The Axis of False Intelligence Claims
Fill in the blanks:
[ISIS President David] Albright said yesterday that the tubes acquired by ___________ neededto be cut in half and shaped in order to be used as the outer casingsof centrifuges. If ___________ proves that the tubes were untouched, hesaid, it could "shatter the argument" that they were meant for auranium program.
Let’s see, WMD expert David Albright describing doubts about claims that a country was using aluminum tubes to build a nuclear centrifuge. It must be the debate over Iraq’s aluminum tubes, right?
No. It’s the growing debate over whether US claims that North Korea had a large-scale uranium enrichment program have any basis in fact.
North Korea is providing evidence to the United States aimed at proving that itnever intended to produce highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons,undermining a key U.S. intelligence finding, South Korean and U.S.officials said this week.
In closely held talks, the North Korean government has granted U.S. experts access to equipment and documents to make its case, in preparation for declaring the extent of its nuclear activities before the end of the year. North Korean officials hope the United States will simultaneously lift sanctions against Pyongyang as the declaration is made.
If North Korea successfully demonstrates that U.S. accusations about the uranium-enrichment program are wrong, it will be a blow to U.S. intelligence and the Bush administration’s credibility.
"It will be a blow to US intelligence and the Bush administration’s credibility" is a bit of a understatement, I think. If North Korea can prove their case, it’ll mean that the claims about the WMD aspirations of two out of three of the members of the "Axis of Evil" will have proven to be false. In fact, it’ll mean that the same tale–Administration claims that a country was altering aluminum tubes to make cetrifuge parts–will have proven false twice.
Add in the fact that Cheney has refused to allow the Intelligence Community publish an unclassified NIE debunking Administration claims about an imminent Iranian WMD threat, and we’re facing that the distinct possibility that the claimed threat of all three members of the "Axis of Evil" is false. The central narrative of this Administration–us against the rogue states–potentially false.
Nice.
One more detail. Note that Glenn Kessler, he of the Condi bio, got this scoop. At the least, this means State is telling us that the North Korea claims may be false. Is Condi getting weary of sustaining one after another WMD lie?
Shorter Deadeye Cheney: â€If we classify it, no one can prove it’s a lie.â€
Condi is probably worried about her own legal status.
Interestingly enough, the administration representation at the UN who has been making various accusuations against North Korea, is the very same person who was one of the leading Republicans involved with the Palm Beach recount. What an interesting career he has had.
If NK were just a bunch of nuclear imposters, then the next domino to fall would be the Syrian Strike on the â€NK Technology Transfer†site.
This amounts to a steady ’beating back’ of the Bush line on the Israeli bombing of the Syrian site. First, it was a ’nuclear facility.’ Then Bush amplified with ’nuclear technology or nuclear know-how.’
Thanks to the pictures, we know the building was closer to a shed than anything resembling a known nuclear facility. And now we know that it couldn’t have been nuclear technology from North Korea – it turns out, they’re poseurs!
So, Bush’s ’leaked’ justifications for Syria have all been ’shot down’ – and the Axis of Evil is looking like a complete fabrication to justify Bush’s Endless Ideological War of Aggression.
Coincidence or what? Was just surfing to refresh my memory about that older toobz story when I saw this post.
Fun links about the older toobz story for your readers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_aluminum_tubes
http://news.nationaljournal.co…..330nj1.htm
http://www.theleftcoaster.com/…..mirror.htm
I like this one too: http://www.historycommons.org/…..of_iraq_48
Wonder what JoeT is up to now?
Kessler repeats the line that the intelligence was faulty. But 2002 was the year of Rumsfeld’s special intelligence shop, intended to bypass the awkward conclusions of State and CIA that Iraq’s and North Korea’s weapons programs did not merit war.
A number of us have been saying for some time that the claims of a full-blown North Korean uranium enrichment program had to be bogus.
