Runaway Trains Cannot Change Tracks.

Conditions: Sunny, warm, even breezy.


Exactly How Much More Clear Can We Be About Iran?

In a move just short of whacking President Bush over the head with a newspaper while asking "Are we learning yet?", the intelligence agencies have published another N.I.E report stating clearly that Iran actually are not about to break out a bunch of nuclear weapons kill everyone on the planet.

In a stunning reversal of Bush administration conventional wisdom, a new assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies concludes Iran shelved its nuclear weapons program over four years ago.

"We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program," reads a declassified version of the National Intelligence Estimate key findings.

- blogs.abcnews.com

------------------

US intelligence agencies undercut the White House yesterday by disclosing for the first time that Iran has not been pursuing a nuclear weapons development programme for the past four years. The secret report, which was declassified yesterday and published, marked a significant shift from previous estimates. "Tehran's decision to halt its nuclear weapons programme suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005," it said.

The disclosure makes it harder for President George Bush, to justify a military strike against Iran before he leaves office next year. It also makes it more difficult to persuade Russia and China to join the US, Britain and France in imposing a new round of sanctions on Tehran.

Bush and vice-president Dick Cheney have been claiming without equivocation that Tehran is bent on achieving a nuclear weapon, with the president warning in October of the risk of a third world war. They were briefed on the national intelligence estimate (NIE) on Wednesday.
[...]

In a startling admission from an administration that regularly portrays Iran as the biggest threat to the Middle East and the world, the NIE said: "We do not know whether [Iran] currently intends to develop nuclear weapons." That contradicts the assessment two years ago that baldly stated that Tehran was "determined to develop nuclear weapons".

- The Guardian

Now, you'd think something like that would take the wind out of President Bush's sails, but Ha! You see, Bush didn't get to where he is today by changing his mind about things.

Defending his credibility, President Bush said Tuesday that Iran is dangerous and must be squeezed by international pressure despite a blockbuster intelligence finding that Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program four years ago.

Bush said the new conclusion _ contradicting earlier U.S. assessments _ would not prompt him to take off the table the possibility of pre-emptive military action against Iran. Nor will the United States change its policy of trying to isolate Iran diplomatically and punish it with sanctions, he said.

"Look, Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous and Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon," the president told a White House news conference a day after the release of a new national intelligence estimate representing the consensus of all U.S. spy agencies.

- Huffpost

Knowledge? That's right, regardless of what the intelligence agencies, or anybody else thinks, simple things like facts are not about to stop President Bush from fighting the evildoers wherever they may be. A graphic from defectiveyeti sums up Bush's thinking process nicely:




So, where does that leave us? According to arms expert and former chief U.N weapons Inspector Scott Ritter, still strapped beneath the point of Bush's mighty sword, set to drop fairly soon irregardless of what Iran does or doesn't do. Bush may have to change the focus of the fear mongering, but the point will remain the same.

Because now you have the difficulty of both the IAEA saying there is no nuclear weapons program and the CIA saying pretty much the same thing. So the Bush administration needs to redefine the Iranian threat, which they have been doing successfully, casting Iran as the largest state sponsor of terror, getting the Senate resolution calling the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command a terrorist organization, and creating a perception amongst the American people, courtesy of a compliant media, that talks about the reason why things are going bad in Iraq is primarily because of Iranian intervention.

They have been working very hard to get back on track. I still believe that we are seeing convergence here. The Bush administration is moving very aggressively toward military action with Iran.
[...]

"What should the United States be doing in regards to Iran?" I think we should be seeking to normalize relations with Iran. We should be seeking stability in the region. This concept that the United States gets to dictate to sovereign people the makeup of their government is absurd. First of all, the theocracy in Iran, while not a model, for instance ... it's an Iranian problem, not an American problem. The day of the exportation of the Islamic revolution is long gone. The Iranians are not seeking to convert by the sword anybody. It's a nation that has serious internal problems. Economic. Huge unemployment. It's a nation that recognizes these problems. And they are in desperate need of not only political stability but also the economic benefits that come with this stability.

The Iranians want a normalization of relations with the United States that would be inclusive of peaceful coexistence with Israel. They've said this over and over and over again.

