Bush Grasp of Reality Tenuous
Farideh Farhi, at our group blog, Global Affairs, says she listened to Bush's press conference on Tuesday -- which was full of implausible statements -- and now wants to know what George W. Bush has been smoking. Uh, I don't think that substance is typically smoked so much as snorted. Or maybe his current favorite is just a stong bottle of beer.
The Los Angeles Times notes a controversy over what the president knew and when he knew it:
' Seven weeks ago, Bush said that in the interest of "avoiding World War III" Iran should be prevented from gaining the knowledge needed to make a nuclear weapon. That was roughly two months after J. Michael McConnell, the director of national intelligence, reported to Bush that he had "some new information" about Iran.
"He didn't tell me what the information was; he did tell me it was going to take awhile to analyze," the president said. He said he was not briefed on the report until last week, and that in the interim no one had suggested that he tone down his language.
Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, expressed incredulity that Bush, "who gets briefed every morning, who is fixated on Iran," had not sought details of the new assessment after learning of it in August.
"I can't believe that," he said in a phone call with reporters. '
Washington insiders say that Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell would certainly have been kept in the loop by the analysts producing this NIE. McConnell briefs Bush and said this summer he had new evidence coming in.
At his press conference Bush reverted to his old ploy of declaring people and things dangerous even when there is no objective measure of such things. He used to say that Saddam Hussein had been "dangerous" even when it was discovered that Saddam had no chemical, biological or nuclear research facilities. Now Iran is intrinsically dangerous, regardless of whether it has a weapons program or not. Does anyone still believe this sort of essentializing and fear-mongering?
Bush's circle is like a medieval court with scheming courtiers. His subordinates apparently routinely do things that he doesn't (and the other courtiers don't) know about until later. Take for instance when then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered the Iraqi army dissolved, with Bush only discovering it afterwards.
My guess is that Admiral William J. Fallon, the CENTCOM commander now, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, may well have cooperated with figures in the intelligence world to get this report written and some of it released, especially since Congress had mandated that it be completed and its findings conveyed to them by a date certain.
Gareth Porter reported that
'A source who met privately with Fallon around the time of his confirmation hearing and who insists on anonymity quoted Fallon as saying that an attack on Iran "will not happen on my watch". Asked how he could be sure, the source says, Fallon replied, "You know what choices I have. I'm a professional." Fallon said that he was not alone, according to the source, adding, "There are several of us trying to put the crazies back in the box." '
Mullen has worried that the way the US military is bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq will prevent Washington from replying decisively to any other foe or crisis.
Snow Bush with some occasional hints that the NIE has some new findings, sure that he won't bother to ask for details or read any actual document (he seldom does), then you could spring this thing on the Cheneyites and blindside them.
Cheney clearly was making a push for war on Iran this fall. The real puzzle is how the NIE got past his team of plumbers, which still informally includes convicted perjurer Scooter Libby. That's why I say there was moxie behind this NIE, of the sort an admiral has, or better two admirals.
posted by Juan Cole @ 12/05/2007 05:00:00 AM
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"quoted Fallon as saying that an attack on Iran "will not happen on my watch". Asked how he could be sure, the source says, Fallon replied, "You know what choices I have. I'm a professional." "
It seems only the militry is able to stop an invasion of Iran. Chris Hedges recently wrote of this on Truthdig: In the Hands of the Military
Is anyone not terrrified by that?
This situation appears to be another instance of a recurrent theme of this Administration; either
1) You believe Bush, in which case he is an incurious and dull minded man who does not try to do his job properly; or
2) Bush is lying; or
3) A bit of both.
An obvious indication that Mr. Bush knew all along that Iran did not have a nuclear weapons program is in the words he used.
He typically warned against Iran's acquisition of the "knowledge" or "capacity" to make weapons. That is code for a civilian uranium enrichment program! He didn't (typically) say that Iran was getting a weapon, he (typically) said Iran was getting the *knowledge* to make weapons.
If he thought that Iran had a weapons program, he wouldn't have kept talking about "knowledge" or "capacity" to make weapons.
Behnam
Another funny thing not noticed by others.
Mr. Hadley said in his press conference that before this last intelligence assessment the US "did not know" that Iran had a had nuclear weapons program prior to 2003! For example, he said, "So the covert nuclear weapons program was unknown to us, suspected, unknown; now confirmed."
