82nd Airborne Casualties Prove Hagel Wrong

Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE), a war critic and collaborator with Democrats on every effort to undermine President Bush’s executive war powers, returned this weekend from his fifth trip to Iraq. What wisdom has Senator Hagel gleaned from these trips? The following is from his opinion column in Sunday’s Washington Post:

We must start by understanding what's really happening in Iraq. According to the National Intelligence Estimate released in February, the conflict has become a "self-sustaining inter-sectarian struggle between Shia and Sunnis" and also includes "extensive Shia-on-Shia violence." This means that Iraq is being consumed by sectarian warfare, much of it driven by Shiite or Sunni militias -- not al-Qaeda terrorists. Yes, there are admirers of Osama bin Laden in the country, including a full-blown al-Qaeda branch. But terrorists are not the core problem; Sunni-Shiite violence is.... American occupation cannot stop a civil war in Iraq. Our military, superb as it is, can only do so much.

Senator Hagel’s assessment that Iraq is a “civil war” not driven by al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups is identical to the Democratic talking points endlessly spouted by Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid, despite assurances from several generals on the ground in Iraq who insist that Iraq is not in a state of civil war. For a Senator with access to intelligence estimates to argue that terrorists are not the core problem in Iraq is utterly disingenuous. Al-Qaeda itself would soon demonstrate the fallacy of Senator Hagel’s opinion.

Today’s headline AP article “Al Qaeda-Linked Sunnis Claim Bombing” opened with this sentence:

An al Qaeda-linked group posted a Web statement today claiming responsibility for a suicide truck bombing that killed nine U.S. paratroopers and wounded 20 in the worst attack on American ground forces in Iraq in more than a year.

The fallen U.S. soldiers, all members of the Army 82nd Airborne Division, would certainly take issue with Hagel’s ill-informed dismissal of al Qaeda as a minor annoyance in Iraq, if they had not been killed by al Qaeda. This bombing illustrated a couple of important truths: first, Congressional “fact finding” trips never produce any facts, as they are carefully scripted and Congressmen take them to increase their own political stature rather than seeking any real understanding of core issues; second, like Iran’s constant destabilizing war on America via Iraq, al Qaeda is part of a massive effort by outside forces to foment turmoil and the spectre of Iraqi civil war. This is an organized propaganda campaign that Congressmen, with shallow understanding of the intelligence they are supposed to review, swallow hook, line, and sinker.

It is unfathomable that Hagel, a Vietnam veteran, could have come away from five trips to Iraq with the opinion that neighboring nations and terrorist networks are not the core problem in Iraq. Hagel fails to grasp the concept that Iran and al Qaeda, like China in Vietnam, are directly impacting the course of the war and America’s resolve to endure setbacks and casualties. Removing the weaponry, funding, and manpower injected into Iraq like a virus by Iran, Syria, and al Qaeda would afford Iraqis an opportunity to resolve cultural issues between Sunni and Shia in an environment without car bombs, IEDs, and snipers. It is the terrorists and outside interlopers that desperately want to prevent Iraqis from living together under an elected government. Stem the flow of destabilizing elements into Iraq, and the Iraqis will justify our faith in their commitment to freedom.

Intel "Experts" vs. Magic 8 Balls

Get out your Ouija boards, Tarot cards, Magic 8-Balls, and tea leaves, because with these you could predict with as much accuracy as any “expert” how long it will take for Iran to produce a functional nuclear weapon. The dynamics of the debate over Iran’s capabilities change from week to week. The divergent opinions of nuclear “experts” and intelligence agencies signal a frightening admission that when it comes to estimating when Iran will master the uranium enrichment and warhead production processes, the only certain thing is uncertainty.

In January I warned that America’s intelligence analysts were underestimating Iran’s determination and aggressive overtures to accomplice nations such as Russia, and North Korea. At that time, the consensus among intelligence analysts was that Iran could not construct a nuclear weapon earlier than 2015. On April 3rd I alerted readers that Iran’s unprecedented speed in building 3,000 centrifuges forced intelligence experts to revise earlier estimates and point to 2009 rather than 2015 as the year by which Iran would weaponize uranium. On April 10th I wrote about the revised revisions of WMD specialists alarmed by reports and video footage from within the Natanz nuclear facility south of Tehran. At that time “experts” warned that Iran, if all factors fell into place and centrifuge construction continued at a torrid pace, might produce sufficient enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon by the end of this year. Following this pattern, it would seem logical to predict that the next revised estimate might warn of Iran weaponizing uranium before Alex Rodriguez hits his 20th home run of this young season (he has hit 14 in 18 games in April thus far).

So much for patterns or analysts’ credibility! An esteemed British theoretical physics professor and Israel’s intelligence service, Mossad, now agree that Iran is actually three or four years away from producing deployable weapons grade uranium. After interviewing Professor Norman Dombey, the UK Telegraph reported:

But the smallest particle of dust - even a fingerprint - can disrupt enrichment. Iran will have to spin all the centrifuges inside a vacuum without any interruption for a period of about one year.

If any machine breaks down - or if dust enters the system or if the power supply is lost - the process must halt and start again.

Prof Dombey estimates that Iran will need about two years simply to master the process of running centrifuges. Then, making allowances for interruptions caused by breakdowns, it could take another two years to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for one bomb.

The Telegraph article also asserted that even if Iran eventually masters the enrichment process, it will still be faced with the task of building a warhead and fitting it to a missile delivery system. I do not separate this task from the more complex enrichment problem. Iran’s role as provider of 20% of the world’s crude oil places it in a strong position to purchase warhead delivery missile technology from a number of willing nations already doing business in Iran. Iran need not “figure out” how to build the missiles. It can simply buy them and clear that hurdle while the centrifuges are spinning straw into gold, as it were.

