I Am Not A Crook — Dubby has a Nixon moment

There always comes a moment … a solid, palpable, knickers-wetting, eye-bulging moment … when you know lightning has struck, you just didn’t see it; you hear reports about the blinding flash, you smell the ozone lingering in the air but there’s no doubt it occurred — you can feel it, oh yes you can — you can feel it raise your hackles, you can feel it shake the foundations, you can feel everything change around you in the nervous tick of an eye. George W. Bush had such a moment yesterday — and so did we.

If there was a more satisfying moment of Neo-Confoundment in the last seven years, I can’t think of it. And we’ve been waiting for it — Lord, we’ve been praying for it. But that doesn’t make it any less ugly, now that its arrived, any less pathetic or disturbing, especially with the Dubby gone stiff and wild-eyed.

Still, it’s our moment when the sticks and stones DID break the bones of ignorance. Think of it as a parting gift from the Centaur, with Pluto and Jupiter making their way through those last teeth-rattling degree’s of Sagittarius and conjuncting with truth. And he ain’t done yet, kids — he’s like Santa, just delivering the first of what he’s got in that bag.

A honkin’ big collection of articles and links today — as you’d expect. Some made me laugh, including the last … that’s a good thing, humor — we’ve still got our humanity.

Now it’s time to reclaim it.

Jude

Seven Days in December?
MAUREEN DOWD, NYT
December 5, 2007

WASHINGTON - At the White House news conference yesterday, The Chicago Tribune’s Mark Silva gingerly snuck up on a state-of-mind question.

“I can’t help but read your body language this morning, Mr. President,” he said. “You seem somehow dispirited, somewhat dispirited.”

W. did look like a kid who’d just had his toys taken away. But he acted humorously exasperated, as he always does when the talk turns introspective.

“This is like, all of a sudden, it’s like Psychology 101, you know?” he said, as reporters laughed.

The reporters pressed on about whether the president was troubled about a possible “credibility gap” with the American people, given that the facts had failed him on Iraq and Iran and that Harry Reid had charged that “the president is not leveling with the American people” on war spending.

Even though Norman Podhoretz is conjuring up a “Seven Days in December” spy thriller scenario in which the intelligence agencies colluded to sabotage the president and prevent him from the noble mission of air strikes on Iran, W. insisted he felt “pretty good about life.”

He said that the breathtaking and embarrassing reversal in the National Intelligence Estimate about Iran’s nuclear capability — from “high confidence” in 2005 that the mullahs were developing a nuke to “high confidence” that they stopped the program in 2003 — somehow made it clear that he was right.

If W. can shape the intelligence to match his faith-based beliefs, as with Iraq, then he will believe the intelligence — no matter how incredible it is.

If he can’t shape it to match his beliefs, as with Iran, then he will disregard the intelligence — no matter how credible it is.

Even though Sy Hersh claims that the top echelon of the White House has long known of the conclusion that Iran had stopped its nuke program, and that Dick Cheney “has kept his foot on the neck of that report,” the president says he was briefed on it only last week.

Others conspiratorially speculate that the president had to have green-lighted the report to take the air out of the hawks’ Iran push.

Just because the facts on which he based his white-hot rhetoric about Iran possibly sparking World War III have been debunked, W. said with his usual twisted logic, why should his policy change?

Indeed, John Bolton, who must have been paying attention in his Psych 101 class, argued to Wolf Blitzer that the intelligence analysts “got Iraq wrong and they’re overcompensating by understating the potential threat from Iran.”

George Tenet helped hawks like Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bolton overstate the case on Iraq W.M.D. Then, when things went wrong, W., Cheney and Condi made Mr. Tenet the fall guy.

After getting Iraq wrong and Iran wrong in 2005 and almost every other big thing wrong since the nation began spending billions every year on intelligence, the burned spooks may not have wanted to play the patsy again while W., Cheney and the neocons beat the drums for an Iran invasion.

Now the apple-polishing George Tenet is gone. The man who oversaw the new estimate is Tom Fingar, a former State Department intelligence officer who was smart and brave enough to object to the cooked-up intelligence on Iraqi W.M.D.

“The way they used to do business was to write estimates in a way that couched things so they said, ‘We may not always be right, but we’re never wrong,’ ” said Tim Weiner, the reporter for The Times who wrote the award-winning history of the C.I.A., “Legacy of Ashes.” “This is a slam-dunk reversal, admitting error. Now, when they play poker, they show their hands to each other, so they don’t get another curveball.”

The president, who has shut out reality for seven years, justified continuing in his world of ideological illusion by saying that he would not be “blinded” to the realities of the world.

You can’t get more Orwellian than that.

“And so,” W. concluded triumphantly, and nonsensically, “kind of Psychology 101 ain’t working.”

W. loves to act as though psychology is voodoo even though his whole misbegotten foreign policy has been conducted from his gut, by checking the body language of his inner circle and looking into the hearts and souls of dictatorial leaders.

If I were looking at the latest fiasco from a Psych 101 point of view, I’d say it was another daddy issue for W.

