U.N. inspectors investigating Iran's nuclear program angrily complained to the Bush administration and to a Republican congressman yesterday about a recent House committee report on Iran's capabilities, calling parts of the document "outrageous and dishonest" and offering evidence to refute its central claims.Sound familiar? It should:
The IAEA openly clashed with the Bush administration on pre-war assessments of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Relations all but collapsed when the agency revealed that the White House had based some allegations about an Iraqi nuclear program on forged documents.What a fine bunch of wacky doodles we have in the executive branch. How many ways can a president screw up a war, um, actually two wars, Iraq being the distraction from Afghanistan, you know, where Al Qaeda and bin Laden were? The short answer: Just look at George. He's the King of FUBAR. And he's vindictive:
After no such weapons were found in Iraq, the IAEA came under additional criticism for taking a cautious approach on Iran, which the White House says is trying to building nuclear weapons in secret. At one point, the administration orchestrated a campaign to remove the IAEA's director general, Mohamed ElBaradei. It failed, and he won the Nobel Peace Prize last year.Sweet. The King of FUBAR screws the pooch and attempts to harm the people who said he was wrong before we all found out the king was wrong. Yeah, that's our Dubya. So what's new?
Yesterday's letter, a copy of which was provided to The Washington Post, was the first time the IAEA has publicly disputed U.S. allegations about its Iran investigation. The agency noted five major errors in the committee's 29-page report, which said Iran's nuclear capabilities are more advanced than either the IAEA or U.S. intelligence has shown.
Among the committee's assertions is that Iran is producing weapons-grade uranium at its facility in the town of Natanz. The IAEA called that "incorrect," noting that weapons-grade uranium is enriched to a level of 90 percent or more. Iran has enriched uranium to 3.5 percent under IAEA monitoring.In other words, Iran is years and years away from having a bomb. Oh, but that doesn't stop the King of FUBAR from sending in his court jester to whip up hysteria. Enter Hoekstra, stage right:
When the congressional report was released last month, Hoekstra said his intent was "to help increase the American public's understanding of Iran as a threat." Spokesman Jamal Ware said yesterday that Hoekstra will respond to the IAEA letter.
Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.), a committee member, said the report was "clearly not prepared in a manner that we can rely on." He agreed to send it to the full committee for review, but the Republicans decided to make it public before then, he said in an interview.
The report was never voted on or discussed by the full committee. Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the vice chairman, told Democratic colleagues in a private e-mail that the report "took a number of analytical shortcuts that present the Iran threat as more dire -- and the Intelligence Community's assessments as more certain -- than they are."
Privately, several intelligence officials said the committee report included at least a dozen claims that were either demonstrably wrong or impossible to substantiate. Hoekstra's office said the report was reviewed by the office of John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence.
Negroponte's spokesman, John Callahan, said in a statement that his office "reviewed the report and provided its response to the committee on July 24, '06." He did not say whether it had approved or challenged any of the claims about Iran's capabilities.
"This is like prewar Iraq all over again," said David Albright, a former nuclear inspector who is president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security. "You have an Iranian nuclear threat that is spun up, using bad information that's cherry-picked and a report that trashes the inspectors."And there you have it. The King of FUBAR wants his war with Iran, dammit! Forget reality. "Me King. Me want war! Harumph!" But wait:
The committee report, written by a single Republican staffer with a hard-line position on Iran, chastised the CIA and other agencies for not providing evidence to back assertions that Iran is building nuclear weapons.Ah, blame it on the intel community who aren't (this time) fixing the facts around the king's policy to kill, kill, kill, bomb, bomb Iran. "Wah, wah, wah," cries the king. "I want to bomb those Islamo freedom-hating Iranian fascists back into the stone age!"
Ha! We've seen this movie before. We don't need to see it again. And that's another reason to put Democrats in charge of Congress this November. To stop the King of FUBAR from starting yet another unnecessary war.
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