"The NIE then highlights, without altering, the underlying issue: At what point would the nations that have described an Iranian military nuclear program as "unacceptable" agree to act on that conviction? Do they wait until Iran starts producing nuclear warheads? Does our intelligence assume that we will know this threshold? Is there then enough time for meaningful countermeasures? What happens to the growing stock of fissile material that, according to the estimate, will have been accumulated? Do we run the risk of finding ourselves with an adversary that, in the end, agrees to stop further production of fissile material but insists on retaining the existing stockpile as a potential threat? " Kissinger
——————————————————————
Henry the "K" has (until now) managed to disguise his relationship to the neocon Jacobins who seek the "perfection of mankind" through political scheming and open warfare. Through the skillful use of avuncular editorials, oracular rumblings and throaty interviews on the Sunday Morning Newsies, he has somehow managed to seem aloof from the policy driven view of "reality engineering" that has been the hallmark of the neocon influence on history.
His regular consulting sessions at the White House and the intimate and profitable links of "Kissinger and Associates" to the Bush Administration never quite managed to damage Kissinger’s image as an elder statesman seeking to "right" the ship of state as a "disinterested" man. Not even the massive and colossal screw-ups of his friend and protege Paul Bremer dimmed HK’s star.
This op-ed published on the neocon dominated editorial page of the Washington Post changes that. In this piece Kissinger comes out of the closet far enough to directly challenge the "right" of the National Intelligence Council (NIC) to make judgments inconvenient to the policy desires of the Administration of the moment.
In this piece Kissinger insists that he (and his friends) know best what is important (and dangerous) in Iran’s nuclear program. He insists that the mere enrichment of uranium is the most dangerous part of such a program. He denigrates the focus of the NIE on actual weapon and warhead research and production, claiming that such prodigies of engineering could be achieved with relative ease once the all-important store of enriched uranium is obtained.
In this process of reasoning, Kissinger ignores the fact that uranium enrichment is also necessary to produce fuel needed to have a large number of atomic electric plants. The difference in the two kinds of enrichment is that weapons production requires a much higher percentage of enrichment. The difference is detectable and so far the IAEA has not detected any efforts to produce weapons grade enriched fuel.
Kissinger’s anger at the "interference" of the spooks in the image building campaign conducted against Iran is palpable. He is revealed as an ally of the AEI fantasists and their friends in the White House. His "crocodile tears" over the poor, misguided souls in the intelligence community are not merely laughable. They are, in fact, symptomatic of a great mind which has lost its own way. pl
Col. Lang:
“They are, in fact, symptomatic of a great mind which has lost its own way”; indeed!
Same with Bernard Lewis who used to be a good historian.
Nuke weapons 101. Uranium based weapons are not deliverable on a missile. They are not shrinkable. Plutonium weapons are. Plutonium weapons are a thousand times more complicated.
In fact the uranium bomb (dropped on Hiroshima) was so simple and the physicists so sure it would work they did not even first test it.
Plutonium bombs need conventional explosive shaped charges acting as refractive lenses and microsecond electronic triggers- matters of precise machining and timing.
Hi verbal and math IQ does not automatically mean good judgment (although they lead to educational success & wealth). Kissinger is a fxking idiot as far as I am concerned.
One out of every four Americans with an IQ over 140 is a Jewish American. This is because their average IQ is 115. Even though their population percentage is only 2.5% of the overall population, that is a result of the the bell shaped Gaussian distribution.
Unfortunately, many of them are blind supporters of Israel when push comes to shove. High IQ does not always go with good judgment. Witness Douglas Feith, for one.
The indicia for nuke weapon development is not nuke enrichment, it is PLUTONIUM. There are reactors that use plutonium and are capable of turning uranium into plutonium, such as the Israeli Dimona reactor. So far, the Persicos are not traveling that road.
Let us recall Super K’s work at secretly implementing the illegal foreign war policy program of another extra-Congressional criminal administration run by a clever president with the minor flaw that he too was a delusional criminal.
But in those days, we walked 20 miles and back to school each day in all seasons – uphill both ways! Back then, Congress could be roused from its gluttonous slumber to defend the Constitution. Now the kids get bussed all about but the criminality of the elite runs ever rampant, ever unaccounttable.
Nothing new here. The “democracy’ we enjoy here is really seen as the plaything of Clifford Kiracole’s trans-national trans-denominational neo-conservative globalized elites. Once in awhile, commonly now, but hardly remarked upon – thanks PL – they can’t be bothered to dissemble, as increasing familiarity with the ease by which such oligopic flim-flammery is swallowed wholesale becomes the narcissistic entitlement to rule in divine self-interest.
henry Kissinger built his career on the status he earned as an expert on the “nuclear bomb”
this is well described by jeremi suri in his recent book: “Henry Kissinger and the American Century”
in the book suri outlines kissinger’s career and his “outsider” relationhip with the “intelligence community” starting with his army days in counterintelligence and continuing to his days on the National Security Council and as secretary of state
from a description of the book on the Woodrow Wilson Center websitse
” – At the end of the day, in Suri’s account, Kissinger’s philosophy boiled down to the need to back democracy with muscle. America, alone of the free countries, said Kissinger, was strong enough to assure global security against the forces of tyranny. Only America had both the power and the decency to inspire other peoples who struggled for identity, for progress and dignity.”
the mindset that suri describes is reflected in kissinger’ op-ed
kissinger’s business must be doing well enough that hi no longer seeks public recognition as an adviser to presidents and is satisfied with speaking out now and then to support the “use of military power”
How can we take back out corporate and zionist controlled media? We need to spread the word about kissinger’s near arrest in France for war crimes. Which and how many war crimes lists is he on, along with his old friend, poppy?
Have a look at the Political Friendster social network for the Zionist Movement. Feel free to add meaningful and verifiable entities and connections.
http://www.politicalfriendster.com/showPerson.php?id=6434&name=Zionist-Movement
They are all so disingenous. It’s time to question the basic premise that knowing how to enrich uranium for electic power clearly means that Iran knows how to enrich it to weapons level. Apparently, Iranian uranium is contaminated with molybdenum and other heavy metals. Frank Barnaby of the Oxford Research groups say that “Iran will…have to solve a difficult technical problem before producing significant amounts of highly enriched uranium. Iranian uranium is reportedly contaminated with large amounts of molybdenum and other heavy metals. These impurities could condense and block pipes and valves in the gas centrifuges. In spite of this problem, the Iranians should be able to enrich uranium to the low enrichment needed for civil nuclear-power reactor fuel. But they would not be able to enrich above about 20 per cent in uranium-235.
They would, therefore, not be able to produce uranium enriched enough for use in nuclear weapons. To do so they would first have to remove most of the molybdenum. They would need foreign technical help – from, for example, China or Russia – to solve this problem…”
http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/publications/briefing_papers/pdf/IranNuclearMar06.pdf
Try getting anyone in the corporate media to run with that story! The propaganda continues.
The only thing to wonder about HK is whether the war crimes investigators will catch up with him before he dies.
Ditto Dick Cheney.
From a technical standpoint he is right. Fissile material is the greatest technical hurdle to building nuclear weapons and once it is mastered it really is a “crossing the Rubicon” event from a purely technical standpoint. There’s a reason why the IAEA does not hand out enrichment technology and why the vast majority of fuel enrichment takes place in consortiums with the actual facilities residing in NPT nuclear-weapons states.
Fuel enrichment is NOT required for all types of reactors (CANDU for example), but it certainly is for the majority of power reactors. Unmentioned is that Iran does not need a domestic enrichment capability to fuel reactors. In fact, it would stand to save quite a lot of money by purchasing fuel on the market, particularly as Kazakh uranium enriched in Russian facilities comes to market and reduces the price in the next few years. Be that as it may, Iran has been offered guaranteed access to reactor fuel which it has rejected. Even under the Shah there were not plans for a domestic Iranian fuel program – instead the Shah signed a contract with EURODIF to provide fuel produced on French soil for Iranian power reactors. That contract (along with every other nuclear contract) was unilaterally canceled by the new Khomeni regime when the fuel production facility Iran partially owned was literally weeks away from completion. Iran would be receiving EURODIF fuel today if not for its actions in the years following the revolution.
