Some people were surprised to find that Iran was building a large facility for producing weapons grade Uranium.  President Obama was not one of those people.  Candidate Obama, however, was.  

In December of 2007 an NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) report said that Iran was not actively pursuing nuclear weapons.  Bush didn’t buy the report and continued on as if Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons because the 2007 report seemed unreasonable.  Earlier assessments seemed more credible.  It turns out that the civil servants responsible for the 2007 report were American leftist “hyper-partisan anti-Bush officials” Tom Fingar, Vann Van Diepin and Kenneth Brill.  Candidates Obama, Clinton and Biden chimed in.

From an AP article: 

… Senator Barack Obama warned that despite the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran released Monday, the Bush administration would not modify its tough line on Iran.

“It is absolutely clear that this administration and President Bush continues to not let facts get in the way of his ideology.”

“They need, now, to aggressively move on the diplomatic front.”

“They should have stopped the saber rattling — should never have started it,” said Obama.

… and from Hillary Clinton

“I vehemently disagree with the president that nothing has changed and therefore nothing in American policy has to change,” front-runner Hillary Clinton said, in a debate in Iowa hosted by National Public Radio.

“He should seize this opportunity and engage in serious diplomacy using both carrots and sticks,” Clinton said in the two-hour debate, a month before Iowans vote in the first nominating clashes of the 2008 race.

…

“I was the first at this table to go to the Senate and speak against the possibility that Bush could take us to war with Iran,” Clinton said.

… and from Joe Biden

Let’s get this straight, in 2003 (Iran) stopped their program, you cannot trust this president, he is not trustworthy,” said Senator Joseph Biden.

“It is outrageous, intolerable and it must stop … the president of the United States — it’s like watching a rerun of his statements on Iraq five years earlier.”

“Iran is not a nuclear threat to the United States of America. Iran should be dealt with directly with the rest of the world at our side.”

Meanwhile, back in reality…

This from a press conference held on  September 25, 2009 as reported by McClatchy:

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Hi, everybody. What I’m going to do is focus on the history and background of this issue, in particular the technical elements and why we’ve made decisions to go ahead and brief the IAEA and reveal the existence of this facility, which we’ve known about for some time. Then I’m going to ask my colleague to talk about the diplomatic state of play, focusing in on the upcoming October 1st meeting, which President Obama and Prime Minister Brown and President Sarkozy made very clear is going to be critical in terms of seeing concrete action from Iran to reassure the international community and to correct the violations of Iran’s international commitments.

Let me start with a bit of history. Just to remind all of you that the Iranian nuclear issue first became public back in 2002, when it was revealed that Iran was building a secret underground enrichment facility, which we now know as the Natanz facility. Once the Iranians were caught building the secret underground enrichment facility with centrifuge machines in it, they were forced to declare the facility, to allow the IAEA inspectors to inspect the facility and to place it under safeguards.

Now, Iran has continued to build that facility despite a number of U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding that they completely suspend all activity there. And the state of play in Natanz is well known from the IAEA reports in terms of the Iranians having about 8,000 centrifuge machines there, about half of which are producing low-enriched uranium at a rate of about two kilograms a day. And they have accumulated a stockpile of about 1,400 kilograms of low-enriched uranium. So we know what’s going on at the Natanz facility because it’s under IAEA safeguards.

Now, it was evident to everybody, both the United States and our allies, that if the Iranians wanted to pursue a nuclear weapons option the use of the Natanz facility was a very unattractive approach; because the IAEA inspectors were there, it would be noticed if Iran tried to produce weapons-grade uranium at that facility, or if they expelled the IAEA inspectors, everybody would assume that they were converting the facility to produce weapons-grade uranium.

So the obvious option for Iran would be to build another secret underground enrichment facility, and our intelligence services, working in very close cooperation with our allies, for the past several years have been looking for such a facility. And not surprisingly, we found one. So we have known for some time now that Iran was building a second underground enrichment facility. And as the President mentioned this morning, it’s located near the city of Qom, a very heavily protected, very heavily disguised facility. We believe that it’s not yet operational. We think it’s most likely at least a few months, perhaps more, from having all of the centrifuges installed and being capable of operating if the Iranians made a decision to begin operating it.

