[FREE IRAN Project] In The Spirit Of Cyrus The Great

[Rasker]

August 06, 2005
What's Iran Got to Do With It?
powerlineblog.com

Regular readers know that Jack Kelly is one of our favorite columnists. His most recent column has not yet appeared in print, but is available on his web site, Irish Pennants. Jack addresses recent casualties in Iraq, and puts the spotlight on arms shipments from Iran. He moves on to consider recent intelligence on Iran's nuclear program in the context of that government's implacable hostility toward the U.S.:
From whence might the [Iraqi] insurgents have acquired such weapons and expertise? NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski provided a hint in a broadcast Thursday:

"U.S. military and intelligence officials tell NBC News that American soldiers intercepted a large shipment of high explosives, smuggled into northeastern Iraq from Iran only last week.

"The officials say the shipment contained dozens of shaped charges manufactured recently," Miklaszewski said.

This was old news to Iran expert Michael Ledeen, who’d learned about the seizure a week before Miklaszewski’s broadcast. A reporter was baffled by Ledeen’s ho-hum response.

"So what?" Ledeen said. "It happens almost every day."

The reporter was amazed that the Shia Muslims who run Iran would supply deadly weapons to Sunni extremists in Iraq who use them, often, to kill Shia Muslims.

The reporter’s amazement was a product of the same blindness that declared there could be no cooperation between Saddam Hussein and al Qaida, because the latter were religious fanatics who disliked Saddam because he was secular.

They forgot the oldest adage in diplomacy is the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

***

It is within this context that one must assess the leak to the Washington Post Tuesday of portions of a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran. The portions leaked said analysts didn’t think Iran could develop a nuclear bomb for another ten years.

The analysis is preposterous on its face, because we developed an atom bomb from scratch in less than four years, and knowledge about how to build one has spread widely since then. The estimate by Israel’s Mossad that Iran will have the bomb in two to four years almost certainly is closer to the mark.

I’m more interested in the fact of the leak than in its contents. It appears that a faction within the CIA is once again attempting to use the selective leaking of classified material to influence administration policy.

"There may be some involved in the report who are frightened that Bush would use anything more imminent as a pretext to bomb," said Henry Sokolski, director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, who told the Christian Science Monitor that the CIA’s estimate is "absurd."

Liberals are fond of charging, baselessly, that the Bush administration has twisted intelligence to suit its foreign policy goals. It would be more accurate to say that elements of the CIA, a liberal organization from its inception, have twisted intelligence reporting to frustrate the Bush administration's foreign policy goals.
Posted by John at 10:47 PM | Permalink
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The Sun Is Rising In The West!Soon It Will Shine on All of Iran!

[Rasker]

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What's Iran got to do with, Part II

On Saturday, John linked to a piece about Iran by Jack Kelly on his blog Irish Pennants http://www.irishpennants.com/archives/2005/08/latest_column.php. John focused on Kelly's discussion of how the CIA appears to be using a dubious assessment of Iran's ability to develop nuclear weapons for the purpose of undercutting the administration's contention that this prospect is an urgent concern.

The flip side of Kelly's analysis is that the administration may be trying to "prepare public opinion for action against Iran." Kelly thinks that this may explain why, in the wake of last week's bombing that killed so many Ohio reservists, military intelligence let it be known that large shipments of high explosives are entering Iraq from Iran, something that his been going on unremarked for some time. And a perceived need on the part of the CIA to influence the public not support military action against Iran may explain why the CIA leaked its assessment.

It's far from clear to me that the administration has any plans to attack Iran. It's also far from clear that we have any other workable means of preventing this terror-supporting fundamentalist regime from going nuclear and from continuing to export terror into Iraq.
Posted by Paul at 09:56 PM | Permalink powerlineblog.com

Profile CAIR

A reader alerted us to this editorial from Investor's Business Daily today, but I was unable to find the link until checking for it on Little Green Footballs. Here it is: "Profile CAIR." Charles comments: "Read it all. Finally, after years of mainstream media’s blinkered unwillingness to report the truth about CAIR, a glimmer of light breaks through."
Posted by Scott at 10:59 PM | Permalink
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The Sun Is Rising In The West!Soon It Will Shine on All of Iran!