Indict Dick Cheney before he Blows up the entire Planet

[Dig]

Joe Scarborough: There need to be hearings ASAP on the Iran Nuke Lies

Ok, this guy is a total NWO shill, so for him to say this means that something is brewing.  Perhaps the lies have gotten so overwheming that Rockefeller decided to "own" the impeachment via Joe Biden.  Who knows, but for morning joe and the daughter of the inventor of islamic fundamentalism to say this is pretty amazing.  hopefully more good news to come.  In the meantime we need to step it up before some NWO psychopath thinks they can derail this momentum and do something ridiculous.  They have no power if we keep stepping up the info-war.

[mr anderson]

Rockefeller wanted to own impeachment proceedings?

That means Clinton is the new pet now...perhaps sooner rather than later?

I dunno lol

[Dig]

Let us take a step back and tally the scandals...

Hillary - Iran war vote, clumsily attacking Barack, hostage fraud
Rudy - Steals money from the poor and gives to the rich
Mitt - Hires illegal aliens, religious tolerance questioned
Huckster - Lied about involvement in releasing a serial rapist who raped again
McCain - Calls middle east situation worse than nazi germany
________________________

Something is going on; hopefully the sub-elites have noticed that their days are numbered unless they support the people of this country's interests.  If not, they will lose so either way step up the info-wars.

[Dig]

Rockefeller wanted to own impeachment proceedings?

That means Clinton is the new pet now...perhaps sooner rather than later?

I dunno lol

I do not think so, I think they might be going with Biden for a bit.  He voted against the Iran war, he seems to know some stuff about 9/11 and can hold off a total uprising.  Not sure, but look for NWO shills praising Joe Biden.

All I can say is that the writer's strike sure has given the truth movement some good luck.  Perhaps a piece of the mind control array has been compromised and that was enough to let some truth in.

[mr anderson]

Damn it though, I've been waiting for BSG for almost a year! lol Sci Fi Ch bastards wanting to break S4 into 2 years bahhh!!

Although the strike has stopped some propaganda pieces like 24 stop....I used to watch that last year, it just got boring. I wasn't decensitised to torture at all...

[Dig]

Just on Morning Joe:

President of CFR, Richard Haass: "We need to talk to Iran and negotiate"

Very odd, this guy is a total Nazi and now he is saying we should negotiate without pre-conditions.  Very wild turn of events in the past 24 hours.

UPDATE: Holy crap, he said other than Israel, Iran is one of the most pro-American countries in the region.  He also leaked some interesting information.  He said that Ahmaninijad does not call the shot thsere and that he is a populous "minority shareholder" if Iran was a company (these sick bastards think every country is a company).  This is after the neocons spent 2 years proping him up as the next Hitler.  Ver interesting coming from the head of the CFR.

UPDATE II: O/T - but might still be relevant for other items in this thread.  Joe Scarborough played a clip from Ellen where she had Jenna Bush calling her dad (the satanic president) on the phone.  Joe said, "Can I just say something? I [pause] LOVE [pause] LOVE [pause] Jenna Bush." WTF Joe, one dead intern is not enough of a controversy?

[Triadtropz]

I think bush is afraid of russia and mostly china...china is no friend of bush after they turned his ships out of hong kong..china has the biggest deals with Iran as well...I think this report is to calm the chinese and russians..I think bush sees an enemy that's actually armed, and he's scared sh*tless..

[Dig]

I do not think so, I think they might be going with Biden for a bit.  He voted against the Iran war, he seems to know some stuff about 9/11 and can hold off a total uprising.  Not sure, but look for NWO shills praising Joe Biden.

Actually, look for Biden to lead the charge for impeachment, but look for Obama to be the front funner for the Dems.  Brzynsky (sic) is Obama's NSA and he is total CFR that offers a "rational" approach to leadership.  I think that perhaps a CFR deal was worked out with China/Russia to stop hiding the truth about Clinton.  I mean look how they are sabotaging themselves over the past 2 weeks.  This may be their way of fighting a front runner, but it seems odd from this usually very calculating couple.

Whatever negotiating CFR did does not matter, the CFR is the number one entity that has been blocking an investigation into the true events of 9/11.  Their negotiations does not include the victims of 9/11 and they must answer for their treason!

[stymo1]

Israel, Cheney & Bush ­
What Did They Know
And When Did They Know It?
By Ted Lang
12-5-7

http://www.rense.com/general79/know.htm

The latest U.S. National Intelligence Estimate assessing Iran's nuclear military capability was just released on Monday, December 3rd. The NIE clearly debunks the Cheney-Bush neocon regime's neocon-job desperately trying to convince the American people and the world that a neo-Nazi invasion of Iran must immediately be put on the table.
 
Ray McGovern's interpretation of this turnaround in events is amply expressed when he asserts: "For those who have doubts about miracles, a double one [has] occurred. An honest National Intelligence Estimate [NIE] on Iran's nuclear program has been issued, and its 'Key Judgments' were made public." Published on Antiwar.com on December 4th, and entitled "A Miracle: Honest Intel on Iran Nukes," the staggering magnitude of this turn of events, although clearly celebrated by McGovern, is nevertheless underplayed by even him.
 
But his lead-in does indeed somewhat emphasize this blessed NIE: "I do not know how often Vice President Dick Cheney visited CIA headquarters during the gestation period, but I am told he voiced his displeasure as soon as he saw the first sonogram/draft very early this year and is so displeased with what issued that he has refused to be the godfather. This time Cheney and his neocon colleagues were unable to abort the process. And after delivery to the press, this child is going to be very hard to explain ­ the more so because it is legitimate." 
 
Most important in terms of meaningful focus is not only McGovern's revelation of yet another Cheney-CIA arm twisting exercise employed previously which resulted in "faulty" intelligence so successfully employed to get US into the Iraqi quagmire, but it has now been repeated and thereby reduced to an embarrassingly failed second attempt reaffirming the first effort of total fraud and deliberate deception. Talk about going to the well once too often!
 
Tony Karon, writing for TIME magazine's website and posted December 3rd entitled, "The Fallout from the Iran Nuclear Report," and carried on Rense.com as well, observes: "The latest U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran, which expresses the consensus of the 16 branches of the intelligence community, is sharply at odds with most of the candidates' (and the White House's) notion that Iran is rushing to build nuclear weapons, and even contradicts a 2005 NIE finding that Iran was working inexorably toward developing a bomb."
 
The information provided by McGovern citing yet another attempt by Cheney to involve US in yet another unjust, unnecessary and unconstitutional war is a monumental revelation in and of itself; but much more enlightening is the fact he points out that Cheney was aware of this impending NIE "very early this year." What this implies is that Cheney knew this adverse, truthful and factual intelligence was being gathered and established, yet we are to believe the other members of the Cheney-Bush regime didn't. Question: Did they or didn't they know of this impending NIE so opposed to the administration's foreign policy direction? It is more than likely that ALL in the administration knew about this coming NIE! Either they intended to squash and spike the report via the help of the MSM, or they figured Cheney's arm twisting would succeed in the same manner as it did with Iraq.
 
Here's McGovern's observation: "My guess is that the Pentagon, and especially Adm. William Fallon, commander of our forces in the Middle East, succeeded in persuading [Director of National Intelligence] McConnell to go public. Several months ago, Fallon was reliably reported to have said, 'We are not going to do Iran on my watch.'"
 
McGovern also points out that many US senior military officers have been "strongly opposed" to a war with Iran. How come Senator Hillary Clinton, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee didn't know about this? How come Senator Joe Biden, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, didn't know about this? How come Senator Christopher Dodd, a senior member of Biden's Foreign Relations Committee didn't know this? How come Senator Barack Obama, also a member of Biden's committee, didn't know this? How come Senator John "Madman" McCain, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, didn't know this?
 
Insofar as Hillary is concerned, hasn't she visited Israel more than any member of Congress? And hasn't Israeli intelligence been touted as so much more efficient than our own intelligence by our own American officials? How come Israel didn't know about these impending findings by "a consensus of 16 US intelligence agencies" being mulled over by them for almost the entire year of 2007? How could Hillary and her Israeli handlers have been so blind sighted?
 
And if this Cheney-Bush and Intelligence conflict, obviously morphing from early this year and culminating in Admiral Fallon and senior military leaders' strong opposition to an attack on Iran to preclude the possible risk of launching a full scale World War III to include Russia, China and Pakistan was brewing for most of this year, why didn't our elected Beltway representatives and senators pass this vital information on to the American people via NBC's "Meet the Press," or ABC's "This Week," or CBS' "Face the Nation?" Where was the "American" press on this? Where was the mainstream media, the MSM on this?
 
The answer is simple. Our government and its partner in crime, the MSM, cooperate and work against the interests of the American people. Our government, in all its branches and so-called representative bodies, ignores the will and wishes of the people. And as I have written in so many previous efforts, all it takes is for one high-level government official to tell it like it is and rein in the Cheney-Bush crime machine. Such a high-level government official has the ability TO MAKE THE NEWS, news and current events the MSM cannot sweep under the rug. Such an American patriot is Admiral William J. Fallon, Commander, U.S. Central Command [CENTCOM].
 
Fallon's leadership and integrity precluded Cheney-Bush from launching World War III via an invasion of Iran. Other dedicated and Constitution-loyal military leaders joined Fallon, and now, courage and integrity has been restored to our intelligence services. They will no linger "fit intelligence around policy," as was articulated by Tony Blair's government in the Downing Street memo suppressed by The New York Times and network and cable TV "news."
 
McGovern quotes the main points established by the latest NIE:
 
We judge that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program
 
We assess with moderate confidence Tehran has not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007.
 
We do not have sufficient intelligence to judge confidently whether Tehran is willing to maintain the halt of its nuclear weapons program indefinitely
 
We judge with moderate confidence Iran probably would be technically capable of producing enough highly enriched uranium sometime during the 2010-2015 time frame.
 
We judge with high confidence that Iran will not be technically capable of producing and reprocessing enough plutonium for a weapon before about 2015.
 
Considering these points, and the fact that these have been mulled over for almost an entire year, what precisely was the urgency on the part of the Cheney-Bush regime to attack Iranfrom the air with nuclear weapons? If one were to recall the hand wringing and screams of those most concerned about Iran's impending huge and deployable nuclear arsenal, the chief source has been Israel and its lobby, AIPAC. And confirming and reacting to Israel's terror would be Dicktator Cheney, Amerika's true totalitarian ruler. And his lead would place Bush, Bolton and Negroponte right in line behind him.
 
But if Israel's intelligence is so astute, and so superior to ours, why were they so terrified of a non-existent threat? The answer is obvious: Iran is NOT a threat to US. It stands instead in the way of Israel's annexing the entire Middle East and having the US taxpayer spend trillions to construct oil pipelines through Iran and Iraq that can be controlled by Israel. In this way, Zionism will control the world's richest oil supplies.
 
With this impending NIE "on the table," is it hard to imagine that Nancy Pelosi was unaware of it and Israel's intentions? And who did she support? Did she support the American people, the taxpayer, and the American military, or did she support Israel, Cheney and Bush? And if Pelosi, by some astronomical stretch, can be assumed to not know of this impending and damaging NIE, can the same thing be said of Bush?
 
