David Corn

"My hunch: it helps"

Mine take is the opposite. HRC was willing to beat those drums of war, threaten a another middle eastern country that (like Iraq) has no WMD's.

How can being wrong help HRC?

Interesting hunch.

Bunnypants will continue in his delusions about the "ask us of evil" and THAT is the delusional train HRC hitched her star to.

But of course we now live on the other side of the looking glass. Bizzaro bass-ackwards world where being wrong is the only virtue that matters.

"War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength"
~ George Orwell (1903 - 1950), Book "1984"

Mine take? I must drink my coffee before I try to post.

SB "MY take"

Happy Hanuka!

Hillary gets grief over Iran vote

Democratic rivals assailed front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton Tuesday for a vote against Iran that they portrayed as misguided and dangerous in light of a new intelligence report that says the Iranians stopped pursuing a nuclear weapon years ago.

*****

If Obama and Edwards can’t make the case that HRC screwed up when she voted WITH Bush on Iran, they are not qualified to be president.

My hunch is her goose is cooked on this issue and NO issue is of more concern to the people than war and starting wars of aggression against countries that have not attacked us.

Bush On The Defensive Over New Iran Intel

Media accounts of the press conference are almost universally negative toward the President. ABC World News, for example, said last night Bush "was instantly and consistently defensive." NBC Nightly News prefaced its report saying, "The 'Washington Post' is running an analysis story on the internet for tomorrow's paper with the headline, 'Neck Snapping Spin' from the President. They're talking about the President's news conference today." (The piece NBC referred to was in fact an online opinion piece not intended for the newspapers' print edition by Dan Froomkin.) NBC also reported Bush was "a president on the defensive."

*****

Bush is on the defensive for more poor choices, choices that HRC joined out of a need to sound tough.

I think the mistake is more than a whoop’s - we are talking about war, maybe even new-que-lar war.

It Turns Out Ahmadinejad Was the Truthful One

Bush is such a liar. Or is he just out to lunch on the most important issue that he faces? In October, he charged that Iran’s nuclear weapons program was bringing the world to the precipice of World War III, even though the White House had been informed at least a month earlier that Iran had no such program and had stopped efforts to develop one back in 2003.

Is it conceivable that Bush was telling the truth at his press conference Tuesday when he stated that he learned of the National Intelligence Estimate report, which contained that inconvenient fact, only last week? Even if Bush read the NIE report, he clearly doesn’t respect it, for at his press conference he said “the NIE doesn’t do anything to change my opinion about the danger Iran poses to the world—quite the contrary.” Not that he has anything against the NIE, whose directors he handpicked. “I want to compliment the intelligence community for their good work. Right after the failure of intelligence in Iraq, we reformed the intelligence community.”

*****

Bush is a liar - we all know that - why would Hillary believe him or his crew? Because she didn’t want to seem weak she decided being wrong doesn’t matter, just like her vote to authorize Bush to attack Iraq.

The issue is character and judgment. HRC loses on both counts.

If Iran fades from the forefront as DC suggests then yes this will help Hillary. Obama, Edwards, and the rest need to tie her in with Bush's missleading on Iran and make it stick ASAP or else the window of opportunity will soon close.

Israel says army ready for Gaza invasion
JERUSALEM - Israel's army has completed plans for a large offensive in the Gaza Strip and is only waiting for government approval for the action, the military chief said Wednesday, shortly after two Palestinian militants were killed by Israeli tank fire in the coastal area.

Great, It looks like things are about to blow up again.

This year, Gazan militants have fired 2,000 rockets and mortars, the army said. The rockets have killed a total of 12 people in recent years and cause widespread panic in southern Israeli border towns.

2000 rockets this year alone and they've only killed 12 in the past several years total? This almost seems like a point to ridicule the militants at their inability to cause more damage, not fear them as a force that requires mass retaliation.

In a move that could hamper the U.S. peace push, Israel on Tuesday announced plans to build more than 300 new homes in a disputed east Jerusalem neighborhood. Palestinians warned that the move will undermine the newly revived peace talks.

Like I said before, the continuation of building settlements in disputed areas is provocation. Negotiations are doomed to fail if Isreal continues to make demands without ceasing its own transgressions.

