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Good morning, everyone, One of the failures of the US government going back several
administrations is the absence of a national industrial policy. It was opposed,
primarily but not solely by Republicans, on the grounds that the free market
would best respond to the challenges that in other countries such a policy
addresses. The result has been national outsourcing, a wandering approach to educational
support and prioritization, a failure to invest in technologies that seem
directly linked to national well-being, national debt history tied to immediate
political expediency, and a lack of vision and commitment within the federal
bureaucracies. That is the short list, and I am sure other members of
Futurework can add to it easily. The result has been that such issues as employment in the
automotive sector, service nets in the transportation sector, technical
standards in the communication sector, executive self-seeking in the business
sector, price/technology escalation in the medical sector, and concentration in
the media sector has all been neglected, with the effect of allowing major
dysfunctionalities to creep into each of these sectors. Will the academic and political leaders of the US have the intellectual
courage and skill to tackle the need for an effective national industrial
policy? If not, these dysfunctionalities will grow and lead to the large scale
impairment of the US economy and society. If they do come to address
these issues, they will have to undo many decades of unquestioning commitment
to laissez-faire ideology. If they don’t, we can only hope that the
American people some day wake up to the reality that many of the weekly blockbuster
bad-news headlines are the result of a lack of societal planning and
leadership, rather than an acceptable, natural and inevitable phenomenon. Those who us who are worried about the shape of tomorrow’s
US economy might wish to give thought to the matter of a national industrial
policy, and what might be some of its essential elements and structures. I’ve
never designed a national industrial policy, but imagine that it must start
with some sort of outcome formulation. Cheers, Lawry From:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Karen Watters Cole Yes, to staunch the domestic wounds from the Abramoff,
Plame and other minor scandals this year, in addition to the Katrina, Medicare
and SS failures, Rove has once again invoked the war time battle plans for
midterm elections, 2006. This is critical for them to do early, not just with
the State of the Union (SoU) speech in a week and a half, but because there is
the Enron and perhaps AIPAC scandals ahead yet to inflict damage. They
also must contend with economic fallout from events unfolding, such as Ford’s
announcement, perhaps tomorrow. It’s hard to blame the opposition
for bad economic policy when there is no ‘shadow’ government here,
when you control all 3 branches of gov’t. - KwC Sound familiar? Rove offers GOP 2006 battle plan: hype national security. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/20/AR2006012001853.html?nav=hcmodule LdB wrote: Yes, the
“run-up” tactics of the neocons are being applied against Iran,
now. But where only the ignorant fell for the ‘run-up’ on Iraq, now
only fools will fall for that on Iran. And, fortunately, there are far fewer
fools in the US than ignorant people. The hard way, the American people are
slowly learning.... From:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Karen Watters Cole The war
machines are geared up again and this time we need to be more vigilance, demand
accuracy and accept no false claims. Everything you ever wanted to know about the Iranian nuclear program
but were afraid to ask? Iran
and its nuclear program are going to be a big issue this year. So it makes
sense to know something about it. Clearly, the Iranians are engaged in a major
nuclear research program. Is it for weapons? If it is, how close are they to
producing them? (Contrary to the
impression you'd get from reading a number of your more antic columnists, the
US intelligence community believes that the Iranians are roughly a decade away from being able to
produce a nuclear weapon. Charles Krauthammer says it's just a matter of months. You decide who to believe.) So next week, from Monday through Thursday, we're going to have 2 arms control
experts, Paul Kerr of the Arms Control Association and Dr. Jeffrey Lewis of Armscontrolwonk.com. They'll be blogging about the technical capacity of the
Iranian nuclear effort, what it's for, whether it's any near to produce a
nuclear weapon and other related topics. They also want to answer your
questions. So we've set up a thread over at TPMCafe where you can pose questions for them to
answer next week. From Josh
Marshall at Talking Points Memo (TPM), for those viewing in text only, the url
is http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2006/1/21/03741/4512 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Here is the news reporting mentioned above
regarding Iran’s disputed timeline. There are good reasons to be
skeptical of both sides - the new president of Iran seems to be claiming a
divine mission for Iran - and the now familiar political plays by Bush
administration war hawks. - KwC Iran Is
Judged 10 Years >From Nuclear Bomb By Dafna Linzer,
Washington Post Staff Writer, Tuesday, August
2, 2005; A01 A major U.S.
