Bipartisanship on the NIE

Who says the Left and Right don't agree?

The NIE finding that Iran discontinued its nuclear weapons program in 2003 brought two divergent voices together within 48 hours to acknowledge that Bush-Cheney have exaggerated the Iranian threat to scare the bejesus out of people... well, those of us still gullible enough to believe the warmongering.

From the Right, Pat Buchanan (with emphasis):

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BLITZER: What do you make of this new intelligence estimate that Iran actually froze or suspended, stopped its nuclear weapons program four years ago?

BUCHANAN: This is a horrendous indictment of the Bush administration, of the Bush intelligence community. The president of the United States and Mr. Cheney have really created almost hysteria in this country where half the country thinks we will have to smash Iran because they're building nuclear weapons. The question, Wolf, is when after 2005 when the intelligence community said that Iran was driving towards nuclear weapons, when did the community come to believe that they had stopped in 2003? Did the president know this when he is talking about a nuclear holocaust and World War III?? If he did, what does that say about the president of the United States? If he didn't, what does that say about the intelligence community?

BLITZER: Sy Hersh was writing about this new estimate a year ago.

BUCHANAN: Certainly then Mr. Negroponte and the head of the CIA certainly have got is to [start] walking into the president and saying, Mr. President, a lot of the community now believes and we're getting more evidence of this that they shut the program down and if they told the president that, how could the president talk about a nuclear holocaust and World War III and have the whole country and half the country believing we have to attack Iran.

Also, Wolf, look at the republican candidates. Many of them have been saying we may have to use tactical atom weapons. Look at Hillary Clinton. She's for that Kyl resolution which authorizes virtually the president to attack Iran. The whole political community in this country looks like it's doing the same thing we did when we went into Iraq without justification.

From the Left, Crooks and Liars, a Countdown special comment from Keith Olbermann... excerpt from the transcript at C&L (with emphasis):

We have either a president who is too dishonest to restrain himself from invoking World War Three about Iran at least six weeks after he had to have known that the analogy would be fantastic, irresponsible hyperbole — or we have a president too transcendently stupid not to have asked — at what now appears to have been a series of opportunities to do so — whether the fairy tales he either created or was fed, were still even remotely plausible.

A pathological presidential liar, or an idiot-in-chief. It is the nightmare scenario of political science fiction: A critical juncture in our history and, contained in either answer, a president manifestly unfit to serve, and behind him in the vice presidency: an unapologetic war-monger who has long been seeing a world visible only to himself.

After Ms Perino’s announcement from the White House late last night, the timeline is inescapable and clear now.

In August, the President was told by his hand-picked Major Domo of intelligence, Mike McConnell, a flinty, high-strung-looking, worrying-warrior who will always see more clouds than silver linings, that what “everybody thought” about Iran might be, in essence, crap.

Yet on October 17th the President said of Iran and its president, Ahmadinejad:

“I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge to make a nuclear weapon.”

And as he said that, Mr. Bush knew that at bare minimum there was a strong chance that his rhetoric was nothing more than words with which to scare the Iranians.

Or was it, sir, to scare the Americans?

Now that's some bipartisanship!

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Pushback against the NIE on Iran

UPDATED AFTER THE BREAK

Over the past five days, the pushback against the NIE findings would amuse of it weren't such an indictment of our rotting press corpse compounded by the tragic consequences of a rogue presidency, Bushie's neocon sweeties, and the Repub intel committees that let the preznut run amok.

The usual wingnuts -- certifiable Bushwackos who ultimately make million$ reaching millions with erroneous infotainment news and opinion -- have lined up to discredit the NIE, the most unpoliticized and authoritative intelligence assessment on Iran in years. The mission: Protect their precious ideology and the worst president in U.S. history who continues to hype the Iranian threat. Ergo, trash the NIE, Democrats, the IAEA, ElBaradei, Europeans, and Bill Clinton to persuade people their Dear Leader's foreign policy isn't a national security train wreck.

A sampling of this week's propaganda about the NIE:

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* Steve Benen's Fox News roundup, a thorough report on Tuesday's contentious talking points from the Bushwacko Right.

* Crooks and Liars alerts us to the alleged CIA plot to subvert the Bush Doctrine authored by the head psychotic of the neocon ward, Norman Podhoretz, also foreign policy advisor to Rudy Giuliani. More in-depth details here.