"If Iran fades from the forefront "

Looks like Bunnypants and the GOP candidates are not going to be able to create another boogeyman in time for the primaries. Bush wants to stick to the Iran issue - that will hang it around HRC's neck.

Her "I was right all along" is too Bushian and puts her squarely in the neo-con camp.

I predict the poll slide continues for HRC.

It would do her well to admit an error, any error.

The whole "I have never been wrong" thing shared by politicians from all parties has worn too thin for me. I want a human being - flawed and honest enough to see that in themselves. Wise enough to know that changing course is a strength not a weakness, that avarice and hubris is toxic and unnecessary.

In a rush to judgment, please remember that:

- This is the same NIE that didn't have a clue beforehand about the 9/11 bombings.

- This is the same NIE that claimed categorically that Hussein had WMD.

- This is the same NIE that claimed in 2005 with a high degree of certainty that Iran was currently conducting a nuclear arms program.

- This is the same NIE that claims in 2007 with a low degree of certainty (term of art as to certaintude) that Iran had stopped its nuclear arms program in 2003.

Whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, why in the world would you believe anything these yahoos say?

Strormin' Norman is indeed a loud and provacative voice. I watched youtube video of Podhoretz' speech at Colombia provided by Max Blumenthal of the Nation. I was not impressed by his intellectual or oratical skills. I also watched Podhoretz on C-SPAN's book TV. Again not imperssed with his anti-liberal characterizations that pass as intellectual assertions.

But let's take Norman's most recent assertion on its own: US intelligence agencies are motivated by the objective to make Bush look bad.

Does that explain why they would give Bush sufficient evidence to go to war in Iraq on false pretenses on one hand and give him insufficient evidence to go to war in Iran on the other? That calculus just doesn't add up for me.

We know the Bushies see a lot of the world as their enemies. In fact, it would seem that anyone who stands in their way - their chosen direction - is an enemy, take for example, Libruls, the French. Both traditional ly were perceived as allies to one extent or another. Now they are both enemies becuase they stand in the way of Bush, the decider. So is it a stretch to presume that the Bush administration sees the US Intelligence Community as enemies too? I don't think so, and I think this explains Podhoetz's assertion. From the outside, it seems presposterous. But if you got ticket to the conversations going on in the innner circle, it makes all the sense in the worold.

The French, from DeGaulle's refusal to cooperate in the Normandy invasion until Sarkozy, have not been our allies, perceived or otherwise. I think the high point in French history was 1066, and everything thereafter has kinda been downhill.

A tip of the hat to them, however, for their invaluable help in our Revolutionary War. Absolutely, positively couldn't have won it without them, regardless of the fact that their motives were probably more anti-British than pro-American.

Tom

Seating Chart Revised To Put Problem Senators Up Front

WASHINGTON—After several incidents of bipartisan name-calling and disruptive filibustering, Senate president Dick Cheney announced Monday that the congressional seating chart has been revised to put problem lawmakers up front. "I was hoping it wouldn't have to come to this, but Mr. [Sen. Dick] Durbin (D-IL) and Mr. [Sen. Jim] DeMint (R-SC), among others, have shown they're not mature enough to handle sitting in the back," said Cheney, who reportedly made Durbin read a secret bill out loud in front of the entire assembly after he was caught passing it to Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA). "I'm not going to let a few bad apples ruin lawmaking for the senators who are here to work." Cheney added that, if the behavior problems persist, the whole Senate will be made to come into the Capitol Building to legislate on weekends.

WSJ Questions CIA Iran Flip Flop

Wednesday, December 5, 2007 1:13 PM

In a new opinion piece, the Wall Street Journal notes that President Bush went out of his way to praise the "good work" of the intelligence community, whose latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) claims Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003.

But the WSJ goes on to lambaste the ironic feature of the Estimate by recalling how for years, senior Administration officials, including Condoleezza Rice, have readily admitted how little the government knows about what goes on inside Iran.

In 2005, for instance, the bipartisan Robb-Silberman report highlighted its conclusion that "Across the board, the Intelligence Community knows disturbingly little about the nuclear programs of many of the world's most dangerous actors."

