In my view, the Iran program halted in 2003 because of the massive and initially successful American use of military power in Iraq.
Republican Pete Hoekstra, who was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee from August 2004 until the end of 2006, said through a spokesman that he does not remember being informed of the videotaping program.
"Congressman Hoekstra does not recall ever being told of the existence or destruction of these tapes," said Jamal D. Ware, senior adviser to the committee. "He believes that Director Hayden is being generous in his claim that the committee was informed. He believes the committee should have been fully briefed and consulted on how this was handled."
On Friday, Representative Peter Hoekstra, the Michigan Republican who was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee from 2004 to 2006, said he had never been told that the tapes were destroyed.
“I think the intelligence committee needs to get all over this,” said Mr. Hoekstra, who has been a strong supporter of the C.I.A. detention and interrogation program. “This raises a red flag that needs to be looked at.”
IN GOD WE TRUST
Mark Thread Read
#1 - Posted on 12/05/07 at 09:38 PM
arisaka38t
Has a nice ring, don't you think - liberals?
(Msg Id: 523441:4217345)
In some early texts the Buddha left unanswered certain questions regarding the destiny of persons who have reached this ultimate goal. He even refused to speculate as to whether fully purified saints, after death, continued to exist or ceased to exist. Such questions, he maintained, were not relevant to the practice of the path and could not in any event be answered from within the confines of ordinary human existence. Indeed, he asserted that any discussion of the nature of nirvana would only distort or misrepresent it. But he also asserted with even more insistence that nirvana can be experienced—and experienced in the present existence—by those who, knowing the Buddhist truth, practice the Buddhist path. 1
There's some unintended irony in Noonan calling others idiots but at least she comes down on the correct side of the issue. David Brooks, a mediocre wingnut hack who happens to write a column for the Paper of Record also comes down on the side of us heathens:There was one significant mistake in the speech. I do not know why Romney did not include nonbelievers in his moving portrait of the great American family. We were founded by believing Christians, but soon enough Jeremiah Johnson, and the old proud agnostic mountain men, and the village atheist, and the Brahmin doubter, were there, and they too are part of us, part of this wonderful thing we have. Why did Mr. Romney not do the obvious thing and include them? My guess: It would have been reported, and some idiots would have seen it and been offended that this Romney character likes to laud atheists. And he would have lost the idiot vote.
My feeling is we've bowed too far to the idiots.
The first casualty is the national community. Romney described a communityyesterday. Observant Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Jews and Muslims are inside that community. The nonobservant are not. There was not even a perfunctory sentence showing respect for the nonreligious.
"The problem is not the nature of the intelligence, it's the nature of the presentation. This NIE was presented with a clear intention to deceive and to redirect foreign policy," wrote Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy at the American Enterprise Institute, in an e-mail. "I have no doubt that these people believe they are protecting the nation from the President, but our constitution doesn't contemplate the non-proliferation center at the ODNI governing U.S. national security policy."
Review of Iran Intelligence to Be Sought
As Conservatives Reject New NIE, Republican Senators to Urge Congressional Panel
By Robin Wright and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, December 7, 2007; Page A09
Senate Republicans are planning to call for a congressional commission to investigate the conclusions of the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran as well as the specific intelligence that went into it, according to congressional sources.
"For every house sold because the buyer couldn't make the payments," Weintraub notes, "there is a buyer on the other end of that transaction who got a good deal. And for every foreclosure, there are probably 10 buyers of nearby homes who benefited from the general easing of house-price pressure." Bingo.
Sales of new and previously owned homes probably will drop to 5.09 million next year, 32 percent below the 2005 peak of 7.46 million, according to Frank Nothaft, chief economist of Freddie Mac, the second largest U.S. mortgage buyer.
Washington's most reliable ally in the Middle East, Israel, recently demonstrated the ease with which a modern air force can destroy a suspected nuclear facility. Not only was last month's attack on a site in northeastern Syria carried out without Israeli losses, there was no retaliation on the part of Damascus. Memo from Ehud Olmert to George W. Bush: You can do this, and do it with impunity.
Before August 9th, it’s: “Trying to develop, build or pursue a nuclear weapon.”
After August 9th, it’s: “Desire, pursuit, want… knowledge, technology, know-how to enrich uranium.”
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or Pasdaran in Farsi, was formed by former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini in the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Mitt Romney threw a long ball today and scored. There can be no objective argument against that conclusion. Why? Because Romney is running for the GOP nomination, and his remarks, both in delivery and substance, were lavishly praised by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Medved, and James Dobson, not to mention Mark Steyn, Fred Barnes and Charles Krauthammer
Did Romany convert anti-Mormon fanatics or secular absolutists? Of course not, but they are very few...
While Romney has been subject to some leafletting and phone calling pointing to religious differences between his faith and others, he has faced little outright religious bigotry or questions on the campaign trail.