Poppy Bush, who was once C.I.A. director, loved the agency and liked to sign notes: “Head Spook.” The C.I.A. headquarters bear his name.

W., by contrast, has voiced contempt for the intelligence community. In 2004, he dismissed a pessimistic National Intelligence Estimate that didn’t match his sunny vision of the Iraq occupation, saying that the analysts were “just guessing as to what the conditions might be like.”

When W.’s history is written, he will be seen as the rebellious teenager crashing the family station wagon into his father’s three most cherished spots — diplomacy, intelligence and the Gulf. ++

The eyes of a madman
Look into Bush’s eyes and then be afraid, be very afraid
Doug Thompson, Capital Hill Blue
December 5, 2007

Hunters know all too well the look that spilled out of our television sets like political diarrhea Tuesday: The look of a cornered animal, the most dangerous time to face a desperate predator.

You saw it in the eyes of George W. Bush, America’s too-often discredited President, caught in yet another lie.

Faced with a damning National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that destroyed his outlandish claims of a threat of World War III from Iran, Bush did what he always does - dug in and faced down his pursuers with bluster, anger and defiance.

But I watched his eyes as they darted back and forth during his press conference at the White House. As a hunter, I’ve seen that look before - at the moment I’ve faced a hunted animal and must make the decision to kill or be killed.

The George W. Bush that faced reporters and the television cameras Tuesday was a cornered, dangerous predator, determined to fight back until the bitter end even as time, and escape routes, run out.

Time may be running out for Bush’s Presidency but America’s most discredited and distrusted leader still has more than a year left in office and that is too much time given his long, sordid record of high crimes against the Constitution, the American people, and the world.

George W. Bush is no less than a traitor to his country. He is a man without honor, a leader without conscience and a human being without a shred of decency or humanity. He is a despot who considers himself above the law and a President who considers the Constitution he swore to uphold to be just “a goddamned piece of paper.”

Yes, I know, no one has come forward publicly to confirm that meeting in 2005 where we reported Bush uttered those words but I trust the people who gave me the information and no one in the White House, Congress or the Republican Party has denied or publicly disputed the story. I believe he said it and I believe his actions have proven, many times over, that he holds that level of disrespect for the document upon which this nation was founded.

Bush is, I believe, a war criminal, a leader who invaded a nation that posed no immediate threat to the United States and lied to Congress, the American people and the world community to justify his illegal and immoral actions.

War criminals are, first and foremost, mass murderers and Bush’s reprehensible actions have resulted in the deaths of not only close to 3,900 American men and women in uniform but also in thousands upon thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians.

His actions have killed more Americans than Osama bin Laden, damaged our relations with allies and destroyed our credibility at home and abroad.

He wants, more than anything, to invade Iran before his term is up. Even now, with his ludicrous claims of a nuclear threat from that nation destroyed by his own intelligence community, he sticks to his saber-rattling rhetoric.

Watch replays of his press conference from Tuesday.

Watch his face, his actions and his body language.

Most of all look at his eyes.

They are the eyes of a cornered dangerous animal.

They are the eyes of a madman. ++

Seymour Hersh: Bush Admin. Has Known About Iran Intel For Year
Talking Points Memo

Seymour Hersh appeared on CNN’s Situation Room and discussed his previous reporting for the New Yorker on U.S. intelligence showing that evidence of an ongoing Iran nuclear program was “inconclusive”:

Youtube of Blitzer and Hersch

From Hersh’s November 27, 2006 piece in the New Yorker:

The Administration’s planning for a military attack on Iran was made far more complicated earlier this fall by a highly classified draft assessment by the C.I.A. challenging the White House’s assumptions about how close Iran might be to building a nuclear bomb. The C.I.A. found no conclusive evidence, as yet, of a secret Iranian nuclear-weapons program running parallel to the civilian operations that Iran has declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency. (The C.I.A. declined to comment on this story.)

The C.I.A.’s analysis, which has been circulated to other agencies for comment, was based on technical intelligence collected by overhead satellites, and on other empirical evidence, such as measurements of the radioactivity of water samples and smoke plumes from factories and power plants. Additional data have been gathered, intelligence sources told me, by high-tech (and highly classified) radioactivity-detection devices that clandestine American and Israeli agents placed near suspected nuclear-weapons facilities inside Iran in the past year or so. No significant amounts of radioactivity were found.