So what the United States should be doing is exploiting the olive branch that is being held out by the Iranians. We should be engaging them diplomatically. We should be terminating economic sanctions and seeking to exploit the leverage that comes with having American businesses working inside Iran to try and change them from within. We should be doing everything to get Iran to be a positive player in the region, especially considering the debacle that's unfolding in Iraq. Having the Iranians working with us to engender stability as opposed to being at cross-purposes.

The same can be said in Afghanistan and the entire central Asian region. We keep putting our hopes on allies like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Saudi Arabia, which produced 14 of the hijackers who slaughtered Americans on 9/11. Pakistan, which was the political sponsor of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and continues to have ties to radical Islamic terror organizations. These are our allies? And we call Iran the enemy? We've got it backward. The Iranians are actually the ones we should be working with to oppose dictatorships like Pakistan and irresponsible governments like Saudi Arabia's.

- Truthout.org

And much like most words of wisdom, this will be ignored. The media isn't interested in changing the public perceptions of Iran any more than they're interested in changing people's perception of nicotine. It's too easy to confuse your audience if you start changing the characters around, and a confused audience is more likely to change the channel. And that threat, above all others, will simply not be tolerated.



I STILL miss my VCR.

Yes, if you can believe it, the VCR that I took to the shop to get fixed TWO MONTHS AGO, is still in the shop. Why, you ask plaintively? Because the parts it needs are in another city/country/district/space-time dimension, and it's "taking a while" for them to get here. Oh, the fun I have when I make my weekly phone call to the shop in question. 'Hi how's it all going' I say. 'Oh it's you again' he says. 'Yes, me again' I say. 'Well, it's still waiting' he says. 'Okay' I say. 'Next week for sure' he says. 'I'd like to kill you and drink the blood from your skull' I don't say.



Car Update.

Well the inevitable happened. Our office has moved, and the daily commute is now quite a bit longer and faster. And I love it, but perhaps the car wasn't ready for the change of pace. It's started to suffer with some kind of ignition problem, the car runs fine but when you slow for an intersection it starts cutting out cylinders. I started cleaning and checking various things, even checked the manual and tried fiddling with the mixture, but to no avail. So it's in the shop, and I'm on the bus. Hate the bus. Don't get me wrong, it's a valuable service, and they all do fine work, but I'm just not a bussing kind of person. Once you soar with the eagles it's kinda hard to accept shuttling along with the turtles. So we hope for the best.



Building Stuff At Work.

Did you know all the stuff on your desk could actually be combined to make cool toys? Watch and learn:




- deeperbeige.com



And Finally.





Film Review: Beowulf.

I don't really care that this is a 3000-odd year old epic poem, one of the first in English. I don't care if it was supposed to be screened in 3D, so that all the flying axes would look more swoopy and less gimmicky. All that interests me is if it's a good story or not, and it falls flat. Apparently the original poem had issues with plot as well, and director Robert Zemeckis has had his writers try to tie things together a bit better, but it's not working. For some reason at the end of the film, Beowulf's peacemaking agreement with Grendel's mother is suddenly revoked, and the big final battle takes place. No reasons, no explanations, no nothing, Fifty odd years of peace, then suddenly a big fight with a dragon to finish off.

I shouldn't be surprised. This film sells itself as being about things like leadership and heroes and weakness and sacrifice and so forth, but it's really about monsters, sword fights and a naked Angelina Jolie. And that's fine, really really fine, but it is only skin deep. Of course the big deal here is Zemeckis's decision to render everything as 'realistic' computer graphics, including the characters. He's tried it before, with The Polar Express. This is always a big mistake. By making the characters look almost real, you're actually making them look like half dead puppets, and in everything they say and everything they do, you can't help but be distracted by thinking first and foremost "wow, that almost looks real." But it doesn't quite look real, and that almost part is as distracting as hell. Actual cartoon characters, or just normal human actors, would have been fine. Trying to find some kind of middle ground just screws it all up.

So, much like it's hero, it's loud, it's boorish, it makes mistakes, it's exciting in some places, boring in others, and it doesn't make a lot of sense. Three curves out of Five.




End transmission.