You could have kept your reply a lot shorter and said: “I don’t care what the evidence says, I’ll go with my fears”.

Because that is what your rant boils down to.

get to it!!!!!

Nothing -or very little- is ever known 100% for sure, but when there is no evidence of a nuclear weapons program, and there is no indication that Iran has the technology to develop them, you’d be crazy to mount a casus belli against Iran.

Not that lack of evidence ever bothered the likes of you, who are still looking for those pesky WMD in Iraq.

That is is YOUR opinion based on a judgement by the NIE. It does not make it fact.

No, it’s not my opinion. It’s what the NIE says just put in plain English. And it’s closer to reality than your paranoid, irrational fear of Iran.

Againg for ANYONE to disregard intentions when it comes to making an assessment regarding a national intelligence assessment is crazy.

The NIE didn’t disregard Iran’s intentions; these are clearly mentioned in the report. But to base an assessment of Iran’s nuclear capabilities on their intentions alone is both inaccurate and dishonest.

BTW why should we believe this NIE?

As I mentioned, it is not too different from Fingar’s assessment (the one you give credibility too). Fingar focuses on Iran’s intentions but mentions little to nothing on their actual capabilities. That omission is very telling in itself.

There is also a dearth of evidence from any other source. What we do have plenty of, is fearmongering from the Bush administration.

Comment by O. Bigfoot — December 6, 2007 @ 3:29 am

Bend over, spread cheeks, insert head.

Quite the plan ya got there, Dingleberry.

Of course, they were wrong. Just as General Shinseki and others with real military experience were “wrong” about Iraq. In the Bushworld, the non-experts know best.

Fredrick of Hollywood’s proof lies where?

Up Cheney’s butt?

WHAT A WINDBAG.

So, if Freddy is to be believable, then the 16 Intel agencies were wrong?

REALLY?

.

The NIE acknowledges Iran’s current and ongoing uranium enrichment program, and concedes that Iran might be leaving their options open with regards to a nuclear program. It even goes as far as to say that “convincing the Iranian leadership to forgo the eventual development of nuclear weapons will be difficult”.

But beyond the mere intentions of developing nuclear weapons, the real question are: Does Iran currently have the capability to develop them? Is Iran currently engaged in developing them?

The answers to those questions are “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program”, “We continue to assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapon”, and “Iran made significant progress in 2007 installing centrifuges at Natanz, but we judge with moderate confidence it still faces significant technical problems operating them.”

In other words, even though Iran might want to develop nuclear weapons, they don’t have the technology necessary to them, they do not have one, and have likely halted any program towards that end.

These are the blanks that Fingar’s assessment didn’t fill because he was too busy trying to figure out Iran’s intentions as opposed to evaluating their current technological capacity.

Comment by Tracy2 — December 5, 2007 @ 9:57 pm

Yeah, but it’s still bullshit. and none of your business, either. chickenhawk.

Comment by bilbobaggins — December 5, 2007 @ 7:36 pm

FWIW, Powell was saying the same thing earlier last month. It’s here on TP in the archivles.

What does that say about General Petraeus?

The following countries are known to operate enrichment facilities: Argentina, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Iran, Japan, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Israel and North Korea are also suspected of having enrichment programs. Belgium, Iran, Italy and Spain hold an investment interest in French facilities.

Preach on you chicken hawks, preach on.

http://www.hyerstandard.com

Worthy of repetition:

Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.

Q: What is wrong with conservatism? 
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception and has no place in the modern world.

As indicated above, Conservative is NOT the opposite of Democratic. Yet we Democrats continue to argue/debate with conservatives as if they were. We need to state our (the peoples) case strongly and firmly, and persue it in the face of the conservative media machine. It is when we play their game that we lose.

Don’t you suppose our Intelligence Professionals are hip to that possibility as a matter of professional competency – they’ve had a lot of practice, for a long time, and I tend to give them some benefit of doubt vis a vis their practical abilities, and fundamental awareness of the notions of “counter-intelligence” and so on.

By your standard, it would be reasonable to assume one’s Accountant was not necessarily able to compute compound interest.

Sorry, I won’t bother to read something published on a site that is about as right wing as they come. May I point out that Sy Hirsch was writing about this last year and again in June of this year. Apparently it was pretty much common knowledge in the intelligence community that Bush’s hysterics about Iran were hype and nothing more.

Sorry that your last hope for greatness has been dashed. Get used to it. Once you Republiscums are out of office, this is going to become normal to you. There will be daily revelations of how we were manipulated and lied to.

Rove and now Thompson. Nice to see ol Chas catering to the wingnut fringe and giving them a “legitimate” platform to spew their crap.

Ok, now I’m really confused. What in the hell does Iran have to do with 911. You need professional help Keltoi, you are making less and less sense as the days go by.

Ok, the neoCONS want to have it every way but up. First they are saying that our intelligence community was at fault for the bad intel on Iraq which would be overestimating the threat and now they want us to believe that the intelligence community underestimates the intentions of adversaries. Sorry guys, you can’t have it both ways.

I believe that our intelligence community has finally thrown off the shackles of the Bush Administration and are giving us true information. It’s no coincidence that their findings coincide with the IAEA, an independent group with no axes to grind.

Thompson is a clown and is just slightly more amusing than Trancero.