| Thursday, April 13, 2006 |
| Wag the camel |
Maureen Dowd lets the administration have it, again:
Iran was whipping up real uranium while America was whipped up by fake uranium.
Obsessed with going to war against a Middle East country that had no nuclear weapon, the Bush administration lost focus on and leverage over a Middle East country hurtling toward a nuclear weapon.
That's after the Bush crew lost focus on and leverage over an Asian country that says it has now produced a whole bunch of nuclear weapons.
To paraphrase Raymond Chandler, if brains were elastic, these guys wouldn't have enough to make suspenders for a parakeet.
While Dick Cheney was getting booed as he threw out the first pitch for the Nationals - it bounced in the dirt and Scooter wasn't even there to catch it - Iran was jubilantly welcoming itself to the nuclear club and spitting in the eye of the U.S. and U.N.
Speaking before a mural of fluttering white doves, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad bragged that his scientists had concocted enriched uranium. They will now churn out nuclear fuel as fast as they can.
Are they making a bomb? Nah, said the Iranian president, furthest thing from their minds.
Are we going to bomb them before they can get a bomb? Nah, said the American president, furthest thing from our minds.
The nuclear doves announcement was embarrassing for Mr. Bush, who had said on Monday that he was determined to prevent Iran from getting the know-how to enrich uranium. But the Persian logic cannot be faulted. If you pretend to have W.M.D., the U.S. may come and get you. Ask Saddam. If you really have W.M.D., you're bulletproof. Ask Kim Jong Il. Which leads us to the following announcement from the talented Mr. Ahmadinejad today:
Iran Leader: 'We Are a Nuclear Country'
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed Thursday that Iran won't back away from uranium enrichment and said the world must treat Iran as a nuclear power.
The comments were made as Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, arrived in Tehran for talks aimed at defusing tensions over Iran's nuclear program.
"Our answer to those who are angry about Iran achieving the full nuclear fuel cycle is just one phrase. We say: Be angry at us and die of this anger," the official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.
"We won't hold talks with anyone about the right of the Iranian nation (to enrich uranium)."
Ahmadinejad declared on Tuesday that Iran had successfully produced enriched uranium for the first time, a key process in what Iran maintains is a peaceful energy program.
Iran's deputy nuclear chief, Mohammad Saeedi, then said Wednesday that Iran intends to move toward large-scale uranium enrichment involving 54,000 centrifuges, signaling the country's resolve to expand a program the United Nations has demanded it halt.
"Today, our situation has changed completely. We are a nuclear country and speak to others from the position of a nuclear country," IRNA quoted the president as saying Thursday. (Recall that the 54,000 figure is the level at which the U.S. State Department says Iran could begin cranking out a nuclear weapon in that scary sounding 16 days, though most experts say Tehran is years and years away from that point...)
In other words, Iran is rushing headlong toward the kind of deterrent they see working for Kim Jong Il, and which clearly failed Saddam Hussein, who never had nukes, and who was being snookered by his own scientists into believing he even had the possibility of them. The Iranian president is no Saddam Hussein. He has figured out the game, and joined it.
Perhaps that's why we're getting all the alarmism and verbal flailing from the administration, which is clearly running out of options, rather than a coherent plan to deal with the country beginning with I that we should have been more focused on all along.
So what are you going to do now, Mr. Bush? That corner is looking awfully tight...
Tags: wag the camel, maureen dowd, nyt, Iraq, Iran, Neocons, Bush, Foreign Policy, Bush administration, Nukes, Nuclear, War |
posted by JReid @ 12:31 PM   |
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