Think of Bush uttering, "We [French President Nicolas Sarkozy] talked about Iran and the desire to work jointly to convince the Iranian regime to give up their nuclear weapons ambitions, for the sake of peace," as quoted by Associated Press White House Correspondent, Terence Hunt in his December 3rd piece entitled, "Like Iraq, US intel on Iran faulty." Hunt continues: "More ominously, Bush told a news conference Oct. 17, '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 having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.'" 
 
Hunt then cites former National Intelligence Director John Negroponte's testimony to Congress in January: "'Our assessment is that Tehran is determined to develop nuclear weapons,'" Think of the total absurdity of that more than ridiculous statement. How the hell would Negroponte, or for that matter ANYONE, be able to determine any other human beings intentions? And how do intentions, not acted out, prove wrongdoing or harm actually done? Shortly after that idiotic line of "reasoning," the draft of the current NIE began to take shape.
 
Hunt quotes Cheney-Bush's hired naysayer, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, who "said the president made comments like those 'because he was describing the threat as the intelligence community itself had been describing the threat both publicly and in their briefings to him.'" Hunt continues: "Intelligence officials advised Bush several months ago that they were reevaluating their assessments about Iran. They came to the White House last Wednesday and briefed him on their new findings." Really?! They told Bush "several months ago" that their assessments of Iran's nuclear capability were wrong, but only informed him officially "last Wednesday?" Well I guess in the view of Hunt and his AP, this lets Bush off the hook for the comments he made during the recent Sarkozy visit.
 
Hunt and the AP continue to apologize for Bush and cover his tail: "The intelligence flip-flop recalled the embarrassing reversal that Bush was forced to make on whether Iraqpossessed weapons of mass destruction. The conviction that Saddam Hussein had such weapons was one of the factors behind Bush's decision to invade Iraq. It has since been determined that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction." Can you believe this crap exemplifying Benjamin Franklin's American journalism???
 
Hunt needs to be instructed as to the fierce opposition that UN inspectors Hans Blix and Scott Ritter expressed before the Bush War against the innocent Iraqi people. Hunt needs training in the area covered by former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill who offered that Bush had targeted Saddam and Iran from the very first day he took office. Hunt needs to read and understand the Downing Street Memo and what it means to make intelligence fit policy. And if he demonstrates a grasp of theses simple examples of true fact and events, we just might be able to explain to him that burning white kerosene cannot melt structural steel in skyscrapers.
 
This evaluation and commentary by Hunt and the Associated Press is pure poppycock and sheer nonsense! It is their desperate attempt to cover for Cheney-Bush to misinform and disinform readers as to the precise nature of the American criminal regime's concocted and deliberately fraudulent intelligence as a pretext for an illegal, unjust, unwarranted and unconstitutional invasion of another nation. The intelligence used by Cheney-Bush was fraudulent and manufactured, not accidental, honest and "faulty." 
 
And you can just bet that Bush will ignore this truthful, factual intelligence assessment with the same level of energy with which he embraced the intelligence and policy lies of weapons of mass destruction, regime change, bringing democracy, and allowing Iraqis to govern themselves.   
 

[bigron]

IAEA says US report on Iran 'consistent' with its own findings


Associated Press - December 4, 2007 10:03 AM ET
http://www.wane.com/global/story.asp?s=7447817&ClientType=Printable


VIENNA, Austria (AP) - The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency says the U.S. report on Iran's nuclear weapons program is consistent with the findings of his agency.

IAEA director-general Mohamed ElBaradei (ehl-BEHR'-uh-day) says he viewed yesterday's report from U.S. intelligence officials with "great interest."

The U.S. says evidence indicates Iran stopped developing a nuclear weapons program in 2003 but continues to enrich uranium. Senior officials say Iran still may be able to develop a weapon between 2010 and 2015.

ElBaradei thinks the new assessment should "help to defuse the current crisis" over Iran's nuclear program. He also says it should quell growing fears that the U.S. is gearing up for a possible conflict with Iran.

[bigron]

China Questions New UN Sanctions Against Iran After US Report

http://www.nasdaq.com/aspxcontent/NewsStory.aspx?cpath=20071204\ACQDJON200712041421DOWJONESDJONLINE000616.htm&selected=9999&selecteddisplaysymbol=9999&StoryTargetFrame=_top&mkt=WORLD&chk=unchecked&lang=&link=&headlinereturnpage=http://www.international.na

UNITED NATIONS (AP)--China's U.N. ambassador said Tuesday that a new U.S. intelligence finding that Iran halted development of a nuclear bomb four years ago raises questions about new U.N. sanctions against Tehran. But the U.S. and its European allies said they are still pushing for new punitive measures.

The U.S. National Intelligence Estimate was released two days after the world's major powers met in Paris Saturday and indicated that a compromise text on a third sanctions resolution could be circulated at the U.N. as early as Friday by the six countries - the U.S., UK, France, Russia, China and Germany.

U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said Monday he met with China's assistant foreign minister, He Yafei, before the Paris talks and they "made progress" and were able "to focus on a number of areas where we would agree to sanctions."

But when China's U.N. Ambassador Wang Guangya was asked Tuesday whether the release of the new intelligence estimate made the prospect of new U.N. sanctions less likely, he said: "I think the council members will have to consider that, because I think we all start from the presumption that now things have changed."

"We want to learn more from our U.S. colleagues," Wang told reporters. " Certainly I think we'll study the content and also think about the implications for the council action."

The new U.S. intelligence estimate found that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003, largely because of international scrutiny and pressure. The finding was in stark contrast to the 2005 estimate, when U.S. intelligence agencies believed Tehran was determined to develop a nuclear weapons capability and was continuing its weapons development program.

The U.S., the U.K. and France, have been pressing for a new sanctions resolution to further pressure a defiant Iran to halt uranium enrichment, which it has refused to do despite numerous council demands and two sanctions resolutions.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said Tuesday his instructions from U.S. President George W. Bush's administration remain unchanged - to complete work on a new sanctions resolution once the political directors transfer the Iran issue to the U.N., "as soon as this coming Friday."

As for the new National Intelligence Estimate, Khalilzad said, "we will see what impact it will have."

U.K. and French diplomats said they are also moving ahead on new sanctions.

Russia and China, both veto-wielding council members and allies of Iran, have grudgingly approved two sets of limited U.N. sanctions. But the Kremlin has bristled at the U.S. push for tougher measures, saying they would only widen the rift with Iran.

Russian President Vladimir Putin Tuesday made no mention of the new U.S. intelligence, but he told Iran's top nuclear negotiator that Tehran's nuclear program should be transparent and remain under control of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog.

Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly in September that Tehran would ignore Security Council demands and sanctions imposed by "arrogant powers" to curb its nuclear program. Instead, he said, Iran had decided to pursue the monitoring of its nuclear program through the IAEA.

South Africa's U.N. Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo, a council member, said the new U.S. intelligence estimate is similar to what the IAEA has been saying all along and "confirms again that the IAEA is the place to deal with this issue."

"I don't see how" this means there should be no new sanctions resolution, Kumalo said. "What would be the justification now because of what is now being said? So let's leave it to the IAEA."

Khalilzad countered that the new U.S. intelligence estimate had confirmed a covert Iranian program that stopped because of international pressure - "but it does not say that Iran does not have the intention to develop a nuclear weapons capability."

The Iranians have refused to suspend their enrichment, reprocessing and heavy water programs, which not only violates Security Council resolutions but would bring Iran "very close to having the capability" to develop nuclear weapons, he said.

Therefore, Khalilzad said, the Security Council should "bring sufficient pressure to bear" with new sanctions to get Iran to change its approach.

[bigron]

Bush will adress the Iran problem in a few minutes on FOX  LIVE

More lies !!!!!!!

[Dig]

Bush will adress the Iran problem in a few minutes on FOX  LIVE

More lies !!!!!!!

I am watching now he is continuing the ratchet up to war...

WTF?

shut the f**k up you dickhead

impeach this terrorist NOW!

[bigron]

Will the U.S. nuclear report empower the Iranians?  
05/12/2007 10:00:00 AM GMT
 The NIE report "removes any possibility of a military strike in the next year… "
By Emile Tayyip
http://aljazeera.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=64301

On Monday, the U.S. intelligence community concluded that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program four years ago, and is unlikely to have resumed it; a finding that would dramatically influence the stand-off over Tehran’s nuclear case. The U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran, which expresses the consensus of the 16 branches of the intelligence community, sharply contradicts claims by the White House that the Islamic Republic is seeking nuclear weapons. It is also at odds with a 2005 NIE finding that Tehran was working towards an atomic bomb. In the assessment, the NIE says that Iran’s halt of its bomb program in 2003 in response to international pressure "suggests it is less determined to build nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005." Even if Iran wanted to restart its halted program, it wouldn’t be able to produce enough nuclear material to build a bomb before two years, or even more. (See video: U.S. report: Iran is not developing a nuclear weapon)  "This is an astounding conclusion," Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, was quoted by the BBC as saying.  "The assessment in 2005 that Iran had a nuclear weapons programme was based on evidence from a hard drive handed over by defector… Since then Western intelligence agencies have tried to find out if Iran had continued with that programme. In fact, they have decided that it did not,“ Mr Fitzpatrick added.  The NIE findings come as no surprise to those who have been closely following the Iranian nuclear case.  Russia's President Vladimir Putin recently said that there was no "concrete evidence" that Iran was building a bomb, remarks that have been reiterated several times by the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohamed ElBaradei.  Commenting on the NIE report, a senior IAEA official told AFP on Tuesday that  the findings confirm the UN atomic watchdog’s assessment that Tehran represents “no imminent danger”.  

So does this mean that Iran has won?
An unidentified Pentagon official told the Time that the report "empowers the Iranians and weakens everybody else.”  In fact, the Iranians welcomed the report as a vindication of their long-standing assertion that their nuclear program is strictly peaceful.  "It's natural that we welcome it when those countries who in the past have questions and ambiguities about this case ... now amend their views realistically," Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told state radio. "The condition of Iran's peaceful nuclear activities is becoming clear to the world."

What about sanctions?
Despite the fact that the NIE notes that Iran’s intentions remain unclear, it certainly strikes a major blow to those who favour military action against Tehran’s nuclear installations.  The question now is whether the report would reduce the pressure against Iran or not.  According to the Time, President Bush's National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley, rushed to assure the media that the glass was half full. "The estimate offers grounds for hope that the problem can be solved diplomatically - without the use of force - as the administration has been trying to do," said Hadley. "For that strategy to succeed, the international community has to turn up the pressure on Iran - with diplomatic isolation, United Nations sanctions, and with other financial pressure - and Iran has to decide it wants to negotiate a solution." But the NIE report would undermine Washington's drive to convince other world powers to agree further UN sanctions against the Islamic Republic, a move strongly opposed by Russia and China.   If the UN Security Council fails to approve a third round of sanctions against Iran, the UK and France will probably ask the EU to follow the U.S. in taking unilateral measures, especially the reduction or cutting off of export credits to Iran.  But again, if the heat is off following the NIE report, some EU countries that export heavily to Iran might be reluctant to go as far as they otherwise might have.

