The 'Washington Note' is Dangerously Wrong.

Steven Clemons of the Washington Note blog believes that this whole Iran thing is the product of Neocon "hysteria" (read Jewish conspiracy). It was only a few days ago that Iran broke the UN seals on their nuclear facilities prompting those "always-hysterical” and "hawkish" Europeans to cancel all further talks and attempt to expeditiously refer the matter to the UN Security Council. Clemons’ website lost no time, immediately complaining about too much anti-Iran hysteria generated by that “Neocon Machine,” such as this site, and proceeded to pooh-pooh any idea that Iran might be close to developing nuclear weapons.

A simple question: Is Steven Clemons a Nuclear Physicist, plugged into the Iranian nuclear program in a way that the CIA might want to pay him a visit? Because if he’s not, what is the basis for his assertion that Iran is far from a nuclear weapon other than his suspicion of Neocon motives? His big source it turns out is a super-duper-secret, exclusive, multiple-sushi-dinner-expensive newsletter from one of those many Washington “consulting” firms. Wow! OK, we can all relax now; Did you hear that Mr. President?

Mr. Clemons bristles about how we got our intelligence wrong in Iraq, and then waives intelligence sources (un-named of course) as presuming that we are five to ten years away from an Iranian bomb. Hopefully he's right. The bigger question is what if he and his supper-duper newsletter buddy are wrong?

Is it really unreasonable to air on the side of caution on such a monumental life or death issue? Is it unreasonable to raise alarms and call for preparedness and planing for possible pre-emptive action when it comes a nuclear bomb in the hands of nutcase-Mullahs with a love of suicidal martyrdom? Or perhaps we should all just take Mr. Clemons and his super-duper newsletter buddy's word for it? I’ll let you the reader make up your own mind without building up all kinds of hidden "intelligence sources" and "Secret newsletter buddies" to reinforce my argument.