A current senior intelligence official confirmed the existence of the C.I.A. analysis, and told me that the White House had been hostile to it. The White House’s dismissal of the C.I.A. findings on Iran is widely known in the intelligence community. Cheney and his aides discounted the assessment, the former senior intelligence official said. “They’re not looking for a smoking gun,” the official added, referring to specific intelligence about Iranian nuclear planning. “They’re looking for the degree of comfort level they think they need to accomplish the mission.” The Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency also challenged the C.I.A.’s analysis. “The D.I.A. is fighting the agency’s conclusions, and disputing its approach,” the former senior intelligence official said. Bush and Cheney, he added, can try to prevent the C.I.A. assessment from being incorporated into a forthcoming National Intelligence Estimate on Iranian nuclear capabilities, “but they can’t stop the agency from putting it out for comment inside the intelligence community.” The C.I.A. assessment warned the White House that it would be a mistake to conclude that the failure to find a secret nuclear-weapons program in Iran merely meant that the Iranians had done a good job of hiding it. The former senior intelligence official noted that at the height of the Cold War the Soviets were equally skilled at deception and misdirection, yet the American intelligence community was readily able to unravel the details of their long-range-missile and nuclear-weapons programs. But some in the White House, including in Cheney’s office, had made just such an assumption—that “the lack of evidence means they must have it,” the former official said. ++

Neck-Snapping Spin From the President
Dan Froomkin, WaPo
Tuesday, December 4, 2007

[open link for complete coverage]

By concluding that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program four years ago, the national intelligence estimate released yesterday undermined a key element of President Bush’s foreign policy. It raised questions about whether the president and vice president knowingly misled the public about the danger posed by Iran. And it added to Bush’s profound credibility problems with the American people and the international community.

But to hear Bush talk about it at the White House press conference this morning, the new NIE vindicated his beliefs and makes his warnings about Iran more potent.

It was neck-snapping spin even by Bush standards. He intentionally misread the report’s central point, failed to acknowledge a huge change in his argument for why Iran is dangerous and exhibited pure bullheaded stubbornness.

When Chicago Tribune reporter Mark Silva noted that Bush appeared dispirited and asked if he was troubled about what this would do to his credibility, Bush replied: “No, I’m feeling pretty spirited, pretty good about life, and have made the decision to come before you so I can explain the NIE. And I have said Iran is dangerous, and the NIE doesn’t do anything to change my opinion about the danger Iran poses to the world. Quite the contrary. I’m using this NIE as an opportunity to continue to rally our colleagues and allies. . . .

“And so, you know, kind of Psychology 101 ain’t working. It’s just not working, you know? I am — I understand the issues. I clearly see the problems and I’m going to use the NIE to continue to rally the international community for the sake of peace.”

Yesterday’s report came as something as a shock to the general public. Bush and Vice President Cheney have long asserted that Iran was actively seeking nuclear weapons, and Cheney, in particular, had been accelerating what some observers saw as a drumbeat for war. But the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies didn’t come to their conclusion overnight. In fact, this NIE had been in the works for 18 months, during which some of its authors were reportedly harried by Cheney for not being sufficiently hawkish.

So what did Bush know and when did he know it? ++

Bush Grasp of Reality Tenuous
Juan Cole, Informed Comment
Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Farideh Farhi, at our group blog, Global Affairs, says she listened to Bush’s press conference on Tuesday — which was full of implausible statements — and now wants to know what George W. Bush has been smoking. Uh, I don’t think that substance is typically smoked so much as snorted. Or maybe his current favorite is just a stong bottle of beer.

The Los Angeles Times notes a controversy over what the president knew and when he knew it:

‘Seven weeks ago, Bush said that in the interest of “avoiding World War III” Iran should be prevented from gaining the knowledge needed to make a nuclear weapon. That was roughly two months after J. Michael McConnell, the director of national intelligence, reported to Bush that he had “some new information” about Iran.

“He didn’t tell me what the information was; he did tell me it was going to take awhile to analyze,” the president said. He said he was not briefed on the report until last week, and that in the interim no one had suggested that he tone down his language.

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, expressed incredulity that Bush, “who gets briefed every morning, who is fixated on Iran,” had not sought details of the new assessment after learning of it in August.

“I can’t believe that,” he said in a phone call with reporters. ‘

Washington insiders say that Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell would certainly have been kept in the loop by the analysts producing this NIE. McConnell briefs Bush and said this summer he had new evidence coming in.

At his press conference Bush reverted to his old ploy of declaring people and things dangerous even when there is no objective measure of such things. He used to say that Saddam Hussein had been “dangerous” even when it was discovered that Saddam had no chemical, biological or nuclear research facilities. Now Iran is intrinsically dangerous, regardless of whether it has a weapons program or not. Does anyone still believe this sort of essentializing and fear-mongering?

Bush’s circle is like a medieval court with scheming courtiers. His subordinates apparently routinely do things that he doesn’t (and the other courtiers don’t) know about until later. Take for instance when then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered the Iraqi army dissolved, with Bush only discovering it afterwards.

My guess is that Admiral William J. Fallon, the CENTCOM commander now, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, may well have cooperated with figures in the intelligence world to get this report written and some of it released, especially since Congress had mandated that it be completed and its findings conveyed to them by a date certain.

Gareth Porter reported that

‘A source who met privately with Fallon around the time of his confirmation hearing and who insists on anonymity quoted Fallon as saying that an attack on Iran “will not happen on my watch”. Asked how he could be sure, the source says, Fallon replied, “You know what choices I have. I’m a professional.” Fallon said that he was not alone, according to the source, adding, “There are several of us trying to put the crazies back in the box.” ‘

Mullen has worried that the way the US military is bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq will prevent Washington from replying decisively to any other foe or crisis.