Military threat
Many analysts believe that the U.S. wouldn’t remove the threat of military action against Iran, even after the NIE concluded that Tehran represents no imminent nuclear threat . Six weeks ago, President Bush warned that Iran's nuclear activity could be the cause of World War III. But Bush’s words were chosen; he didn’t say World War III would be the consequence of Iran attaining a nuclear weapon. He said: "If you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from hav(ing) the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."  Bush’s warning clarified that the red line for his administration isn’t an Iranian nuclear weapons program per se, but rather Iran acquiring  "the knowledge necessary to make" such an atomic bomb - which is the technology of uranium enrichment; a process used in civilian nuclear programs or bombs making -- depending on the level of enrichment.  Uranium enrichment is entirely legal for any signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Iran has the right to enrich uranium as a signatory of the NPT, although it has been ordered to halt the process because of its non-compliance with some transparency requirements in its previous nuclear activities. The suspension, therefore, is seen as a temporary requirement, until Iran satisfies the concerns of the IAEA.  But the U.S. wants to stop Iran from enriching uranium, alleging that once Tehran masters the technology of uranium enrichment, it would withdraw from the NPT - like North Korea - and start building a nuclear weapon.   On the other hand, Iran defies the demand to stop enrichment, even after it was backed by UN sanctions. It’s well known now that the Iranian government prefers to live with sanctions than to give up its nuclear rights. At the same time, Tehran is cooperating with the IAEA to resolve all outstanding issues.  So while Iran wants to resolve the standoff without halting its nuclear activities, the U.S. wants it to completely abandon its atomic program, at any cost and regardless of the transparency issues.   But selling the war against Iran would be a very tough job, especially to an American public that feels it was already duped once on Iraq's alleged WMD.

“This (the NIE report) is a new and important development. It removes any possibility of a military strike in the next year. There would be no substantive cause and no public support… It also shows that lessons have been learned from Iraq. The U.S. intelligence agencies are determined to show their independence from political influence,” says Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.  


 

[bigron]

New reality presents third solution to Iran’s nuclear standoff 
24/05/2007 08:26:00 PM GMT
As the IAEA confirms that Iran is pressing ahead with its nuclear program, the idea of allowing Tehran to engage in limited enrichment is being more widely discussed.
By Amina Anderson
http://aljazeera.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=7806

As the IAEA confirms that Iran is pressing ahead with its uranium enrichment program, the concept of allowing Tehran to engage in limited enrichment under IAEA supervision is being more widely discussed. According to a BBC article, this idea represents a “third way” solution between imposing further sanctions against Iran; something that has so far failed to curb Tehran’s nuclear plans, and a military attack; a disastrous move that could plunge the region into another deadly conflict and that's not even backed by some of the closest U.S. allies.  Iran insists that it doesn’t need nuclear weapons and is simply exercising its right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to develop fuel to a limited level for use in power stations. But the United States and its Western allies say that Tehran does not need to make the fuel itself and that it’s nuclear program is aimed at enriching fuel to the higher level needed for an atomic bomb. The nuclear standoff is entering a critical phase that some U.S. intelligence officials say Iran’s purchases of nuclear and missile equipment on the black market (something Tehran had to because of sanctions) would be sabotaged by the deliberate planting of defective material. This could only slow Iran down, but the U.S. CBS network says such operations are already underway.

Moreover, ABC News reported that President Bush allowed the CIA to carry out "non-lethal covert action against Iran involving propaganda, disinformation and the manipulation of Iran's international banking transactions". These reports clearly indicate that the Bush administration isn’t going to adopt the “third way”. The idea of a negotiated agreement to allow Iran to have a limited enrichment program is advocated by IAEA chief Mohammad El-Baradei, who recently told the New York Times: "We believe they pretty much have the knowledge about how to enrich... From now, it's simply a question of perfecting that knowledge. People will not like to hear it, but that's a fact." "The fact of the matter is that one of the purposes of suspension, keeping them from getting the knowledge, has been overtaken by events," he added.   In another speech, Dr ElBaradei tried to explain his comments. He said that he wanted to hamper Tehran from reaching industrial-scale production of enriched uranium, stressing that Iran was three to eight years from making a bomb, if that is what it chooses to do. Tehran insists that it will not do so. The IAEA cheif also said it is too late to try and force Tehran to halt its uranium enrichment program and instead called for steps to contain it and prevent further expansion. Several members of the agency's decision-making 35-nation board also endorse ElBaradei's view.

But their proposal about accepting a limited enrichment program was immediately rejected by the U.S. and its allies; Britain, France and Germany, who say that this suggestion would undermine the current carrot-and-stick approach; applying pressure through sanctions (designed to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear and missile technology) and offering help with the development of civilian nuclear energy, as long as enrichment is not involved. What they do is they hold talks with Iran on one hand, and threaten sanctions on the other. The UK’s ambassador to the UN, Sir Emyr Jones Parry, recently told reporters in London that if Tehran didn’t meet UN demands, it would face more sanctions. "There will be more of the same - more people and more companies in Iran under sanctions," he said. Mark Fitzpatrick, nuclear watcher at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said the idea of an enrichment agreement was a "fallback position." "If Iran gets enrichment technology, then the present strategy will have failed," he said. "However, if this strategy is seriously challenged, there will be tension between those whose impulse is to hold out for suspension and those who think there is a new reality. "An agreement with Iran would have to limit its enrichment, perhaps to the number of centrifuges it has already installed, and there would have to be a strict system of inspections, with surprise visits. Such a system would have to go beyond the extra measures Iran agreed to some time ago but never ratified. The closest precedent would be what happened in Iraq where inspectors had the power to go where they wanted."

[bigron]

Ron Paul Vindicated on Iran!!

Tuesday, December 4th, 2007 in News by James Bovard|
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2007/12/04/ron-paul-vindicated-on-iran/

Ron Paul is the only non-Armageddon presidential candidate among the Republicans.  He is the only person who staunchly opposes a massive first strike against Iran because of  its alleged nuclear program.  He has long been ridiculed for his aversion to preemptive genocide in the Middle East.

The National Intelligence Estimate yesterday reported that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003.  This blows to pieces the Bush-Neoconservative case for war.

Bush knew this for at least the last 5 or 6 months, but he continued rattling his missiles and warning of World War III if Iran did not kowtow to U.S. demands.   Cheney has been even more bloodthirsty, as usual.

Top Bush supporters like Norman Podhoretz are wailing that the intelligence agencies are cheating them out of another U.S. government-orchestrated slaughter of Muslims.  Not exactly “Presidential Medal” Podhoretz’s words, but that’s the soul of the complaint.

In the Fall of 2002, Ron Paul stood almost alone denouncing the “phantom weapons” claims the Bush team was invoking to attack Iraq.   Once again, he has been proven right

[rick reuben]

I am watching now he is continuing the ratchet up to war...

WTF?

He's totally deranged. His administration just got slapped down by its own CIA for a six year lying campaign, and what does he do? Tell Iran to 'come clean'.

"The Iranians have a strategic choice to make," he said. "They can come clean with the international community about the scope of their nuclear activities, and fully accept the long-standing offer to suspend their enrichment program and come to the table and negotiate, or they can continue on a path of isolation."

Bush the Decider is probably feeling total humiliation, because it looks like Russia and China told him exactly what would happen if he and Cheney bombed Iran, and took Bush's God-given deciding powers away from him. I wouldn't want to be around the guy for the next year if he can't fulfill his holy genocidal mission. Crazy dry drunk nut job.

[Sub-X]

How can the sheeple not see that another war would cripple the Dollar even more,also that Bush throwing his weight around seems much more important to him and his administration than trying to sort out the economy

[Dig]

CNN: Seymour Hersh 'vindicated' by new Iran intel estimate
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/CNN_Seymour_Hersh_vindicated_by_new_1205.html
David Edwards and Muriel Kane Published: Wednesday December 5, 2007

Reporter believes Cheney 'kept his foot on the neck of' report
A new National Intelligence Estimate released on Monday indicates that 16 US intelligence agencies have concluded with a high level of confidence that Iran has not had an active nuclear weapons program since 2003 and that even if it resumed weapons development, it would be unlikely to obtain a nuclear bomb in less than 5 to 10 years. The NIE apparently came as a surprise to President Bush, who insisted at a news conference the next day that "I was made aware of the NIE last week. In August, I think it was, John – Mike McConnell – came in and said, 'We have some new information.' He didn't tell me what the information was. He did tell me it was going to take a while to analyze."

However, the NIE was no surprise to veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, who has been writing about it since November 2006. Hersh told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday that he believes the White House deliberately kept the NIE bottled up for over a year because the vice president was dissatisfied with its conclusions.  "At the time I wrote that, there was a tremendous fight about it, because Cheney ... did not want to hear this," Hersh recalled. "I think the vice-president has kept his foot on the neck of that report. ... The intelligence we learned about yesterday has been circulating inside this government at the highest levels for the last year -- and probably longer." As early as July 2006, Hersh had reported that the US military was resisting administration pressure for a bombing campaign in Iran, because "American and European intelligence agencies have not found specific evidence of clandestine activities or hidden facilities."  By November 2006, Hersh's sources had told him of "a highly classified draft assessment by the C.I.A.," which concluded that satellite monitoring and sophisticated radiation-detection devices planted near Iranian facilities had turned up absolutely no evidence of a nuclear weapons program. However, Bush and Cheney were expected to try to keep those conclusions out of the forthcoming NIE on Iran's nuclear capabilities. As Hersh explained to Wolf Blitzer at the time, the White House was attempting to counter the CIA assessment with an Israeli claim, based on a "reliable agent," that Iran was working on a trigger for a nuclear device. "The CIA isn’t getting a good look at the Israeli intelligence." Hersh explained. "It’s the old word, stovepiping. It’s the President and the Vice President, it’s pretty much being kept in the White House."

RAW STORY's Larisa Alexandrovna further reported in January 2007 that the NIE on Iran was intended to be released later that month, but that John Negroponte's was being replaced as Director of National Intelligence because he had refused to tailor the NIE to Vice President Cheney's specificiations. Despite feeling vindicated by the latest developments, Hersh warned Blitzer that the White House push for war with Iran is "still not over. ... There's always Israel." He explained that "the Israelis were very upset about the report. They think we're naive."  However, Hersh was confident that there was very little chance the NIE could be mistaken, because "It's been four years since we've had any positive evidence of a parallel secret program to build a bomb -- and we've been all over the country." Hersh and Blitzer then recalled Hersh's past appearances on CNN -- including several long interviews discussing the Abu Ghraib scandal -- and how the White House would regularly accuse him of using "anonymous sorces" or just "throwing crap against the wall." Hersh concluded by emphasizing what a serious problem the NIE poses for Bush. "It's a lose-lose for them," he stated. "The fight I'm talking about began last year. ... This is going to pose a serious credibility problem. ... That's not what we pay the guy to do." However, Hersh's sources tell him that despite the NIE, Bush's negotiating position is still that the Iranians "have to stop everything ... destroy it. ... Inspectors have to come in that we pick. ... He's not saying that publicly, but that's the private standard."


This video is from CNN's Situation Room, broadcast on December 4, 2007.

http://www.rawprint.com/media/2007/0712/cnn_sr_hersh_iran_intel_071204a.flv

[Dig]

Neocons believe US intelligence community too timid after Iraq
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Bolton_Iran_nuke_intel_overestimated_in_1204.html
David Edwards and Jason Rhyne Published: Tuesday December 4, 2007

Following its botched reports about Iraq's weapons capabilities, the US intelligence community is now too gun-shy to get it right about Iran, according to some hawkish conservatives who have advocated possible military intervention against the country.  Newly declassified portions of a new National Intelligence Estimate -- which indicates that Iran no longer actively developing a nuclear weapon -- are part of an effort by the US intelligence community to avoid a repeat of its mistakes in the run-up to war with Iraq, former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton told Fox News. "They're so concerned about overstating the threat in Iraq, that they're overcompensating in the wrong direction," Bolton said. "You know they've changed their estimate on Iran from just two years ago. One has to ask why we should be more inclined to believe this one today than the one two years ago." A 2005 NIE reported Iran was "determined" develop nuclear capability.

