"Everybody Knows" Iran Wants The Bomb, Says Always-Wrong Expert

By Cernig

In the midst of a gloriously overblow Wall Street Journal report on Iran's sanction-busting procurement of dual-use materials which most experts acknowledge "also have industrial uses such as commercial aviation and manufacturing", the article's authors employ "Gary Milhollin of the nonprofit Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control" to put the necessary spin on the case - of course Iran is using these materials to build nukes and ballistic missiles rather than commercial aircraft or lucrative satellite-launch vehicles.

"We can't say we know it would, or would not, be used for military purposes," said proliferation expert Gary Milholland [sic]... noting that broad economic sanctions on Tehran led by the U.S. mean Iran has to go to unusual lengths to find high-grade materials for industrial use as well as weapons.

Still, he added, "There doesn't seem to be any real doubt or debate whether Iran is going for the bomb or whether Iran is using front companies to import things. Everyone agrees on that around the world."

To which the drones at LGF respond "That’s nice." But of course "everyone" doesn't agree on Milhollin's premise at all. The IAEA and the last consensus NIE from the American intelligence community don't, for two. The guy ultimately responsible for that NIE - Thomas Fingar, who stepped down Dec. 1 from the post of deputy director of national intelligence and as chairman of the National Intelligence Council - is still sticking with it, even if his political masters started ignoring it before the ink was even dry.

"I still stand by the judgments in that estimate," Mr. Fingar told a small group of reporters, referring to the November 2007 report. "We've had other teams look at this. Everyone who has, has affirmed the judgments we made."

But...but...but... Gary Milhollin works for a non-profit, "non-partisan" think tank, doesn't he? How could he say such a thing if it isn't true?

Well, Milhollin and his Project aren't as non-partisan as the WSJ would like us to think. He's a favorite at neocon conflabs.

"There seems to be a general consensus that if you don't want war, you got sanctions," said Gary Milhollin, who founded the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, a Washington-based, non-profit research group operated under the auspices of the University of Wisconsin.

"Meaningful, onerous, strong sanctions are the only threat to the regime," he said at a Heritage Foundation forum—one of Milhollin's two appearances at major right-wing think tanks in Washington, D.C., last week.

The government- and private foundation-funded project houses IranWatch.org, a self-proclaimed "comprehensive repository of open source information about Iran's suspected mass destruction weapon programs."

IranWatch.org, according to Milhollin at his other appearance at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI), estimates that Iran will have the fissile material to fuel a nuclear bomb within a few months. He said it was a "safe assumption" that Iran is ready for weaponization.

IranWatch.Org, the website run by the Project, claims to be " a comprehensive web site that monitors Iran's ability to construct weapons of mass destruction". It has a sister site, IraqWatch.Org, which stopped updating in 2006. there you can read Milhollin's participation in a 2003 roundtable with the "non-partisan" Thomas Donnelly (AEI), Reuel Marc Gerecht (AEI), Jeane J. Kirkpatrick (AEI) and Danielle Pletka (AEI) in which he's just as certain that dual-use imports to iraq will turn out to have been used for WMD production after the invasion. Or his 2002 piece for the WSJ in which he wrote:

If the inspectors find more evidence that Saddam is lying - more evidence of hidden warheads or illegal imports, for example - it will only prove more clearly that disarmament isn't taking place. Obviously, this has nothing to do with achieving the peaceful disarmament Mr. Blix hopes to achieve. On the other hand, if the inspectors fail to find more evidence, that will not prove that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction as long as Saddam refused to account for the frightening list of missing items.

The only hope for inspections now is the last-minute conversion of Saddam Hussein. If troops begin massing on his border, there is a slim chance that Saddam will start answering Mr. Blix's questions. There is even less of a chance that Saddam will then begin to transparently disarm.

Ah, the old "prove a negative" hoax that got those troops over the border and into Baghdad.

Milhollin and his Project were consistent boosters for invading Iraq in search of WMD's that didn't exist and are now constant companions to boosters of similiar action against Iran. And he himself is willing to bend the facts all out of shape in service to the neocon's goals. His pronouncements should be seen in this light.