Iran Curveball - This latest intelligence fiasco is Mr. Bush's fault

WSJ OpinionJournal.com ^ | December 8, 2007 | The Editors

[gpapa]

President Bush has been scrambling to rescue his Iran policy after this week's intelligence switcheroo, but the fact that the White House has had to spin so furiously is a sign of how badly it has bungled this episode. In sum, Mr. Bush and his staff have allowed the intelligence bureaucracy to frame a new judgment in a way that has undermined four years of U.S. effort to stop Iran's nuclear ambitions.

This kind of national security mismanagement has bedeviled the Bush Presidency. Recall the internal disputes over post-invasion Iraq, the smearing of Ahmad Chalabi by the State Department and CIA, hanging Scooter Libby out to dry after bungling the response to Joseph Wilson's bogus accusations, and so on. Mr. Bush has too often failed to settle internal disputes and enforce the results.

What's amazing in this case is how the White House has allowed intelligence analysts to drive policy. The very first sentence of this week's national intelligence estimate (NIE) is written in a way that damages U.S. diplomacy: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program." Only in a footnote below does the NIE say that this definition of "nuclear weapons program" does "not mean Iran's declared civil work related to uranium conversion and enrichment."

[LjubivojeRadosavljevic]

Many of the Federal departments have a life of their own. Since they all tend to to protect their own turf by aggrandizing power and money to themselves, the result tends to be larger and more intrusive government.

Well said.

And, you just reminded me of a comment made by the late Milton Friedman: (I think I have it right) "The country is no longer run by our elected officials - it's run by career bureaucrats."

[cowdog77]

btt

[Sacajaweau]

Is this NIE the same group that gathered the Korean intelligence prior to the Bush Administration looking into it....a little further?

Let's be real. Iran is led by a nut...a nut who held Hostages...way back when.

[TheThinker]

Aren’t they protected by the federal employee’s union? He was trying to get the CIA de-unionized if I remember correctly.

[bpjam]

Goss got screwed by Negroponte who wanted the DNI job. Bush took his usual hands-off approach and ended up losing the best CIA Chief he could have had and got himself a guy as DNI who was hated by State and had no real connections to most of the other 15 agencies.

Bush refuses to become involved in actual politics. He apparently thinks its either beneath him or its just not dignified to practice the art of politics. And while he makes himself defenseless by refusing to fight back, his enemies within our government gut him on a regular basis and put his closest friends on the chopping block (Rove, Libby, etc).

I really didn’t expect Bush would be so incredibly neutered when it came to partisanship. I guess I should have seen it coming from his days in Texas but I thought that having seen how partisanship works when his dad got eaten alive that he would be smart enough to know that if you don’t hit your enemies in the nose they will continue to put their nose in your affairs. Its probably been the biggest disappointment for me in him as a President - his unwillingness to fight anybody within the borders of the U.S. or even speak up when he or his allies are attacked (unless its the last 30 days before an election and he’s at a campaign event - that is apparently the only place he is willing to state the truth about the other side).

[dbacks]

[There’s a girl in charge of the State Dept. It just doesn’t work.]

Oh, this mess didn’t happen until Condi came in. Your view is not well thought out.

[Manic_Episode]

Have we struck a deal with the devil?
by Hal Lindsey

The partisan furor erupting over the selective release of two pages from this year's National Intelligence Estimate report aside, it raises a lot more questions than it answers.

The first question that comes to mind is why? The White House is allegedly "incensed" that those particular pages were declassified and released, and it might even be true.

Or it might not.<.P Let's look at both arguments. Leaking the NIE report handed all the cards over to Iran, seemingly emasculating the administration's entire Iran foreign policy. The National Intelligence Estimate is highly classified information – for any of the 16 intelligence agencies to leak it is tantamount to treason.

For it to be freely released to the public seems inexplicable.

For four years, the Bush administration has been building a case against Iran's nuclear program. Two years ago, the NIE reported "with high confidence" Iran was moving full steam ahead with a nuclear weapons program. It estimated Iran was only a matter of a few years, if not months, before it would pass the nuclear point of no return.

The leaked portion of this year's NIE says the consensus opinion of the nation's intelligence community is that Iran suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003. However, while it has "high confidence" the program was suspended in 2003, it also concluded with "medium to high confidence" that Iran is keeping its nuclear weapons development options open.

