Associated Press reports:
November 8th, 2006 8:15 pm
Peace mom Sheehan arrested in Washington
By Derrill Holly
WASHINGTON – Activist Cindy Sheehan was arrested Wednesday as she led about 50 protesters to a White House gate Wednesday to deliver anti-war petitions she said were signed by 80,000 Americans.
The Berkeley, Calif., woman, whose son was killed in Iraq more than two years ago, was arrested along with three other women on the sidewalk outside the White House gate, said Lt. Scott Fear, a U.S. Park Police spokesman. They were charged with interfering with a government function, he said.
Before she was arrested, she joined the protesters in hailing the outcome of Tuesday’s elections and chanting “Stop the War” outside the gate.
“It was taking too long for them to decide whether to accept them or not, so we just delivered them,” said Sheehan, who waited about 15 minutes with other protesters before tossing the petitions over the fence.
The petitions opposed use of military force to resolve the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program.
Sheehan, 49, and other grieving families met with Bush about two months after her son died, before reports of faulty prewar intelligence surfaced and caused her to speak out.
She has tried repeatedly to speak with the president again, including a 26-day vigil last year outside Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas.
Wednesday’s protest came as Republicans lost control of the House and the White House announced the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
“He‘s being offered as a sacrificial lamb,” Sheehan said.
So, Bush losing the midterm elections does not automatically make the USA a paradise of free speech and peace.
Free the peace demonstrators!
After Rumsfeld, sack Bush, Cheney, and their whole gang!
Including Tony Blair.
John Bolton may have to go soon.
US election commentary: here.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
Dear friends,
I just took an action on the internet calling for a stop to the war in Iraq, and I thought you might be interested…
From the Ceasefire Campaign:
Dear friends,
This week the American people voted overwhelmingly to reject President Bush’s war in Iraq, and yesterday the key architect of the war, US military chief Donald Rumsfeld, announced his resignation. The winds of political change are sweeping the US, and the US-led Coalition in Iraq may — finally — be realising that they cannot win the war, and that they lack the legitimacy to bring stability and peace to the country without more help from the international community.
With a newly elected US Congress and a President who is finally in a listening mood, we now have a unique opportunity for a global public outcry to change the course of this disastrous war. It’s the perfect time to act.
To seize this opportunity, we want to place ads in US and UK papers with a new global petition calling upon the Coalition to accept a larger role for the international community and a phased withdrawal of all its troops from Iraq. We’ll publish the number of signatures we get in the ads, so we need AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE to sign the petition in the next 48 hours. Please tell all your friends and family, and sign below:
http://www.CeasefireCampaign.org
This is our chance to make sure the pressure of global public opinion is being felt by Coalition governments as they rethink their war in Iraq, pressing them to accept a larger role for the international community and to withdraw their troops.
We know why it’s so important to act. A shocking study released by Johns Hopkins University last month suggested that hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians have been killed in Iraq — more than anyone thought — and experts warn that the civil war is about to pass a point of no return. October was the worst month yet for civilian casualties, with death squads moving house to house. The killing could place Iraq alongside Darfur as one of the greatest human catastrophes of our new century.
We must not let that happen. And if we each act quickly this week, we can each play a role in stopping it.
We can reach our goal for this campaign by spreading the word. Please forward this email to as many of your friends and family as you can, and act now to add your voice to this urgent call for action:
http://www.CeasefireCampaign.org
This may be our best chance for peace yet. Let’s take it.
With hope,
Ricken, Ben, Rachel, Paul, Tom, Amparo and the Ceasefire Campaign team
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Howard Zinn on Activism
Posted by: “Charles Jenks” charles@traprockpeace.org chaspeace
Fri Nov 10, 2006 10:17 am (PST)
“[A]fter all, and this is a very important thing to understand, the power of governments and the power of all large entities like corporations, rests and depends upon the obedience of people. The government and the military, as powerful as they are, cannot carry out a war.” – Howard Zinn, speaking on the necessity of activism with Sunny Miller, Executive Director of Traprock Peace Center (August, 2006).
This fascinating 22 minute conversation by one of the great thinkers and activists of our time is available for download at http://www.traprockpeace.org/traprock_audio/
Dr. Zinn encouraged activism in peace and justice movements, both for the sake of society and for the sake of ourselves.
“Historically we can point to the successes of these movements [such as civil rights and against the Vietnam War]….I think the other thing that is important to tell people who perhaps are on the verge of becoming active but are not sure what it will mean to their lives, and what sacrifices they will have to make. I think what is important for them to know is that there is nothing more satisfying than to participate with other people in a struggle or a good cause. That whatever sacrifices may be required of you, whatever troubles you may go through, whatever threats may be made to you, once you have been part of such a movement, you will never forget it. It will be a high point of your life. There is nothing so satisfying as getting together with other people who believe in peace and justice.”
