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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (25992)	12/3/2007 9:23:27 PM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 220208

US spies give shock verdict on Iran threat. Intelligence agencies say Tehran halted weapons programme in 2003 ELMAT: Like I keep saying: they need first to learn how to make an electric kettle... US spies give shock verdict on Iran threat. Ewen MacAskill in Washington Tuesday December 4, 2007 The Guardian US intelligence agencies undercut the White House yesterday by disclosing for the first time that Iran has not been pursuing a nuclear weapons development programme for the past four years. The secret report, which was declassified yesterday and published, marked a significant shift from previous estimates. "Tehran's decision to halt its nuclear weapons programme suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005," it said. The disclosure makes it harder for President George Bush, to justify a military strike against Iran before he leaves office next year. It also makes it more difficult to persuade Russia and China to join the US, Britain and France in imposing a new round of sanctions on Tehran. Bush and vice-president Dick Cheney have been claiming without equivocation that Tehran is bent on achieving a nuclear weapon, with the president warning in October of the risk of a third world war. They were briefed on the national intelligence estimate (NIE) on Wednesday. The White House national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, at a press conference yesterday, denied there were echoes of the intelligence failure over Iraq's phantom weapons of mass destruction. He said that Iran was "one of a handful of the hardest intelligence targets going" and the new intelligence had only arrived in the past few months. As soon as it did, both the president and Congress had been briefed. He warned that there would be a tendency now to think "the problem is less bad than we thought, let's relax. Our view is that would be a mistake." The NIE, which pulls together the work of the 16 American intelligence agencies, is entitled Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities. It concluded: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003 Tehran halted its nuclear weapons programme." It had not been restarted as of the middle of this year. In a startling admission from an administration that regularly portrays Iran as the biggest threat to the Middle East and the world, the NIE said: "We do not know whether [Iran] currently intends to develop nuclear weapons." That contradicts the assessment two years ago that baldly stated that Tehran was "determined to develop nuclear weapons". The British government, which is planning to discuss the report with its US counterparts during the next few days, has also repeatedly said it suspects President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government of seeking a nuclear weapons capability. It will claim that the weapons halt shows that diplomacy - in particular the threat of sanctions - can work. The weapons halt roughly coincided with a visit by British, French and German foreign ministers to Tehran in October 2003. The Iranian government has insisted throughout that it is only pursuing a civilian nuclear programme. Although a halt to the nuclear weapons programme is significant, the NIE is far from a clean bill of health for Iran. Tehran is pushing ahead with its uranium enrichment programme, which has only limited civilian use and could be quickly converted to nuclear military use. The NIE warned that Iran could secure a nuclear weapon by 2010. The US state department's intelligence and research office, one of the agencies involved, said the more likely timescale would be 2013. All the agencies concede that Iran may not have enough enriched uranium until after 2015. The White House will continue to try to intensify international pressure on Iran. Russia and China, two of the permanent members of the UN security council, have scuppered attempts by the US over the past six months to impose tough new sanctions on Iran. The decision to publish the NIE is aimed at trying to recover the public credibility lost when the agencies wrongly claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in the years leading up to 2003.

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (25992)	12/3/2007 9:46:53 PM
From: Cogito Ergo Sum	Respond to of 220208

M, Men don't rate intelligence in women so highly, valuing other characteristics as more important. I dunno.. I know I looked for dependability, honesty, intelligence... as big factors in a partner.. must have been my feminine side LOL.. then again in university a future partner was really not a priority at all.. so I was more like a cave man I guess :O) but I think on balance you are quite right... I thought it interesting to point out that we are looking based on criteria (in the linked piece) with relevance to hunter gatherer savanna dwellers than ourselves... I think your brain analogy is correct... There are just more ways to gauge and use brain power now than before.. As to why study... yes you can over do it but on the other hand there are a lot of stupid folks born into money that get by because of education.. not too hard to spot them usually.. and lots of high brain power folks born into the lower end of the grey ooze that never catch a break..... I'm not a proponent of too much official schooling.. but lots of 'experiences and other activities' promoting confidence and leadership are valuable, and spare language or two doesn't hurt.. I regularly tell my kids ... smart is not enough... sometimes smart can make you a little lazy... better to have a few other tools in the arsenal to help make your own luck... for the brains to exploit.. The Black Swan