Intelligence analysts have now changed their estimates to read quite differently than just two years ago. Then, the consensus was that Iran would not be capable of producing sufficient uranium for 10 years. Now, analysts no longer speculate about capability to produce. That has become, apparently, an accepted fact. Estimates now focus only on whether Iran will encounter technological glitches that will hamper production. The UN and the U.S. missed the opportunity to address Iran’s nuclear ambitions decisively before they moved from construction to production. Now our intelligence “experts” are counting on Iran’s centrifuges to break down or work less efficiently than planned to buy time for negotiations and sanctions. What these “experts” will not predict is how soon Iran will have sufficient enriched uranium if all the centrifuges operate perfectly, because they apparently refuse to believe in that possibility. According to Gary Samore, Vice President of the Council on Foreign Relations, "The belief in Western intelligence circles is that a large portion of these machines are likely to break if Iran attempts to operate them at high speeds necessary for enrichment."

Counting on machinery to malfunction is not a strategy that will keep nuclear arms out of the mullahs’ hands. Analysts are uncertain how well the centrifuges were constructed. They are uncertain whether the machinery will withstand the rigors of high enrichment. They are uncertain how many centrifuges have been or are currently being constructed in facilities other than Natanz. They are uncertain what technological and material assistance has been provided by nations with valuable investments in Iran, such as China and Russia. They are uncertain how many years (or is it months?) it will take for Iran to enrich weaponized uranium.

The only factor of which analysts are certain is that the mullahs will do and say anything to buy time for their ultimate goal: Annihilating Israel and wielding nuclear weapons over cowering Middle East and Europe populations. Perhaps our policies toward Iran should operate on that premise rather than on psychics, palm readers, or nuclear intelligence “experts”, all of whom seem to be equally reliable sources when making important strategic decisions.

Iran's Bribery Worse Than Bombs

Iran is at war with the United States, allied forces, and the Iraqi government. What other appropriate term could be applied when a nation funds, trains, equips, and transports terrorist insurgents into Iraq to wage war against U.S. and allied troops? How could it be considered anything short of war when a nation seizes 15 members of an allied naval crew well within Iraqi sovereign territorial waters and holds them hostage? Does a nation engage in an act of war against the entire world when it dismissively ignores UN WMD non-proliferation policies and sanctions by blindly pursuing production of nuclear weapons? Is it not war when one nation blatantly bribes elected officials of another nation with the expressed intention of destroying a democratically elected government before it can adequately defend itself?

When taken in the aggregate, all of these behaviors by the current Iranian regime constitute an undeclared, but all too real war against America, Iraq, and those who fight for the democratically elected Iraqi government. The last of the insidiously aggressive acts listed above was exposed today in an exclusive article by New York Sun reporter Eli Lake, submitted from Baghdad. War critics like to evoke emotion and false imagery by using terms such as “quagmire” and “civil war” to describe the war in Iraq and why we should abandon it. These politically opportunistic terms, however, were discredited by a courageous member of Iraq’s democratically elected parliament, Mithal al-Alusi.

Al-Alusi, a father of two sons killed by terrorists in Iraq in 2005, went on record with Lake to explain the intimate inner conflicts occurring in Iraq, and to identify a major contributor to the unrest in Iraq: Iran. American officials have long complained of Iranian interference in Iraq, most notably through pouring funds, arms, and terrorists into Iraq. Al-Alusi, however, specifically identified a high level Iranian diplomat engaged in a less explosive, but no less lethal, effort to undermine the Iraqi government.

According to al-Alusi, Iran’s Ambassador to Iraq, Hassam Kazemi Qomi, offered him large sums of cash through an intermediary and invited al-Alusi to visit Tehran and meet with President Ahmadinejad and the ruling mullahs. Al-Alusi told Lake that such offers have been made to most of the members of the Iraqi parliament, but he was the first elected official to speak publicly about Iran’s effort to destroy the fledgling democracy or so thoroughly corrupt it through bribery that it would function as an Iranian puppet. From the NY Sun exclusive:

The fact that Iran would be interested in buying Mr. al-Alusi and his single vote in parliament is in itself a sign of both this politician's growing appeal to Iraqis and the Iranian strategy to diversify their influence to include politicians outside the Shiite bloc of religious parties that wield a narrow majority in the parliament.

Mr. al-Alusi said yesterday that he believed the soft influence of Iranians through bribes and economic leverage is even more dangerous than the role the Islamic Republic plays in facilitating and supporting the terrorists here.

And in this respect Mr. al-Alusi is not alone. A senior Iraqi minister here last week, who asked to speak anonymously, said that it is well known that Iranians are paying off both Sunni and Shiite legislators. "Any Iraqi who takes this money should be ashamed, but many are taking it," the minister said.

War critics have repeatedly expressed “no confidence votes” against President Bush and the Iraqi government, and have stated their belief that the Iraqis are incapable of sustaining a democracy. If decisive actions are not taken against Iranian interference in Iraq, these critics will be proven right but not because Iraqis were incapable. The Iraqi democracy will dissolve due to Iran’s overt and, until now, covert warfare against it. It has become clear that victory in Iraq cannot be achieved without some form of decisive containment of Iran’s aggressive actions in Iraq.

Brave parliamentarians such as al-Alusi are a rarity, and many will take the money offered by Tehran. America must not allow this Middle Eastern democracy, purchased as it was with American, allied, and Iraqi blood, to devolve into an Iranian puppet purchased by high level diplomatic bribery. Congress incessantly complains about “special interest groups” wielding too much influence on government. Now it must take action to protect the Iraqi government from Iran, the world’s most prolific terrorist special interest group.