Thursday, February 19, 2009
Enriching Iran
This is either more news of Iran's weapons program or anti-Iranian information ops. You decide:
Iran has built up a stockpile of enough enriched uranium for one nuclear bomb, United Nations officials acknowledged on Thursday.
In a development that comes as the Obama administration is drawing up its policy on negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear programme, UN officials said Iran had produced more nuclear material than previously thought....
“It appears that Iran has walked right up to the threshold of having enough low enriched uranium to provide enough raw material for a single bomb,” said Peter Zimmerman, a former chief scientist of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.
Of course, even if the news were true, one can never derive "what ought" from "what is."
6 Comments:
By 
Elijah, at
Thu Feb 19, 11:19:00 PM:
i read that you had responded to Fabius Maximus.
One could just as easily flip the narrative and perspective - Fabius is engaging in pro-Iranian Information ops.
In any case, odds are Obama will be more of a wartime President than Bush
tick tock
By 
, at
Fri Feb 20, 01:16:00 AM:
Tigerhawk,
Not related to this article, but it is still highly on-topic to your blog:
Arctic Ice Extent Understated Because of "Sensor Drift"
http://news.slashdot.org/news/09/02/19/0420255.shtml
Vilmos
By Viking Kaj, at
Fri Feb 20, 12:08:00 PM:
I responded at length in Fabio's blog.
His position is that the LA times article somewhat misrepresented government positions.
But if you read the government positions there seems to be a distancing from the campaign position going on, ie. Iran might be more of a problem than we thought.
You also have to consider the biases of the source. The LA times is owned by Sam Zell, a somewhat conservative supporter of Israel who has had notorious fights with the editorial staff there since he took over in 2007. He endorsed Obama in the Trib and the LA times. There may also be a Panetta connection.
My expectation is that the article is either a reflection of the fact that the "O team" got their strategic assessment and went "Oh, shit.", i.e. we effed up on Iran, and are now backpedaling quietly so as to avoid acusations of incompetence.
Or, in a more cynical moment, this is a subtile piece of calculated disinformation being now planted since the Dems knew they were going to keep us in Iraq all along and needed to have a likely, if flimsy, excuse.
Either way, my prediction during the campaign still holds. Despite all the rhetoric I expect the Dems will not abandon any of our significant investment in forward bases in Iraq, especially custome built the Camp Cooke/Taji complex.
In other words, they just snookered the American electorate again. But then sheep deserve what happens to them.
By Georg Felis, at
Sat Feb 21, 12:06:00 AM:
The position of gradually increasing the rhetoric pointed at Iran to show that the Obama Administration takes them seriously as a potential threat is a straw position. It looks good, and in the event they pull something really nasty like nuking Tel Aviv, it gives Obama "cover", but without any serious consequences to the Iranians continuing their nuclear bomb program, the Obama position is useless. And after the first nuke goes off, it is too late.
Far too many people are taking the position "Gee, those nutty neighbors of Fred's. They throw M-80s into Fred's back yard, they killed his dog, burned down his shed, and have taken to shooting his windows out whenever his kids walk by them. And now Fred has gone and built a wall between them. Silly Fred, he should just try talking to them again before they finish building that cannon in their back yard. Its Fred's fault they had to build the cannon, that wall was just the last straw..."
Yes, I responded in Fabio's blog too. Fabio thinks Fred is silly too.
By Nichevo, at
Sat Feb 21, 04:10:00 AM:
I find Faboo both tiresome and tyrannical. Since one can't post freely on his blog, here's hoping you will engage him on yours, where he can't muzzle, edit and interrupt you.
Since you evidently respect him, he must be a nonzero, but he has proven nothing to me except that he needs Imodium for the keyboard. Do you know what are his credentials?
The sort of company he keeps and indulges on the site, we needn't get into, but as he aggressively jumps into any posting he doesn't like, it's pretty clear what he does like. So I really see little need to bother anymore. You post hard so we don't have to!
By Viking Kaj, at
Sat Feb 21, 05:30:00 PM:
I now believe that Fabio is actually Cato the Censor and will post accordingly.
Kaj
