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How Misleading, Questionable “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 (NIE) that suggests that Iran is not working on a nuclear weapons project while it 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  is that there can be but little doubt as to Iran’s purposes in continuing to develop uranium enrichment capabilities. According to the NIE, 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 having 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 despite the confusing tone of the NIE report. 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 NIE must be 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 counter and 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 and 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, for them and their stated warlike goals, make a great deal of sense.

An official of the International Atomic Energy Agency obtusely yet proudly stated today in response to the NIE that it “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 nor validation that Iran does not have a highly secret weapons program underway. This is a great flim-flam that helps the Iranians and nobody else. I have no doubt that their efforts to enrich uranium are for military purposes. I get no comfort whatever from the questionable assurances in the NIE report that Iran will not be ready with enough uranium for a bomb for another several years. And then? Then they will have a very public program to develop nukes? Either way, we lose and Israel loses, and the entire civilized community loses. 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, we must accept these countries for what they are, and the world for what it truly is. To choose the opposite is to choose fantasy over reality.

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 over a year. They have never changed their posture towards us, and we have never exacted payment for this act of war against us. They continue to support and actively participate in, through their own agents (in Iraq and elsewhere) and through their proxies in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, warfare against the United States.

The President now is at a disadvantage as our own intelligence agencies suggest/imply 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 currently plays out we are now on the defensive having to justify our posture and strong language and ramping up of rhetoric and pressure against Ahmadnijad to disarm and withdraw. We have put our friends in Israel also at a disadvantage. Our unified position against Iran, an aggressor state, is now broken.

It seems unlikely that Iran is no longer a serious threat to the United States and our friends. It seems highly likely instead to me that they are continuing their war against us, and keeping their ongoing nuclear efforts closely guarded and effectively secret. 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 serious and deadly threats. Israel must defend itself, and we must never allow such a country as Iran with their stated intentions of our destruction, their active participation in terror and violence against us and our allies to ever 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 occurred 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 completed 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 they 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 conclusively 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 are making great propaganda strides and political hay with this gift basket of the NIE 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 now currently 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 their bombs to their surrogates so that Israel and the United States will 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 NIE we should assume that Iran continues its nuclear gambit and when they acquire the bomb they will hold the world hostage and use the weapons that they create or purchase. 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.