Iran Could Produce Nuclear Bomb in 16 Days, U.S. Says

[sabra]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=awSzbHpjozAo&refer=top_world_news

Iran Could Produce Nuclear Bomb in 16 Days, U.S. Says (Update1)

April 12 (Bloomberg) -- Iran, which is defying United Nations Security Council demands to cease its nuclear program, may be capable of making a nuclear bomb within 16 days if it goes ahead with plans to install thousands of centrifuges at its Natanz plant, a U.S. State Department official said.

``Natanz was constructed to house 50,000 centrifuges,'' Stephen Rademaker, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation, told reporters today in Moscow. ``Using those 50,000 centrifuges they could produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon in 16 days.''

In fact, Iran will move forward to ``industrial scale'' uranium enrichment involving 54,000 centrifuges at Natanz, the Associated Press quoted deputy nuclear chief Mohammad Saeedi as telling state-run television today.

...

Iran has informed the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency that it plans to construct 3,000 centrifuges at Natanz next year, Rademaker said.

``We calculate that a 3,000-machine cascade could produce enough uranium to build a nuclear weapon within 271 days,'' he said.

:nuke:

[onehandle]

1. Again. Goodbye, Iran. nt

[marmar]

2. The U.S. State Dept.....

can produce highly enriched bullshit in 16 seconds.

[MissB]

5. .

:spray:
:toast:

[saigon68]

6. LOL highly enriched bullshit in 16 seconds

ASS CLOWNS

[katty]

58. ...Condi's "mushroom cloud", propaganda dope of choice

[Pithy Cherub]

21. The bushies can do bullshit with only *16 words* too!

:hide:

[marmar]

25. Nice!

:)

[Kikosexy2]

33. And Iraq...

is able to launch missiles in 45 minutes??? remember?....Ah, Chicken Little...the sky is falling...the sky is falling!

[colorado_ufo]

114. A keeper of a comment!

[ItsTheMediaStupid]

136. My thoughts exactly

I applaud your concise analysis of this nonsense.:applause:

[magellan]

3. Hey, it's deja vu all over again

They said pretty much the same thing about Saddam.

It's starting to look a lot like war on Iran.

[MidwestTransplant]

22. They will say they meant Iran at the time but just mispoke.

[UpInArms]

101. will the smoking gun be in Kindasleazy's or Heartless Dick's mouth

[magellan]

108. Excellent!

UpInArms, that's a great graphic! Clear and concise. I know you won't mind if I borrow it for future printing. :)

[UpInArms]

110. it makes a perfect one page printout and handout

:hi:

[EarlG]

4. Could it hit America in 45 minutes?

:eyes:

[sabra]

11. we are getting close to the "mushroom cloud" statements

I expect them this weekend...

[karlrschneider]

12. We need to find out if they've been importing balsa wood.

:eyes:

[BrotherBuzz]

65. Yep, and it must be magic balsa wood for that 45 minute flight...

[neuvocat]

60. Let's just say that it could.

In fact, let's just say that for once the admin is actually telling the truth and that Iran is in fact building up nuclear capabilities for the sake of starting a war.

The problem is that Washington D.C.'s creditability is so shot that no one will believe it. Bush cried wolf over Iraq. He's lied about absolutely everything with regards to invading a sovereign country in the mid-east. No one will be completely convinced that Iran is a threat.

And if it turns out that people do in fact believe Iran will build nuclear weapons, well there's an even bigger problem there. Iran will simply say "Yeah, so what? How are we supposed to defend ourselves against the world's only superpower after it invaded the country next door?"

[Sterling]

72. I am convinced.

I have always thought we had to do something about Iran's ambitions. It's funny but if Bush does attack Iran it may be the first thing he does right.

[The Wielding Truth]

82. No. Iran has been leaning to democracy for over 20 years . We need

to open up to the young majority by showing we are strong but fair and fun. Bombing them is exactly the wrong way to deal with a country that is very progressive and intelligent. They are strong religiously but they mostly would love their government to be secular.

When Chimpy declared war on his "axis of evil" he created an environment that made the leaders of these countries bristle and posture as if they could defend themselves against our threat. Since then they have been furiously working to defend themselves the only way they have available.

If you notice Bush Co has been shying away from negotiations. Working it out is not in the plan. I think it is so obvious. War in this case, as in Iraq, is not the best option for PEACE.

You see peace is not the goal of this administration.

This is my take and I have been unforutnatly accurate since 2001.

[The Stranger]

88. Another unprovoked attack on another nation, with more lies, war, torture,

xenophobic hate, destruction of innocent lives, rape of civil liberties, concentration camps, nuclear weapons . . .

Are you sure you are on the right web site?

[bigbrother05]

118. Studied Nuclear Engineering with numerous Iranians

in the 70's at OU. This was while the Shah was still in power but there were also several anti-Shah demonstrations on campus. My point is that if they have harbored serious intentions to have a nuclear capability, they could have done so a long time ago. With the people I personally knew who were well trained over 30 years ago and the resources available to them, they would already have a bomb if they had really wanted one. Or think of the alternative, why wouldn't they have just bought the stuff from Pakistan (or N. Korea) like Libya tried to do? What appears to be happening is that they (Iran) are reacting to what they see on the world scene.

