I'm Really F-ing Sick Of This President...
 

U.S. Views Iran as Potential Trouble Spot
By GEORGE GEDDA, AP

WASHINGTON (Jan. 21) - President Bush refuses to rule out war with Iran. Iranian President Mohammad Khatami says his country is ready to defend itself against a U.S. attack. The United States is pushing for a peaceful solution to its nuclear impasse with Iran but, with mistrust on both sides running high, encouraging signs are hard to find.

"You look around the world at potential trouble spots, Iran is right at the top of the list," Vice President Dick Cheney said Thursday in an interview with radio host Don Imus, hours before being sworn in to a second term.

Asked hypothetically whether the United States would yield to Israel in a scenario in which an attack against Tehran was being considered, he said, "One of the concerns people have is that Israel might do it without being asked, that if in fact the Israelis became convinced the Iranians had a significant nuclear capability, given the fact that Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of the state of Israel, that the Israelis might well decide to act first and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterward."

"We don't want a war in the Middle East if we can avoid it," Cheney quickly added, "and certainly, in the case of the Iranian situation, I think everybody would best suited by, and or best treated or dealt with, if we could deal with it diplomatically."

On Monday, Bush reaffirmed his support for a diplomatic settlement of Iran's nuclear program but said, "I will never take any option off the table."


"You look around the world at potential trouble spots, Iran is right at the top of the list."
-Cheney


Perhaps the most pessimistic comment of all this week came from Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del.

"There may be nothing we can do to persuade Iran not to develop weapons of mass destruction," Biden said during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing for Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice.

Both Rice and Cheney made clear that the nuclear diplomacy the United States has been pursuing in the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency will continue.

They said the administration could raise the stakes with Iran by referring the nuclear question to the U.N. Security Council if Iran does not abide by its nonproliferation commitments.

The administration has been hopeful that a nonproliferation initiative being carried out with Iran by Germany, France and Britain will produce results.

But the administration is skeptical that Iran is bargaining in good faith. For its part, Iran says its nuclear program is aimed at producing energy, not weapons.

Rice said U.S. differences with Iran go well beyond its nuclear program.

"It's really hard to find common ground with a government that thinks Israel should be extinguished," she told senators. "It's difficult to find common ground with a government that is supporting Hezbollah and terrorist organizations that are determined to undermine the Middle East peace that we seek."

Beyond that, Rice listed Iran among six "outposts of tyranny."

Khatami, traveling Thursday in Africa, seemed unconcerned about the consequences of a possible U.S. attack.

"We have prepared ourselves," he said. He added that he did not anticipate any "lunatic" military move by the United States because Washington has too many problems in Iraq.

According to an article by Seymour Hersh published this week in The New Yorker, U.S. officials have been trying to get to the bottom of Iran's nuclear puzzle through a covert operation inside Iran that has been under way since last summer.

Defense Department officials said the article was filled with mistakes but did not deny its basic point.


01/21/05 08:20 EST

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

I don't believe any of this anymore. Bush was the little boy who cried wolf and kept telling us that Iraq was dangerous and had WMDs (which in the end, we found out that his administration lied). Iran is at the top of the trouble spot list? What about North Korea?

And those two bold sentences in the story totally contradict each other.

Here is a recent interesting article related to this:

U.N. Finds No Nuclear Bomb Program in Iran
Agency Report and Tehran's Deal With Europe Undercut Tougher U.S. Stance
By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 16, 2004; Page A18


In its most positive assessment of Iran in two years, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported yesterday that it had found no evidence the nation had a nuclear weapons program and that Tehran's recent cooperation with the agency has been very good.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog's report, along with Europe's acceptance of a wide-ranging nuclear agreement with Tehran, capped a pivotal day for the Islamic republic's relations with the West and left little chance for the Bush administration's Iran strategy to succeed in the near term.

