Iran says nuclear missiles aren't part of its defenses

[Tab]

TEHRAN, Iran Iranian officials insist nuclear weapons aren't part of the country's defense policies.

The comments come after Secretary of State Colin Powell said he has seen intelligence confirming Iran is secretly trying to produce a nuclear weapon by next year.

Iranian officials deny that claim. And they say, "Such a thing could not be hidden in today's world."

More> http://www.wtol.com/Global/story.asp?S=2595774

[rodeodance]

1. McCain talking about this on Meet the Press right now

[asjr]

2. Good heavens! Iran has weapons of mass destruction.

Here we go again folks.

[UL_Approved]

3. Shrub couldn't pull this one off, no matter what

There is NO WAY that Iran would be conquered by the United States. That would be like Hitler trying to go into Russia. It would fail, miserably.

[asjr]

4. You are right about that, not only because we simply

do not have the troops, but we would become a pariah if he did invade as he did in Iraq. And we are almost there anyway.

[livinbella]

6. bush can and will pull it off!

americans are so fucking passive they will let him do anything.
the war drums are already beating.

[TheFarseer]

5. I heard they were buying yellow cake from Niger

Good God people. He's just spoiling to Invade Iran. I pray someone will stop him.

[Barkley]

7. The Iranians have a point: DSP would have detected a test firing

In operation since the 1970s, these Defense Support Program (DSP) satellites are located 36,000 kilometers above the earth in geosynchronous orbits--because each has an orbital period of 24 hours, it remains fixed over a single point on the equator.

Together the satellites view almost the entire planet in the infrared part of the spectrum and are thus able to see the launch of every ballistic missile of significant size and range.

Each DSP satellite scans the earth's surface every 10 seconds, providing a rough position for the ICBM--to an accuracy of about one kilometer--from the time the missile breaks cloud cover at an altitude of about 10 kilometers until the burnout of its rocket motor some 200 to 300 seconds later. Over parts of the earth there is stereo DSP coverage.

Scientific American
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000A45A2-E044-115D-A04483414B7F0000&pageNumber=2&catID=2