"My great fear is indeed we will have to learn to leave Iran, and all its terrorist connections, with the bomb," Kay told NBC television's Today Show while declining to say for certain that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons.

Kay ran the Iraq Survey Group that concluded that Iraq had no chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, even as the White House continued to insist that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had been a growing threat at the time of the US invasion.

Calling the Tehran regime "toxic", Kay said on Sunday that the tensions over Iran's nuclear power programme - which the US believes masks an intention to develop atomic weapons - differ from those which preceded the US attack on Iraq.

Multilateral coalition

"This time we have a far more united multilateral coalition against Iran and we actually have the International Atomic Energy Agency condemning Iran for 18 years of cheating on its non-proliferation obligations," Kay said.

However, he said, the coalition is far from agreed on the actions to take against an Iraq that has rejected pressures to shut down its uranium enrichment programme, which it claims is for peaceful purposes.

Kay said Europeans in the coalition were particularly bothered by aggressive statements from US leaders threatening tough UN sanctions or worse against Iran.

"When you've got in Tehran a regime that is toxic in the extreme, you really don't need to make the point that there are serious consequences. Everyone knows where we are moving," he said.

Kay, who was the chief UN weapons inspector from 1983 to 1992, would not say for certain that Iran was seeking to build nuclear weapons. "Intentions - that's always the weakest link in intelligence, and it certainly is in this case," he said.

"What you can say right now is Iran has taken a number of steps that are preparatory to having a nuclear weapon. You cannot say that in fact they definitively made that decision to go ahead with that weapons programme."

"I believe the U.A.E. are good friends of ours," the senator said. "Our navy ships have made more than 700 hundred visits into the port of Dubai, more than any other ports outside of the U.S., they are serviced by U.A.E. personnel.

"There are missions being flown into Iraq as we speak out of Dubai," McCain continued. "There are two wars going on. One on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, the other is for the hearts and minds of the people of this country ... of the Arab world.

"I would at least have allowed the President the 45 day delay [on the Dubai Ports World deal] before we hammered him. The president deserved better, but it's over."

The recently completed command centre is connected by tunnels to other government compounds near the Mossala prayer ground, one of the city's most important religious sites.

Offices of the state security forces, the energy department and the Organisation of Islamic Culture and Communications are all located in the same area.

The construction of the complex is part of the regime's plan to move more of its operations beneath ground. The Revolutionary Guard has overseen the development of subterranean chambers and tunnels - some more than half a mile long and an estimated 35ft high and wide - at sites across the country for research and development work on nuclear and rocket programmes.

The opposition National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) learnt about the complex from its contacts within the regime. The same network revealed in 2002 that Iran had been operating a secret nuclear programme for 18 years.

The underground strategy is partly designed to hide activities from satellite view and international inspections but also reflects a growing belief in Teheran that its showdown with the international community could end in air strikes by America or Israel. "Iran's leaders are clearly preparing for a confrontation by going underground," said Alireza Jafarzadeh, the NCRI official who made the 2002 announcement.

America and Europe believe that Iran is secretly trying to acquire an atomic bomb, although the regime insists that its nuclear programme is for civilian energy purposes.

As the United Nations Security Council prepares to discuss Iran's nuclear operations this week, Teheran has been stepping up plans for confrontation. Its chief delegate on nuclear talks last week threatened that Iran would inflict "harm and pain" on America if censured by the Security Council.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the hardline president who has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map", also said that the West would "suffer" if it tried to thwart Iran's nuclear ambitions. As the war of words intensified, President George W Bush said that Teheran represents a "grave national security concern" for America.

In Iraq, which Mr Ahmadinejad hopes will develop into a fellow Shia Islamic state, Iran is already using its proxy militia to attack British and American forces, often with Iranian-made bombs and weapons. As tensions grow, Teheran could order Hizbollah - the Lebanese-based terror faction that it created and arms - to attack targets in Israel.