U.S. officials, who agreed to discuss policy on the condition of anonymity, acknowledged that both the IAEA's upbeat tone and the European deal deeply undercut the White House's diplomatic drive to confront Iran now with the prospect of international sanctions.

"We still think they should go to the U.N. Security Council, but it's clear no one is with us on that right now," one senior policymaker said.

Instead, the administration will focus on lobbying IAEA board members to approve more aggressive inspections in Iran and an automatic referral to the Security Council if Tehran breaks any part of the European deal, U.S. policymakers said.

President Bush's senior foreign policy officials are expected to discuss wording for the resolution and a strategy for the IAEA's Nov. 25 board meeting in Vienna over the coming days.

On Sunday, Iran agreed to suspend its nuclear programs in exchange for European guarantees that it will not face the Security Council as long as their agreement holds. Iran has said its programs are for energy production, but the equipment and expertise could also be used for making weapons.

Officials from the State Department and the National Security Council were briefed by European diplomats in Washington yesterday and raised concerns regarding one item in the deal.

In a last-minute concession to Iran, the three European powers agreed that the suspension would begin Nov. 22 and that until then Iran would complete converting up to 15 tons of raw uranium to a state that makes it nearly ready for enrichment. The process still leaves Iran a long way from being able to make bomb-grade uranium, and the converted material would be stored by the IAEA, but its insistence on completing that work worried U.S. officials.

The IAEA said it would start tagging and sealing equipment at other facilities first and move on to the conversion plant on Nov. 22. Inspectors need to complete the verification by the time the IAEA board meets three days later.

"We believe that the conclusion of this agreement can both allow for confidence-building in respect of Iran's nuclear program and represent a significant development in relations between Europe and Iran," British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said yesterday as he confirmed the deal.

Throughout European capitals there were toasts for the deal, and Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, said it started a "new chapter" for Iran.

In addition to the suspension, the agreement commits Iran to support two U.S.-led endeavors: the war against al Qaeda and efforts to establish a democratic government in Iraq. Iran is holding several senior al Qaeda leaders and exerts significant influence in neighboring Iraq.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said the deal indicated "a little bit of progress," but no other official would comment publicly on it. Administration spokesmen said the government was reviewing the IAEA report and the agreement.

In his 32-page report yesterday, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei wrote that "all the declared nuclear material in Iran has been accounted for, and therefore such material is not diverted to prohibited activities," such as weapons programs.

ElBaradei said there he could not rule out the possibility that Iran is conducting a clandestine nuclear weapons program. But its decision to suspend work aimed at developing a new energy source could make it more difficult to pursue a covert program. "It becomes harder to conceal without legitimate activities," said Robert Einhorn, who ran the State Department's nonproliferation bureau until 2001.

Several outstanding issues remain in the Iran investigation, mostly due to missing Iranian paperwork and a lack of cooperation from Pakistan, which supplied much of Iran's nuclear equipment. But ElBaradei wrote that Iran's cooperation had increased and that he would no longer need to issue special reports on a regular basis.

Over 18 years, Iran secretly assembled uranium enrichment and conversion facilities that could be used for a nuclear energy program or to construct an atomic bomb. The underground sites became a target of a massive IAEA investigation after they were exposed by an Iranian exile group two years ago.

Iran, rich in oil and gas, says its efforts are aimed at building a new energy source. But the scale and secrecy of the program fueled suspicions that Tehran planned to develop nuclear weapons.

While the IAEA inspections will continue, Iran and Europe's three main powers will begin talks for a final accord that would give Iran lucrative trade deals with the EU when it permanently halts its nuclear work.