If that is true, then the US was lying all along to claim to know that Iran had such a program!
Anyway you cut this, there's deception all through!
Behnam
He's not smokin' anything.. Trust me on that.
GW's on the finest medications that Rummy's pharma-industrial complex friends can bioengineer.
Prozac like substances designed with 'his mind in mind'.
Hunter S. Thompson, if he were alive, could have written more elaborately on the topic, but nonetheless, mood-elevators, depressants, pills to get you up, pills that put you down for the night, pills that make you believe Iran HAS a nuclear weapons program... have been a staple in the presidential medicine cabinet for a long, long time.
"Uh, I don't think that substance is typically smoked so much as snorted. Or maybe his current favorite is just a stong (sic) bottle of beer."
There is a set of approved lies:
Iran wants to build a nuclear weapon.
Ahmedinejad threatened to wipe Israel of the map.
The Palestinians do not want peace.
The Israelis make generous offers.
We need a primer of approved lies to help the neutral observer navigate this American insanity.
Wasn't Fallon, just a few months back, beating the Iran is supplying weapons to Iraqi insurgents drum?
Not sure anyone has picked this up but a snippet of Bush's press conference escaped my mute button trigger finger yesterday and it was a whopper!
Bush expressed appreciation for the fine work done on the NIE and then went out of his way to contrast this product with the 2002 Iraq NIE. Seems that thanks to his intelligence reforms "we are taking these estimates more seriously"
Holy moly
These admirals and those like them remind me of the monarchist noblemen who assassinated Rasputin in December 1916 to try save the Czarist regime.
Excellent post and very plausible. I too had been curious as to the source of the leak and surprised that Cheney had not prevented or softened it.
Admiral Fallon has been clear that he opposes any action against Iran and has shown a willingness to stand up to Cheney.
The leak does two things. It further poisons the well of public opinion against Cheney and war with Iran, and, it fires a shot across the bow that powerful parts of the government are opposed to starting a war with iran.
Of course, Cheney cares not a whit about public opinion, so the true test will come when he decides to bomb iran anyway and forces the military into a question of obedience or insubordination.
Who will get Cheney's finger off the trigger?
Bush has now declared that the Iranis cannot even have the knowledge to make nuclear weapons. Is there now a prohibition on Iran's use of the Internet? Bush is a boob!
ref : “Bush's circle is like a medieval court with scheming courtiers.”
{grin} That's a good description: it really is quite remarkable. And from time to time Toto pulls back the curtain at this leaderless / mis-leading Court of OZ, giving us stunning glimpses of how one special interest or another, including ‘triangulating’ members of a supposed opposition party ~ manages to finesse or just blatantly foster their agenda into "Official U.S. Policy".
Such was apparently the case when Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad was recently forced to withdraw a resolution submitted to the U.N. Security Council because ISRAEL (!) objected to language within the draft's text; statements that did not jibe with their agenda:
“We don't just write a text in the mission and come and present it to people. We are an organized government, institutionalized. We are not a banana republic,” Khalilzad said.
"Israeli officials said at the time that while they had no objections to the U.S. text in itself, they believed a Security Council resolution was ‘not appropriate’."
Of course, anyone familiar with the U.S. voting record at the U.N. could deduce the obvious presence of ISRAEL (or AIPAC) involvement in the creation of ‘Official Policy’, but only rarely do we see these machinations in such a naked manner: it's embarrassing.
In so many ways it is so much easier for we (Americans) to cling to our illusions: That we are not addicted to petroleum products, largely sold to us as if by drug dealers who care little for our well-being, or for the global environment of which they are a part; That we are not indebted to China, Japan ~ who loan us the money to buy their exports; That we do not have a de facto ‘untermenschen’ class of 12~20 million workers among us; that, for some reason still a mystery to this writer, we harbor the terrifying ‘persecution hysteria’ of ISRAEL as our own, dark, national ID: in the Court of OZ.
While El Presidente Arbusto has cited the NIE as reason to continue on a war path with Iran, claiming it proves that Iran had a nucular weapons program and could very well have the knowledge to begin one soon, the Israeli hawks have stuck to their guns, arguing that the NIE is incorrect, which in turn implies that the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies that prepared it are also in the wrong...
