I read the news today, "Bush: Iran still a danger despite report (AP)"
WASHINGTON - "Defending his credibility, President Bush said Tuesday that Iran is dangerous and must be squeezed by international pressure despite a blockbuster intelligence finding that Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program four years ago.""Defending his credibility" really says it all, don't you think. Orwell is not dead. Double-speak is alive and well. They keep trying to remember how to sell a war. Fortunately, it appears this time America is not buying. Have we started to ask tough questions?
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Labels: how to sell a war, ohiodem1
posted by REB 84 at 12/04/2007 11:15:00 PM
2 Comments:
Clearly the intelligence community does not want to be blamed for WMD as a justification for going to war with Iran, and this NIE is a very clear statement that they have assessed the risk and with a high level of certainty, they have outlined a solid case that the 16 agencies of the US intelligence community are clearly on the record that they do not believe Iran has an active nuclear weapons program, and that their capability to get one is severely restricted, and that their possibility to get one is quite a few years out, certainly not likely in the one remaining year of the Bush administration.
One has to assume that the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA gets daily security and threat briefings concerning terrorism, proliferation, international troublemaking by terrorist states, war news and a host of other topics.
It also seems likely that the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA gets told the same information in these daily or at least weekly summaries as the intelligence community is willing to disclose publically.
Is the president being disingenuous, dissembling or simply lying when he says in a news conference that the assessment of his own intelligence community is wrong and he continues to ratchet up the rhetorical heat on Iran, when all the signs point to a means for him to back off, and reduce tension in the world.
This continued tension is a contributor to the international fears of war which is a proximate cause of the massive runup in the price of oil, which is contributing to continued weakness in our own economy, continued weakness in our currency, continual increases in the transportation costs of everything we eat, buy or sell. Continued increases in the cost of heating our homes this winter, problems for truckers and our airlines.
No, the president's intelligence agencies provide him a legitimate means to step back from the precipice, and what does he do, he discounts all of that work by his closest advisors and stays the course toward war with Iran, who poses little or no threat of nuclear weapons, who has no ability to win a war with the United States, who is not being belligerent with the United States, in a war-making way. No, the president is intent on ascribing an overblown threat scenario, based on WMD, which everyone knows is the bogus reason used to justify war with Iraq.
Does the president actually think that the American people will allow him to cry wolf again?
This is a big topic. My initial read was that the neocon community had their applecart upset by the intelligence community, that is, the neocon belligerence to Iran, and their stated desire to go to war with Iran was somehow less possible, given the NIE that said that pressure and diplomacy had been effective in suppressing the Iranian nuclear weapons program, and it had been suppressed for four years.
This seems to have created quite an uproar, and we now have a US Senator announcing that he wants to launch a congressional investigation because the intelligence no longer fits the mold that the neocons want it to be in.
WaPo Intelligence investigation article
The article goes on to say that leading lights in the neocon movement are very displeased, including Norman Podhoretz:
(snip)
"Podhoretz especially faulted the estimate for guessing at Iranian intentions about a weapon while not significantly changing the estimate for when Tehran could acquire a weapon: "The summary strikes me as more of a political document as distinguished from an intelligence document." He said a review of the intelligence by a special commission is "a very good idea" because it is "entirely possible" that others would come to different conclusions.
Critics of the NIE have seized on the fact that career government officials who had battled with conservatives earlier in the administration on policy issues have now migrated to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), which coordinated the writing of the estimate.
"The problem is not the nature of the intelligence, it's the nature of the presentation. This NIE was presented with a clear intention to deceive and to redirect foreign policy," wrote Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy at the American Enterprise Institute, in an e-mail. "I have no doubt that these people believe they are protecting the nation from the President, but our constitution doesn't contemplate the non-proliferation center at the ODNI governing U.S. national security policy."
(snip)
So Ms. Pletka and other "critics of the NIE" are in effect saying that the folks in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence are a, to use a McCarthian term, "a pack of spies".
We must remember, however, that the Director of National Intelligence is appointed by the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, and serves at his pleasure, as does the entire staff. As does the Secretary of Homeland Security, who is in charge of all intelligence gathering and coordination.
The implication of the call for a Congressional investigation of the intelligence community, which in the mind of those neocons whose dream of war with Iran has been severely disrupted if not shattered completely, is that if the intelligence community does not produce information consistent with their world view that Iran must be bombed, then the congress will step in and intimidate the intelligence community into conformance with this political mindset, and damn the accuracy.
It is absolutely clear that if the intelligence community had properly communicated in 2002, prior to the Iraq war, maybe we would not have gone to war with Iraq, or at least not for the stated reasons, which were, of course wrong.
In this NIE, the 16 coordinated agencies, not, as in 2002 a bunch of uncoordinated agencies under multiple command structures, the 16 agencies came to a consensus, made assessments of the probablility of the information being right, clearly stated when controverisies existed, and when such controversies did exist, the stated confidence of the estimate was reduced.
One of the legislative intents of the post 9/11 reorgainzation of the intelligence community was to get the entire community on the same page, make it easier for them to communicate among themselves, make it easier for them to discuss differences of opinion and the like. This NIE appears to be a positive result of that legislation, which was requested by the administration and the congress to AVOID THE INTELLIGENCE FAILURES that led to the war with Iraq. Now some may argue that the intelligence did not fail, it was simply shaped to fit the pre-conceptions of the decision-makers (this is my opinion) but the administration blamed INTELLIGENCE FAILURES.
So, you tell me, is this NIE an INTELLIGENCE FAILURE, or is it the improved product of a previously chastened intelligence community that actually has improved and is unwilling to bow to political pressure?
I want an intelligence service that understands the Constitution, follows it, is incorruptable, is not swaying in the political wind, and is willing to tell the leadership of this nation what they need to know, irrespective of political pressure and pre-conceived notions of what they should be saying. Mark this one down as an improved product, and stop the congressional attempt at intimidation.
America and its decision makers deserve nothing less than the truth from its intelligence community. Its soldiers who will be called upon to lay their lives on the line have a right to DEMAND it.
I do not believe the intelligence community has gone wobbly here. I believe just the opposite, they are assessing the threat Iran poses in regard to the acquisition of nuclear arms, and reporting the information that was gathered, and properly corroborating new information that contradicts old information. America is stronger because of it.
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