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."

[RetiredArmy]

One of Bush REAL failures was in not fumigating the CIA, State Dept., and Dept of Justice of all the Clinton moles.

He'd have had to nuke the places, then burn the rubble to git rid of all of the germs left there by the Klinton gang. Now, Amerika wants to infilltrate the government with them again. It will take two decades to clean them out next time. Bush came in wanting to be pals with Kennedy and the other Marxists, that was his first mistake of many. His failures in this area far out weigh his gains. Take out the war effort and terror fight, and I give him an F grade. Failures on spending, big government, border security. He was and is a failure for 8 years.

[hinckley buzzard]

One of Bush REAL failures was in not fumigating the CIA, State Dept., and Dept of Justice of all the Clinton moles.

Yep. the ugly underbelly of the "new tone" takes its toll. Or maybe it was just incompetence at the nuts and bolts of governing.

[Bigun]

One of Bush REAL failures was in not fumigating the CIA, State Dept., and Dept of Justice of all the Clinton moles.

AMEN and Amen!

[Bigun]

The problems at the State Department [known as “foggy bottom”] and CIA predate Bill Clinton by many, many years. The Federal bureaucracy has defined the illness known as “inside the beltway” at least since FDR.

There is more than ample evidence to support that statement but, sadly the media refused to report it to the masses.

[Carbonado]

"Stupid article. First this stupid NIE hack job did not change the policy of President Bush toward Iran"

The NIE report may well be a hack job, but in the court of public debate it trumps anything Bush now says about Iran. The point of the article is just how utterly inept and tone deaf this administration is and always has been.

I see this same conversation - or one much like it - Occurring in a few years when we have allowed another non conservative (say Huckabee) to be maneuvered into the Republican nomination and the presidency, only to "discover" later that 1) Amnesty for illegals is his first priority, 2) The borders will be propped open even wider than they are now, 3) The Liberal agendas on education, welfare, health care, et al are all being pushed right from the White House itself.

[beckaz]

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

Funny.

However, and I am no fan of Condi, the problem goes way back and the Dept is infested with girly men and girly girls.

[hinckley buzzard]

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?

911 was six years ago. What has he done since that massive intel failure to upgrade and discipline the various agencies? Created the Department of Homeland Security and larded it with whole new layers of bureaucrats. In the meantime rogue elements of the CIA et al. create fiascoes like the Plame-Wilson hoax and do it with impunity.

This is a failure to govern.

[hinckley buzzard]

And just how do the folks at WSJ figure that the President is at fault?

Ever heard the saying, "The buck stops here?"

[tpanther]

I think history will judge Bush quite favorably. Yeah, he’s made alot of mistakes by even talking to the likes of Ted Kennedy IMO.

Some call him stubborn, while others are already comparing him to Lincoln. The truth is, he falls somewhere in the middle.

---

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.

---

Sheesh, there’s your article and then there’s the drive-bys, daily kos etc. that say Bush and Cheney are the 4th reich, and sooner or later there’s gonna be marshall law in U.S. streets, they spy on ordinary U.S. citizens, blah blah blah; only the trouble is, time is running out on their idiocy, in a little over a year their horrible predictions will expire when Bush/Cheney leave office!

And though he indeed IS a turn the other cheek Christian kinda guy and no Ronnie Reagan, again, history will reflect that while Ronnie’s middle east report card will forever be remembered by the marine barracks in Lebanon, Bush will be known for sweeping change in the middle east, an actual response to 9-11 that’ll resonate for decades if not longer.

In years to come kids all grown up named Bush will outnumber kids named Ronnie all over the middle-east.

[Bigun]

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.

For many reasons I must conclude that you are correct.

I gave more than 1000 hrs of my time to the last campaign of George H. W. Bush only to walk away in disgust at the end. They did not WANT to win!

While running unsuccessfully for statewide office here in Texas in 1994 I, of course, bumped into the then candidate for Governor of our state (G.W. Bush) on many occasions and thought I had gotten to know him fairly well. I was wrong, he is NOT a conservative, and I wish I had been able to see that sooner although I don't know what difference it would have made as he was going to be the nominee regardless. I must say also that, given the alternatives presented at the time, my votes would remain the same.

[Edit35]

...this stupid NIE hack job did not change the policy of President Bush ... The President went out of his way in the last three days to tell the world ... that nothing has changed regarding the US policy toward Iran..

