Reagan pretended that he had no idea that members of his staff sold weaponry to Tehran. Everyone, even Republicans, giggled at this pronouncement, since the image of so clueless a president tied in with the rumors of his Alzheimer's. Saturday Night Live did a memorable sketch which explored the proposition that Reagan, in public, only pretended to be a dullard -- behind the scenes, he was a fast-talking, multi-lingual master manipulator.
Now we have the stomach-churning spectacle of George Bush trying to convince the planet that he had no idea that Iran's nuclear program was suspended in 2003. He mintained this ignorance in the face of tentative (now formal) conclusions offered by a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which the adinistration tried to block.
Once again, we must wonder if Bush is a genuine fool or merely playing one on TV.
I feel certain only of one conclusion: Pressure to rewrite the NIE came from Cheney's office, as we learned last month. Regardless of the president's state of nescience, Dick drives Iran policy.
Joe Biden's response:
“Are you telling me a president who is briefed every single morning, who is fixated on Iran, is not told back in August that the tentative conclusion of 16 intelligence agencies in the United States government said they had abandoned their effort for a nuclear weapon in ’03?”Larisa Alexandrovna's response to Joe Biden:
Because the person getting briefed for real is Dick Cheney, while Bush is likely being told stories of good vs. evil as he plays President.I'm not convinced that this assessment is true. Some earlier stories have indicated that W has obstructed Darth's plans to let the bombs fly. (I'm not sure that that assessment is true either.)
The main question really should not be when did Bush know that what he was saying about Iran was a lie, although that is still an important question. The main question should be when was Dick Cheney briefed? And more important still, were the two men briefed together and if not, were their briefings the same?
What really intrigues me is the view from the right -- that is, from the guys who really, really want to see Iran turned into glowing green vapor stew. How do they propose to explain away that pesky NIE report?
Turns out they know better than the American itelligence community does. Here's NewsMax:
A highly controversial, 150 page National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran’s nuclear programs was coordinated and written by former State Department political and intelligence analysts — not by more seasoned members of the U.S. intelligence community, Newsmax has learned.This is a scream. The term "State Department intelligence analyst" could include the folks at CIA, which is, after all, part of the State Department. Recall that when the "seasoned" pros in Doug Feith's propaganda shop told fib after fib, NewsMax did not offer a word of protest. But it gets better:
Newsmax sources in Tehran believe that Washington has fallen for “a deliberate disinformation campaign” cooked up by the Revolutionary Guards, who laundered fake information and fed it to the United States through Revolutionary Guards intelligence officers posing as senior diplomats in Europe.Riiiiight. As though NewsMax has really reliable sources within the Revolutionary Guards.
And now a word from that lovable funboy, Norman Podhoretz:
But 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.Call this the "evil librul spook" theory.
Finally, Ha'aretz:
The Americans have no understanding of what is really happening in Iran's nuclear program. They have no solid information, they have no high-level agents and they have nothing more than a mix of guesswork and chatter.Yeah, those lads at CIA and DIA and the other American intelligence agencies are all dumber than a sack of doorknobs. Ha'aretz is way ahead of all of them. But does the Israeli newspaper have any contradictory evidence of its own? Er...not really:
On one level, this is a philosophical debate: How should the lack of "indicative signs" be interpreted, in the face of a devious enemy, a certified cheat who is determined in his pursuit of the goal (also according to the intelligence assessors). The suspicious Bush and Cheney believe the absence of evidence is in fact evidence of the existence of an additional, hidden channel of nuclear development.Anyone else remember that early Brian De Palma classic, Phantom of the Paradise? In one scene, a prison warden explains his plan to remove all of the prisoners' teeth: "Teeth are a potential source of infection, and it is better to be safe than sorry."
4 comments:
If you take the Wayback Express to 2003, you can re-read Sy Hersh's reportage about the many and varied intel ops inside Iran, some of which included commandos installing bugs and monitoring devices. Sy's thesis: whatever they're doing, we know what it is. Subtext: Iranians can read English. Less than a year later, Secretary of State Colin Powell, wearing an armored vest while in some African disaster area, answered a guy with a mic, who asked him, "Do you think Israel should bomb Iran?" Powell replied: "Do I think Israel should bomb Iran? No, I don't think Israel should bomb Iran as long as Iran is willing to give up its puruit of nuclear weapons", or he said something that means the same thing. And the US refusal to meet with Iranian negotiators back then was the last way to insure that Iran would remember its place.
This current stuff is more junk news designed to get sympathy for the CIA. Watch your back.
Real people hear the news only one way: a drone says blah blah and introduces a speech major in the field who repeats the drone's blah blah and then we hear a clip of the star, usually the POTUS, whose voice is arresting because you never know when it will be announcing a nuclear or nukyerlar strike, plus you've heard the voice so much, it's like family. Whatever he says you believe even if you know it's a lie or hate him.
My Iranian-American Muslim US citizen friend (son of one of the Shah's finance ministers) said matter-of-factly that Iran wants nukes to use against its own people. Meaning, to threaten to use until they have 300-channel cable TV and edible pizza. Didn't South Africa have nukes? Who were they afraid of? Russia? Red China? Antarctica?
At the press conference starring Dana Perino she answered a question by saying that it wouldn't strike her as unusual if Cheney was informed a week before Bush. The question was about a briefing two weeks ago that Cheney attended but Bush skipped or wasn't invited to. It was all the way down in the situation room after all.
And we should hope that the State Department is handling the intelligence. They have a better track record than other agencies.
It's actually "Teeth are a source of infection; and it pays to be on the safe side."
The CIA is not part of the State Department. To the contrary, the State Dept. has its own intelligence and/or analysis people, apart from the dozen or so alphabet soup intel groups in the rest of the government.
....sofla
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