Letter: Report aside, Iran has proved itself a menace

Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2007 | 7:08 a.m.

Several letter writers have seized on the recently released National Intelligence Estimate to bash the Bush administration. Unfortunately, most of them apparently failed to read beyond the newspaper headlines proclaiming Tehran suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003.

Aside from the fact that Iran could restart its program at any time, the report also states that the nation has continued uranium enrichment during this time. Once uranium is sufficiently enriched a weapon can be produced in a matter of a few months. In fact, so confident were the scientists of the Manhattan Project in the ease of creating a nuclear explosion using enriched uranium that they sent a plutonium and a uranium bomb into the field, having tested only a plutonium weapon.

After having failed to foresee the collapse of the Soviet Union, underestimating Saddam's weapons programs in the early '90s, overestimating them in the late '90s, completely missing Iran's nuclear program for 18 years and issuing a contradictory report just two years ago, we are to believe that this time the intelligence agencies have it completely correct.

Already the Russians and the Chinese have used the NIE report to claim they will not support further U.N. sanctions against Iran. So we are now forced to approach Iran carrying only carrots and no sticks. For some, their hatred of Bush allows them to put their trust in the brutal Iranian theocracy that has pledged the destruction of the United States. Personally, I do not think that wise.

Michael Chamberlain, Las Vegas

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