Monday, May 08, 2006

Personal Intelligence Agency Alert

The previous PIA Alert is here. On Larry Kudlow's CNBC show today, a breathless Jed Babbin, former deputy undersecretary of defense, said this about Iran: "They are maybe eighteen months to three years away. They will use these nuclear weapons through proxies. They will provide nuclear weapons to their terrorist proxies."

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. Despite efforts by some in recent weeks to discredit the NIE and advance the idea that Iran is moving faster than was anticipated previously, the WaPo piece notes that the estimate of a decade is "a minimum designed to reflect a program moving full speed ahead without major technical obstacles." The estimate already accounts for various ways Iran could periodically hasten its work. Thus, Jed Babbin appears to have his own Personal Intelligence Agency, the information from which has caused him 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---increasingly desperate, mendacious, and in Jed Babbin's case, hysterical---continues. With this news just out today, would you expect it to happen any other way?

5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Target Iran is hardly mystifying if taken in its proper context - save Israel above all else.

5/08/2006 7:02 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It was so much easier to keep track of his poll numbers when he just upped the alert level whenever bad news for the GOP came out.

5/08/2006 8:22 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

If they are 10+ years away from developing a bomb, then American aggression towards Iran is surely speeding up that timeline. Nothing like threatening somebody with nukular attack to drive them to want to acquire nukularization capabilitization themselves.

Of course this all assumes that Iran has not purchased bomb-grade material or a weapon from North Korea along with some missiles. Watch out if Kim starts driving around in a shiny new Hummer. What a Bush oops moment that would be if Iran nuked Israel in response to attacks from the USofA. Come to think of it, we don't have any defense treaties with Israel, do we? (aside from the Old Testament)
At what point is Iran within it's right of self defense to pre-empt America's pre-emptive attack? But then their pre-emption would be the provocation the Bushkovites have been waiting for.

5/10/2006 4:09 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Watching Kudlow makes me want to puke. What a relentless Polyanna and shill for the Bush Adminstration.

5/15/2006 12:32 AM  
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3/02/2007 11:50 AM  

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