Syndicated columnist Pat Buchanan questions the validity of the intelligence report on Iran.
WASHINGTON — The White House
campaign to stampede this nation into war, to smash Iran’s nuclear facilities
before she acquires the capability to build an atom bomb, has been derailed,
probably for the duration of the Bush presidency.
And the Bush policy — to leave the
military option on the table while pressing China, Russia and NATO to back
tougher sanctions in the Security Council — has been torpedoed.
Who are the sappers of the Bush
policy? The leaders of the 16 intelligence agencies Bush commands. For even as
he was raising the specter of “nuclear holocaust” and “World War III,” those 16
agencies downgraded and virtually dismissed the threat, by declaring that Iran
suspended its drive for nuclear weapons — in 2003.
To have the intelligence community
make a public declaration that undermines the foreign policy of a president,
even as it calls his credibility into question, is unprecedented.
Nor is that the only astonishing
aspect of the new National Intelligence Estimate that flatly contradicts the
2005 NIE, which had concluded that Iran was plowing ahead toward a nuclear
weapon.
For if the intelligence agencies
were 100 percent wrong about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, the casus
belli of today’s war, and they have been 100 percent wrong for four years about
Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons, how can we trust them? How can we rely on
them in formulating policy?
And if we cannot trust our
intelligence agencies to distinguish disinformation from truth, and if we have
blundered horribly once into war and almost blundered a second time, how can we
justify the Bush policy of pre-emptive strikes and preventive war?
Other questions arise.
What did President Bush know, and
when did he know it?
Was Bush aware that Iran had
abandoned its nuclear weapons program, years ago, when he was using his
apocalyptic rhetoric about nuclear holocaust and World War III?
If so, that is indefensible.
And if the NIE is right today, why
was it wrong again in 2005, two years after the intelligence community was
wrong about Iraq’s WMD? Why did it take us longer than World War II — from 2003
to late 2007 — to find out the truth about our putative enemy?
The NIE also reports that Iran
probably lacks the capability to produce a nuclear weapon until between 2010
and 2015.
This implies that the uranium
enrichment being done at Natanz is either not proceeding at the pace President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claims or the centrifuges are not working. For if Iran were
actually running 3,000 centrifuges at full speed, and they were working
properly, we have been told Iran could have enough fissile material for a
rudimentary bomb by the end of next year.
What, then, is the real truth
about Iran’s nuclear program and its potential? And what was the nature of the
military program that Iran supposedly stopped back in 2003?
The NIE also said that Iran is
using a “cost-benefit” analysis in deciding whether to proceed with a nuclear
weapons program.
This, however, is a direct
challenge to the madman theory. That theory holds that if Iran builds a bomb,
Ahmadinejad will use it against Israel or us, or give it to terrorists to use
against Israel or us, to start the Armageddon that will bring back the 12th
Imam.
But if Iran’s regime is rational,
which is how it has behaved, if not how it talks, we have an altogether
different adversary we can deal with. For while possession of an atom bomb may
give Iran a deterrent, it would also set in train a series of almost certain
events that would do less to enhance the security of Iran than to imperil it
permanently.
For, if Iran acquires an atomic
weapon, Israel will put its nuclear arsenal of hundreds of warheads on a hair
trigger. The U.S. would re-target nuclear weapons on Iran. Egypt, Turkey and
Saudi Arabia would almost certainly acquire nuclear weapons or a nuclear
capacity. How would any of that make Shiite Iran safer in a Sunni world?
Finally, if Iran did suspend or
terminate its nuclear weapons program in 2003, this suggests that the arrival
of the U.S. Army in Baghdad, and the capture of Saddam Hussein, concentrated
the minds of the mullahs wonderfully. This suggests that those who say Iran,
like Libya, had on offer a grand bargain — to give up nuclear ambitions and end
its aid to Hamas and Hezbollah, in return for an end to sanctions and the U.S.
drive for regime change, and the normalization of relations — may have been
right.
Thus, what the NIE implies is that
Bush may have missed the opportunity to put himself in the history books
alongside Richard Nixon, who opened up China, and Ronald Reagan, who ended the
Cold War with Russia.
Pat Buchanan, a Creators Syndicate
columnist, has been a senior adviser to three presidents.
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Yet we continue to trade goods with a country which 50 years ago -we were at war with? 
There's the berlin Airlift.
Korea'
Cuban Missle Conflict/Vietnam;
Desert Storm,
Iraq War.
And the "left-wing" media.
Ending from "the greatest generation" to the "baby boomers" of the late '1940's and '50's,
Stalin/Mao never need fire ONE ROUND.
All they need is "yellow journalism" and "the drive-by media."