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Impeach George Bush
Who's Next, Iran or Syria
It's a tough call, but the lies about Iran are amassing quickly.
Source: Washington Post, 2004-11-19
Candidate: Republican Party
The United States has intelligence that Iran is working to adapt missiles to deliver a nuclear weapon, further evidence that the Islamic republic is determined to acquire a nuclear bomb, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Wednesday.
Separately, an Iranian opposition exile group charged in Paris that Iran is enriching uranium at a secret military facility unknown to U.N. weapons inspectors. Iran has denied seeking to build nuclear weapons.
"I have seen some information that would suggest that they have been actively working on delivery systems. . . . You don't have a weapon until you put it in something that can deliver a weapon," Powell told reporters traveling with him to Chile for an Asia-Pacific economic summit. "I'm not talking about uranium or fissile material or the warhead; I'm talking about what one does with a warhead."
Powell's comments came just three days after an agreement between Iran and three European countries -- Britain, France and Germany -- designed to limit Tehran's ability to divert its peaceful nuclear energy program for military use. The primary focus of the deal, accepted by Iran on Sunday and due to go into effect Nov. 22, is a stipulation that Iran indefinitely suspend its uranium enrichment program.
The issue of adapting a missile is separate from the question of enriching uranium for use in a weapon.
"I'm talking about information that says they not only have these missiles, but I am aware of information that suggests that they were working hard as to how to put the two together," Powell said, referring to the process of matching warheads to missiles. He spoke to reporters during a refueling stop in Manaus, Brazil.
"There is no doubt in my mind -- and it's fairly straightforward from what we've been saying for years -- that they have been interested in a nuclear weapon that has utility, meaning that it is something they would be able to deliver, not just something that sits there," Powell said.
Iran has long been known to have a missile program, while denying that it was seeking a nuclear bomb. Powell seemed to be suggesting that efforts not previously disclosed were underway to arm missiles with nuclear warheads.
Joseph Cirincione, director of the Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Powell's remarks indicated that Iran was trying to master the difficult technology of reducing the size of a nuclear warhead to fit on a ballistic missile.
"Powell appears to be saying the Iranians are working very hard on this capability," Cirincione said. He said Powell's comments were striking because the International Atomic Energy Agency said this week that it had not seen any information that Iran had conducted weapons-related work.
In a 32-page report, 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. But ElBaradei said that he could not rule out the possibility that Iran was conducting a clandestine nuclear weapons program.
Powell also told reporters that the United States had not decided what action to take following Sunday's agreement. The Bush administration had insisted that Iran's past violations warranted taking the matter to the U.N. Security Council.
Powell said the United States would monitor verification efforts "with necessary and deserved caution because for 20 years the Iranians have been trying to hide things from the international community."
Meanwhile, in Paris, the exile group charged that Iran was still enriching uranium and would continue to do so despite the pledge made Sunday to European foreign ministers. The group, the National Council for Resistance in Iran, or NCRI, also claimed that Iran received blueprints for a Chinese-made bomb in the mid-1990s from the global nuclear technology network led by the Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. The Khan network sold the same type of bomb blueprint to Libya, which has since renounced its nuclear ambitions.
Mohammad Mohaddessin, chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the Paris-based NCRI, told reporters at a news conference that the Khan network delivered to the Iranians a small quantity of highly enriched uranium that could be used in making a bomb. But he said the amount was probably too small for use in a weapon.
The NCRI is the political wing of the People's Mujahedeen organization, which the State Department has labeled a terrorist organization. The NCRI helped expose Iran's nuclear ambitions in 2002 by disclosing the location of the government's secret uranium enrichment facility at Natanz. But many of its subsequent assertions about the program have proven inaccurate.
On Wednesday, Mohaddessin used satellite photos to pinpoint what he said was the new facility, inside a 60-acre complex in the northeast part of Tehran known as the Center for the Development of Advanced Defense Technology. The group said that the site also houses Iranian chemical and biological weapons programs and that uranium enrichment began there a year and a half ago, to replace a nearby facility that was dismantled in March ahead of a visit by a U.N. inspections team.
