Juan Cole..... Republican Congressional Report on Iran Riddled With Errors

[RedEarth]

Friday, August 25, 2006

Republican Congressional Report on Iran Riddled With Errors

Here is what the professionals are saying about the Republican-dominated Subcommittee on Intelligence Policy report on Iran that slams US intelligence professionals for poor intelligence on Iran: The report demonstrates that these Republicans have poor intelligence . . . on Iran. What follows is summaries of things I've seen from other experts but I can't identify them without permission.

First of all, former CIA professional Larry Johnson and Jim Marcinkowski point out that the Republicans have a lot of damn gall. It was high members of this Republican administration who leaked to the Iranians and the whole world the name of Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA operative who spent her professional career combatting the proliferation of WMD and was, at the time she was betrayed by Traitor Rove and his merry band, working on Iran. Had it not been for these Republican figures, none of whom has yet been punished in any way for endangering US national security, we might know more about Iran.

It is being said that the staffer who headed the report is Frederick Fleitz, who was a special assistant to John Bolton when Bolton was undersecretary of state for proliferation issues. Fleitz was sent to the unemployment line when Condi wisely exiled Bolton to the United Nations, where there is a long history of ill-tempered despots who like to bang their shoes on the podium. So this report is the long arm of Bolton popping up in Congress. It is Neoconservative propaganda.

I repeat what I have said before, which is that John Bolton is just an ill-tempered lawyer who has no special expertise in nuclear issues or in Iran, and aside from an ability to scare the bejesus out of young gophers who bring him coffee and to thunderously denounce on cue any world leader on whom he is sicced, he has no particular qualifications for his job.

Nor do the Republican congressmen know anything special about Iran's nuclear energy program. They certainly know much less than the CIA agents who work on it full time, some of whom know Persian and have actually done, like, you know . . . intelligence work. We are beset by instant experts on contemporary Iran, like the medievalist Bernard Lewis, who wrongly predicted that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would attack Israel on August 22, based on Lewis's weird interpretation of his alleged millenarian beliefs. Once the Neoconservatives went so far as actually to make fun of reality in the hearing of a reporter, their game was up.

Pete Hoekstra, who is the chair of this committee, has a long history of saying things that are, well, disconnected to reality. Like when he made a big deal about some old shells with mustard gas found in Iraq left over from the 1980s Iran-Iraq War, and claimed that these were the fabled and long-sought Iraqi WMD over which 2600 of our service people are six feet under and another 8000 in wheelchairs. Nope.

This congressional report is full of the same sort of wild fantasies.

more ........... and a link to the PDF file.....

http://www.juancole.com/2006/08/republican-congressional-report-on.html

[Greeby]

1. Surely you're taking the piss, professor?

Surely a guy as smart as you knows this is about catapulting the propaganda

[Kagemusha]

2. Know more about Iran? That's not the point to them at all

They simply want to create new reality and launch a war based on that reality, which will then create yet more new reality, while historians study the reality they ignored, and encouraged others to ignore.

[gula]

3. Interesting article in AsiaTimes on the neocons, specifically

Elliot Abrams. It gives a good background to help better understand some of the stuff coming from the repugnants.

Bad headline, but definitively worth a read.
http://tinyurl.com/j7m5m

[Blue Meany]

4. National Council Resistance is not a good source...

It appears to me that much information in the Congressional report comes from the National Council of Resistance, a front organization from the MEK (Mujaddin-i Khalq), which has been lobbying the US to overthrow the Iranian government and put them in charge for the last 25 years. The State Department has rightly labelled them a terrorist organization. They are also a very unreliable source, though occasionally their claims have a nugget of truth in them. Here are some of the claims they have made in the recent past about Iran:

International Terrorism

1996 Iran has shipped giant mortar launchers to Europe for use in a wave of international terrorist
attacks (UPI 7/25/1996).

1997 Iran was responsible for the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabaia. (UPI 4/16/1997)

1998 Iran was responsible for the East Africa embassy bombings (AP 8/15/1998).

Biological and Chemical Weapons

1999 Iran has a massive chemical and biological warfare program (AFP 4/17/1997)
Iran has hired 18 Russian chemical weapons experts to support the programs; has developed 3
kinds of biological weapons; has produced alaftoxin, anthrax and VX gas, and is conducting
tests to weaponize these for use on missile warheads (AFP 1/26/1999)

2003 Iran is producing anthrax, smallpox and the plague (Press Association,
5/16/2003)

Long Range Missiles

2002 Iran tested a Shahab-4 long-range missile, which has a range of 2000 km
(Japan Economic Newswire, 10/16/2002) under development, though it appeared in the recent Congressional Report on
Iran]
Iran is seeking missiles that can reach Europe and North Africa (UPI
10/17/2002)
2005 Iran is building missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons (AFP
11/21/2005)

Nuclear Program

2002 Iran has a secret nuclear program outside the supervision of IAEA (UPI 12/13/2002).
2003 Iran has two new sites that are part of nuclear weapons program (AP 7/9/2003)
Iran has secret uranium enrichment plant near Isfahan, with 120 to 180
centrifuges. (AFP 10/14/2003)
2004 A Q Khan, of Pakistan delivered highly enriched uranium to Iran in 2001 (11/18/2004)
Iran will have an atomic bomb by 2005 (11/18/2004)
2005 Iran is secretly importing extra-durable steel for its nuclear program (AP 7/28/2005)
Iran has 4000 centrifuges for enriching uranium to weapons grade (AP
8/9/2005)
Iran built a plant for processing plutonium for nuclear weapons (White
House Bulletin, 8/19/2005)
Iran is building missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons (AFP
11/21/2005)
Iran has built a secret network of underground tunnels to hide nuclear weapons
program (Voice of America, 12/20/2005)
2006 Iran has built 5000 centrifuge machines (AFP 1/10/2006)
Iran will have atomic bomb in 2-3 years ( AFP 4/12/2006)
Iran is working on P-2 centrifuge for uranium enrichment (AFP 4/27/2006)