As for the IAEA’s ability to detect diversion, it can only do so with facilities under safeguard, but even then diversion is possible unless the Additional Protocol is in place and the member nation agrees to extra voluntary monitoring measures (you can read about some of the problems with current safeguarding methods here.).
The IAEA has no inherent right to investigate the activities of Iran or any other state unless that state allows it or unless third-party intelligence is provided to the IAEA that shows violations. IOW, the IAEA only safeguard’s declared facilities. As we saw with Iraq’s EMIS program in 1991 as well as Iran’s numerous activities for almost two decades, the IAEA isn’t very good at detecting hidden programs. Iraq’s EMIS program was only discovered after the 1991 war and Iran’s activities were only discovered when the US provided the agency intelligence on the facilities.
I greatly enjoy your informative blog, but it seems that you focus more attention lately on neocon aspect of issues above everything else, which, in my opinion, damages your arguments. Assuming your blog here is meant to influence and inform, then I wonder what utility is served by focusing the majority of your effort on allegations that Kissinger belongs to the neocon club instead of wholly puting that effort into refuting his arguments. Examining connections between Kissinger and the neocons do not show that his views are wrong.
Sadly, the tendency these days is to lump people into certain “camps” where they can be safely dismissed without having to substantively address their arguments. From my perspective your increasing focus on the “neocon cabal” over the last six months indicates to me that you’re moving in that direction. It concerns me because you have an important perspective and rare experience that needs to be heard. The trouble is that focusing on groups like the neocons as a group instead of addressing the arguments they make on their merits alone is likely to appeal only to the already converted neocon-haters out there and not those who are sitting on the fence, much less those who are sympathetic to the other side. IOW, refuting arguments, policies and positions is more likely to influence than attempts at labeling. Just my 2 cents.
“The CIA is enemy territory” Paul Wolfowitz Against US Intelligence
The following was posted at the following Internet Newsgroup URL:
http://tinyurl.com/2xxgrx
“The CIA is enemy territory” Paul Wolfowitz Against US Intelligence
The quote in the title comes from a very informative document that you can
read here:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?entity=pa…
There is a good reason why Paul Wolfowitz has no use for the CIA or the US
Intelligence Community. It has to do with the word they share in common.
Intelligence , as in something that is gathered from a study of the facts.
Something that has some basis in reality. Facts just get in the way of
people like Wolfowitz, who make up their minds what they want to do, and then make up excuses why they have to do it.
The document above is a handy resource with links to many sources about things said and done by and about Paul Wolfowitz. I decided to put on my hip boots and wade into Wolfowitz’s career in political propaganda, because
something about the recent Iran NIE bashing maneuver coordinated by the New
York Times and Washington Post reminds me of the run up to the war with Iraq.
Even before 9/11, Wolfowitz is ready to invade Iraq. While Tenet and others worry about Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban, Wolfowitz wants to get on with
the Project for the New American Century —you know, liberating oil that was under the control of brown people. When the CIA and FBI fails to get on board his theories that Saddam blew up the WTC in 1993 “he said something
derisive about how I shouldn’t believe the CIA and FBI, that they’ve been wrong.”
After 9/11, Dept. Defense Sect. Wolfowitz is commissioned by Rumfeld to set up the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group, which picks and chooses which
intelligence it likes.
Critics claim that its members manipulate and distort intelligence,
“cherry-picking” bits of information that support their preconceived conclusions. “There is a complete breakdown in the relationship between the Defense Department and the intelligence community, to include its own
Defense Intelligence Agency,” a defense official will tell the New York Times. “Wolfowitz and company disbelieve any analysis that doesn’t support their own preconceived conclusions.
The CIA is enemy territory, as far arethey’re concerned.”
This group leaked material from the US intelligence community, a patternwhich will become familiar.
According to unnamed Pentagon and US intelligence officials, the group is also accused of providing sensitive CIA and Pentagon intercepts to the US-funded Iraqi National Congress, which then pass them on to the government
of Iran.
http://www.itszone.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=82566
So the question (one of them) is: What smoked K out? Why now? Why he did he feel the urgency to line up with the neocons now, having stayed in the shadows for so long?
Andy
I hsve concluded that the “neocon cabal” deliberately employs propaganda techniques to deceive and that their arguments are not based on logic. they are based on a desire to deceive.
To argue their points is to concede them an audience for their usually fallacious arguments.
In short, I have ceased to consider them honorable men. pl
“I totally concur that Kissinger has really let his true colors show with the shameless attack on the NIE. Not only does it reveal Kissinger’s prominent role in the war party faction. It calls to mind two earlier episodes from Kissinger’s career. First, I believe it was Bob Woodward’s latest mea culpa book on the Bush 43 Presidency that revealed that Kissinger was the most frequent consultant to Dick Cheney, throughout the administration. Second, back in the Nixon era, Kissinger hated the intelligence community, especially the CIA, and did everything in his power as NSC advisor and Secretary of States to trash the CIA, and strip away as much power as he could. Some news documentation of this is found in Legacy of Ashes, recently published.” Harper
As I read the op-ed piece, I kept thinking of history. I can only speak for myself, but I know a few Viet-Nam era vets, me included, who would like to have a “chat” with Dr. “K”. It is strange, the people who want these wars are NOT the ones fighting them. Then, like terrorism, track the money, who is making money off of this war? There are many questions to be answered. Our leaders should not be making money off of this war or any war. It would appear to be a conflict of interest.
Grumpy
Andy:
Iran is a sovereign state. She is also a proud and resourceful country. If her leaders decide that building a nuclear weapon is in her best interest they will do so. And there is nothing any state actor can do to stop them short of invading and occupying that country.
My recommendation to stop diggingis when in a hole.
In regards to EURODIF here is what I know:
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2006_01-02/JANFEB-iranenrich.asp
Will,
That is simply 100% false. If you do some research on US nuclear artillery shells, you’ll find that almost all are HEU gun designs. The earliest of these, built in 52-53, was the W-9 which at 900 pounds is well within the capabilities of many Iranian missile systems.
Perhaps you’ve never heard of Arak?
JohnH,
It’s not a premise – it is established fact. There is no difference in the facilities or technology needed.
As for Iranian UF6 purity problems, that is something Iran can solve on it’s own, provided it hasn’t already. As an interesting aside, do you know why Iran has hex purity problems? It’s because the Clinton Administration convinced the Chinese to stop building a UCF in Iran. It’s considered one of the great nonproliferation accomplishments of the Clinton administration.
Pat,
If their arguments are so fallacious, they should be easy to refute, correct? Might I suggest that removing yourself from debating on the merits because you don’t like your opponents and/or their tactics is counterproductive. How, exactly, is essentially stating “he’s a neocon, therefore he is wrong” adding any substance to the debate?
I don’t agree with a lot of Kissinger’s commentary but he’s right on a few key points, the most cogent being:
Babak,
Your link is a good, short synopsis and notes it was Iran that canceled the contract. One thing it doesn’t discuss is that the principle advantage of the EURODIF model compared to URENCO is that it limits technology transfer and is therefore much safer from a proliferation standpoint.
Pat,
I think this should get boiled down to a simple question of which nations the US (the current administration) will allow to develop nuclear weapon?
If those nations won’t be allowed then how do you deter them? Diplomacy, treaties, sanctions? If none of those work who decides what comes next, the ‘commander in chief’ under the pretext of ‘keeping America safe’, the Congress by declaration of war?
Who then decides to stop the war – based on what? How long does the US stay inside that nation once they have ‘won’.
And just as important – what are the expected consequences of having a war with the nation(s) (Iran) the US (current administration) decides they will not allow to have nuclear weapons?
Andy
The damage done to this country by the people we have been discussing is immense. They are given to sophism and one should be careful about “cutting them slack.”