Bolton characterized the White House as having been taken aback by the new NIE report's conclusions.
"I think they were floored by it, since it's inconsistent with what the intelligence community was telling them as recently as a week ago," he said. "In fact, members of the House and Senate were briefed on this last week, and there was no mention of the suspension point. So, I think there are some questions that need to be raised about how this thing was put together and what its conclusions are."

He also contends that there is that there is a whiff of politics to the NIE summary.
"I think there is a risk here, and I raise this as a question, whether people in the intelligence community who had their own agenda on Iran for some time now, have politicized this intelligence and politicized these judgments in a way contrary to where the administration was going," said Bolton. "I think somebody needs to look at that."

Neoconservative columnist Norman Podhoretz also has "dark suspicions" about the new report, and suggests that the intelligence community's current beliefs about Iran amount to a calculated reverse image of it's determinations about Iraq.
"I must confess to suspecting that the intelligence community, having been excoriated for supporting the then universal belief that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, is now bending over backward to counter what has up to now been a similarly universal view...that Iran is hell-bent on developing nuclear weapons," writes Podhoretz in a Commentary Magazine column published Monday. "I also suspect that, having been excoriated as well for minimizing the time it would take Saddam to add nuclear weapons to his arsenal, the intelligence community is now bending over backward to maximize the time it will take Iran to reach the same goal."

Podhoretz goes on to suggest that intelligence agencies may also harbor political motivations to thwart Bush administration policy goals.
"But I entertain an even darker suspicion," he adds. "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."

Read Podhoretz's full column in Commentary Magazine here.

This video is from Fox's Studio B, broadcast on December 4, 2007.

http://www.rawprint.com/media/2007/0712/fox_sb_bolton_iran_estimate_071204a.flv

[Dig]

Cusack: Bush photo ban one of 'most cowardly political acts' in my lifetime
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Bush_political_cowardice_prompted_new_John_1204.html
David Edwards and Jason Rhyne Published: Tuesday December 4, 2007

When the Bush administration began enforcing a controversial policy banning photographs of military caskets returning from Iraq, the move provoked outrage -- and now, a film -- from actor John Cusack, who calls the media ban "one of the most cowardly political acts" of his lifetime. Appearing on PBS with host Tavis Smiley, Cusack explained that his new movie, Grace is Gone, is the result of a storytelling interest largely inspired by the Bush photo policy.  "The screenwriter, James Strouse, had approached my company and I had been looking for a story, a human drama to tell about the Iraq conflict," said Cusack. "It stemmed from a place of outrage for me when the Bush administration banned the photos of the dead coming home." That directive, ordered in 2003 at Dover Air Force Base, was technically on the books prior to Bush's presidency, but was seldom enforced.  "I thought that was one of the most cowardly political acts I'd seen in my lifetime, in some ways" the actor said. "So I thought, we have to tell the story of one of those coffins coming home, right? It seemed clear that would be a really smart thing to do." Asked by Smiley to explain his characterization of the Bush decision as "cowardly," Cusack said that if the war was worth fighting, its casualties should be appropriately honored. "I just think that, if this war is going to be fought and if it is as important as he says it is, I think the least we can do is stop our days and pay honor to the people making the ultimate sacrifice for this," he added. "I mean, they were trying to say...we'll tell you when we can grieve and get our photo ops when we go to the bases and visit the families and we're going to control this along with everything else." Concluded Cusack, "I thought, my God, if this is really happening, we should all know about this every day. We should stop our days, right?" This video is from PBS's Tavis Smiley, broadcast on December 4, 2007.

http://www.rawprint.com/media/2007/0712/pbs_ts_cusack_politcal_cowardice_071204a.flv

[Dig]

Hill Democrats Explore New Strategy on Iraq - Plan Would Link Funding to Political Gains
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/04/AR2007120402216.html
By Jonathan Weisman Washington Post Staff Writer  Wednesday, December 5, 2007; Page A03

Facing increasing evidence of military progress in Iraq, some Democratic congressional leaders are eyeing a shift in legislative strategy that would abandon a link between $50 billion in additional war funding sought by President Bush to a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops. Instead, they would tie the measure to political advances by the Iraqi government.  For nearly a year, Democrats have tried [bullshit, they never tried! It was a con job on the world] unsuccessfully to use war funds to push timelines for troop withdrawals, troop-training requirements, and prescribed periods of rest for weary soldiers.  Now, House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.) is examining a new approach, releasing war funds in small increments, with further installments tied to specific performance measures for Iraq's politicians. House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) also is searching for a new approach and has been briefed on the idea of more explicitly tying funds to political progress.  The new thrust has divided Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill, some of whom say they will never approve additional funding for the Iraq war without troop-withdrawal timelines. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) remains skeptical, House Democratic leadership sources said, and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) has vacillated between seeking compromise with Republicans and holding firmly to troop-withdrawal language.  "We've been through all that," Reid said yesterday of the new approach, suggesting the war-funding issue will wait until January. "I just think we need to figure out some way to fund a government and move on to next year."  The new approach contains considerable political risks for Democrats. If they choose to adopt realistic measurements of political progress, they would be signaling a willingness to leave U.S. combat troops in Iraq far longer than Democratic voters want, said Michael O'Hanlon, a Democratic defense analyst at the Brookings Institution.  None of the leading contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination is likely to embrace that, said O'Hanlon, who suspended his ties to the campaign of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) after he wrote that Bush's troop buildup was yielding positive results.  On the other hand, the year-long struggle to mandate troop withdrawals shows no sign of progress. War funding will begin running dry by mid-February, leaving Democrats with the choice of withholding money for the war, providing the money without strings attached, or finding a new approach that can win bipartisan support.  The House approved a $50 billion war spending bill last month that would have tied additional funding to a goal of removing all combat troops from Iraq by December 2008, but it fell to a Republican filibuster in the Senate. Bush had promised to veto it anyway.

A separate war funding bill approved in the spring laid out political benchmarks for the Iraqis and demanded that the Bush administration return to Congress in September with an update on progress toward them. It showed that the Iraqi government was woefully short of meeting those goals.  The new approach will get an airing today when USA Today publishes an opinion piece by O'Hanlon. He argues that Democrats should receive more credit for the positive changes in Iraq and lays out a fresh set of benchmarks linked to the provision of funds.  O'Hanlon shook up the Iraq debate earlier this year when he co-wrote an opinion piece hailing the progress that has resulted from Bush's troop buildup. It also suggested that Gen. David H. Petraeus's counterinsurgency strategy could stabilize Iraq.  He suggests, for instance, that Congress should judge political progress by how much money the central government in Baghdad is sharing with Iraq's provinces, and should recognize the ongoing de facto amnesty that Iraq's government is offering political opponents with the hiring of former insurgents as police officers and soldiers.  Emanuel suggested yesterday that the Bush administration's diplomatic outreach to Syria, its engagement in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the new intelligence estimate on Iran's nuclear capabilities stem in part from the changing political climate brought on by the Democratic Congress.  "Our troops at every step of the way have done an incredible job," he told reporters. "And at every step of the way, the people that are responsible for a political strategy for Iraq have failed to deliver one. And our views on the funding is that what we need and what we've asked for from Day One is a set of benchmarks the Iraqis have to meet for Iraq."

[bigron]

 Dispute over Iran’s nuclear program throws Israel-US relations into grave crisis !!!!

December 4, 2007, 7:56 PM (GMT+02:00)
DEBKAfile Exclusive:http://debka.com/

A friendship on the rocks !!!
 
Senior Israel security and intelligence officials report: Washington is refusing to heed the intelligence Israel has gathered on Iran’s covert military nuclear program which refutes its latest estimate, denies Israel access to authentic US intelligence and has embarked on steps detrimental to Israel in relation to Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Lebanon, without informing its government.

Defense minister Ehud Barak challenged the US intelligence estimate on Iran Tuesday, Dec. 4. He said that Iran may have stopped its military program in 2003, but has since apparently restarted it.

Prime minister Ehud Olmert, left in the dark by Israel’s senior ally, is at a loss to arrest the serious deterioration in their relations. At pains to conceal the gaping rift with Washington, the prime minister’s office released word of George W, Bush’s coming visit to Jerusalem, his first as president. However, DEBKAfile’s sources disclose Israel will be only one stop Jan. 9 along an extensive Middle East tour, which will take Bush to Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Ramallah, where he intends to make a big deal of proclaiming his support for forthcoming Palestinian statehood.

He will also visit Beirut, by which time Gen. Michel Suleiman will be installed as president. Bush will hail his administration’s diplomatic success in securing Saudi, Iranian and Syrian approval for the election of a pro-Syrian Hizballah supporter as Lebanese president.

Talking to the media Tuesday, the US president ducked the question of whether the new US Intelligence Estimate had changed Washington’s Iran policy. Next month, our sources report, he will have ample opportunity to demonstrate his abrupt, tidal policy reversals when he tours Middle East capitals.

DEBKAfile’s Jerusalem sources report Olmert, loath to admit the loss of Israel’s most powerful friend, is under mounting pressure by leading political, intelligence and military officials to stand up and articulate an independent Israeli stance in the light of the Bush administration’s actions, especially in response to the true facts of Iran’s nuclear activities. The rift with Washington is not just political, they say, but touches on critical security issues that affect Israel’s very survival.

One immediate proposal is for the establishment of a national emergency government.

[William Rausch]

A while back, we heard Daniel Estulin report on the Bilderberg meeting this past June with news that they had decided not to go ahead with the attack on Iran.  Then, with an apparent attempt by Cheney to free-lance such an attack having been defeated this past August by alert (or tipped-off) officers at Barksdale Air Force Base, it became apparent that the Bilderbergers truly have the ability to enforce their will even against a recalcitrant Administration.  Now, with the new NIE kicking the struts out from underneath the Bush Administration’s war propaganda against Iran, with Neo-Con commentators’ panicky realization that their opinions no longer enjoy official backing, as well as Alex’s report over the radio that Hillary’s transition people are already beginning to take over some government departments, it may seem as though the Rulers of the World may be pulling the plug on the Bush Administration entirely.

Don’t breathe too deep a sigh of relief yet, though.  Keep an eye on the Tristan da Cunha situation, where the most remote human settlement in the world is suffering from an epidemic of an asthma-inducing virus which I haven’t heard of anywhere else in the world.  (Where did it come from and how did it get there?)  Sane has already pointed out that it looks like a Bioweapons experiment.

[Dig]

A while back, we heard Daniel Estulin report on the Bilderberg meeting this past June with news that they had decided not to go ahead with the attack on Iran.  Then, with an apparent attempt by Cheney to free-lance such an attack having been defeated this past August by alert (or tipped-off) officers at Barksdale Air Force Base, it became apparent that the Bilderbergers truly have the ability to enforce their will even against a recalcitrant Administration.  Now, with the new NIE kicking the struts out from underneath the Bush Administration’s war propaganda against Iran, with Neo-Con commentators’ panicky realization that their opinions no longer enjoy official backing, as well as Alex’s report over the radio that Hillary’s transition people are already beginning to take over some government departments, it may seem as though the Rulers of the World may be pulling the plug on the Bush Administration entirely.