The audio is copyright 2006 Traprock Peace Center; all rights reserved. Audio may be downloaded for free for non-profit use; it may not be edited or copied for sale without permission of Traprock Peace Center. Radio stations and websites may replay it in its entirety only, with attributions to the participants and to Traprock Peace Center as producer. Any replay must refer to Traprock’s copyright. Permission to replay is not necessary, but notice of replay is required to charles@traprockpeace.org
The MP3 audio is 22:14 minutes, recorded at 128 kbps mono, and with a file size of 20.4 mb. This phone interview was conducted and recorded in August, 2006 by Sunny Miller, Executive Director of Traprock Peace Center.
The permanent link for the audio program:
http://www.traprockpeace.org/traprock_audio/index.php/2006/11/09/howard-zinn-on-activism/
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The Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade (COAT) has a new slideshow called:
Afghanistan, Iraq and “Missile Defence”:
Canadian Hypocrisy and Complicity in the Business of War
http://coat.ncf.ca/Slides/3in1/001.htm
You can check out the online version of this slideshow right now by simply clicking on the URL above.
As usual, when it comes to war, our government has been saying one thing and doing another. This duplicity is exposed by examining Canada’s deep and ongoing participation in U.S.-led wars now being waged in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as in the biggest, weapons-development program in world history, namely America’s BMD program.
This is COAT’s latest resource for peace/antiwar activists. It is an informative online slide presentation using hundreds of eye-catching graphics to illustrate the Canadian government’s hypocrisy in the business of war. This theme is highlighted by focusing on three major examples: Afghanistan, Iraq and “Ballistic Missile Defense” (BMD).
The slide show summarizes, in an often humourous way, many of the well-researched and thoroughly-documented articles that have been published in COAT’s magazine, Press for Conversion!
Rest assured that the data in this slide show is balanced with healthy doses of light-hearted social commentary. It is also heavily spiced with the biting wit and wisdom of such satirists as Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde and Pogo.
Canadian governments have long used deceptive PR campaigns to trick Canadians into thinking that our country is a powerful, global force for peace and democracy. This mythical perception that shapes how we see ourselves and our government’s role in the world is a clever fabrication used to cover up Canada’s deep integration within the U.S. war machine.
This slideshow presents a wealth of little-known evidence to demonstrate beyond a doubt that Canada’s government, corporate and scientific sectors, as well as our armed forces, have made significant, longstanding, vitally-important and ongoing contributions to the Iraq war and to America’s BMD weapons development program. And, all of the major pretexts for the war in Afghanistan are also analyzed and debunked.
COAT Slideshow/Speaking Tour
This autumn, Richard Sanders, coordinator of the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade (COAT) and editor of COAT’s magazine, Press for Conversion!, presented this slide show in five cities: Ottawa, Toronto, Peterborough, Regina and Edmonton. (Learn more about this tour by clicking here.)
If you are interested in helping to organize a presentation of this slide show in your town or city (or a modified slideshow focusing on only one or two of the three topics), please contact COAT’s coordinator by email or telephone, 613-231-3076.
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*When Votes Disappear*
by PAUL KRUGMAN
The New York Times
November 24, 2006
You know what really had me terrified on Nov. 7? The all-too-real
possibility of a highly suspect result.
What would we have done if the Republicans had held on to the House by a
narrow margin, but circumstantial evidence strongly suggested that a
combination of vote suppression and defective or rigged electronic
voting machines made the difference?
Fortunately, it wasn’t a close election. But the fact that our electoral
system worked well enough to register an overwhelming Democratic
landslide doesn’t mean that things are O.K. There were many problems
with voting in this election and in at least one Congressional race,
the evidence strongly suggests that paperless voting machines failed to
count thousands of votes, and that the disappearance of these votes
delivered the race to the wrong candidate.
Here’s the background: Florida’s 13th Congressional District is
currently represented by Katherine Harris, who as Florida’s secretary of
state during the 2000 recount famously acted as a partisan Republican
rather than a fair referee. This year Ms. Harris didn’t run for
re-election, making an unsuccessful bid for the Senate instead. But
according to the official vote
count, the Republicans held on to her seat, with Vern Buchanan, the
G.O.P. candidate, narrowly defeating Christine Jennings, the Democrat.
The problem is that the official vote count isn’t credible. In much of
the 13th District, the voting pattern looks normal. But in Sarasota
County, which used touch-screen voting machines made by Election Systems
and Software, almost 18,000 voters — nearly 15 percent of those who
cast ballots using the machines — supposedly failed to vote for either
candidate in the hotly contested Congressional race. That compares with
undervote rates ranging from 2.2 to 5.3 percent in neighboring counties.
Reporting by The Herald-Tribune of Sarasota, which interviewed hundreds
of voters who called the paper to report problems at the polls, strongly
suggests that the huge apparent undervote was caused by bugs in the ES&S
software.
About a third of those interviewed by the paper reported that they
couldn’t even find the Congressional race on the screen. This could
conceivably have been the result of bad ballot design, but many of them
insisted that they looked hard for the race. Moreover, more than 60
percent of those interviewed by The Herald-Tribune reported that they
did cast a vote in the Congressional race but that this vote didn’t
show up on the ballot summary page they were shown at the end of the
voting process.
If there were bugs in the software, the odds are that they threw the
election to the wrong candidate. An Orlando Sentinel examination of
other votes cast by those who supposedly failed to cast a vote in the
Congressional race shows that they strongly favored Democrats, and Mr.