Thanks for your opinion. pl
Andy:
There is no way to make industrial development safe from a proliferation point of view; not in nuclear energy, not in rocketry, not in chemicals, and not in biotech.
Consider this: the pump used in V2 rcoket engine for liquid oxygen was initially developed for use in fire engines 40 years earlier.
Realistically, what you can do is to try to changes states’ calculations for deploying nuclear weapons. So far, the United States, in my opinion, has done an excellent job of creating incentives for their creation and deployment by many many state actors.
That’s why I wrote: “When in hole, first stop digging.”
Andy,
I would agree with you if all uranium ore was created equal. Yes, Iran could probably eventually solve the problem of impurities in the uranium, GIVEN ENOUGH TIME and RESOURCES or foreign advise. The time frame is significant enough for Barnaby to conclude that Iran would “not be able to produce uranium enriched enough for use in nuclear weapons.”
Therefore the presence of these impurities makes the weaponization process different from the electic fuel creation process. In one case, they have to remove the impurities, in the other case they don’t. You judge the difference to be trivial, Barnaby sees it as virtually insurmountable.
I trust Barnaby on this, because he is a nuclear physicist with established, impressive credentials, including a 55 year career in the field.
The Bushies and their neo-con-job friends are intent on closing the sale and must sweep under the rug any information that suggests energy and weaponization require different knowledge.
Andy,
You seem to imply that you embrace the–false, in my opinion– paradigm that Dr. K, and many, many others offer. That is ‘possession’, or even the desire to ‘possess’ the weapons in question should be the central issue in the matter. “Central” enough, and pivotal enough to contemplate initiating hostiles with a nation we are not at war with. This, as opposed to the use of such weapons. I wonder what would have happened had this been our position with regard to the Soviet Union, or China? Both of whom had a clear ability to deliver the weapons in question at our nation. As opposed to Iran, with a clear inability, at present, and in the foreseeable future to strike at our nation. Why the rejection of retaliation, massive retaliation, of the kind that would not allow the survival of a nation in question, as a strategy? What changed so much to make our nation contemplate this radical, and highly risky, change in strategy?
Andy,
Perhaps you might take a few moments and read the Constitution of the United States. If you can find the time, maybe you could share what you learned with your friends. Maybe you could explain to them, that such a document actually exists. You might also want to tell your friends, that most of those who take the oath to uphold and defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and DOMESTIC, actually take the oath with seriousness and presence of mind.
With my best to you and your friends,
Steve
Former Captain, USMC
I don’t understand how the mind of these people operate at all.
1. The world is watching the neocon closely. Any false move. a) dump dollar, b) stop buying bond, c) start buying oil, gold.
And we already see the result. Remember the $6/gallon and $15 McDonald dinner scenario I was talking half year ago? Nobody is laughing now, isn’t there?
2. Even if Iran has nuclear right now. tactically speaking they will use it as deterrent or retaliation. (in relationship to US) So it would be, US can start advancing, but nuking bases will be a fair game for Iran.
If Iran want to cause damage, they would have launch global banking and oil supply attack instead of nuclear. Far cheaper and more effective.
Iran does not have enough nuke to initiate nuclear war. They would need about 15K heads and proven long range delivery system. (aka, the size of Russia)
that is assuming they can get their act together producing large scale nuke weapon program.
A handful nuke only serve as deterrent period. The logical cost analysis says so.
Iranian nuke in relation to Israel however…
well, it’s different story altogether.
Iran will reach military parity against Israel within a decade if they make the right move.
——-
so it is time for the neocon to see the logical reality of their action.
They can keep pushing war with Iran, but they will ultimately forever redraw domestic political landscape.
the more I hear or read voices like ‘Andy’ – the more I am disgusted; i am reminded of the behavior of the HIV virus which avoids recognition by organisms immune response.
The “Key Judgments” released by the intelligence community last week begin with a dramatic assertion: “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.” This sentence was widely interpreted as a challenge to the Bush administration policy of mobilizing international pressure against alleged Iranian nuclear programs. It was, in fact, qualified by a footnote whose complex phraseology obfuscated that the suspension really applied to only one aspect of the Iranian nuclear weapons program (and not even the most significant one): the construction of warheads.
The actual footnote from the NIE:
1 For the purposes of this Estimate, by “nuclear weapons program” we mean Iran’s nuclear weapon design and weaponization work and covert uranium conversion-related and uranium enrichment-related work; we do not mean Iran’s declared civil work related to uranium conversion and enrichment.
NIE
I cannot say for certain that Dr. K’s “interpretation” of the footnote is accurate. So, how will I judge his op-ed?
First, it’s full of weasle words and phrases such as “appears”, “might” and “Is it unreasonable to assume…” So, here’s my counter-argument:
1. Appears not to the intel agencies.
2. Might not.
3. Yes, it is unreasonable to assume.
Really, all I have left is a judgement of the guy’s credibility. That includes who he hangs out with.
He’s not credible, and neither are his friends.
Problem is, the intel agencies have their own fare share of credibility problems. This is where the media should be helping out people like me – Mr. Average Voter in the Republic – by bringing in experts and trying the best they can to establish who is credible and who isn’t. Basically, trying to determine The Truth.
But they haven’t been honorable players in this mess, either.
Our entire political system is broken. It will take some sort of mass uprising to fix it.
Kissinger? Ah yes, William Yandell Elliott’s star pupil, aside from Zbiggy.
Threat inflation? NEI’s, Iran??? How about 1957-1958?
From a paper I prepared for a conference in China in 2006:
“The imperial faction strove once more to create an intensified sense of external threat and “emergency.” Not surprisingly, we find Paul Nitze again playing a critical role in the escalation of Cold War fears in 1957. At this time, a study on the US-Soviet military balance was put together by the “Gaither Committee,” a group of outside advisors originally tasked by the White House, as the “Security Resources Panel,” to consider civil defense issues.
Nitze played a central role drafting the committee’s final report, which was a sharp criticism of the Eisenhower Administration’s overall defense policy. The final report, using language similar to Nitze’s NSC-68 document, claimed there was a rapidly growing Soviet intercontinental nuclear missile capability. The report laid the groundwork for the “missile gap” propaganda of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Similar propaganda, in 1955, created a falsified “bomber gap” threat. The Gaither Report called for increased defense spending on the nuclear triad as well as spending to create a capability to fight “limited wars” in peripheral areas around the globe.
In January 1958, a similar report was created for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund under the direction of a young Harvard professor named Henry Kissinger. Kissinger’s report offered a sharp criticism of the Eisenhower defense policy and called for defense budget increases and policies much the same as the Gaither Committee report. The Gaither Committee report was a classified government secret document while the Kissinger report was public and, hence, could be used politically in the fall 1958 Congressional mid-term elections and in the run-up to the 1960 general election. There was an overlap in the teams of consultants for both reports which explains the similarities of criticism and policy recommendations.
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund report drafted by Kissinger was used by Nelson Rockefeller, then Governor of New York, to attack President Eisenhower’s defense policies and thereby force a change in the Republican Party’s foreign policy and defense policy in the direction of the requirements of the Wall Street-based imperial faction and away from the Eisenhower “defense liberalism” perspective.
During the 1960 Republican Convention, held in Chicago, Richard Nixon secretly left the convention and went to New York City to meet with Nelson Rockefeller. Rockefeller demanded that Nixon accept his defense policy views and influence the convention accordingly. Nixon accepted and returned to Chicago to work with the Rockefeller Republican forces to defeat the Eisenhower defense perspective. This meant that, whichever candidate won the coming election (Nixon or Kennedy), the imperial faction’s defense policy and imperial strategy would be implemented as Kennedy had adopted the same policy perspective. Traditional Republicans called the Nixon capitulation to the Rockefeller-Wall Street forces the “Republican Munich.”