This announcement is about a scientific breakthrough for their country and seems to be mostly posturing for local political gain. They produced a minimal amount of of enriched uranium and as pointed out, they would have ramp up at a phenomenal rate to get anywhere in the near term.

The fact that they announced this so publicly and that they are doing something that is completely within the international nuclear guidelines should not be overlooked. They are allowing the IAEA to come in to inspect so any preemptive action by the thugs running our country into the ground should be viewed as the ultimate war crime and dealt with accordingly.

Just because you don't like "the look" of things doesn't give you the right to stop someone from acting within the accepted laws that govern the world's business, unless, like the Chimperor, you don't feel compelled to honor any treaties/accords you didn't personally approve and/or sign.

Edit to add: It's very interesting we want to punish someone following the rules while Chimpy announced to the world that he would help the Indians violate the same rules. Goose/gander?

[Oversea Visitor]

123. Aaaah

You mean if Iran has nuke they will actually nuke US or some country

Whee Imean you have 10,000 nukes

Nobody going to nuke US

Correction no country will

Cant say that will so many Iraqies dying so much hatred for US generated there.

BIG BAD CANS AND CANS OF WORMS courtesy of GWB for the future Americans

[stepnw1f]

127. Iran's ambitions? What's That?

Have Nuclear energy reactors? Because there is no evidence to say otherwise, just paranoid speculation based on propaganda.

[donkeyotay]

98. Whatever it takes. You're either with us or against us. Dead or alive.

Axis of evil. And, we can preemptively attack anyone we don't like, and ALL (wink, wink) options are on the table. Nukular. Options.

No sane country would fail to arm themselves under these conditions.

And making all the diplomatic positions payola for being a right wing douche bag didn't help either, according to a former ambassador that was saying there used to be quality and pride in the foreign service. Everything with these repo's is just about money. That's the odd part. If they're doing bidness with Iran, are we going to go to war with them? It's so hard to understand the complexities of modern defense industry crime.

[Oversea Visitor]

121. Yeah so what if they have nukes

Iraq didnt see where they end up.

Facts are facts

US fail world ....... PERIOD

Americans people will fail themself if they all still asleep

WAR good grief perpetual war very fun

Good good go live like wartime for the next 50 years

[ThoughtCriminal]

7. Weapons Grade Balonium

Does this sound familiar?

[saigon68]

29. TO MAKE A WEAPON OF MASS DISTRACTION

[jimshoes]

39. Balonium

That's good. Tnx for the laugh. I needed one today. :)

[formercia]

78. Fearless Leader can produce an implosion device

in 5 minutes with weapons-grade Bullshitium.

[donkeyotay]

99. Balonium? Weaponized balonium? Yeah, that sounds about right. nt

[UpInArms]

102. Yes, they have the balonium to enrich the unobtanium.

:hi:

[formercia]

131. Which spotaneously transmutates into Bullshitium.

then they spin it and spin it in the great Wutlizer Centerfuge to enrich it.

[donkeyotay]

138. Not in our circles. No one could imagine spinning bullshitium into

unobtainium. You've got to catapult it.
:P

[Lance_Boyle]

8. Sixteen *more* days...

Did they just recycle the "dodgy dossier" with the "find and replace" option set to change all "Qs" to "Ns?"

[bullimiami]

9. liars. shut the hell up.

[swag]

10. Gee, what a misleading headline

Maybe Sebastian Allison can prevail upon his editor to change it. The reporter's email address appears at the bottom of the story.

[cliss]

13. There's an old saying -

Those who do not remember the past (Iraq, WMD's, Wilson)

are doomed to repeat it.

[AValdoux]

14. Check this out

They currently have 164 centifuges. Scroll down to the item about "Iran can now make Glowing Mickey Mouse Watches". This is getting so scary. Not because of what Iran is doing but it sure feels like the run up to Iraq. The misinformation is frightening.


http://juancole.com/


AValdoux

[magellan]

15. Um, one weapon 16 days AFTER two years

...and that's only IF Iran plans to use the enriched uranium for weapons and not energy.

Iran has informed the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency that it plans to construct 3,000 centrifuges at Natanz next year, Rademaker said.

``We calculate that a 3,000-machine cascade could produce enough uranium to build a nuclear weapon within 271 days,'' he said.

[Strelnikov_]

48. And The Key Being 'A' (As In One) Weapon

And that along the lines of a Little Boy device.

Don't really see them going from mastering enrichment to multi-stage fission/fusion devices overnight.

[no_hypocrisy]

16. Iran could get a nuclear device tomorrow if it purchased one from

North Korea and used FedEx.

Terra, terra, terra. Here we go again . . .

[rodeodance]

17. what happened to the 5-10 years?

