Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Armageddon Might Be Delayed A Bit

There’s great news from the National Intelligence Estimate released on Monday about Iran . It said Iran had abandoned their nuclear program 4 years ago, and thus, effectively ends any chance Bush has of invading Iran before he leaves office.

The doomsday clock has been turned back just a bit, and Armageddon will have to wait until we elect a different bunch of crazy saber-rattlers. Actually, that might be a bit optimistic. All we can really say is that Iran's non-existent nuclear program will not be the immediate cause of Armageddon.

However, the best news here is that our intelligence community is apparently no longer beholden to neocon fantasies. To have a government report come out that undercuts what the administration has been saying for years about Iran is rather astonishing, and quite a change from the runup to the Iraq war. It gives me hope that the damage done by the Bush administration might only take a decade or so to fix, rather than a few generations.

I did enjoy Bush’s response to the report though, if only because it is exactly what I thought it would be. It is oddly comforting to have the false impression that I can predict some small part of the future:

Despite the intelligence community's new assessment of whether Iran was working to develop nuclear weapons, the president said, "the NIE doesn't do anything to change my opinion about the danger Iran poses to the world."
I immediately thought of Stephen Colbert’s brilliant tribute to Bush at the 2006 White House Correspondent’s Dinner:

The greatest thing about this man is he’s steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday. Events can change; this man’s beliefs never will.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I heard an excellent piece on NPR which pointed out that there are 3 pieces to the question of danger in having nuclear arms - basically, enriched uranium, the means to make it into a weapon, and a ballistic missile program.

A rough analogy would be sending a gift. You have to purchase the gift, wrap it, and deliver it. Just because you don't have wrapping paper is not enough to think that a person does not intend to send a gift. Just because a country is not currently working on converting enriched uranium into weapons is not a reason to feel safe.

Dan S said...

To be honest, I'm not worried about Iran - even if they had nuclear weapons, it would be suicide for them to attack us.

What I think makes us more safe is that the report undercuts the administration's ability to go to war with Iran. As with Iraq, we are safer when we are not creating more enemies.

Fingtree said...

It's really quite a simple recipe of logic: Anything the Bush administration has said or done is the antithesis of reality. To use a G.W. Bush term; "In other words", you can't believe a word they say. They always have a hidden agenda that is packaged, gift wrapped and delivered for the 'sheeple' of gullible intellect to open like a Christmas present.