Centerblue.org

And now this, from the party in power that promises to keep you safer from the dreaded mushroom cloud:

Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans who had said they hoped to “leverage the Internet” to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.

But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.

Last night, the government shut down the Web site after The New York Times asked about complaints from weapons experts and arms-control officials. A spokesman for the director of national intelligence said access to the site had been suspended “pending a review to ensure its content is appropriate for public viewing.”

Officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency, fearing that the information could help states like Iran develop nuclear arms, had privately protested last week to the American ambassador to the agency, according to European diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity. One diplomat said the agency’s technical experts “were shocked” at the public disclosures.

…

The documents, roughly a dozen in number, contain charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that nuclear experts who have viewed them say go beyond what is available elsewhere on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs.

Let me get this straight: the GOP, hoping to unearth non-existent evidence of WMD dangers in pre-war Iraq in hopes of bolstering its desperate case for the war, forced the government to put pre-1991 materials online that could be used by any terrorist or rogue nation with enough technical know-how to build a nuclear weapon. They did this while at the same time trying to portray Democrats as weak on keeping America safe from terrorism.

Feel safer yet?

As if the entire Iraq adventure weren’t enough of a fiasco, word comes that North Korea has successfully tested its first nuclear weapon. This comes while the US is tied down militarily in Iraq and therefore unable to exert any kind of significant pressure.

So instead of focusing on North Korea that was known to be close to nuclear capability–a country with plenty of incentive to sell weapons to terrorists because of its impoverishment–the Bush administration chose to make up Iraqi WMD evidence, lie to the public, and take down a regime that posed no threat to the United States.

The test alters the balance of power in northeast Asia and touches off grave new concerns about the proliferation of refined nuclear material or devices to other rogue states or terrorist groups. North Korea, a secretive communist state which strictly limits all contact with the outside world, already generates tens of millions of dollars a year through its thriving underground sales of missiles and other sophisticated weaponry to nations including Iran and Syria.

Now we’re stuck with a nuclear North Korea, and it is highly unlikely they will ever give up their new weapon.

Feel safer yet?

Directly related to the previous post about attacking Iran, the UN International Atomic Energy Agency is claiming that a report on Iran recently completed by US House of Representatives committee is “dishonest” about Iran’s intent to develop nuclear weapons.

The dispute centers around the report’s claim that Iran is making weapons-grade uranium at an enrichment site, when the IAEA says that Iran has made only small amounts of the material–far less than what is required to build weapons.

Another dispute surrounds the removal of an IAEA inspector at IAEA leader Mohamed ElBaradei’s request, which the report says was because that inspector believed Iran wanted to create weapons. In fact, says the IAEA, Tehran asked for the removal and was entitled to ask for a replacement under IAEA rules.

The House committee’s response on the enrichment site issue was that the report said that Iran was creating the material, not that it had created enough for weapons use.

This dispute is reminiscent of the debate that occurred before the Iraq invasion. I really hope we learned our lesson then. Before any military decisions are made about Iran we absolutely must know the complete truth about exactly what Iran has been doing. We should exert great pressure to ensure that inspections continue, and that they not be impeded by a trigger-happy Chief Executive in the way that led to the disastrous search for non-existent WMD’s in Iraq.

I don’t usually think much of Charles Krauthammer’s writing, as I often think he’s just a right-wing blowhard.

Today, however, he has a compelling column about the Iran situation. He discusses what comes next for Iran given its continuing intransigence in nuclear weapons negotiations. He uses stark language to describe why an attack against Iran may come, what the costs of it would be, and what the cost of doing nothing would be as well.

On why an attack may be imminent:

In his televised Sept. 11 address, President Bush said that we must not “leave our children to face a Middle East overrun by terrorist states and radical dictators armed with nuclear weapons.” There’s only one such current candidate: Iran.

The next day, he responded thus (as reported by Rich Lowry and Kate O’Beirne of National Review) to a question on Iran: “It’s very important for the American people to see the president try to solve problems diplomatically before resorting to military force.”

“Before” implies that the one follows the other. The signal is unmistakable. An aerial attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities lies just beyond the horizon of diplomacy.

On the terrible cost of such an attack:

An attack on Iran is likely to send oil prices overnight to $100 or even to $150 a barrel. That will cause a worldwide recession perhaps as deep as the one triggered by the Iranian revolution of 1979.

Iran might suspend its own 2.5 million barrels a day of oil exports and might even be joined by Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, asserting primacy as the world’s leading anti-imperialist. But even more effectively, Iran will shock the oil markets by closing the Strait of Hormuz, through which 40 percent of the world’s exports flow every day.

Iran could do this by attacking ships in the Strait, scuttling its own ships, laying mines or just threatening to launch Silkworm anti-ship missiles at any passing tanker.

The U.S. Navy will be forced to break the blockade. We will succeed, but at considerable cost. And it will take time — during which the world economy will be in a deep spiral.

On the cost of doing nothing:

In the region, Persian Iran will immediately become the hegemonic power in the Arab Middle East. Today it is deterred from overt aggression against its neighbors by the threat of conventional retaliation. Against a nuclear Iran, such deterrence becomes far less credible. As its weak, nonnuclear Persian Gulf neighbors accommodate to it, jihadist Iran will gain control of the most strategic region on the globe.

Then there is the larger danger of permitting nuclear weapons to be acquired by religious fanatics seized with an eschatological belief in the imminent apocalypse and in their own divine duty to hasten the End of Days. The mullahs are infinitely more likely to use these weapons than anyone in the history of the nuclear age. Every city in the civilized world will live under the specter of instant annihilation delivered either by missile or by terrorist. This from a country that has an official Death to America Day and has declared since Ayatollah Khomeini’s ascension that Israel must be wiped off the map.

Against millenarian fanaticism glorying in a cult of death, deterrence is a mere wish. Is the West prepared to wager its cities with their millions of inhabitants on that feeble gamble?

Weighty issues to consider, indeed. I agree with Krauthammer that the radical mullahs of Iran cannot be trusted with nukes. They have made clear their intentions against America, Israel, and their allies.

Through all of this, though, let’s not forget what precipitated this crisis in no small part: by Bush labeling Iran as part of an “axis of evil” following the 9/11 attacks.

If I was the leader of a country and I heard the most powerful nation on earth target me as part of an “axis of evil” in the wake of terrible terrorist attacks, I’d make haste to develop nukes too, the rest of the world’s opinion be damned.

There is no end to the evil that Bush does and provokes.

Bush is sounding like an impotent rock in a tin can, threatening Iran by saying there “must be consequences” for Iran’s “defiance and delay” to demands it stop enriching uranium.

Bush seems to forget that you actually need to hold some cards in your hand if you’re going to bluff. What cards does he hold?

The US is militarily and financially over-extended in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran knows better than to leave its nuclear facilities on the surface for the US to bomb with planes. Any military intervention would likely require “boots on the ground,” and there’s just not lots of boots to go around these days–absent a draft, of course.

The US is also addicted to Iran’s most precious resource–oil. Iran has lots of oil..enough to radically affect world markets if it shut off the spigots, and it knows that fully well. That threat takes the bloom off the rose when it comes to any meaningful economic sanctions.

Finally, Iran is cozy with China and Russia, and that too is likely to blunt the effects of any sanctions.

So what exactly are these consequences Bush is talking about?