Yes, but perceptions often morph into reality, and sometimes STEER US policy to places we should not go.

The Bush Administration, instead of issuing a "respectful" statement in response to this NIE hit job, should have gotten in FRONT of the news cycle by proclaiming OUT LOUD that the writers of this report were in fact Democratic sychophants at best, and terror appeasers at worst.

I mean, c'mon. It was left up to shoe-leather reporters at the Wall Street Journal to tell the country that two of the three writers of the NIE report were in fact openly hostile to our policy of confronting and eliminating alQaeda and other terrorists.

[tpanther]

well...funny you mention that about public debate trumping anything...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1936593/posts

Seems only 18% are buying into it.

DARN! Bush out-flanked his detractors once again!

That stupid Harvard AND Yale educated hill-billy! LOL

[Gondring]

There's some very strange and disturbing stuff going on on the security front, with spooks operating as an opposition goverenment and defying properly elected officials.

Extremely disturbing.

Just what the hell did Frank Church and Stansfield Turner set into motion?

I doubt we'll ever know it all.

But it's difficult to simply clean house in such an agency, especially at the field level.

But I think that Kim Philby and the Cambridge Five are probably minor compared to this.

[phothus]

Absolutely true, the Plame/Libby debacle should have been a great opportunity for Bush to go public with the war the CIA has been fighting against his administration. Instead, he capitulated and let Libby go to trial.

The people in the CIA aren’t going to stop because he appeases them once, they will keep coming until someone exposes them and gets rid of them.

Thompson might be the only one of the candidates who gets this - he’s right on the NIE and he’s right on the LIbby affair.

[SuziQ]

Ever heard the saying, "The buck stops here?"

Again, the NIE is compiled from investigations done by the intelligence services. The President, last time I looked, was not a member of the CIA, nor of any of the other investigative agencies, and didn't interview people in the field. The President is the person who RECEIVES this information.

The NIE was presented in 2005, supposedly based on accurate and timely information, and came to the conclusion that Iran was still pursuing its nuclear ambitions, thus was a threat. So here, in 2007, the intelligence services, based on supposedly timely and accurate information, proceed to disavow their 2005 report and now claim that Iran stopped its nuclear program in 2003.

Just how is the President responsible for this reversal? He is totally DEPENDENT on his intelligence services, and the fact that they now seem to be engaging in policy making and trying to undercut the President is a BAD thing.

[Bernard Marx]

Goss got screwed by Negroponte who wanted the DNI job.

I saw that happening but figured Negroponte had Bush's cojones in a vise of some kind and was twisting the handle. The more I look at it I'm inclined to think Bush is simply politically incompetent as you say. He seems to live in the same kind of reality-insulated bubble his patrician Daddy inhabited during his "Read my lips" days.

Now I read this: "...two months after Goss was nominated, Bush asked Congress to implement a recommendation from the 9/11 commission to create an overall national intelligence director, which would oversee the CIA and 14 other intelligence agencies -- a change that diluted the authority of the CIA director."

Looks to me like Bush's foot wound was a self-inflicted gunshot. In one act of grand incompetence he not only backstabbed Goss, but ended up creating a total bureaucratic nightmare for our security apparatus. If it was bad before it's probably past the point of hopelessness now. Witness the current tape-destruction mess.

[Bernard Marx]

This is in stark contrast to the hysterical Dem rhetoric which paints him as a fascist dictator. What are those guys smoking? Marijuana, I guess!

I'm sure they're smoking that and using stronger stuff too. But they've carefully studied their Orwell, Gramsci and Alinsky too. "Peace is war," "love is hate," etc. Remember "the worst economy in 50 years?" Even liberal Business Week now admits to a very healthy economic growth during that time. They'll get away with their self-serving lies and distortions until the public informs itself on the issues and dumps them. Not likely, sad to say.

[Old Professer]

Okay, all you guys on here who insist in inserting “It’s Bush’s fault” in just about every bad news post - it has now been made official by the venerated Wall St. Journal, no less.

Someone ought to compile a list of all his faults to date.

[Bernard Marx]

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

I share you conclusion and sadness.

[Bernard Marx]

it's difficult to simply clean house in such an agency, especially at the field level.

That's certainly been proven by events. Bush has made the problem much worse by creating an even bigger security bureaucracy. I thought Cheney had the experience and moxie to guide Bush through the political maze but Bush is either not listening or Cheney's lost his edge due to age and illness.