made nuclear warhead.  I also can't help noticing ol' Mahmoud's inclusion of "the world powers" - a not very subtle reference to the West in general and the United States in particular - as being responsible for Israel's continued stubborn existence.  As once and future (God willing) Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has repeatedly stressed, Israel is just the appetizer; once the mullahs are finished finishing the Holocaust, we're "next".

Some Jews, at least, are not blind to the history that is repeating itself:

I am worried. Last year I did some historical research on the shifts in discourse within British, Japanese, and South African official elites prior to their use of biological weapons. In all these cases, including the deliberate distribution of small pox-infected blankets by the British in North America, the use of bubonic plague by the Japanese in China, and the use of anthrax by the South Africans in what was then Rhodesia, use of biological agents was preceded by an escalation of rhetorical campaigns to demonize and dehumanize the targeted enemy.

Amazing that they didn't mention the Nazis.  Maybe to the folks at Harvard's Olin Institute's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs that goes without saying.  I wish, though, that they'd say it anyway, as nobody else in this country seems to understand it - not even on the Right.

So I must say it again, no matter how small a voice I project: war with Iran is inevitable.  We can either undertake the mission to "disarm" that country now, assuming they don't already have nukes purchased from their North Korean allies or loosely controlled post-Soviet inventories, and prosecute the conflict on our terms; or we can continue to piss away whatever window of time we have left until the Iranians provide "public verification" of their nuclear weapons program by incinerating Tel Aviv, or Paris, or New York.  But either way, there will be war, and it will not matter whether or not we're "ready" for it.  We'll have it, whether we like it or not.

Personally, I'd rather fight it without absorbing hundreds of thousands or millions of civilian casualties first.  But that just does not seem to be the way of democracies.  I had hoped that the Bush Doctrine might, just might, change that.  Guess I can round-file that pipedream right alongside the conviction that the American electorate wouldn't forget we're at war and put the party of the pacifistic Fifth Column back in unified power.  Somehow I don't think the next "Pearl Harbor" will be nearly as relatively inexpensive yet nationally galvanizing as its two predecessors.

But what else can you expect from spreaders of "filthy bacteria" - right?

We're a tad late to the party on this one, but even a week later the novelty of a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee smackdown of the hyper-left-wing "intelligence community" over its pro-Iranian interference-running is sufficiently jaw-dropping that it merits a mention even this belated:

Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell took careful steps to reconsider key portions of a controversial National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear weapons program on Tuesday under sharp questions from members of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

McConnell was grilled on the NIE’s disputed conclusion that Iran had shut down its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003 under international pressure by both Democrats and Republicans.

Senator Bond, the ranking Republican on the committee, chided McConnell for allowing the NIE to be used as a “political football,” and pointed out that the real revelation of the NIE was just the opposite of how it has been portrayed in news accounts at home and abroad.

“The main news of the NIE was the confirmation that Iran had a nuclear weapons program, not that it had halted it temporarily,” he said.

Even the presumed, temporary halt was open to question, Bond added. “The French defense minister said publicly that he believes the program has restarted. Now if our government comes to that assessment, then we have set ourselves up to release another NIE or leak intelligence, because this last one has given us a false sense of security.”

"Have," Senator Bond, not "had".  The difference is that the mullahgarchy conceals its nuclear weapons development under the fig-leaf of its program being "dual use," having civilian applications as well as military.  But the openly beastial nature of the Islamic regime and its open crowing of its plans to annihilate Israel and bring the United States to its knees makes as much of a mockery of its smirking protestations that its nuke program is {wink-wink} "peaceful" as the so-called intelligence community made of the term "common sense" with its ridiculous pro-Iranian NIE.

If you're thinking that there's no way a Senate 'Pubbie could possibly get this fiesty without somebody sprinkling Spanish fly in his Metamucil, you catch on fast.  In this case, it was a heapin' helpin' of John Bolton:

John Bolton, the former undersecretary of state for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, blasted McConnell and the NIE on the morning of the hearing in a sharply-worded oped appearing in the Wall Street Journal.

“Few seriously doubt that the NIE gravely damaged the Bush administration’s diplomatic strategy,” Bolton wrote.

The NIE was driven by policy considerations, not actual intelligence, and put the community’s credibility and impartiality on the line, Bolton argued.

“Mr. McConnell should commit the intelligence community to stick to its knitting — intelligence — and return its policy enthusiasts to agencies where policy is made,” Bolton added. He called for the reassignment of the three State Department policy-makers who had authored the NIE.

Man, I wish Dubya had made Ambassador Bolton Secretary of State instead of Condi Rice.  His stubbornly bold stand for the "intelligence" community to exit the "reality-based community" and return to reality seemed to open quite a few Bushkin eyes as well - not that their belated shock covers them in glory:

Senior Bush Administration officials who have read the entire classified NIE have told Newsmax they were “appalled” at the thin sourcing and shoddy analysis.

A former career CIA analyst commented, “I have never seen an intelligence analysis this bad. It is misleading, politicized, and poorly written.”

In a column entitled “Stupid Intelligence on Iran,” the former defense secretary, James Schlesinger, wrote, “Clearly, the key judgments in the NIE were overstated . . . and thus incautiously phrased.”

Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger warned (in a December 13, 2007 Op-Ed in the Washington Post) that the authors of the NIE saw themselves as “a kind of check on, instead of a part of, the executive branch,” and excoriated them for seeking to become “surrogate policy-makers and advocates.”

I could have sworn I said that two months ago when this mullahgarchic press released was, um, released.  Or maybe I was too buried beneath budget season in my day job.  But whoever made the point first (and I wouldn't be saying that if I had been the first), it's gratifying to see it made, and in relatively short order.  Which goes to show how howlingly risible that NIE was.

Pity the damage it did to "the national security interests of the country" in Donk Senator Evan Bayh's words can't be repaired as promptly.