[SammyWinstonJack]

19. That was just "wild speculation" on our part.

:nuke:

[rodeodance]

18. this headline will scrare the toots out people!

`We calculate that a 3,000-machine cascade could produce enough uranium to build a nuclear weapon within 271 days,'' he said.

[sabra]

20. who reads the details anyways? :-)

[saigon68]

36. Old people are hiding in their basements covered in DUCT TAPE

[watrwefitinfor]

50. No we are not.

:hi:

It's the young'uns who seem to fall for that shit the quickest.

Wat

[EVDebs]

23. The Israelis will end up striking first, I fear, not the US.

Then we'll end up getting sucked into their zero sum games.

[lovuian]

87. Nope the US will strike them... Israel will watch...

and then proceed to attack Syria... It is WWIII people...

this is going to wakeup lots of sleeping dragons...

[swag]

24. .

[EVDebs]

27. Maybe if Bechtel and Halliburton built the components for Iran...

and the Russians did the processing. This is no more nutty than what's already happening. Am I correct ?

[SOS]

49. Halliburton is evading sanctions and making money in Iran now

Halliburton operates in Iran despite sanctions
How do U.S. contractors legally do business there?

By Lisa Myers & the NBC investigative unit
Updated: 12:24 a.m. ET March 8, 2005

"It's just another Halliburton oil and gas operation. The company name is emblazoned everywhere: On trucks, equipment, large storage silos and workers' uniforms.

But this isn't Texas. It's Iran. U.S. companies aren't supposed to do business here.

Yet, in January, Halliburton won a contract to drill at a huge Iranian gas field called Pars.

"I am baffled that any American company would want to have employees operating in Iran," says Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. "I would think they'd be ashamed."

Halliburton says the operation — videotaped by NBC News — is entirely legal. It's run by a subsidiary called "Halliburton Products and Services Limited," based outside the U.S."

Cheney evaded the sanctions by creating a subsidiary, which is a PO Box in the Cayman Islands! Their hypocrisy is without limit.

[ast_liberal2008]

57. What about the case of the Cubans that were expelled

from the Starwood Hotel in Mexico City because its parent company is based in the U.S.? I thought all subsidiaries are subject to the law of the country where its parent company was located? What hypocrisy!

[Megahurtz]

90. O - M - G !!!

:puke:

Typical corrupt Fundie-Repuke "offshore corporation" trick.

What total slime!!!

[leQ]

96. you got a link for that? (eom)

on edit: found it: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%2B%22But+this+isn%27t+Texas.+It%27s+Iran%22&btnG=Google+Search

[donkeyotay]

100. There was a Dow Jones story in 2001 before 9-11 before Iraq

And the legality of the office sure sounds like a legalese fig leaf:

But a U.S. official said a Halliburton (HAL) office in Tehran would violate at least the spirit of American law. The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control declined to comment on a specific company, referring inquiries to a Web site summary of Iran sanctions that bans almost all U.S. trade and investment with Iran, specifically in oil services. The Web site adds: 'No U.S. person may approve or facilitate the entry into or performance of transactions or contracts with Iran by a foreign subsidiary of a U.S. firm that the U.S. person is precluded from performing directly. Similarly, no U.S. person may facilitate such transactions by unaffiliated foreign persons.'

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/linkscopy/HCtOiI.html

[daleo]

26. May be able to... if it...

Weasel language. Aliens may be able to take over the earth in 16 days, if they actually existed and were hostile.

[gratuitous]

28. All Iran needs is another 53,850 centrifuges

Ooooh, scary! Ph34r!

I say now, who do, who do they think they’re fooling? Haven’t we heard this cry of “wolf” before from this lying-ass administration?

[EVDebs]

31. In the meantime, Israel already has a bomb and may be getting ready to

target some holy and non-holy sites in Iran. Lovely day today isn't it ?

[catnhatnh]

30. Most missleading headline EVER....

IF they had 50,000 centrifuges,installed,up, and running,instead of the 3000 they plan to install next year,or the 164 they have now-THEN they could produce NOT A BOMB- but rather enough enriched uranium FOR a bomb....that still leaves the "minor" (cough,cough) problem of DESIGNING, BUILDING, AND TESTING a bomb-which of course would also require a DELIVERY SYSTEM....It looks like it'll be a VERY busy 16 days-if they don't manage to make their country a glowing slag heap before we do....And of course as soon as they finish building the very first "Hand of Allah Mark II" warhead they will immediately GIVE IT TO TERRORISTS???? Well 16 days from now is April 26-if America is still here on the 1st of May will they admit to being lying neo-con bastards???

[saigon68]

37. THE TEMPLE WILL BE REBUILT IN 3 DAYS

[phantom power]

32. Shameless, cynical mofos. They're actually going to try it again.

[Warpy]

34. The "US" is lying, as usual

They've refined a small amount of uranium hexafluoride. That doesn't make a bomb possible now or even in the next year or so.

Listen to Blix, folks, just like some of you should have listened to him before Stupid invaded Iraq. He says they're two to three years away from having the capacity, let alone the ability, to develop a single test bomb.