The right people to evaluate the â€aluminum tubes†argument is not the intelligence community, but the DoE. DoE is in charge of enrichment and weaponization (not the DoD as many people believe). In the Iraq NIE, there are persistent rumors that the DoE analysis flatly said the tubes were not for centrifuges, while the IC and DoD said they were. (I’ve never seen this confirmed directly but would love a link if someone has it.)
Since the DoE people who might know are legally constrained from talking, the best we’re going to get is from technically trained people like Albright (who has an actual physics degree, unlike, say, Dick Cheney.)
Let me also say, it’s been known for a while that there was no large-scale DPRK uranium project. (The original diplomatic row that started this whole thing off in 2002 was a mistranslation.) The DPRK nuclear program was focussed on plutonium.
All that said, the claim being challenged here is a narrow one: whether the DPRK shipped aluminum tubes to Iran. That should not be taken to mean that Iran is not enriching uranium–they surely are. Whether they are enriching to weapons-grade is the open question. The tubes issue bears on that only insofar as it would incrementally speed their centrifuge construction program and therefore incrementally reduce the time needed to produce enough enriched uranium to build a weapon.
Albright and Shire recently wrote a moderately technical roundup of the state of the Iranian centrifuge program which I think is excellent.
For the record, Albright’s analysis of Iraqi WMD at the time was spot-on.
EW and Neil – I got to admit, those folks at the big Amherst-Williams grudge match look like they are having a pretty darn good time if the scenes shown on ESPN are any indication. Actually saw a lot of people in rugby shirts; is it like the school uniform or something? Heh heh.
Well, well, well.
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahn…….. isn’t disinformation to sustain a continual war against an imaginary â€boogy man†very basic and justified in the â€neocon philosophical agenda†when dealing with us dumber plebians.
bmaz
Back in the day, the rugby started at 9, with the B-side game starting around 11. So those rugby jerseys may be fake. Or it may be that the A-W game isn’t the same weekend anymore.
But the grudge matches were fun–quite fun. When I was at Amherst, an alum offered $5 million for a proper stadium. But the school turned it down, figuring the alumni would be pissed if the stadium eliminated the ability to watch teh whole game from the tailgate in the endzone. And by tailgate, we’re not meaning exclusively those that take place on a tailgate. There’s generally a tent or two with staff and open bars and the works.
ER
Yup, your tubes are back!!
I like the sound of this gig a lot. Couldn’t we have built the stadium and just left one end open for the party tents and tailgates? Memo to Amherstians: When someone wants to build you a free stadium, let them.
By the way EW, I note that Phred’s evil Badgers just chewed up Big Blue. At least they are a Division 1 school…..
You mean Div 1A, right?
Yeah, I guess that happened. I expect phred will be round to gloat any moment.
AF has left a link that yields a copy of a new study which is partly financed by pediatrician HCaldic, an economic treatise based on a few decades of research into ways to sustain economic growth in western economies by reducing carbon pollution and eliminating nuclear electric power generation as well as nuke weapons 4.3MB. For those of us who might read beyond a discussion embarking on quantitation of 450 mev thermal electrons, I wonder what else is in that library to help elucidate the distinctions between Pu and U pathways for weapons, as opposed to making tools for doctors such as tracers which help with imaging studies in medicine, eg Gd.
bmaz
Then again, the Wolverines STILL could win the Big 10.
JohnLopresti–I think I’m the only AF around here, but I’m puzzled which link you’re talking about. There are two about the North Korean program (one is to my blog, quoting an article which has since left the msnbc site), and one study about the Iranian program. No pediatric studies that I know of…
sorry to stray off-topic here. . .
but we so regularly bash old
media around here — that when
they get it â€rightâ€, we ought
to toot their horn for them — as
we ought, for tomorrow’s n.y.t.
an amazing, disgusting, gut-
wrenching, well-documented
account of how, and why, our
troops are likely to face fire
from our OWN weapons, sold to
insurgents, by our OWN guys in
baghdad — in some cases from
our OWN armories. . .
this is sickening.
simply sickening.