Don’t breathe too deep a sigh of relief yet, though.  Keep an eye on the Tristan da Cunha situation, where the most remote human settlement in the world is suffering from an epidemic of an asthma-inducing virus which I haven’t heard of anywhere else in the world.  (Where did it come from and how did it get there?)  Sane has already pointed out that it looks like a Bioweapons experiment.

Here is the link to IBM's possibly new genocide weapon test run where the british government may have attempted to kill hundreds of "subjects":

http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=17554.0

Remember IBM was responsible for the Holocaust being so efficient.

But forget about that for now.  This seems to be more urgent.  GWB was within 10 miles of a multiple homocide in a mall where 9 were killed and 5 injured:

http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=17741.0

[Biggs]

Dispute over Iran’s nuclear program throws Israel-US relations into grave crisis !!!!

December 4, 2007, 7:56 PM (GMT+02:00)
DEBKAfile Exclusive:http://debka.com/

A friendship on the rocks !!!
 
Senior Israel security and intelligence officials report: Washington is refusing to heed the intelligence Israel has gathered on Iran’s covert military nuclear program which refutes its latest estimate, denies Israel access to authentic US intelligence and has embarked on steps detrimental to Israel in relation to Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Lebanon, without informing its government.

Defense minister Ehud Barak challenged the US intelligence estimate on Iran Tuesday, Dec. 4. He said that Iran may have stopped its military program in 2003, but has since apparently restarted it.

this could lead to a unilateral Israeli strike in the new year sometime, dragging the US into a conflict would not be so hard to do. This would be especially likely if Olmert is further weakened and Avigdor Leiberman and Netanyahu were to become even more prominent

[Biggs]

A while back, we heard Daniel Estulin report on the Bilderberg meeting this past June with news that they had decided not to go ahead with the attack on Iran.  Then, with an apparent attempt by Cheney to free-lance such an attack having been defeated this past August by alert (or tipped-off) officers at Barksdale Air Force Base, it became apparent that the Bilderbergers truly have the ability to enforce their will even against a recalcitrant Administration.  Now, with the new NIE kicking the struts out from underneath the Bush Administration’s war propaganda against Iran, with Neo-Con commentators’ panicky realization that their opinions no longer enjoy official backing, as well as Alex’s report over the radio that Hillary’s transition people are already beginning to take over some government departments, it may seem as though the Rulers of the World may be pulling the plug on the Bush Administration entirely.

I have heard the rumour that in fact the next target is going to be Pakistan's NWFP, bomb the tribesmen and destabilise Pakistan further.

Don’t breathe too deep a sigh of relief yet, though.  Keep an eye on the Tristan da Cunha situation, where the most remote human settlement in the world is suffering from an epidemic of an asthma-inducing virus which I haven’t heard of anywhere else in the world.  (Where did it come from and how did it get there?)  Sane has already pointed out that it looks like a Bioweapons experiment.

yes it is best to always be on the lookout for such things.

[Biggs]

warning this source cannot be fully trusted, but the story does rather fit what we know about internal conflicts within the relevant powers.

December 4, 2007

Israel In Peril As Renegade US Military Leaders Sign Treaty With Iran

full article at link - highlights extracted below

http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1052.htm

By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers

Russian Military reports circulating in the Kremlin today are stating that the United States Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, met with Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the Qatari capital of Doha, where both were attending a meeting of Gulf Arab leaders, and which saw them both signing what is being termed by these reports as a ‘secret’ non-aggression pact between Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and US Military Forces.

According to these reports, Secretary Gates was spearheading an effort by the United States top renegade Military Leaders to forestall further war for the Americans reported to be led by Admiral William Fallon of the United States Navy [pictured top left], the current Commander of the US Central Command and overall Commander of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and General Michael V. Hayden of the United States Air Force and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency [pictured bottom left].

Within hours of the signing of this secret agreement between the US Military and Iran, according to Western reports, the Pentagon and CIA ‘leaked’ one of the United States most closely guarded reports on Iran’s nuclear capabilities, termed a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), that had recently been alluded to by the United States Director of National Intelligence, and former US Navy Vice Admiral, John Michael McConnell [pictured 3rd from top, left] who during his recent testimony before the US Senate stated that the ‘key findings’ of this reports would not be made public.

The critical significance of this report, according to Russian Intelligence experts, is that it completely shatters the American War Leaders claim for a needed war against Iran by stating:

"We judge that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program...

"We assess with moderate confidence Tehran has not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007.

"We do not have sufficient intelligence to judge confidently whether Tehran is willing to maintain the halt of its nuclear weapons program indefinitely...

"We judge with moderate confidence Iran probably would be technically capable of producing enough highly enriched uranium sometime during the 2010-2015 time frame.

"We judge with high confidence that Iran will not be technically capable of producing and reprocessing enough plutonium for a weapon before about 2015."

Having reached these conclusions, it is not surprising that the NIE's authors make a point of saying up front (in bold type) "This NIE does not (italics in original) assume that Iran intends to acquire nuclear weapons."

These latest actions against America’s Main War Leaders by these renegade current, and former, high ranking US Military Leaders coincide with Secretary Gates verbal ‘broadside’ this past week against United States warmongering by his stating that his countries use of military power over ‘soft power’ was undermining his Nations security, and as we can read:

"Secretary Gates says the U.S. government needs "new institutions for the 21st Century with a 21st Century mind-set." He told an audience at Kansas State University recent conflicts, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, have proved that military power alone can not prevail in this century's challenges. He said that means devoting "considerably more resources" to other parts of the U.S. government.

"There is a need for a dramatic increase in spending on the civilian instruments of national security - diplomacy, strategic communications, foreign assistance, civic action and economic reconstruction and development," he said. "We must focus our energies beyond the guns and steel of the military, beyond just our brave soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen. We must also focus our energies on the other elements of national power that will be so crucial in the years to come."

Gates says that means more money for the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, whose budgets are currently a small fraction of the size of his budget for the Defense Department.

He says the U.S. government might also need new organizations to expand and coordinate its capabilities to deliver assistance on governance, rule of law, internal reconciliation and basic services, and to communicate its policies and goals to the world. He suggests the need for a new National Security Act, updating the law passed in 1947 that established the current U.S. government foreign affairs structure, in order to better deal with the conflicts of the future.

"These conflicts will be fundamentally political in nature, and require the application of all elements of national power," he said. "Success will be less a matter of imposing one's will and more a function of shaping behavior - of friends, adversaries, and most importantly, the people in between."

[Dig]

Cheney: Iraq to be self-governing by 2009
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1207/7227.html
By: Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei and John F. Harris  Dec 5, 2007 03:54 PM EST

Cheney said he has no reason to question the intelligence released this week showing that Iran is not an imminent nuclear threat. Vice President Cheney today predicted Iraq will be a self-governing democracy by the time he leaves office, calling the current U.S. surge strategy “a remarkable success story” that will be studied for years to come.  In an interview with Politico, Cheney offered a remarkably upbeat view of Iraq, despite continued violence and political paralysis in the war-torn nation. Cheney, who has been widely criticized for overly optimistic — and sometime flat wrong — projections in the past, sounded as confident as ever that the Bush administration will achieve its objectives in Iraq.  “I am fairly confident we’ll have [Iraq] in a good place, where we’ll be able to look back on it and say, 'That was the right decision. It was a sound decision going into Iraq,'” Cheney told us in a 40-minute White House interview.

Sounding a note of caution, the vice president said: "We've got a lot of work to do. We're sort of halfway through the surge, in a sense. We'll be going back to pre-surge levels over the course of the next year." But Cheney said that by the middle of January 2009, it will be clear that “we have in fact achieved our objective in terms of having a self-governing Iraq that’s capable for the most part of defending themselves, a democracy in the heart of the Middle East, a nation that will be a positive force in influencing the world around it in the future.”  All of that by 2009? “Yes, sir,” he replied. It was a remarkable prediction by any measure, and one that is certain to infuriate congressional Democrats.  Nearly as surprising, Cheney said he has no reason to question the intelligence released this week showing that Iran is not an imminent nuclear threat, putting him at odds with conservatives such as presidential candidate Fred Thompson of Tennessee and others who have raised doubts or disputed the findings.  “I don’t have any reason to question what the [intelligence] community has produced,” he said. “Now, there are things they don’t know. There’s always the possibility that circumstances will change. But I think they’ve done the best job they can with the intelligence that’s available.”  However, the vice president said the administration is "still concerned" about Iran's enrichment activities. "We still think there's need to continue the course we've been on to persuade the Iranians not to enrich uranium," he said. "The long pole in the tent in terms of developing nuclear weapons, traditionally, historically, has been developing fissile material, either highly-enriched uranium or plutonium. In this case, they're embarked upon the program to develop uranium, obviously."

Asked how badly the NIE would complicate the administration's strategic objectives, the vice president replied: "We don't get to say we only pursue those policies if they're easy. It's very important, I think, and the President clearly does, that we proceed down the road of trying to persuade Iran diplomatically to give up their efforts to enrich uranium. That has not changed. There's nothing in the NIE that said we should be -- not be concerned about their enrichment activities." Cheney said the assessment was released because “there was a general belief that we all shared that it was important to put it out — that it was not likely to stay classified for long, anyway,” he said. Cheney said that “especially in light of what happened with respect to Iraq and the NIE on weapons of destruction,” officials wanted to be “upfront with what we knew.” He said he agreed that was “the right call.”

So you though it might leak? “Everything leaks,” he said with a chuckle. Suggesting the intelligence has been over-interpreted in some quarters, Cheney said he thinks it’s “important to be precise in terms of what it means.” For instance, he pointed out that the NIE “doesn’t deal with” the effort to persuade Iran to give up efforts to enrich uranium. He pointed to a footnote in the NIE that reads: “For the purposes of this Estimate, by ‘nuclear weapons program’ we mean Iran’s nuclear weapon design and weaponization work and covert uranium conversion-related and uranium enrichment-related work; we do not mean Iran’s declared civil work related to uranium conversion and enrichment.” Cheney, in a seemingly relaxed and unhurried mood, chatted in his shirtsleeves, not wearing glasses, with his big chair swiveled to the side to meet his visitors.  His private office was dominated by a Christmas tree decorated with berries, pinecones and birds.  He talked at length about Congress for a story to be posted tomorrow morning and that will appear on the front page of Politico for Thursday’s edition.  By contrast to President Bush’s paper-free Oval Office desk, Cheney’s is a working desk, stacked with reference and reading material, including a pictorial directory for Congress and the latest issue of Politico.  On the lighter side, Cheney said he is reading “The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War,” the recently released final work of the late David Halberstam.

[Dig]

White House Reveals Bush Lied: Was Told In August Iran’s Nuclear Program ‘May Be Suspended’
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/12/05/bush-nie-lied/


On Tuesday, President Bush said he was never forewarned by the intelligence community that Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003:
In August, I think it was John — Mike McConnell came in and said, We have some new information. He didn’t tell me what the information was.

Now the White House is revealing that wasn’t true. In fact, Bush did know what the information was. CNN reports:
President Bush was told in August that Iran’s nuclear weapons program ‘may be suspended,’ the White House said Wednesday, which seemingly contradicts the account of the meeting given by Bush Tuesday.”