Snow Bush with some occasional hints that the NIE has some new findings, sure that he won’t bother to ask for details or read any actual document (he seldom does), then you could spring this thing on the Cheneyites and blindside them.

Cheney clearly was making a push for war on Iran this fall. The real puzzle is how the NIE got past his team of plumbers, which still informally includes convicted perjurer Scooter Libby. That’s why I say there was moxie behind this NIE, of the sort an admiral has, or better two admirals. ++

Bush Is in Denial on Iran
John Mashek, US News
December 04, 2007

Once again the Bush administration and the president himself have been trapped in an intelligence snafu of major proportions. And they are in total denial.

Bush must have taken a course-”Turning Defeat Into Victory”-at Yale or the Harvard Business School. Rather than admit that the Bush inner circle had erroneously tried to frighten citizens over Iran’s nuclear program, the president said nothing had really changed.

He even had the temerity, at his press conference, to warn Congress about a “gap in intelligence” if it did not renew authority for the National Intelligence Estimate by next February. The gaps in intelligence have already been demonstrated with the fiasco in Iraq.

Bush was dancing all around the Iranian issue to try to avoid any blame for scaring the nation about a potential World War III as recently as October.

The president, Vice President Cheney, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have repeatedly been warning about Iran’s ability to make a nuclear weapon.

Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser, compounded Bush’s problems the day before with rope-a-dope moves that Muhammad Ali would admire.

Hadley’s message: Admit nothing.

There is no doubt Iran is led by a tinhorn dictator with some crazy ideas about the past and present.

But he does not have a nuclear program and hasn’t had one for four years.

Bush even claimed that the latest NIE estimate was “a warning signal,” ignoring altogether the essence of the report.

The international community will not take this report lightly. The attempt to isolate Iran from the world with sanctions has been damaged. But Bush refuses to believe it in his stubborn way. ++

Giuliani Advisor Podhoretz: It’s a CIA Plot to Protect Iran
Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo
12.04.07

Yep, Rudy’s Mideast Advisor Norman Podhoretz says the CIA is fibbing about the Iranian nuclear program to protect the Iranians from an attack by Bush or Rudy.

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. As the intelligence community must know, if he were to do so, it would be as a last resort, only after it had become undeniable that neither negotiations nor sanctions could prevent Iran from getting the bomb, and only after being convinced that it was very close to succeeding. How better, then, to stop Bush in his tracks than by telling him and the world that such pressures have already been effective and that keeping them up could well bring about “a halt to Iran’s entire nuclear weapons program”-especially if the negotiations and sanctions were combined with a goodly dose of appeasement or, in the NIE’s own euphemistic formulation, “with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways.” ++

Iran Has No Nukes, Bush White House Proves Yet Again It Has No Credibility
[VIDEO]
Adam Howard, AlterNet
December 4, 2007

In the video to your right, David Shuster gives his report on the latest information to come out of the NIE on Iran’s lack of nuclear capabilities which they knew about but Cheney’s office kept trying to delay being released to the public. Rachel Maddow of Air America weighs in on the latest spin. “There must be steam coming out of Dick Cheney’s ears right now,” suggests Shuster. Check out the video … for more.++

Wingnuts See Great Patriotic War With Iran Slip Away, Experience 5 Stages of
Grief
Blue Texan, FireDogLake
Tuesday December 4, 2007

These are truly sad and confused times for the right-wing. “How can we call the Democrats Chamberlains if there’s no Nazi Germany?!” they’re wondering.

Their reaction to the Iran story was classic Kubler-Ross.

DENIAL: “Given the poor performance of the U.S. Intelligence Community (”IC”) in drafting previous NIE’s, we should review the IC’s work with a skeptical eye–no matter what conclusions are drawn,” insisted The Weekly Standard

ANGER: “This latest front page news story is an insult to every American or freedom loving person that has even average intelligence. The New York Times ate up every mendacious morsel … jihad lovers,” hissed Atlas Juggs.

BARGAINING: “…the report offers no reason to be less concerned about the likelihood that Iran will possess nuclear weapons in the near future, and no reason to doubt that our own willingness to take military action is one of the factors that will influence decision-making in Tehran,” suggested Powertools.

DEPRESSION: “No matter what the reason, you can bet the media and the Democrats (but I repeat myself) will spin this as more proof of the administrations disingenuousness when it comes to WMD issues,” complained Ace of Spades.

ACCEPTANCE: “The bar for bombing Iran has not only not been met yet, but that it’s arguably moving farther away,” sighed Jonah Goldberg. ++

Bush Explains Why Pearl Harbor Was Justified
Cenk Uygur, HuffPo
December 5, 2007

“I view this report as a warning signal that they had the program, they halted the program. The reason why it’s a warning signal is they could restart it.”

– George W. Bush

This is George Bush talking about Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons program. He explains that a National Intelligence Estimate that says they have no program is a warning that they might have one. Obviously this has to win some sort of award for circular reasoning (come on, how ridiculous is it that he says the fact they don’t have one proves they might have one later), but there is one other problem.

