Personal Intelligence Agency Alert
The previous PIA Alert is here. Anyone surprised at the source of today's alert? From an editorial at National Review that bears the title "Iran, Now" (apparently the rhetorical cousin to and logical evolution of "Faster, Please"):
The marketing of Target Iran continues.
Four years ago, George W. Bush said his administration would not "permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons." Yet precisely that is about to happen.And this:
They now stand on the brink of getting a new weapon -- and this one will let them threaten the incineration of millions of infidels at the push of a button. Is this something that we -- that anyone -- should be willing to live with?We know the U.S. intelligence community's current estimate is that Iran is about a decade away from the ability to produce a nuclear weapon. Even senior hawks in the Israeli military community concede that Iran is at least three to five years away. Thus, unless National Review's definition of "about to happen" and "on the brink" is a decade, it appears to have its own Personal (or in this case Private) Intelligence Agency, the information from which has caused it to reach a radically different conclusion than the large and well-funded U.S. intelligence community that includes the CIA, DIA and NSA.
The marketing of Target Iran continues.
posted by The Cunning Realist at Friday, April 14, 2006
9 Comments:
And on the other hand, you can read the assesment by Russia's nuclear chief of the state of the Iranian nuclear program: http://www.kyivpost.com/bn/24251/
or click here.
They, various groups who desperately WANT a war or bombing campaign in Iran are pushing it now because they see the bush43 only has 2 years left on his dance card. They don't think they'll be able to push that type of action through with anyone who may be more contemplative than this administration.
That means anyone outside of Michael Savage, & I don't see him getting elected.
The largely unspoken-of lie beneath this whole issue is the notion that we have some right to prevent another sovereign country from developing any weapons they choose. If that isn't the height of hubris, from the world's largest arms merchant, nothing is.
Of course we should do all we can to prevent the spreak of nuclear weapon technology, within the bounds of legal, non-violent means. There is a comprehensive international system in place dedicated to just that end.
But if Iran or anybody else pursues nuclear weapons nonetheless, who the hell are we to say we have the right to prevent them from doing so through military aggression? That this is even considered, let alone the default assumption, is a consequence of the Bush regime's illegal war against Iraq. We've been numbed to the idea that we have a duty and right to bomb or invade another country just because we fear an action they MAY take.
If Iran or anybody else we don't like gets nukes, then we must do all we can to assure they are not used by the old-fashioned tried and true methods: first, maintain normalized if not friendly relationship with them, with full and robust diplomatic exchange (think USSR); and second, trust that Iran's leaders do not have a death wish for their own country in the face of certain knowledge of massive retaliation should they ever be foolish enough to launch a nuclear strike.
Headline at Bloomberg.com:
"Iran Could Produce Nuclear Bomb in 16 Days, U.S. Says
April 12 (Bloomberg) -- Iran, defying United Nations Security Council demands to halt its nuclear program, may be capable of making a nuclear bomb within 16 days, a U.S. State Department official said. [...]"
....if they had 50,000 centrifuges.
They do have 164 now.
And if my grandma had wheels, she'd be a motorcycle. (German proverb :)
Ooops, didn't see your post further down.
Yes, Iran is being marketed by people we have no reason to trust. But 3-5 years IS a very short time ("on the brink") in the affairs of nations. And we SHOULD be very worried about a world in which the crazies in Iran have nuclear weapons and the ability to deliver them by missile or bomber. Sometimes even your feckless Uncle George is right. It's not the marketing that worries me, it's whether those in the Bush Admin are competent to handle this crisis. And it isn't completely clear to me that we have the capacity to stop them.
All you have to do with this statement is replace "Iran" with "America"
"we SHOULD be very worried about a world in which the crazies in Iran have nuclear weapons and the ability to deliver them by missile or bomber."
My personal intelligence agency estimate for the development of an Iranian nuke capability is based on an assessment of our 'experts' ability to forecast such state secrets accurately in the past few years.
In all honestly, we must admit the record is not too good, even accounting for the fact that intel is only noticeable when it's wrong. The things we keep getting wrong are extremely significant.
Evidence for a skeptical attitude rests on the following,
1. Our failure to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union.
2. Our failure to take seriously the rise of Al Quaeda.
3. Our utter failure to uncover the Khan network.
4. Our failure to predict when North Korea would get nukes.
5. Our failure to foresee Pakistan's nuke program.
6. Our failure to see what Libya was up to. (We got a bit lucky there, but there was still a huge upward surprise at their actual capabilities).
7. Our failure to understand the state of Saddam's WMD programs.
In almost all these case, our estimates have been off by an order of magnitude or more, and often the info is simply out of left field, thus justifying this statisticians estimate of...
10 years +/- 9.5 years
Excellent, love it! » » »
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