Buchanan won the official count by only 369 votes. The fact that Mr.
Buchanan won a recount that is, a recount of the votes the machines
happened to record means nothing.
Although state officials have certified Mr. Buchanan as the victor,
they’ve promised an audit of the voting machines. But don’t get your
hopes up: as in 2000, state election officials aren’t even trying to
look impartial. To oversee the audit, the state has chosen as its
independent expert Prof. Alec Yasinsac of Florida State University a
Republican partisan who made an appearance on the steps of the Florida
Supreme Court during the 2000 recount battle wearing a ‘Bush Won’ sign.
Ms. Jennings has now filed suit with the same court, demanding a new
election. She deserves one.
But for the nation as a whole, the important thing isn’t who gets seated
to represent Florida’s 13th District. It’s whether the voting disaster
there leads to legislation requiring voter verification and a paper
trail.
And I have to say that the omens aren’t good. I’ve been shocked at how
little national attention the mess in Sarasota has received. Here we
have as clear a demonstration as we’re ever likely to see that warnings
from computer scientists about the dangers of paperless electronic
voting are valid and most Americans probably haven’t even heard about
it.
As far as I can tell, the reason Florida-13 hasn’t become a major
national story is that neither control of Congress nor control of the
White House is on the line. But do we have to wait for a constitutional
crisis to realize that were in danger of becoming a digital-age banana
republic?
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Seymour M. Hersh
21-11-2006
The New Yorker
The Next Act
A month before the November elections, Vice-President Dick Cheney was sitting in on a national-security discussion at the Executive Office Building. The talk took a political turn: what if the Democrats won both the Senate and the House? How would that affect policy toward Iran, which is believed to be on the verge of becoming a nuclear power? At that point, according to someone familiar with the discussion, Cheney began reminiscing about his job as a lineman, in the early nineteen-sixties, for a power company in Wyoming.
Is a damaged Administration less likely to attack Iran, or more?
Copper wire was expensive, and the linemen were instructed to return all unused pieces three feet or longer. No one wanted to deal with the paperwork that resulted, Cheney said, so he and his colleagues found a solution: putting “shorteners” on the wire-that is, cutting it into short pieces and tossing the leftovers at the end of the workday. If the Democrats won on November 7th, the Vice-President said, that victory would not stop the Administration from pursuing a military option with Iran. The White House would put “shorteners” on any legislative restrictions, Cheney said, and thus stop Congress from getting in its way.
The White House’s concern was not that the Democrats would cut off funds for the war in Iraq but that future legislation would prohibit it from financing operations targeted at overthrowing or destabilizing the Iranian government, to keep it from getting the bomb. “They”re afraid that Congress is going to vote a binding resolution to stop a hit on Iran, _ la Nicaragua in the Contra war,” a former senior intelligence official told me.
In late 1982, Edward P. Boland, a Democratic representative, introduced the first in a series of “Boland amendments,” which limited the Reagan Administration’s ability to support the Contras, who were working to overthrow Nicaragua’s left-wing Sandinista government. The Boland restrictions led White House officials to orchestrate illegal fund-raising activities for the Contras, including the sale of American weapons, via Israel, to Iran. The result was the Iran-Contra scandal of the mid-eighties. Cheney’s story, according to the source, was his way of saying that, whatever a Democratic Congress might do next year to limit the President’s authority, the Administration would find a way to work around it. (In response to a request for comment, the Vice-President’s office said that it had no record of the discussion.)
In interviews, current and former Administration officials returned to one question: whether Cheney would be as influential in the last two years of George W. Bush’s Presidency as he was in its first six. Cheney is emphatic about Iraq. In late October, he told Time, “I know what the President thinks,” about Iraq. “I know what I think. And we’re not looking for an exit strategy. We’re looking for victory.” He is equally clear that the Administration would, if necessary, use force against Iran. “The United States is keeping all options on the table in addressing the irresponsible conduct of the regime,” he told an Israeli lobbying group early this year. “And we join other nations in sending that regime a clear message: we will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”
On November 8th, the day after the Republicans lost both the House and the Senate, Bush announced the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and the nomination of his successor, Robert Gates, a former director of Central Intelligence. The move was widely seen as an acknowledgment that the Administration was paying a political price for the debacle in Iraq. Gates was a member of the Iraq Study Group-headed by former Secretary of State James Baker and Lee Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman-which has been charged with examining new approaches to Iraq, and he has publicly urged for more than a year that the U.S. begin direct talks with Iran. President Bush’s decision to turn to Gates was a sign of the White House’s “desperation,” a former high-level C.I.A. official, who worked with the White House after September 11th, told me. Cheney’s relationship with Rumsfeld was among the closest inside the Administration, and Gates’s nomination was seen by some Republicans as a clear signal that the Vice-President’s influence in the White House could be challenged. The only reason Gates would take the job, after turning down an earlier offer to serve as the new Director of National Intelligence, the former high-level C.I.A. official said, was that “the President’s father, Brent Scowcroft, and James Baker”-former aides of the first President Bush-“piled on, and the President finally had to accept adult supervision.”
