The Flittering Thing
The Democrats aren’t buying this crap about the President not knowing until just recently that the NIE on Iran’s nuclear weapons program says that it was stopped in 2003. They believe he must have known about it no later than this past summer.
In an October 17 news conference, Bush said that “If you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.”
And four days later, Vice President Dick Cheney told a Washington think tank that Iran would face “serious consequences” from the international community if it continued to enrich uranium.
You’ll notice that neither man’s remark really has anything at all to do with the NIE’s findings. It is, in fact, our purpose to keep Iran from getting the Bomb and destroying Israel. You can be sure that’s Israel’s purpose. And, bless their hearts, the Israelis’ standard of proof on this particular issue remains somewhat higher than our own. They’re just not as goddamned certain as Joe Biden is, but what are you going to do?
We don’t want World War III. Therefore, we will see to it that there are serious consequences if the Iranians don’t stop enriching uranium for their so-called civilian energy sector. They are doing that, regardless of how high the “confidence” is that they’ve stopped it with respect to weapons.
The President and Mr. Cheney misspoke? Not to this, they didn’t.
At the bottom of these controversies over our intelligence assessments of Iran lies a single fact: none of them matters. Right or wrong, yes or no, the inevitability of conflict with Iran was begun when the nauseating Jimmy Carter allowed them to humiliate us in 1979. That debt has never been paid. It is right that we should plant our foot in Iran —like some colossal Alexander of infidel proportions.
The Dinnerjacket and his fellow revolutionaries will surely live long enough to see their movement come to be reviled and discarded by their own children and grandchildren. Then a fine market will Persia make!