History records that there was no “missile gap.” Our intelligence services, and President Eisenhower, knew this from the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret U2 flights, which began in 1956, and other national technical means such as the CORONA satellite launched in August 1960, SIGINT (signals intelligence), and HUMINT (human intelligence) such as the Penkovsky case. The hyperinflated Soviet threat was a calculated deception on the part of Nitze and the Gaither Committee, and the Kissinger Rockefeller Brothers Fund report, for political purposes to support massive increased defense spending and an imperial foreign policy.”
Imo, Kissinger is playing the role of the ‘cooler’ at the casino, brought in to break the table’s hot streak. While we here at this table are considering the specifics of what he has just dealt the table, I’d like to suggest that you all step away from the game, and consider the large view; while the specifics of the NIE and the ramifications of the Iranian nuke program rightly need to be sifted through (by much smarter minds than the Usual Suspects of the WaPo, Sunday talkshows, etc), the main question remains the same–given what we know now, what vision do we buy into?
I don’t think there is anybody here who thinks Iran is our buddy, however, buying into the neocon view is to subscribe to the view that Iran is an unrational, unthinking entity that is hell bent on nuking Israel and/or the US as soon as possible. Such a view ignores restraints such as IAEA or the NPT, or even MAD as impractical and imprudent, things to be ignored.
Credibility matters; the same people who were so very wrong about Iraq are now selling us the same story about Iran. Andy, you sound like a knowledgeable person, yet I think that your question/plea is more properly addressed to somebody who really knows this subject–why don’t you ask Valerie Plame?
Kissinger is a master of droning on until everybody at the table is either asleep or mesmerized–he knows it, and has historically used it to his advantage. However, that sage visage and intellectual mumbling should not overshadow the fact that his tenure in the US govt was wrongheaded and extemely damaging to the country’s interests then, just as his unwelcome input is right now.
@Andy
There is Newton’s second law F=mxa
What is the range of an artillery shell?
(forget about Saddam’s (Bull’s) fantasy supergun design?) That’s why the Yamamoto and the Prince of Yales were sunk by aircraft during WWII. Carrier based aircraft exceed the range of artillery shells.
Gun type Nukes can be delivered by aircraft b/ they are easily defended. For missles of any range you need plutonium.
I am aware of the heavy water Arak facility the Neokons are all excited about.
Just getting to the chase quickly. the Persicos are not idiots. They know the Ziocons are out to dismantle Iran the same way they dismanteld Irak. Irak was dismantled on the WMD pretense. SH ran a doublebluff and it backfired. He pretended to have WMD to bluff the Iranians, but didn’t have WMD so he wouldn’t get invaded. Bush invaded anyway.
The Persicos are playing a fine and dangerous game but they are w/i their rights. Hell the Brasilians are enriching through a propitiatory process and even recently resurrected their nuclear submarine program.
What’s the difference? Why are they not targeted for dismemberment?
The Brasilians don’t in the aggregate give a shxt about the West Bank.
Andy,
The NIE was a politically correct tool utilized to let Israel know it is on its own on this one.
As for arguing that the EURODIF or Ukrainian alternative would be cheaper, I find it interesting that you are able to reduce this aspect of the nuclear program to coming down to a simple cost benefit analysis but you fail to consider the overall cost benefit analysis which dictates that Iran should maximize its natural resource exports.
Additionally, you have to consider all the agreements which were broken off by other countries and companies over the course of the past 2-3 decades, this transcends just the nuclear industries.
Fuel enrichment is NOT required for all types of reactors (CANDU for example), but it certainly is for the majority of power reactors. Unmentioned is that Iran does not need a domestic enrichment capability to fuel reactors.
Posted by: Andy | 13 December 2007 at 03:11 PM
yeah but
1. the plutonium out of spent fuel is very complicated to turn into weapon. It’s far easier to enrich uranium in the first place. Anybody actually worry Iran making radioactive junk?
2. CANDU type of reactor is huge facility. You can’t hide it under the kitchen sink or cave. Where is it?
If you want to make speculation. Then it’s going to be the India route. NRX.
We’re seeing a number of less-than-accurate assertions about nuclear weapons design (e.g., confusing gun-assembly HEU designs with implosion designs, or asserting that there is no difference between engineering the capability to create HEU or LEU).
This manner of technical speculation (e.g., the aluminum tubes debacle) is what led to the whole “what if the smoking gun is a mushroom cloud?” mushy thinking that got us into Iraq in the first place, so it’s poor form for us to engage in it now.
Those who know the relevant technology simply cannot describe its technical details here or almost anywhere else outside of the NNSA complex (it’s classified, and the non-disclosure agreements involved are lifelong regardless of whether one continues to work in the nuclear weapons complex or not), and those who describe the technology openly are almost invariably incorrect on the all-important details (if not simply wildly incorrect, e.g., John Bolton).
Nuclear WMD technology in the U.S. is governed by SRD and TSRD classification, and much of what is released into the media is deliberate misinformation intended to provide a certain level of “security through obscurity”. And that disinformation stream is a part of what leads to divergent assertions such as those found here.
The only places in the U.S. where this information is readily available in a complete, coherent, and accurate form are the two physics labs (LANL and LLNL), and the DUSA’s at these labs do not permit public discussion of the underlying technologies, period. It’s highly illegal (the penalties for violation are truly ugly).
So in general, we shouldn’t trust any of the assertions made in the media about nuclear WMD production or design. But on the other hand, the NIE integrates over all the relevant intelligence-gathering agencies, including DOE/NNSA. So the NIE is arguably the best document to trust, and thankfully, we can read the unclassified version.
It’s a good document, well worth reading in its entirety.
And finally, as a veteran of both LANL and LLNL, I would especially advocate complete mistrust of opinions from un-informed un-American neo-con-men like Kissinger.
Where did Kissinger earn his doctorate in weapons physics, anyway?
How about Kissinger in 1957-1958?
From a paper I prepared for a conference in China in 2006:
“The imperial faction strove once more to create an intensified sense of external threat and “emergency.” Not surprisingly, we find Paul Nitze again playing a critical role in the escalation of Cold War fears in 1957. At this time, a study on the US-Soviet military balance was put together by the “Gaither Committee,” a group of outside advisors originally tasked by the White House, as the “Security Resources Panel,” to consider civil defense issues.
Nitze played a central role drafting the committee’s final report, which was a sharp criticism of the Eisenhower Administration’s overall defense policy. The final report, using language similar to Nitze’s NSC-68 document, claimed there was a rapidly growing Soviet intercontinental nuclear missile capability. The report laid the groundwork for the “missile gap” propaganda of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Similar propaganda, in 1955, created a falsified “bomber gap” threat. The Gaither Report called for increased defense spending on the nuclear triad as well as spending to create a capability to fight “limited wars” in peripheral areas around the globe.
In January 1958, a similar report was created for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund under the direction of a young Harvard professor named Henry Kissinger. Kissinger’s report offered a sharp criticism of the Eisenhower defense policy and called for defense budget increases and policies much the same as the Gaither Committee report. The Gaither Committee report was a classified government secret document while the Kissinger report was public and, hence, could be used politically in the fall 1958 Congressional mid-term elections and in the run-up to the 1960 general election. There was an overlap in the teams of consultants for both reports which explains the similarities of criticism and policy recommendations.
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund report drafted by Kissinger was used by Nelson Rockefeller, then Governor of New York, to attack President Eisenhower’s defense policies and thereby force a change in the Republican Party’s foreign policy and defense policy in the direction of the requirements of the Wall Street-based imperial faction and away from the Eisenhower “defense liberalism” perspective.
During the 1960 Republican Convention, held in Chicago, Richard Nixon secretly left the convention and went to New York City to meet with Nelson Rockefeller. Rockefeller demanded that Nixon accept his defense policy views and influence the convention accordingly. Nixon accepted and returned to Chicago to work with the Rockefeller Republican forces to defeat the Eisenhower defense perspective. This meant that, whichever candidate won the coming election (Nixon or Kennedy), the imperial faction’s defense policy and imperial strategy would be implemented as Kennedy had adopted the same policy perspective.