The regime is also reviewing its contingency plans to attack tankers and American naval forces in the Persian Gulf and to mine the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 15 million barrels of oil (about 20 per cent of world production) passes each day. Any action in the Gulf would send oil prices soaring - a weapon that Iran has often threatened to wield.

The Pentagon's strategic planning is focused on the danger that Iran might try to mine the strait and deploy explosive-packed suicide boats against its warships. In May, American vessels in the Gulf will take part in the Arabian Gauntlet training exercise that deals with clearing mines from the strait, which has a navigable channel just two miles wide.

The naval wing of the Revolutionary Guard has in recent years practised "swarming" raids, using its flotilla of small rapid-attack boats to simulate assaults on commercial vessels and United States warships, according to Ken Timmerman, an American expert on Iran.

The Pentagon is particularly sensitive to the dangers of such attacks after al-Qaeda hit the USS Cole off the Yemen with a suicide boat in 2000, killing 17 American sailors. Last month the White House listed two foiled al-Qaeda plots to attack ships in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.

US intelligence believes that if Iranian nuclear facilities were attacked by either America or Israel, then Teheran would respond by trying to close the Strait of Hormuz with naval forces, mines and anti-ship cruise missiles.

"When these systems become fully operational, they will significantly enhance Iran's defensive capabilities and ability to deny access to the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz," Michael Maples, the director of the Defence Intelligence Agency testified before the Senate armed services committee last month.

A senior American intelligence officer said that the US navy would be able to reopen the strait but that it would be militarily costly. Hamid Reza Zakeri, a former Iranian intelligence officer, recently told Mr Timmerman that the Iranian navy's Strategic Studies Centre has produced an updated battle plan for the strait.

Its most devastating options would be to use its long-range Shahab-3 missiles to attack Israeli or American bases in the region or to deploy suicide bombers in Western cities under its strategy of "asymmetric" response.

"The price to the West for standing up to Iran is clear," Gen Moshe Ya'alon, the former Israeli defence chief said last month in Washington. "It includes terror attacks, economic hardship… and consequences resulting from fluctuations in Iranian oil production. Indeed, the regime believes that the West - including Israel - is afraid to deal with it."

Although all of the rabbis who visited Iran live in either New York or London, there are some 400 Neturei Karta families living in Jerusalem who refuse to recognise Israel's authority.

'Wish for calm'

The Iranian Fars News Agency reports that the group said in a statement that Ahmadinejad's call for a "world free from Zionism ... is nothing more than wishing for a better world dominated by peace and calm."

"This means a true hope for a peaceful life and coexistence between the Jewish and Muslim communities following the dismantlement of the Zionist regime," the group's statement added.

The group also said that it was "a dangerous deviation" to pretend that the Iranian president is an anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic personality since President Ahmadinejad, in fact, restated what the late founder of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Khomeini had frequently stated.

"That is, Zionism is different from Judaism and while the Zionist state of Israel must be disintegrated, the Jewish communities world wide and the religion of Judaism must be respected."

Holocaust

Following Ahmadinejad's claim that the Holocaust - the killing of an estimated six million Jews by the Nazis and their allies during World War II - was a myth used to justify the creation of Israel, the visiting rabbis agreed the mass killing had been hijacked by Zionists.

Weiss was quoted as saying: "The issue of the Holocaust has to do with the Zionist use ... The Zionists are using this issue. We, the Jews who were killed in the Holocaust, do not use the Holocaust as a tool for promoting our cause."

"Neturei Karta are well known for their hatred towards Israel," Yediot Aharonot wrote, "but it seems that this time they have crossed the line."

Sometimes people less fanatical than the overheated Rohrbacher try to claim Bush may not have known all these statements were false, therefore he "meant well" but was wrong - not lying. But Bush, Cheney and others were rigging the entire intelligence system to make sure they got the information they wanted, then they were relying on that to support misleading and highly provocative statements intended to drive the US into war.

