The (Neo) Con Game

posted by The Vidiot @ 7:55 PM Permalink

Intel Estimate on Iran Blocks Neo-Con Plans

WASHINGTON - In the struggle over U.S. policy toward Iran, neoconservatives in the George W. Bush administration spoiling for an attack on Iran's nuclear sites have been seeking to convince the public that the United States must strike before an Iranian nuclear weapons capability becomes inevitable.

In order to do so, they must discredit the intelligence community's conclusions that Iran is still as many as 10 years away from being able to build a nuclear weapon and that such a weapon is not an inevitable consequence of its present uranium enrichment programme.
[...]
On Apr. 20, Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte[...]"According to the experts that I consult... getting 164 centrifuges to work is still a long way from having the capacity to manufacture fissile material for a nuclear weapon."
[...]
The intelligence estimate on Iran, however, explicitly takes the view that there is nothing inevitable about an Iranian decision to weaponise.
[...]
The intelligence judgment on this is also supported by independent analysts of the Iranian programme. Ray Takeyh, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last March that it was "neither inevitable nor absolute" that Iran would turn to nuclear weapons, because "its course of action is still unsettled."

It's only unsettled because Bush refuses to talk with them and they are concerned we will attack them vis a vis

"[Bush] promised that Iraq was only the first step in a campaign to bring democracy to the Middle East."

BTW, Iran is a democracy. Maybe not our vision of democracy, just like Britain doesn't have our type of democracy, but they have elections and they have an elected president. They also have a large internal struggle between the secular and the uber-religious wangdoodles. Sound familiar?