Right Claims Iran NIE a CIA Plot Against Bush
President Bush's amen corner in the conservative commentariat is apoplectic over the new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran. After all, the report's conclusion that Tehran suspended its nuclear weapons program inn 2003 knocked the legs out from their "World War III" rhetoric. And as you'd expect, the same people who helped bring you the war in Iraq are now quick to claim CIA incompetence and conspiracies are behind the new assessment.
At the head of the list of the usual suspects, of course, is Norman Podhoretz. The neo-conservative icon made the case Monday that the new NIE is part of an anti-Bush cabal at the CIA. In his piece "Dark Suspicions About the NIE," summarized the significance of the report's findings and leveled an accusation about the motivations behind them:
"[The NIE] has just dealt a serious blow to the argument some of us have been making that Iran is intent on building nuclear weapons and that neither diplomacy nor sanctions can prevent it from succeeding...
...I entertain an even darker suspicion. It is that the intelligence community, which has for some years now been leaking material calculated to undermine George W. Bush, is doing it again. This time the purpose is to head off the possibility that the President may order air strikes on the Iranian nuclear installations."
Those air strikes have no bigger cheerleader than Podhoretz. Now an advisor to Rudy Giuliani, it is Podhoretz who helps provide the world war vision to both the current and would-be next GOP occupant of the White House. His latest pro-war screed from June, "The Case for Bombing Iran," is required reading in both the Bush and Giuliani camps. In his book World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism, Podhoretz argues that with the conflict against Al Qaeda, Iraq and Iran, Sunni and Shiite, and other Islamic foes real or imagined, the next world war is already underway. As he told Newsweek:
"I decided to join Giuliani's team because his view of the war - what I call World War IV - is very close to my own," Podhoretz tells NEWSWEEK. (World War III, in his view, was the cold war.) "And also because he has the qualities of a wartime leader, including a fighting spirit and a determination to win."
Podhoretz has plenty of company among the skeptics on the right. Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, who denied his role in the Iraq war chorus he helped lead, scoffed at the "intelligence professionals" who produced the NIE document for the CIA. In his latest ragefest, "The Great Intelligence Scam," Ledeen lambasts the Agency for offering conclusions about Iran's nuclear ambitions unhappily different (for him) from its earlier 2005 assessment:
"Indeed, those 'intelligence professionals' were very happy to take off their analytical caps and gowns and put on their policy wigs...This sort of blatant unprofessionalism is as common in today's Washington as it is unworthy of a serious intel type, and I think it tells us a lot about the document itself."
Ledeen's friends at the National Review join him in the ranks of the "unbelievers." Michael Rubin plays the "blame Clinton" card, asking "If Iran was working on a nuclear weapons program until 2003, what does this say about U.S. policy in the late Clinton period and European engagement?" Victor Davis Hanson incredibly argues that the NIE presents a major quandary for Democrats, who must now acknowledge the wisdom of George W. Bush's Iraq war and its supposed elimination of two nuclear threats:
"The latest news from Iran about the supposed abandonment in 2003 of the effort to produce a Bomb - if even remotely accurate - presents somewhat of a dilemma for liberal Democrats. Are they now to suggest that Republicans have been warmongering over a nonexistent threat for partisan purposes?
After all, what critic would wish now to grant that one result of the 2003 war - aside from the real chance that Iraq can stabilize and function under the only consensual government in the region - might have been the elimination, for some time, of two growing and potentially nuclear threats to American security, quite apart from Saddam Hussein?"
Cognitive dissonance, of course, can be painful to watch. The mouthpieces of the right, confronted with an intelligence assessment so wildly at odds with their own preconceptions about the Iran of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, desperately cling to their "bomb Iran now" mantra. As for the NIE itself, at best, they claim, it was an exercise by CIA analysts hopelessly trying to "cover their derrieres" in the wake of the Iraq pre-war intelligence fiasco. At its worst, the NIE is a determined agency effort to undermine President Bush. Either way, its conclusions are tentative, made wobbly by self-acknowledged "gaps."
