Terrorism And Mid-Term Elections

Its tinfoil hat time.

Bush Administration officials will brief the U.N Security Council members soon on what they allege is evidence Iran is working to develop a nuclear bomb. And to add a little colour to it, they compare the evidence found to the design of Fat Man, the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.

As the U.N. Security Council prepares to debate Iran's nuclear ambitions--perhaps as early as next week--Bush Administration officials are readying a new intelligence briefing for council members on Tehran's weapons programs. It will rely mainly on circumstantial evidence, much of it from documents found on a laptop purportedly purloined from an Iranian nuclear engineer and obtained by the CIA in 2004. U.S. officials...concede they have no smoking gun.

Ok, circumstantial evidence should be enough. This is the evidence they will present.

...have diagrams that they believe show components of a nuclear bomb. According to a Western diplomat familiar with the U.S. intel brief, a Farsi-language PowerPoint* presentation on the laptop has "catchy graphics," including diagrams of a hollow metallic sphere 2 ft. in diameter and weighing about 440 lbs. Other documents show a sphere-shaped array of tiny detonators. No file specifically refers to a nuclear bomb, but U.S. officials say the design of the sphere--an outer shell studded with small chemical-explosive charges meant to detonate inward, which would squeeze an inner core of material into a critical mass--is akin to that of classic devices like Fat Man, the atom bomb dropped on Nagasaki during World War II. "Because of the size and weight and the power source going into it and height-of-burst requirements," says the diplomat, Western experts have concluded that the design "is only intended to contain a nuclear weapon. There's no other munition which would work." A report issued last week by Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), says Iranian officials have dismissed a number of the laptop documents as fabricated [emphasis mine].

The tinfoil hat question is just what audience are the the Bushaviks playing to? Are they just trying to get U.N. sanctions against Iran or are they playing to the American Congress and American people? Are they making their case for an invasion of Iran exactly like they did in the case of Iraq? Just asking.

Bush has already said all options are open in dealing with Iran.

In the interview, Bush said the U.S. & Israel "are united in our objective to make sure that Iran doesn’t have a weapon." But, he said, if diplomacy fails "all options are on the table. The use of force is the last option for any president. You know, we've used force in the recent past to secure our country," he said.

Cheney has already nearly come out and said the administration will play the fear factor in the upcoming elections. Bush needs to scare the American people so they will elect Republicans if he is to keep his iron fisted control of government.

"And with an important election coming up, people need to know just how we view the most critical questions of national security, and how we propose to defend the nation..." Cheney said.

His comments reflected the emerging GOP plan to make national security and terrorism the centerpiece of House and Senate elections. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove telegraphed the strategy last month when he told a Republican audience that "we are dealing with two parties that have fundamentally different views on national security."

Cheney's comments were the closest a top White House official has come to calling for the NSA program to be a political matter.

If this administration had a track record of nothing more than political spinning of fact, which is expected from any politician, I might be inclined to believe what they say. Hell, I believed them right after 9/11 although I didn't believe they had made a case for attacking Iraq. But this group of charlatans, and that is far too polite a term, lies to US every chance they get. They lie about big things and small. If they want to invade Iran and take control of their oil fields, they will lie through their teeth to justify it.

*A while back I read how Washington DC loves PowerPoint presentations. Can't find the source to link to, but the author suggested America would have a much better government if PowerPoint were removed from all DC computers. Then there is this PowerPoint: Killer App article.