The group gave no evidence for its claims, but Mohaddessin said, "Our sources were 100 percent sure about their intelligence." He and other group members said the NCRI relies on human sources, including scientists and other people working in the facilities and locals who might live near the facilities and see suspicious activities.
The IAEA, the U.N. nuclear monitoring body, had no immediate comment on the claims but said it took all such reports seriously.
The agency has no information to support the NCRI claims, according to Western diplomats with knowledge of the U.N. body's investigations of Iran.
Some diplomats and arms control experts privately discounted the Iranian group's latest claim, saying it appeared designed to undermine the deal that the Tehran government signed with Britain, France and Germany. In Tehran on Wednesday, Iranian officials said they considered the enrichment suspension temporary and contingent upon a favorable decision at the IAEA meeting next week and on quick progress in talks next month on long-term guarantees that Iran can apply nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
Richburg reported from Paris. Staff writers Glenn Kessler and Dafna Linzer in Washington contributed to this report.
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User Originated Comments:
From: Robbie
2004-12-29 05:26:26
bob:
you're the one who repeated an
unsubstantiated statement several times in a list
and then called it an "argument" or "position" or
something.
the old "america is better
than anywhere else" thing is so old it's
sickening.
if that kind of thing is the
most interesting thing you've got to contribute to
the "conversation" you may as well take up
knitting... oops, i repeated myself. let me make
it clear -why- you should take up
knitting.
1) you are unable to form
coherent arguments with more than one
sentence.
2) you are unable to think
originally for yourself "outside the box".
3)
you aren't sufficiently aware of the material
facts of politics or political philosophy.
4)
you have a tendency to get offended when people
call you on it, further weakening your
presentation.
5) you don't seem to have any
genuine interest in truth and that shows through
transparently as a result of your poor rhetorical
skill.
on the other hand, people who
can't read, write or do arithmetic can be taught
to knit and it makes a valuable contribution of
doilies to our society.
please, bob, for
the love of mankind, take up
knitting.
robbie
From: bob
2004-12-20 22:15:45
and so it goes ...
if you can't dazzle
them with your brilliance, dazzle them with your
bullshit. and if they won't buy your bullshit,
resort to name-calling and personal
attacks.
you're like a bad syndicated
sit-com that keeps getting played over and over
and over again.
From: Robbie
2004-12-20 05:51:03
fascinating. here we have a self-described
libertarian, bob, first talking out of his -ss,
then getting called on it, then acting like a
nitwit, then getting called on it, then talking
out of his -ss again while simultaneously making
things up.
well, he got one thing right,
i do have a bit of doom and gloom attitude toward
the us. and the idea that it's the best thing
going is just silly. perhaps bob should get out
more, try different things, see new
places.
buh-bye,
robbie
From: bob
2004-12-20 00:09:28
robbie,
more nonsense. but slightly
amusing. ;-)
if conclusion-jumping or
logic-leaping was an olympic event, you could
qualify for the gold medal.
congrats.
this country has some serious
issues, but it still beats the hell out of
anything in 2nd place. what's wrong? your bmw or
suv went out of style?
good luck with
your doom and gloom attitude.
buh-bye. -b
From: Robbie
2004-12-17 22:04:23
bob:
1) you managed not to read what i
said.
2) you came up with a response of
repeating "wrong, wrong wrong" five times like a
child.
it's not because you said
something interesting that you're being ridiculed
but because you decided to argue like a child or
nitwit.
if you have something interesting
to say, by all means, say so!
what i said
was that -if- you do math the way the "jobs market
improving" apologetics machine does, you could
also make a case that 7.2 million jobs had been
lost over the last four years. i even displayed
how you -could- do the math to come up with that
number. the point is, and this is the truth, that
the number of actual employed people has been
declining steadily for four years and doesn't seem
to be in any state of recovery and that the labor
department has reported good news a few times in
the last years only to reverse their numbers a
week or two later.
that is to say, it's
time to stop buying the bullshit and just look at
the people who are in fact unemployed and going
bankrupt at an alarming rate due to the economic
policies of this administration.
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