* ThinkProgess dares to go where I prefer not to tread without galoshes for my keyboard ...further deconstruction of Podhoretz' reaction to the NIE. "He insisted the Iranians were very close to developing a nuclear weapon" and likens negotiating with Iran to the same effect that "Munich had with Hitler." See the TP Update for a creative conspiracy theory: It's a plot to affect the elections! Ooga booga!

* Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson leads us through the twisted minds of neocons gone ballistic.

* Emptywheel reveals John Bolton's warped history, one caveat of which was featured in a Dec. 6 Washington Post editorial, The Flaws In the Iran Report. More pushback on the IC's new sourcing rules used for the NIE. Plus, a nifty NIE timeline so you can keep track of who boosted what and lied when.

* Katrina vanden Heuvel at The Nation takes The Post's Al Kamen to the woodshed for his "snarky" hit job on the IAEA's Director General Mohamed ElBaradei and his remarks about the NIE. The quote with ouch from Katrina: "Maybe Kamen and his paper should set aside some time to reflect on how dead wrong they were in blasting ElBaradei on his Iraq assessment." Self-awareness dips low at the WaPo's editorial page so mendacity abounds.

* Bolton on CNN without a disclaimer... shameless. How can CNN advertise itself as "the most trusted name in news" and grant air time to an untrustworthy neocon kook? Dec. 4:

BOLTON: Well, I think it's potentially wrong. But I would also say many of the people who wrote this are former State Department employees who, during their career at the State Department, never gave much attention to the threat of the Iranian program. Now they are writing as members of the intelligence community, the same opinions that they have had four and five years ago.

BLITZER: President Bush says he has confidence in this new NIE, and he says they revamped the intelligence community after the blunders involving weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He says there's a whole new community out there and he has total confidence in what the national intelligence director is doing.

BOLTON: Well, I have to say I don't. I think there's a very real risk here that the intelligence community is like generals fighting the last war. They got Iraq wrong and they're overcompensating by understating the potential threat from Iran.

* More Bolton lunacy on Iran. See and hear him live raving at YouTube -- Dec. 4 on O'Reilly's spinathon in defense of Bush's Iranian warmongering despite the NIE -- Dec. 4 on CNN when Bolton slammed the NIE (excerpts above) -- his desire in August to attack Iran within six months -- earlier in June more warmongering against Iran for arming the Taliban (whom Shiite Iran hates) in Afghanistan -- and earlier in May, Bolton "hoped" that Iran would withdraw from the NPT or to expel IAEA inspectors. Bolton either requires medication for his delusions or he's a stone-cold sociopath. Take your pick.

* Tom Friedman's brain gasping like a hooked brook trout flopped from its cranium to lunge at parody -- an Iranian NIE on America -- that implicitly trivialized the American NIE on Iran:

As you’ll recall, in the wake of 9/11, we were extremely concerned that the U.S. would develop a covert program to end its addiction to oil, which would be the greatest threat to Iranian national security. In fact, after Bush’s 2006 State of the Union, in which he decried America’s oil addiction, we had “high confidence” that a comprehensive U.S. clean energy policy would emerge. We were wrong.

Stephen Colbert has absolutely nothing to fear.

* Michael Ledeen of the spin tank, the American Enterprise Institute, christens the NIE, The Great Intelligence Scam, at Pajamas Media. I decline to link to his scurrilous dreck so click here for excerpt and the link.

* Where's the ooey-gooey fudge factor with a wingnut center? NRO always delivers the goodies:

[1] 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?

[2] Are [Democrats] now to suggest that Republicans have been warmongering over a nonexistent threat for partisan purposes? But to advance that belief is also to concede that Iran, like Libya, likely came to a conjecture (around say early spring 2003?) that it was not wise for regimes to conceal WMD programs, given the unpredictable, but lethal American military reaction.

[3] Two years ago, the [Intelligence Community] — the same IC that claimed to have detailed information about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, that famously missed the boat on al-Qaeda, and that has had at least two spy networks inside Iran rolled up in the past couple of decades — told us it was all but certain that Iran was “determined to develop nuclear weapons.” [Ed. translation: They were wrong then so they're wrong now.]