intelligence review has projected that Iran is about a decade away from
manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon, roughly doubling the
previous estimate of five years, according to government sources with firsthand
knowledge of the new analysis. The carefully hedged
assessments, which represent consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies,
contrast with forceful public statements by the White House. Administration officials have asserted, but have not offered
proof, that Tehran is moving determinedly toward a nuclear arsenal. The new
estimate could provide more time for diplomacy with Iran over its nuclear
ambitions. President Bush has said that he wants the crisis resolved
diplomatically but that "all options
are on the table." The new National Intelligence Estimate includes what the intelligence community views as credible
indicators that Iran's military is conducting clandestine work. But the sources
said there is no information linking those projects directly to a nuclear
weapons program. What is clear is that Iran, mostly through its energy program,
is acquiring and mastering technologies that could be diverted to bombmaking. The estimate expresses
uncertainty about whether Iran's ruling clerics have made a decision to build a
nuclear arsenal, three U.S. sources said. Still, a senior intelligence official
familiar with the findings said that "it
is the judgment of the intelligence community that, left to its own devices,
Iran is determined to build nuclear weapons." At no time in the past
three years has the White House attributed its assertions about Iran to U.S.
intelligence, as it did about Iraq
in the run-up to the March 2003 invasion. Instead, it has pointed to years of
Iranian concealment and questioned why a country with as much oil as Iran would
require a large-scale nuclear energy program. The NIE addresses those
assertions and offers alternative views supporting and challenging the
assumptions they are based on. Those familiar with the new judgments, which
have not been previously detailed, would discuss only limited elements of the
estimate and only on the condition of anonymity, because the report is
classified, as is some of the evidence on which it is based. Top policymakers are
scrutinizing the review, several administration officials said, as the White
House formulates the next steps of an Iran policy long riven by infighting and
competing strategies. For three years, the
administration has tried, with limited success, to increase pressure on Iran by
focusing attention on its nuclear program. Those efforts have been driven as
much by international diplomacy as by the intelligence. The NIE, ordered by the
National Intelligence Council in January, is the first major review since 2001
of what is known and what is unknown about Iran. Additional assessments
produced during Bush's first term were narrow in scope, and some were rejected
by advocates of policies that were inconsistent with the intelligence
judgments. One such paper was a 2002 review that former and
current officials said was commissioned by national security adviser Stephen J.
Hadley, who was then deputy adviser, to assess the possibility for "regime
change" in Iran. Those findings described the Islamic republic on a slow
march toward democracy and cautioned against U.S. interference in that process,
said the officials, who would describe the paper's classified findings only on
the condition of anonymity. The new estimate takes a
broader approach to the question of Iran's political future. But it is unable
to answer whether the country's ruling clerics will still be in control by the
time the country is capable of producing fissile material. The administration
keeps "hoping the mullahs will leave before Iran gets a nuclear weapons
capability," said an official familiar with policy discussions. Intelligence estimates are
designed to alert the president of national security developments and help
guide policy. The new Iran findings were described as well documented and well
written, covering such topics as military capabilities, expected population
growth and the oil industry. The assessments of Iran's nuclear program appear
in a separate annex to the NIE known as a memorandum to holders. "It's a full look
at what we know, what we don't know and what assumptions we have," a U.S.
source said. Until recently, Iran was judged, according to February testimony by Vice Adm.