Couldn’t this apply to almost any country in the world? Is President Bush really claiming the fact that someone could start a nuclear weapon program at any time is justification for threatening them, including keeping military attacks against that country on the table?

Couldn’t the Philippines start a nuclear weapons program at any time? How about Canada? How about the dangerous folks in Botswana?

How could the fact that someone has ended their nuclear weapons program years ago be justification for attacking them because they might restart it? Can Bush really believe the things that he says?

And if he does believe this absurdity, then wasn’t Japan justified in attacking us in Pearl Harbor?

They heard that we had a nuclear weapons program - and we did. And that we might be able to start it any time - which was relatively true. And that if we had nuclear weapons, we might use them against Japan one day - which obviously proved to be true. So, they launched a pre-emptive strike against the United States because we had a nuclear weapons program they feared we might use against them at a later time.

Under the Bush doctrine, isn’t Pearl Harbor the perfect case for using a pre-emptive first strike? Japan was rightfully concerned about our weapons program and they rightfully struck us first.

Of course, the only problem with that theory is that there is an excellent chance we would have never used those nuclear weapons against Japan if they hadn’t attacked us first. Gee, I wonder if this could be a decent argument against pre-emptive strikes.

Isn’t it absurdly ironic that the country that suffered one of the most infamous pre-emptive strikes in history and called it “a day that will live in infamy” is now arguing for pre-emptive strikes across the world?

It’s amazing to me that the so-called Bush doctrine has been considered a legitimate theory on foreign policy for this long. It is a doctrine for aggressive, first strike wars. According to Nuremberg, it is the highest war crime (they called it “the supreme international crime”).

And one we specifically suffered in World War II. How has it been taken seriously for this long? It is an abomination posing as legitimate foreign policy.

For the record, our listener, Lexpix from Australia, was the first to suggest the Pearl Harbor analogy to me. So if there is any credit for this analogy, it should go to him first. If there is any discredit for it, it should go to me for publishing it. ++

Did Gates Force Bush to Release a Humiliating NIE?
Scarecrow, FireDogLake
Tuesday December 4, 2007

Despite the best efforts of the Administration and their now demoralized neocon supporters to put a positive spin on the new NIE, including the President’s evasions at this morning’s presser, the most plausible explanation for the NIE’s complete reversal of its 2005 findings is that enough adults in the Pentagon finally told the Bush/Cheney White House to knock off the war talk on Iran. And they did it knowing that the NIE would likely destroy the Administration’s last remaining credibility.

What is yet to be uncovered is how forceful that message must have been to force the regime to expose its own duplicity and incompetence. It’s now clear that publishing the NIE’s key judgments has essentially torpedoed whatever remaining credibility the Administration still had with the Europeans and Russians, with Putin now saying “I told you so.” The Administration would have known months ago this hit on their credibility would result, and yet they released this NIE. I doubt it occurred willingly.

This Administration doesn’t admit mistakes or knowingly humiliate itself, so I’m guessing they were forced to humble themselves by someone willing to go to the mat to get this NIE out. Bush 41’s grownups used the Iraq Study Group to try to rescue Bush 43 from his own policies, and they failed. I suspect only Bob Gate’s Pentagon seniors could have pulled this off, and only by threatening to resign. Was there another Comey/Ashcroft event?

Admiral Fallon and others have been outspoken in recent months in their opposition to another war. The Army and Marines are stretched dangerously thin in Iraq and Afghanistan, and worried about Pakistan. When the senior Generals warned Congress we had no reserves for a serious contingency, and then Pakistan’s nukes became vulnerable, the message must have sunk in. But how did they actually force the regime to humiliate itself?

It is almost impossible to read the NIE as anything other than a stunning confession. The NIE tells us, in effect, that the Bush/Cheney regime has been systematically lying about the threat posed by Iran and could easily have misled a frightened Congress (recall, Lieberman-Kyl) and the country into yet another unwarranted and disastrous war.

Even if one accepts the dubious cover story that new intelligence only recently changed the intelligence community’s prior judgments — Bush said today he only got a heads up in August — it’s an admission that the Bush/Cheney regime, which has firmly controlled every facet of US intelligence since 2003, was dangerously incompetent in analyzing the intelligence information it had before and even more dangerous in threatening war over its unsupported claims. Stephen Hadley’s cover performance yesterday, and Bush’s presser today, only confirmed that the United States still has a disingenuous and dysfunctional national security team.

The neocons have shown an astounding ability to keep their heads from exploding. They’re frantically inventing explanations for the fact that what they adamantly called night is now judged with high confidence to be day. As Attaturk noted this morning, Norman Podhoretz says that no one should trust the folks who write these NIEs, because those CIA spooks are always trying to shaft Bush/Cheney, except when Cheney’s minions fix the facts to fit the policy and are in charge of the NIE, as they still were in 2005. If that’s the neocon’s best argument for being misled by the regime that’s been in charge of the entire intelligence community since 2003, they can have it.