Yet, in an AP-Yahoo poll last month, half said they had some problems supporting a Mormon presidential candidate, including one-fifth who said that would make them very uncomfortable.
Fifty-six percent of white evangelical Christians - a major portion of likely participants in the early GOP presidential contests in Iowa and South Carolina - expressed reservations about a Mormon candidate.
No, I don't know that atheists should be regarded as citizens, nor should they be regarded as patriotic. This is one nation under God.
Almost a year ago, on Dec. 14, 2006, David A. Viniar, Goldman’s chief financial officer, called a “mortgage risk” meeting. The investment bank’s mortgage desk was losing money, and Mr. Viniar, with various officials, reviewed every position in the bank’s portfolio.
The bank decided to reduce its stockpile of mortgages and mortgage-related securities and to buy expensive insurance as protection against further losses, said a person briefed on the meeting who was not authorized to speak about the situation publicly.
Mr. Cheney was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, on January 30, 1941 and grew up in Casper, Wyoming. He earned his bachelor's and master's of arts degrees from the University of Wyoming.
Biography from Current Biography (2002)
Copyright (c) by The H. W. Wilson Company. All rights reserved.
Following his graduation from high school, in 1959, Cheney enrolled at Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut, on a full scholarship, only to drop out after just four semesters. "I wasn't a serious student," he told Jeanette Smyth for the Washington Post (April 4, 1976). "I never buckled down."
Cheney said that by the middle of January 2009, it will be clear that “we have in fact achieved our objective in terms of having a self-governing Iraq that’s capable for the most part of defending themselves, a democracy in the heart of the Middle East, a nation that will be a positive force in influencing the world around it in the future.”
All of that by 2009? “Yes, sir,” he replied.
Dispel the myth that there’s an underground tunnel between the Fox News studios and the White House.
Um, no, quite the contrary. I’ll tell you, I probably got more complaints from various Fox News programs about not getting the type of access they deserved. Now, there are exceptions to that. Vice President Cheney’s done a lot with them. But I think they were treated pretty equally across the board. If you look at the major newscasters, there were some, like [Dan] Rather, that we didn’t do. You’d be hard-pressed to say that we didn’t accommodate the others.
O’REILLY: If I had not done the campaign, then the forces of darkness would
have won.
Well, they reach the president’s base.
That’s what I mean by influential. I mean, talk about a direct IV into the vein of your support. It’s a very efficient way to communicate. They regurgitate exactly and put up on their blogs what you said to them. It is something that we’ve cultivated and have really tried to put quite a bit of focus on.
Israeli officials reject U.S. findings on Iran
By Dion Nissenbaum McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Defense Minister Ehud Barak directly challenged the new assessment in an interview with Israel's Army Radio, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the new finding wouldn't deter Israel or the United States from pressing its campaign to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapons capability.
"It seems Iran in 2003 halted for a certain period of time its military nuclear program, but as far as we know, it has probably since revived it," Barak said.
On Tuesday morning, Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper called the U.S. findings "a blow below the belt."
"Even after this report, the American stance will still focus on preventing Iran from attaining nuclear capability," Olmert said. "We will expend every effort along with our friends in the U.S. to prevent the Iranians from developing nuclear weapons."
I think there is a risk here, and I raise this as a question, whether people in the intelligence community who had their own agenda on Iran for some time now have politicized this intelligence and politicized these judgments in a way contrary to where the administration was going. I think somebody needs to look at that.
But I entertain an even darker suspicion. It is that the intelligence community, which has for some years now been leaking material calculated to undermine George W. Bush, is doing it again. This time the purpose is to head off the possibility that the President may order air strikes on the Iranian nuclear installations.
Previously, in guidance provided to Coalition transition teams for use in evaluating Iraqi Security Forces, a level 1 unit was said to be "fully capable of planning, executing, and sustaining independent operations." However, in the spring of 2006, MNC-I removed the words "fully" and "independent" from the definition. When we asked DOD officials for the reason for this change they were not able to provide us with an explanation. Therefore, according to the current guidance, a level 1 unit is one that is "capable of planning, executing, and sustaining counterinsurgency operations." It is important to note that, according to the guidance, a Coalition transition team cannot judge an ISF unit as "independent." However, in its most recent report to Congress, DOD asserted that an "independent unit is one that is capable of planning, executing, and sustaining counterinsurgency operations." Thus, DOD’s continued reporting that some ISF units are "independent" or "fully independent" is not congruent with MNC-I’s instructions for filling out the Operational Readiness Assessments on which DOD’s assertions and reports seem to be based. If independence is still a relevant descriptor of ISF unit capabilities, then why was the term removed from the definition of a level 1 unit in 2006?