Furthermore, notes the WSJ, as recently as 2005, the consensus estimate of the nation’s spies was that "Iran currently is determined to develop nuclear weapons" and do so "despite its international obligations and international pressure." This was a "high confidence" judgment.

The NIE conclusion that now says Iran abandoned its nuclear program in 2003 is also a "high confidence" finding, notes the paper.

“One of the two conclusions is wrong, and casts considerable doubt on the entire process by which these ‘estimates’ -- the consensus of 16 intelligence bureaucracies -- are conducted and accorded gospel status,” noted the Journal.

No less a source than the IAEA recently confirmed that Iran already has blueprints to cast uranium in the shape of an atomic bomb core, points out the Journal, which also concludes that the ill-timed report puts the administration’s efforts to further sanction Iran at the U.N. on life support.

“Now they have done a 180-degree turn on Iran, and in such a way that will contribute to a complacency that will make it easier for Iran to build a weapon,” concluded the Journal.

IRAN 'DEFYING UN CALL ON URANIUM'

Daily Express ^
IRAN 'DEFYING UN CALL ON URANIUM' Iran is continuing to defy international demands to end its programme of uranium enrichment, Foreign Secretary David Miliband has said. Mr Miliband made clear that Britain would not be deflected from its demands for a new UN Security Council resolution imposing sanctions on the Tehran regime, despite a new US intelligence assessment that it had suspended its nuclear weapons programme. "The origins of that sanctions resolution are in the defiance by Iran of the international community in respect of uranium enrichment," Mr Miliband said. "That defiance remains the case today." The Foreign Secretary was...

New York Sun ^ | December 4, 2007 | New York Sun Editorial

The latest assessment from the American intelligence community on Iran has been declassified, at least in part, and the directorate of national intelligence would have one believe that in 2003 "Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program". It's advancing a line that could be described with the word astounding if it didn't come from the same intelligence bureaucrats that so famously failed to foresee the attacks of September 11, 2001. One doesn't have to be privy to our country's secret sources to know that this last statement strains credulity. Iran has been enriching uranium, or nuclear fuel, for nearly two years...

Iran and its Democratic friends
Washington Times ^ | 12-5-07 | Editorial

If anything is clear from the new National Intelligence Estimate, it's that the U.S. intelligence agencies have no clear idea of what's going on in Iran. The authors of the intelligence estimate concede that despite their earlier conclusions they can't really say how far Iran's nuclear program has advanced, or how close Iran is to developing atomic weapons. It's irrefutable that Iran may have a nuclear weapon in the foreseeable future — whether in 2009, 2013 or 2015 is not so clear.

The only weapon the Democrats want to employ against our enemies in the Middle East is a white flag. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, as wobbly on Iran as on the Iraq war, says the Bush administration should be pushing for a "surge in diplomacy" with dealing with Iran.

Mr. Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other leading Democrats have a "can we talk?" message for the terrorists in Iraq — where Tehran, working through proxies, has been actively working to destabilize the country and kill and maim American soldiers. They're eager to embarrass President Bush and denying sufficient funding to the military to do the job against al Qaeda terrorists for another year is the way they're determined to embarrass him.

On Monday, Mr. Bush reiterated Pentagon warnings that the failure to approve funding for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1 will force the Army to run out of money for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in mid-February and the Marines four weeks later. In a Nov. 26 memo, Army Vice Chief of Staff Richard Cody ordered commanders to prepare for widespread layoffs of civilian personnel. Congress is doing this despite the fact that...

I told ya the Democrats were gunna flip flop on the surge just like Murtha.

Democrats New Iraq Strategy: Declare Victory
They Couldn’t Beat Bush So Now They Plan to Join Him

By Mark I

Predictably, but no less unbelievably, Congressional Democrats are considering a new approach in dealing with the burgeoning success in Iraq. Michael O’Hanlon, of the Brookings Institution and author of a now famous New York Times op-ed that was one of the first to claim that the surge was working, has another opinion piece in today’s USA Today. O’Hanlon argues that Democrats are due a large share of the credit for the surge’s apparent success.

Rarely in U.S. history has a political party diagnosed a major failure in the country's approach to a crucial issue of the day, led a national referendum on the failing policy, forced a change in that policy that led to major substantive benefits for the nation — and then categorically refused to take any credit whatsoever for doing so.