Critical decisions will be made in the next few months, the former C.I.A. official said. “Bush has followed Cheney’s advice for six years, and the story line will be: ‘Will he continue to choose Cheney over his father?’ We’ll know soon.” (The White House and the Pentagon declined to respond to detailed requests for comment about this article, other than to say that there were unspecified inaccuracies.)
A retired four-star general who worked closely with the first Bush Administration told me that the Gates nomination means that Scowcroft, Baker, the elder Bush, and his son “are saying that winning the election in 2008 is more important than the individual. The issue for them is how to preserve the Republican agenda. The Old Guard wants to isolate Cheney and give their girl, Condoleezza Rice”-the Secretary of State-“a chance to perform.” The combination of Scowcroft, Baker, and the senior Bush working together is, the general added, “tough enough to take on Cheney. One guy can’t do it.”
Richard Armitage, the Deputy Secretary of State in Bush’s first term, told me that he believed the Democratic election victory, followed by Rumsfeld’s dismissal, meant that the Administration “has backed off,” in terms of the pace of its planning for a military campaign against Iran. Gates and other decision-makers would now have more time to push for a diplomatic solution in Iran and deal with other, arguably more immediate issues. “Iraq is as bad as it looks, and Afghanistan is worse than it looks,” Armitage said. “A year ago, the Taliban were fighting us in units of eight to twelve, and now they’re sometimes in company-size, and even larger.” Bombing Iran and expecting the Iranian public “to rise up” and overthrow the government, as some in the White House believe, Armitage added, “is a fool’s errand.”
“Iraq is the disaster we have to get rid of, and Iran is the disaster we have to avoid,” Joseph Cirincione, the vice-president for national security at the liberal Center for American Progress, said. “Gates will be in favor of talking to Iran and listening to the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but the neoconservatives are still there”-in the White House-“and still believe that chaos would be a small price for getting rid of the threat. The danger is that Gates could be the new Colin Powell-the one who opposes the policy but ends up briefing the Congress and publicly supporting it.”
Other sources close to the Bush family said that the machinations behind Rumsfeld’s resignation and the Gates nomination were complex, and the seeming triumph of the Old Guard may be illusory. The former senior intelligence official, who once worked closely with Gates and with the President’s father, said that Bush and his immediate advisers in the White House understood by mid-October that Rumsfeld would have to resign if the result of the midterm election was a resounding defeat. Rumsfeld was involved in conversations about the timing of his departure with Cheney, Gates, and the President before the election, the former senior intelligence official said. Critics who asked why Rumsfeld wasn’t fired earlier, a move that might have given the Republicans a boost, were missing the point. “A week before the election, the Republicans were saying that a Democratic victory was the seed of American retreat, and now Bush and Cheney are going to change their national-security policies?” the former senior intelligence official said. “Cheney knew this was coming. Dropping Rummy after the election looked like a conciliatory move-‘You’re right, Democrats. We got a new guy and we’re looking at all the options. Nothing is ruled out.’ ” But the conciliatory gesture would not be accompanied by a significant change in policy; instead, the White House saw Gates as someone who would have the credibility to help it stay the course on Iran and Iraq. Gates would also be an asset before Congress. If the Administration needed to make the case that Iran’s weapons program posed an imminent threat, Gates would be a better advocate than someone who had been associated with the flawed intelligence about Iraq. The former official said, “He’s not the guy who told us there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and he’ll be taken seriously by Congress.”
Once Gates is installed at the Pentagon, he will have to contend with Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Rumsfeld legacy-and Dick Cheney. A former senior Bush Administration official, who has also worked with Gates, told me that Gates was well aware of the difficulties of his new job. He added that Gates would not simply endorse the Administration’s policies and say, “with a flag waving, ‘Go, go’ “-especially at the cost of his own reputation. “He does not want to see thirty-five years of government service go out the window,” the former official said. However, on the question of whether Gates would actively stand up to Cheney, the former official said, after a pause, “I don’t know.”
Another critical issue for Gates will be the Pentagon’s expanding effort to conduct clandestine and covert intelligence missions overseas. Such activity has traditionally been the C.I.A.’s responsibility, but, as the result of a systematic push by Rumsfeld, military covert actions have been substantially increased. In the past six months, Israel and the United States have also been working together in support of a Kurdish resistance group known as the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan. The group has been conducting clandestine cross-border forays into Iran, I was told by a government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon civilian leadership, as “part of an effort to explore alternative means of applying pressure on Iran.” (The Pentagon has established covert relationships with Kurdish, Azeri, and Baluchi tribesmen, and has encouraged their efforts to undermine the regime’s authority in northern and southeastern Iran.) The government consultant said that Israel is giving the Kurdish group “equipment and training.” The group has also been given “a list of targets inside Iran of interest to the U.S.” (An Israeli government spokesman denied that Israel was involved.)
Such activities, if they are considered military rather than intelligence operations, do not require congressional briefings. For a similar C.I.A. operation, the President would, by law, have to issue a formal finding that the mission was necessary, and the Administration would have to brief the senior leadership of the House and the Senate. The lack of such consultation annoyed some Democrats in Congress. This fall, I was told, Representative David Obey, of Wisconsin, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations subcommittee that finances classified military activity, pointedly asked, during a closed meeting of House and Senate members, whether “anyone has been briefing on the Administration’s plan for military activity in Iran.” The answer was no. (A spokesman for Obey confirmed this account.)
