Bush's concocted Iran "Threat" Debunked

U.S. Showed the World Exhibit A, Iran as Nuclear Threat; Now Exhibit B Upends It

NEW YORK TIMES
WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 — In the summer of 2005, senior American intelligence officials began traveling the world with a secret slide show drawn from thousands of pages that they said were downloaded from a stolen Iranian laptop computer, trying to prove that Iran was lying when it said it had no interest in building a nuclear weapon.

The slides detailed efforts to build what looked like a compact warhead for an Iranian missile and were portrayed by the Americans as suggesting that the Iranian military was working to solve the technical problems in building a bomb.

Now, that assertion has been thrown into doubt by a surprising reversal: the conclusion, contained in the declassified summary of a new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear programs, that Iran’s effort to master the technology of building a nuclear weapon had halted two years before those briefings.

At the time of the laptop slide show, some European and United Nations officials questioned what they were being shown. “I can fabricate that data,” one said at the time. “It looks beautiful, but it is open to doubt.”

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U.S. Finds Iran Halted Its Nuclear Arms Effort in 2003

NEW YORK TIMES
WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 — A new assessment by American intelligence agencies released Monday concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains frozen, contradicting a judgment two years ago that Tehran was working relentlessly toward building a nuclear bomb."

Same old lies, fabrications, exaggerations and attempts at burying the truth as per Iraq.

Nothing new there from the new resident Evil Empire.

Just to recall, this is the utterly ludicrous scaremongering Bush was employing just a short time ago:

"Bush speaks of third world war

US president George Bush has said the world faces the danger of a third world war if Iran is allowed to develop nuclear weapons."

LOL !



Same old, same old, mind boggingly ridiculous assertions by his NeoCon cabal:


..."And Mike Huckabee, whom reporters like to portray as a nice, reasonable guy, says that if Hillary Clinton is elected, "I'm not sure we'll have the courage and the will and the resolve to fight the greatest threat this country's ever faced in Islamofascism."

Yep, a bunch of lightly armed terrorists and a fourth-rate military power -- which aren't even allies -- pose a greater danger than Hitler's panzers or the Soviet nuclear arsenal ever did.

All of this would be funny if it weren't so serious.

In the wake of 9/11, the Bush administration adopted fear-mongering as a political strategy. Instead of treating the attack as what it was -- an atrocity committed by a fundamentally weak, though ruthless adversary -- the administration portrayed America as a nation under threat from every direction."...

Cont.

One really needs an IQ south of ones birth date if one is expected to fall for utterly laughable fearmongering trash like that straight out of some third rate movie never seen outside of video stores.

Thing one mustn't forget though is that by now a clear majority of Americans are just as fed up with Bush, his NeoCons and their blood drenched, backfiring policies as the rest of the world is.

Thing is, it's definitely fin de siecle for Bush and his NeoCons, maybe the hole Bush has dug the US into even means that it's game over entirely for any remaining aspirations to Empire, with a passing of the torch to new Empires arising in the East, that will enter their reign totally unencumbered by any standards of democracy or international collaboration, after Bush has severely damaged a lot of what was painstakingly built up in that regard in 50 Post-WW II years.

The main legacy of Bush, apart from having dramatically grown the threat from terror attacks, destroyed a lot of democracy at home along with any pretense at a functioning legal system what with having reintroduced torture as a legitimate means of interrogation, is that while he had all the great opportunities that an Empire can offer, he squandered all of them, all he did was basically steer the world back to the primitive and ultimately always counterproductive, sable rattling power politics of the Pre-WW II era, where all you had for centuries was a semi-ceaseless progression of attacks and retaliatory counter-attacks that at the end of the day benefited no one, almost never lastingly changed any major power balances, but certainly caused more than enough bloodshed and misery.

But the immediate question is, what's going to happen when Bush is finally gone concerning the fabricated problem he's made out of Iran, or his legacy of investing no more than half hearted gestures barely masking his total disinterest towards solving the single biggest problem of the Middle East, the fact that there are two peoples out there both deserving their own full statehood, Israelis and Palestinians.

Let's say Hillary wins, is she going to be so desperate for a second term that she'll do everything and more in her first term to fulfill what she believes her electorate expects from her, which by her reading is probably a demonstration of her ability to go kick some ass, deservedly or not being only of secondary importance to the primary importance of appealing to what she thinks the homeboys want, a demonstration of her willingness to lobb a few bombs around the place, never mind the consequences down the road ?

I don't for a minute believe that a self-confident and balanced majority in the US wants anything of the sort, but a far more vocal, insecure and paranoid minority scared to death by all the successful scaremongering Bush has spent the greatest part of his tenure on spreading, is certainly sending out those messages that she appears to be hearing louder and clearer than the voice of reason and common sense.

The neocons must be foaming at the mouth.

