And the beat goes on

The drumbeat of war, that is. And the echoes just keep getting louder.

A Washington Post story on Friday revealed that the "intelligence" Colin Powerless cited in charging Iran is trying to adapt a missile to accept a nuclear warhead was unverified information from a single, unvetted, "walk-in" source.

The official said the CIA remains unsure about the authenticity of the documents and how they came into the informant's possession. A second official would say only that there are questions about the source of the information. ...

The lack of certainty about the source who approached U.S. intelligence had kept officials from talking publicly about the information, and Powell's comments caught the small group of informed officials by surprise and angered some of them.

Although why they would be surprised at the White House using unverified intelligence to advance agenda is beyond me.

Even so, the spin machine was whirling madly in the article's wake, as the State Department went into rhetorical overdrive to cover CP's ass. It claimed Powerless's remarks had a "firm basis" in "solid information" and the US is on "very very solid ground" in making its accusations, CNN reported.

"Those who have seen [the information] have expressed confidence that, A, it is valid and, B, the critics taking issue with it don't know what they are talking about," [a senior State Department] official said. "What the secretary said was backed up by strong information that gives us confidence in his conclusion."

Strong words. Almost as strong, in fact, as the "clear," "convincing," "undeniable" evidence our lame-duck Secretary of State put before the UN Security Council about Iraq to justify an invasion.

Interestingly, US officials did not, according to CNN, dispute the Post's story that the allegations were based on a single unvetted source. Instead, one said "public discussion of the details of the human source of intelligence is irresponsible and a remarkably bad idea" and called "disturbing" the idea that it would be discussed with a journalist. Which is to say, they're not denying the story, they're just pissed it got out and want to change the subject to the leak itself instead of what it said.

Then there's the fact that

Powell ... said the Iranians need to "convince the international community that they are not moving in the direction of a nuclear weapon, and they will comply with their obligations to the IAEA."

Okay. So we've got the expatriate dissident group hoping to overthrow the government making accusations. We have the supposedly "very very solid" but actually questionable intelligence about nefarious plans involving weapons of mass destruction. We've got the accusations of massive, long-term deception coupled with demands that "they" prove a negative while we show no actual proof of our contentions. Is that all so far?

Not quite. We also have the "alarming" information about something "they" are doing which they think they have every right to do and which you know about because they, who are always trying to deceive the world, told you. (In Iraq's case, it was the Samoud-2 missile.) Again from CNN for Friday:

Iran is producing massive quantities of uranium hexaflouride on the eve of the implementation of an agreement to suspend its nuclear activity, U.S. and Western diplomats said Friday.

Uranium hexaflouride, also known as UF-6, can be fed into gas centrifuges and turned into highly enriched uranium - the key energy component for both nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons.

The officials said Iran notified the International Atomic Energy Agency - the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog - of the UF-6 production just days before the nation's agreement to freeze all uranium enrichment activities goes into effect Monday. ...

"We are alarmed," a Bush administration official said of Friday's developments. "This is a profound show of bad faith and violates the spirit of the agreement."

Now, just for my own understanding, how it is "bad faith" for Iran to tell the IAEA it's producing UF-6 at a time prior to the date it agreed to stop enrichment activities? How is it bad faith for the Iranians to operate a facility which CNN says is "visited regularly by IAEA inspectors and is legal under Iran's nuclear agreements?" How is it bad faith for them to reveal capabilities which, if the White House was to be taken at its word, they would have tried to conceal? No matter.

The official said the Bush administration plans to take up the issue with the British, French and Germans, as well as the IAEA. The administration feels the development will give a boost to U.S. efforts to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council when the IAEA board of governors meets next week, the official said.

That's what matters: moving the goalposts, always upping the requirements. Does anyone here remember how the UN weapons inspectors came to return to Iraq in 2002? If not, let me remind you: It was Saddam Hussein who sent word to the Security Council that he was ready to restart inspections. The US, however, was not satisfied; we didn't want the inspectors to go back in, as that could undermine our plans. So we demanded changes in the inspection regimen, ones specifically designed to make it harder for Iraq to cooperate and which would provide a pretext for unilateral US military action. The conditions were ones we felt confident Saddam would refuse. So set on this were we that on September 20, 2002, Powerless went before the House International Relations Committee and testified that the US would find ways to stop weapons inspectors from going back to Iraq unless the Security Council first adopted our resolution. The Security Council folded, adopted the resolution - and to our astonishment, Saddam agreed. That is why the inspectors got back in: We were unable to keep them out.

The point is, once Iraq agreed to one set of conditions we imposed a harsher set. And now that Iran has agreed to stop its enrichment programs, we want to find a way to say that's not enough in order to seek sanctions.

This is not looking good.