Bury Me Broken

No Proof Found of Iran Arms Program

Dafna Lizner at the Washington Post reports:

"Traces of bomb-grade uranium found two years ago in Iran came from contaminated Pakistani equipment and are not evidence of a clandestine nuclear weapons program, a group of U.S. government experts and other international scientists has determined.

 "The biggest smoking gun that everyone was waving is now eliminated with these conclusions," said a senior official who discussed the still-confidential findings on the condition of anonymity.

Scientists from the United States, France, Japan, Britain and Russia met in secret during the past nine months to pore over data collected by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, according to U.S. and foreign officials. Recently, the group, whose existence had not been previously reported, definitively matched samples of the highly enriched uranium -- a key ingredient for a nuclear weapon -- with centrifuge equipment turned over by the government of Pakistan."

President Bush was just talking about military intervention as one of the options on the table to compel Iran to cooperate with international stipulations for their nuclear program. Today we receive the revelation that the "smoking gun" of which we were sure signified a clandestine nuclear program was what Iran had said all alone.

Of course, iraq said it had no nuclear program either. I remember when it produced a document of several thousand pages stipulating its compliance only for pages to be blacked out for national security reasons, I believe. Anyway, they said they had no nuclear program but got a war for their troubles.

Thank goodness our war has stretched thin a volunteer army and that this noble cause doesn't warrant a draft. Otherwise, I might be gearing up to bomb Tehran while watching Darfur like a Friday summer blockbuster, in horror.

posted by niteskolar @ 3:55 AM