Stupid wants another war to consolidate his stolen power and to convince angry white males that he's an effective swaggerer.

He and his whole government are lying.

[HuffleClaw]

35. BWHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAAA

wow, it sure didn't take 'em long to produce a nice little bit of propaganda did it? ahahahhahaha. i guess bush being EXPOSED yet again in a lie must have 'em freaked out.

[swag]

38. My email to the reporter

No disrespect intended to you or your reporting, but do you think your editors could provide a more misleading headline for your story than "Iran Could Produce Nuclear Bomb in 16 Days, U.S. Says"?

[swag]

41. The bad headline remains on the story, but on Bloomberg's "World News"

index it has been revised to "Iran Could Make Bomb in 16 Days if Centrifuge Plans Continue, U.S. Says."

I wonder how it's going out on Bloomberg terminals.

[swag]

44. Here's the unfortunate front page of Google with the bad headline

Bloomberg's headline writers always have seemed like extreme misleaders, used to touting economic releases that haven't been released yet, etc., but this is particularly bad.

[bdamomma]

53. those headlines

maybe we should start sending e-mails to these papers and tell them stop spreading the propaganda.

Worse than Watergate, John Dean saw all of this coming. This pre emptive shit must end now.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

40. Same ol', same ol'.

[MrPrax]

42. It's getting both sad and scary

that MSM headlines themselves are funnier than peoples' comments--

16 days!! or 10 years!! Someone's estimate is a tad off base...wonder who?

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

43. BLOOMBERG fucked up.

Headline says: Iran Could Produce Nuclear Bomb in 16 Days, U.S. Says


Actual quotes in article say:
``Using those 50,000 centrifuges they could produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon in 16 days.''



That's enough FUEL for a weapon, not an actual weapon.

[ConcernedCanuk]

54. No one will ever remember a retraction/correction

.
.
.

The damage is done

Misinformation at it's best . . .

(sigh)

[magellan]

45. SEND THEM FEEDBACK!!

Go here: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/fbk?site=cp

Here's what I wrote:

Subject: Iran Could Produce Nuclear Bomb in 16 Days, U.S. Says

Does Bloomberg have designs on becoming a mediocre rag? The irresponsible
headline accompanying this article tells me 'yes'. You make it sound as if Iran
could produce a bomb in little over two weeks if they started today. I would
remind you that the same sort of intentional misleading of the American public
by the government and its mouthpiece in the press is responsible for the
boondoggle of Iraq. Bloomberg needs to decide whether it's going to be an
accomplice in the lies that result in our next war, or a defender of the truth.

[swag]

47. Have done so, and have alerted FAIR, media-matters and a few others

It's awful that manifestly untrue headline hit the top of Google News.

[bdamomma]

56. I just did send an e-mail

to Bloomberg. they really want to play this fear card again. geez, this is just sick. Iraq, is still broken, Afghanistan is broken, the Gulf States are still broken, Ground Zero area, is still broken. We have a madman in office.

[newspeak]

46. since Brewster Jennings is exposed and the network monitoring WMDs

(especially in Iran) is gone, does that mean the wackies can make up any little old thing they want to? Intelligence (oxymoron) brought to you by the goose-stepping, anything my master says squad.

[bdamomma]

51. this is such

bullshit, are we buying into this shit again, this regime has no respect for anyone especially our troops who are out there, and us.

time has come, tank man where are you?

[ConcernedCanuk]

52. "U.S. Says" - the beginning of a lie IMO - who believes them now anyways??

.
.
.

Adding to that

Who trusts the USA nowadays?

They refuse to submit themselves to the ICC (International Criminal Court)

They refused to abide by the UN's decision NOT to invade Iraq

They refuse to become a party to the UN's Humanitarian Council

They refuse decisions from the WHO and the FTC regarding health and trade issues

AND

They make a big stink if they even THINK another country might have or get a nuke or two -never mind the thousands that the USA already has with intercontinental ballistic delivery systems ready to nuke any country they feel like . .

Wake up USA citizens - places like Korea, Iran, etc., if they indeed have, or want nukes, it would be only to keep the USA off their fecking backs - It would take a century for any country to come close to amassing the amount of weapons the USA has . . .

frigadee . . .

idjut voters down there

[Toucano]

55. After outrage over the effed up headline passed

I became keenly aware that A LOT of innocent people are going to die very soon.

Will the people of the United States allow this to happen again? Have they learned nothing?

[rocktivity]

59. Just so that they give us 45 minutes notice

like Saddam meant to...

:crazy:
rocknation

[Emillereid]

61. Are the American people going to fall for this crap again???

Hell why not make it 45 minutes?

Who gives us the right to decided whether or not Iran can use nuclear energy or build a nuclear bomb; who made us the cops of the world especially since we are the one rogue natioin that actually used nuclear weapons and have shown a propensity for going to war against helpless nations. Furthermore we are in violation of the Non-proliferation treaty -- we are supposed to be decreasing our stockpiles of nuclear weaponry and instead we are building a whole new generation of the dastardly things.

