UPDATE:

How many times do we need to be warned before we get serious?

END UPDATE

I was stunned to see this Reuters news item flash across the screen (especially in the post 9-11 world of hyping intelligence):

U.S. atomic expert doubts report of Iran weapons work

David Albright, head of the U.S.-based Institute for Science and International Security think-tank and a former U.N. arms inspector, said the report was off the mark on one key issue and glossed over two others.

In a statement, Albright said the article repeatedly characterised the laptop’s contents as information about a nuclear warhead design “when the information actually describes a re-entry vehicle for a missile.

“This distinction is not minor. The information does not contain any words such as nuclear or nuclear warhead. The ‘black box’ carried by the re-entry vehicle may appear to be a nuclear warhead, but the documents do not state what the warhead is.”

No, the distinction is not minor – but if anyone cared to rub two brain cells together the implication is not what David Not-So-Bright would be selling Reuters.

Here is a bio on David Albright (what an perfect oxymoronic name):

Albright cooperated actively with the IAEA Action Team from 1992 until 1997, focusing on analyses of Iraqi documents and past procurement activities. In June 1996, he was the first non-governmental inspector of the Iraqi nuclear program. On this inspection mission, Albright questioned members of Iraq’s former uranium enrichment programs about their statements in Iraq’s draft Full, Final, and Complete Declaration.
…
From 1990 to 2001, Albright was a member of the Health Advisory Panel appointed by Colorado Governor Roy Romer.

Yep, ex-DNC chairman Roy Romer. David Albright appears to be a card carrying liberal.

But let’s see how good David Albright is at determining whether a nation is a nuclear threat or not. To set the stage recall that Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons program was finally exposed in 1995 after the defection of Hussein Kammel – Saddam’s son-in-law. From 1991, post Gulf War I:

Just two hours after U.S. warplanes began attacking Iraq on January 16, President Bush went on national television to report the goals of the assault. “As I report to you, air attacks are under way against military targets in Iraq. We are determined to knock out Saddam Hussein’s nuclear bomb potential,” the president said, before ticking off other objectives.

The prominence Bush gave to Iraq’s nuclear “potential” repeated a theme that the administration began pushing vigorously last November as a rationale for the use of military force against that country. But after a months-long investigation of the requirements any country would need to build nuclear weapons, and an assessment of Iraq’s ability to meet those requirements, we conclude that Saddam Hussein was many years away from developing usable nuclear weapons.

Does this sound familiar? I thought so too.

Indeed, the Iraqi nuclear bomb-making capability was so primitive that the international sanctions put in place after the August 2 invasion may have had more substantive effect than the tons of bombs dropped by U.S. and allied planes five months later. “There may be good reasons to go to war with Iraq,” one U.S. government official said before January 16, “but Iraq’s nuclear program isn’t one of them.”

Well Albright should have eaten those words in 1995 when the stunning truth of how close Saddam really was finally came out.

But back to Re-entry Vehicles (RVs) and Nuclear Warheads. If you ever watched True Lies with Ahnold you have seen the form of a nuclear warhead housed in the RV. RV’s are specific to nuclear war heads on ballistic missiles and NOTHING else. The nuclear bombs you see in something like Season 2 of 24 or Armaggedon are the bare-bones version. But RV’s are for one thing: penetrating the atmosphere from a missile launched into space on a ballistic (non-orbiting) path.

There is no other use for the RV with conventional explosives – because the payload size is too small to carry sufficient quantities of explosive. Albright skirts this fact in his duping of Reuters

A further important question sidestepped by the report, Albright said, was whether Iran could build the relatively small atomic warhead able to fit into the triconic re-entry vehicle — a missile nose cone made up of three distinct shapes.

Based on publicly available photos of Iran’s 2004 test launch of such a missile, a nuclear warhead would require a diameter of 600 millimetres — a major challenge for Iran, according to Albright.

He said the diameter of the warhead in a design given to Libya by the disgraced father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme, Abdul Qadeer Khan, was about 900 millimetres.

“A legitimate question is whether Iran could successfully build such a small warhead without outside help,” Albright said.

BS. It all depends on kiloton yield for size (or is Albright going to claim there is no such thing as nuclear artillery rounds). Also, that ‘outside help’ could come in the form of missiles from North Korea – which does have the technology for larger RV sizes.

This ‘rationale’ is proposed by someone who missed Saddam’s nuclear WMD intentions 15 years ago, and the logic is frighteningly shortsighted. It is a blatant attempt to grasp onto a severely narrow scenario to support the theory there is no threat from Iraq with regards to nuclear weapons.

It is a dangerous proposal because it can fool the uneducated, like a Reuters reporter, into believing this is a strong argument against Iran’s intent to build nuclear weapons. It is a laughable argument – but who could tell except us space cadets?

There is no need to engineer an RV if there is no nuclear warhead to put into it. None. Absolutely none. While nuclear weapons can exist without the RV – RV’s by themselves are a waste of engineering time without the warhead.

Read his words again:

The information does not contain any words such as nuclear or nuclear warhead. The ‘black box’ carried by the re-entry vehicle may appear to be a nuclear warhead, but the documents do not state what the warhead is

They probably do not include the words ‘space’ and ‘atmosphere’ but that would not mean these were funny shaped torpedoes! The words probably do not include ‘long range ICBM’ – so should we conclude the RV is for use with an artillery mortar or rocket launcher? How about used with a sling shot?

Ballistic missiles are the long range threat everyone dreads because the world does not have a robust defense system from nuclear tipped ballistic missiles at this time. The best we have is the Patriot System, but it is not robust and not meant for long range ballistic missiles (SCUDS are medium range missiles).

This is the scary form of misleading intelligence – the kind which can make us drop our guard!