MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Posts Tagged ‘National Intelligence estimate’

VIPS to Trump:  Intel on Iran Could be CATASTROPHIC – Consortiumnews

Posted by M. C. on August 2, 2018

VIPS to Trump:  Intel on Iran Could be CATASTROPHIC

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: Intelligence on Iran Fails the Smell Test

Mr. President:

As the George W. Bush administration revved up to attack Iraq 15 years ago, we could see no compelling reason for war.  We decided, though, to give President Bush the benefit of the doubt on the chance he had been sandbagged by Vice President Dick Cheney and others.  We chose to allow for the possibility that he actually believed the “intelligence” that Colin Powell presented to the UN as providing “irrefutable and undeniable” proof of WMD in Iraq and a “sinister nexus” between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.

To us in VIPS it was clear, however, that the “intelligence” Powell adduced was bogus.  Thus, that same afternoon (Feb. 5, 2003) we prepared and sent to President Bush a Memorandum like this one, urging him to seek counsel beyond the “circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.”… Read the rest of this entry »

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Iran Doesn’t Have a Nuclear Weapons Program. Why Do Media Keep Saying It Does? | FAIR

Posted by M. C. on October 19, 2017

http://fair.org/home/iran-doesnt-have-a-nuclear-weapons-program-why-do-media-keep-saying-it-does/

The problem with all of these excerpts: Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program. It has a civilian nuclear energy program, but not one designed to build weapons. Over 30 countries have civilian nuclear programs; only a handful—including, of course, the US and Israel—have nuclear weapons programs. One is used to power cities, one is used to level them.

If you are skeptical, just refer to a 2007 assessment by all 16 US intelligences agencies (yes, those 16 US intelligence agencies), which found Iran had “halted” its nuclear weapons program. Or look at the same National Intelligence Estimate in 2012, which concluded again that there “is no hard evidence that Iran has decided to build a nuclear bomb.” Or we can listen to the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, which concurred with the US intelligence assessment (Haaretz, 3/18/12). Read the rest of this entry »

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Another Perspective On Bad Boy Iran

Posted by M. C. on April 12, 2015

Whom has Iran Attacked? No one.

Whom has attacked Iran? US backed Iraq using US and UK supplied chemical weapons.

Is Iran developing nuclear weapons? Not according to the Mossad and our own National Intelligence Estimates.

From Eric Margolis

In fact, the real issue was not nuclear weapons, which Iran does not now possess, but Iran’s potential geopolitical power.

What Israel really feared was not Iran’s non-existent nuclear threat  but rather its ongoing support for the beleaguered Palestinians.

But for the United States, the geostrategic calculus is somewhat different. The Iranian revolution of 1979 profoundly challenged America’s Mideast imperium – what I call the American Raj after the manner in which the British Empire ruled India.

Supposedly Iran would attack Israel if it had a nuke. Israel has 80 to 200 nukes depending on whom you read. Between Israel and it’s US lapdog Iran would be turned into a sheet of glass in a nuclear conflict. The Iranians are not stupid. Read the rest of this entry »

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