An Iranian diplomat, Hassan Rohani, said the negotiations "will be a matter of months, not years." But European officials insisted the talks will be open-ended to avoid time-pressured negotiations. One European diplomat said Europe expected the negotiations to last two years or more.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004Nov15.html

This makes me so mad. how bout a war on poverty, Bush? How bout a War on our horrendous educational system? How bout a war against environmental degradation? :mad:

Maybe not. There is a non-profit conservative think tank of which Cheney was (perhaps is) a member that said they would need to execute "theater wars" to move their agenda forward. Something to that effect. So I think that there was a premeditated idea of going to war for sure, but with whom wasn't so sure, but I bet Iraq was at the top of that list. :nod:

Oh Jesus. Does that sound familiar? Haven't we already done this? Man, the next couple of years are going to be interesting. :distress:

If you haven't already, Google "military industrial complex" and "Carlyle Group George Bush". There should be some pretty eye opening stuff. The last piece of the puzzle is "PNAC" or "Project For A New American Century." It's all there. You're not oversimplifying in any way.

History does repeat itself. But so soon? :laugh: :rolleyes:

Can't. No money in it. Got to give back to the big campaign contributors. You're gonna see some real blatant fascism now.

Yep!

AND Europe allegedly is making progress with Iran on this issue :shrug:

December 12, 2004
The U.S. vs. a Nuclear Iran
By DAVID E. SANGER

his article was reported by Thom Shanker, Eric Schmitt and David E. Sanger, and was written by Mr. Sanger.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 11 - The Bush administration says the prospect of Iran's obtaining a nuclear weapon is "intolerable," and from the White House to the State Department, officials express considerable skepticism that Europe's efforts to negotiate quietly an end to Iran's nuclear activities will succeed.

Yet, though President Bush threatened Iraq before the war there, he has said almost nothing about the possibility of resorting to military action in Iran.

That may reflect the fact that Pentagon war planners, reviewing available options, say there are no good options for Mr. Bush - or for Israel, which has expressed even greater alarm about a nuclear-armed Iran if negotiations fail.

Almost unanimously, these planners and Pentagon analysts say there are no effective military ways to wipe out a nuclear program that has been well hidden and broadly dispersed across the country, including in crowded cities. Confronted with intelligence evidence, Iran admitted to inspectors last year that it had hidden critical aspects of its civilian program for 18 years, and even today there are questions about whether all of its nuclear-related sites are known.

The Bush administration has talked about the possibility of going to the United Nations to seek sanctions against Iran if a recent accord with the Europeans falls apart, as a similar agreement did last year. But the Iranians themselves are aware of the whispers about military strikes, many of them fueled by Israeli officials who view the threat as much more urgent than the Europeans do.

Even so, such talk may amount to little more than bluffing in a high-stakes diplomatic game that the deputy secretary of state, Richard L. Armitage, recently described as "kind of a good-cop, bad-cop arrangement," with Washington playing the bad cop. But a senior European official related a conversation in which Iranians deeply involved in the talks warned that any military action would be futile.

The official said the Iranians boasted that "they can rebuild the facilities in six months," using indigenous technology. He also said they believed that after any military action to slow Iran's program, they could "develop a weapon as a national cause, with more consensus than now."

Senior officers and Pentagon officials confirm that war planners, in particular Air Force targeting teams, have updated contingencies for dealing with Iran's nuclear ambitions, as they periodically do. But they immediately emphasize that this does not reflect any guidance from the civilian leadership to prepare for military confrontation.

Instead, they say, it is part of an effort ordered by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to begin a constant process of refreshing contingency planning throughout the world, an effort partly inspired by the outdated plan for invading Iraq that had to be rapidly dusted off and radically rewritten before the war there.

"Military planning always continues," said one senior officer based in the Middle East. "We are constantly updating plans."

But interviews with military planners, Pentagon policy makers and academic experts drew a unanimous sentiment that the challenge in 2005 would be to contain the situation so that neither the United States nor Iran took a misstep or miscalculated, bringing on military action.

The Iranians remember Osirak, the site of a lightning Israeli airstrike against an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981 that set back Saddam Hussein's nuclear ambitions by a decade. American and European intelligence officials say Iran has taken the lesson to heart, spreading its nuclear facilities around the country, burying some underground and putting others in the middle of crowded urban areas.