Oh, they easily could, even before the Buckeyes lost to Illinois. In fact, I will be rooting for them when they play Ohio State. If Michigan and ASU can win their last games, and Oregon goes to the National Championship Game, I am pretty sure ASU and Michigan would meet in the Rose Bowl. Now that would be fun for us to jaw about. ASU still has USC and Arizona to get through, so their sledding is tough to get there.
Di She Fein(stein) announces her vote for Telco Immunity by Glenn Greenwald as the Democratic juggernaut towards to preserve a Fascist America Rolls On
Speakin’ of Intelligence, or actually the eipitome of the lack of it, as we all knew, the Democratic juggernaut for Telco Immunity is a done deal and one of the first to announce her lickass Bush support for it is none other than She Fein(stein). Feinstein has jumped your bones and screwed you again on legislation that is integral to parking you in Naomi’s Wolf’s Fascist State.
Dianne Feinstein — Bush’s key ally in the Senate — to support telecom amnesty
Feinstein is not merely voting reliably for the most extremist Bush policies, though she is doing that. Far more than that, she has become, time and again, the linchpin of Bush’s ability to have his most radical policies approved by the Senate.
Could the universe be any larger between what Feinstein’s constituents want and what she is doing in the Senate? Here are the latest views of California voters of the President to whose agenda Feinstein is displaying such ferocious fidelity:
Do you approve or disapprove of the job George W. Bush is doing as President?
Approve — 28%
Disapprove — 70%
Among California Democrats, a grand total of 9% approve of Feinstein’s beloved President; 90% disapprove. Obviously, nothing could be less relevant to Feinstein than the views of her constituents, but still, the disparity between what they believe and what she is doing is just striking, even for the Beltway.
1. bmaz: I suppose that if the offer were made in the 80s, five million dollars was a lot of money. But $5 mil in today’s dollars wouldn’t even buy a half-decent set of bleachers, let alone enough rugby turf to play a game on.
2. ew: ha ha ha! â€a blow to US intelligence and the Bush administration’s credibility†is a bit of a understatement, I think
– you think, indeed! I almost laughed beer out my nose. Mr. 24% doesn’t have a whole lot of credibility left to spread around- we must not have had any spies to destroy or evidence to plant on this one to back up Michael Leeden’s preposterous claims.
3. My Ducks don’t play until Thursday. But the Buckeyes have already gone down! Oregon might go to #2 in the BCS! And the discussion in Eugene has already started- would it be better to play in the BCS championship, or would it be better to slip the shiv to the BCS and just go play in the Rose Bowl, where everyone here might actually try to buy tickets to the game? I’ve been to games at the Big House, back when Bo was the coach, and I’ve heard what a crowd of 110,000 people sounds like. But I went to the ASU game last week, so now I also know what 60,000 people sound like when you pack them into a stadium that has only 45,000 seats! The fans here are rabid, but we’d be a lot more likely to show up if the game is in CA (roughly $100 plane ticket, 5 possile carriers, many non-stop flights availabe from Eugene and Portland) than if it’s 2 time zones away (tickets from EUG -> BTR today start at $466, for itineraries with multiple carriers with two stops, and go as high as $1000. Most of these itineraries include a layover in DENVER for christsakes. I mean, seriously, after the multiple fiascos last year, the airlines should be paying ME to fly through denver- that detail alone is enough to keep me from going to the game.)
I’m biased becuase I went to college in Pasadena, so the Rose Bowl was practically in my back yard. We used to stagger to/from the stadium when the Galaxy played there back in 1997. Enough of my buddies stuck around LA that if we went, I wouldn’t pay for a hotel room, and we could all go out to Fogo de Chao on La Cieneca to celebrate a massive Ducks win.
Oh, and of course I should note that this post assumes that we’ll kick the living shit out of UCLA… which I think is a fair assumption at this point.
4. For all the good she’s doing for the party, Diane Feinstein might as well be a Republican. At this point I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that she’s been soliciting anonymous gay sex in airport bathrooms. Discuss.
tekel
You also have the slower and more expensive option of the Coast Starlight. Of course, since it’s Amtrak, it might die somewhere in the middle of nowhere ….