Israel's leaders' hawkish position on Iran prompts me to try and examine their hostility along a historical context, so readers here can understand why the Israelis hawks are persisting on a war path with Iran:
1. The NeoCons: The Neoconservative movement, advocating a Clean Break in the Middle East in favor of Israel, was picked up by Israeli right-wing leader Benjamin Netanyahu in the 1990s and the Israeli hawks, including most of Likud and also other political blocs, are hardline Neoconservatives, just as most Republicans and some Democrats are in the U.S., as is Tony Blair's coterie in the UK, and the John Howard cabal, which lost the elections in Australia. The Israeli connection to the Neoconservatives, however, goes much deeper than that of UK or Aussie activists, primarily because many of the authors of the neocon doctrine, whether at the PNAC or the AEI, have a long history of lobbying for right-wing Israeli causes in Washington.
2. Iraqi Threat: While the media here has done a fairly good job of exposing the connections between the neocons and exiled Iraqis led by Ahmad Chalabi as being the source of faulty intelligence on Iraq, little is said of the misinformation and propaganda carried out by Israeli right-wingers, and Israeli intel services, to foster a war with Iraq prior to 2002. If you doubt me, merely google Netanyahu and 2002. Israel's security interests in overthrowing Saddam's regime in Iraq were genuine, but it has never been discussed as to what extent Israeli intel services and propagandists played a role in misdirecting U.S. concerns regarding Iraq.
3. Iranian Threat: Israel has genuine security concerns regarding Iran, and most directly so because Iran supports the resistance movements such as Hamas in occupied Palestine, and Hizbollah in what was until recently Israeli-occupied Lebanon. However, the Israeli propagandists gloss over the fact that even in the most fanatical of times, such as Ayatollah Khomeini's Vilayat e-Fakih in the 1980s, the Israelis shipped weapons to Iran and maintained effective negotiations with that country. While it benefits Israeli hawks to portray the Iranian leadership to be bloodthirsty madmen, which many Israeli commentators have been doing for the last two days, the fact is that the Iranian leadership is quite rational - something that is noted in the NIE itself!
4. Israel's Intel Agencies - Israel's intelligence agencies are probably the best in the world when it comes to misinformation and propaganda campaigns. The U.S. intel agencies are limited in their media activities precisely because the domestic laws here forbid the CIA's use of propaganda in domestic media, and there is always the fear of blowback if CIA propaganda abroad gets picked up by U.S. foreign correspondents. However, in all the countries that were schooled in propaganda and intel work by British and German officials in the 1940s and 1950s, the Israelis have shown themselves to be the most adept at the black arts. But let's not be confused here - Israeli misinformation and death squads are vicious and effective because Israel is locked into an Iron Wall doctrine wherein Israeli leaders (except, maybe, for Moshe Sharett) have, for long, been favorable to the doctrine of perpetual war with the Arabs and Iranians (after the fall of the Shah) in order to sustain their illegal occupation of Arab lands (Palestinian, Syrian and bits of disputed Lebanese terrortories). If the U.S. seeks to replicate Israeli propaganda and death squad tactics in its foreign affairs as it did during the Cold War, it will find itself in a similar lifelong battle, because that is precisely what these kinds of tactics create when practiced on groups with strong cultural, religious and political inter-ties.
5. The 2003 Switch - What the U.S. intel agencies knew of Iranian nuclear programs prior to the invasion of Iraq came mostly from Iranian dissident sources, many of whom are run by Israeli intel agencies. I doubt that the CIA was able to get full access to most of these Iranian dissidents as the Mossad and Shabak (GSS) are usually quite careful in avoiding direct access to their foreign agents, preferring, instead, to propagandize or manipulate their intel instead. I believe the U.S. case for establishing this "fact" of the Iranian nuclear weapons program prior to 2003 was based largely on sources, such as the Mujahideen e-Khalq, who were run by Israeli intel agencies. After 2003, the U.S. intel forces occupied Iraq and were in direct contact with the MEK and other Shiite agents with access to Iran. I believe the U.S. did not really "discover" the end of Iran's program, but rather, my hunch is, it wasn't so much as that the Iranian nuclear weapons program ended in 2003, as much as the U.S. intel services discovered through their own new network of Iranian spies that a lot of material made available to them previously via Israeli-run agents was bogus.
