Iran insists its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes

Veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, writing in The New Yorker, cites a secret CIA report based on intelligence such as satellite images.

Correspondents say the alleged document appears to challenge Washington's views regarding Iranian nuclear intentions.

The article says the White House was dismissive about the CIA report.

The US and Europe say Iran is pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons programme - a charge Iran has strongly denied.

'Hostile' response

The CIA assessment, according to unnamed officials quoted in the article, casts doubt on how far Iran has actually progressed to making a nuclear weapon.

The White House is not going to dignify the work of an author who has viciously degraded our troops Dana Perino White House spokeswoman

It says the agency based its conclusions on technical intelligence, such as satellite photography and measurements from sensors planted by US and Israeli agents.

The article says: "A current senior intelligence official confirmed the existence of the CIA analysis, and told me that the White House had been hostile to it."

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino criticised the article, calling it an "error-filled" piece in a "series of inaccuracy-riddled articles about the Bush administration".

"The White House is not going to dignify the work of an author who has viciously degraded our troops, and whose articles consistently rely on outright falsehoods to justify his own radical views," she was quoted by AFP news agency as saying.

The BBC's Adam Brookes in Washington says if the New Yorker article is correct, it would suggest that the CIA is being more cautious than the Bush administration in evaluating whether or not Iran is on its way to building a bomb.

And he says, as with Iraq, it suggests political battles to come over how intelligence is used as a basis for American foreign policy.

___________________________

To be fair I will include the L.A.Times article below, which was released two years after the report above. Of course Hayden goes against facts & logic, he is after all the scumbag who hates our privacy. '

www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-02-05-nsa-t elecoms_x.htm

In May of 2006, USA Today reported that, under General Hayden's leadership, the NSA created an domestic telephone call database.'

from wikipedia: On Monday, May 8, 2006, General Hayden was nominated by President George W. Bush to be Director of the Central Intelligence Agency after the resignation of Porter J. Goss on May 5, 2006.

So good old Bush appoints Hayden as CIA chief..... not long after the CIA said Iran was not a threat.......Figures.........

The whole thing makes me sick, considering the Bushes & McCains are close friends & Obama & Cheney are cousins. Don't believe me? Look it up.

It's one big happy family. George Bush Jr. & Kerry are cousins......when is America going to wake up to the lies & deception?

___________________________

articles.latimes.com/2008/mar/31/world/fg-hayden3 1

CIA chief says Iran still pursuing nuclear bomb

By Greg Miller
March 31, 2008

CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said Sunday that he believes Iran is still pursuing a nuclear bomb, even though the U.S. intelligence community, including his own agency, reached a consensus judgment last year that the Islamic Republic had halted its nuclear weapons work in 2003.

Asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” whether he thought Iran was trying to develop a nuclear weapon, Hayden said, “Yes,” adding that his assessment was not based on “court-of-law stuff… . This is Mike Hayden looking at the body of evidence.”

He said his conviction stemmed largely from Iran’s willingness to endure international sanctions rather than comply with demands for nuclear inspections and abandon its efforts to develop technologies that can produce fissile material.

“Why would the Iranians be willing to pay the international tariff they appear willing to pay for what they’re doing now if they did not have, at a minimum … the desire to keep the option open to develop a nuclear weapon and, perhaps even more so, that they’ve already decided to do that?” he said.

However, a sweeping assessment from the intelligence community issued in December concluded Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons work in 2003, soon after the United States invaded Iraq, and appeared not to have restarted it.

The CIA director is the latest senior Bush administration official to question the findings of the National Intelligence Estimate, which was widely seen as a setback to efforts by the United States and European nations to step up international pressure on Tehran.

Soon after the report was released, President Bush argued that it should not be seen as a sign that Iran was backing away from its pursuit of the bomb.

“Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous, and Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon,” he said in a Dec. 4 news conference.

In an interview with ABC News last week, Vice President Dick Cheney alleged that Iran was “heavily involved in trying to develop nuclear weapons enrichment, the enrichment of uranium to weapons-grade levels.” International inspectors have not found evidence of such an effort.

Iran has said its nuclear program is strictly for peaceful energy purposes, to generate power. In its latest report, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ watchdog group, said that Iran’s uranium enrichment operations at its Natanz plant are yielding material useful for civilian reactors, but far below the 80% or 90% grade needed for weapons production.

Still, the United States and other Western nations fear that Iran’s pursuit of dual-use nuclear technologies will eventually enable it to develop nuclear weapons.

The National Intelligence Estimate on Iran represented a startling shift in the intelligence community’s views of Tehran’s nuclear activity. The report, issued after years of warnings that Tehran appeared bent on building a nuclear bomb, begins by saying that U.S. spy agencies had concluded “with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.”

The finding was cited as evidence that Tehran was susceptible to diplomatic pressure. It was subsequently attributed to new intelligence that had surfaced in the summer of 2007, including journals kept by senior Iranian officials that documented the decision to suspend the program.

