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Bush's "Axis of Evil," Six Years Later

[Washington Post] Charles Krauthammer - Just four months after Sept. 11, George Bush identified Iran, Iraq and North Korea as the "axis of evil" and declared that defanging these rogue regimes was America's most urgent national security task. Six years later, Bush is one for three. Bush will have succeeded on Iraq, failed on Iran and fought North Korea to a draw. Bush has thrown in the towel on Iran's nuclear program because the intelligence bureaucracy, in a spectacularly successful coup, seized control of the policy with a National Intelligence Estimate that very misleadingly trumpeted the claim that Iran had halted its nuclear program. In fact, Iran halted only the least important component of its nuclear program, namely weaponization. The hard part is the production of nuclear fuel. Iran continues enriching uranium with 3,000 centrifuges at work in open defiance of the UN. Once you have the necessary fuel, you can make the bomb in only a few months. Thus to even speak of the Iranian program as having been stopped while enrichment continues is absurd. And that is true even if you discount recent dissidents' reports that the weaponization program, suspended in 2003, in fact resumed the following year.
2007-12-25 01:00:00
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