The Washington Post characterizes O’Hanlon’s thesis as a first airing of a possible shift in strategy by House Democrats over funding for the Iraq war. Democrats are considering dropping timeframes for troop withdrawal altogether in favor of timelines on political progress. This strategy says O’Hanlon, will allow Democrats to acknowledge the success of our troops while maintaining opposition to the war.

"THE TRUTHFUL ONE"

According to Capt and the rest of you neo-libs.

Quotes by Iran's Ahmadinejad

Sep 24 03:29 PM US/Eastern
By The Associated Press

‘In Iran, We Don’t Have Homosexuals Like In Your Country’

Ahmadinejad: Why Isn't The Holocaust 'Open To All Forms Of Research'?

Ahmadinejad: Iran Is 'Friends With The Jewish People'

Ahmadinejad Says 'Big Powers' Like U.S. Stopping Iran From Nuclear Ambitions

Comments by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose remarks were translated from Farsi.
—On a toughly worded criticism in the introduction by Columbia University president Lee Bollinger, who called him a "petty and cruel dictator":

I think the text read by the dear gentleman here, more than addressing me, was an insult to information and the knowledge of the audience here, present here. In a university environment we must allow people to speak their mind, to allow everyone to talk so that the truth is eventually revealed by all.

—On the Holocaust:

Why is it that the Palestinian people are paying the price for an event they had nothing to do with?

—On Holocaust deniers:

My question was simple: There are researchers who want to approach the topic from a different perspective. Why are they put into prison? Right now, there are a number of European academics who have been sent to prison because they attempted to write about the Holocaust or research it from a different perspective, questioning certain aspects of it. My question is: Why isn't it open to all forms of research?

—On Israel as a Jewish state:

We love all nations. We are friends with the Jewish people. There are many Jews living in Iran with security. You must understand that in our constitution and our laws and the parliamentary elections for every 150,000 people we get one representative in the parliament. For the Jewish community one-fifth of this number they still get one independent representative in the parliament. Our proposal to the Palestinian plight is a humanitarian and a democratic proposal. What we say is that to solve this 60-year problem, we must allow the Palestinian people to decide about its future for itself.

—On nuclear research:

Some big powers create a monopoly over science and prevent other nations in achieving scientific development as well. This, too, is one of the surprises of our time. Some big powers do not want to see the progress of other societies and nations. They turn to thousands of reasons, make allegations, place economic sanctions to prevent other nations from developing and advancing, all resulting from their distance from human values and the teachings of the divine prophets. Regretfully, they have not been trained to serve mankind.

—On 9/11:

Why did this happen? What caused it? What conditions led to it? .. Who truly was involved? Who was really involved and put it all together?

—On executions of homosexuals in Iran:

In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country. We don't have that like in your country. ... In Iran we do not have this phenomenon. I don't know who's told you that we have this.

News that Iran froze its nuclear arms programme in 2003 only confirms the lunacy of the hawks' paranoid belligerence

[…]

There is no realpolitik in gratuitously abusing and threatening Tehran. Such belligerence weakens moderates, emboldens extremists and, in Iran's case, renders counterproductive any sanctions as might be imposed. The CIA's hamfisted backing of Ahmadinejad's opponents in his 2005 election helped hand him victory. As in recent dealings with Russia, the west's tunnel vision cannot see that foreign hostility, however justified, strengthens the domestic standing of the victim. Ahmadinejad (like Saddam before him) appears to have been reluctant fully to admit to his country its capitulation to the 2003 UN ultimatum, even if it meant breaching the nuclear treaty inspection regime. Western intelligence did not want to read this, and so ignored it.

As a result of the west's confusion, the Iranian president has been able to present himself as champion of Iranian sovereignty without losing flexibility later to develop weapons grade uranium should he choose. Under political pressure at home, he has been given a helping hand by Bush. He has made the Americans and British appear stupid.

