U.S. money for Russia is linked to Iran nuclear plant

[Dover]

Source: International Herald Tribune

WASHINGTON: The U.S. Energy Department is subsidizing two Russian nuclear institutes that are building key parts of a reactor in Iran that the United States spent years trying to stop, according to a House committee.

The institutes, both in Nizhny Novgorod, gave U.S. officials sales presentations describing their capabilities, and listing the Bushehr reactor, which Russia has agreed to fuel, as one of their projects. One institute is providing control systems, including control room equipment, and the other is providing hundreds of pumps and ventilation fans.

The Energy Department is subsidizing the institutes under the Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention, a program set up after the collapse of the Soviet Union to prevent newly impoverished scientists and their institutions from selling their expertise to states that might be developing nuclear weapons. The United States supplements the salaries of scientists, and pays overhead at those institutes, among others.

It was not immediately clear if the Energy Department was paying the salaries of the scientists involved in the Bushehr reactor. Representative John Dingell, chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and Bart Stupak, chairman of the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee, asked that question in a letter sent Wednesday to Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman.

"What policy logic justifies DOE funding Russian institutes which are providing nuclear technology to Iran?" the letter asked, referring to the acronym for the Department of Energy. "How does this advance our nonproliferation goals?"

...snip..

In a statement, Dingell, a Democrat of Michigan, said "only this administration would complain about proliferation in Iran, as part of President Bush's axis of evil, and then finance it with American taxpayer dollars." Stupak called it "schizophrenic foreign policy."

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It's called planting/encouraging the evidence to justify WWIII. I'll bet Saddam Hussein might have a story or two to add.

[benld74]

1. If true, then time to cut the allowance, doncha thank?

[Ian David]

2. Not to mention Halliburton helped build them, too. n/t

[Phred42]

3. Your tax $$ at work - as administered by republicans.

Orwell must be laughing his ass off.

[Roland99]

4. Quite the earmark, eh?

[boricua79]

5. hahaha..

HOw about THAT shit.

Kinda like how our money that goes to Saudi Arabia ends up funding terrorist who hit us afterwards.

Or how the monsters we create to fight our proxy wars later become the leaders of terrorist groups who hate us.

KARMA!!!!

[Dover]

6. Or........perhaps policy is shifting to allow for living with a nuclear Iran.

Couldn't admit that openly if true, but definitely one possibility.

[boricua79]

7. of course we'll have to live with a nuclear Iran

there are no workable military options. Military experts have already discussed this ad nauseum. We don't have the political, military, or economic strategies available to successfully stop Iran without massive consequences for us...and right now, our country is immersed in a major economic problem.

[Quantess]

8. ...interesting...