File Under "N" Yet Again

Once again, under the heading of "No Shit, Dick Tracy," we have a news item.

"Diplomacy Fails To Slow The Advance Of Nuclear Arms," proclaims the Paper of Record.

Well no shit.

If I were a government official in Iran, I'd take a long look at my counterparts in Bush's fantasyland "Axis of Evil."

North Korea--real threat. Nuclear weapons, nuclear missile submarines--that is to say, a nuclear deterrent (remember that term?). No presence of 150,000 US occupying troops.

Iraq--no threat. No nuclear weapons, no weapons programs, no effective army, no functional air force--that is to say, no deterrent. And there just happen to be 150,000 foreign soldiers there.

Right next door to Iran.

Oh, and on their eastern border, there are a bunch of US soldiers and aircraft, too--in Afghanistan (remember that place?).

WWAKD?

Yes, what would the Ayatollah Khomeini do?

He'd get to work on a goddamn nuclear deterrent, that's what.

Considering North Korea again, I liked this paragraph:

Mr. Khan's sales have also complicated the Bush administration's efforts to disarm North Korea. A new assessment of the country has come in one of three classified reports commissioned by the Bush administration earlier this year from the American intelligence community. Circulated last month, the report concluded that nearly 20 months of toughened sanctions, including ending major energy aid, and several rounds of negotiations involving four of North Korea's neighbors have not slowed the North's efforts to develop plutonium weapons, and that a separate, parallel program to make weapons from highly enriched uranium was also moving forward, though more slowly.

Uh, it could be that Mr. Bush's policies have complicated the Bush administration's efforts to disarm North Korea. That whole "pre-emptive war" deal might carry more weight than any piddling diplomatic toy Colin Powell carried to Pyongyang.

And, regarding Iran:

"The evidence suggests that Iran is trying to keep all of its options open,” said Robert M. Gates, the director of central intelligence under President Bush’s father, who recently headed a detailed study of Iran that was critical of what it called the administration’s failure to engage the country. “They are trying to stay just within their treaty obligations” while producing highly enriched uranium, said Mr. Gates, who is now the president of Texas A&M University, “and I think they can go with a weapon whenever they want to.”

Mr. Gates and other outside experts were interviewed on the sidelines of a four-day conference on the challenges of nuclear terrorism and the spread of unconventional weapons held at the Aspen Institute last week. Separately over the past few weeks, five senior officials from the administration and Asian and European nations, all with varying access to the intelligence about the Iranian and North Korean programs, were interviewed about their status. Not surprisingly, their judgments about the progress the two countries have made were not always in accord.

Okay, to me that sounds entirely fuckin' reasonable given that there is a conquering army on two of Iran's borders. What the hell do we expect them to do? Sit around with their thumbs up their asses waiting for the 3rd Infantry Division to come to Tehran?

Also, I think that the CIA (and even more so the Bush administration) has completely used up all of its credibility regarding who has nuclear weapons, where they are, and how many. I'm wary of them. And you should be too.