US Says Iran Mothballed its A-Bomb Project in 2003

About six weeks ago, President Bush said, “I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.” Monday, a new National Intelligence Estimate was released that said, “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program . . . these efforts probably had not been restarted through at least mid-2007.” If Mr. Bush had any personal credibility left, this NIE destroyed it. In the process, it revitalized the independence of America’s intelligence community.

As Ronald Reagan once said, “Facts are stupid things.” They tend to get in the way of what an ideologically driven mind wants to achieve. Mr. Bush has been a neo-conservative empire builder since that Tuesday morning when 3,000 people died in an attack that could have been prevented (“Excuse me, Mr. Atta,” a security guard at Logan Airport might have said, “but you can’t take that box cutter on board."). He launched a war of aggression against the Saddamite regime in Baghdad because of the threat posed by that dictator’s weapons of mass destruction – except he didn’t have any.

Now, it turns out that a third member of the Axis of Evil had hung up it’s A-Bomb seeking shoes back in 2003, and the current nuclear development effort has two goals. The first is to create a civilian energy plant, and the second is to annoy the west. The former is less likely than the latter. Indeed, for what they are spending on a crummy nuke plant, they could build 12 or so real power plants for the poor of Iran to enjoy. However, the government there is as ideologically crazed as the one in Washington.

Stephen Hadley, the thoroughly incompetent National Security Advisor and one of the architects of the Mess in Mesopotamia, said, “We have good reason to continue to be concerned about Iran developing a nuclear weapon even after this most recent National Intelligence Estimate. In the words of the NIE, quote, Iranian entities are continuing to develop a range of technical capabilities that could be applied to producing nuclear weapons, if a decision is made to do so.” That’s a far cry from, “They’re going to nuke Israel next week,” which has been the motto of the Buskeviks of late.

Naturally, the Iranian government can’t let this window for progress stay open. It needs the bullying Bushies to divert national attention from the fact that the economy is on its back and the mullahs own everything. Iranian government spokesman Gholam-Hossein Elham, quoted on the official Islamic Republic News Agency website said, “US officials have so far inflicted ... damage on the Iranian nation by spreading lies against the country and by disturbing public opinion, therefore, they have to pay the price for their action.” Despite everything, Mr. Bush remains fortunate in that his enemies don’t seem to be much better at world politics than he is.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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