Unable to see danger
Jack Kelly's weekly Pittsburgh Post-Gazette column reviews the evidence regarding Able Danger and brings the story up to date. Kelly concludes: "It's unclear why the Bush administration is covering up [Able Danger], since the suppression of Able Danger occurred on President Clinton's watch. But it is clear there is a cover-up. One would think a Washington press corps obsessing about a hunting accident in Texas would be more curious about it."
I think that's an observation that broadly applies to events of the past week including the administration's approval of the sale of six American ports to the United Arab Emirates, Al Gore's giving one of the most disgusting speeches in American history in a hotbed of Islamism, and the restarting of uranium enrichment in Iran combined with Iran's bald terrorist threats.
On the last subject, Michael Ledeen has been a close student of Iran for roughly the past 25 years. In his most recent NRO column, Ledeen observes: "When the French announced that the Iranian nuclear program was undoubtedly designed to produce weapons, Tehran demanded an apology. Above all, there is no longer any pretense of cooperation with the Big Three negotiators on the nuclear program. This suggests that the mullahs do indeed believe they have acquired nuclear weapons..."
Given that the mullahs are particularly well positioned to base their "beliefs" regarding the status of their nuclear program on the facts in issue, Ledeen seems to suggest that circumstantial evidence points to Iran's having acquired nuclear weapons. And now MEMRI brings word that the extremist clerics from Qom have issued "a new fatwa" stating that "shari'a does not forbid the use of nuclear weapons."
Footnote: AJStrata has an Able Danger hearings summary here.