Despite Podhoretz, the emerging neocon delusion assumes the latest NIE is correct, but that it proves that Bush/Cheney were correct to lie us into a war with Iraq, since that crazy act of invading a country that posed no threat to America convinced the Iranians to abandon their previous nuclear weapons program for fear the Bush/Cheney crazies would attack them too. Apart from how appalling this admission is and what it says to the families of 3880 dead and 28,000 wounded US troops — plus a decimated Iraq– there seem to be some minor glitches with this notion:

(1) If the Bush/Cheney crazies would fabricate intelligence to justify regime change in Iraq, even though Saddam had abandoned his WMD programs, they would be equally capable of doing the same thing to impose regime change on Iran;

(2) So the Iranians would not gain anything from actually abandoning their program because of Iraq, while being coy about it and stalling IAEA inspectors, increasing risks of giving the Bush/Cheney crazies cover to attack.

(3) We’re asked to believe that the Bush/Cheney regime remained silent about their huge strategic success in intimidating Iran, while perceptions of their abject failure in Iraq and Afghanistan were allowed to tank the Bush Presidency and the Republican Party.

We shouldn’t waste any time trying to convince the neocons that they’ve been had by their own regime, a regime that has now exposed the neocons as dangerous lunatics. They’re a lost cause. But the American people should have no trouble recognizing that the Bush/Cheney regime is the most incompetent, dishonest and dangerous we’ve ever had, and we can’t be rid of them soon enough. ++

Nuclear Meltdown
We’re not going to bomb Iran.
Fred Kaplan, Slate
Monday, Dec. 3, 2007

If there was ever a possibility that President George W. Bush would drop bombs on Iran, the chances have now shrunk to nearly zero.

In one of the most dramatic National Intelligence Estimates ever, the 16 agencies of the U.S. intelligence community concluded today “with high confidence” that Iran “halted its nuclear weapons” four years ago, in the fall of 2003.

The NIE, which was released this afternoon, also judges “with moderate confidence” that Iran won’t be “technically capable” of producing enough materials for an atom bomb-much less the bomb itself-until 2010-15 or possibly later.

The report also concedes that Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear-weapons program “suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005.”

It was in 2005 that the intelligence agencies released their first, more alarming NIE, which concluded that Iran was determined to develop nuclear weapons despite international pressure.

The new report-which incorporates intelligence information as recent as Oct. 31, 2007-now finds evidence to the contrary.

President Bush and the administration’s hawkish faction, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, can take some solace from the new intelligence estimate. For instance, the NIE states, again “with high confidence,” that until the fall of 2003, the Iranians were developing nuclear weapons. It also notes that they are continuing civilian work “related to uranium conversion and enrichment.” Most significant, perhaps, it concludes that the Iranians halted their weapons program “primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure resulting from exposure of Iran’s previously undeclared nuclear work.”

But one implication of this last assessment is that Iran’s leaders are not so hermetic-that, as the NIE puts it, “Iran may be more vulnerable to influence on the issues than we judged previously.” The Bush administration’s campaign of pressure-the smart sanctions that it imposed and rallied other nations to join-appears to have had an effect. By the same token, inducements might spur further progress.

The NIE is strikingly explicit on this point:

Our assessment that Iran halted the program in 2003 primarily in response to international pressure indicates Tehran’s decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic, and military costs. This, in turn, suggests that some combination of threats of intensified international scrutiny and pressure, along with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways, might-if perceived by Iran’s leaders as credible-prompt Tehran to extend the current halt to its nuclear weapons program. [Emphasis added.]

The report grants, “It is difficult to specify what such a combination might be.” But the point is this: The chiefs of the U.S. intelligence community are recommending a mix of pressure and diplomacy-sticks and carrots-as the best way to keep the A-bomb out of Iranian hands.

A little context is necessary to understand this report’s full significance.

For the past two years, various factions in the Bush administration have engaged in internecine skirmishes over how to deal with the anticipation of an Iranian atom bomb. Cheney and his associates are the prominent hawks, in favor of stepping up the pressure and, if the time comes, attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities, perhaps pre-emptively. President Bush has sometimes seemed to take this side, at least rhetorically, as when he said recently that failure to keep Iran from gaining the ability to build A-bombs could trigger “World War III.”

Opposing this faction is . well, nearly every other agency and high-ranking official that deals with national-security policy. And ever since Robert Gates replaced Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense one year ago, the pro-diplomacy wing has grown increasingly outspoken.

In his confirmation hearings, Gates was asked by Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., whether he favored attacking Iran. Gates replied that he did not, adding, “We have seen in Iraq that when war is unleashed, it becomes unpredictable.”

Earlier this month, in an interview with the Financial Times, Adm. William Fallon, commander of U.S. Central Command, said, when asked about an attack on Iran, “Another war is just not where we want to go.”

A week later, Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when asked the same question, replied, “I would never take the military option off the table,” but noted that this “doesn’t mean it would be used,” adding, “Diplomacy is very important.”

