What’s Important; What’s Not

The International Atomic Energy Agency reports that it has found “unexplained plutonium and highly enriched uranium traces in a nuclear waste facility in Iran.” The IAEA has asked Iran for an explanation.
I’m not sure whether this was the explanation they had in mind, but earlier today Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said publicly that a nuclear Iran is a done deal:

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday that Iran would soon celebrate completion of its nuclear fuel program and claimed the international community was ready to accept it as a nuclear state.
“Initially, they (the U.S. and its allies) were very angry. The reason was clear: They basically wanted to monopolize nuclear power in order to rule the world and impose their will on nations,” Ahmadinejad told a news conference.
“Today, they have finally agreed to live with a nuclear Iran, with an Iran possessing the whole nuclear fuel cycle,” he said. He did not elaborate.

I’m not sure how much elaboration was necessary. Binyamin Netanyahu thinks he understands what Ahmadinejad has in mind:

Likud Party Chairman Binyamin Netanyahu warned delegates attending the United Jewish Communities’ General Assembly (UJC-GA) at the Los Angeles Convention Center on Monday that Iran today resembled Germany in 1938.
“Iran is Germany,” said Netanyahu, “that is arming itself with atomic bombs and declaring it will destroy the Jewish State.”
“Iran’s goals are global,” he continued, “and we are the first target. Every month that passes Iran comes closer to its goal – be it through the development of a nuclear weapon or the development of the means [to use them].

The Democrats are fond of telling us how incompetent the Bush administration is, so they certainly wouldn’t want to leave the problem of Iran to President Bush and his advisers. Maybe, now that the election is over, they will share with us their ideas for what to do about Iran.
You probably shouldn’t hold your breath, though: I think the Democrats are more interested in this kind of thing:

Civil rights activists filed suit Tuesday asking German prosecutors to open a war crimes investigation of outgoing Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and a host of other U.S. officials for their alleged roles in abuse at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo Bay.
“One of the goals has been to say a torturer is someone who cannot be given a safe haven,” said Michael Ratner, the president of New York’s Center for Constitutional Rights, which is behind the litigation.
The suit is on behalf of 12 alleged torture victims _ 11 Iraqis held at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison and Mohamad al-Qahtani, a Saudi held at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who has been identified by the U.S. as a would-be participant in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Captured in December 2001 along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, al-Qahtani would not crack under normal questioning, so Rumsfeld approved harsher methods, according to testimony before Congress.
After FBI agents raised concerns, military investigators began reviewing the case and in July 2005 said they confirmed abusive and degrading treatment that included forcing al-Qahtani to wear a bra, dance with another man, stand naked in front of women and behave like a dog. Still, the Pentagon determined “no torture occurred.”

Well, that’s obviously correct. What we see here (assuming the AP has the facts right) is interrogators who are NOT permitted to use torture, or anything approaching it, trying to get a critically important detainee to talk through more creative methods. If the AP wants to learn about what constitutes torture, its reporters should watch some al Qaeda videos. And if either the AP or the Center for Constitutional Rights has any ideas as to how we can get terrorists to talk without doing anything they dislike, we’d be interested to hear them.

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