But the report also notes that Tehran “at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons” and has not ceased civilian uranium enrichment activities that could possibly be converted to weapons development purposes.

The nation’s top intelligence official, J. Michael McConnell, testified last month that he “probably would change a few things” if given a chance to redo the report, suggesting that its conclusions had been misinterpreted.

The document includes a footnote that specifies that Iran is believed to have stopped only its “weapon design and weaponization work,” not the uranium-enrichment work that is widely considered the biggest obstacle to constructing a bomb.

Hayden acknowledged Sunday that U.S. estimates on such matters were now viewed with greater skepticism because assertions about Iraq’s alleged stockpiles of banned weapons had been proven wrong.

The U.S. intelligence community “has additional burdens to carry because of the Iraq NIE, in which we got so much of that estimate wrong,” he said.

_____________________

What about the dumb chicken necked liberals who just love their Zionist tool change boy Obama? Obama is no different than McInsane.

Source: Chicago Sun Times:

Another source: www.antiwarleague.com/blog/index.php

www.suntimes.com/news/politics/281249,CST-NWS-OBA MA03.article#

Obama: Iran threatens all of us

Won't rule out force in speech in Chicago to pro-Israel group

Sen. Barack Obama said Friday the use of military force should not be taken off the table when dealing with Iran, which he called "a threat to all of us."

Speaking before a pro-Israel crowd at a downtown hotel, Obama also repeated his call for a phased pullout of U.S. troops from Iraq and strongly backed a strong U.S. relationship with Israel.

Earlier in the day, the Republican National Committee took aim at Obama, issuing a research memo aimed at highlighting the Illinois freshman senator's lack of experience on foreign affairs. That the gloves-are-off memo was even generated at this time is a testament to Obama's growing strength in the Democratic primary field.

» http://www.suntimes.com/new... 'fullimage', 'toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no, menubar=no,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,width=650,h eight=650')" class="enlarge_pic">Click to enlarge image

http://www.suntimes.com/new... 'fullimage', 'toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no, menubar=no,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,width=650,h eight=650')" class="enlarge_pic">

Senator Barack Obama makes a major policy speech on Israel before the American

Israel Public Affairs Committee.
(Rich Hein/Sun-Times)

March 3, 2007

 

BY DAVE NEWBART Staff Reporter

RELATED STORIES

http://blogs.suntimes.com/s... class="reddotlink"> Text: Obama's AIPAC speech http://blogs.suntimes.com/s... class="reddotlink"> Sweet blog: GOP launches attack Did Obama ancestors own slaves?

Obama campaign spokesman Dan Pfeiffer dismissed the Republican memo as an "example of the type of politics Barack Obama is hoping to change." He said Obama has spoken out against the war for years.

While he was being attacked in Washington, Obama was in friendly territory in Chicago as he appeared at a forum attended by 800 members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, an influential pro-Israel lobby. He received a standing ovation from the crowd and a hug from one of the group's leaders.

Obama said global leaders must do whatever it takes to stop Iran from enriching uranium and acquiring nuclear weapons. He called Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "reckless, irresponsible and inattentive" to the day-to-day needs of the Iranian people.

The Iranian "regime is a threat to all of us," Obama said.

While Obama wouldn't rule out force, he said the United States should engage in "aggressive diplomacy combined with tough sanctions" to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear threat.

Again taking aim at the Bush administration and the war in Iraq, he said the war had actually strengthened Iran's influence in the region. He noted the war had spurned "anti-U.S. and further anti-Israel propaganda."

Obama told of a trip he took to Israel in January 2006, visiting a village that resembled a suburb in the United States. He said he was deeply moved by a visit to a home hit by a rocket launched by Hezbollah.

"Our job is to never forget that the threat of violence is real," he said.

Obama's appearance was seen as a move to court Jewish donors, although the event wasn't a fund-raiser. He did pose for photos with AIPAC members at a private reception before the speech. Although the event was billed as a "forum," he took no questions from the audience or media and left immediately after his half-hour speech.

Even though many in the crowd endorsed his remarks, some said they are waiting to hear more from him in the coming months to better gauge his position on Israel and other foreign-policy questions.

"He is an unknown," said Diane Dubey, an AIPAC member from Lincolnwood.

Others said Obama, who largely read from prepared remarks, seemed slightly less passionate about the topic than presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, who spoke at AIPAC's national convention last year. Both Clinton and Obama will be at the convention March 11 in Washington.

"He speaks beautifully, but we don't find a lot of emotion in what he says," said Mark Sherman of Northbrook.

_____________________

Obama:"Israel True Friend" and " Elimination of Iran Threat"

Video Here: www.youtube.com/watch

Check out this interview with Sr. CIA analyst Ray McGovern,

Interview with 27-year CIA veteran Ray McGovern on Israel, Iran and the Bush policy in the Middle East

Video here: www.youtube.com/watch

A picture speaks a thousand words.........