The Democratic victories this month led to a surge of calls for the Administration to begin direct talks with Iran, in part to get its help in settling the conflict in Iraq. British Prime Minister Tony Blair broke ranks with President Bush after the election and declared that Iran should be offered “a clear strategic choice” that could include a “new partnership” with the West. But many in the White House and the Pentagon insist that getting tough with Iran is the only way to salvage Iraq. “It’s a classic case of ‘failure forward,'” a Pentagon consultant said. “They believe that by tipping over Iran they would recover their losses in Iraq-like doubling your bet. It would be an attempt to revive the concept of spreading democracy in the Middle East by creating one new model state.”
The view that there is a nexus between Iran and Iraq has been endorsed by Condoleezza Rice, who said last month that Iran “does need to understand that it is not going to improve its own situation by stirring instability in Iraq,” and by the President, who said, in August, that “Iran is backing armed groups in the hope of stopping democracy from taking hold” in Iraq. The government consultant told me, “More and more people see the weakening of Iran as the only way to save Iraq.”
The consultant added that, for some advocates of military action, “the goal in Iran is not regime change but a strike that will send a signal that America still can accomplish its goals. Even if it does not destroy Iran’s nuclear network, there are many who think that thirty-six hours of bombing is the only way to remind the Iranians of the very high cost of going forward with the bomb-and of supporting Moqtada al-Sadr and his pro-Iran element in Iraq.” (Sadr, who commands a Shiite militia, has religious ties to Iran.)
In the current issue of Foreign Policy, Joshua Muravchik, a prominent neoconservative, argued that the Administration had little choice. “Make no mistake: President Bush will need to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities before leaving office,” he wrote. The President would be bitterly criticized for a pre_mptive attack on Iran, Muravchik said, and so neoconservatives “need to pave the way intellectually now and be prepared to defend the action when it comes.”
The main Middle East expert on the Vice-President’s staff is David Wurmser, a neoconservative who was a strident advocate for the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Like many in Washington, Wurmser “believes that, so far, there’s been no price tag on Iran for its nuclear efforts and for its continuing agitation and intervention inside Iraq,” the consultant said. But, unlike those in the Administration who are calling for limited strikes, Wurmser and others in Cheney’s office “want to end the regime,” the consultant said. “They argue that there can be no settlement of the Iraq war without regime change in Iran.”
The Administration’s planning for a military attack on Iran was made far more complicated earlier this fall by a highly classified draft assessment by the C.I.A. challenging the White House’s assumptions about how close Iran might be to building a nuclear bomb. The C.I.A. found no conclusive evidence, as yet, of a secret Iranian nuclear-weapons program running parallel to the civilian operations that Iran has declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency. (The C.I.A. declined to comment on this story.)
The C.I.A.’s analysis, which has been circulated to other agencies for comment, was based on technical intelligence collected by overhead satellites, and on other empirical evidence, such as measurements of the radioactivity of water samples and smoke plumes from factories and power plants. Additional data have been gathered, intelligence sources told me, by high-tech (and highly classified) radioactivity-detection devices that clandestine American and Israeli agents placed near suspected nuclear-weapons facilities inside Iran in the past year or so. No significant amounts of radioactivity were found.
A current senior intelligence official confirmed the existence of the C.I.A. analysis, and told me that the White House had been hostile to it. The White House’s dismissal of the C.I.A. findings on Iran is widely known in the intelligence community. Cheney and his aides discounted the assessment, the former senior intelligence official said. “They’re not looking for a smoking gun,” the official added, referring to specific intelligence about Iranian nuclear planning. “They’re looking for the degree of comfort level they think they need to accomplish the mission.” The Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency also challenged the C.I.A.’s analysis. “The D.I.A. is fighting the agency’s conclusions, and disputing its approach,” the former senior intelligence official said. Bush and Cheney, he added, can try to prevent the C.I.A. assessment from being incorporated into a forthcoming National Intelligence Estimate on Iranian nuclear capabilities, “but they can’t stop the agency from putting it out for comment inside the intelligence community.” The C.I.A. assessment warned the White House that it would be a mistake to conclude that the failure to find a secret nuclear-weapons program in Iran merely meant that the Iranians had done a good job of hiding it. The former senior intelligence official noted that at the height of the Cold War the Soviets were equally skilled at deception and misdirection, yet the American intelligence community was readily able to unravel the details of their long-range-missile and nuclear-weapons programs. But some in the White House, including in Cheney’s office, had made just such an assumption-that “the lack of evidence means they must have it,” the former official said.
Iran is a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty, under which it is entitled to conduct nuclear research for peaceful purposes. Despite the offer of trade agreements and the prospect of military action, it defied a demand by the I.A.E.A. and the Security Council, earlier this year, that it stop enriching uranium-a process that can produce material for nuclear power plants as well as for weapons-and it has been unable, or unwilling, to account for traces of plutonium and highly enriched uranium that have been detected during I.A.E.A. inspections. The I.A.E.A. has complained about a lack of “transparency,” although, like the C.I.A., it has not found unambiguous evidence of a secret weapons program.
