Could Iran really make a Nuclear weapon in 16 Days? Yes, according to the U.S. State Department based on reporting from the AP. Via Bloomberg.com:

April 12 (Bloomberg) -- Iran, defying United Nations Security Council demands to halt its nuclear program, may be capable of making a nuclear bomb within 16 days, a U.S. State Department official said.

Iran will move to ``industrial scale'' uranium enrichment involving 54,000 centrifuges at its Natanz plant, the Associated Press quoted deputy nuclear chief Mohammad Saeedi as telling state-run television today.

``Using those 50,000 centrifuges they could produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon in 16 days,'' Stephen Rademaker, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation, told reporters today in Moscow.

Of course this comes a day after Iranian President Ahmadinejad delivered the "good news" that Iran has successfully enriched uranium and joined the exclusive club. Yah!

Interesting how Iran's announcement came just a day or two after the spun report that the Bush administration was planning nuclear attackson on Iran. Drudge, discussing this on Sunday's Drudge Radio, hit the nail on the head when he pointed out that Seymour Hersh delivered this story the way he did, specifically to make worldwide headlines, that would obviously do nothing but hurt the country. When you get down to the meat of the story, it's about one (of many) contingency plans, that don't involve "nukes" the way you think of them.. but smaller tactical/bunker buster type weapons such as the b61-11.

Basically Hersh knew that the he could make the rest of the world hate America when they were all waking up to headlines "American Plans to Nuke Iran". But when you get down to it, it was one Pentagon plan discussed as a possible way to penetrate deep bunker facilities in Iran. It doesn't mean that this is going to happen, or that any military action will happen. But obviously we have to have contingency plans, and that is all that is going on here. The difference is, the leftwing press went crazy with it, just like Hersh knew they would. But the real outrage would be if we didn't have contingency plans in the works, and having people drawing up ideas for the best way to quickly take out important targets. This is discussed a little bit in this AFP article via Yahoo! News.

"There are always operational planning endeavours ongoing whether it's in Korea, whether it's in Southcom, whether its in Eucom, or Centcom," said Moseley, referring to the US military's combat commands around the world.

He added: "It's not appropriate to comment on particular military options."

Among the many challenges US military planners face in Iran is that its nuclear facilities are scattered and some are buried in undergound bunkers, raising the question whether they could be destroyed with conventional weapons.

Stipulating that he was talking about general capabilities and not an Iran scenario, Moseley said the air force's ability to destroy buried, hardened targets using conventional weapons depends on how deep they are.

"There are a variety of weapons that can penetrate concrete and steel structures, and there are variety of weapons that can penetrate a mix of concrete and steel and sand and rubble structures," Moseley said.

"It depends on how deep and it depends on how the structure is put together," he said. "There are potentials I would suppose of things so deep and so hardened that it would be hard to get through with anything."

Also, you might want to keep in mind when Seymour Hersh breaks a story, that he's the same Seymour Hersh that, in 2004, made unsubstantiated claims before the ACLU that our military took Iraqi women and boys, sodomized the children, and filmed it! That's right, He claims that our troops raped boys and filmed it and that the Pentagon has the tapes. Of course the KOS Kids ate it up. It's one thing for these POS liberals to attack the President unfairly and dishonestly, but it's another to accuse the troops of being child rapists Seymour. And It's disgusting to see the sick KOS troop haters buy this all the way, without a shred of evidence, simply because Hersh said so.