[Bigmack]

62. Remember "Massive Retaliation" and MAD...

Mutual Assured Destruction? From the Cold War?

Shit... if Iran does get the bomb, how can they threaten the US? We still have 18 scungillions of warheads, and no place to put them. Iran could rattle its nuclear penknife at us... I'm not worried.

The neocon Dr. Strangeloves (Perle, etc) assured us during the Cold War that Massive Retaliation and MAD would keep us safe. What happened?

[shantipriya]

63. 16 days

Oh boy!! how exact and sure these bastards are!!

[NIGHT TRIPPER]

66. ------ -------- ------- ---------WE INVADE in 16 days--but the question is

are we going to allow it?
This is supposed to be a government of the people for the people and by the people-

Q: Are we just so used to the Dictatorship that we've forgotten
that the 3 branches of the Government are working for US (the people)?

If we've hired incompetent people to run our country,
and incompetent people have taken over and now choose to limit our input as citizens,
then we have the duty to each other to remove them.



So let's get to work!
Can we really allow serial killers to kill in our name?

Let's make sure these guys are jailed before they kill again

[Miss Chybil]

64. That's not what they said on Good Morning America...

They said it would take years.

[Jack Rabbit]

67. Is that so?

Then I want independent verification. The word of the Bush junta is worthless.

[admsitio]

68. MOVING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION

The United States said Iran was “moving in the wrong direction”: its enough to justify another world war, i don't want a world like this, with such cruel and idiot president like BUSH.
The USA Foreign Policy is moving in the wrong direction, allienating the world in what we live.
Some suggestion???????

[Coastie for Truth]

69. The numbers do not add up

The numbers don't add up.

That's 17 days to refine a critical mass of 235 with 50,000 centrifuges.

But they are only talking about a 3000 centrifuge train or cascade. Assuming linear scaling (per "Introduction to Nuclear Engineering" by John R. Lamarsh and Anthony J. Baratta and "Introduction to Nuclear Engineering" by Richard Montgomery Stephenson) - that's about 270 days per weapon -- and they haven't reached that centrifuge cascade yet.

Sorry, the numbers don't add up.

And even after they get 3000 centrifuges -- it is non-trivial to get the cascade up and running.

Coastie, PhD
(alumnus of Bettis National Lab)

[BigDDem]

70. In other news...

Troops greeted as liberators.
Iraqis dancing in the streets.
Insurgents in their last throes.

and on and on...

[area51]

105. Welcome to DU, BigDDem. (n/t)

[Dead_Parrot]

71. Stop confusing people with facts.

Terra!:nuke:Terra!:nuke:Terra!:nuke:Terra!:nuke:
:nuke:Terra!:nuke:Terra!:nuke:Terra!:nuke:Terra!

[admsitio]

80. terra

Dead Parrot: So Sad, so real.

[Az_lefty]

85. thanks for injecting some truth into this...

but we all know the chimp don't listen to scientists and their facts.

[genieroze]

73. Oh for Christs sake, here we go again.

:mad: :puke: :crazy: :argh: :nuke::nuke::nuke::nuke::nuke::nuke::nuke::nuke::nuke::nuke::nuke::nuke::nuke::nuke::nuke::nuke:
:scared:

[GeorgeGist]

74. Not 45 minutes....?

[radfringe]

75. Mushroom Omelet over DC...

I thought we were going to invade Fantasy Land???

Same crap we've heard before - they just changed 1 letter and have recycled the same booga-booga-boogsh*t


16 days...yeah right -- like Saddam could nuke attack in 45 minutes? remember that load of crap?

[lostnfound]

119. And a mushroom man in the Oval Office

Kept in the dark, fed bullshit, and psychedelic*

*No offense to hippies intended.

[The Wielding Truth]

76. B. S.! They are making their move. Too much evidence to the

contrary.Make them prove it!

[Julius Civitatus]

77. Countdown for the bombing

Here we go again!

:scared:

[opihimoimoi]

79. They gonna rebuild TROY too...yeah, rightttt

[admsitio]

81. NUCLEAR WORLD WAR

I'm sure that if a world war is possible, it came from occident/orient confrontantion, the scenario is ideal for such war, a criminal idiot PRESIDENT BUSH and some people there in mi-orient making some nuclear tests... i hope this could be solved without a war, but the scenario looks ugly.

[cureautismnow]

83. Isn't this just more "Fuzzy Math" to steal more oil...

...and spill more blood?

[Az_lefty]

84. Good Lord, now we're going to nuke a country that hasn't attacked us.

this is just utterly insane.

[progressivebydesign]

86. 5-10 years.. now SIXTEEN days?? Shit. how desperate ARE the PNACers?

It's just really fucking weird that they're doing this again. Are people really that stupid? We need a draft, that's the only way to stop the American Idiots from supporting them in another war. once they realize it'll be THEIR kids, not someone else's sent off to die, then they'd be squarely against it.

