nuclear weapons
Posted at 8:12am on Jul. 8, 2008 So Tell Me, Mr. Immelt, Why Are You Killing American Servicemen?
Bill O’Reilly doesn’t let facts get in the way of a good story line
By blackhedd
Years ago, a large young man from Flint, Michigan with nothing better to do started stalking Roger Smith, who was then the CEO of General Motors Corporation. The young man, with a small film crew in tow, would stick a microphone under Smith’s nose and ask him all kinds of strange questions. Later, he assembled the pieces into what looked like a documentary but in fact was tendentious propaganda.
General Motors learned then that truth is no barrier to being smeared effectively. And young Michael Moore learned that craftily-packaged lies can change the world.
I was reminded of that when I heard that Bill O’Reilly, of Fox News, showed up last week at the National Governor’s Association meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. And he appears to have gotten in front of attendee Jeffrey Immelt, who is the CEO of the General Electric Company of Fairfield, Connecticut.
What O’Reilly wanted to know from Immelt more or less boiled down to: Why are you still killing Americans in Iraq?
It turns out that this has been a hobbyhorse for O’Reilly for quite some time now. He’s generated several flaps about General Electric this year.
So this is my way of trying to cut off another one.
Keep reading…
Posted in Bill O'Reilly | Foreign Affairs | General Electric | Iran | nuclear weapons — Comments (30)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 11:17am on Feb. 23, 2008 Israel In The Crossfire...Again
By haystack
We've heard Iran's President and his diatribe about Israel often enough to get the basic point: "We want Israel to go away, and we want to "own" the Middle East." We know he plans on having nukes, regardless his strained denials and insistences to the contrary. There's really no reason to even attempt to convince ourselves there is anything BUT hostile intentions despite all the Democrats running for President who promise to be open minded (and, in Obama's case actually sit DOWN with these lunatics for a mocha latte and cookies) and look for a peaceful relationship with them.
Now, apparently, Lebanese Lunatic Nasrallah wants a piece of that action as well:
"The disappearance of Israel is an inevitable fact. It is an historical process in the region which will come to an end in several years.
I wonder...does the reference to "several years" fall solely to coincidence in the larger context of Iran's nuke program? We are to believe as much, apparently.
Our Democrat Presidential wannabes refuse to look at the reality of what Iran would do were they to have this capability. Obama has even gone so far as to promise open talks without pre-conditions. How do you think that conversation will go?
BO: Are you going to launch nuclear weapons against Israel and wipe them from the face of the earth?
MA: Of COURSE not. We are a peaceful people.
BO: You PROMISE?
MA: Of COURSE. You can trust us...always...to tell you the truth.
BO: Cool-pass the cream and sugar please? You gonna eat that cookie?
More below the fold...
Posted in Democrat Denials | Iran | Israel | nuclear weapons | War — Comments (40)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 6:09pm on Dec. 13, 2007 Clarifying The Iran NIE
By Pejman Yousefzadeh
A valuable and interesting op-ed from Henry Kissinger. The following passage deserves mention and further commentary in response to the questions that it raises:
The "Key Judgments" released by the intelligence community last week begin with a dramatic assertion: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program." This sentence was widely interpreted as a challenge to the Bush administration policy of mobilizing international pressure against alleged Iranian nuclear programs. It was, in fact, qualified by a footnote whose complex phraseology obfuscated that the suspension really applied to only one aspect of the Iranian nuclear weapons program (and not even the most significant one): the construction of warheads. That qualification was not restated in the rest of the document, which continued to refer to the "halt of the weapons program" repeatedly and without qualification.
The reality is that the concern about Iranian nuclear weapons has had three components: the production of fissile material, the development of missiles and the building of warheads. Heretofore, production of fissile material has been treated as by far the greatest danger, and the pace of Iranian production of fissile material has accelerated since 2006. So has the development of missiles of increasing range. What appears to have been suspended is the engineering aimed at the production of warheads.
The NIE holds that Iran may be able to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon by the end of 2009 and, with increasing confidence, more warheads by the period 2010 to 2015. That is virtually the same timeline as was suggested in the 2005 National Intelligence Estimate. The new estimate does not assess how long it would take to build a warhead, though it treats the availability of fissile material as the principal limiting factor. If there is a significant gap between these two processes, it would be important to be told what it is. Nor are we told how close to developing a warhead Tehran was when it suspended its program or how confident the intelligence community is in its ability to learn when work on warheads has resumed. On the latter point, the new estimate expresses only "moderate" confidence that the suspension has not been lifted already.
It is therefore doubtful that the evidence supports the dramatic language of the summary and, even less so, the broad conclusions drawn in much of the public commentary. For the past three years, the international debate has concentrated on the Iranian effort to enrich uranium by centrifuges, some 3,000 of which are now in operation. The administration has asserted that this represents a decisive step toward Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons and has urged a policy of maximum pressure. Every permanent member of the U.N. Security Council has supported the request that Iran suspend its uranium enrichment program; the various countries differ on the urgency with which their recommendations should be pressed and in their willingness to impose penalties.
Posted at 6:13pm on Apr. 16, 2007 Hear THAT, Mullahs?
By Jeff Emanuel
Quote of the day:
Now’s the time to worry. The Iranians have to worry, too. The idea that they’ll emerge as the regional hegemon is silly.
—Middle East expert Geoffrey Kemp, on the potential for a Middle East nuclear arms race spurred by Iran’s atomic program