This affair must indicate the demise of the White House in US foreign policy, and particularly of its Rasputin, Dick Cheney, who reportedly wanted the NIE suppressed. Washington is rife with rumours that Cheney's eagerness to bomb Iran met with a resignation threat from the defence secretary, Robert Gates, and a virtual mutiny from the chiefs of staff. They did not believe any proven threat merited such aggression and they could not and would not handle the military consequences. This defeat for Cheney probably emboldened the intelligence community to break cover. Intelligence has not conceded defeat to virtue, merely felt the wind of a political climate change.

Meanwhile, Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), a pro-Israel lawmaker who has opposed congressional action that could limit the administration’s Iran policy, found the change in the intelligence estimates over the past two years “troubling.”

“It makes one question which is more accurate, this one or the previous one which came to the opposite conclusion,” he said in a statement. “It makes one harken back to the flawed Iraq intelligence. It seems as if our intelligence agencies can’t make up their minds, and that is troubling.”

He added that Iran continues to “thumb its nose at the international community by enriching uranium” and warned that the U.S. should continue to push for strong sanctions on Iran.

Monitoring Agency Praises US Report, but Keeps Wary Eye on Iran [To be frank, we are more skeptical]

NY Times ^ | December 5, 2007 | ELAINE SCIOLINO

PARIS, Dec. 4 — The International Atomic Energy Agency on Tuesday publicly embraced the new American intelligence assessment stating that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons effort, but in truth the agency is taking a more cautious approach in drawing conclusions about Iran’s nuclear program.

A report last month by Mohamed ElBaradei, the international agency’s leader, was less categorical than the American finding.

The International Atomic Energy Agency says it has "outstanding issues" about Iran’s nuclear enrichment complex in Natanz.

“To be frank, we are more skeptical,” a senior official close to the agency said. “We don’t buy the American analysis 100 percent. We are not that generous with Iran.”

The official called the American assertion that Iran had “halted” its weapons program in 2003 “somewhat surprising.”

That the nuclear watchdog agency based in Vienna is sounding a somewhat tougher line than the Bush administration is surprising, given that the administration has long criticized it for not pressuring Iran hard enough to curb its nuclear program.

Only one way to prove the NIE report~

let the inspections begin!

National Review

NIE: An Abrupt About-Face

As many recognize, the latest NIE on Iran’s nuclear weapons program directly contradicts what the U.S. Intelligence Community was saying just two years previously. And it appears that this about-face was very recent. How recent?

Consider that on July 11, 2007, roughly four or so months prior to the most recent NIE’s publication, Deputy Director of Analysis Thomas Fingar gave the following testimony before the House Armed Services Committee (emphasis added):

Iran and North Korea are the states of most concern to us. The United States’ concerns about Iran are shared by many nations, including many of Iran’s neighbors. Iran is continuing to pursue uranium enrichment and has shown more interest in protracting negotiations and working to delay and diminish the impact of UNSC sanctions than in reaching an acceptable diplomatic solution. We assess that Tehran is determined to develop nuclear weapons--despite its international obligations and international pressure. This is a grave concern to the other countries in the region whose security would be threatened should Iran acquire nuclear weapons.

This paragraph appeared under the subheading: "Iran Assessed As Determined to Develop Nuclear Weapons." And the entirety of Fingar’s 22-page testimony was labeled "Information as of July 11, 2007." No part of it is consistent with the latest NIE, in which our spooks tell us Iran suspended its covert nuclear weapons program in 2003 "primarily in response to international pressure" and they "do not know whether (Iran) currently intends to develop nuclear weapons."

The inconsistencies are more troubling when we realize that, according to the Wall Street Journal, Thomas Fingar is one of the three officials who were responsible for crafting the latest NIE. The Journal cites "an intelligence source" as describing Fingar and his two colleagues as "hyper-partisan anti-Bush officials." (The New York Sun drew attention to one of Fingar’s colleagues yesterday.)

So, if it is true that Dr. Fingar played a leading role in crafting this latest NIE, then we are left with serious questions:

Why did your opinion change so drastically in just four months time?
Is the new intelligence or analysis really that good? Is it good enough to overturn your previous assessments? Or, has it never really been good enough to make a definitive assessment at all?
Did your political or ideological leanings, or your policy preferences, or those of your colleagues, influence your opinion in any way?

Many in the mainstream press have been willing to cite this latest NIE unquestioningly. Perhaps they should start asking some pointed questions. (Don’t hold your breath.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What about it Mr. Corn?

