- WASHINGTON -- "Merry
Christmas, Mr President" hissed the men in cloaks as they plunged
a dagger into George Bush's back. America's spooks finally had their revenge.
After being forced by the White House in 2002-2003 to concoct a farrago
of lies about Iraq, and then take blame for the ensuing fiasco there,
the 16 US intelligence agencies struck back last week with high drama
and devastating effect.
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- US intelligence chief Mike McConnell made public a bombshell
National Intelligence Report (NIE) that concluded "with high confidence"
Tehran had halted its rudimentary nuclear weapons programme in 2003.
- If it was restarted, said the NIE, Iran is unlikely to
produce any weapons before 2012-15.
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- The new NIE is a devastating, humiliating blow to Bush,
Dick Cheney and the pro-Israel neocons who have been furiously whipping
up war fever and hysteria against Iran. Only two months ago, Bush warned
Americans that Iran's secret nuclear programme threatened to ignite World
War III.
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- An earlier NIE in 2005 had billed Iran as a major nuclear
threat. Now, we learn it was based on fabricated evidence supplied to
CIA. Just like the bogus Niger uranium story used by Bush and Cheney to
justify war against Iraq. Who, one wonders, is behind this disinformation?
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- Bush was given the new NIE on Iran last August. But
for the past four months, Bush, Cheney and Condoleeza Rice have been beating
the war drums over Iran when their own massed intelligence agencies have
been telling them there was no danger from Iran. The White House hid
its own intelligence community's findings from the public until the spooks
threatened to leak the report.
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- Ironically, Iran's leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was telling
the truth all along when he said Iran was not working on nuclear arms,
while Bush & Company was lying through its teeth, just as it did over
Iraq and Afghanistan.
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- This column has been reporting for two years growing
opposition at CIA, the Pentagon, and the State Department to Bush/Cheney's
plans to launch a war against Iran. I repeatedly heard the term "fifth
column" used to describe the fanatical neocon ideologues pressing
American into a second Mideast war.
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- Now, America's national security community is telling
the White House to cease and desist before it drags the nation into another
foreign catastrophe. While not a coup as in the wonderful film, "Seven
Days in May," it was the next closest thing.
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- At the heart of this drama lies the disturbing fact that
Bush/Cheney & Co. were simply ignoring their own $40-bn plus a year
intelligence community. When the White House didn't get the answers it
wanted on Iran, it turned to Israel, whose renowned intelligence agency,
Mossad, became a primary source of reports about Iran. Mossad still
insists Iran will have a nuclear bomb by 2008.
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- Israel's defense minister, Ehud Barak, declared the US
NIE report a "blow to the groin." Israel has been straining
every sinew to get the US to destroy Iran's growing nuclear infrastructure.
Whether Israel, which has a large nuclear arsenal, will attack Iran on
its own remains uncertain.
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- America's intelligence has been poor in the past, and
might be wrong again. But UN nuclear inspectors confirm the US NIE findings.
So does SVR, Russia's intelligence agency. Iran's civilian nuclear power
programme could eventually produce highly enriched uranium for weapons,
but there is no sign of Iran developing any long-range delivery capability.
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- Nuclear warheads without long-ranged delivery systems
are useless.
- Claims by US neocons that Iran is developing intercontinental
ballistic missiles are yet more lies. If Iran was indeed developing
a limited nuclear arsenal, it was clearly to forestall potential nuclear
attack or nuclear blackmail by the US or Israel, not to attack North America
or Europe, as Bush so absurdly claimed.
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- In the midst of all the furore over Iran's supposed nuclear
weapons, not one peep has come from Washington calling for Mideast regional
nuclear disarmament the surest way of ending the nuclear arms race
between Israel and its neighbors.
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- The new NIE is likely to ease sanctions on besieged
Iran, and undermine the anti-Iran coalition the US, Israel and their new
ally, France were assembling. It should put an end to Bush's idiotic
plans for an anti-missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic.
- Sanity seems to be slowly returning to Washington.
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- http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp? cu_no=2&item_no=189057&version=1&template_id=46&parent_id=26
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