The left immediately seized on the revised NIE assessment to attack the president's credibility, drawing the inevitable connections between the failed Iraq intel in 2003 and the NIE's abrupt turnaround in 2007.

Notwithstanding the fact that the NIE's assessment is what the president was relying on in the first place (making attacks on his personal credibility ludicrous), the partisan opportunism in Washington virtually hands Tehran a blank check from henceforth.

There is no way short of a Iranian nuclear test that Bush will be able to rebuild domestic or international support for additional sanctions (or especially military strikes) against Iran in months remaining in his presidency.

For all intents and purposes, the U.S. lost the war against Iran's nuclear program 10 seconds after the NIE summary hit the front page of the New York Times. There is no point in wasting ammunition.

So in this view, the NIE leak was very, very bad news for the administration and worse news for Israel, in that it seems to inoculate Tehran against further Western interference in its domestic nuclear program.

On the other hand, it seems illogical for the White House to be taking its release so calmly. It undid four long years of U.S. foreign policy in an instant. To leak it would be tantamount to treason. Deliberately declassifying it suggests government incompetence that has reached dizzying new heights – a possibility I don't lightly discount.

But it is the Bush administration's National Intelligence Estimate. Declassifying secret intelligence summaries is a White House prerogative. And its release did torpedo U.S./Iran foreign policy.

So what is it doing on the front page?

There is but one alternative explanation. Either some kind of a U.S. deal with Iran has already been struck, or one is so close that maintaining the coalition is no longer deemed necessary.

What kind of deal? Virtually any kind of deal with Iran is in Washington's interests. Until the fall of the shah, Iran was America's chief ally in the Middle East. American geopolitical strategy is always aimed at preventing the rise of a regional or continental power bloc that can threaten the U.S. or Europe.

In the Islamic Middle East, Sunni outnumber Shia many times over. Iran is predominately Shia. Arabs outnumber Persians in similar numbers. Arabs and Persians have historical animosities stretching back millennia to days of Xerxes and the Persian Empire. In terms of U.S. geopolitical strategy, Iran is the spoiler.

As a consequence of U.S. long-term strategy and Persia's unique circumstances, America and Iran are natural allies. And an alliance with Tehran would go a long way toward containing Hugo Chavez while keeping Venezuela's oil pipelines open.

Iran's current relationship with Russia is forced and unnatural. The last nation to occupy Iran was Russia, and the Persians have a long memory and an outstanding score to settle.

Iran's youthful majority doesn't trust the Americans, but they don't like the Russians, either. Given the choice between the two cultures, however, all the polls indicate they'd dump the Kremlin in a heartbeat.

Something is clearly about to break, and the NIE is but one indication among many.

The Saudis have recently done an about-face and concluded, over U.S. objections, a major arms deal with the Russians. The Saudis are Shia, Iran's natural and religious enemies, and the Saudis also fear being dumped by Washington in favor of a deal with Iran.

The Arabs tend to get worried whenever the Americans or the Iranians rattle sabers in their direction. The prospect of a deal between Iran and the United States is enough to send them scurrying for their prayer mats. Clearly, a deal between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran seems absurd on its face, and maybe it is. But no less absurd than the prospect that the White House has deliberately sabotaged its own foreign policy agenda during the final months of the Bush presidency. Whether there is a deal in the works or whether the Bush administration has surpassed its own high standard for intelligence-processing incompetence remains to be seen.

But there is more here than meets the eye, and you can bet that they are burning the midnight oil in Riyadh, Moscow and, especially, Jerusalem, trying to figure out what. Meanwhile, keep an eye on what the prophet Ezekiel predicted about this region. It is more illuminating than the New York Times, or any other media right now.

article

[backtothestreets]

A great many Americans are now aware of the "Two-Party Cartel"  Republicans and Democrats deny it, but they are joined at the hip.  Combined, the two parties did not muster even 40% support when Americans were polled on job performance.  Something BIG is brewing in American minds, and if it turns to action at the polls, expect the "Two-Party Cartel" to take every unconstitutional means available to them to crush it.

Gallup Poll. Sept. 14-16, 2007. N=1,010 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.