Last week, Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, announced that Iran had made further progress in its enrichment research program, and said, “We know that some countries may not be pleased.” He insisted that Iran was abiding by international agreements, but said, “Time is now completely on the side of the Iranian people.” A diplomat in Vienna, where the I.A.E.A. has its headquarters, told me that the agency was skeptical of the claim, for technical reasons. But Ahmadinejad’s defiant tone did nothing to diminish suspicions about Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
“There is no evidence of a large-scale covert enrichment program inside Iran,” one involved European diplomat said. “But the Iranians would not have launched themselves into a very dangerous confrontation with the West on the basis of a weapons program that they no longer pursue. Their enrichment program makes sense only in terms of wanting nuclear weapons. It would be inconceivable if they weren’t cheating to some degree. You don’t need a covert program to be concerned about Iran’s nuclear ambitions. We have enough information to be concerned without one. It’s not a slam dunk, but it’s close to it.”
There are, however, other possible reasons for Iran’s obstinacy. The nuclear program-peaceful or not-is a source of great national pride, and President Ahmadinejad’s support for it has helped to propel him to enormous popularity. (Saddam Hussein created confusion for years, inside and outside his country, about whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, in part to project an image of strength.) According to the former senior intelligence official, the C.I.A.’s assessment suggested that Iran might even see some benefits in a limited military strike-especially one that did not succeed in fully destroying its nuclear program-in that an attack might enhance its position in the Islamic world. “They learned that in the Iraqi experience, and relearned it in southern Lebanon,” the former senior official said. In both cases, a more powerful military force had trouble achieving its military or political goals; in Lebanon, Israel’s war against Hezbollah did not destroy the group’s entire arsenal of rockets, and increased the popularity of its leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
The former senior intelligence official added that the C.I.A. assessment raised the possibility that an American attack on Iran could end up serving as a rallying point to unite Sunni and Shiite populations. “An American attack will paper over any differences in the Arab world, and we’ll have Syrians, Iranians, Hamas, and Hezbollah fighting against us-and the Saudis and the Egyptians questioning their ties to the West. It’s an analyst’s worst nightmare-for the first time since the caliphate there will be common cause in the Middle East.” (An Islamic caliphate ruled the Middle East for over six hundred years, until the thirteenth century.)
According to the Pentagon consultant, “The C.I.A.’s view is that, without more intelligence, a large-scale bombing attack would not stop Iran’s nuclear program. And a low-end campaign of subversion and sabotage would play into Iran’s hands-bolstering support for the religious leadership and deepening anti-American Muslim rage.”
The Pentagon consultant said that he and many of his colleagues in the military believe that Iran is intent on developing nuclear-weapons capability. But he added that the Bush Administration’s options for dealing with that threat are diminished, because of a lack of good intelligence and also because “we’ve cried wolf” before.
As the C.I.A.’s assessment was making its way through the government, late this summer, current and former military officers and consultants told me, a new element suddenly emerged: intelligence from Israeli spies operating inside Iran claimed that Iran has developed and tested a trigger device for a nuclear bomb. The provenance and significance of the human intelligence, or HUMINT, are controversial. “The problem is that no one can verify it,” the former senior intelligence official told me. “We don’t know who the Israeli source is. The briefing says the Iranians are testing trigger mechanisms”-simulating a zero-yield nuclear explosion without any weapons-grade materials-“but there are no diagrams, no significant facts. Where is the test site? How often have they done it? How big is the warhead-a breadbox or a refrigerator? They don’t have that.” And yet, he said, the report was being used by White House hawks within the Administration to “prove the White House’s theory that the Iranians are on track. And tests leave no radioactive track, which is why we can’t find it.” Still, he said, “The agency is standing its ground.”
The Pentagon consultant, however, told me that he and other intelligence professionals believe that the Israeli intelligence should be taken more seriously. “We live in an era when national technical intelligence”-data from satellites and on-the-ground sensors-“will not get us what we need. HUMINT may not be hard evidence by that standard, but very often it’s the best intelligence we can get.” He added, with obvious exasperation, that within the intelligence community “we’re going to be fighting over the quality of the information for the next year.” One reason for the dispute, he said, was that the White House had asked to see the “raw”-the original, unanalyzed and unvetted-Israeli intelligence. Such “stovepiping” of intelligence had led to faulty conclusions about nonexistent weapons of mass destruction during the buildup to the 2003 Iraq war. “Many Presidents in the past have done the same thing,” the consultant said, “but intelligence professionals are always aghast when Presidents ask for stuff in the raw. They see it as asking a second grader to read ‘Ulysses.’ ”
HUMINT can be difficult to assess. Some of the most politically significant-and most inaccurate-intelligence about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction came from an operative, known as Curveball, who was initially supplied to the C.I.A. by German intelligence. But the Pentagon consultant insisted that, in this case, “the Israeli intelligence is apparently very strong.” He said that the information about the trigger device had been buttressed by another form of highly classified data, known as MASINT, for “measuring and signature” intelligence. The Defense Intelligence Agency is the central processing and dissemination point for such intelligence, which includes radar, radio, nuclear, and electro-optical data. The consultant said that the MASINT indicated activities that “are not consistent with the programs” Iran has declared to the I.A.E.A. “The intelligence suggests far greater sophistication and more advanced development,” the consultant said. “The indications don’t make sense, unless they’re farther along in some aspects of their nuclear-weapons program than we know.”