As for DiFi – I’m still pushing at her about telecom amnesty, but my opinion of her is running to ’taxation without representation’.
(Find out what her favorite beverage is, and send her postcards of it being dumped in the Bay in cases – Photoshop should be useful for that.)
Tekel, I got to tell you, the Rose Bowl is one heckuva good time. You can’t turn down the National Championship game; but no doubt I would a lot rather go to a game at the Rose Bowl than the SuperDome if all other things are equal (French Quarter makes it a close call, but there is something mystical about RoseBowl stadium). And by the way, congratulations on beating ASU last week; Oregon has a great team. I think the outcome might have been different if the game was played in Tempe, but my hat is off to the Ducks and their fans.
DiFi – Jeebus, what a nightmare. And from San Francisco, she sure has sold out her original constituency. She was never great, but sure seems to have been on a steep downhill slope for the last year or two.
AF, the gist was Helen Caldicott was a sponsor for the linked study. I checked your site but some of the profiled sub sites you sponsor are admission by private registration only. Only a few people know the orator Caldicott was a pediatrician. The other technical material was looking at a way to glance as your linked Albright and Shire article did beyond the hype over centrifuges, at the byproducts pathways which differ between the U series and Pu. I am having a broadband slowdown, so will resume tomorrow. I know CDT and a few other sites are doing good work, and there are some scientist professional groups with background on this as well. My take was that some of the reportage, e.g., as at TPMM today, rests on, for example, Bolton statements five years ago, and a depiction of the Khan design which served as the basis for some degree of proliferation but which some news is saying is crude or risky if the cluster output is recycled to input, wanting to avoid critical mass. I have been away from the science too long to see much more than a lot of hype in the news today but maybe a learned person could slice to the rationale beyond the political part of the news.
And, meanwhile in Pakistan……
Any more press poodles wanna have a go at folks like EW now?
Sheesh.
.
And for the record, we the Canuckistanian people apologize for letting the bloviator of (â€potentiallyâ€) bogus boweevilty loose on the world.
.
Ms. Wheeler, you’ve brought forth to light yet MORE things we mere humans would never see, hear, or consider and think of.
Perhaps, Condi Boots is REALLY pissed at Shooter, and has had it, and IS willin to roll over and rat?
We progressives could USE a big score soon . . . thanks for the info and the read, Ma’am . .
Gloat??? Me??? HaHaHaHa… Yep. It’s a pity I was away from the toobz yesterday, you couldn’t hear me cackling with glee Badgers beat #12 Wolverines, #1 Ohio falls to unranked Illinois AT HOME. Does a Saturday afternoon get any better than that? Ummm, no. Football, rugby and politics all in one happy thread, boy I love this site! Oh, and congrats to both tekel and bmaz of the wholly unexpected success of their teams — Pac 10, who knew???
As for DiFi – R, CA, not only is she going to run interference for Bush yet again on telecom amnesty, but I see she is likely to be a key vote on the Farm Bill. This is just depressing.
EW, as for the possible Condi leak on the tubes, I wouldn’t doubt for a second that there is no love lost between her and Shooter, but I can’t imagine her doing anything to undermine her husb…er… President. I do find that aspect of this post really intriguing.
JohnLopresti–I’m still puzzled; drop me a line, at hotmail, andyfoland, if you want to follow up.
And on the college football front, I’ll just say it’s a good day to be an Illinois alum
How do we find out if DiFi took an oath to support the preznit and the corp-rats?
Andrew
Didn’t know you were an Illini. Damn that was a great game. Congrats to you.
AF, Sent it.
We are still waiting for the complete Phase II of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. We have yet to witness Republicans or Democrats hold those responsible for the false WMD intelligence accountable.
This is the very least that our Reps can do for the hundreds of thousands of dead, injured and the millions displaced as a direct result of the use of this false intelligence.
Senator Rockefeller we are watching and waiting