Nuke agency says Iran can make bomb

The AP is reporting something very alarming about Iran's nuclear capability: Nuke agency says Iran can make bomb.

VIENNA — Experts at the world's top atomic watchdog are in agreement that Tehran has the ability to make a nuclear bomb and is on the way to developing a missile system able to carry an atomic warhead, according to a secret report seen by The Associated Press.

The document drafted by senior officials at the International Atomic Energy Agency is the clearest indication yet that the agency's leaders share Washington's views on Iran's weapon-making capabilities.

It appears to be the so-called "secret annex" on Iran's nuclear program that Washington says is being withheld by the IAEA's chief.

The document says Iran has "sufficient information" to build a bomb. It says Iran is likely to "overcome problems" on developing a delivery system.

Why is this report being withheld? Isn't this vital information that should be publicized? Why is the IAEA protecting Iran?

I don't want the Israelis to attack Iran's nuclear program. Pretending that Iran doesn't yet have the ability to produce a nuclear weapon is unlikely to prevent Israel from acting, since it makes it seem that the IAEA is deliberately lying instead of taking Israel's concern seriously.

Later: the IAEA denies the report (Reuters).

VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog said Thursday it had no proof that Iran has or once had a covert atomic bomb program, dismissing a news report that it had concluded Iran was on its way to producing nuclear weapons.

In a statement, the International Atomic Energy Agency reaffirmed IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei's September 9 warning that allegations the agency was sitting on undeniable evidence of Iranian bomb work were "politically motivated and baseless."

"With respect to a recent media report, the IAEA reiterates that it has no concrete proof that there is or has been a nuclear weapons program in Iran," the statement said.

Is Lockerbie bomber really dying of prostate cancer?

This is something I've wondered about the release of the man convicted for the Lockerbie bombing, whether his medical condition was really as dire as it was presented in order to support his "compassionate release". The Telegraph reports: Doctors urged by Libyans to draw 'helpful' conclusions about Lockerbie bomber life expectancy.

Among those killed by the explosion and crash of the plane were 35 students from Syracuse University, four from Colgate University, and two from SUNY Oswego - all colleges in upstate New York within a couple of hours drive from Ithaca, where I live.

The mother of one of the victims from Syracuse, responded to the release in this way:

Janine Boulanger, the Shrewsbury mother of Nicole Elise Boulanger, a 21-year-old student who was killed in the bombing, said she was disappointed but not surprised.

She said her daughter, who was a musical theater major at Syracuse University, had been studying on scholarship in London. She was coming home after completing all of her requirements in seven semesters when she was killed, her mother said.

“These individuals died in foreign countries, without their families there, and we, as it was, had to accept this very low sentence,” she said.

“And now, not to carry it out?” she said. “You soon lose faith.”

The mother of another one of the Syracuse University student victims said:

But Susan Cohen, whose only child Theodora, 20, was one of 35 Syracuse University students on Pan Am flight 103, said any suggestion of freedom on compassionate grounds was "vile".

Speaking from her home in New Jersey, she added: "It just shows that the power of oil money counts for more than justice. There have been so many attempts to let him off. It has to do with money and power and giving Gaddafi what he wants. My feelings, as a victim, apparently count for nothing."

The father of one of the students from Colgate University said on hearing of the news of the release:

A former Macungie man who lost his 21-year-old son in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 called the release of the only man convicted in the attack ''perverted justice.''....

Scott Saunders, a dean's list senior at Colgate University, was returning home from studying in London when a bomb destroyed the plane in the air, killing all 259 passengers and crew and 11 residents of the small Scottish town of Lockerbie. Many of the 189 Americans on board the flight were college students wrapping up studies in Europe....

''This dominated the morning news, and it's a searing pain, I can tell you, to have to relive this, to have to see someone who has been found guilty of the crime is going to be liberated,'' Saunders said. ''But nothing in this thing surprises me anymore. I'm not surprised. I'm certainly discouraged. It isn't the first searing pain and it will not be the last.''

Scott, a 1985 Emmaus High School graduate, was majoring in English and history and had planned to enter law school or become a journalist.

The victims' families received multimillion-dollar settlements from Libya, which the elder Saunders has called ''blood money.'' He donated some of it, set aside some for his other son, Greg, and used more to augment scholarship funds in Scott's memory.

Saunders said some victims' families believe other nations -- perhaps Iran or Syria -- were behind the bombing and that Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi only took responsibility in an effort to rehabilitate his reputation in the West.

Saunders doesn't subscribe to that theory but he is certain the truth behind the bombing hasn't fully emerged, and may not for many years. He is also sure that the West's oil interests in Libya were likely the deciding factor in releasing al-Megrahi, an intelligence official.

