Gareth Porter reports that the NIE had the news about no Iranian nuclear weapons program over a year ago in 2006, but that Cheney and Bush fought to have it revised and kept it suppressed until after they could get summary statements of particular findings blocked in late October this year (which allows for unexamined claims of previous nuke weapons programs to remain in the NIE), being unable to shake the findings of the more independent members of the intelligence community. Apparently John Negroponte was forced out as Director of National Intelligence last year because he refused to go along with this fraudulent scheming by Bush and Cheney, and the earlier NIE also disagreed with the claim that Iran was arming Shi'i militants in Iraq.
Porter's report can be accessed at http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39978. Juan Cole today also provides lots of interesting and relevant related material on this shocking (if not ultimately surprising) set of lies and manipulations by Bush and Cheney.
Do I recall that in the not too distant past the Congress was running amuk to impeach a sitting President because he had been thought to have lied about something? I guess f---ing around with an intern is far more serious than f---ing with the lives of 4,000 American soldiers, 100s of thousands of Iraqis and virtually the wealth of the nation.
ReplyDeleteAnd then lieing about every aspect of the deed.
Well, I think that this piece of outrageous lying with all the warmongering that has accompanied it has been about as impeachable as anything these guys have pulled. After all, there was belief in the presence of at least chemical weapons in Iraq by most intel agencies, although without delivery systems such things do not count for much as a threat to the US national security.
ReplyDeleteConsider this aspect of this ugly piece of lying. A major reason our relations with Russia are lousy right now has been our hard push to violate agreements with them by building bases in Poland and the Czech Republic, strongly opposed by the locals in the latter, although not the government, and not all that strongly supported in the former, for the purpose of basing our still-nonexistent anti-missile defense system, ostensibly to defend Europe against Iranian nuclear attacks. This massively stupid drive, alienating allies as well as really pissing off the Russians, who just pulled out of the conventional arms agreement signed in the late 1980s because of this, is bringing about a revival of the Cold War over a total nothing lie. This screwup is beginning to outdo the one they pulled with Korea.
Barkley
Based on George W's press conference yesterday, I can understand why it took him and Cheney a whole year to find a pony in the NIE Report that they can saddle up and ride into the sunset of their terms.
ReplyDeleteUnsurprisingly there have been further developments. So, in WaPo this morning, David Ignatius had a column in which he reported that apparently that it was during this past summer that a huge amount of confirming evidence came in both by humint and sigint confirming that the Iranian program had ended in 2003. Juan Cole speculates that ultimately behind the pushback against Cheney and his gangster/plumbers was supported by two admirals, William Fallon, the current CENTCOM commander, and Michael Mullen, the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. When he was confirmed, Fallon has been quoted as saying that he and the military were "going to put the crazies back into the box." They may have succeeded.
ReplyDeleteAlso, careful reading of Porter's piece suggests that the original fight over the NIE starting last year was over "dissents." So, in 2006 the view that Iran did not have a nuclear weapons program was a dissent, and Cheney and crew were trying to remove even this hint of a dissent. Ironically their assinine efforts delayed the report to the point where this year the dissent became the overwhelming majority, no longer able to be held back. Hah!
Barkley
Given the fury with which the Neo-Cons responded to what would seem to be excellent news all around you are tempted (and in the case of the Norman Pod deeply so) to simply claim that they are blind to reality. But they aren't. You have one faction centered around Cheney and the Kagans who are simply out for American Empire. Then you have another group centered around the various Pods and including Perle who see Hezbollah and hence Hezbollah's sponsors Syria and Iran as existential threats to Israel. And then you have people like Ledeen who careen in between.
ReplyDeleteOf the two groups the Cheney people are the most dangerous, they seem willing to commit America to Perma-war simply because they can. (In retrospect the Roman Empire seemed successful and peaceful but this was only true if you were away from the frontiers, the Roman Army as a whole hardly ever was in a position where they were not fighting and dying somewhere. Emperor Cheney seems okay with duplicating that 'peaceful success'.)
On the other hand the Pod People are not delusional as such. They may exaggerate the actual threat posed by Hezbollah and holding a rather odd formulation of American National Security interests as starting and stopping at protecting Israel, but at least Hezbollah is real.
Wheras Cheney just wants to get his war on before it is too late (which it now may be).
Barkley, what's your opinion of Steven Cohen's writings on the end of the Soviet Union and events since, e.g. U.S. continuance of the cold war under other labels?
ReplyDeleteGeorge W's reaction to the NIA reminds me of the obnoxious guy incessantly snapping his fingers in a restaurant when finally an annoyed customer asked:
ReplyDelete"Why are you doing that?"
Snapper: "Why to keep the elephants away."
Customer: "But there are no elephants here."
Snapper: "Yeh, effective, isn't it?"
juan,
ReplyDeleteI have not read any Cohen for some time, so do not know his more recent line(s). I would say that there were/are factions in both the US and Russia who have never been keen on giving up the Cold War. However, especially in the wake of 9/11/01 and with Russia still fighting Muslim separatists in Chechnya, the semi-Cold War faded, and there was a period of friendlier relations and even some cooperation on military and intel matters, I think. This tended to fade after the US invaded Iraq, and has contiuued to go the other way as one issue after another has arisen to where we do seem to be back into at least a semi-Cold War state.
I note that in today's WaPo, John Bolten was trying to minimize the NIE report on Iran. He argues that Iran is sending out disinformation, that there are contradictions in the report, that we do not know everything in it because much of the supporting material is classified (although I would lay odds most of that supports the conclusion rather than the opposite), and the people putting it together were a bunch of wimpy refugees from the State Department who don't know a War Against Terror when they step on one. Of coures, besides being a major cheerleader of the disastrous war in Iraq, Bolten was also a main player in the Cheney-Rumsfeld canning of the Clinton agreement with North Korea, which I have discussed in another post still up on this blog. It was getting him out of the State Department, along with firing Rumsfeld, which cleared the way for the more reasonable recent negotiations over Korea, although Bolten is reportedly gnashing his teeth over that one as well as this NIE.
Barkley