For example, the International Atomic Energy Agency last year found centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium, behind a false wall at the Kalaye Electric Company in a densely populated corner of Tehran, where there would be no way to conduct a military strike without causing major civilian casualties. "They are not about to make the same mistake Saddam did," a senior administration official said.

Thus the military options range from the bad to the unimaginable.

None guarantee success, military planners say. Many risk causing not only casualties but a political crisis in the Middle East. The planners, many of them involved in the war against Iraq, argue vehemently that Iran presents a growing proliferation problem better approached through diplomatic channels than by airstrikes, Special Operations missions or an all-out invasion.

"There's no big war plan on the shelf," said one administration official involved in the planning process.

Part of the caution appears linked to the realization that while Iran's nuclear facilities are far more advanced than Iraq's ever were, the administration has yet to prove that Iran is secretly planning to build a weapon. The country has opened many of its sites to international inspectors, though there is still wrangling over whether the agency will be able to visit two military sites that some experts suspect could house a parallel, secret military effort to produce uranium.

If such sites exist, they would violate the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, which Iran has signed and which requires that all of its facilities must be solely for civilian use. So far, the inspectors have asked to see only one of the sites, and Iran has not indicated whether it would provide access.

The director general of the international agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, has carefully stopped short of declaring that Iran is seeking a weapon, though recently he noted that Iran "tried to cheat the system."

But whether it is a civilian program or something more nefarious, Iran is using an approach to developing nuclear fuel through the enrichment of uranium that is far easier to hide than the approach that Iraq took two decades ago.

So there is no central plant like Osirak to bomb.

"Osirak is not a paradigm," said Robert S. Litwak, director of international studies at the Woodrow Wilson Center here. "It was an exceptional case, in which all of the conditions for success came together. Israel had accurate intelligence on the target, collateral damage effects on the nearby population were judged minimal because the nuclear core had not yet been loaded into the reactor, and Saddam Hussein then had no capacity to retaliate directly against Israel."

In Iran today, said Mr. Litwak, who worked on proliferation issues as a National Security Council staff member in the Clinton administration, "none of those conditions pertain."

That view is echoed at the senior levels of the military. "Iran takes great care to protect its technology and production/storage capability with multiple layers of security, hardening and dispersal," said one Air Force general with experience in the Middle East. "All this complicates identification, targeting and execution."

Analysts of the Iranian political scene also point out that many in the American government view a growing and energized Iranian civil society, in particular the young and women, as an agent of change toward a democratic Iran.

News of the energy agency's restrained action helped Iran's stock market, which had suffered over fears that the nuclear dispute could result in a military confrontation with Israel or the United States. Any American military strike on Iran, these analysts say, would cancel any positive feelings these people have toward the United States, and probably galvanize support for the more militant Islamic leadership.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/po...rint&position=
________________________________________________________________

I think Iran is a threat and they are probably doing something in this area, but that is not the issue. The issue to me is W will screw this up with his bravado/machismo just like he did in Iraq. I mean even if the premise for invading Iraq is taken out of the picture (hard I know but just pretend :laugh: ) , the US' ill fated preparation for the invasion, Rumsfeld's archaic thinking and unwillingness to listen to essentially ALL of the advisors who told him he did not have enough troops and that his strategy was wrong, the lack of a plan to control the country we just blew to hell and back, and the contempt with which some, but not all, of our leaders treated the prisoners of that war (torture, etc.) - is all evidence that W will botch up Iran as well :mad:

Why not? We let him get away with it the first time. That's their whole m.o. Whatever the sheeple aren't going to strenuosly object to is what their going to try to push through. This group are crooks of the highest order.

Thanks, PNAC is the one I was talking about, they are scary. :shocked:

Iran has a young, sociopolitically progressive population right now and the best thing we could do is just leave them the hell alone and let the changes occur naturally.