So much for "reconciliation" with Libya. Michael Totten's reporting from Libya gives the information we need to know about "The Land of the Brother Leader". See his article about the Megrahi release also - Qaddafi Can Celebrate His Filthy Regime Without Us.

Auf Wiedersehen, Pat Buchanan

Ten years ago Jacob Weisberg wrote an illuminating article about Pat Buchanan - Auf Wiedersehen, Pat - which presents much evidence about Buchanan's anti-semitic, Nazi-defending worldview then.

He writes:

Buchanan is a kind of fascist fellow traveler, who dabbles in an anachronistic style of populist demagoguery that points to cosmopolitan Jews, and to a lesser extent nonwhite immigrants, as the source of the country's problems....

The fuss about Buchanan first started in 1990 when he blamed Jewish neoconservatives of dragging the country toward the Gulf War. In a similar vein in his 1996 campaign, Buchanan would hint that Jews were to blame for much else, sarcastically enunciating the name of Ruth Bader Ginsburg when complaining about the Supreme Court. Or he would attack "New York bankers," often singling out the firm of "Goldman Sachs" (but never Bear Stearns or Salomon Smith Barney). Or he might complain about the globalist economic policies of Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan--not those of Lloyd Bentsen and Bill Clinton. In Buchanan's neo-1930s protectionism and isolationism, it isn't hard to hear the echoes of the radio priest Father Coughlin, who associated Jewish bankers with rapacious capitalism....

His new book, A Republic Not an Empire, makes his complaints against the Jews more explicit than ever. A brief for isolationism, the book includes a pocket history of "Jewish Influence" in U.S. foreign policy from 1917 to the present. Buchanan, who blamed Jews for dragging America into the Gulf War, thinks they also pushed us into World War II--mistakenly! His words echo those of Charles Lindburgh, a leader of the America First Committee, who Buchanan thinks was unfairly labeled an anti-Semite for warning the country about Jewish influence in Hollywood and the media. Buchanan, whose campaign Web site sports an "America First" logo, echoes Lindbergh when he decries "the growing domination of U.S. foreign policy by ethnic groups and media elites able to focus public attention and incite public hysteria." Instead of agitating for entry into a specific war, he thinks these "ethnic groups" and the "media elites" (read Jews) are pushing us toward general policies of interventionism and internationalism.

I hadn't realized how accurate it was to accuse him of being an America-Firster. I wonder if Philip Roth was thinking of Pat Buchanan when he was writing his book, The Plot Against America.

September 1, 1939

I should be grading map exercises, but instead I've been reading blogs, and like other people, have found George Orwell's entries in his diaries (now being posted daily on the Orwell Diaries website) very poignant. For September 1, 1939, the day that Germany invaded Poland, he wrote:

Invasion of Poland began this morning. Warsaw bombed. General mobilization proclaimed in England, ditto in France plus martial law. [Radio]
Foreign & General
1. Hitler’s terms to Poland boil down to return of Danzig & plebiscite in the corridor, to be held 1 year hence & based on 1918 census. There is some hanky panky about time the terms were presented, & as they were to be answered by night of 30.8.39,[1] H.[2] claims that they are already refused. Daily Telegraph [a]
2. Naval reservists and rest of army and R.A.F. reservists called up. Evacuation of children etc. begins today, involving 3m. people & expected to take 3 days. [Radio; undated]
3. Russo-German pact ratified. Russian armed forces to be further increased. Voroshilov’s speech taken as meaning that Russo-German alliance is not contemplated. Daily Express [b]
4. Berlin report states Russian military mission is expected to arrive there shortly. Daily Telegraph [a]

The site includes PDFs of the newspaper articles he refers to in the diary.

This is a good counter to Pat Buchanan's retrograde America-First anti-semitism, most recently expressed in a column published on his website and others, which contends that "Hitler did not want a war with Poland." The only possible response to this comment, it seems to me, is "why the hell did he invade Poland then?!" Why does MSNBC retain him as a commentator? How much more blatant does his anti-semitism and pro-Nazism have to get before they decide that he's more of a liability than a draw?

Update: see this good TPM article on Buchanan. Commenter jeffgee reminded us of Molly Ivins' stellar line describing Buchanan's speech at the '92 GOP convention: it "sounded better in the original German."

And here's a good takedown of Buchanan by Orac.

This is the stanza of W.H. Auden's poem about the beginning of the war that I find the most moving:

Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

And again, today was a beautiful early September day - not a cloud in the sky, warm but not too warm, the sky a beautiful blue as it was on that Tuesday eight years ago in New York City and Washington.