History records that there was no “missile gap.” Our intelligence services, and President Eisenhower, knew this from the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret U2 flights, which began in 1956, and other national technical means such as the CORONA satellite launched in August 1960, SIGINT (signals intelligence), and HUMINT (human intelligence) such as the Penkovsky case. The hyperinflated Soviet threat was a calculated deception on the part of Nitze and the Gaither Committee, and the Kissinger Rockefeller Brothers Fund report, for political purposes to support massive increased defense spending and an imperial foreign policy.”
As I have been reading this discussion, there appears to be a separation. On one hand, you have the nuclear Iran and our thoughts about that situation.
But there is another whole discuscussion in here. This one centers on things like tradition, honor and respect I read what Col. Lang wrote yesterday, 13 Dec 2007 at 03:36PM, “In short, I have ceased to consider them honorable men.” This is one of those statements which felt like a real “back of the head slap.” As I read it, I was reminded of the RICO Act. You have the poisonous tree and everything that comes into contact with it is contaminated, EVERYTHING. This is the reason Col. Lang’s comment had such great value.
To Former Capt. Steve, USMC (Former?), you raised the oath, this is something we should be doing all of the time.
Thanks to all of our military, their families and veterans for your service to this GREAT Nation.
The news just keeps getting better and better. The leaders of the GOI — including those of the IDF — are becoming more and more vocal in their criticism of the NIE and, presumably, the US military and intelligence community.
Maybe the USM will become more vocal in its criticism of the IDF.
Arguably, the USM is at its best when it sticks to the American tradition based on its national experience and history. You can see this tradition at work when reading the handbook for soldiers headed to Iraq during the Second World War and it’s this: respect the local culture and fight the bully.
This tradition appears to have evolved into the guiding rule that Fall gave us in Street Without Joy: to win, the military and the people must emerge on the same side of the struggle.
In contrast, the history of the IDF is the complete opposite. Its strategic goal and resulting tactics appear worse than the USM at its worst, meaning “burn the village to save the village”. For the GOI and IDF, it’s just burn the village. Source: Pappe and his book on Ethnic Cleansing of the Palestinians.
If true, then the strategic goals and tactics of the IDF and USM are mutually exclusive.
It didn’t have to be that way. If the IDF had followed the ways of the USM and began building hospitals and schools for the Palestinians starting back in 67 (if not earlier), then the odds of peace today would be much greater. The military and the people would have emerged on the same side of the struggle. But such a concept, at least at this point, seems alien to the zeitgeist of the IDF.
And, most interestingly, when the USM is at its worst is when it reflects the tradition of the IDF instead of the one that arises out of E Pluribus Unum. By that I mean, pre-emptive strikes (Shock and Awe), the destruction of a local culture (Iraqi museums) and torture (Abu G).
Whatever improvement that has occurred in Iraq is due to our returning to the American tradition: Respect the local culture and fight the bully. To win, the military and the people must emerge on the same side of the struggle. It is the formula, I contend, that makes the US military Sun Tuz’s “sovereign imbued with the moral law.”
The IDF appears to have rejected Sun Tzu’s maxim and instead rely on a strategy and tactics that are outdated. Burn the village is obsolete in Western thinking. Perhaps the IDF can turn it around and adopt the winning ways of the USM. But if so, then I think every Israeli general who visits the US needs to pay homage to the Vietnam Vet Wall in DC. In many ways, that is our wailing wall. And it is the sacrifice that arose out the Vietnam War that help give us our winning tactics.
And Luti called General Zinni a traitor?
As a ‘simple man from the back mountains of Colorado’ it seems to me that Fred has asked the essential question. What nations are we willing to allow to become owners of these weapons and which will we not and why? As I stated months ago iran lives in a dangerous area with several atomic powers playing in their neighbourhood. I think their desire for an effffective weapons program makes sense from their perspective. Unless one thinks they are suicidal, then the argrument concerning attacking Isreal shoul be handled by a MAD argrument. As for religious inspiration as a basis for destructive policies check out our president President and his statements about his relationship to and messages from God. if I were an Iranian that would scare the hell out of me. it is not just that wer don’t really understand othersw as the Col. keeps pointing out we also don’t really see ourselves as others may legitimately percieve us.
Great blog, keep it up.
“Examining connections between Kissinger and the neocons do not show that his views are wrong…
…Sadly, the tendency these days is to lump people into certain “camps” where they can be safely dismissed without having to substantively address their arguments.
The trouble is that focusing on groups like the neocons as a group instead of addressing the arguments they make on their merits alone is likely to appeal only to the already converted neocon-haters out there and not those who are sitting on the fence, much less those who are sympathetic to the other side. IOW, refuting arguments, policies and positions is more likely to influence than attempts at labeling.”
Posted by Andy
Thoughtful post, (among many). You’re almost right, I think.
But.
Using Kissinger’s connections to the neocons as shorthand to explain his motivations and/or prejudices to an audience too damned busy to delve into the minutiae of his existence themselves helps get the message out to more people than would otherwise hear or read of it. This man is malevolent. He does not mean well. More people need to make the connection between Kissinger and the neocon movement.
Surely you can agree, Andy, that some “camps” CAN be dismissed. (Though I don’t know how safely it can be done.) Some “camps” have proven themselves to be incompetent, others larcenous, even dangerous. The opinions and prejudicial policies of such people should be easy to dismiss.
In the past we’ve all deconstructed the neocon’s arguments until we’re blue in the face with little or nothing to show for it. We wasted time trying to reason with this pack of snarling, snapping dogs circling the bloodied body of the United States of America while they were incapable of any thought but of filling their bellies. And I don’t have to be a hater of anyone, Andy, to recognize the utter depravity of the neocons and their enablers. All that’s required is a sentient brain and access to nearly accurate information.
We need to distill our arguments to the essential if we are to convince enough people of the seriousness of the situation. Madison Avenue may have something to teach the rational “camp”. But only if we can match the Cons in the Talking Point wars.
Admit it – long, complicated, (even if rational and reasonable), argument doesn’t hold a candle to “Mission Accomplished”.
In regards to the comment about disproving another’s position with the facts, try agruing with a creationist using the facts of cosmology or evolution and see if their “light” comes on.
Pat,
Fair enough. For what it’s worth, I don’t think we differ to a great degree on the neocons, except on the tactics best suited to hindering them.
Babak,
Of course not, but that does not mean there shouldn’t be limits on the transfer of dual-use technology.
Agreed. Take Japan for instance. Should it make the political decision to do so, they could manufacture a nuclear weapon in a matter of weeks. Few fear this though, for a variety of reasons, but it mainly boils down to intent. And therein lies the problem with Iran that almost everyone agrees on – Iran’s future intentions. IAEA Director El Baradai makes this point constantly:
And Jeffrey Lewis, another notable expert:
JohnH,
Assessments vary (see last paragraph) on Iran’s ability to overcome it’s hex purity problems and range from a couple of months to about 2 years – and this was back in 2005. The Hex impurity issues are a temporary roadblock – Iranian scientists are not stupid and they will overcome this problem if they haven’t already.
Jonst,
Well, hate to break this to you, but that’s been US policy since at least 1979 and not just with Iran. With regard to Iran vs China and Russia, if you don’t understand the difference between nuclear weapons states and non-nuclear weapons states under the NPT then I don’t know what to tell you.
Steve,
I was unaware that writing an opinion piece in a major newpaper was a Constitutional violation. BTW, I served in the Navy and Air Force, but always secretly wished I’d joined the Marines instead. Semper Fi.
tons15,
Pointing out relevant facts and engaging in debate is “disgusting?” Considering I have not provided any political opinions in here, I fail to see why I deserve such opprobrium.
Will,
The fact remains is that Uranium weapons can be used on missiles, no matter what you choose to believe.
eaken,
The NIE has political consequences, but it is not a political document.
How, exactly, does spending less money on a nuclear program hinder natural resource exports? It doesn’t, it makes more money available for other priorities. Consider, for example, that Iran is spending 1/5 of it’s annual revenue importing and subsidizing gasoline (equivalent, in percentage terms, to what the US spends on Social Security).