This strike-first policy is destroying the fucking world!!!

[retread]

89. Bullshit! In 16 days my butt MAY be capable of producing flying monkeys!

*

[pinniped]

91. Ya, but do they have unlimited range drones with "God is great"....

emblazoned on the fuselage?

[Megahurtz]

92. Wow. They're just DYIN" for that 'Ol Rapture Train

to come pick them up and save them from the mess that they created LOL!

:crazy:

[CrazyForKucinich]

93. Well I guess that means war in 15 days then.

[twaddler01]

94. that timing doesn't sound right to me...

:eyes:

[robertpaulsen]

95. Consider the source. Stephen Rademaker is John Bolton's HENCHMAN!

Here's some links to what he's really about:

"On a recent, quite incredible Fox News special, Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney said we are already moving aircraft carriers into positions from which we could strike. He was then asked: 'If you had to put a percentage on it, the chances that the U.S. will eventually have to take military actions against Iran, what would you put it at?' to which McInerney replied casually: 'Well, I would put 1 percent of using ground forces, boots on the ground in Iran, I would put up 50 percent on a blockade, and I would put up 50 to 60 percent on precision air strikes on their nuclear development sites.' He also observed casually that Iran wouldn't dare take on the United States. Perhaps the 60 million Iranians would greet our bombers with garlands and sweets. Do you see what I mean? Fox News, as you may know, is commonly known as 'The War Channel,' for similar work it did in promoting the war against Iraq.

"Is Iran this kind of threat to anyone? As far as I can tell, ladies and gentlemen..., the answer is 'absolutely not,' at least as long as they remain members in good standing of the NPT, which means they will permit the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect intrusively and constantly, as they have been doing. It has been the mission of John Bolton and his underling Stephen Rademaker to 'reform' the United Nations in a way that dissolves the NPT and the need for the IAEA, not only to pave the way for the bombing of Bushehr, but also to get out from under the NPT provisions that require all the nuclear weapon powers to make progress toward making the world a nuclear-free zone...

http://jameswolcott.com/archives/2005/05/linkage.php


Rademaker's wife also used to work with Bolton at AEI:


Bolton was Senior Vice President of the American Enterprise Institute, the institution where both Pletka and Rodman work. Veronique Rodman is married to Peter Rodman, who is now Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs at the Pentagon -- and someone who was an ally of John Bolton's in the administration.

Danielle Pletka is married to Stephen Rademaker, Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control. Rademaker reports directly to John Bolton and is cut from the same ideological cloth as Bolton. I spoke on a panel at the annual Sandia National Laboratories' International Security Conference with Rademaker and Gerard Baker, then at the Financial Times, and was stunned by the number of references in his speech to "evil".

Most strategists and negotiators need to be able to deal with players commanding forces that threaten American interests, but the amount of hyperbole in Rademaker's talk seemed to me to be something that would not lend itself to negotiations with the world's most dangerous thugs on how to tie down weapons and proliferation problems.

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000545.html


Finally, if you can stomach this, read the interview of Rademaker speaking about Bolton. To say he worships Bolton is an understatement. He actually refers to him as "superhuman":

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/Rademacher%20Interview.pdf

[0007]

97. 0' fuck here we go again.

[knight_of_the_star]

103. They COULD get a nuke in 16 days

Then again, I COULD get into Harvard in 16 days, but the chances of either of the above are highly unlikely.

[Kablooie]

104. They WILL get a nuke in 16 days. From George Bush.

[MasonJar]

106. Is that kind of like England's 45 minutes for Sadaam to strike

Britain?

[Kablooie]

107. But the suckers are still being born every minute...

I'd bet a bunch of money that we will be in the middle of a nuclear war when election time rolls around.
All anyone will care about is defending ourselves.

[superconnected]

109. Any minute they're going to say Iran HAS nuclear weapons

and we will have an emergency congress session and bomb.

We will have no proof, millions could end up dead this time instead of just 10's of thousands. And we'll be faced supporting senators who voted FOR it again. In the face of being called "anti-american" for not going after the nuclear threat. (sadam was a nuclear threat too)

Bush is bad but so are his enablers -democrats and republican senators voting for war - John Kerry included.

He has always been a mass murder. He has no empathy or he would have stopped after he let the two towers happen. Instead without conscience he will go for war profits - getting this life-of-failures-little-man the atta-boys from his ultra-corrupt friends.

Iran will be bombed, and possibly nuked. This ultra-corrupt administration, will do it.

[jamesinca]

111. let me get this straight

state dept says 16 days and everybody else says

"Iran has informed the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency that it plans to construct 3,000 centrifuges at Natanz next year, Rademaker said.

``We calculate that a 3,000-machine cascade could produce enough uranium to build a nuclear weapon within 271 days,'' he said."

so next year they will build 3,000 centrifuges:
then it will take an additional 271 days once they are operational:

that works out to Oct 2007 if the centrifuges are working and being used on Jan 1, 2007.

Our state dept is pushing the idea of April 28, 2006.


remember this, because the "leaker in chief" will want to start his war before he loses both houses of congress in Nov.