Finally, Maj. Gen. James Simmons, an Army deputy corps commander in Iraq, said, during a press briefing in Baghdad, that the Iranians seem to be keeping to their “initiatives and their commitments” to stop the flow of IEDs into Iraq.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has pushed for diplomacy over confrontation, when it comes to Iran, ever since she took the job at the start of Bush’s second term.

And now, with today’s NIE, we see the entire U.S. intelligence community not only, in effect, coming down on the side of the doves but concluding that the threat animating the hawks doesn’t even exist.

There is another caveat here. At his confirmation hearings last year, Gates pledged to be independent and to give the president his unvarnished advice. “But,” he emphasized, “there is still only one president of the United States, and he will make the final decision.”

In other words (and many people make a mistake in neglecting this fact), Bush really is “the decider.” Then again, in previous disputes within the administration, especially over decisions on Iraq, the dissenters have caved or been outmaneuvered. This time, on Iran, the leaders of the State Department, the Defense Department, the military command, and now the intelligence community are on public record as downplaying the wisdom of war-and, with today’s NIE, disputing the rationale for even considering war.

Skeptics of war have rarely been so legitimized. Vice President Cheney has never been so isolated. If Bush were to order an attack under these circumstances, he would risk a major eruption in the chain of command, even a constitutional crisis, among many other crises. It seems extremely unlikely that even he would do that. ++

Did an Iranian Spy Clear Tehran of Nuclear Ambitions?
Juan Cole, Informed Comment
12/04/2007

The new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran says that Iran did have a nuclear weapons research program until early 2003, but then dismantled it. See Farideh Farhi’s excellent discussion of this development at our joint Global Affairs weblog.

There is now a high level of confidence that Iran is no longer seeking nuclear weapons.

This finding reverses numerous statements of George W. Bush to the effect that Iran is frantically trying to get a nuke.

So what convinced the US intelligence community that Iran’s weapons program was long ago dismantled?

A prominent Iran specialist is suggesting on a private email list that very likely, it is explained by one name: Ali Reza Asghari.

Asghari had been head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon in the 1980s. He is someone who knows where all the bodies are buried with regard to Iranian covert operations, from involvement in the 1983 attack on the Marines in Beirut, to the training of the Badr Corps (now back in Iraq) and any Iran links to the Mahdi Army. Likewise he was allegedly privy to information on Iran’s nuclear research. He rose to be deputy minister of defense. It is alleged that around 2003 he was recruited by a foreign intelligence agency (very likely that of Turkey) as a spy. The Iranian authorities may have gotten wise to him in late 2006, forcing him abruptly to flee to Istanbul in early 2007.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat said around the same time:

“According to anonymous officials who spoke to the Turkish newspaper, ‘Millet’, the Turkish intelligence and police had discovered that Asghari was opposed to the Iranian government and that he holds information regarding its nuclear plan.”

Some press accounts say that Asghari was able to bring actual documents out with him about Iran’s nuclear program.

So if the Iranians were doing some weapons experiments in 2002 (which itself is not proved), why did they stop?

1. The anti-government Mojahedin-e Khalq terrorist organization, which Saddam Hussein had given a base in Iraq, was able to discover the nuclear research facility at Natanz and to pass information about it not only to Saddam but also to the US. Anything weapons-related was then obviously open to being bombed, and the government may have decided that keeping such experiments covert was too difficult and the possibility of its enemies bombing them too likely, to continue.

2. Having seen what international economic sanctions did to Iraq, reducing it to a fourth world country, the Iranians were afraid of sanctions once Natanz became known. (Gareth Porter suggests that the decision to negotiate with the Europeans was the turning point.)

3. As the US rushed to war against Saddam, Iran’s rulers saw an opportunity for a grand alliance with Washington, and they knew that one quid pro quo would be giving up any ambitions to become a nuclear state.

Thus, the Iranian government’s decision to drop the experiments at Natanz were probably prompted by a combination of discouragement about the likelihood they could be kept secret and an ambition to do what Libya later did and reposition itself in a less adversarial posture toward Washington.

The Iranians must have been astonished when Dick Cheney shot down their overtures.

Some speculate that Asghari also had information about a secret Syrian missile site, leading to the Israeli strike on it in September.

If the decisive evidence for the lack of any nuclear weapons program in Iran was the documents Asghari spirited out when he defected last winter, then the US intelligence community has had this information for at least 6 months.

So why has the Bush administration continued to rattle sabers at Iran all this time.

Why was Cheney conspiring with Neoconservatives on his staff to convince Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to attack the Natanz facilities, in hopes Iran would over-react and give Bush and Cheney a pretext for doing regime change in Tehran?

Why did the Bushies keep leaking to prominent journalist Seymour Hersh the story that Cheney was planning an attack on Iran?

Why did Bush go so far as to say that World War III could only be prevented if Iran was denied the knowledge of how to enrich uranium?

Cheney and Bush have probably known since at least April that Iran has no weapons program.