The White House statement released by Dana Perino tonight also states McConnell told Bush “the new information might cause the intelligence community to change its assessment of Iran’s covert nuclear program.”  On Tuesday, Bush said “nobody ever told me” to back down from his hawkish rhetoric on Iran. No, maybe not. But Bush knew Iran “may have suspended” its nuclear weapons program and that the intelligence community was in the process of “changing its assessment.” And yet, he continued to warn of “World War III” and a “nuclear holocaust” because nobody told specifically him to stop.

UPDATE: Dan Froomkin reported today that Bush deceptively “changed the way he talked about Iran” starting in August. “Instead of directly condemning Iranian leaders for pursuing nuclear weapons, he started more vaguely accusing them of seeking the knowledge necessary to make such a weapon. Even as he did that, however, he and the vice president accelerated their rhetorical efforts to persuade the public that the nuclear threat posed by Iran was grave and urgent.”

[jimd3100]

Jerusalem Post seems to agree with my assessment that the NIE report means if Iran is to be attacked it will be by Israel. (With our full support of course)

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1195546805195&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull

Analyze this...: Reading between the lines of the new Iran report

Whatever one may think of the new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report on Iran's nuclear intentions and capabilities, there is no doubt it provides some telling and timely insights into a regime whose true direction and condition many analysts here in Jerusalem have been trying to discern for the past year.


That regime is the Bush administration.

As to the substance of the NIE report itself, it's impossible to assess the accuracy of its claim that Teheran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and has not resumed it, without knowing the source of the raw intelligence that provided the basis for that conclusion.

Administration officials have said the dramatic reversal of a previous NIE report two years ago, which had concluded the exact opposite about Iranian nuclear weapons development, was based in part on data received fairly recently.


One can only wonder what the information was, how it was interpreted, and especially why this report was released - not long after the US director of national intelligence, Vice Admiral Michael McConnell, had commented that such NIE reports would not be made public.
The common assumption of many Washington observers is that the veteran intelligence bureaucracy, after years of chafing under pressure by the Bush/Cheney White House to "shape" its information in a way that would support the administration's ideological policy goals (especially during the WMD debate in the run-up to the Iraq invasion), has finally struck back to derail any possible US-led military action against Iran.

If this is so - if the intelligence community really felt it could defy and embarrass the White House with impunity in this manner, just six weeks after President George W. Bush warned of a potential "World War III" in relation to the Iranian nuclear threat - it gives a good sign of just what kind of weakened condition the administration is in as it limps into its last lame-duck year.

Still, this was not some lone intelligence estimate leaked to the press by an off-the-record source, but an official consensus report both Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney discussed and signed off on before its release. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley was quick to assert that it supported the administration's policy of putting international pressure on Teheran, since the NIE also concluded that was what convinced the Iranians to halt their weapons program in the first place four years ago.

Many others will interpret it differently, of course (and already have), asserting that the White House overstated the threat and arguing that now is the time to engage Iran diplomatically rather than trying to isolate it.

The latter point is one that advocates of even more vigorous sanctions against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's radical Islamist regime can continue to argue against by citing certain points in the NIE analysis (for more details you can read the document at http://www.dni.gov/press-releases/20071203-release.pdf).

Even they would have to concede, though, that the report, if taken at face value, has made it much harder - if not impossible - to politically sell the idea of any US military action against Iranian nuclear facilities in the near future.

Which raises the question of whether this is actually a consequence of the NIE report that the Bush administration can not only live with, but is not at all displeased at having to accept. It is even arguable that the release of this report does not contradict current White House aims, but is another sign (just like last week's Annapolis conference) of the Bush administration's shifting strategies and priorities in this region.

You wouldn't think so just by listening or reading the rhetoric of the Bush government's domestic political opponents, whose sole criteria for judgment seems to be current troop levels in Iraq and the president's determination to maintain a US military presence there.

Yet the fact is that a White House in which Hadley, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (a former member of the Iraq Study Group that advocated engagement with Iran) are the dominant foreign policy voices - rather than weakened Cheney, a banished Donald Rumsfeld, or such MIA neo-conservative voices as Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith or John Bolton - is naturally going to be assessing the Iran challenge from a different perspective.

The White House may have tried to keep this report from going public, as some pundits have suggested. However, having claimed proudly to have forged at Annapolis a coalition of Arab states in opposition to Iran and its radical Islamist proxies, Bush and Rice might well be thinking that it might be handy at this stage to have a reason to implicitly back down from the military option that those "moderate" Muslim allies so ardently oppose. That's certainly what the NIE report conveniently provides, even if that won't be publicly acknowledged by the administration.

What does the NIE analysis really tells us about Iranian nuclear intentions and capabilities? That's anybody's guess. But from a Jerusalem viewpoint, the message it sends from Washington seems to be: If you're thinking of a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities, Israel - you're on your own.
Calev@jpost.com

[bigron]

Iran report won't slow Giuliani !!
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20071205/NEWS/712050330
By CAROL E. LEE

As Rudy Giuliani prepares for his first campaign appearance in Sarasota County since announcing his candidacy for president, he shows no sign of backing off one of his favorite applause lines. More than any other candidate, Giuliani has made getting tough on Iran central to his platform. At campaign stops in Florida and across the country, Giuliani trumpets his willingness to "take whatever action is necessary" to thwart Iran's nuclear ambitions. That was before the release this week of a U.S. intelligence report stating that Iran halted its program to build a nuclear weapon in 2003 and has not tried since then. The report says Iran continues to enrich uranium, which its government has said is for civilian purposes, but is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than it has been portrayed. Giuliani's campaign said Tuesday that the findings in the National Intelligence Estimate report do not change his belief that Iran is a threat. "Sanctions and other pressures must be continued and stepped up until Iran complies by halting enrichment activities in a verifiable way," Giuliani said in a statement. On the stump, Giuliani has been more bellicose. He has called Iran a bigger danger than Iraq. He has made it a "promise," not a "threat," that he would "set them back 8 or 10 years" if the country was on the brink of becoming a nuclear power. "We will not take the military option off the table," Giuliani said at a campaign stop in Central Florida. "We will not beg to negotiate with them. We're going to make them beg to negotiate to us." His position on Iran has won him support among conservatives who might be put off by his more liberal positions on social issues, such as gun control, abortion and gay rights. Democrats characterize Giuliani's harsh talk as "fear-mongering." Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., a candidate for president who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has been one of the most vocal critics of Giuliani's Iran rhetoric, saying the former mayor knows "virtually nothing" about foreign policy. On recent campaign stops in Florida, however, Giuliani has scoffed at critics who say the United States should negotiate with Iran without a military threat to back it up. Giuliani, who tends to break down issues to audiences with a tone and simplicity reminiscent of a school teacher, winds up for his Iran pitch. He describes the Democrats as weak. He explains that as Iran feathers its nuclear ambitions, the Democratic party's presidential frontrunners, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, quibble over whether they should invite Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the presidential inauguration or the inaugural ball.

Then he goes for it. "I cannot tell you," he said at a recent rally in Central Florida. "in mixed company, where I would invite him." The point highlights a strength many Giuliani supporters tout: his nails-tough confrontation of security issues. "I love everything about him after 9/11," Joan Lanzieri said at a Giuliani campaign rally in The Villages retirement community. "After 9/11, if people don't think he can run our country, then nobody can." But the intelligence report on Iran could leave Giuliani open to criticism. Already in the past week, Giuliani's GOP challengers have characterized him as soft on immigration, and he has faced questions about his accounting of taxpayer money as mayor while he was conducting an extramarital affair. Giuliani's support among Republicans fell to 25 percent in a Gallup/USA Today national poll released Monday, from 50 percent last spring. And former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who appeals to the party's social conservatives, has gotten a surge in support. "It certainly undermines what he thinks is his strong suit, which is tough on security and tough on global terrorism," Daniel Smith, an associate professor of political science at the University of Florida, said of Giuliani and the Iran intelligence report. "Unfortunately for him he doesn't have much else to fall back on." But Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor at the University of Central Florida, said Giuliani does not need Iran to show voters he stands strong against terrorism. "As a general stump speech issue, they'll probably de-emphasise it a bit, I would think, because he doesn't need that one in his arsenal," Jewett said. "He's a law-and-order guy. There's a lot of other things he can say to still make the point."

[bigron]

Bolton Calls For Congressional Witch-Hunt Into Anti-Bush ‘People In The Intelligence Community’
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/12/04/bolton-nie-iran/
Yesterday’s National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) concluded that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003, pouring cold water on neoconservative calls for bombing Iran. Like his ideological kin Norman Podhoretz, former U.N. ambassador and Iran war hawk John Bolton has been attempting to slander the U.S. intelligence community’s collective judgments.
Iran has been pursuing nuclear weapons “for 20 years,” he defiantly declared today. To give weight to a single intelligence estimate “would be a mistake.” On Fox News today, Bolton went even further and called for a congressional investigation into U.S. intelligence agencies, stating that the report was politicized by intelligence officials who have their “own agenda”:
I really think the House and Senate Intelligence Committees have to look at how this NIE was put together because there are a lot unexplained points in here. […]
I think there is a risk here, and I raise this as a question, whether people in the intelligence community who had their own agenda on Iran for some time now have politicized this intelligence and politicized these judgments in a way contrary to where the administration was going. I think somebody needs to look at that.
Watch it: http://thinkprogress.org/2007/12/04/bolton-nie-iran/
“I’ve never based my view on this week’s intelligence,” Bolton proclaimed today. Just as he did before the Iraq war, Bolton is attempting to discredit any intelligence which contrasts with his fixation on more war in the Middle East.
While Bolton is calling for a congressional witch-hunt into the intelligence community, VoteVets is calling for an congressional investigation into the Bush administration for warning of a false Iran threat despite knowing the key findings of the NIE.
UPDATE: Digby parses out the perpetually wrong neocon worldview: “The real question is why anyone ever takes them seriously about anything.”

[bigron]

It Turns Out Ahmadinejad Was the Truthful One !!
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20071204_it_turns_out_ahmadinejad_is_honest/
byRobert Scheer

Bush is such a liar. Or is he just out to lunch on the most important issue that he faces? In October, he charged that Iran’s nuclear weapons program was bringing the world to the precipice of World War III, even though the White House had been informed at least a month earlier that Iran had no such program and had stopped efforts to develop one back in 2003.  Is it conceivable that Bush was telling the truth at his press conference Tuesday when he stated that he learned of the National Intelligence Estimate report, which contained that inconvenient fact, only last week? Even if Bush read the NIE report, he clearly doesn’t respect it, for at his press conference he said “the NIE doesn’t do anything to change my opinion about the danger Iran poses to the world—quite the contrary.” Not that he has anything against the NIE, whose directors he handpicked. “I want to compliment the intelligence community for their good work. Right after the failure of intelligence in Iraq, we reformed the intelligence community.”  But whether or not the intelligence agencies are reformed, the president still ignores them. He didn’t listen when they told him he was wrong in claiming that Iraq had purchased yellow cake uranium from Niger and he doesn’t listen now when they tell him his alarms about Iran are without factual foundation. The difference this time around is that because Bush is a discredited lame duck the intelligence chiefs were a bit more forthcoming with their findings in a report that has, in part, been made available to the public.