But notice that they (CIA and their mates) are still claiming that Iran did have a nuclear weapons program up until 2003 when they stopped it. The argument will now be put forward that the war on Iraq was a success because it put the frighteners on Iran and made them stop their nuclear weapons program.

The IAEA does not support the US position that there was an Iranian nuclear weapons program up until 2003. They have never reported finding evidence of one. If the US "intelligence" services have relevant information to the contrary, why has it not been supplied to the IAEA ? This is like a mirror image of the nonsense about Iraqi WMD's when Blix reported that the "intelligence" supplied to the UN inspectors by Western countries was valueless.

Nevertheless, this has got to be a real setback to the necon's dreams of another imperialist war, this time against Iran.

But it's not over until it's over. There is still time for a Gulf of Tonkin type incident, possibly on the Iraq/Iran border on in the Gulf. I wouldn't bet that it couldn't happen.

Well the argument that Rice has come up with is that it shows results of international pressure worked - only forgetting that in 2003 no pressure was applied on Iran and it was 2 years before Irans fiery president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office!!

The US administration are getting their numbers mixed up. My middle finger to them all.

Great points Craig.

Also totally agree that with Bush and his NeoCons, anything is possible at any time.

The only hope is that Bush's NeoCon regime has lost control over the Military and Intelligence Agencies to a degree that while there won't be open rebellion, the latter will still do everything in their substantial powers to prevent another counterproductive disaster like Iraq from unfolding a second time in Iran, eg very understandably Cheney tried to prevent the above National Intelligence Report from the USA's 16 intelligence agencies on Iran from being published, which obviously didn't work, probably not least out of revenge for the way the NeoCons manipulated the agencies Iraq data beyond all recognition to fabricate grounds for that ongoing disaster.

Then again, a Tonkin type of incident probably wouldn't need all that many in the know, and there are always some staunch supporters to be drummed up for dirty works right up till the very end, see Milosevic & Co etc.

DDI, Britain, Germany and France had negotiated with Iran on these issues in 2003, while the US had been totally against that wanting to counterproductively rattle the saber instead as they like doing:

"...The signal event of that period was the agreement in Tehran on Oct. 21, 2003 between the foreign ministers of Iran and the three European states.

In the agreement, Iran renounced nuclear weapons, pledged to sign and begin ratification of the Additional Protocol, and "voluntarily to suspend all uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities as defined by the IAEA".

The three European foreign ministers pledged, in turn, to "co-operate with Iran to promote security and stability in the region, including the establishment of a zone free from weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East in accordance with the objectives of the United Nations."

The Bush administration had opposed the initiative of the European three in offering a political agreement with Iran that would offer security and other concessions as part of a broader deal. The administration wanted to bring Iran quickly before the United Nations Security Council so that it would be subject to international sanctions.

Britain, France and Germany reached an agreement with Iran in mid-November 2004 under which Iran pledged to "provide objective guarantees that Iran's nuclear programme is exclusively for peaceful purposes" and the EU three promised "firm guarantees on nuclear, technological and economic cooperation and firm commitments on security issues".

In any case, it is ludicrous to consider that any country should not be allowed to develope nuclear power which, in its turn, would lead to nuclear weapons if that country wished.

This genie was let out of the box in 1945 and no one is going to be able to put it back.

It is something with which the world will have to live, in much the same way as the Pope will have to live with contraception and abortions and the muslims with womens' liberation. That's the way things are.

Let's be philosophical and hope that we will survive it.

Split

Actually I do agree with that Split.

Dreaming dreams in politics that have no basis in human nature or how the world works have never succeeded, as is amply demonstrated by the Communist experiment, or equally naive ideas like the Dominoe theory behind the Vietnam war, or the downright ludicrous dreams of world domination behind the NeoCons Project for the New American Century that rapidly disintegrated into disaster when theory met reality in the killing fields of Iraq.

No, the world can't be changed through trying to, ahem, have sex for virginity, let alone bomb entire nations into democracy, or go trying to control their oil supplies, nobody wants others tellling them or even forcing them how to live, such projects are doomed to failure from the outset, all such initial actions achieve are their corresponding, eventual reactions.

Tell somebody what to do, and they'll overtly or covertly oppose that out of principle, that is just the way we all are wired.

One should accept what one realistically can't prevent forever, particularly from a cost / benefit view point, besides, nuclear weapons are probably the greatest and most effective deterrent to monkey business from other powers, and are certainly one of the main reasons why peace prevailed during the Cold War, at least when one discounts the proxy wars.

Without the calming effect of nuclear weapons I'm sure that some of the non-thinking, shoot first, damn the consequences types currently running the US but definitely to be found in all nations throughout the ages would have had West and East Block involved in WW III quite some time ago already.

The Chinese have a wise saying:

"To change the State you must change the Province.

To change the Province you must change the City.

To change the City you must change the Family.

To change the Family you must change Yourself.

Change yourself and you have done your part in changing the world."

Only thing that works, leading through example.