"In your view, do the Republican and Democratic parties do an adequate job of representing the American people, or do they do such a poor job that a third major party is needed?"
						.
		Do an Adequate Job	Third Party Is Needed	Unsure	.	.
		%	%	%	.	.
	9/14-16/07	39	57	4	.	.
	7/6-8/07	33	58	10	.	.
	9/7-10/06	45	48	7	.	.
	10/10-12/03	56	40	4

 

[ovrtaxt]

Why did he allow Porter Goss to be hung out to dry?

An excellent question- not to mention guys like Curt Weldon, and have you noticed that Duncan Hunter has had NO HELP from the Admin? Meanwhile, we all thought Rice was going to State in order to clean house, and now she's proposing insanity like a Pali state in Israel.

This group turned out to be a collection of clowns. Sad.

[aruanan]

In sum, Mr. Bush and his staff have allowed the intelligence bureaucracy to frame a new judgment in a way that has undermined four years of U.S. effort to stop Iran's nuclear ambitions.

It wasn't the intelligence bureaucracy but three former State Dept. officials with an ax to grind. One may as well say that a robbery victim was, by having something someone wanted to rob, responsible for his robbery.

[wita]

I think it boils down to what happens when you are much too lenient with your children. It comes back to bite where it really hurts. Both the parents and the poorly raised. Spare the rod and spoil the Dept of State kind of thing. The word Treason, and the proper punishment for it, IMHO is the only thing that is going to rescue childrearing 101, at least where government is concerned. I don’t think it will take more than 5 or ten well known folks fearing the gallows to straighten things out in a heartbeat so to speak.

[wita]

GMTA you will notice that my 31 addressing post 09 didn’t make it to your 13, until this. We agree completely, and sooner rather than later.

[Diogenesis]

An alternative hypothesis is the Pres. Bush respects Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and the DNC more than his base and the integrity of the United States of America.
His actions speak quite loudly.

[dk/coro]

Got that right !! In spades!!

[peyton randolph]

we all thought Rice was going to State in order to clean house

---

Condi Rice's key mentor was Madeline Not-So-Bright's father.

Why should we expect Rice to have a different world view?

[LibLieSlayer]

Let’s refresh... the man was kept out of office by anti-American dims until the last second... shortly after we are attacked on 9/11... and he should have fired ALL of our intel people? No, he did what he had to do and tried to make a silk purse with turds. The fault here lies with dims that put power and party over National Security. Bush cares enough about America to continue to take the hits and do his job. I do agree that we need a purge in almost every corner of the Fed.

LLS

[nathanbedford]

Immediately after the last election I published a vanity entitled, Why We Lost. I reproduce a portion of that now because it echoes your post. Some years ago I published my thoughts about the Bushes and their political philosophy which I concluded then was not essentially conservative. I add that old post as well.

In thinking about this I had mostly confined my thoughts to domestic politics. Somehow I thought that Bush's inexperience in both domestic and international politics could be compensated for by Dick Cheney. Indeed, the left-wing press has been full of articles and even books describing Cheney's attempts to intimidate the CIA into coughing up the kinds of analysis that would justify war against Iraq. The CIA, of coarse, has denied this explicitly and the 9/11 commission and the Senate investigating commission have exonerated Cheney. But there is no doubt the Cheney had a very lively personal interest in the analytical workings of the CIA concerning Iraq and this was demonstrated by his frequent trips to Langley. The fact that the CIA has written this document, that it has defeated Porter Goss, that it is leaked repeatedly to the New York Times without consequences, that Valerie Plame could get away with her atrocities, all demonstrate that something has gone terribly wrong with the agency which is beyond the capacity of George Bush, and I would say, Dick Cheney, to fix.

The implications for our national security are grave.

Here is my first post written just after the' 06 election:

Other reasons are less easily identifiable and more subjective in nature. One goes to the very essence of the character of George Bush. I've long published that he is not a movement conservative, in fact he is not a conservative at all but rather he is a patrician with loyalties to family, friends, and country. His politics are animated not by conservative ideology but by a noblisse oblige which, as a substitute for political philosophy, move him to act from loyalty and love of country. The result of this is that he does not weigh his words and actions against a coherent standard grounded in conservatism, but instinctively reacts to do what is right for family, friends, and country. Thus we get Harriet Meirs, pandering to the Clintons and Kennedys, prescription drug laws, campaign finance laws, runaway spending, and the war in Iraq. The conservative movement is left muddled and confused and the Republican Party undisciplined and leaderless. In these circumstances all manner of mischief is possible beginning with corruption and indiscipline in the ranks. To be effective, a president must be feared as well is loved. A President is more than just Commander in Chief and Chief Executive of the nation, he is the titular head of his party and he must rule it. If Bush was willing to pander to the likes of Teddy Kennedy, what did Senator John McCain have to fear from him? Bush has utterly failed in his role as head wrangler of the Republican Party.