The whole episode shows that our democratic system retains at least some essential checks and balances, but it also is depressing to see that, in this instance at least, the fanatical leader of a theocracy seems to have a higher regard for truth than does the president of the world’s greatest experiment in representative democracy.  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who took office as Iran’s president in August of 2005, two years after Iran’s nuclear weapons program ended, has now been vindicated in his claims that Iran has abandoned the weaponization program. Not so Bush, who has summarily dismissed the intelligence community’s findings and, using his favorite tactic in dealing with debacles, is sticking to his original story. A story, as in the case of the earlier Iraq threat inflation, that too many in the mass media and Congress, including some leading Democrats, have bought.  Take Hillary Clinton, who said that “Iran is seeking nuclear weapons, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is in the forefront of that” by way of defending her vote for a resolution that, like the one she voted for before the Iraq war, blindly supports rather than seriously questions the president’s case for war. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was absolutely correct in calling candidate Clinton out on that vote and challenging her lame excuse that she had not read the full intelligence report before her Iraq war vote. “Members of Congress,” Obama cautioned, “must carefully read the intelligence before giving the president any justification to use military force.”

Not a bad idea. In the case of Iraq’s non-nukes, the intelligence evidence supporting Bush was flimsy at best when it did not directly contradict his key assertions. In the case of Iran, it is now publicly understood that there is no such evidence, flimsy or otherwise. But don’t count on that to stop the bipartisan coalition of invasion hawks from pushing on.  Once again, they will attack the United Nations’ experts, who have been proved right in Iran as they were in Iraq. A spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency pointed out that the NIE report supports the agency’s view that there is “no evidence” of an undeclared nuclear weapons program in Iran and “validates the assessments of [IAEA Director General] Mohamed ElBaradei, who continuously said in his public statements that he saw no clear and public danger, and that therefore that there was plenty of time for negotiations.”  Can we get ElBaradei to run in the Iowa caucus? Why are our leading presidential candidates so easily fooled?  It’s humiliating to all of us who believe in a free press, separation of powers and individual liberty that a system of government designed by its founders to hold leaders accountable can be so easily manipulated by an unremarkable loser who has been rewarded throughout his life for screwing up. It is hoped that this time around the truth will catch up with him before he gets us in yet another bloody war, just to show he can.

[bigron]

Debunking Iran's Nuclear Program: Another 'Intelligence Failure' -- On the Part of the Press?
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003680766
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.
By Greg Mitchell

NEW YORK (December 04, 2007) -- Press reports so far have suggested that the belated release of the National Intelligence Estimate yesterday throwing cold water on oft-repeated claims of a rampant Iranian nuclear weapons program has deeply embarrassed, or at least chastened, public officials and policymakers who have promoted this line for years. Gaining little attention so far: Many in the media have made these same claims, often extravagantly, which promoted (deliberately or not) the tubthumping for striking Iran.Surely you remember Sen. John McCain's inspired Beach Boys' parody, a YouTube favorite, "Bomb-bomb-bomb, Bomb-bomb Iran"? That was the least of it. You could dance to it and it had a good beat. Not so for so much of the press and punditry surrounding the bomb. Who can forget Norman Podhoretz's call for an immediate attack on Iran, in the pages of the Wall Street Journal last May, as he argued that "the plain and brutal truth is that if Iran is to be prevented from developing a nuclear arsenal, there is no alternative to the actual use of military force -- any more than there was an alternative to force if Hitler was to be stopped in 1938." As I've warned in this space for years, too many in the media seemed to fail to learn the lessons of the Iraqi WMD intelligence failure -- and White House propaganda effort -- and instead, were repeating it, re: Iran. This time, perhaps, we may have averted war, with little help from most of the media. In this case, it appears, the NIE people managed to resist several months of efforts by the administration to change their assessment. If only they had stiffened their backbones concerning Iraq in 2002. For the rest of today and this week, media critics will be offering up all sorts of reminders of the near-fatal claims by many in the press relating to Iranian nukes. Sure to get attention are the scare stories in the summer of 2005 after "proof" of an Iranian nuke program somehow surfaced on a certain laptop, proudly unveiled by offiicials and bought by many in the media then as firm evidence (and now debunked, like much of the "proof" of Iraqi WMD provided by defectors a few years back). Wth much effort, I've already found this beauty from David Brooks of The New York Times from Jan. 22, 2006, when he declared that "despite administration hopes, there is scant reason to believe that imagined Iranian cosmopolitans would shut down the nuclear program, or could if they wanted to, or could do it in time - before Israel forced the issue to a crisis point. This is going to be a lengthy and tortured debate, dividing both parties. We'll probably be engaged in it up to the moment the Iranian bombs are built and fully functioning."

As recently as this past June, Thomas Friedman of The Times wrote: "Iran is about to go nuclear." Even more recently, on October 23, 2007, Richard Cohen (like Brooks and Friedman, a big backer of the attack on Iraq) of The Washington Post, wrote: "Sadly, it is simply not possible to dismiss the Iranian threat. Not only is Iran proceeding with a nuclear program, but it projects a pugnacious, somewhat nutty, profile to the world." More in this vein is sure to come: I found those three quotes without even breaking a sweat. At least Friedman, Brooks and Cohen back some kind of diplomacy in regard to Iran, unlike many of their brethren. Another Post columnist, Jim Hoagland, exactly one month ago summarized his year-long travels and study surrounding this issue, declaring "unmistakable effort by Iran to develop nuclear weapons....That Iran has gone to great, secretive lengths to create and push forward a bomb-building capability is not a Bush delusion." He added the warning that "time is running out on the diplomatic track." One week before that, reporting on his trip to Moscow, Hoagland noted Putin's doubts that Tehran will be able to turn enriched uranium into a usable weapon -- but called that failure "implausible." We'd be remiss if we left out William Kristol, the hawk's hawk on Iran, who for the July 14, 2006 issue of The Weekly Standard called for a "military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions--and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement."

As often the case, Salon.com's popular blogger, Glenn Greenwald, may have gotten there first. A longtime critic of The Washington Post editorial page and its editor, Fred Hiatt, he has already happily reprinted a few choice passages from the past. Here is the latest, from a Sept. 26, 2007 editorial in the Post, which flatly denounced Iran's "race for a bomb": "As France's new foreign minister has recognized, the danger is growing that the United States and its allies could face a choice between allowing Iran to acquire the capacity to build a nuclear weapon and going to war to prevent it. "The only way to avoid facing that terrible decision is effective diplomacy -- that is, a mix of sanctions and incentives that will induce Mr. Ahmadinejad's superiors to suspend their race for a bomb. ..Even if Tehran provides satisfactory answers, its uranium enrichment -- and thus its progress toward a bomb -- will continue. That doesn't trouble Mr. ElBaradei, who hasn't hidden his view that the world should stop trying to prevent Iran from enriching uranium and should concentrate instead on blocking U.S. military action ... "European diplomats say they are worried that escalating tensions between the United States and Iran, if fueled by more sanctions, could lead to war. What they don't make clear is how the government Mr. Ahmadinejad represents will be induced to change its policy if it has nothing to fear from the West." Greenwald also resurrects Post editorial quotes in this vein going back to 2005, along with this choice snippet from a September online interview with Kenneth Pollack, whose complete wrongheadedness on Iraqi WMD somehow has not kept him from remaining a darling of the press as an expert on Iran's nukes and other Middle East issues:

"Q. How compelling is the evidence that Iranians are developing a nuclear weapons program?

"POLLACK: Obviously, the evidence is circumstantial, but it is quite strong."

I'll provide other examples of pundit malfeasance as they surface.

[bigron]

No Iran Attack? Don't Be So Sure…
Never underestimate the neocons  !!!
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12005
by Justin Raimondo

The release of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program has everyone breathing a sigh of relief. According to our best intelligence, the Iranians stopped their weapons program in 2003. The liberal pundits and the more reasonable Sullivanesque conservatives are shouting "Hallelujah!" War has been averted! My response: not so fast. Before we segue into all the reasons why we shouldn't be letting our guard down, however, let's take a moment or three to savor the War Party's distress. This morning's edition of National Review Online is a veritable cornucopia of spittle-on-the-screen invective. There's a whole section devoted to debunking the debunkers, and each and every article is a study in sophistry elevated almost to an art form. Michael Ledeen avers that since "you can't prove a negative," the NIE is wrong. Thus, there is no need for any empirical evidence, since, after all, you can't be 100 percent certain, so Iran is guilty as a given. And weren't these the same guys who thought Iraq had WMD? What Ledeen fails to mention is that he and his gang agreed with that assessment, but in the solipsistic universe of the neocons, a different set of rules applies. Victor Davis Hanson is uncharacteristically laconic. Instead of the usual 1,200 words detailing why the failure to strike Iran yesterday will lead to the Decline of the West and the Victory of Islamofascism, we get little more than 200 words of self-contradicting evasions: the NIE report, taken at face value, proves the Iraq war was a success – after all, it succeeded in deterring the Iranians, who would have gone nuclear had they not witnessed the wrath of the Americans up close. He then turns around, however, and refutes himself by smugly asking us to "expect a variety of rebuttals to this assurance that for 4 years the Iranians haven't gotten much closer to producing weapons grade materials." So, then, the Iraq war did not sufficiently impress the Iranians to divert them from going down the nuclear road? Which is it?

On a scale of one to 10 – one meaning Ledeenian incoherence and 10 meaning a chameleon-like ability to mimic rationality – I give Michael Rubin a nine. He's a clever boy who can think of six different reasons why "no" means "yes." What about "the Syrian episode," Rubin asks: doesn't that prove the Iranians are going after nukes without having to produce one themselves? But it proves nothing of the kind. "The Syrian episode" is an elaborate hoax carried out by the one country that has everything to gain by provoking war between the U.S. and Iran. The best analysis I've seen describes the Dair-el-Zor strike as an attack on a giant underground weapons depot, where medium- and long-range missiles bought from North Korea and Iran are stored. My best guess is that Israel's amen corner in the national security bureaucracy saw the NIE coming and engineered the Israeli strike to raise the possibility of imported nukes. Forgetting that the NIE is supposed to be entirely wrong, Rubin avers that it proves "pressure works" and that it's time "for another round of sanctions" on Tehran. If they do what we want, punish them. And if they don't, punish them some more. This is the neocon prescription: torture the world, and don't let up when they scream – and never take yes for an answer. Rubin has all the talking points laid out like pearls on a string: if they stopped in 2003, then weren't they talking about the "dialogue of civilizations" in somewhat less than good faith? Except we don't know how advanced that program was, or how seriously they took it, and, in any case, as things now stand, they won't have an operable nuke for at least a decade. Evading this vital piece of information is the whole point of Rubin's Olympic-level display of verbal gymnastics. The best defense being a good offense, Rubin comes up with this: "Will the analysts who agreed with Iran come clean and explain how they got it wrong?" Who are these "analysts," and how, exactly, did they "get it wrong"? No one said the Iranians didn't have nuclear aspirations. What the analysts inside the government and in the non-neocon think-tanks were saying, and continue to say, is that the Iranians aren't even close to going nuclear, that they've had technical difficulties and just don't have the capacity at present. There is no imminent threat, no need to act, no reason to put a military strike against Iran "on the table," as have all the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates except Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul.

