Germany: Iran Seeks Nuclear Weapons
Well, this is surprising in so far that it’s coming from Europe (Germany even!), not the United States:
The Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, has amassed evidence of a sophisticated Iranian nuclear weapons program that continued beyond 2003. This usually classified information comes courtesy of Germany’s highest state-security court. In a 30-page legal opinion on March 26 and a May 27 press release in a case about possible illegal trading with Iran, a special national security panel of the Federal Supreme Court in Karlsruhe cites from a May 2008 BND report, saying the agency “showed comprehensively” that “development work on nuclear weapons can be observed in Iran even after 2003.”
According to the judges, the BND supplemented its findings on August 28, 2008, showing “the development of a new missile launcher and the similarities between Iran’s acquisition efforts and those of countries with already known nuclear weapons programs, such as Pakistan and North Korea.”
It’s important to point out that this was no ordinary agency report, the kind that often consists just of open source material, hearsay and speculation. Rather, the BND submitted an “office testimony,” which consists of factual statements about the Iranian program that can be proved in a court of law. This is why, in their March 26 opinion, the judges wrote that “a preliminary assessment of the available evidence suggests that at the time of the crime [April to November 2007] nuclear weapons were being developed in Iran.” In their May press release, the judges come out even more clear, stating unequivocally that “Iran in 2007 worked on the development of nuclear weapons.”
The German report stands in stark contrast with the now (in?)famous 2007 NIE report, which said that Iran put a halt to its nuclear project years ago. As Ed Morrissey opines at Hot Air:
It’s really not difficult to conclude that the higher echelons of American intelligence had gone to war with the Bush administration early in his presidency. The 2007 NIE was theircoup de grace, making Bush impotent and giving them control over American foreign policy. It also let vital time slip past while Iran continued to develop nuclear weapons, although in the event, Europe simply rejected the NIE as faulty and proceeded along the same path that Bush had demanded. The NIE gave Russia and China political cover to block the West’s attempts to rein in the Iranians, although that would have happened anyway with other rationalizations.
Democrats are demanding a reckoning with the CIA over a program that never proceeded past the spitball stage. Republicans ought to demand a reckoning, too — over the NIE and the wool that got pulled over the eyes of Congress.
The report also explains why Israel is now seriously planning to strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities ‘within the year,’ and why Europe may give the Jewish nation-state the green light to do so.
It’s obvious that the CIA has become so politicized because of its own bad behavior that both the Dems and Repubs have to clean up the Augean stables of the Happy Horses**t piled high all over the place. Cheney was a frequent visitor to Langley and George Tenet was appointed by Bill C., but was GWB’s daily briefer in the Oval Office. The only thing that Tenet misjudged was the presence of WMD, along with every other intelligence agency around the world, and also the Iraqi High Command, who didn’t know that Saddam had his own operatives get rid of the chem/bio & nuke elements on the sly, perhaps waiting for a later day, perhaps across the border in Syria where the Assads would take care of them for him. [Actually, both countries were ruled by Ba'athist Party shells covering for an autocrat dictator.] Saddam admitted all to US interrogators before his hanging.
In the USSR, the KGB has become the factual ruler of the current regime. Losing the CIA completely would harm the US, although political lightweights like Pelosi don’t comprehend the damage they do. The NIE was payback to GWB after Tenet left and the anti-Cheney crowd cooked the books to make Bush look incompetent. These retardos hurt the US far more than any mistakes Bush made.
Missile launchers aren’t super high speed switches or DAQ systems to monitor cold tests. Delivery systems aren’t the same as miniaturization of an implosion bomb made from U.