Posted on 02/08/2008 5:56:08 AM PST by Brilliant
...The December NIE made headlines the world over for its "key judgment" that in 2003 "Tehran halted its nuclear weapons programs" -- programs that previously had been conducted in secret and in violation of Iran's Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty obligations.
This was a "high confidence" judgment, though the intelligence community had only "moderate confidence" that the program hasn't since been restarted...
So it was little wonder that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad quickly called the NIE a "declaration of victory" for Iran's nuclear programs. Diplomatic efforts to pass a third round of U.N. economic sanctions ground to a crawl... Russia decided to ship nuclear fuel to the reactor it has built for Iran at Bushehr, a move it had previously postponed ...and which has worrisome proliferation risks.
Elsewhere, the NIE complicated U.S. efforts to deploy an antiballistic-missile shield in Central Europe. The Israelis worried that the report signaled the death of American seriousness on Iran, possibly requiring them to act alone. At home, Democrats used the NIE to accuse the Administration of hyping intelligence...
Now Admiral McConnell is clearly trying to repair the damage... "I think I would change the way that we described [the] nuclear program," he admitted to Evan Bayh (D., Ind.) during the hearing, adding that weapon design and weaponization were "the least significant portion" of a nuclear weapons program.
He expressed some regret that the authors of the NIE had left it to a footnote to explain that the NIE's definition of "nuclear weapons program" meant only its design and weaponization and excluded its uranium enrichment. And he agreed with Mr. Bayh's statement that it would be "very difficult" for the U.S. to know if Iran had recommenced weaponization work, and that "given their industrial and technological capabilities, they are likely to be successful" in building a bomb...
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
It means Biden is an a$$. But we already knew that.
It means that the NIE is a buch of stupid cowards.
That’s not new either. The US have the most corrupted spy agencies of the world.
“Admiral McConnell’s belated damage repair ought to refocus world attention on Iran’s very real nuclear threat. Too bad his NIE rewrite won’t get anywhere near the media attention that the first draft did.”
Heaven forbid. That would go against the democrats in the election. MSM can’t do that.
The Admiral is one of the Three Stooges. I will leave it up to the audience to decided which one.
Maybe he used a Magic Eightball on his first analysis.
All of the people who had any knowledge of the situation at all knew that the NIE was crap when it came out, but, it was another shot across the bow at Bush from the weenies at State who’ve never been on board and have worked hard to wreck the Bush Doctrine from the beginning.
One of the things that I like about McCain is that it looks to me like he wouldn’t take this sh*t and he would do a little house cleaning. For all that I like about GW, he never got out the broom and swept the dust out of the corners.
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