[4] What the NIE does not explain — what no one has explained — is why the world’s third-largest exporter of oil and gas needs nuclear power.... ...It’s no secret that careerists at the CIA and State have been less interested in implementing the president’s policies on Iran, Iraq, and North Korea than in sabotaging them at every opportunity. Sources close to the intelligence community question the objectivity of the NIE’s Iran conclusions, and tell us that three principal authors of the report are longtime critics of the administration’s policy who have axes to grind.

[5] The attitude among many people — like say, John Edwards — is that we dodged a bullet with this NIE. But that's only true if this NIE is right. Indeed, as a matter of national security, it seems to me one could make the case that it would be better for the NIE to be wrong the other way. That is to say, if the NIE is wrong, better it be wrong on the side of caution. Which would you rather: An NIE that says Iran isn't pursuing nuclear weapons when it really is? Or, an NIE that says Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons when it really isn't? How you answer that question probably says a lot about how you view foreign policy generally.

The last chewy nugget from Jonah Goldberg seems to justify dishonesty, the kind that led to Operation FUBAR in Iraq. Yes, such distorted morality shrieks loudly about one's foreign policy view.

I'm certain plenty more pushback against the NIE on Iran skips merrily along to a polka beat but I've got to stop delving at this point. My head hurts from propaganda overload.

Can't wait for what Lil' Tim (who's hosting Rudy!) and the roundtables of the Sunday funnies have to say. Serious talk about the success of the Bush Doctrine could upstage the key findings in the NIE. Wanna bet?

Know of other NIE wingnuttery? Leave your picks in Comments. I'll post an update.

UPDATE: Digby (with a h/t to Josh Marshall) noted "the administration was changing its focus from WMD to Iranian influence in Iraq as a justification for the war they insisted must be waged." Summing up, Digby writes (with emphasis):

It seemed obvious to me that the Iran obsessives were working hard to build a case that even if Iran didn't have the bomb, it had declared war on the US by killing our soldiers in Iraq and we had to start bombing them post-haste anyway. Kyl-Lieberman was clearly designed to further that goal, no matter what Clinton and others say about it now.

Their problem seems to be that The Man Called Petraeus's surge has resulted in a decline in violence and urgency about Iraq --- and they couldn't hold back the NIE any longer. (It would have leaked before long with all this warmongering going on.) They finally had to admit that they couldn't get this defective casus bellis off the assembly line.

They knew. A whole bunch of them knew, even that nutcase Ledeen.

Which makes the pushback the empty rhetoric of gnashing teeth.

There's more: "Pushback against the NIE on Iran" >>

Inside the NIE on Iran

Earlier I wrote that the latest NIE reminded me of Saddam's missing WMDs, David Kay's admission -- "we were all wrong" -- and how the Bush-Cheney WH hyped the nuclear threat of Iraq and more recently Iran. I figure when Bush or Cheney say something, it has to be wrong. But:

Thankfully, adults with conscience from 16 agencies dared to contradict the wrong-headed warmongering of the WH with their NIE findings about Iran.

And, once again, the IAEA and its director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, were right.

The front page headline of today's Washington Post explained what made the difference in this NIE, Lessons of Iraq Aided Intelligence on Iran. Better late than never. But don't think for one minute the lessons would have helped if Repubs still controlled the congressional intelligence committees, a point I explored in my previous post.

A few grafs from the WaPo's story:

[Keeping reading...]

The starkly different view of Iran's nuclear program that emerged from U.S. spy agencies this week was the product of a surge in clandestine intelligence-gathering in Iran as well as radical changes in the way the intelligence community analyzes information.

Drawing lessons from the intelligence debacle over supposed Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell required agencies to consult more sources and to say to a larger intelligence community audience precisely what they know and how they know it -- and to acknowledge, to a degree previously unheard of, what they do not know....

...The new report upended years of previous assessments by asserting that the Islamic republic halted the weapons side of its nuclear program in 2003. The report, while expressing concern about Iran's rapidly growing civilian nuclear energy program, contradicted assertions by top Bush administration officials and previous intelligence assessments that Iran has been bent on acquiring nuclear weapons.

"The new report brings the U.S. intelligence community in line with what the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] and several European governments were saying years ago," said David Albright, a former United Nations weapons inspector and president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security.