Other subjective reasons for the debacle involve Bush's personal character. He is essentially a nonconfrontational man who would rather operate through collegiality than through power. This is reinforced by his Christian belief and he will almost literally turn the other cheek. So, his loyalty to family and friends affects his appointments and produce mediocrities like Brown at FEMA and Ridge at Homeland Security and Harriet Meirs. It makes him shrink from prosecuting the crimes of his enemies even to the point of overlooking real security lapses committed by The New York Times. It makes it very difficult for Bush to discipline his troops and fire incompetent or disloyal subordinates. Instead he soothes them with the Medal of Freedom.

George Bush is a singularly inarticulate man. When he is not delivering a prepared speech, his sincerity and goodness of character come through, but his policies often die an agonizing death along with the syntax. The truth is that Bush has never been able, Ronald Reagan style, to articulate well the three or four fundamental issues which move the times in which we live. One need only cite the bootless efforts to reform Social Security as an example. His inability to tell America why we must fight in Iraq to win the greater worldwide war against terrorism, or how we are even going to win in Iraq, has been fatal to the Republicans' chances in this election. Of course, one can carry this Billy Budd characterization too far and it is easy to overemphasize its importance, but it is part of the general pattern which has led us to this pass. It is a very great pity that the bully pulpit has been squandered in the hands of a man so inarticulate. That the bully pulpit was wasted means that there are no great guiding principles for the country, for the party, for the administration, for Congress to follow, or for the voters to be inspired by. If the voters went into the booth confused about what the Republican Party stands for, the fault is primarily George Bush's.

.............................................................................................................................................................................................................. Here is the second post written many years ago:

I too have written such e-mails in my head. The problem is not really that George Bush would not read them but that he would not heed them. The problem with George Bush is that he is not primarily a conservative, he is primarily a Christian, and he does not have a calculus that is congruent with yours or mine, even though both of us might be Christians. George Bush sees partisan politics as petty and ultimately meaningless. We see partisanship as the indispensable stuff of freedom. At election time the Bushes will hold their nose and dip into partisanship. But it is not in their essential nature to wage war for tactical political advantage.

George Bush wants what Bill Clinton wanted: To fashion a legacy. He does not want to be remembered as the man who cut a few percentage points from an appropriation bill but as the man who reshaped Social Security. I've come to the conclusion that the Bushes see politics as squirmy, fetid. It must be indulged in if one is to practice statesmanship but it is statesmanship alone that that is worthy as a calling.

They are honest, they are loyal, they are patrician. There would've been admired and respected if had lived among the founding fathers. But it is Laura Bush and Momma Bush who really and truly speak for the family and who tell us what they are thinking and who they are. There's not a Bush woman who does not believe in abortion. They believe in family, they live in loyalty, they believe in the tribe, but they do not believe in partisan politics.

I believe it is time for us to decide no longer to be used by the Bush family as useful idiots and instead to begin to use the Bushes as our useful idiots . I say this with the utmost admiration and respect for everything the Bushes stand for. Who would not be proud beyond description to have a father or an uncle who was among the first and youngest of naval aviators to fight in the Pacific and to be twice shot down. Not a stain or blemish of corruption or personal peccadillo has touched the family(except for the brother whom I believe was cleared of bank charges). They are the living embodiment of all that is good and noble in the American tradition.

But they are not conservative.

[goldstategop]

Condie Rice was supposed to clean out the State Department bureaucracy but she ended up being swallowed up by it.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[shove_it]

Curious article by Hal Lindsey. Sounds like wishful thinking to me (those pesky mullahs don’t play nice with us). Also the part where he misspoke about the Saudis being “Shia, Iran’s natural and religious enemies ...” was a surprise.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Totally agree. Bolton should’ve covered State and Condi the UN or something equally important.