In early 2004, John Bolton, who was then the Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control (he is now the United Nations Ambassador), privately conveyed to the I.A.E.A. suspicions that Iran was conducting research into the intricately timed detonation of conventional explosives needed to trigger a nuclear warhead at Parchin, a sensitive facility twenty miles southeast of Tehran that serves as the center of Iran’s Defense Industries Organization. A wide array of chemical munitions and fuels, as well as advanced antitank and ground-to-air missiles, are manufactured there, and satellite imagery appeared to show a bunker suitable for testing very large explosions.
A senior diplomat in Vienna told me that, in response to the allegations, I.A.E.A. inspectors went to Parchin in November of 2005, after months of negotiation. An inspection team was allowed to single out a specific site at the base, and then was granted access to a few buildings there. “We found no evidence of nuclear materials,” the diplomat said. The inspectors looked hard at an underground explosive-testing pit that, he said, “resembled what South Africa had when it developed its nuclear weapons,” three decades ago. The pit could have been used for the kind of kinetic research needed to test a nuclear trigger. But, like so many military facilities with dual-use potential, “it also could be used for other things,” such as testing fuel for rockets, which routinely takes place at Parchin. “The Iranians have demonstrated that they can enrich uranium,” the diplomat added, “and trigger tests without nuclear yield can be done. But it’s a very sophisticated process-it’s also known as hydrodynamic testing-and only countries with suitably advanced nuclear testing facilities as well as the necessary scientific expertise can do it. I’d be very skeptical that Iran could do it.”
Earlier this month, the allegations about Parchin re_merged when Yediot Ahronot, Israel’s largest newspaper, reported that recent satellite imagery showed new “massive construction” at Parchin, suggesting an expansion of underground tunnels and chambers. The newspaper sharply criticized the I.A.E.A.’s inspection process and its director, Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, for his insistence on “using very neutral wording for his findings and his conclusions.”
Patrick Clawson, an expert on Iran who is the deputy director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a conservative think tank, told me that the “biggest moment” of tension has yet to arrive: “How does the United States keep an Israeli decision point-one that may come sooner than we want-from being reached?” Clawson noted that there is evidence that Iran has been slowed by technical problems in the construction and operation of two small centrifuge cascades, which are essential for the pilot production of enriched uranium. Both are now under I.A.E.A. supervision. “Why were they so slow in getting the second cascade up and running?” Clawson asked. “And why haven’t they run the first one as much as they said they would? Do we have more time?
“Why talk about war?” he said. “We’re not talking about going to war with North Korea or Venezuela. It’s not necessarily the case that Iran has started a weapons program, and it’s conceivable-just conceivable-that Iran does not have a nuclear-weapons program yet. We can slow them down-force them to reinvent the wheel-without bombing, especially if the international conditions get better.”
Clawson added that Secretary of State Rice has “staked her reputation on diplomacy, and she will not risk her career without evidence. Her team is saying, ‘What’s the rush?’ The President wants to solve the Iranian issue before leaving office, but he may have to say, ‘Darn, I wish I could have solved it.’ ”
Earlier this year, the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert created a task force to coördinate all the available intelligence on Iran. The task force, which is led by Major General Eliezer Shkedi, the head of the Israeli Air Force, reports directly to the Prime Minister. In late October, Olmert appointed Ephraim Sneh, a Labor Party member of the Knesset, to serve as Deputy Defense Minister. Sneh, who served previously in that position under Ehud Barak, has for years insisted that action be taken to prevent Iran from getting the bomb. In an interview this month with the Jerusalem Post, Sneh expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of diplomacy or international sanctions in curbing Iran:
The danger isn’t as much Ahmadinejad’s deciding to launch an attack but Israel’s living under a dark cloud of fear from a leader committed to its destruction. . . . Most Israelis would prefer not to live here; most Jews would prefer not to come here with families, and Israelis who can live abroad will . . . I am afraid Ahmadinejad will be able to kill the Zionist dream without pushing a button. That’s why we must prevent this regime from obtaining nuclear capability at all costs.
A similar message was delivered by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Likud leader, in a speech in Los Angeles last week. “It’s 1938 and Iran is Germany. And Iran is racing to arm itself with atomic bombs,” he said, adding that there was “still time” to stop the Iranians.
The Pentagon consultant told me that, while there may be pressure from the Israelis, “they won’t do anything on their own without our green light.” That assurance, he said, “comes from the Cheney shop. It’s Cheney himself who is saying, ‘We’re not going to leave you high and dry, but don’t go without us.’ ” A senior European diplomat agreed: “For Israel, it is a question of life or death. The United States does not want to go into Iran, but, if Israel feels more and more cornered, there may be no other choice.”
