Although Ehud Barrack, Israel's defense minister, yesterday stated that Iran restarted its nuclear program, it looks like this one is dead in the water. People are simply too sick of the warmongers!

Who'd a thought you could teach a chimp to read in such short time.

Dear Editor,

The argument that Iran is building a nuclear weapon has always been pretty questionable. Iran's nuclear weapons program (started by the Shah) was restarted in the 1980s due to the fear that Saddam Hussein in Iraq was trying to develop his own nuclear weapons. The effort was allowed to slide after Saddam's overthrow, then restarted in the late 1990s after Pakistan got its bomb (and Pakistan, the sponsor of the Taliban and in real danger of being controlled by radical Sunni Muslims, is regarded as a potential threat to Shi'ite Iran). It is perfectly reasonable that Iran abandoned its most recent efforts at acquiring nukes in 2003. In all likelihood, what Iran wants - and what it has always wanted - is the knowledge of how to build a bomb in order to deter the US, Israel and other Western powers from attacking it.

The really interesting question is how the neocons will spin this. Already, they are saying that sanctions and pressure worked and so "we" should keep it up. But to what end? If Iran is not developing nuclear weapons then it has every right to develop nuclear power. And let's not forget that the US is the real nuclear threat here, given that the current US administration has destroyed or is in the process of violating every nuclear safeguard treaty ever signed by the US. The US is simply in no position to cast stones at any other country over its nuclear intentions.

The NIE indicates that negotiation with Iran is not only possible but likely to be successful. Of course, this won't happen. The current crop of "policymakers" in the White House are dedicated to humbling Iran, to making it pay because it has dared to defy American power and, more than 25 years ago, humiliated the one, true superpower. The real crazies are in the White House. Those who want another war would seem to have been dealt a significant defeat with this new report, but these people are master manipulators. Let's see how this all plays out.

Sincerely,

Shaun Narine

So we're lead to believe the equally somewhat implausible assertion that they've spent, what they themselves say is about $4 billion dollars a year NOT doing this. And the atomic power plants the Russians are building for them still don't have electrical generation facilities because.......(money they could have spent building refineries because Iran imports 80% of their gasoline and price increases indirectly HURT them as much as they hurt us).

And their own pronouncements more recent than 2003 not only repeated assert that they are and will develop an atomic bomb but that they're developing missiles specifically to deliver them

And just two weeks ago the IAEA announced that the Iranian atomic program is so opaque that they (the IAEA) lost track of the Iranian program, doesn't know what they're up to and can no longer comment on it good or bad.

Uh ok hang your hat on that theory. Why is it you call the NIE a bunch of hooey when it says something you disagree with and when it aligns with you is suddenly brilliant?

Nice work. It's always good to see primary sources here.

Unfortunately, the talking points coming out of the conservative machine are already showing the footprints leading back to the source of this one. The story, in case anyone is having trouble with it, boils down to something like:

"This report shows that we have Iran under control and can continue to stop their terrifying, evil, terrorist threat of terror using only our bad-ass tough-talking hard-line attitude rather than employing the much more inconvenient hard-line military invasion we claimed we were going to use."

We already know that nobody wipes their butt in the Bush regime without permission from the zampolits. If there's any reason to think that the current document, accurate though it may be, is anything other than a face-saving measure intended to distract critics from the fact that the White House is caving on war with Iran, it's not yet in evidence.