In 2005, the CIA formed the Iran Operations Division that "brought analysts and clandestine collectors together to search for hard evidence."

Communications intercepts of Iranian nuclear officials and a stolen Iranian laptop containing diagrams related to the development of a nuclear warhead for missiles both yielded valuable evidence about Iran's nuclear past as well as its decision in 2003 to suspend the weapons side of its program....

...The report also reflects what several officials described yesterday as a new willingness by the intelligence community to analyze intentions in addition to capabilities. While Iran has the scientific, technical and industrial capacity to make nuclear weapons, including knowledge of how to enrich uranium to a level usable in bombs, the new intelligence collected through intercepted communications raised doubts about Iran's intended use of the technology.

The following passage piqued my interest since the Natanz plant in Iran had been mentioned as a potential "bunker-busting" bomb target of U.S. contingency attack plans. As it turns out, DNI offcials demanded...

...a broader array of intelligence sources, including news accounts and other "open sources" that traditionally had carried little weight inside intelligence agencies. In the case of Iran, critical information was gleaned from non-clandestine sources, such as news photographs taken in 2005 depicting the inner workings of one of Iran's uranium enrichment plants, an official said.

Those photos helped persuade analysts that the Natanz plant was suited to making low-enriched uranium for nuclear energy but not the highly enriched uranium needed for bombs.

Go read the article, which covers more details than I've quoted. As always, buckle up and don on your skeptical spectacles when reading inside the Beltway reporting.

For refreshing candor and intel expertise, check Larry Johnson who offers insights into Bush's lie about when he learned Iran had shut down its nuclear program. Johnson also examines the NIE and how the "NIC stepped up and refused to budge despite repeated efforts by Dick Cheney and his minions to gut the effort."

Score one for the home team.

There's more: "Inside the NIE on Iran" >>

First Iraq and now Iran

I'll never forget watching U.S. weapons inspector David Kay testify that his team had found no WMDs in Iraq.

The latest NIE on Iran's lack of nuclear capability reminded me of Kay's poignant admission, "It turns out that we were all wrong." Thankfully, adults with conscience from 16 agencies dared to contradict the wrong-headed warmongering of the WH with their NIE findings about Iran.

And, once again, the IAEA and its director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, were right.

Rewind to Aug. 23, 2006, when the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) then chaired by loyal Bushie Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) issued a report, Recognizing Iran as a Strategic Threat: An Intelligence Challenge for the United States [PDF].

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Responding to the House committee brief, U.N. inspectors denounced portions of the report as "outrageous and dishonest." The Washington Post, Sept. 14, 2006:

Officials of the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency said in a letter that the report contained some "erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated statements." The letter, signed by a senior director at the agency, was addressed to Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, which issued the report. A copy was hand-delivered to Gregory L. Schulte, the U.S. ambassador to the IAEA in Vienna.

The IAEA openly clashed with the Bush administration on pre-war assessments of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Relations all but collapsed when the agency revealed that the White House had based some allegations about an Iraqi nuclear program on forged documents.

You remember the Niger yellow cake uranium forgeries that led to the 16 words in Bush's 2003 SOTU, right? We still don't know who forged those docs and for what reason... although one can speculate that a nuclear threat would thwart opposition to preemptive military action against Iraq. Sound familiar?

After no such weapons were found in Iraq, the IAEA came under additional criticism for taking a cautious approach on Iran, which the White House says is trying to build nuclear weapons in secret. At one point, the administration orchestrated a campaign to remove the IAEA's director general, Mohamed ElBaradei. It failed, and he won the Nobel Peace Prize last year.

Yesterday's letter, a copy of which was provided to The Washington Post, was the first time the IAEA has publicly disputed U.S. allegations about its Iran investigation. The agency noted five major errors in the committee's 29-page report, which said Iran's nuclear capabilities are more advanced than either the IAEA or U.S. intelligence has shown.

Among the committee's assertions is that Iran is producing weapons-grade uranium at its facility in the town of Natanz. The IAEA called that "incorrect," noting that weapons-grade uranium is enriched to a level of 90 percent or more. Iran has enriched uranium to 3.5 percent under IAEA monitoring.

