What must have been yet another Fred Hiatt editorial in Thursday morning's Washington Post tries to strike fear in the heart of every American over Iran getting nukes in MAYBE JUST A YEAR!!!!!!
Of course, Iran getting nukes in a year is not what the experts in our government say - they say it's gonna take ten years, and that's if Iran gets lucky - but far be it for Hiatt to rely on a sane analysis when we can scare people into yet another unnecessary disaster of a war.
My favorite part of the editorial is the following:
Some in Washington cite a U.S. intelligence estimate that an Iranian bomb is 10 years away. In fact the low end of that same estimate is five years, and some independent experts say three.Uh, not according to your own newspaper, Fred.
In fact, the Washington Post reported that the low end of the estimate is TEN YEARS, not five years. The Post also reported that the estimate in question says it's unlikely Iran will even be able to develop nukes in ten years - ten years is only if EVERYTHING goes right and if Iran goes full blast towards building nukes, and everything reportedly never goes right in these cases.
So where did Hiatt get this ridiculous notion that the "same estimate" says five years? He's probably confusing the previous - now discredited (gee Fred, who did you learn that trick from?) - estimate of five years that the US government had long believed was the time necessary for Iran to develop a nuke. That five year estimate was superseded by the ten year estimate just last year when the entire US intelligence community prepared a new National Intelligence Estimate - the NIE is the US intelligence communities BEST ESTIMATE, period.
Fred would have known all of this had he simply read his own newspaper, and I quote:
Until recently, Iran was judged, according to February testimony by Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, to be within five years of the capability to make a nuclear weapon. Since 1995, U.S. officials have continually estimated Iran to be "within five years" from reaching that same capability. So far, it has not.As for Hiatt's contention that "some experts" say it could be only 3 years, or even ONE YEAR before Iran gets nukes, I'd like to know why we should trust "some" experts when even the hawkish we-really-want-to-blow-up-Iran Bush administration can only muster a best estimate that says Iran won't be able to produce nukes for at least ten years?
The new estimate extends the timeline, judging that Iran will be unlikely to produce a sufficient quantity of highly enriched uranium, the key ingredient for an atomic weapon, before "early to mid-next decade," according to four sources familiar with that finding. The sources said the shift, based on a better understanding of Iran's technical limitations, puts the timeline closer to 2015 and in line with recently revised British and Israeli figures.... The timeline is portrayed as a minimum designed to reflect a program moving full speed ahead without major technical obstacles.
Oh Fred, you're such a bore (and that rhymes with whore).
