Let’s get this into the clear air of reason already. The Bush haters are once again arming themselves with only half of the knowledge they need to come to an intelligent conclusion. They write and spout things like this to people who are not going to take the time to find out that they are being fed a bunch of crap.
WASHINGTON - The George W Bush administration has long pushed the “laptop documents” - 1,000 pages of technical documents supposedly from a stolen Iranian laptop - as hard evidence of Iranian intentions to build a nuclear weapon. Now charges based on those documents pose the only remaining obstacles to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) declaring that Iran has resolved all unanswered questions about its nuclear program.
But those documents have also been regarded with great suspicion by US and foreign analysts. German officials identified the source of the laptop documents in November 2004 as the Mujahideen e-Khalq (MEK), which along with its political arm, the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), is listed by the U.
Mujahideen e-Khalq is a Marxist organization which began as an opposition to the Shaw and his pro-western government. Because of their Marxist ideology, they also are at odds with the theocracy of the current government. However, you need to understand that the US considers MEK to be a terrorist organization, as does the EU. The source of these documents makes them no more or less suspect than if they had come from any other source in the Middle East. Although it is reported that German intelligence captured the laptop and disclosed the existence of the documents in 2004, it is equally likely the MEK documents could have come from one of two other places.
1) The US Forces in Iraq, when they raided the MEK compounds during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
2) The French security services raid on the Paris headquarters of MEK.
So make certain you understand. The MEK and the US are not in bed together on this and there is nothing to indicate MEK would have known their offices in either country would be raided.
If you are going to question anything, question the age of the documents. The thing most people who have not done intelligence work miss is that information is perishable. If these documents were captured in November 2004, the claim that the Iranian nuclear weapons program was halted in 2003 could still be valid. How many documents do you have on your hard drive that are over a year old?
The issue here is not the documents themselves. Those documents simply raised questions. The issue is regarding how Iran responded to the questions. They have refused IAEA requests to interview scientists who’s names appeared on the documents and they have refused the IAEA the ability to inspect the locations mentioned in the documents. Suspicion is not based upon the documents themselves, but Iran’s reaction to them.