All of which suggests the United States may have both the time and the opportunity for a different approach towards Iran. That, of course, will not be forthcoming from President Bush and his allies. At his press conference this morning, President Bush made it clear that despite the NIE, his approach to and rhetoric towards Iran will continue unchanged:
REPORTER: Are you saying at no point while the rhetoric was escalating, as World War III was making it into conversation - at no point, nobody from your intelligence team or your administration was saying, Maybe you want to back it down a little bit?
BUSH: No - I've never - nobody ever told me that.
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I can't believe we're still taking NPod seriously. I guess nothing succeeds like failure...
Posted by Travis on December 4, 2007 2:00 PM,i>Are they now to suggest that Republicans have been warmongering over a nonexistent threat for partisan purposes?
Duh. It's their modis operandi
Posted by vman on December 4, 2007 2:08 PMWhy don't people realize that the "Intelligence Community" is not just the CIA or FBI, it is made up of like 16 different entities.
Plus they loved the Intelligence Community when it said Saddam was seeking uranium!
Posted by boot on December 4, 2007 2:26 PMI guess our intelligence is useless. Why continue to throw away more tax dollars on an intelligence agency we will never listen to anyway? (unless of course it tells us there are WMDs in Iran).
Posted by Joseph on December 4, 2007 2:43 PM"After all, what critic would wish now to grant that one result of the 2003 war - aside from the real chance that Iraq can stabilize and function under the only consensual government in the region - might have been the elimination, for some time, of two growing and potentially nuclear threats to American security, quite apart from Saddam Hussein?"
After all, what critic would wish now to grant that one result of the 2003 war might have been the restoration of the French monarchy or perhaps the discovery of oil in Georgetown.
Might have been? If these idiots spent a tenth of the time finding out the truth that they spend spinning malicious lies, imagine what might have been then.
Posted by Carl from L.A. on December 4, 2007 4:41 PMAnyone with an ounce of informed brain knows that the neocons who wanted to continue the cold war wanted a dumb president on their side. The neocons visited Texas and nurtured the ignorant moron failed businessman Governor Geo W Bush and also got the religious evangelists on their side shouting about divisive issues. Eventually non issues.
So the religious right was fooled by Karl Rove, (an atheist, btw) into supporting Bush for president against a candidate who was concerned with a wider view of where the country ought to lead.
So now we have over 3,800 of our finest citizens killed far away over there in an occupation of a country which never attacked the US or ever threatened to. It's an Un-American situation. My father who fought in WWII would be rolling in his grave if he knew that Geo W Bush took his country into invading and occupying a country which posed no threat. But that's what Bush did. The Soviet Union pointed nuclear missles at the US for decades. Greater politicians than Bush dealt with that for decades. Along comes Bush and his Neocon cabal and suddenly Iraq becomes a threat to mainland US. Just how stupid do these neocons think the average American citizen is? Answer: They think we're stupid.
There's a telling of that in that the President of the United States has still never learned how to pronounce the word "nuclear".
I think he knows. He just continues the act.
Ronald Reagan was an actor who became president but Geo W Bush is a coddled person from a famous family who flaunts his acting, imo. And I think the US and the World is sick of him
Posted by Don on December 4, 2007 7:42 PMIt seems like the entire right is on meth, or taking a real bad acid trip.
Posted by angryrat on December 5, 2007 8:02 AMEven the Nazis did not manage to distort the facts so blatantly, so openly withouth being challenged.
(And these repulsive human carrions who would spread more death and suffering should be hanged next to their Nazi counterparts.)
"They think we're stupid."
Hey, Don!
Posted by angryrat on December 5, 2007 8:04 AMObviously they are right.
Re: "I guess nothing succeeds like failure..."
How true. Just look how G.W. has managed to ensure that the US will be "needed" in Iraq indefinitely.
Bush's recent opinion that he doesn't believe the Iraq war has harmed US economy is credible, too - you just have to remember who his clients are. Not the people who allegedly elected him with their votes.
Posted by Me on February 29, 2008 11:53 AM