Even if the point I make in #5. above is off the mark, there is still the larger issue of the persisting Israeli right-wing propaganda that seeks to sustain hostilities with Iran, and draw U.S. support for a military strike, consisting of hundreds of bombing raids, against Iranian facilities, in order to destroy Iran's ability to pose a conventional threat to Israel.
What these right-wing hawks in Israel and the U.S. ignore, of course, is that ever since Israel's development of nuclear weapons deterrence in 1968, the Arabs and, since 1979 the Iranians, have been rational enough to understand that they can not wage a conventional war with Israel. The 1973 limited engagement with Egypt and Syria was, to a large part, limited because both countries understood, through back channel contacts, that Israel would launch nukes against Damascus and Cairo if the Arab armies swept across Israel. The unconventional warfare, including the setting up of guerrilla and terrorist groups, has escalated since the creation of the Israeli nuclear weapons program precisely because the Arabs and Iranians are not madmen, and the more Israel attacks these people through terrible and terrifying conventional weapons, the stronger their unconventional forces become.
What substances Bushie ingests, of course, is a closely guarded secret. Still, I think Bush's status with NIE was clearly genetic. He was "out of the loop."
I would think Cheney would have been present at any intel briefings that Bush received. If Bush didn't ask questions, Cheney certainly would have.
If Iran is dangerous because it might possess knowledge, doesn't those of us who are still semi-aware of the world a "threat to peace?" America is not safe until Iran is without math, physics and chemistry, apparently.
Does anyone have any knowledge of the Iranian information campaigns and what sorts of black arts operations they run?
So J. Michael McConnell makes an appointment with Bush, meets with him and says the there is some important intelligence that needs to be analyzed, but doesnt say what it is about and Bush doesnt ask?!!!!!!!
Sure, and I just fell off of a turnip truck. I have heard L-A-M-E excuses before, but that one takes the cake.I would be ashamed to make such an incredibly stupid claim if I were President of the United States. No wonder we had 9/11. Evidently, the entire FBI could have circled Bush in the Rose Garden, screaming that there was information indicating an attack on the U.S., and he would have agreed to wait until it was analyzed and confirmed by at least four other agencies,rejecting it in the end because it might disrupt the airlines.The DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE told the President he had important intelligence information! And the President doesnt ask what it was about? Isnt anyone out there as concerned as I am about that? Arent you a little, tiny bit taken aback? Or, do you believe, as I do, that Bush is lying? And, not a very good nor intelligent lie, either. One way or another, the coporate-owned media should be picking up on that incredible statement. Just when I think the extraordinary depth of stupidity cannot be topped, Bush takes it to another level. If the sheeple want to be afraid, very afraid, this should do the trick. It sure scares me.
Earlier in this string, Anonymous said:
"Does anyone have any knowledge of the Iranian information campaigns and what sorts of black arts operations they run?"
I am not sure what the context to that question is, but previously I have heard bogus arguments about how Iran fooled the U.S. intel agencies into invading Iraq by using Ahmad Chalabi as a double agent...
Iran's ability to compromise and sabotage U.S. intel agencies, especially when it comes to implanting double agents and red herrings, is doubtful... For one, anyone who is Iranian or Shiite, or even Muslim for that matter, is run through an exhaustive background and verification process and viewed with deep suspicion...
The problem with the Bush administration, and especially Cheney's OSP, was that they were willing to hear a rooster crow in Djibouti and certify that it signified undeniable proof of Saddam's WMDs...
When the bar for intel filtering and screening is deliberately lowered to a pedestrian level by people who have no training in the craft but immerse themselves into finding intel to support their ideological and political plans - in those kinds of situations, even a third rate third world agency can run misinformation directly to the White House, precisely because the professional intel officers have been replaced by partisan hacks...
But specifically in the context of my earlier remark regarding Israel's intel agencies and their misinformation and propaganda campaigns, the only Iranian supported outfit to achieve anything similar in foreign operations is the Hizbollah in Lebanon, which was able to disrupt and displace GSS and Mossad networks in Lebanon from 1982-2000 and is reported to have even infiltrated Israeli military by developing an asset in the Israeli Druze community, who was subsequently arrested by Israeli authorities... Hizbollah has also been able to build extensive intel ties with Hamas, but that is largely because hundreds of Hamas members were expelled to Lebanon by Israel in the 1990s and fell right into the laps of the Hizb camps in the Bekaa valley.
