Cry Wolf

by digby

Here’s our favorite pychotic diplomat talking about Iran today:

BLITZER: … the International Atomic Energy Agency stops short of flatly saying they are building a bomb.

BOLTON: They have stopped short, but they’ve also refused to say that Iran’s program is purely peaceful. It may just take one piece of information that the IAEA published. Iran has documents from AQCON[A.Q Kahn], the great nuclear proliferator from Pakistan about how to fabricate uranium metal into hemispheres. There’s only one use of uranium metal formed in the hemisphere, and that’s to form a nuclear weapon. But nothing to do with peaceful uses of nuclear power.

BLITZER: But you understand why some people are skeptical of the Bush administration’s stance given the failures on the weapons of mass destruction intelligence leading up to the Iraq war?

BOLTON: Quite honestly, I think it’s few and far between, people who are skeptical of what direction Iran is taking. Where there have been disagreements with our European friends and even with Russia and China have been over how to handle it. But I will say, it’s not — this is not a dispute over intelligence. Obviously, intelligence can be wrong in several different directions. This is fundamentally a dispute I think within the security council about when to impose sanctions.

BLITZER: Because I raise the question because going into the war with Iraq, all of the intelligence communities in Europe and the Middle East and United States, they seem to be convinced that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. We now know he did not, so maybe all of the intelligence communities as far as Iran are wrong right now for whatever reason.

And I say that only because the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Lugar, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, a member of the intelligence committee, Carl Levin of Michigan, they told me recently that U.S. intelligence on Iran — they don’t believe is very good.

BOLTON: Well I think our intelligence could get much better, let’s put it that way. But don’t forget, intelligence was wrong about Saddam Hussein in 1990, ’91 too when they didn’t think they were close to developing a nuclear weapon, where the IAEA had no proof, but where after that war, we learned a lot about what Saddam Hussein was up to.

So as they say, intelligence can be wrong in a lot of directions. There is no doubt that the strategic decision that Iran has been following for close to 20 years has been to get not only a nuclear weapons capability, but to enhance the range and accuracy of their ballistic missile forces as well and that combination is extraordinarily dangerous.

BLITZER: How close, based on the information you have, is Iran to building a nuclear bomb?

BOLTON: Well, this is where the intelligence estimates vary and they vary all over the lot. I think precisely because of our uncertainty about the exact state of Iran’s nuclear program, we have to treat their clear effort to get a nuclear weapon capability as very serious and not to assume that the intelligence estimates that put it off for many years are necessarily going to be right.

When you see a regime seeking the capability and you see a president like Ahmadinejad denying the existence of the Holocaust, calling for Israel to be wiped off the map, sponsoring conferences with names like the World Without the United States, this is something that it’s not only capabilities, it’s intentions that you have to take seriously.

BLITZER: So you think it’s realistic to assume if they had a bomb, they would actually use it?

BOLTON: I think it’s realistic in a regime that is the central banker of international terrorism that is seeking a ballistic missile capability far beyond any legitimate defensive needs they might have, but which also puts arms and weapons in the hands of terrorists today. We’ve got a threat if they had the weapon, they could not make it with a ballistic missile, they could give it to a terrorist group like Hamas or Hezbollah as well.

BLITZER: Well that sounds very ominous, even much more dangerous than what the United States feared going into the war with Iraq. I assume the military option is being dusted off if it’s not more advanced?

BOLTON: Well I think we’ve said repeatedly we never take the military option off the table, but President Bush has been emphatic for several years now our preferred way of dealing with the Iranian program is through peaceful and diplomatic means and he emphasized that again this morning at the U.N.

BLITZER: If those peaceful diplomatic means don’t work, sanctions don’t get off the ground, if there’s no change in the Iranian position, what happens then?

BOLTON: Well that’s why we say we don’t take any option off the table about, but our effort at the moment, our concentration, our focus is on getting it resolved through diplomatic means. Through sanctions, if need be.

BLITZER: Is it credible to think that the U.S. could destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons program, assuming they have one?

BOLTON: I think they should believe that.

BLITZER: Do you think the U.S. could that with air strikes, with cruise missiles, with — presumably they spread out their facilities around the country and they’re deep underground. They learned the lessons of the Iraqis back in 1981 when the Israelis destroyed their reactor.

BOLTON: Well I’m not sure what the Iranians have really learned and I don’t want to get into a hypothetical how it might happen. But I do think that the president has been very clear over a number of months that it’s unacceptable for Iran to have nuclear weapons. I think when he says it’s unacceptable, I think what he means by that, it’s not acceptable.

BLITZER: Is Senator Voinovich of Ohio right when he compares Ahmadinejad to Hitler?

BOLTON: I think any man who denies the existence of the Holocaust and calls for Israel to be wiped off the map hasn’t learned the lessons of history and I don’t know what kind of comparison you can draw other than that.

BLITZER: Would you make a similar comparison?

BOLTON: That’s not my function. I mean, what I do is follow the policies set by the president and the secretary. We all have our personal opinions. I think it’s unacceptable for the head of a member government of the United Nations that says — the charter of which says we are to resolve our differences by peaceful means to have somebody like that calling for another U.N. member state to be wiped off the map.

BLITZER: Is that why you don’t think the president or other top officials should be meeting with Iranian leaders right now?

BOLTON: Well, we have made an incredibly generous offer to Iran on the nuclear question, even though they are a principal state sponsor of terrorism. We’ve even been willing to put that aside to say we would be prepared with the Europeans and the Russians and the Chinese to sit down with Iran if they do one thing, they suspend their uranium enrichment activity. And that’s not the U.S.’ condition, that’s the European’s condition, it’s the Security Council’s condition, it’s the IAEA’s condition.

I don’t know why all that sounds so familiar, but it does. I feel like I was sitting right here at my desk some time in the not too distant past, reading speeches about an evil man who wanted to kill Americans and gassing people like in the holocaust and centrifuges and aluminum tubes and security council resolutions and mushroom clouds…

It was fall, too … just after labor day. Must be deja vu.

They couldn’t possibly try this again before another mid-term election, could they?

And the country isn’t going to fall for it again, are they?

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