The build up to war with Iran.

Here we go again.

The Bush Administration is telling us Iran could have nuclear weapons in 16 days.

The right wing press is talking up the grave threat that Iran has become and is urging immediate action.

The Democrats, as usual, are rolling over, hiding, or agreeing that something has to be done.

Now let's see what all these liars and wusses are wetting their pants about.

The official, Muhammad Saeedi, the deputy head of Iran's atomic energy
organization, said Iran would push quickly to put 54,000 centrifuges on line — a
vast increase from the 164 the Iranians said Tuesday that they had used to
enrich uranium to levels that could fuel a nuclear reactor.

Still, nuclear
analysts called the claims exaggerated. They said nothing had changed to
alter current estimates of when Iran might be able to make a single nuclear
weapon, assuming that is its ultimate goal. The United States government has put
that at 5 to 10 years, and some analysts have said it could come as late as
2020.

Nuclear analysts said Iran's boast that it had enriched uranium using 164
centrifuges meant that it had now moved one small but significant step beyond
what it had been ready to do nearly three years ago, when it agreed to suspend
enrichment while negotiating the fate of its nuclear program.

"They're hyping it," said David Albright, president of the Institute for
Science and International Security in Washington, a private group that monitors
the Iranian nuclear program. Anthony H. Cordesman and Khalid R. al-Rodhan of the
Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington called the new
Iranian claims "little more than vacuous political posturing" meant to promote
Iranian nationalism and a global sense of atomic inevitability.

The nuclear experts said Iran's claim yesterday that it would mass-produce
54,000 centrifuges echoed boasts that it made years ago. Even so, they noted,
the Islamic state still lacked the parts and materials to make droves of the
highly complex machines, which can spin uranium into fuel rich enough for use in
nuclear reactors or atom bombs.

It took Tehran 21 years of planning and 7 years of sporadic experiments,
mostly in secret, to reach its current ability to link 164 spinning centrifuges
in what nuclear experts call a cascade. Now, the analysts said, Tehran has to
achieve not only consistent results around the clock for many months and years
but even higher degrees of precision and mass production. It is as if Iran,
having mastered a difficult musical instrument, now faces the challenge of
making thousands of them and creating a very large orchestra that always plays
in tune and in unison.

I think we have plenty of time to avoid another rush to disaster.