When the congressional report was released last month, Hoekstra said his intent was "to help increase the American public's understanding of Iran as a threat." Spokesman Jamal Ware said yesterday that Hoekstra will respond to the IAEA letter.

Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.), a committee member, said the report was "clearly not prepared in a manner that we can rely on." He agreed to send it to the full committee for review, but the Republicans decided to make it public before then, he said in an interview.

The report was never voted on or discussed by the full committee. Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the vice chairman, told Democratic colleagues in a private e-mail that the report "took a number of analytical shortcuts that present the Iran threat as more dire -- and the Intelligence Community's assessments as more certain -- than they are."

Privately, several intelligence officials said the committee report included at least a dozen claims that were either demonstrably wrong or impossible to substantiate. Hoekstra's office said the report was reviewed by the office of John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence.

Negroponte's spokesman, John Callahan, said in a statement that his office "reviewed the report and provided its response to the committee on July 24, '06." He did not say whether it had approved or challenged any of the claims about Iran's capabilities.

"This is like prewar Iraq all over again," said David Albright, a former nuclear inspector who is president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security. "You have an Iranian nuclear threat that is spun up, using bad information that's cherry-picked and a report that trashes the inspectors."

The committee report, written by a single Republican staffer with a hard-line position on Iran, chastised the CIA and other agencies for not providing evidence to back assertions that Iran is building nuclear weapons.

What? How dare our intel agencies refuse to fabricate a slam dunk on Iran for the preznut and the veep. They will never get a Presidential Medal of Freedom with that attitude.

It concluded that the lack of intelligence made it impossible to support talks with Tehran. Democrats on the committee saw it as an attempt from within conservative Republican circles to undermine Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who has agreed to talk with the Iranians under certain conditions.

The report's author, Fredrick Fleitz, is a onetime CIA officer and special assistant to John R. Bolton, the administration's former point man on Iran at the State Department. Bolton, who is now ambassador to the United Nations, had been highly influential during President Bush's first term in drawing up a tough policy that rejected talks with Tehran.

Among the allegations in Fleitz's Iran report is that ElBaradei removed a senior inspector from the Iran investigation because he raised "concerns about Iranian deception regarding its nuclear program." The agency said the inspector has not been removed.

A suggestion that ElBaradei had an "unstated" policy that prevented inspectors from telling the truth about Iran's program was particularly "outrageous and dishonest," according to the IAEA letter, which was signed by Vilmos Cserveny, the IAEA's director for external affairs and a former Hungarian ambassador.

A copy of the 2006 IAEA letter as a PDF is here.

To describe the 2006 committee report as flawed would be a gross understatement. The trumped-up handiwork of the Administration's neocon handmaidens served to bolster the WH case to use military force against another member of the "axis of evil." Cheney had already boasted about Iran's "fairly robust new nuclear program" on Imus in the Morning just hours before Bush's inaugural in January 2005. And we know how Bushies work -- the WH claims thus, and then magically... Presto! Documents (and media reports) appear to lend credence to their pronouncements. Before Democrats won majority control over congressional committees, Hoekstra in the House and Pat Roberts (R-KS) in the Senate "vetted" intel for WH lies assertions like the strategic threat that Iran posed to U.S. interests.

What's available to remedy the damage done to U.S. foreign affairs and get back on track? Unfortunately, our rotting press corpse has to cooperate. Today, John Bolton appeared as CNN's NIE contrarian spreading his wacky neocon scaremongering throughout the afternoon. Laughing John Bolton out of D.C. and never permitting him access to a government job or official would be a good step, but don't hold your breath against the neocon revolving door. Impeaching Cheney would be a giant leap for mankind, but too many door-stoppers would halt a Senate indictment or trial if H.R. 799 miraculously revived and passed. Michigan and Kansas voters ought to kick servile Hoekstra and coverup Roberts out on their asses in '08 -- a possibility for Roberts; Hoestra, I dunno. Fleitz can flip burgers; he knows how to take orders. Negroponte, now deputy secretary at State, has already been contained via lecondel. And Iran? Bush remains... undaunted by the NIE to put it politely.

Our best remedy is electing a Democratic president who knows how to use diplomacy, sending a positive signal to Tehran in persuading Iranians to relinquish development of nuclear weapons. You don't think Mitt, Rudy, Huck or Fred can do that, do you?

