See Bush Squirm, Iran Edition
04 December 2007 11:00 am by Taylor Marsh
See Bush Squirm, Iran Edition updated
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Classic conspiracy theory from Rudy’s man 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. 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.”
Norm shouldn’t worry. After all, AIPAC has their man back at the Administration so nothing will change, because these guys don’t care about facts. Oh, and guess what Wolfie’s job will be. He’ll be advising Condi on — wait for it — WMDs.
Insert laugh track here, except it’s not funny. Could they find two more incalculably incompetent people to pair together than Condi and Wolfie?
Reader Borg Warner has a great Hot Topics post. David Gregory blames the blogs! Now I like Gregory, especially compared to Tim Russert, but BW is absolutely right in his post. Check it out.
Reader BMerry is on a roll in Hot Topics as well. Two in depth posts, including links “Obama’s second-hand ’smoke’” and another beauty here. Lots of information in these posts.
We’ll be talking about Iran today.
Lots to talk about. I’ll also have a story you won’t want to miss.
Hope you can join me.
UPDATE II: A Jerusalem Post article says the NIE means nothing. It will be business as usual against Iran. I’m shocked. (**snark alert**)
UPDATE: From Harper’s:
Is this true? That will be a subject for further study. But one highly reliable intelligence community source I consulted immediately after Hadley spoke answered my question this way: “This is absolutely absurd. The NIE has been in substantially the form in which it was finally submitted for more than six months. The White House, and particularly Vice President Cheney, used every trick in the book to stop it from being finalized and issued. There was no last minute breakthrough that caused the issuance of the assessment.” So what, I asked, if not an intelligence breakthrough, what caused the last-minute change and the sudden issuance of the summary of the NIE? My source had no idea. He speculated, however, that a hardening of attitudes within the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the intelligence community, and in Israel against the plans for an air war in Iran had caused Cheney and his team to fold their cards. “But I’d leave that with a final note of caution,” the source added, “Cheney sometimes appears to give up, but he’s a tenacious son-of-a-bitch. He may very well be back at it tomorrow.”