Congress should investigate this guy and get to the bottom of this.

Once again,

just like the Valerie Plame and Joeseph Wilson scam,

it all seems to be falling apart for the neo-libs as they try to blame Bush for poor reporting of the facts.

Bush - out of touch on Iran? Or willfully ignorant?

Bush is such a liar. Or is he just out to lunch on the most important issue that he faces? In October, he charged that Iran's nuclear weapons program was bringing the world to the precipice of WWIII, even though the White House had been informed at least a month earlier that Iran had no such program and had stopped efforts to develop one back in 2003.

Is it conceivable that Bush was telling the truth at his press conference on Tuesday when he stated that he only learned of the National Intelligence Estimate report, which contained that inconvenient fact, last week? Even if Bush read the NIE report, he clearly doesn't respect it, for at his press conference he said, "the NIE doesn't do anything to change my opinion about the danger Iran poses to the world - quite the contrary." Not that he has anything against the NIE, whose directors he handpicked. "I want to compliment the intelligence community for their good work. Right after the failure of intelligence in Iraq, we reformed the intelligence community."

Reformed or not, the president still feels he can ignore them. He didn't listen when the intelligence agencies told him he was wrong in claiming that Iraq had purchased yellow cake from Niger and he doesn't listen now when they tell him his alarms about Iran are without factual foundation. The difference this time around is that, because Bush is a discredited lame duck, the intelligence chiefs were a bit more forthcoming with their findings in a report that is, in part, made available to the public. The whole episode shows that our democratic system retains at least some essential checks and balances, but it is also depressing to see that, in this instance at least, the fanatical leader of a theocracy seems to have a higher regard for truth than does the president of the world's greatest experiment in representative democracy.

*****

Bush is a proven pathological liar. You know he is lying when his lips are moving.

Richardson Statement on National Intelligence Estimate on Iran

DES MOINES, IA-- New Mexico Governor and Democratic Presidential candidate Bill Richardson today released the following statement on the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran:

"This NIE tells us one of two things. Either the Bush-Cheney administration has been willfully misleading the American public on Iran's nuclear weapons capabilities or they are incompetent and were not aware of the consensus view of sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies until yesterday."

On October 17th, President Bush said: "If you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them (Iran) from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."

Governor Richardson added: "The NIE underscores what I have been saying all along. The next President will have to use diplomacy to accomplish our goals and strengthen our interests around the world. I am the only candidate, Democrat or Republican, who has served as an Ambassador. I will be ready on day one to go toe-to-toe with the toughest leaders in the world."

*****

Short, honest and to the point.

Iran Intelligence Report: Another Psychological Warfare?

Under the current administration, it is increasingly difficult to know who the enemy is, but what is certain is that the latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) is a brilliantly executed psychological warfare by way of misinformation. This dastardly plan is so devious that even the anti-war groups are jubilant at its release, and they are naively sharing its contents. Perhaps non are as enthusiastic about the report as the most powerful lobby group in America hostile to Iran.

The AIPAC was quick to announce: "Far from acquitting Iran, the NIE reveals that Tehran continues to violate the international community's calls to end the pursuit of the fuel cycle and the ability to make highly enriched uranium, concludes that Iran has utilized and has at its disposal a hidden, secret second unacknowledged, unmonitored track for enriching bomb fuel, and has engaged in a nuclear weaponization program, an assessment never before made public by the American intelligence community". "All in all, it's a clarion call for additional and continued effort to pressure Iran economically and politically to end its illicit nuclear programs”
(source JTA http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/105674.html ).

The NIE claims that ‘Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003’. This report now in circulation, and being repeated by every media outlet, and as importantly, by way of word of mouth, is giving credibility to the warmongers that Iran actually had a nuclear weapons program, with the idea that ‘repetition begets belief’. Drumming home a false message, the White House will get the justification it needs to impose further sanctions, with the idea of escalating into a war.

*****

An interesting take on the NIE.