A nuclear-armed Iran would not only threaten Israel. It could trigger a strategic-arms race throughout the Middle East, as Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt-all led by Sunni governments-would be compelled to take steps to defend themselves. The Bush Administration, if it does take military action against Iran, would have support from Democrats as well as Republicans. Senators Hillary Clinton, of New York, and Evan Bayh, of Indiana, who are potential Democratic Presidential candidates, have warned that Iran cannot be permitted to build a bomb and that-as Clinton said earlier this year-“we cannot take any option off the table.” Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, has also endorsed this view. Last May, Olmert was given a rousing reception when he addressed a joint session of Congress and declared, “A nuclear Iran means a terrorist state could achieve the primary mission for which terrorists live and die-the mass destruction of innocent human life. This challenge, which I believe is the test of our time, is one the West cannot afford to fail.”
Despite such rhetoric, Leslie Gelb, a former State Department official who is a president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, said he believes that, “when push comes to shove, the Israelis will have a hard time selling the idea that an Iranian nuclear capability is imminent. The military and the State Department will be flat against a pre_mptive bombing campaign.” Gelb said he hoped that Gates’s appointment would add weight to America’s most pressing issue-“to get some level of Iranian restraint inside Iraq. In the next year or two, we’re much more likely to be negotiating with Iran than bombing it.”
The Bush Administration remains publicly committed to a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear impasse, and has been working with China, Russia, France, Germany, and Britain to get negotiations under way. So far, that effort has foundered; the most recent round of talks broke up early in November, amid growing disagreements with Russia and China about the necessity of imposing harsh United Nations sanctions on the Iranian regime. President Bush is adamant that Iran must stop all of its enrichment programs before any direct talks involving the United States can begin.
The senior European diplomat told me that the French President, Jacques Chirac, and President Bush met in New York on September 19th, as the new U.N. session was beginning, and agreed on what the French called the “Big Bang” approach to breaking the deadlock with Iran. A scenario was presented to Ali Larijani, the chief Iranian negotiator on nuclear issues. The Western delegation would sit down at a negotiating table with Iran. The diplomat told me, “We would say, ‘We’re beginning the negotiations without preconditions,’ and the Iranians would respond, ‘We will suspend.’ Our side would register great satisfaction, and the Iranians would agree to accept I.A.E.A. inspection of their enrichment facilities. And then the West would announce, in return, that they would suspend any U.N. sanctions.” The United States would not be at the table when the talks began but would join later. Larijani took the offer to Tehran; the answer, as relayed by Larijani, was no, the diplomat said. “We were trying to compromise, for all sides, but Ahmadinejad did not want to save face,” the diplomat said. “The beautiful scenario has gone nowhere.”
Last week, there was a heightened expectation that the Iraq Study Group would produce a set of recommendations that could win bipartisan approval and guide America out of the quagmire in Iraq. Sources with direct knowledge of the panel’s proceedings have told me that the group, as of mid-November, had ruled out calling for an immediate and complete American withdrawal but would recommend focussing on the improved training of Iraqi forces and on redeploying American troops. In the most significant recommendation, Baker and Hamilton were expected to urge President Bush to do what he has thus far refused to do-bring Syria and Iran into a regional conference to help stabilize Iraq.
It is not clear whether the Administration will be receptive. In August, according to the former senior intelligence official, Rumsfeld asked the Joint Chiefs to quietly devise alternative plans for Iraq, to pre_mpt new proposals, whether they come from the new Democratic majority or from the Iraq Study Group. “The option of last resort is to move American forces out of the cities and relocate them along the Syrian and Iranian border,” the former official said. “Civilians would be hired to train the Iraqi police, with the eventual goal of separating the local police from the Iraqi military. The White House believes that if American troops stay in Iraq long enough-with enough troops-the bad guys will end up killing each other, and Iraqi citizens, fed up with internal strife, will come up with a solution. It’ll take a long time to move the troops and train the police. It’s a time line to infinity.”
In a subsequent interview, the former senior Bush Administration official said that he had also been told that the Pentagon has been at work on a plan in Iraq that called for a military withdrawal from the major urban areas to a series of fortified bases near the borders. The working assumption was that, with the American troops gone from the most heavily populated places, the sectarian violence would “burn out.” “The White House is saying it’s going to stabilize,” the former senior Administration official said, “but it may stabilize the wrong way.”
One problem with the proposal that the Administration enlist Iran in reaching a settlement of the conflict in Iraq is that it’s not clear that Iran would be interested, especially if the goal is to help the Bush Administration extricate itself from a bad situation.
“Iran is emerging as a dominant power in the Middle East,” I was told by a Middle East expert and former senior Administration official. “With a nuclear program, and an ability to interfere throughout the region, it’s basically calling the shots. Why should they coöperate with us over Iraq?” He recounted a recent meeting with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who challenged Bush’s right to tell Iran that it could not enrich uranium. “Why doesn’t America stop enriching uranium?” the Iranian President asked. He laughed, and added, “We’ll enrich it for you and sell it to you at a fifty-per-cent discount.
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