(Originally posted Monday, December 03, 2007)
A new assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies, the National Intelligence Estimate, says that Iran halted work on its nuclear weapons program in 2003, contradicting the report two years ago that said Iran was moving to build a bomb as soon as possible. This is the same report whose flawed conclusions helped justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Here is a list of findings from the newly hedged National Intelligence Estimate:
–*Iran may ultimately be seeking nuclear weapons, or they may just be bluffing, since they are in deathly fear of a much larger world power that does indeed have nuclear weapons and has, in fact, used them on smaller Asian countries
–*Iraq may still have nuclear weapons, but we’ll never know, because they have likely been buried under a Babylonian burial mound that we respect too much to violate
–*Iraq may have tried to buy nuclear weapons material, including aluminum tubes for enriching uranium from a Chinese company, but we must also in the interest of fairness say that these could have been parts for a theme park water slide.
–*Over 50% of the population of Iraq was under age 15 at the time of the U.S. invasion. But that number has likely changed since everybody’s dead.
–*Venezuela may be a country under the thumb of a despotic left-wing oppressor. Or not.
–*Israel has been siphoning off our nuclear weapons intelligence for years and has been flouting restrictions we place on other countries in the region on nuclear weapons capability. But in the interest of political expediency, we’ll just say that it hasn’t been.
–*In the 1960s, there was a rumor that musician Paul McCartney of the Beatles was dead. The National Intelligence Estimate believes now with 85% accuracy that this is not true.
–*The NIE has found no evidence to support the urban myth that the girl who took Spanish fly died pleasuring herself on a gear shift. But we promise to keep looking.
–*American women don’t like it when you hit on them all the time. However, sometimes, the NIE must admit, they do like it.
–*We’re still betting that Biggie killed Tupac
–*Islamic terrorists have become more battle hardened and experienced on the ground in Iraq after fighting for four years, and this will better prepare them for deployment against Westerners elsewhere. We figured this out by watching all their videos on YouTube.
–*The president of Iran says there are no homosexuals in his country. Our intelligence report finds that this is because most of the gay hangouts have been taken over by spoiled teens from the suburbs with their goddamned SUVs.
–*If 50 blustering, grandstanding politicians are going on TV saying a country is armed with nuclear weapons, then we’ll just say “ditto.”
–*The NIE believes that Saddam Hussein was willing to have his country run the risk of being nuked to oblivion or invaded — or for himself to personally be attacked, deposed, tried, defenestrated and executed — all for the remote possibility that he could bomb just one American city. Because bombing just one American city would make his own personal annihilation worth it. Yes, we here at the NIE think that makes sense and that the American people think that makes sense and that they would not base their decision on total hysterical, wide-eyed psychotic fear.
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