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Here is what the professionals are saying
about the Republican-dominated Subcommittee on Intelligence Policy
report on Iran that slams US intelligence professionals for poor
intelligence on Iran: The report demonstrates that these Republicans
have poor intelligence . . . on Iran. What follows is summaries
of things I've seen from other experts but I can't identify them
without permission..
First of all, former CIA professionals
Larry Johnson and Jim Marcinkowski point out that the Republicans
have a lot of damn gall. It was high members of this Republican
administration who leaked to the Iranians and the whole world
the name of Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA operative who spent
her professional career combatting the proliferation of WMD and
was, at the time she was betrayed by Traitor Rove and his merry
band, working on Iran. Had it not been for these Republican figures,
none of whom has yet been punished in any way for endangering
US national security, we might know more about Iran.
It is being said that the staffer
who headed the report is Frederick Fleitz, who was a special
assistant to John Bolton when Bolton was undersecretary of state
for proliferation issues. Fleitz was sent to the unemployment
line when Condi wisely exiled Bolton to the United Nations, where
there is a long history of ill-tempered despots who like to bang
their shoes on the podium. So this report is the long arm of
Bolton popping up in Congress. It is Neoconservative propaganda.
I repeat what I have said before,
which is that John Bolton is just an ill-tempered lawyer who
has no special expertise in nuclear issues or in Iran, and aside
from an ability to scare the bejesus out of young gofers who
bring him coffee and to thunderously denounce on cue any world
leader on whom he is sicced, he has no particular qualifications
for his job.
Nor do the Republican congressmen
know anything special about Iran's nuclear energy program. They
certainly know much less than the CIA agents who work on it full
time, some of whom know Persian and have actually done . . .
intelligence work.
We are beset by instant experts
on contemporary Iran, like the medievalist Bernard Lewis, who
wrongly predicted that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
would attack Israel on August 22, based on Lewis's weird interpretation
of his alleged millenarian beliefs. Once the Neoconservatives
went so far as actually to make fun of reality in the hearing
of a reporter, their game was up.
Pete Hoekstra, who is the chair
of this committee, has a long history of saying things that are
disconnected from reality. Like when he made a big deal about
some old shells with mustard gas found in Iraq left over from
the 1980s Iran-Iraq War, and claimed that these were the fabled
and long-sought Iraqi WMD over which 2600 of our service people
are six feet under and another 8000 in wheelchairs. Nope.
Bolton at one point was exercised
about an imaginary Cuban biological weapons program, which even
his own staffers wouldn't support him on, and at one point he
was alleging that Iranian mullahs were sneaking into Havana to
help with it.
This congressional report is
full of the same sort of wild fantasies.
On page 9, the report alleges
that "Iran is currently enriching uranium to weapons grade
using a 164-machine centrifuge cascade at this facility in Natanz."
This is an outright lie. Enriching
to weapons grade would require at least 80% enrichment. Iran
claims . . . 2.5 per cent. See how that isn't the same thing?
See how you can't blow up anything with 2.5 percent?
The claim is not only flat
wrong, but it is misleading in another way. You need 16,000 centrifuges,
hooked up so that they cascade, to make enough enriched uranium
for a bomb in any realistic time fame, even if you know how to
get the 80 percent! Iran has . . . 164. See how that isn't the
same?
The report cites the International
Atomic Energy Agency only when it is critical of Iran. It does
not tell us what the IAEA actually has found.
By the way, here is what IAEA
head Mohamed Elbaradei said in early March, 2003, about Iraq:
'After three months of intrusive
inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication
of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq.'
At the same time, Republicans
like Donald Rumsfeld were saying he knew exactly where Iraq's
WMD was!
Elbaradei was right then, and
Fleitz was wrong. Can't get fooled again.
And here is what the IAEA said
about Iran just last January:
"Iran has continued to
facilitate access under its Safeguards Agreement as requested
by the Agency, and to act as if the Additional Protocol is in
force, including by providing in a timely manner the requisite
declarations and access to locations."
Last April Elbaradei complained
about the hype around Iran's nuclear research, and said that
there is no imminent threat from Iran.
The only thing that the IAEA
knows for sure is that Iran has a peaceful nuclear energy research
program. Such a program is not the same as a weapons program,
and it is perfectly legal under the Nonproliferation Treaty,
which Iran, unlike Israel, has actually signed.
The report allegedly vastly
exaggerates the range of Iran's missiles and also exaggerates
the number of its longer-range ones, and seems to think that
Iran already has the Shahab-4, which it does not. It also doesn't
seem to realize that Iran can't send missiles on other countries
without receiving them back. Israel has more and longer-range
missiles than Iran, and can quickly equip them with real nuclear
warheads, not the imaginary variety in Fleitz's fevered brain.
Folks, we are being set up
again.
Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana
Institute. This article is extracted from Juan Cole's website.
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