Posted on 12/12/2007 9:37:11 AM PST by IrishMike
I DON'T think I have ever seen anything quite so foolishly irresponsible by an American administration in the field of diplomacy as last week's release of the US National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. There is a dismaying clumsiness and stupidity about it, a kind of reckless disregard of allies and consequences, which is both bewildering and bizarre.
There are times when even the Bush administration's best friends, and this column has been among them, shake their heads in simple disbelief.
Why am I so down on this report?
There are three elements. First is what the report said. Second is the way it said it. And third, the manner of its release.
On the first question, I don't necessarily disbelieve what the report said. Nor do I necessarily believe it. The report's most contentious finding was that Iran had given up its nuclear weaponisation program in 2003. The report, which represented the consensus view of 16 US intelligence agencies, concludes with "high confidence" that Iran gave this up in 2003 and did so as a result of international pressure.
It is worth noting that in 2003 the US-led coalition, of which Australia was part, invaded Iraq. Iran was scared of the Americans then and it is not inherently implausible that Tehran did suspend its specific weapons design program.
At the moment I am in Israel and it is fair to say that the Israelis don't believe this is true. I spoke this week to Israel's Security Affairs Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, and asked him whether he thought Iran today was pursuing nuclear weapons. His answer was straightforward: "Of course."
But leaving Israeli input aside entirely, the NIE report itself says it has only "moderate confidence" that Iran has not restarted the weaponisation program.
(Excerpt) Read more at theaustralian.news.com.au ...
The NIE report was brought to you by those with liberal leanings...in other words...no clue!
If they hadn’t released it, it would have been leaked with the obligatory scandal attached.
Sadly, a great deal of what goes on within the executive branch (i.e., the “adminstration”) happens utterly independent of the desires or the initiative of the Chief Executive, who in the present case suffers from the “I’ll Try Being Nice to My Enemies” syndrome, declining to flush out of the CIA and other executive agencies those Clinton appointees and other Bush-hating Democrats that are staffing the Shadow Warrior alternative government.
Everybody with a clue understands that the NIE report was nothing more than another limp cannonball fired off in desperation by the same CIA/State cabal that produced the Plame/Wilson fiasco. Good grief! I wish there was some way to just get rid of the CIA and the State Department altogether.
The NIE...brought to you from the same “unimpeachable sources” that supplied Rather and Matalin with their “irrefutable” documentation.
Many conservatives burrowed within the Department of Justice have long complained that Gonzales (therefore, Bush) has permitted career government employees and hold-overs from Democratic Administrations to remain in perches of power and thereby water down conservative directives from the top. As one conservative and Federalist Society member in the Justice Department told me: “This is definitely not Ronald Reagan’s Justice Department, I assure you. You have holdovers from Clinton calling the shots in a lot of places here.”
- - John Gizzi from: Should Gonzales Go? Human Events ^ | March 20, 2007
bttt
Mary Matalin is a conservative Republican even if she is married to the snakehead, James Carville. There was a woman involved in the National Guard papers hoax of 2004 in cahoots with Gunga Dan, but I forget her name.
Yiu’re right. My mistake. I can’t remember the womans name off hand either. Ms. Matalins’ name came to mind.
My apologies to Ms. Matalin, should this come to her attention.
...Well...at least I wasn’t *far* off...Rathers’ co-conspirators name is Mary Mapes. <:o)
Regarding IRAN:
http://truthusa.com/a/index.php?topic=672.0
http://truthusa.com/a/index.php?topic=1296.0
http://www.truthusa.com/IRAN.html
This brings us to the second consideration: how the report was written. Almost the first thing you learn in journalism is that the lead par, the intro, is the most important part of any piece you write. It would have been possible for the NIE to present exactly the same information as it did in this report, but to do so in a way which generated the opposite headlines to those which this report generated.
The headlines around the world were that Iran is no longer a nuclear threat. Yet that is the opposite of the NIE's lengthy consideration of Iran's uranium enrichment program or indeed of its missile efforts. And it ignores the report's only moderate confidence that Iran has not recommenced actual weaponisation.
Thus, in generating headlines the opposite of its overall conclusions, the report was either written with monumental incompetence, or, much more likely, with an overtly political purpose....
Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities [NIE summary text].LINK.
“Ahmadinejad is harmless” bump
overtly political purpose....
......................................
That’s my guess.
Well, I’m sure there’s no uranium enrichment going on, either, despite those 50,000 centrifuges. Thanks Fred.
Youre bang on, but let me describe it another way. Bush is like a shepherd who refuses to run the wolves from his flock.
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