The fact is that purchasing nuclear fuel is cheaper in the long run, particularly since Iran will have to import fuel and/or ore anyway in a couple of decades because their uranium reserves are so small.
Cieran,
Sorry, but centrifuge technology is not hidden by DOE classification, nor is it some arcane science only understood in the hallowed halls of DOE labs. And as a someone who’s worked at the labs, you obviously know that the US doesn’t use centrifuge technology for it’s own enrichment needs, right?
Stating that the facilities and technology to make LEU and HEU are the same is not exposing classified information, nor is it a lie. You don’t even have to take my word for it(see page 7).
Thank you all for the engaging debate. For the record, I wish to make clear my position regarding Iran since it seems some are making assumptions. I do not support military action against Iran and I do support engagement, beginning with the reestablishment of our embassy. In my view the only long-term way to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons is to work to bring about conditions where Iran believes they are not needed and not worth the cost. In my view that will require not only security guarantees from the US, but also peace and recognition of Israel along with a regional denuclearization treaty. The Brazil and Argentina programs are instructive. Once they came to an agreement and largely settled their differences, there was no longer a need nor desire for nuclear weapons.
Pat,
Marvelous, simply marvelous!
If the WaPo had any sense (yes, an oxymoron these days *g*), they would have taken your piece and juxtaposed it with that mealy-mouthed piece that Henry the “K” threw up.
Unfortunately, those Villagers who only get their talking points from has-beens like the WaPo Op-Eds, will continue to curtsy and gibberishly gush on about how Henry the “K” still “has it”.
Others, not so “fortunate” to be “Villagers”, will knowingly nod their heads that what Henry the “K” has, they don’t ever want to catch.
Regarding Andy’s comment:
Sorry, but centrifuge technology is not hidden by DOE classification, nor is it some arcane science only understood in the hallowed halls of DOE labs
This is a perfect example of exactly the means by which the honest discussion of the Iranian WMD topic is devalued, by assertions that are irrelevant at best, and deliberately misleading at worst.
It’s a straw-man argument, plain and simple. It’s what the neocons have been doing for years, and it’s a big part of why they are not honorable men.
It’s not quite outright mendacity, but you can see it from there.
No one has stated here that centrifuge science is classified: anyone who has ever enjoyed watching hot dogs crack open on a barbeque grille (coupled with just a dash of D’Alembert’s magic and some elementary considerations of hoop stress in a cylinder) can grasp the salient science behind what makes effective centrifuge technology difficult.
The science is seldom the problem: it’s the engineering that’s difficult. It’s the engineering that’s classified. That’s what “weaponization” means, in practice.
Furthermore, conflating “centrifuge technology” with “design of a nuclear weapon that can be effectively deployed against distant enemies” is tantamount to confusing “making rubber for tires” with “design and deployment of a Ferrari convertible”.
One is a part, and only a part, of a much more complex technological whole.
We need to pay attention to whether Iran has developed nuclear weapons, not whether they have centrifuges. Conflating the two concepts is a big part of what got us into Iraq, and hence such willful obfuscation is part of the current problem, not part of any real-world solution.
In my view the only long-term way to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons is to work to bring about conditions where Iran believes they are not needed and not worth the cost. In my view that will require not only security guarantees from the US, but also peace and recognition of Israel along with a regional denuclearization treaty.
Posted by: Andy | 14 December 2007 at 12:00 PM
1. Iran getting a nuclear is their way to equilize the power imbalance with Iran and now US presence in their border. You want to make Iran feel secure, take those two parameter away. With bunch of neocon talking about attacking Iran every day. Nobody believes We and Israel are nothing but bad news for Iran. ) You can say “Be my friend or I’ll kill you” It just doesn’t work that way.
2. Nobody trust Israel. It’s one of the worst nation in the planet when it comes to international treaty and obligation. Every time Israel think it can get way with stealing land. I will steal land and invade neighboring country. That’s just Israel.
Observe current Israel rhetoric in the news.
3. In order to “denuclearize” Israel has to declare their nuclear first right?
Anybody actually believe Israel EVER going to give up their nuclear? lol …
no really. seriously .. you are killing me. not going to happen ever.
Israel entire military strategy, therefore existence, is based on the premise that It has superior force, including final strike than anybody else.
—-
Israel cannot suddenly talk peace, after years and years of hostility. People in the area are going to ask for proof first.
And the fact Israel start building settlement and invade Gaza 20 minutes after Annapolis, pretty much says it all to everybody. What level of trust one can put in Israel willingness to negotiate.
Cieran,
I was specifically referring to the bolded portrion of what you said:
There is hardly any difference in the engineering requirements with centrifuge technology. All that’s required is reconfiguring the cascade or batch processing the output.
Had I ever made such an argument, then you might be right! Strawman indeed!
I would be the first to admit that there is a huge difference between having a nuke or nascent capability and having a deliverable, safe nuke that can survive a missile flight and still detonate. You’re right to point out there are tremendous engineering and systems integration challenges in mating bombs to missiles. No argument there.
However, I point out again that US policy for decades has been to essentially “conflate” (as you put it) enrichment technology with actual weapons. The US (and most everyone else) focuses policy efforts in this direction because fissile material is such a fundamental requirement for weapons and it is arguably the most challenging requirement.
It sounds like you’re suggesting the focus on nuclear material and the technology to make it is misplaced and that instead we should draw the red line at weaponizing, is that correct?
Curious,
Point 1. Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons (according the the IC) long before GWB came into office, long before troops were either in Iraq or Afghanistan and long before neocons were talking incessantly of “all options” being on the table.
Point 3. Israeli policy since at least 1980 is that it would become a party to a verifiable nuclear-weapons free zone treaty once the region recognizes it and there is a peace agreement, to include Iran.
I do not see where Pat Lang has to defend the notion that credibility enters into any discussion worth having. As a matter of unfortunate fact, it takes far longer to rebut an obvious and insincere fallacy once than to shamelessly utter it again and again. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes explained this truth long ago when he said that “Controversy equalizes wise men and fools alike — and the fools know it.” I do not blame Pat Lang for refusing to play the Neocon fools’ prefered game of controversy-for-its-own-sake. I only chide him for taking so many years to tire of the tendentious twerps and their tawdry twitterings.
As a victim/veteran of the Nixon-Kissinger Fig Leaf Contingent (Vietnam 1970-1972), I realize that many will dismiss my jaundiced views regarding the unctuous Teutonic influence peddler as personally aggrieved and therefore illegitimate “ad hominem” argumentation. Therefore, I submit a few brief quotations from Paul Krugman’s book The Great Unraveling (2003) which I think intellectually and historically support Pat Lang’s choice of “Jacobin cabal” as the relevant phrase describing the Republican Party’s current take-over and dismembering of the American government.
“Back in 1957, Henry Kissinger — then a brilliant, iconoclastic young Harvard scholar, with his eventual career as cynical political manipulator and, later, as crony capitalist still far in the future — published his doctoral dissertation, A World Restored. One wouldn’t think that a book about the diplomatic efforts of Metternich and Casterleagh is relevant to U. S. politics in the twenty-first century. But the first three pages of Kissinger’s book … seem all too relevant to current events. In those first three pages, Kissinger describes the problems confronting a heretofore stable diplomatic system when it is faced with a “revolutionary power” — a power that does not accept the system’s legitimacy.”
Pat Lang has only come to recognize and forthrightly state Kissinger’s old thesis (which the influence-peddling Kissinger has long since come to personify) that the Republican Party “neoconservatives” — who fully consider themselves a “revolutionary power” — do not recognize nor do they accept the legitimacy of the American political system. As Krugman again quotes Professor Kissinger: “The distinguishing feature of a revolutionary power is not that it feels theatened … but that nothing can reassure it. (Kissinger’s emphasis). Only absolute security — the neutralization of the opponent — is considered a sufficient guarantee.”