[IndianaGreen]

112. and Iraq could launch WMD crop dusters within 45 minutes

Same lies, same liars, another country that begins with "I."

[entanglement]

113. If they work nights as well, it'll just take 8 days! OMFG!

[slay]

115. K&R

Unfuckingreal. Iran may indeed be fucked if BushCo can get people to believe this bullshit. :scared:

[sofa king]

116. If we don't believe them, we need to stop them.

I wish I had a simple way to do that.

[eridani]

117. Iran Can Now Make glowing Mickey Mouse Watches

Juan Cole's take--

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041206A.shtml

Despite all the sloppy and inaccurate headlines about Iran "going nuclear," the fact is that all President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday was that it had enriched uranium to a measely 3.5 percent, using a bank of 180 centrifuges hooked up so that they "cascade."

The ability to slightly enrich uranium is not the same as the ability to build a bomb. For the latter, you need at least 80% enrichment, which in turn would require about 16,000 small centrifuges hooked up to cascade. Iran does not have 16,000 centrifuges. It seems to have 180. Iran is a good ten years away from having a bomb, and since its leaders, including Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei, say they do not want an atomic bomb because it is Islamically immoral, you have to wonder if they will ever have a bomb.

The crisis is not one of nuclear enrichment, a low-level attainment that does not necessarily lead to having a bomb. Even if Iran had a bomb, it is hard to see how they could be more dangerous than Communist China, which has lots of such bombs, and whose Walmart stores are a clever ruse to wipe out the middle class American family through funneling in cheaply made Chinese goods.

[TheBaldyMan]

120. THE HEADLINE IS BULLSHIT! - read the whole article ...

Originally it says that a 50,000 centrifuge array could make enough fissile material for one bomb in a fortnight. The only problem is the Iranians have less than 200.

Iran will expand to 3,000 centrifuges within a year, or so they say. This will mean another 9 months at full capacity to make enough material for one bomb.

most estimates say that Iran will not be able to produce a nuclear weapon for years.

[KeepItReal]

125. Former nuke inspector Scott Ritter agrees with you....

"Scott Ritter, the former UN weapons inspector, was back on my KMOX show this afternoon to talk about Iran and the nuclear threat. Ritter said that Iran is nowhere close to having nuclear weapons capabilities, and explained how different that is from having nuclear energy and power plants. He also said that the IAEA inspections were making sure of that before the Bush administration pushed the matter into the UN Security Council in an attempt to impose tough sanctions against Iran. Ritter sees parallels between that decision and the moves made before the US went to war with Iraq based on similar claims and supposed threats."

http://www.loomia.com/media/audio?cp=1308384

[allemand]

122. NYT: "Analysts Say a Nuclear Iran Is Years Away"

Analysts Say a Nuclear Iran Is Years Away

By WILLIAM J. BROAD, NAZILA FATHI and JOEL BRINKLEY
Published: April 13, 2006

Western nuclear analysts said yesterday that Tehran lacked the skills, materials and equipment to make good on its immediate nuclear ambitions, even as a senior Iranian official said Iran would defy international pressure and rapidly expand its ability to enrich uranium for fuel.
(...)

Still, nuclear analysts called the claims exaggerated. They said nothing had changed to alter current estimates of when Iran might be able to make a single nuclear weapon, assuming that is its ultimate goal. The United States government has put that at 5 to 10 years, and some analysts have said it could come as late as 2020.
(...)

The nuclear experts said Iran's claim yesterday that it would mass-produce 54,000 centrifuges echoed boasts that it made years ago. Even so, they noted, the Islamic state still lacked the parts and materials to make droves of the highly complex machines, which can spin uranium into fuel rich enough for use in nuclear reactors or atom bombs.

It took Tehran 21 years of planning and 7 years of sporadic experiments, mostly in secret, to reach its current ability to link 164 spinning centrifuges in what nuclear experts call a cascade. Now, the analysts said, Tehran has to achieve not only consistent results around the clock for many months and years but even higher degrees of precision and mass production. It is as if Iran, having mastered a difficult musical instrument, now faces the challenge of making thousands of them and creating a very large orchestra that always plays in tune and in unison.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/13/world/middleeast/13iran.html?ei=5094&en=bbddf136e8fc9818&hp=&ex=1144987200&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all

16 days?

:rofl:

[cassiepriam]

124. I can't blame Iran, they have no choice. Look at what Bush did to Iraq.

Iran has to protect itself from American insanity.

[ShortnFiery]

128. Just listening to a couple of the INSANE "I loves my pres-i-dent raves

"All those Muslims are not human like us'in good American folk. Why we must stand behind our Pres-EE-dint and bomb Iran back into the stone age. Kant U see they r savuges?!?" :puke:

A couple of the people who called in were seemingly brainwashed into a lulled sense of "let DADDY (authority) take care of those big bad Muslims."

The thought of some of their sentiments made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

It's FRIGHTENING to believe there are people so easily led ... I mean clueless.