Repubs have proven they know nuthin' about diplomacy. Or conducting war, which Iraq has revealed so miserably. The neocon dream articulated in the Bush Doctrine has shattered American foreign policy -- our goodwill, blood, and treasure spent. When have the neocons been right?

It's a very useful rule of thumb in foreign affairs to simply assume that the neocons are wrong no matter what, because they are always wrong about everything. That is not to say that all conservatives are wrong about everything, and neocons merge with the more traditional hard line hawk faction just often enough that it gets confusing.

I suspect we will hearing a lot more confusing rhetoric about the worth of the NIE. What's clear to me is Bush's and Cheney's bellicosity towards Iran's non-existent nuclear weapons program has been, to refrain David Kay, all wrong.

And for goodness sake, when the ElBaradei speaks, dammit, listen! He was right about Iraq and he's right about Iran. Bush, Cheney and their loyal rubber-stamp Repubs... Not so much.

There's more: "First Iraq and now Iran" >>

Spinning the NIE

I swear that our rotting press corpse must be completely incompetent, illiterate, or mainlining payola to have transformed the NIE on Iran's lack of nuclear capability into the opposite of what the intel estimate says. Crooks and Liars posted up a Google search of "bogus and misleading headlines." More about that in a minute. First, check this priceless lame-ass excuse from Hadley that makes the WH look supremely stupid and unabashedly craven:

As Shuster and Maddow point out, the Bush administration has no shame, which is why they had no problem trotting out National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley, to float the ridiculous notion that the report wasn’t completed until Tuesday of last week and that President Bush only learned that Iran halted its nuclear program four years ago — the following day.

Uh huh. So while, "bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb, Iran" played in the background over the years, Hadley fed a howler to the American public yesterday to cover the wild assertion that Bush didn't know what the intel folks were debating over the summer. As the Washington Post noted in its front page story about the NIE this morning (with emphasis):

[Keep reading...]

A major U.S. intelligence review has concluded that Iran stopped work on a suspected nuclear weapons program more than four years ago, a stark reversal of previous intelligence assessments that Iran was actively moving toward a bomb.

The new findings, drawn from a consensus National Intelligence Estimate, reflected a surprising shift in the midst of the Bush administration's continuing political and diplomatic campaign to depict Tehran's nuclear development as a grave threat. The report was drafted after an extended internal debate over the reliability of communications intercepts of Iranian conversations this past summer that suggested the program had been suspended.

But Hadley would have us believe that Bush only learned of the "stark reversal" of intel on Iran just last week. OK, maybe things go real s-l-o-w at the WH and/or Bush reads real s-l-o-w. Or, George -- expecting so many dignitaries for his Annapolis bash, celebrating Thanksgiving, attending all the festivities, meetings, and summits of which a preznut must undertake along with summer vacations -- got distracted. Shucks, keeping up with nukes in the world is indeed hard work.

Another possibility: Incurious George decided to treat the NIE as adeptly as he handled the August 2001 PDB, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike U.S" or the Iraq Study Group's recommendations. He ignored it, in denial of anything that didn't fit his own biased agenda. We'll get to learn the scoop today since he's called a press conference. Oh, joy!

As for the misleading stories that headline the opposite of what the NIE says... how did it happen? Spencer Ackerman at The Horse's Mouth captured a screen shot last evening of an AP story that got picked up by numerous news outlets repeating the erroneous, US Officials: Iran Has Nuke Capability. Ackerman rightfully surmised:

These misleading AP headlines aren't free of consequences.... casual readers will come away with an impression of the Iranian nuclear weapons non-program that's exactly the opposite of what the U.S. intelligence community says it is -- or, at the least, they'll be needlessly confused. And when Bush administration hawks or GOP politicians or Joe Lieberman lie about the nuclear threat from the Tehran Islamofascists, they'll be playing to an already-bamboozled audience. Nice work!

This morning I googled the identical headline text (see screen shot above) just as Ackerman and Crooks and Liars did. When I clicked through, the faulty headlines in all 10 instances that I found displayed appropriate headlines representative of the NIE. For example, the WaPo story headline after the click reads, "U.S. Finds That Iran Halted Nuclear Arms Bid in 2003." Ackerman also noted the same was true yesterday.