According to Rubin, it wasn't the alarmists like himself who got it wrong: the Iranians are inveterate liars and can't be trusted under any circumstances. What's difficult for the neocons at this point is to transfer the liar-liar-pants-on-fire epithet to our own government. Are they now saying we can't trust the CIA, the DIA, and the rest any more than we trust the Iranian mullahs? Has the American intelligence community been infiltrated by the Revolutionary Guards? Good luck with that one, guys… Oh, this is truly a comedic situation, and I just can't help taking an inordinate amount of pleasure in listening to the chorus of outrage that has greeted the NIE in neocon-land. It's like music to my ears! Ah, but I'm saving the best – Norman Podhoretz, obviously – for last. For now, we'll just have to content ourselves with the second- and third-tier neocon hacks at NRO and the Weekly Standard. I'm just getting warmed up… I had an especially good laugh over Frank Gaffney's contribution, which dismisses the NIE with the assertion that, since no one "outside a very small circle in Iran has certain knowledge about the current state of Iran's nuclear-weapons program," therefore "we had better be prepared to use military force." In Gaffney's world, life is risky: if you can't prove you aren't a terrorist, then get ready for Guantanamo. Countries have it worse. Washington must know for certain that a given country isn't about to nuke Washington, and they're guilty until proven innocent. If you're the leader of a Muslim nation in the Middle East with a long history of hostility to Israel, expect an attack at any moment. Poor Seth Leibsohn is beside himself. He's so distraught by the NIE that he does us all a service by compiling a wide range of sources for the report's conclusions. The New York Timesattributes the estimate to "new information obtained from covert sources over the summer," the Washington Postsays it was "intercepted calls between Iranian military commanders, that steadily chipped away at the earlier assessment," the Washington Timespoints to the defection of "a senior Iranian official, Ali Rez Asgari," who "defected to the West during a visit to Turkey in February." USA Today, on the other hand, somewhat vaguely claims it was "news photos" that played a major role in turning the spooks around. "Maybe it's all of this," Leibsohn concludes, to which one can only add: Duh!

The Weekly Standardruns one Thomas Joscelyn, a blogger associated with fringe neocon David Horowitz and his David Horowitz Freedom Center. As a self-proclaimed "terrorism expert," Joscelyn had the honor of being cited by Rush Limbaugh recently for "proving" that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden really were in cahoots, in spite of the National Commission on 9/11's conclusion that no such links existed. He demands that the intelligence community immediately release to him the evidence for its conclusions – this in spite of his acknowledgment, in the beginning of his piece, that it can and should do no such thing. The NIE seems to have unhinged the lesser neocons, who are reduced to the sort of noises a small mammal makes when cornered. Norman Podhoretz, however, is quite a different story: his contribution to the "debate" is a perfect gem of the purest nihilism, a textbook example of Bizarro World logic. According to Podhoretz, since the last NIE was wrong, this one cannot be right. They were wrong then, he wails, so how can we trust them now? This principle, applied to, say, the realm of science, would ensure that no progress, no advance on the road to truth, no technological or theoretical innovation would ever be possible, because, after all, scientists have been wrong before. But truth is not Podhoretz's concern: he's already determined, a priori, that the truth is whatever he says it is. This kind of radical subjectivism leads naturally to an accusation that the whole thing is a political ploy by Bush-haters in the national security bureaucracy who are sabotaging the lovely war he thought he talked the president into. Podhoretz has "dark suspicions," he confides, that the intelligence community is "bending over backwards" to avoid the mistakes it made during the run-up to war with Iraq. Naturally, he avoids mentioning that he, Norman Podhoretz, was just as wrong as they were, if not more so – so why, given his own Bizarro World logic, should we believe anything he says? According to Norm, it wasn't the Iranians who succumbed to pressure from the international community to end their nuclear weapons program, it was the intelligence community that caved in to pressure in producing this NIE. Intercepts, defectors, news photos, whatever – he isn't interested. The whole thing is a plot by the advocates of "appeasement" to undermine the sacred goal of killing thousands of Iranians and embroiling us in another war in the Middle East.

Okay, that was fun, now wasn't it? Yet there is a price to pay for all this glorious gloating – all pleasures, my Catholic conscience tells me, come with a price. A number of commentators are now certain that, as Fred Kaplan puts it, "If there was ever a possibility that President George W. Bush would drop bombs on Iran, the chances have now shrunk to nearly zero." If only it were so. The Iranian nuclear issue has always been a slow-burning fuse. It took the neocons a good decade to gin up the invasion of Iraq and frame the Ba'athist regime on charges of covert WMD: taking on the much more formidable Persians, in the face of a more skeptical public, naturally requires an even greater effort. Think of it as a long-term project, one that has been set back for the moment – but the damage isn't irreparable. This NIE can always be revised, although we can say with confidence that the thorough debunking undertaken by the intelligence community in this instance has thrown the War Party on the defensive. Hence the howls of rage coming from the peanut gallery. However, the nuclear issue has never been the primary thrust of the neocons' case for war with Iran: far more important has been the accusation that we are already at war with Iran because they're supposedly funding, harboring, and directing "terrorist" activities against U.S. troops in Iraq. According to what the administration has been saying for many months, the Iranians are killing U.S. soldiers – so when are we going to take them out? Hillary Clinton, too, is asking this question: that's why she voted for the Kyl-Lieberman resolution declaring the Iranian Revolutionary Guards to be an official "terrorist" organization, the only time a military component of a foreign regime has been so defined. Kyl-Lieberman will give the president full authority to engage in "hot pursuit" and precipitate a cross-border incident with Iran that could easily escalate into a full-scale military conflict. It's a very long Iranian-Iraqi border that snakes through every enclave of ethno-religious tension in the region. Somewhere in that vast and volatile wilderness the first shots of what George W. Bush warns is going to be World War III will be fired: it's the most likely scenario, far more plausible and defensible than a strike at what the administration claims are nuclear facilities in or near heavily populated Iranian cities.

War with Iran is no less likely now than it was last week, last month, or last year. Indeed, it is conceivable that the chances of just such a provocation occurring sometime before we get a new president have increased, precisely because the War Party has been dealt such a devastating setback on the nuclear front. Desperation makes people do very odd things, and in this case I would reverse one of Victor Davis Hanson and Michael Rubin's arguments and apply it to those seemingly intent on taking us into yet another disastrous war, including the president. Hanson and Rubin argue that the Iranians are not entirely of sound mind, that all that stuff about the Twelfth Imam returning indicates an irrational millennialism that can only end in a nuclear conflagration. In short, the Iranians are crazy. I suggest Rubin, Podhoretz, et al., take a good, long look in the mirror. Unlike Iran's hardliners, ours are openly calling for war. As crazy as Ahmadinejad and his pals may be, Podhoretz and his pals are even wackier. I'd sure like to believe that the relatively rational sectors of our government – the professional intelligence analysts, career diplomats, and assorted "realists" in the national security bureaucracy – have succeeded in putting a stake through the heart of the neocons and spiking the much-rumored war plans of this administration. Unfortunately, I owe it to my readers to tell it like it is: don't break out the champagne just yet. Oh, and keep your eye on the Iran-Iraq border, including the somewhat blurry line of demarcation in the Gulf. We aren't in the clear yet, not by a long shot, and we won't be until all U.S. troops are out of Iraq.

[Dig]

Perino Defends Bush’s Lie: ‘The President Was Being Truthful!’ »
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/12/06/perino-lie-bush/

During the White House press briefing today, Press Secretary Dana Perino attempted to defend President Bush’s lie about when he first learned that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program. Recall, Bush originally stated that Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell came to him in August “and said, ‘We have some new information.’ He didn’t tell me what the information was.” But last night, Perino conceded he was told that Iran’s program “may be suspended.” White House reporters repeatedly confronted Perino about this discrepancy in the press briefing this afternoon. Perino tried to claim that when Bush said he didn’t know what the information was, he actually meant, “he didn’t get any of the details of what — what the information was, in terms of what the actual raw intelligence was.” When reporters pressed her on this, an exasperated Perino said:

OK, look. I can see where you could see that the president could have been more precise in that language. But the president was being truthful.

Watch it:

http://video.thinkprogress.org/2007/12/perinobushnie.320.240.flv

[William Rausch]

Sane:

Thanks for the IBM link.

Biggs:

That secret treaty idea creates a profound possibility: under the Constitution only the President can sign a treaty, which then becomes law if and when the Senate ratifies it by two-thirds majority.  Clearly the military signing its own treaty with a foreign state only shows how severely eroded the authority of the Constitution (and, indeed, the rule of law more generally) has become as a result of the policies of the various Bush and Clinton Administrations, but it also raises the spectre of the Federal Government itself beginning to disintegrate as the various agencies try to disengage themselves from the policy making arms that have come under radical Neo-Conservative control.

[Dig]

Joe Klein Calls Bush’s Response To NIE ‘An Amazing Moment Of Candor By The United States’
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/12/06/klein-candor/

This week Joe Klein authors Time’s front cover story on Iran, titled, “Iran’s Nukes: Now They Tell Us,” in reference to the recent intelligence revelations that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003.  Today on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Klein cheered President Bush’s response to the NIE, stating that it was “an amazing moment of candor by the United States”:

The Bush reaction to this — he didn’t try to block it. He didn’t try to postpone it. He didn’t spend weeks, he didn’t ask the intelligence community ‘give me a couple of weeks, let’s see if we can figure out some kind of negotiating initiative or some way to respond to this.’ He didn’t try to spin it to our advantage. This is an amazing moment of candor by the United States.

Watch it:

http://video.thinkprogress.org/2007/12/kleinnie3.320.240.flv

[Dig]

Joe Klein Is Never Wrong. ‘Obviously.’
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/12/06/klein-tp/
This morning, Time columnist Joe Klein was interviewed on MSNBC and heaped praise on President Bush’s response to the Iran NIE. Klein told Joe Scarborough:

The Bush reaction to [the NIE] — he didn’t try to block it. He didn’t try to postpone it. He didn’t spend weeks, he didn’t ask the intelligence community ‘give me a couple of weeks, let’s see if we can figure out some kind of negotiating initiative or some way to respond to this.’ He didn’t try to spin it to our advantage. This is an amazing moment of candor by the United States.

ThinkProgress criticized Klein for his comment that Bush’s reaction to the NIE was “an amazing moment of candor by the United States.” In a post titled “Misinterpreted,” Klein responds to our criticism:

This is wrong. OBviously, I was referring to the NIE itself as a remarkable moment of candor for the United States. I thought that Bush’s reaction to it was, literally, incredible. As in, not to be believed–which was made completely clear in my cover story.

In just a few short hours, Klein has gone from saying Bush engaged in an “amazing moment of candor,” to saying Bush is “not to be believed.” We appreciate the conversion, but we don’t appreciate the disingenuousness of it.

We weren’t “wrong” or “misinterpreted.” TV pundit Joe Klein explicitly said that an “amazing moment of candor” occurred in the context of “the Bush reaction” to the NIE; he marveled that Bush “didn’t try to block it” and “didn’t try to spin it.” But Time magazine blogger Joe Klein says, “I thought that Bush’s reaction to it was, literally, incredible. As in, not to be believed.”

So what was it? Was Bush’s reaction part of America’s “moment of candor,” or was it “not to be believed”? The two Joe Kleins should interpret one another, sort it out, and get on the same page. And maybe one of the Joe Kleins should apologize to the other.

As Atrios stated, “Is it possible for Joe Klein to admit error at all? He could just say: I misspoke, which is easy to do on live radio or television.”