Monday, June 16, 2008

Why Leak the Khan Bomb Design Now?

As you know from my previous posts on McBush and Iran, I am paying particular attention to possible propaganda efforts that the administration may put forth to preposition public opinion for an attack on Iran before the November elections.

With that in mind its interesting to note that Bush decided last Wednesday to echo a phrase he used repeatedly in creating the drumbeat to invade Iraq:
President Bush said Wednesday that if diplomacy fails to deter Iran from developing its nuclear program, then "all options are on the table."

Combine this with the recent release of information from unnamed "American and international investigators" regarding a possibly improved bomb design that Khan may have been responsible for. Why release information on Khan's bomb design now when it was originally discovered in 2005 (It was not until 2005 that officials of the I.A.E.A., which is based in Vienna, finally cracked the hard drives on the Khan computers recovered around the world.)?

The salient portion of David Sanger's piece in the NYT, at least with regards to my concern, is this:
Among the missiles that could carry the smaller weapon, according to some weapons experts, is the Iranian Shahab III, which is based on a North Korean design.

It is also surely no coincidence that Sanger includes the following snippet in his lead paragraph:
"....they have not been able to determine whether they were sold to Iran".....

One suspects that they were also unable to determine if the designs were sold to, I don't know, lets say Liechtenstein or to Brittney Spears for that matter. This is disappointing, Sanger was fairly independent during the run up to the Iraq invasion, lets hope he is not becoming this year's Judy Miller.

Three year old information suddenly leaking as Bush says all options are on the table, sound familiar to anyone?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This Khan guy worries me.

Publisher said...

His face...fine Corinthian Leather

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