I know from work experience that GoogleBot spiders online news editions at various times throughout a 24-hour period. The question is, did the errant AP headline -- indicative of a first pass by GoogleBot recording initial online errors, possibly of a first print edition repurposed for the Web -- show up in the wire story in dead-wood newspapers? Check your local newspapers and let us know in Comments. Hopefully, copy editors caught the mistake before the presses rolled. At this posting, the wrong headlines in Google's search remain unchanged.

There's more: "Spinning the NIE" >>

Can we impeach Cheney now?

So - the administration has known for a year that all sixteen intelligence agencies have determined that Iran halted their nuclear weapons program in 2003, but that little bit of inconvenient truth did not deter Cheney from not only advocating for another illegal war, one that would possibly (probably) use nuclear weapons, but he didn't stop there - he also attempted to stifle the report and tried to get the parts they didn't agree with stricken.

Remember how, a couple of months ago, the meme changed? Resident Evil said that the Iranians couldn't be allowed to have the knowledge to make a nuclear weapon. In October, aWol gave a dire warning about WW III if Iran obtained a nuclear weapon, and the warmongering old prick vowed "serious consequences" if the Iranians didn't (re)abandon their nuclear program. (It's all very cartoonish, in a tragic way. Remember your Looney Tunes? Bugs: "Batten down the hatches!" Buster:"I did! I did batten 'em down!" Bugs: "Well batten 'em down again. We'll teach those hatches!")

[Keep reading...]

Gareth Porter pointed out a month ago that the NIE was being held up. (h/t Kevin Drum)

A National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran has been held up for more than a year in an effort to force the intelligence community to remove dissenting judgments on the Iranian nuclear programme, and thus make the document more supportive of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's militarily aggressive policy toward Iran, according to accounts of the process provided by participants to two former Central Intelligence Agency officers.

But this pressure on intelligence analysts, obviously instigated by Cheney himself, has not produced a draft estimate without those dissenting views, these sources say. The White House has now apparently decided to release the unsatisfactory draft NIE, but without making its key findings public.

Cheney got his knickers in a twist over more than the nuclear part of the NIE. He was also furious that there was no conclusive evidence that the Iranians were meddling in Iraq and arming Shiite militias.

So, congresscritters, especially you, Nancy Pelosi, read the god-damned NIE for yourselves, and then riddle me this:

Is it enough yet? Can we please make with impeaching the warmongering, pathological old prick? We can't risk another year with this psychotic madman at the levers.

There's more: "Can we impeach Cheney now?" >>

You know this already...the Occupation of Iraq is a catalyst for terrorism

As if you needed more evidence that I am consistently right when I say things like this:

...when the whole thing is a mere 800 words in length, and if you read it carefully, the conclusion is, this administration has done everything wrong and allowed the Al Qaeda terror network to regroup.

Well, I am not alone.

Paul R. Pillar, a former CIA analyst who has been involved in previous intelligence estimates, said that the administration has correctly identified the danger posed by al-Qaeda in Iraq and that there are indeed links between the Iraq group and the larger international terrorist network. But he said the White House is drawing the wrong conclusion, and argued instead that it is the U.S. presence in Iraq that is fueling the terrorists' cause. [emphasis added]

"Iraq matters because it has become a cause celebre and because groups like al-Qaeda in Iraq and al-Qaeda central exploit the image of the United States being out to occupy Muslim lands," Pillar said.

Referring to al-Qaeda in Iraq, Clinton administration official Daniel S. Benjamin, who has written books and articles on international terrorism, said: "These are bad guys. These are jihadists." He added: "That doesn't mean we [should] stay in Iraq the way we have been, because we are not making the situation any better. We're creating terrorists in Iraq, we are creating terrorists outside of Iraq who are inspired by what's going on in Iraq. . . . The longer we stay, the more terrorists we create." [emphasis added]

So riddle me this, Batman...


Why the hell would I even trust these chumps - who have been absolutely wrong about absolutely everything - to even be able to do something so basic as order lunch without fucking it up?


And these jokers have the audacity to tell me I need to be patient?


Four and a half years in?


Patience my ass.


I'm gonna kill something.


Hows about we start with the entire damned Defense Authorization Bill for FY 2008 if a binding exit date is not mandated therein?

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