A. We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program1; we also assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons. We judge with high confidence that the halt, and Tehran’s announcement of its decision to suspend its declared uranium enrichment program and sign an Additional Protocol to its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Safeguards Agreement, was directed primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure resulting from exposure of Iran’s previously undeclared nuclear work.
1For the purposes of this Estimate, by “nuclear weapons program” we mean Iran’s nuclear weapon design and weaponization work and covert uranium conversion-related and uranium enrichment-related work; we do not mean Iran’s declared civil work related to uranium conversion and enrichment.
The New York Times
June 30, 2003 Monday
Late Edition - Final
British Minister Presses Iran To Allow Nuclear Inspections
BYLINE: By NAZILA FATHI
SECTION: Section A; Column 5; Foreign Desk; Pg. 12
LENGTH: 727 words
DATELINE: TEHRAN, June 29
Britain's foreign secretary, Jack Straw, urged Iran today to sign "quickly and unconditionally" an additional protocol to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty that would lead to more aggressive United Nations inspections of its nuclear sites.
Speaking at a news conference at the outset of his fourth visit to Iran in less than two years, Mr. Straw said Iran's refusal to sign the protocol allowing surprise inspections was undermining international confidence and discouraging the lifting of trade sanctions.
"With my colleagues in Germany and in France we want to have closer trade cooperation with Iran, but we have to say that progress in trade cooperation depends on progress in issues of human rights and weapons of mass destruction," he said.
"If there is no signature, then confidence will not be improved and the international community will be profoundly reluctant to lift the sanctions," he added.
After all, what critic would wish now to grant that one result of the 2003 war-aside from the real chance that Iraq can stabilize and function under the only consensual government in the region-might have been the elimination for some time of two growing and potentially nuclear threats to American security, quite apart from Saddam Hussein?
WALLACE: Congressman? Mr. Rove? I'm going to pretend that I'm in control of this situation.
I want to ask you about a different aspect of that, which is the economy, because one of the things that I think you'd agree the Republicans have had going for them for the last seven years has been a strong economy.Now you've got high gas prices. You've got a housing slump. You've got a credit crunch. Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman who was a Bush appointee, keeps talking about a significant economic slowdown. If you have the economy getting worse plus a continuing war, aren't you guys doomed?
ROVE: No. Look. The war is going better. And look. The economy — people understand that when you have a Democrat Congress intent on spending more and raising taxes that that's not good for the economy, and they'll understand that it's the answers proposed by the Democrats of more taxes, more spending, more government regulation, and less support for our military that's bad for America.
Nitze seemed to take his revenge against his former friends and colleagues who fared better in the new Administration. One was Paul Warnke, who had worked closely with Nitze in the Pentagon during Lyndon Johnson's presidency. When Warnke was nominated to be Carter's chief arms-control negotiator, Nitze savaged him in congressional testimony, impugning his integrity and patriotism.
Nitze also testified against SALT II before Congress. When one senator asked him if he considered himself to be more patriotic than Warnke, an old friend and colleague of his who was now Carter's arms-control negotiator, Nitze replied: Yes.
While I believe this to be a minor issue for Giuliani in terms of ethics...
For the reading-comprehension challenged, there is nowhere in here where I say this is "no big deal".
"I, the undersigned, pledge that I intend to support the nominee of the Republican Party for President."
“The Savage Nation” is unique among so-called “Talk Radio” in that it combines serious intellectual analysis
CNN chose to devote the first 35 minutes of this critical debate to a single issue -- immigration. Now, if that leaves you scratching your head, it's probably because you're included in the 96% of Americans who do not think immigration is the most important issue confronting this country.
...the wickedness of using some crackpot's query about the candidates' stand on Biblical inerrancy to do something that's anathema in our system -- to probe people's individual religious consciences.
Q Mr. President, thank you. Are you concerned that Democrats in Congress don't want a vote there until after U.N. action? And secondly, have you spoken with President Putin since your speech yesterday?
THE PRESIDENT: I have not spoken to President Putin since my speech. I did speak to his Foreign Minister, as did Colin Powell. I'll speak to President Putin, I'm confident, soon. I'll have -- I think we've got a scheduled phone call, actually.
And the first part of the question was, Democrats waiting for the U.N. to act? I can't imagine an elected United States -- elected member of the United States Senate or House of Representatives saying, I think I'm going to wait for the United Nations to make a decision. It seems like to me that if you're representing the United States, you ought to be making a decision on what's best for the United States. If I were running for office, I'm not sure how I'd explain to the American people -- say, vote for me, and, oh, by the way, on a matter of national security, I think I'm going to wait for somebody else to act.
And so I -- we'll see. My answer to the Congress is, they need to debate this issue and consult with us, and get the issue done as quickly as possible. It's in our national interests that we do so. I don't imagine Saddam Hussein sitting around, saying, gosh, I think I'm going to wait for some resolution. He's a threat that we must deal with as quickly as possible.
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