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How Misleading, Politically Motivated Intelligence and Partisan Journalism Puts Our Country At Risk, Empowers our Enemies, and Undermines our Leadership During Time of War

by Daniel Mallock, BookFolks

The release today of the National Intelligence Estimate that suggests that Iran is not working on a nuclear weapons project but continues to work towards enriching uranium has brought doubt and confusion to the country and to our friends around the world. CNN led early in the day with misleading headlines declaring, “Iran Has No Nuclear Weapons Program”. What is not stated in the hysterical leftist media in the country is that there can be but little doubt as to Iran’s purposes in continuing to develop uranium enrichment capabilities. According to the NEI, the Iranians halted their “program” in 2003. Perhaps they halted the “program” because the United States had invaded their neighbor and brought down their dictator because of Iraq’s purported WMDs and their own researches into nuke development.

The report suggests a denouement to the ongoing Iran crisis - Iran has no program so there is no crisis. This puts the President in a difficult position to explain to the country, our friends and enemies, that we believe that ongoing uranium research is significant, threatening, and clearly a component in a larger effort to create or acquire nuclear weapons. The formal “program” may have been discontinued, but this does not mean that another one does not continue secretly, and that uranium enrichment efforts are not significant.

Confusion in Israel over this NEI must be fairly high. The Israelis continue to maintain that Iran has an active nuclear weapons program. Israel has the finest intelligence agency in the world, and they have been repeatedly and very publicly threatened by the lunatic dictator of Iran with total destruction by “nuclear fire”. It is an existential necessity that Israel take the threats seriously, and act as best they can to remove the threat. Ehud Barak, Israeli Minister of Defense, said today regarding the NEI, “Nevertheless, I say again that Iran is today a central threat on the world and the State of Israel.” Barak went on to say that the NEI made him “smile”. Israel continues to take the threat of Iran very seriously, while leftist propaganda creators in the United States actively undermine our ability to confront our enemies and setup our allies for criticism for the crime of continuing to defend themselves against an evil regime that has promised to attack them when the opportunity arises.

Ahmadinejad has stated on many ocassions that the destruction of Israel and the “defeat” of the United States are two of his main goals. Having the 2nd largest oil reserves in the world why would Iran spend billions of dollars on a “peaceful” nuclear energy program when a more simple approach to energy supply for that country would be to build domestic refining capabilities and infrastructure to support it. A nuclear power program is counter-intuitive, counter productive because of the richness of the oil reserve that they sit upon. However, a militarized program whose goal is the production of weapons for use by them and their proxies does make a great deal of sense.

One official of the International Atomic Energy Agency, obtusely yet proudly stated today in response to the NIE that “validates the [IAEA's] statements over the last years that inspectors have found no concrete evidence of an undeclared nuclear weapons program in Iran”. Consider: The absence of evidence uncovered by inspectors is proof only of the lack of evidence uncovered by inspectors. It is not proof or validation that Iran does not have a highly secret program underway. This is a great flim flam that the Iranians have somehow successful created. They have now sowed great doubt in the world community tapping into the hatred of war and violence and conflict that so underlies most of the civilized societies of the west. I have no doubt that their efforts to enrich uranium are for military purposes. I get no comfort whatever from the assurances in the report that Iran will not be ready with enough uranium for a bomb for another several years. For those on the hard left desperate for confirmation of their bizarre combination of Bush-hating and utopian anti-pragmatism, this highly political and dangerous NIE could not have come soon enough.

Civilized people do so want the world to operate in a civilized, rational and peace-loving manner, we almost cannot comprehend when countries are overtly belligerent, hateful, threatening, and warlike. But we haven’t any choice, that is how the world truly is, and we must accept it for what it is, not what we want it to be. Iran has been an enemy state since they attacked our embassy in 1979 and took our military and civilian personnel hostage and held them for an year. They have never changed their posture towards us, and we have never exacted payment for this act of war against us.

The president now is at a disadvantage as our own intelligence agencies speculate that Iran is no longer a threat and that their nuclear program is discontinued. In the court of public opinion, where so much of this war of civilizations plays out we are now on the defensive having to justify our defensive posture and strong language and ramping up of rhetoric and pressure against Ahmadnijad. We have put our friends in Israel also at a disadvantage. Our unified position against an aggressor state broken.

It seems unlikely that Iran is no longer a serious threat to the United States and our friends. It seems highly likely to me that they are continuing their war against us, and keeping their ongoing nuclear efforts closely guarded. In 1982 Israel destroyed Saddam’s nuclear research facility at Osirak. The world heaped criticism upon them and condemned them. Nevertheless, they were right. Israel has a right to defend itself, as do we.

We must not let our guard down vis a vis Iran. They have made threats that must be taken at their face value as serios and deadly threats. Israel must defend itself, and we must never allow such a country as Iran with stated intentions of our destruction to acquire nuclear weapons.

On September 6th Israel attacked a Syrian facility and destroyed it deep inside that country. There was very rapidly a dearth of information from either Israel or Syria as to why the attack occured and the raid’s target. Soon speculation started pouring in from analysts around the world, even from the NYT that Israel had destroyed a partially complete Syrian nuclear reactor. Some called the site a bomb plant, a cache, a facility, but all agreed that it was a nuclear site. The silence about this attack both from Israel and Syria and the Arab world in particular is deafening. For Israel, discussing the attack is not important - only that it was successful. For Syria admission that the had an active nuclear weapons program would show the world that the threat is real, and that Israel is justified. For now the silence continues, but when it breaks and the world is shown that the Muslim/Arab dictator bomb is not a myth but a reality will the civilized societies of the West unite against this horrific threat?

Iran and its looney dictator is making great propaganda strides and political hay with this gift basket dropped on their laps just in time for the Christmas holiday. The Iranians believe that this NIE vindicates their obviously false claims that their nuke program is for peaceful purposes only. This is a great propaganda victory for them. The NIE does in no way prove anything but that no active nuclear weapons “program” has been found definitively yet by US intelligence agencies. However, these same agencies admit that Iran continues uranium enrichment efforts whose results will likely mean the creation of a nuclear weapon when that “program” is complete. The word “hood-wink” seems apropos here. A “program” doesn’t exist, apparently because the intel agencies can’t find one, but the “program” of uranium enrichment continues? This entire scenario is completely illogical and plays into the hands of the Iranians who will hold the world hostage with their nukes the moment they acquire them. And before that day, they may well give them to their surrogates so that Israel can be attacked. This is a massive public relations disaster for American and Israeli efforts to contain Iran’s overtly belligerent and nuclear ambitions. 1984 is 2007, December 4th to be precise with “Big Brother” apparently somebody else’s Little Brother!

Because we don’t know for sure, because the NIE represents a “best guess” approach, we are obligated to continue investigating so that definitive proof of the existence or absence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program is found. Our stance should be strong and, despite the empty assurances of this NEI we should assume that Iran continues its nuclear gambit and when they acquire the bomb, they will hold the world hostage. We should work with Israel and all of our friends around the world publicly and secretly to thwart the acquisition of nuclear weapons by any group or country that works for and promises our destruction as does Iran. To do anything else would be folly.