Professor Beeman Is At It Again

The very liberal Providence Journal often publishes articles and letters from William O. Beeman, a Brown University professor. His ultra-liberal, multiculturalist views of the world always enrage me as I think of the nonsense he is feeding students at this once great university. His usual message is that we shouldn’t get too upset about the fact that the Islamacists want to kill us because they have some grievances arising out of mistakes made by western powers in the past.
Here is his latest letter to the editor:

Exaggerated Iranian nuclear threat

Thursday, September 7, 2006

“David S. Bell ("Courting an Iranian first strike," Sept. 4) implies that I favor nuclear weapons for Iran. I do not. In fact, I am unalterably opposed to the posession of nuclear weaponry by any nation, including Israel, Pakistan, India, North Korea, China, the European Community and the United States.

In Iran's case, however, there is not one scintilla of hard evidence that it has nuclear weapons or a nuclear-weapons program. This was reiterated on Aug. 30 in the latest International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report, which restates that IAEA inspectors "have not uncovered any concrete proof that Iran's nuclear program is of a military nature."

Ambassador John Bolton's continual palaver about the "Iranian nuclear-weapons program" as if it were a reality does not alter this state of affairs. It is another example of the Bush administration's well-known practice of truth by repetition. A further example of the misreporting of the Iranian nuclear-development program came Aug. 22, when Iran announced the opening of a heavy-water plant, a facility for manufacturing heavy water (deuterium).

In the American press this was immediately transformed into a "heavy-water reactor capable of producing plutonium which can be used to manufacture nuclear weapons."
Every part of that statement is false. Such a nuclear reactor would have to be built, and yet another separate facility for extracting plutonium would also have to be built before any weapons could begin to be constructed. Such massive construction could not be hidden from IAEA inspection. Contrast this with Israel, Pakistan and India who all have functioning nuclear weapons today, ready to launch. Who is more dangerous?

Is Mr. Bell equally ready to denounce those nations for their nuclear weaponry, or to denounce the United States for failing to observe Section 6 of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty calling for nuclear-weapons reduction?”

WILLIAM O. BEEMAN
Providence

I have just three questions for Professor Beeman:

1. Why would a country (Iran) with only peaceful intentions of developing a nuclear capability solely to produce electricity hide their development work and defy the efforts of the civilized world to monitor them under a treaty they themselves signed?

2. Excluding Pakistan, where the danger of WMD technology falling into the wrong hands is a real threat, does Professor Beeman really think that the civilized world has more to fear from Israel or India than Iran?

3. What level of madness would lead him to think that any American administration would reduce its nuclear capabilities in a world awash with acts of mass terrorism? The day is already here that we thank God that Ronald Reagan launched Star Wars, the only capability, other than the threat of massive retaliation, that may keep our children safe from ballistic missiles launched from Iranian or North Korean submarines that we know they already have.