Our information is that the facility is designed to hold about 3,000 centrifuge machines. Now, that’s not a large enough number to make any sense from a commercial standpoint. It cannot produce a significant quantity of low-enriched uranium. But if you want to use the facility in order to produce a small amount of weapons-grade uranium, enough for a bomb or two a year, it’s the right size. And our information is that the Iranians began this facility with the intent that it be secret, and therefore giving them an option of producing weapons-grade uranium without the international community knowing about it.

Now, as I said, we’ve been aware of this facility for several years; we’ve been watching the construction, we’ve been building up a case so that we were sure that we had very strong evidence, irrefutable evidence, that the intent of this facility was as an enrichment plant. We also learned that the Iranians learned that the secrecy of the facility was compromised. So they came to believe that the value of the facility as a secret facility was no longer valid 

–

Q When was that?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Excuse me?

Q When was that? When did they learn that?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I can’t be precise. All I can say is that fairly recently — and recognizing that they might then choose to disclose the facility themselves, we worked with our allies — the U.K. and the French — to put together a briefing, an extraordinarily detailed briefing, for the IAEA, because we anticipated that we would need to provide that briefing to the agency so that they would be able to conduct a proper investigation — not just of the facility itself, but of the support facilities that are producing materials and equipment for this facility, what the Iranian decision-making process and intent was to build this facility.
…

The safeguards agreement between Iran and the IAEA requires Iran to declare nuclear facilities as soon as they begin construction. Now, in March of 2007, Iran unilaterally said it did not feel bound by that element of its safeguards agreement. And we know construction of the facility began even before the Iranians unilaterally said that they did not feel bound by that obligation.

…

Q Could you help me understand the timing of this? These facilities, obviously, are harder to get rid of once they’re built. So if you all knew about this — not you guys, in this case — but several years ago, was there some reason why it didn’t make sense to alert the world to the impending construction of the thing back then, and not have to then contend with a nearly completed one?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: You know, I think it would be a terrible mistake if we prematurely disclosed the facility, because at a very early stage of construction, a facility like this could have multiple uses. So we thought it was very important to wait until the facility had reached the stage of construction where it was undeniably intended for use as a centrifuge facility.

So, from our standpoint — and of course it takes years to build these facilities — and also we were building the case so that we felt that we were in a very strong position when the time came — because we knew eventually this time would come — we would want to brief the IAEA as well as the other countries we’re working with. So that explains the delay.

Q Was there ever a concern about intelligence? Was there ever a concern about faulty intelligence?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: April, April, let’s do this one at a time. You’ve had a crack. Let’s get around the room. 

Q Have you talked to Israel about this, and are they on board, and are they part of –

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Let me just go back to your point, your first question, and then we can answer the next one. 

The President was first briefed on this during the transition. He was very insistent, as he has been on this issue since day one, that this is an issue that needed to be addressed urgently. And obviously, as my colleagues have made clear, we’ve been aware of this facility now for several years. The President became aware of it as President-elect and we have been working quite aggressively with our friends to make sure we have a very solid case to present to the IAEA, having learned that such intelligence presentations have to be made in a very credible fashion because of the nature of the charges.

…

Q A couple of questions. Can you confirm that the construction of this facility was started before Ahmadinejad? And last year, there was an intelligence report that calls — or assessment — because it cast doubt about the fact that Iran was actually pursuing nuclear weapons. Is this your understanding now that Iran is definitely after nuclear weapons, or is it the intelligence assessment?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think both of those questions, while good, are not something that, based on intelligence, we feel comfortable getting into here.

Uh, yeah.  Based on intelligence.  Uh-huh.  Silly me.  I thought the SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL just didn’t want to discuss the horrible judgment shown by Obama, Clinton and Biden.   Bush and company knew about the facility all along.  The three Demo-clowns basically lied and said there was no problem in Iran and that Bush was just trying to start another war.  Then they won the election and now they are going, “Oh my gosh!  There I guess there really is a problem.” 

 Hillary has always been clueless.  Obama is a clueless manipulative phoney.  Biden is a clueless moron.  Do you really trust their judgment to work at resolving the Iran nuclear problem? 

Stumble it!