Why the Pentagon Is Happy about the NIE

The latest National Intelligence Estimate on Iran was the final factor in a military equation that now appears to guarantee that there will be no war with Iran during the Bush Administration. It meshes with the views of the operational types at the Pentagon, who have steadfastly resisted the march to war led by some Administration hawks. The anti-war group was composed of Defense Secretary Robert Gates; Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs; and Admiral William Fallon, who oversees the U.S. forces that would have had to wage that war. In recent months, all have pushed back privately and publicly, on the wisdom of going to war with Tehran. Indeed, the Pentagon's intelligence units were instrumental in forming the NIE's conclusions.

The U.S. military contributes nine of the 16 intelligence agencies whose views are cobbled together in NIEs: the Counterintelligence Field Activity, the Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency, Army Intelligence, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the National Security Agency, and the Office of Naval Intelligence. Some critics have suggested that the military simply found a public way to quiet the drumbeat for war coming from Vice President Dick Cheney and his shrinking band of allies in the Administration.

There was no formal response from the Pentagon. It is evident, however, that the U.S. military, already strained by wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, has no appetite for a third war. That's true even if a series of strikes against nuclear and other targets inside Iran were carried out by the Air Force and Navy, the two services who have sat, somewhat frustrated, on the sidelines as the Army and Marine Corps has done the heavy lifting in the two wars now under way. Some Pentagon officials welcomed the new NIE as evidence that the intelligence community is not tied to ideology, as some critics argued was true during the buildup to the Iraq war in 2003.

*****

The fact that the illegal occupation of Iraq was started on a pack of lies means Bush (and America) has no credibility. Just another way his failures of leadership could cause real harm. Like the little boy who cried wolf he might end up costing us dearly.

U.S. In No-Win Situations

[…]

No, it is a no-win situation that is bad and can only get worse, a vicious cycle of destruction, sorrow and defeat brought about by men who know nothing of war and who knew nothing of war, but decided they knew how to run a war based on lies that they were sure would make them go down in history as great men. How foolish they were, how foolish they and their allies in both political parties, from Bush to Lieberman, to Hillary Clinton to Nancy Pelosi and the whole lot--all have betrayed the people of America, these are all people who do not value the lives of the American troops or the Iraqi or Afghani people, and who do not, and did not, value the future of our children and their own grandchildren because of what they have done to help the war and what some have not done to stop these wars and the funding of them.

Tis sad, very sad, but now, we must all pay the piper, even those who were against these wars. This reminds me of the good German, Japanese and Iraqi people who were against Hitler, Tojo and Saddam, who did what they could, but who could not stop the war machines because those in power had all the weapons and the armies to do as they wished and told the people, just as our leaders have told us, to "Go to Hell."

So, now we are in hell, and who knows if and when we'll ever get out of it.

Sam Hamod may be reached at samhamod@sbcglobal

The Podhoretz comment is actually silly in a different way than Corn suggests. After all, the accusation is not so much that the NIE was doctored, but that it was released for the preventing the president from boming Iran. That would not seem to take so many people, assuming that the information in it was actually what the intelligence agencies believed.

The really goofy part of this is the claim that this was done to undercut Bush who would only bomb Iran after becoming convinced that Iran getting the bomb was both unstoppable by diplomacy and being convinced that Iran was very close to getting the bomb. But given that the intelligence agencies do not believe Iran is close to getting the bomb, on what would Bush's conviction be based?

If the claim was that Bush would only bomb Iran if he was convinced based on solid evidence that Iran was about to get the bomb, then a plan by the spooks to derail this by claiming that Iran is not close to getting the bomb would be a ridiculous tactic since it wouldn't be likely to work.

Instead the idea makes more sense, if one considers evidence to be irrelevant. If one sees the issue as people trying to convince Bush he needs to bomb and others trying to convince him that he doesn't, then it makes a little bit of sense for someone who wants Bush to bomb to consider it cheating to try to convince Bush by actually using evidence.

And of course what as Podhoretz upset is not that the intelligence agents tried to convince Bush using evidence, something that Bush has made clear does not work with him, but rather that they have brought the evidence to the people, so Bush can be convinced that he looks like an idiot if he bombs. That is something that might work with Bush.

But the amusing bit is that Pohoretz does not seem to see that the release of the NIE being effective and the Bush administration having the information he claims it would need before bombing Iran are clearly inconsistent.