Lowell E. Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, to be within five years of the capability to make a nuclear weapon. Since 1995, U.S.
officials have continually estimated Iran to be "within five years"
from reaching that same capability. So far, it has not. The
new estimate extends the timeline, judging that Iran will be unlikely to
produce a sufficient quantity of highly enriched uranium, the key ingredient
for an atomic weapon, before "early to mid-next decade," according to
four sources familiar with that finding. The sources said the shift, based on a better understanding of
Iran's technical limitations, puts the timeline closer to 2015 and in line with
recently revised British and Israeli figures. The estimate is for
acquisition of fissile material, but there is no firm view expressed on whether
Iran would be ready by then with an implosion device, sources said. The timeline is
portrayed as a minimum designed to
reflect a program moving full speed ahead without major technical obstacles. It does not take into account that Iran has suspended much of
its uranium-enrichment work as part of a tenuous deal with Britain, France and
Germany. Iran announced yesterday that it intends to resume some of that work
if the European talks fall short of expectations. Sources said the new
timeline also reflects a fading of suspicions that Iran's military has been
running its own separate and covert enrichment effort. But there is evidence of clandestine military work on missiles and
centrifuge research and development that
could be linked to a nuclear program, four sources said. Last month, U.S.
officials shared some data on the missile program with U.N. nuclear inspectors,
based on drawings obtained last November. The documents include design
modifications for Iran's Shahab-3 missile to make the room required for a
nuclear warhead, U.S. and foreign officials said. "If someone has a
good idea for a missile program, and he has really good connections, he'll get
that program through," said Gordon Oehler, who ran the CIA's
nonproliferation center and served as deputy director of the presidential
commission on weapons of mass destruction. "But that doesn't mean there is
a master plan for a nuclear weapon." The commission found
earlier this year that U.S. intelligence knows "disturbingly little"
about Iran, and about North Korea. Much of what is known
about Tehran has been learned through analyzing communication intercepts,
satellite imagery and the work of U.N. inspectors who have been investigating
Iran for more than two years. Inspectors uncovered facilities for uranium
conversion and enrichment, results of plutonium tests, and equipment bought
illicitly from Pakistan -- all of which raised serious concerns but could be
explained by an energy program. Inspectors have found no proof that Iran
possesses a nuclear warhead design or is conducting a nuclear weapons program. The NIE comes more than
two years after the intelligence community assessed, wrongly, in an October 2002
estimate that then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass
destruction and was reconstituting his nuclear program. The judgments were
declassified and made public by the Bush administration as it sought to build
support for invading Iraq five months later. At a congressional
hearing last Thursday, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, deputy director of national
intelligence, said that new rules recently were imposed for crafting NIEs and
that there would be "a higher tolerance for ambiguity," even if it meant
producing estimates with less definitive conclusions. The Iran NIE, sources
said, includes creative analysis and alternative theories that could explain
some of the suspicious activities discovered in Iran in the past three years.
Iran has said its nuclear infrastructure was built for energy production, not
weapons. Assessed as plausible,
but unverifiable, is Iran's public explanation that it built the program in
secret, over 18 years, because it feared attack by the United States or Israel
if the work was exposed. In January, before the review, Vice President Cheney suggested Iranian nuclear
advances were so pressing that Israel may be forced to attack facilities, as it
had done 23 years earlier in Iraq. In an April 2004 speech,
John R. Bolton - then the administration's point man on weapons of mass
destruction and now Bush's temporarily appointed U.N. ambassador -- said:
"If we permit Iran's deception to go on much longer, it will be too late.
Iran will have nuclear weapons." But the level of certainty,
influenced by diplomacy and intelligence, appears to have shifted. Asked in June, after the NIE was done, whether Iran had a
nuclear effort underway, Bolton's successor, Robert G. Joseph, undersecretary of
state for arms control, said: "I don't know quite how to answer that
because we don't have perfect information or perfect understanding. But the
Iranian record, plus what the Iranian leaders have said . . . lead us to
conclude that we have to be highly skeptical." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/01/AR2005080101453.html |
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