I won’t go any further into Paul Krugman’s crushing use of Kissinger-against-Kissinger to expand upon the essential point that the people Pat Lang calls a “Jacobin cabal” fully deserve the epithet. Not only that, but since nothing can ever appease their ravenous appetite for power, one can only cease falling for their duplicitous dialectical dithering and combine with other concerned citizens to drive them from office under as much opprobrium and with as great a degree of humiliation as humanly possible. No one can “argue” with them because they do not accept any rules of argumentation. They will say anything, anything at all, no matter how illogical or contradictory if it advances their power-grabbing agenda for even a day. They care not for any “system,” but only for power. Pat Lang now recognizes this and says so. Good for him. Better late than never.
He floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee.
Andy:
About your LEU/HEU assertions:
There is hardly any difference in the engineering requirements with centrifuge technology. All that’s required is reconfiguring the cascade or batch processing the output.
That’s all that’s required? *laugh*
The term “Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF)” comes to mind here. That’s a huge and inexorable engineering requirement. Do you have any technically-grounded idea just how difficult it is to enrich substantial amounts of uranium to what is required for a set of useful weapons?
(please remember that one needs a set, as it’s not considered good strategy to run out of ammo right after firing the first shot in the Battle of Armageddon!).
Then there’s this:
I would be the first to admit that there is a huge difference between having a nuke or nascent capability and having a deliverable, safe nuke that can survive a missile flight and still detonate. You’re right to point out there are tremendous engineering and systems integration challenges in mating bombs to missiles.
Mind your manners, Andy — I never said (or wrote) any such thing. The challenges I wrote about are not in mating bombs to missiles. The most important challenges are in designing and manufacturing robust and reliable bombs in the first place.
As George W would say, “it’s hard work”.
And this:
However, I point out again that US policy for decades has been to essentially “conflate” (as you put it) enrichment technology with actual weapons.
To the extent that’s true (and it’s not entirely true), that’s largely about whether nuclear testing can be depended upon to detect a clandestine weapons program. Gun-assembly weapons don’t need testing, but such weapons cannot be made without HEU (Plutonium doesn’t work for those designs). Making HEU generally requires enrichment (assuming you’re not stealing it or somesuch).
Hence we watch enrichment technologies because they are a necessary condition for the kind of bomb program that cannot be depended upon to show up on seismograms.
But there are bomb programs that don’t require enrichment, so U.S. policy is actually to deploy a wide variety of intelligence measures in the hopes of detecting a concomitantly wide variety of weapons programs. We strive to detect all feasible bomb programs, and we’re actually pretty good at this extremely difficult task.
Finally, there’s this:
It sounds like you’re suggesting the focus on nuclear material and the technology to make it is misplaced and that instead we should draw the red line at weaponizing, is that correct?
Not even close!
Actually, what I originally suggested is that we should not believe Hank Kissinger when he bloviates about nuclear WMD.
You’ve been doing the lion’s share of the suggesting ever since.
And seriously, I’d recommend otherwise, Andy, because you really can learn a lot from the good folks who contribute to Colonel Lang’s corner of the intelligent universe (or is it the intelligence universe?).
Charlottesville, Virginia
15 December 2007
Andy;
Your assertions that the Neoconfederacy of Dunces currently running our country into the ground should have their arguments countered with reasonable, measured dialogue disproving their worldview falls on deaf ears in regards to myself. To wit; all of these guys have lied for so long and caused so much suffering, heartache and bloodshed in the world that I’d just as soon kick ’em in the teeth as rebut any argument they have to make about Iran.
The fact that Iran is a theocratic, undemocratic quasi police state that is run by the Persian equivilant of the “Moral Majority” can’t be disputed. ‘Res Ispa Loquitor,’ as the toadies in the legal profession would say. But that doesn’t get Cheney, Fieth, Rice, Wolfowitz or any other those rat bastard neocon pricks off the hook for lying us into this awful war in Iraq, and trying like hell to start another in Iran. Not enough evidence? Why, forge it! Don’t like the intell your own agencies are telling you? Why, just start another one, that is absolutely certain to give you the info you know is right (Office of Special Plans, anyone?) Trying to terrorize your own citizens into a war? Just send out the DC goon squad to hit the Sunday Talking Head shows until it’s “Smoking guns and Mushroom Clouds” morning, noon and night.
Your assertion that the likes of Henry Kissinger or John Bolten are making some sort of reasonable argument for taking action against Iran is, for me anyway, kind of like listening to John Wayne Gacey talk about the great insulating quality of dead bodies jammed into the crawlspace the his house, or Jeffrey Dahmer extolling the great health effects of his ‘special’ dietary preferences. Oh, and Kissinger…wasn’t he the one that said (after we had screwed the Kurds the FIRST time back when they were engaged in a guerilla campagn against…wait for it…Saddam Hussien…for the then Shah of Iran’s geopolitical aspirations in the region) “Diplomacy is not missionary work.” (or something very close to that). In short, Andy, these guys have about as much credibility with me as Wile E Coyote, Super Genious, and his corporate masters at The Acme Corporation. Alas, the only person Wile E Coyote, Super Genius ever hurt was himself, typically by his own hand in pursuit of some half assed plan that, in retrospect, appears to have all the earmarks of something the likes of Fred Kagan would cook up in his office, deep in the bowels of the AEI.
SubKommander Dred
Charlottesville, Virginia
15 December 2007
Andy;
Your assertions that the Neoconfederacy of Dunces currently running our country into the ground should have their arguments countered with reasonable, measured dialogue disproving their worldview falls on deaf ears in regards to myself. To wit; all of these guys have lied for so long and caused so much suffering, heartache and bloodshed in the world that I’d just as soon kick ’em in the teeth as rebut any argument they have to make about Iran.
The fact that Iran is a theocratic, undemocratic quasi police state that is run by the Persian equivilant of the “Moral Majority” can’t be disputed. ‘Res Ispa Loquitor,’ as the toadies in the legal profession would say. But that doesn’t get Cheney, Fieth, Rice, Wolfowitz or any other those rat bastard neocon pricks off the hook for lying us into this awful war in Iraq, and trying like hell to start another in Iran. Not enough evidence? Why, forge it! Don’t like the intell your own agencies are telling you? Why, just start another one, that is absolutely certain to give you the info you know is right (Office of Special Plans, anyone?) Trying to terrorize your own citizens into a war? Just send out the DC goon squad to hit the Sunday Talking Head shows until it’s “Smoking guns and Mushroom Clouds” morning, noon and night.
Your assertion that the likes of Henry Kissinger or John Bolten are making some sort of reasonable argument for taking action against Iran is, for me anyway, kind of like listening to John Wayne Gacey talk about the great insulating quality of dead bodies jammed into the crawlspace the his house, or Jeffrey Dahmer extolling the great health effects of his ‘special’ dietary preferences. Oh, and Kissinger…wasn’t he the one that said (after we had screwed the Kurds the FIRST time back when they were engaged in a guerilla campagn against…wait for it…Saddam Hussien…for the then Shah of Iran’s geopolitical aspirations in the region) “Diplomacy is not missionary work.” (or something very close to that). In short, Andy, these guys have about as much credibility with me as Wile E Coyote, Super Genious, and his corporate masters at The Acme Corporation. Alas, the only person Wile E Coyote, Super Genius ever hurt was himself, typically by his own hand in pursuit of some half assed plan that, in retrospect, appears to have all the earmarks of something the likes of Fred Kagan would cook up in his office, deep in the bowels of the AEI.
SubKommander Dred
And what do you think of Obadiah Shoher’s arguments against the peace process ( samsonblinded.org/blog/we-need-a-respite-from-peace.htm )?
Andy wrote:
>>.Well, hate to break this to you, but that’s been US policy since at least 1979 and not just with Iran. With regard to Iran vs China and Russia, if you don’t understand the difference between nuclear weapons states and non-nuclear weapons states under the NPT then I don’t know what to tell you.<<, What you can "tell me" is what the hell you are talking about? My point is the following: Dr K, the nut in the VP's robes, and the rest of the cabal, think that we should contemplate military attacks against Iran for their termidity in attempting to secure nuclear weapons. Correct, so far? Where else, for what other nation, has that option been discussed?
