Little Mistake? Maybe...
I read on the NYTimes website today that two separate National Intelligence estimates, one from 2005, the other from 2007, had contradicted each other over the subject of Iran and Atomic weapons enrichment. According to the article, written by Mark Mazzetti, a recent report says that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program back in 2003; however, in a report issued in 2005, it was said that, at that point, Iran was still working hard at creating a nuclear bomb. Now, Iran is continuing to enrich uranium, but this is said to be for "civilian purposes." Whether or not you believe the purpose of their uranium enrichment, a recent report has said that even this enrichment program would provide Iran with enough material to produce a nuclear weapon " . . . sometime in the next decade."
At this point, I can say that I'm not honestly sure what to believe. There are other things one can do with uranium other than for weapons purposes, for it can also help to produce electricity. Of this situation, though, the most worrying part is the difference in the two reports mentioned earlier on.
All things considered, a government is generally supposed to be well-informed and consistent. But when you consider what has happened with these two reports, you really start to wonder how and where we get these reports from. Now, some may not consider this all that important; but think about it. The preliminary of these two reports said that the Iranian nuclear enrichment program was continuing on quite vigorously; the most recent, however, says the program had ceased two years before the earlier report was released. If the 2007 report is to be believed, then we were lied to about Iran's nuclear enrichment program. But this makes you wonder: why did the government lie to the American public about the Iran situation?
Take a minute to think though: at what other time where we lied to for war purposes. If you're thinking Iraq, you and I may be on the same page. We were told that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and when we got there, it turns out there where none. Now, we were told earlier on that Iran was pursuing a nuclear enrichment program. We believed that the Bush Administration when they told us about the weapons of mass destruction, and, due to this belief, we were led into the Iraq war. Take a look at the similarity between the two lies. If the government lied to us in this manner to get us into Iraq, were they, possibly are they, trying to do the same to get us into Iran? Considering the catastrophes that occurred in Iraq, think of what awful things might or will happen if we go into Iran?
Part of the problem may have been that there was not as drastic a reaction to the Iranian nuclear enrichment than to the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Maybe we are being more wary of what we are told. Whatever it is, we should be grateful that we are not in there right now.
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Iran
The whole reason behind our invasion of Iraq has to do with "peak oil" I highly recommend any of Mike Ruppert's videos, especially "The truth and Lies of 9/11. He is a former Narcotics Officer with the LAPD, who has been outspoken for years about the "war on drugs," and the hypocrisy of it. He was also one of the first to bravely challenge the "official" 9/11 Conspiracy Theory.
"Peak oil" is the fact that we have reached the turning point in oil production. We have now used up over half of all known natural gas and oil reserves; and the demand is increasing at an expotential rate, largely due to the merging economies of China and India...India is doing well, and China, because Corporations are "outsourcing" (shipping) American jobs over-seas. This, together with an uncontrolled influx of "illegal" aliens, has devastated the middle and lower classes of America. Untimately, the immigration issue hurts both Americans and the illegal immigrants, because it allows Corporations to do away with worker rights, and any fair compensation, among other things. The only winner are the big Corporations.
I believe it was Stalin, but I may be wrong there, but a political leader once said: "Fascism should be more rightly called Corporatism, for it is the perfect merger of Corporations and State."
If that is not what we now have in the U.S., I don't know what is. Our Bill of Rights has been almost completely dissolved, at least on the Federal Level, by the "Patriot" Act and other Executive Orders that would make Orwell Proud. I also highly recommend Aaron Russo's last movie, available to watch for free (last time I checked) on Google video, entitled, "America: From Freedom to Fascism."
Between this, and the Mike Ruppert presentation, one can finally understand what's going on in American foreign policy, and other geo-political events around the world.
Closing our eyes to truth will not make the bad things go away. Just look at the recently de-classified "Northwoods" documents, if you doubt what the U.S.gov't is willing to do to meet its political and military objectives, which are driven by the interests of a small group of powerful and untra-wealthy men.
hard to say "i don't know"
Clafabio -
There's little doubt that Bush wants to paint Iran as a big, scary threat - as many papers are reporting at the time he was freaking us all out about "WWIII" with the Iranian mullahs he was probably (certainly?) aware of the NIE's report. And, yeah, the lesson of Iraq tells us that we need to be careful about being duped by supposed threats that the administration tries to sell us.
But I'm not so sure that the entire intelligence community is in cahoots to fabricate threats that don't exist. I think something much more subtle is going on - that is, people like to give answers and don't like saying "i don't know." But in the case of Iran, it may just be that we don't know what's going on - as Justin Logan of Cato says (as other smart folks say), our intelligence there is just so shoddy that any intelligence information that we get right is really just lucky guesswork.
My bet is that our intelligence agencies' view of Iran probably didn't changed much between '05 and '07, that they were somewhat on the fence of what was really going on - but that for each report, when they had to sit down and say "what's the upshot?" they had to come up with something and so went the direction where there was a preponderance of evidence. 2005 they came up heads, 2007 tails.
The truth of the matter is that we'll never know if Iran is building a bomb until Iran has a bomb. The good news is that most nukes wathchers think that even if Iran was working full steam to build a bomb, we have anywhere from two to ten years before it's ready to go - that's a lot of time to build better relations with Iran and maybe even nudge them toward a more liberal, democratic state. The other good news is that - contrary to the fears of neoconservatives - even the current ayatollah run country is way too practical to use a bomb or give one to a terrorist organization. Too bad so many in this administration buy the neocon hype and are doing all they can to worsen relations with Iran. Thank goodness for January 2009.
Admitting Truths and Hyping the Unnecessary
It is true: in the Bush Administration, many things have been fabricated, and in many circumstances, do seem to have been sheer guesswork. But this brings one prominent problem forth: why did we elect these people who would tell us mere guesses (or lies), not facts? This is part of what worries me. Back to the Iraq situation, if we were knowingly lied to just to build support for invading Iraq, then how would the Iran hype different? It was a conniving, well-thought-out plan, except for one thing: we did not fall for the bait this time. It just seems that this administration is losing more and more credibility as time goes on, and we have learned that it cannot be trusted. This seems quite problematic, that we have a government that the citizens who brought it to power can no longer trust.
With the WWIII issue, it seems we are all just being bread to fear these people, turn against them permanently for this supposed threat. They may have posed a certain threat at some point, but not that large of one, and it's true: they're knowledgable enough to know not to launch a large war. Since they are this reasonable, it strikes me as quite unwise and plain wrong to make the Iranians out as a bunch of war-loving barbarians.