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Not only do British spy chiefs have grave doubts that Iran has mothballed its nuclear weapons program, as the US NIE report claimed last week, they believe the CIA has been suckered by Teheran. (HT – Ace) And the British aren’t the only country that t…

Among the big news this week has been the bombshell dropped in the latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE): the determination that Iran stopped its military nuclear program in 2003. You can read the publicly released version of the document here….

georgej on December 5, 2007 at 1:01 PM

I couldn’t agree with you more, in fact I’d say America has now sanctioned for itself the steepest decline in its strong history. Going forward you have little intelligence, zero unity, now a castrated Administration, a stressed military, and an entire 5th column that preys on your media, preys in your critical insitutions, even brings your legislature to a crawl, and now the prospect of a weak Dem govt coming in.. All at the most dangerous of times.

If not for the fact that I’m in Israel I’d boldly state you guys are pretty screwed, only we’re screwed even worse.

From a jihadist point of view why not? The Crusader kingdom lasted 400 years, Israel has only been around for the better part of a century.

kiakjones on December 5, 2007 at 2:08 PM

Good summary.

Why these ‘Intelligence Experts’ can’t see and report on the most obvious facts that even some dummy like me can easily discern, can’t be ascribed merely to Bush Derangement Syndrome….. They must want to bring Armageddon just as much as Ahmadinejad does.

Whatever the reason for their idiocy though, It is taking all my effort not to type a whole bunch of profanities directed at them and their willing media dupes right now.

Not only that but the LWR is inherently safe and one would think in the most earthquake prone areas of the world one would be overly cautious with the possibility of having an accidental meltdown. If the LWR suffers catastrophic damage the released coolant actually acts to shut down the reactor.

Having LWR built for them at the expense of the EU would make nuclear power not only economically feasible but realistic; one can only conclude they are pursuing fuel for weapons.

georgej on December 5, 2007 at 1:01 PM

It’s interesting to learn that the State Department was so influential in this NIE report. I haven’t read much about the NIE yet but have been suspicious of the fact that only a few days after Rice likened Palestinian terrorists with Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement, all of a sudden we’re supposed to believe that Iran is no longer a threat despite all of the threatening words of Iran itself.

If it’s true that the State department is largely responsible for the NIE report then I can’t help but suspect it’s findings. I don’t remember there ever being a time when I trusted the State Department with issues of national security; just the opposite.

Maybe Bush has determined it’s too late in his administration to attack Iran and this provides some cover for that decision in the event that it turns out that waiting was a mistake. Perhaps the release of the NIE report is punishment against Israel because they didn’t bow to the expectations of the State Department at Annapolis. Whatever the case, if this NIE report turns out to have been a product of ulterior motives, it may someday become known as a modern variation of, “Peace for our time”.

Let’s just hope that we all survive so we’ll be able to appreciate the irony.

The National Intelligence Council, which produced the NIE, is chaired by Thomas Fingar, “a State Department intelligence analyst with no known overseas experience who briefly headed the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research,” ….

…Fingar was a key partner of Senate Democrats in their successful effort to derail the confirmation of John Bolton in the spring of 2005 to become the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations.

As the head of the NIC, Fingar has gone out of his way to fire analysts “who asked the wrong questions,” and who challenged the politically-correct views held by Fingar and his former State Department colleagues, as revealed in “Shadow Warriors.”

In March 2007, Fingar fired his top Cuba and Venezuela analyst, Norman Bailey, after he warned of the growing alliance between Castro and Chavez….

…Collaborating with Fingar on the Iran estimate, released on Monday, were Kenneth Brill, the director of the National Counterproliferation Center, and Vann H. Van Diepen, the National Intelligence officer for Weapons of Mass Destruction and Proliferation.

“Van Diepen was an enormous problem,” a former colleague of his from the State Department told me when I was fact gathering for “Shadow Warriors.”

“He was insubordinate, hated WMD sanctions, and strived not to implement them,” even though it was his specific responsibility at State to do so, the former colleague told me.

Kenneth Brill, also a career foreign service officer, had been the U.S. representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna in 2003-2004 before he was forced into retirement.

“Shadow Warrior” reports, “While in Vienna, Brill consistently failed to confront Iran once its clandestine nuclear weapons program was exposed in February 2003, and had to be woken up with the bureaucratic equivalent of a cattle prod to deliver a single speech condemning Iran’s eighteen year history of nuclear cheating.”

We have been ILL SERVED by people whose agenda to bring down Bush outweighs their sworn duty to protect the United States of America.

They have committed treason, if Timmerman is right. And if this allows Iran to continue to build nukes, Americans will die because of this treason.

1) The NIE is right, and we (arguably) wasted a few bombs.

2) The NIE is wrong, and we saved ourselves from having to face a nuclear-armed nation headed by a messianic Islamic lunatic.

Alternately, if we don’t launch the attack, there are still two possibilities:

1) The NIE is right, and we’re OK for a while.

2) The NIE is wrong, and we’re going to face a nuclear-armed nation headed by a messianic Islamic lunatic.

Anybody having any serious trouble doing the math here?

Slightly off topic, but I would like to thank the cameraman for pulling back for the “leg shot”.

nailinmyeye on December 5, 2007 at 12:02 PM

Quite so. Everything the Iranian regime says and does is crushing evidence to support absolute distrust in them.