Like it or not andy is correct. If you want to affect the narrative you have to have a counternarrative that does several things. First, that it counters factually the narrative you oppose; second, thsat it constructs, using facts, a counteernarrative that will stand up to attack; and third that you name the emotional, non-factual points as such and hold the’other’ accountable for parading emotion as fact. there’s more but that’s a beginning. Otherwise one just mirrors the ‘other’ and that simply asks who can manipulate better and yell louder. Sistinguish fact from interpretation as much as possible.
Cieran,
First of all, thanks for the spirited debate.
WRT to reconfiguring centrifuges or batch processing to make HEU you have not really proffered any evidence that this is as difficult as you seemingly believe it to be.
Supporting my position I’ve provided to ISIS piece above and additionally is this from Dr. Charles Ferguson:
I’ve found no nuclear experts who believe converting a centrifuge facility from LEU to HEU production is a significant challenge technically, but if I’ve missed something, please point it out to me.
Now, we can debate whether or not the Iranians currently have the expertise to reconfigure their cascades or batch process and, if not, when they might gain that expertise, but that is a topic probably well beyond the scope of the discussion here.
Furthermore, I’m aware of MTBF and would point to the example of Pakistan, which was willing to tolerate crashes to get HEU sooner rather than later.
I don’t have much to disagree with on your comments regarding nonproliferation policy which were more complete than my own.
Well, that’s why I specifically asked you if my reading of what you wrote was correct, which you duly did. What is unfair or suggestive about that?
Certainly! I’ve been an admirer of Col. Lang for some time and I’m always interested in the seemingly few spots on the Internet left that promote intelligent, open and fair debate – this is one of them.
jonst,
Well, there’s this:
And this on the same incident:
Point 1. Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons (according the the IC) long before GWB came into office, long before troops were either in Iraq or Afghanistan and long before neocons were talking incessantly of “all options” being on the table.”
Nobody here deny that Iran is persuing nuclear. What is being debated is Israel and its neocon operative demand for war as sole mean to solve tension with Iran.
These action reinforce the logic behind Iran thinking of needing nuclear. And by now Russia and China are fully supporting that logic.
You can keep thumping the war drum. But sooner or later Israel will face massive public backlash.
“Point 3. Israeli policy since at least 1980 is that it would become a party to a verifiable nuclear-weapons free zone treaty once the region recognizes it and there is a peace agreement, to include Iran.”
Like I say. Israel approach to peace talk is this: “Be my friend or I’ll shoot” Then it plays stupid why nobody trust them or wanting to blow them out. Israel consistently present itself as hostile player. It is only natural for everybody to take Israel as hostile player.
There isn’t a single country in the middle east who trust Israel nor Israel words as good faith.
That’s your problem. Either you want to accept it or not. Previously you can survive by getting bigger guns. But now we have reached nuclear. Yer screwed.
From an excellent little book by T. Edward Damer on the rules of civilized argumentation entitled Attacking Faulty Reasoning (a practical guide to fallacy-free arguments):
“To ask others to accept your claim without any support, or to shift the burden of proof to them by suggesting that your position is true unless they can prove otherwise, is to commit the fallacy of ‘arguing from ignorance,’ for you are, in this way, making a claim based on no evidence at all. Indeed, you are basing the claim on the absence of evidence — that is, on ignorance. … In this way you fail to take responsibility for you own claims and even attempt to get your opponents to do your work for you. Moreover, since negative claims are notoriously difficult to establish, you are attempting to set yourself up for a ‘win’ by default. But in the argument game, there are no wins by default, for the merit of any position can be only as good as the argumentation given in support of it.”
As I stated previously above, it takes far more time and careful phrasing — as Professor Damer demonstrates — to rebut Sheriff Dick Cheney saying, “We just don’t know” (about alleged Iraqi W.M.D.) than it does for duplicitous Dick to go on repeating, ad nauseum, his shifting-the-burden-of-proof argument-from-ignorance fallacy that what he and his putative boss, Deputy Dubya don’t know in fact justifies their claims that they do! Ditto for the same sloppy “strategy” of trying to claim that we really don’t know what Iran can or intends to do but that just means that they must intend to do it nonetheless!
I cannot recall ever once seeing or hearing — or reading about — any media interviewer or reporter challenging Dick and Dubya’s fallacious, fraudulent fables for the benefit of their viewers and/or readers. I never once heard any incredulous interlocutor simply state: “Well, if you don’t know, why in the hell should any sentient carbon-based life form on Planet Earth give a rat’s ass what you say?” I certainly never once in all these dreary years heard Tim Russert or Wolf Blitzer, or any of their sycophant-stenographer cohort clearly identify the relevant, blatant fallacies and — in so doing — debunk the drivel our government sophists ladel out for the somnolent, stupified masses to passively consume without reflection.
In spite of all the disreputatable demagoguery, though, the American public has — as in the desultory days of America’s War on Vietnam decades ago — learned to its rage and sorrow that our governmental “representatives” lie just to keep in practice; just so they won’t forget how. The common people may not know and recognize “The Art of Controversy,” as Arthur Schopenhauer called sophistical dialectical disputation, but they do know the fable of the boy who cried “Wolf”(owitz) so many needless times that he lost all credibility regarding any alarms that he might raise in the future. We used do speak of the “Credibility Gap” between our government and “we, the people.” Now we’ve got “Credibility Chasm.” Yet still, some demand that we give known knaves the benefit of taking their fallacy-riddled, sophisitical dialectic tricks seriously. Sorry, but “fool me once, shame on you; fool me one hundred times, shame on nobody” doesn’t earn Cheney, Dubya and the “neo” con-artists a hundred-and-first chance to do it all again vis-a-vis Iran based on all that we don’t know about that country, its capabilities, and/or intentions.
So Andy, you dug deep enough…but you finally found the one statement uttered by Bill Clinton that the neocon would defend as a true one. There is no way on this (presently)green earth that Clinton was going to attack North Korea. Revisionist history aside. Just as the was no way Bush was going to attack. Even when N.Korea indeed, obtained the weapon! Look at their deeds….not their words. But, your point is taken anyway, to the extent that contemplated the attack it would have been an illegal and immoral action on the part of the US. And therefore the policy should be, and was, by many, condemned.
jonst,
Whether you believe Clinton’s threat against the North Korean’s was credible or not is beside the point since it appears the North took it seriously.
And herein lies the difference between Bush warmongering, done from a pulpit, and Clinton’s, done as part of diplomacy and in private. One was effective and the other has been a failure. The reasons for the different outcomes, I should hope, are rather obvious.
What proof have you that they took the threat as credible? They may have. They may have not. They may have took the bribe of aid, as credible. And they went ahead with their planning in any event. Bush..Clinton, agreements, whatever, they got their bomb. And then they negotiated from a position of strength. You have no evidence….as I have no evidence, what was the decisive motivating factor with any of Korea’s leadership. Other that is, the fact that they went ahead with their plans, in any event. So please…spare me the tea leaf reading why people, whom we know, little or nothing, about did what they did. Let’s focus on what they did. And what we did NOT do…despite all our bluster.
Well jonst, whether you choose to believe Clinton and his officials who were there is ultimately up to you, but they indicate the threat was a motivating factor for the North Koreans and they also state their intent to attack was real. Maybe they’re wrong in their assessment of North Korean motivations (certainly a possibility given the insular nature of the regime) and maybe they’re now lying about their intentions to strike, but given the choice of whose word to take on the matter in the absence of any additional evidence, I defer to them over you for reasons which should be obvious.
In any event the point remains – Iran is not the only nation we’ve threatened with military action over a nuclear program. One might even include Pakistan and the widely reported plans that US strike teams planned to raid and secure or destroy Pakistani nukes should the government fall. Although the context is different, it still represents planning and intent to unilaterally use military force against a sovereign nation’s nuclear program.
One could also include an actual unilateral military action – Desert Fox – which was in large part aimed at destroying what remained of Saddam’s WMD facilities.