As the great social scientist :blush: Bob Dylan would croon, "Idiot Wind - It's a wonder we can even feed ourselves?" :scared:

[symbolman]

126. So they've hired McGyver?

I guess this is SO much more believeble that Bush making the remark THREE TIMES that the US could be attacked by Iraq in as little as 45 minutes (cribbed from England who's at LEAST on the same contintental shelf), once in the ROse Garden, once on the Radio, and the best of all was on the WHITE HOUSE WEB SITE which at least check was STILL THERE!

THey seem to be speeding up the attack, lie to UN, process.

Can't wait for Russia (who's been selling nuke shit to them along with Halliburton), and China to step up to the plate and tell BUSH to TAKE A GODDAM HIKE ON THIS SHIT..

meanwhile Korea would take out the Terminator and that seems to be no problem, unless they want San Diago to the the next Pear Harbor. Lots of cannon fodder there.

Is there ANYONE that REALLY believes this guy anymore? His own church basically excommunicated him and the Pope himself before he died told Bush that if he goes into Iraq he goes, "WITHOUT GOD.."

Maybe that's why US troops are getting splattered all over ceilings everywhere there.

Goddam fucking LIARS STEAL YOUR REALITY, while picking your pocket.

[Canuckistanian]

129. The administration can produce bullshit in ONE day

"It's been confirmed that pure, refined, enriched bullshit has been manufactured in less than 24 hours by the Bush administration", an unnamed senior White House official said today.

[AnarchoFreeThinker]

130. looks like the US State Department has successfully refined Bullshitium

[formercia]

133. but they have to spin it and spin it in the Wurlitzer Centerfuge

to enrich it to the point of near implosion.

[GliderGuider]

132. We're well and truly in the soup, and "16 Days" is very important info.

Here are my dark suspicions, couched in a poker metaphor.

Ahmedinajad is bluffing for all he's worth, and we all know he's holding a king high at most - he won't have his homegrown nuclear royal flush for years yet. Despite that, he acts totally unconcerned, acts as if he's holding a full house, and seems eager to "see you and raise you" at every turn. This gives rise to the usual thought, expressed with great regularity, "That man is one card short of a deck." Of course Ahmedinajad has two examples to look at - Iraq and North Korea, his named partners in the "Axis of Eeeeevil". Iraq cooperated (inspectors, mammoth disclosure report) and didn't avoid their fate. NK let everyone know they had nukes, and did. Of course, Ahmedinajad doesn't have nukes, won't have any for years yet, and even if he gets them, doesn't have delivery systems that can reach the USA. So his behavior is simple evidence of his own brand of apocalyptic insanity. Right?

Well, while reading the back-and-forth chain of escalation and saber-rattling yesterday a horrifying thought occurred to me. What if Mr. A is not totally insane? What if the reason he's bluffing so hard is that he knows if his bluff is called he's actually covered? To torture the poker metaphor further, he's acting like he has a pair of aces up his sleeve. Wondering what those aces might be led me to think back back to the news article that appeared briefly last week about Ukrainian nukes:

The Ukrainian defense ministry denied media reports Monday that Ukraine had sold 250 nuclear warheads to Iran, RIA Novosty reported.

The newspaper said that Ukraine had failed to return 250 warheads to Russia in the 1990s when the former Soviet republic declared itself a nuclear-free zone. The paper suggested the warheads could have been sold to a third country, including Iran.

And I suddenly realized, the aces Ahmedinajad is hiding could actually be Ukrainian warheads, already in place in a selection of American cities. If that were true, he could twist the American tiger's tail pretty much as hard as he wanted. When the USA eventually calls his bluff, he tips his hand and reveals one of the warheads without detonating it, and tells them to back the f#ck off. MAD is then officially on the table: touch us and you're toast. It's Dr. Strangelove's Doomsday Machine updated in the context of asymmetric nuclear warfare.

Then we get to see who the crazy ones really are. Does Bush still bet against a hand like that? Would Ahmidinajad transmit the codes if he felt Bush was going to go anyway? Would one or the other of these two lunatics fold? Is this just an apocalyptic fantasy of mine, brought on by drinking too much absinthe for breakfast? I think we'll know within 16 days.

The reason "16 Days" is important is because the Pentagon came up with that specific number, and issued it in the context of a warning about a nuclear attack. IMO this is not a warning that "Iran could nuke the USA in 16 days". This is a warning that "The USA may nuke Iran in 16 days." Bushco is telegraphing their timetable without having to actually say they are going to attack.

I'm officially petrified.

[drm604]

134. That headline is (purposely?) misleading.

It would perhaps take 16 days, after the years it will take to build 50,000 centrifuges.

[FlashHarry]

135. Um... did they specify EARTH days?

Maybe they meant Venutian days...

[Javaman]

137. 16 days in april. The count down has begun. nt

[BrklynLiberal]

139. "Earth" days or "Plutonian" days?

[Rex]

140. 5 years...16 days, seems like 'experts' are fucking clueless.

nt