As investigative reporter Seymour Hersh explained: "The point is not that the President and his senior aides were consciously lying. What was taking place was much more systematic - and potentially just as troublesome." He quoted "Kenneth Pollack, a former National Security Council expert on Iraq, whose book 'The Threatening Storm' generally supported the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein [who said] what the Bush people did was 'dismantle the existing filtering process that for fifty years had been preventing the policymakers from getting bad information. They created stovepipes to get the information they wanted directly to the top leadership."

In the process Pollack and Hersh describe, the Bush Administration believed the professional intelligence system was "deliberately and maliciously keeping information from them." Although, "They always had information to back up their public claims, but it was often very bad information," according to Pollack. It gets worse. The Administration was "forcing the intelligence community to defend its good information and good analysis so aggressively that the intelligence analysts didn't have the time or the energy to go after the bad information." As Hersh reports, "The Administration eventually got its way, a former C.I.A. official said. 'The analysts at the C.I.A. were beaten down defending their assessments.'"

See: THE STOVEPIPE by SEYMOUR M. HERSH, How conflicts between the Bush Administration and the intelligence community marred the reporting on Iraq's weapons. The New Yorker, 10-27-03: http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?031027fa_fact

Bush lied with bad intent. No "meant well" defense possible.

There are many ways to lie. Someone can lie by saying something while knowing the statement is wrong, obviously. Knowingly implying certainty about a statement which is uncertain is also lying. Many of Bush's and his administration's statements fall into the latter category. Some fall into the first, such as their promise to exhaust every non-military approach before using military force against Iraq. That was a flat out lie.

The Downing Street Minutes and other evidence - Paul O'Neill's comments - establish clear, spoken intent to attack no Iraq matter what. Coercing people into making statements, or bullying them into silence, is not lying per se, but claiming "all evidence suggests" the favored conclusion after making sure none that doesn't gets notice becomes lying.

Bush made and had his administration make many specific and alarming claims which were not true and clearly intended to push us into war. Bush and his people were grossly negligent to the point of depraved disregard for the loss of life resulting from the war he (mis)led us into. Bush, Cheney et al knew or should have known - and often were on actual notice - that at least some of the key claims about Iraq were either false or not clearly supported by evidence.

"Intelligence" includes rumor, conjecture, and a lot of otherwise questionable information which is not "evidence" in any sense. Public statements relying on "intelligence" of this dubious value but presented as known facts - intended to whip the public into support of war - is dishonest at best. Overstating the accuracy of this "intelligence" is essentially lying.

Exaggerating this unverified information to further an objective is lying just like giving someone what you know is a $1 bill and calling it a ten is lying. The yellow cake from Africa claim in the State of the Union address of 2003 was just the most notorious example. Statements by Bush and Cheney at convictbushcheney.org are lies or misstatements of fact delivered with misleading sense of certitude: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=Bush-Cheney_Misleading

One can be wrong and well-meaning, but not when pretending certitude about matters of life and death (as in "I know this isn't poison, drink it. Oops, I was wrong.") There are no "well-meaning" mistakes about taking a nation to war this way. Either Bush is a liar, he's so depraved he doesn't care about innocent life, or he's a fool who isn't qualified to plan a bachelor party.

Saying Bush and his administration "meant well" when they killed well over 100,000 people means everyone the Bush Administration are amiable but dangerous dunces like Lennie Small from "Of Mice and Men". Not just Bush. All of them "mean well" but accidentally kill people. I don't believe that, but if that's what Bush's defenders assure us is true, then we must have grave concerns about such people in control of the nuclear button.

© Copyright 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 by MikeHersh.com and identified authors. MikeHersh.com invites you to broadcast any material at this site, provided you identify the source as MikeHersh.com. All Internet, email and other summaries, excerpts or other written reproductions must include this blurb and a link to http://www.MikeHersh.com.