I can only speculate, of course. But I believe that Bush and Cheney want regime change in Tehran. Being oil men, they are very well aware that petroleum switched over in the late 1990s to being a seller’s market. There was a danger of China doing proprietary deals with Iran (and Iraq and others) that would ultimately deny the US access to the Gulf oil and gas bonanza.

If Iran learns how to close the fuel cycle, it could always make a bomb fairly quickly if it thought that the US was planning an invasion. (If you use centrifuges to enrich to 5% for fuel, you could theoretically keep feeding the uranium back through them to enrich to 80% for a bomb).

In short, regime change by force becomes impossible if Iran has the knowledge of how to make a bomb. And if you can’t do regime change by force, you might well not be able to forestall a new Iran-China economic and military axis, in which the US increasingly risks being cut out of the petroleum not only in Iran but in the Oil Gulf more generally.

So from a hawkish Cheney point of view, it is irrelevant whether Iran has a weapons program. It cannot be allowed to develop enrichment capabilities even for civilian purposes.

If China found a way to monopolize Gulf petroleum, the US could be reduced to a third rate power during the next century. That’s why Bushco invaded Iraq, and it is why they keep the pressure on Iran. They want to ability to maneuver and to use conventional force if necessary to secure US energy security.

So although the NIE makes it less likely that Cheney can get his way on attacking Iran in the next 12 months, as Fred Kaplan rightly argues, the new finding only postpones the crisis.

Ominously, whereas the Los Angeles Times leads this story with “Iran has no nuke program, U.S. intel says,” the hawkish Washington Postleads with “Iran Is Judged 10 Years From Nuclear Bomb.” The WaPo diction (for which poor Dafna Linzer is almost certainly not responsible) implies facts not in evidence. Iran cannot be 10 years away from a bomb if it has no weapons program. It would have to constitute a weapons program and then it would be X years from having a bomb. But the WaPo way of putting it is going to dominate the debate from here on in. Cheney may yet have his way, down the road, by inspiring younger hawks. ++

Links:

Debunking Iran’s Nuclear Program: Another ‘Intelligence Failure’ — On the Part of the Press?
Greg Mitchell, Editor and Publisher

Iraqi WMD redux: The release of the NIE throwing cold water on oft-repeated claims of a rampant Iranian nuclear weapons program has chastened public officials and policymakers who have promoted this line for years. But many in the media have made these same claims, often extravagantly.

Enough Spin Already: Bush and Cheney Lied, Iran Didn’t
Tony Hendra, Smirking Chimp
Dec 4 2007

“Assessment Jars a Foreign Policy Debate About Iran.” Assessment? Jars? Debate? Excuse me?

Here’s Gramma Pelosi this morning: “The NIE illustrates the effectiveness of international monitoring and targeted sanctions to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.” Effectiveness? Targeted? Proliferation? Excuse me?

President Butch and his Vice Resident clear the air?
Ed Kociela, Smirking Chimp
Dec 5 2007

Is there enough evidence now, Ms. Pelosi, to proceed with impeachment against the president and vice president?

I mean, these two have finally given it up to the world, which now knows how screwed up they are in the brain when President Butch says it doesn’t matter that we’ve known for four years that Iran has no nuclear capabilities, we should still consider a pre-emptive strike to make sure it never gets them. Huh?

Post NIE-tal Thoughts…Congressional Medals of Honor, Journalistic Testicles, Impeachment Urgency and Pelosi’s Treason.
Rob Kall, OpEdNews
December 5, 2007

and one last tickle of an article

Kim Jong-Il Kicks Iran out of Axis of Evil, Calling it ‘Not Evil Enough’
Andy Borowitz, HuffPo
December 4, 2007

One day after a National Intelligence Estimate revealed that Iran halted its nuclear arms program in 2003, North Korean president Kim Jong-Il ejected Iran from the Axis of Evil, calling them “not evil enough.”

A visibly furious Kim called a press conference in Pyongyang today to excoriate the Iranians as “evildoer wannabes” and “pussies.”

“I can’t tell you how many times Mahmoud Ahmadinejad looked me in the eye, told me he was developing nuclear weapons, and cackled like a madman,” Kim said. “That man does not deserve to cackle.”

Kim added that when Iran was admitted into the Axis of Evil in 2002, “they knew the rules: no nukes, no membership.”

The National Intelligence Estimate, Kim said, showed that Iran was not holding up their end of the bargain: “They said they were enriching uranium and all the while they were going all Libya on my ass.”

In the first step towards formally removing Iran from the evil organization, the North Korean strongman said he was “un-inviting” Mr. Ahmadinejad from the Axis of Evil’s winter golf outing in Scottsdale Arizona.

In a terse statement from Mr. Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president said he would agree not to attend the outing but wanted his deposit back.

As for who would take Iran’s place in the Axis of Evil, Kim said there was no shortage of candidates: “Right now we’re looking at Venezuela, Syria, and Rupert Murdoch.”

Elsewhere, natural honey is a more effective remedy for children’s coughs than over-the-counter medicines, according to a study commissioned by the National Association of Bees. ++

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

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