Our good friend Chris at Right Wing and Right Minded has an interesting story on how Iran got closer to getting a nuke.

Apparently every intern’s favorite Bill Clinton gave Iran plans for the nuclear bomb as part of a very cunning plan, that naturally fell apart. The plan was to give Iran a flawed plan for the bomb in the hope that it would slow down their bomb building program. In the tradition of the great Baldrick, the cunning plan had a flaw. The deliberately flawed plans for the bomb were given to a Russian scientist who was known to play both sides of the fence. He was told not to look at the (fake) plans. Yeah right. According to this report he not only had a peek, but he added a note in with them saying he could fix the (apparently very rudimentary deliberate mistakes) for a few dollars.

This whole cunning plan went under the moniker of “Operation Merlin”.

Now if it is all true, this is one reason why America sometimes faces a credibility problem in these matters. Clinton gives nuke plans away and Bush tries to stop Iran from building one. Those inside the U.S.A will see Bush trying to correct a mistake made by another administration (well they should anyway), but those outside the US will only see that the US created another monster that it now has to try and stop. Just like the perceptions RE bin Laden. You know the ones, the US trained him, armed him, made him coffee and cookies and all that.

The US takes on so much responsibility that decisions of is successive administrations take on a global importance, not just internal import. Unfortunately it seems a lot of the world does not seem to notice what administration makes what decision that affects them, they just see it as the US did it.

I believe it comes down to ideology as much as anything else. If people outside the US would take note of what administration does (or did) what, then said people could position themselves on the ideological side of the administration that makes decisions that best suit them. This would have a trickle down effect on global politics. Unfortunately most people don’t look very far past “the US did it” mentality.

If this story is true, then I guess it has just single handedly killed off any chance what so ever of Hillary getting the top job in 2008, and thats gotta be a good thing.