Within the Middle East, Iran's propaganda activities are mostly targeted at Shiites in mostly Sunni nations - something that deeply troubles the unstable fat cats of the Gulf kingdoms... Iran has very little influence or intel capability in largely Sunni nations as these Sunnis view Iran, and Shiites, with contempt.
The March of Shiism
Even without nuclear weapons, Iran has become the hegemonic power over the world’s richest oil region, thanks to the Bush administration’s elimination of the Sunni Wahhabi Talibans in Afghanistan and Saddam’s Sunni regime in Iraq.
On April 9, 2003, the U.S. won the battle against a tattered Iraq. But Iran, without firing a shot won the war for Iraq; a triumph for the Khomeini revolution, one of Shiism’s greatest moments since Saladin removed the Shii Fatimids in Cairo in 1171. The occupation of Iraq transferred control in Mesopotamia to Iraq’s 60% Shii majority, a cataclysmic event that turned Iran into an unstoppable regional powerhouse. The British think tank, Chatham House concluded in August 2006: “The greatest problem facing the U.S. is that Iran has superseded it as the most influential power in Iraq.”
To Sunnis, Shiis are heretics. In extremist Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, Shiis are discriminated against. The founder of the kingdom imposed on Shiis the tax he imposed on non-Muslims. Shii towns and villages today are pathetically poor despite being located at the heart of Saudi Arabia’s oil region. In Bahrain, the Sunni ruling minority discriminates against the Shii majority. In Iraq, until the U.S. occupation, the Shii majority was deprived. In Kuwait, Shiis, almost one-third of Kuwaitis, are second-class citizens. In Lebanon, Shiis, a third of the population, are underprivileged. In Syria, until seizing power in 1970, the Alawites, a Shii sect, lived in abject poverty under Sunni rule. In Yemen, the Zaydis, a Shii sect, are a third of Yemen’s twenty million people. Zaidis accuse the Sunni government of genocide.
The Arab Shiis look to Iran for deliverance; leverage in Tehran’s arsenal in dealing with Arab oil Sheikhdoms. Egyptian President Mubarak declared recently that Shiis in Arab states were more loyal to Iran than to their own countries.
As a minority of about 15% of Muslims today, Shiism draws Shiis together. In Southern Iraq, Najaf and Karbala, the burial places of Imams Ali and Hussein, are the holiest of holy Shii cities. Kazimayn, nearby, has the tombs of the Seventh and the Ninth Imams. Samarra has the tombs of the Tenth and the Eleventh Imams plus the revered Mosque of the Occultation, from where the Twelfth Imam allegedly disappeared (this mosque was blown up in the civil war on February 22, 2006 and again on June 13, 2007). In the cemeteries of these holy cities, many illustrious religious personalities from the world of Shiism are buried. In Iran, the Eighth Imam is buried in Mashhad, and in Qumm his sister is buried. Outside Damascus in Syria, Zainab, the Granddaughter of the Prophet and the sister of Hasan and Hussein, is buried. In commemorating the suffering of the Imams, pilgrimages pull millions of Shiis together. In the grand seminaries of Najaf, Karbala, Mashhad, and Qumm the best-known clerics teach. The prominent families of Najaf and Karbala trace their roots to long lines of marriages with the great families of Burjurid, Isfahan, Kirmanshah, Mashhad, and Qumm. Ayatollahs have cross-country followings. From Najaf and Karbala, Iranian clerics often led the Shii world. The so-called “historical ethnic enmity” between Arabs and Persians is an exaggeration. The conflict has always been between the rulers, not the Shii masses.
Washington needs today to deal with Iran as the major power in the world’s biggest oil region. GCC rulers in Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and UAE are too feeble to challenge Iran. These men are non-representative dictators pre-occupied in outdoing each other on who owns the more ostentatious palace and who flies the bigger private Airbus or Boeing airplane.
Elie Elhadj; author: The Islamic Shield
http://www.universal-publishers.com/book.php?method=ISBN&book=1599424118
Also:
http://journals.aol.com/eeh100/daring-opinion/
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