No sh*t? You don't say. I wouldn't call that a narrow dispute. I might even go so far as to call that no dispute at all.
Still, Iran disputes claims that the plant is part of a weapons program.
This, on the other hand, I would not call narrow. I would call it an infinite chasm. The United States says without any evidence that Iran is building weapons, or might be, or could consider doing so - which almost sounds even scarier. And Iran says that is not true. Neither is Iran pretending to be building weapons in order to facilitate its own destruction, as our media pundits love to falsely claim that Iraq did. Iran is stating clearly and unequivocally that it is not building nuclear weapons.
American intelligence officials say that they learned a traumatic lesson from the Iraqi weapons debacle, and that assessments of Iran's nuclear program are hedged and not influenced by political or policy considerations.
Horseshit. They lied and did not need to learn that they had lied. There is nothing OTHER than policy considerations shaping announcements that Iran is building weapons or might be, or announcments that Iran has done something different from what the United States and Israel and other nations do when it has tested missiles.
??We'd let the country down, and we wanted to make sure it would never happen again, ? said Thomas Fingar, who before the Iraq war led the State Department's intelligence bureau, which dissented from the inaccurate claims about Iraq's nuclear program. Dissent from majority views in intelligence assessments is now encouraged, and assumptions are spelled out, said Mr. Fingar, who is now at Stanford University.
??Now, it's much more of a transparent tussle of ideas, ? he said.
Good. At least the next war launched from Stanford won't be launched. That's a relief.
That tussle produced a surprising conclusion in a 2007 national intelligence assessment on Iran's nuclear program: that Tehran's work on designing a warhead was halted in 2003. Today, the American view is that the design work has still not resumed, a more conservative stance than that of some close allies, who say they believe the work has resumed or never stopped at all, including Germany, Israel and, according to a report Tuesday by The Financial Times, Britain.
When there is evidence for such claims, you should report it. The IAEA and the United Nations should address it. But there STILL will not be the slightest glimmer of a legal justification for bombing another country.
In assessing the construction near Qum, the Central Intelligence Agency ??formed its conclusions carefully and patiently over time, weighing and testing each piece of information that came in, ? said Paul Gimigliano, an agency spokesman. ??This was a major intelligence success. ?
Not all are persuaded. Glenn Greenwald, an author and a left-leaning blogger for the online magazine Salon, called the parallels with the charges that Iraq had so-called weapons of mass destruction in 2002 ??substantial and disturbing. ?
??The administration is making inflammatory claims about another country's W.M.D. program and intentions without providing any evidence, ? he said.
Why in the hell do you have to quote someone else and call him left-leaning in order to note that there is no evidence. Either there is evidence or there isn't. Why not report that? Why not put it in the first paragraph?
Gary Sick, an expert on Iran at Columbia University, said that ever since 1992, American officials had claimed that Iran was just a few years away from a nuclear bomb. Like Saddam Hussein, the clerical government in Iran is ??despised, ? he said, leading to worst-case assumptions.
??In 2002, it seemed utterly naà ve to believe Saddam didn't have a program, ? Mr. Sick said. Now, the notion that Iran is not racing to build a bomb is similarly excluded from serious discussion, he said.
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