This Wall Street Journal editorial is hysterical — starting with the title —
Iran Curveball
This latest intelligence fiasco is Mr. Bush’s fault.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.
At this point I was wondering if I were really reading the Wall Street Journal. Since when had the WSJ editorial page actually owned up to reality? But the next sentence put my mind at ease.
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.
Yep; this is the WSJ editorial page we know and love to snark at.
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.
It’s sad, really. The Warmongering Right really did get away with creating its own reality, for a while. With the help of compulsive pleasers like George Tenet they created a world in which no one told them anything they didn’t want to hear. Now they want to believe the intelligence agencies deceived the Bush Administration with false intelligence on Iraq, but the truth is that the Bush Administration made it clear that the only products they would accept from Intelligence were those that confirmed their beliefs. Intelligence complied, and gave the Bushies what they wanted, and then took the blame when it all turned out wrong.
Oddly, after this some of them decided the Bushies’ games were no fun, and they would not play them any more.
Today the righties are taking comfort in a Rasmussen Poll that says only 18 percent of American voters believe Iran has stopped its nuclear weapons programs. The Dream (of bombing “the daylights out of Iran’s nuclear facilities and terrorism-supporting infrastructure“) is not dead! The American People are still with them!
Maybe not. A USA Today/Gallup Poll taken November 2-4 says that only 18 percent of Americans support military action against Iran. I assume we’re not looking at the same 18 percent.
The Wall Street Journal remains gloomy:
We reported earlier this week that the authors of this Iran NIE include former State Department officials who have a history of hostility to Mr. Bush’s foreign policy. But the ultimate responsibility for this fiasco lies with Mr. Bush. Too often he has appointed, or tolerated, officials who oppose his agenda, and failed to discipline them even when they have worked against his policies. Instead of being candid this week about the problems with the NIE, Mr. Bush and his National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley, tried to spin it as a victory for their policy. They simply weren’t believable.
It’s a sign of the Bush Administration’s flagging authority that even many of its natural allies wondered this week if the NIE was really an attempt to back down from its own Iran policy. We only wish it were that competent.
Clearly, the Washington bureaucracy is running short of toadies willing to sell out their country for the sake of an unpopular Administration that will be gone in 13 months. How odd.
See also Ewen MacAskill, “Intelligence expert who rewrote book on Iran” in today’s Guardian.
Sorry for this disjointed rant:
Here’s why these people are successful: They pound away at logic like the waves in the ocean. Given enough time, they can wear away a mountain.
They pound away at logic. Then retreat a bit. Then pound away again.
I grow weary of these war-mongering idiot’s. I want to hide from their constant war-mantra cries. But that’s what they depend on.
The mountain must pound back. We must, instead, spit in their faces!
None of these $@%&ing idiot’s read the intellegence (not that they’d recognize intellegence if they saw it – it’s certainly not in their mirror), they just opine.
And they are/were wrong about everything. EVERYTHING! How long before their cry of “Wolf!” makes us ignore real threats. Like those from inside! My greatest fear is that when/if Democrat’s win the next election, the hound’s of Hell (that the right has fed, nurtured and poked) will be unleashed in the form of internal terrorism. That is what we need to fear: the next Timothy McVeigh – not Iran, you hapless Bobo’s.
Yeah, let’s disregard the intellengce and attack Iran. It worked so well in Iraq! Where will Iran hit us back? Here, with long-range missile’s? No, you $@%&ing idiot’s – in Iraq. More soldier’s die. More civilian’s. And then terrorism here at home. Why do any of these people have any credibilty left? They’ve never had any with me.
America is now like the old USSR in the early-to-mid-’80’s. Trying to carry on the facade of power while hemorrhaging money and lives in a war in the Middle-east. Our economy is in tatter’s. Our army broken. The people losing, or have lost, any faith in their government. Yet, the apparatchiks continue to opine about the power and the glory! Might, not right!
When you look for enemies in every corner, you find no friend’s. And that is where we are at today: An idiot and his enabler’s in an Oval Office looking for enemies in every corner.
So, WSJ, FNN, etc., shut the $@%& up! We need friend’s right now, not another enemy/enemies.
Peace… Out…
In a former life, I worked at General Electric, back when the infamous Jack Welch was CEO. While there are a lot of things that could be said about Welch, both good and bad, I grew to appreciate some, if not all of his business philosophy. He got a lot of things right, and had he not shown up when he did, GE would’ve likely ended up as moribund and on the ropes as another contemporary industrial collossus, GM. But relevant to this post, one of Welch’s first principles was stated in this very simple, colloquial expression: “Get Real”.
Welch hated bureaucracy, and he hated mangers who would bullshit him, painting a rosy picture when the facts didn’t support it – hence his saying: “Get Real”. Welch understood there was such a thing as Reality, and you had better not play games with it, because there are real world consequences – bad ones – if you do.
And so it boggles my mind that the WSJ – long an admirer of titans like Welch, and which I admit I haven’t read in a long time – buys the Bush notion that you can create your own reality, and encourages the turning of reality on its head, by blaming the intelligence agencies for not giving Bush what he wants to hear. As though their “product” were some defective widget that could simply be retooled to make management happy.
I’m reminded of Lee Iacoca, one of Welch’s peers, who lamented the disastrous arc of this country, in his book, Where Have All the Leaders Gone?. A leader has to be grounded in reality, not in some fantasy space, and the WSJ – as the country’s preeminent business paper – by insisting on fantasy instead of reality, has much to answer for the appalling lack of leadership in America.
“Recall the internal disputes… ” Wow, that sentence is amazing. Chalabi is a saint; um, Ok. Wilson was lying (so those weren’t forgeries – damn, Heller was right – a man who’d lie about his own signature would lie about anything!)
But “internal disputes about post-invasion Iraq”? Yikes! I guess it’s all the CIA’s fault for arguing against handing out millions of small American flags to the greatful masses.
Look, we want to do Iran because of the oil. Finding another pretext for doing Iran (nukes, terrorism, etc) is simply something to give the critters to get them to go along with it, wanting Irans oil won’t do it for us. No one was buying the threat from nuclear weapons, especially China and Russia, so along came the Kyl-Lieberman amendment declaring the IRGC as a terrorist group last September.
The NIE report will just lull everyone back to sleep, and then we will go to war after manufacturing an attack on the US that can be blamed on Iran, or Israel will attack them and they retaliate, and then it is bombs away. Count on it.
People believe Iran still pursues nuclear weapons because any sane country would want to have nuclear weapons to deter the US from invading them. This does not mean they support war with Iran because people understand Iran is not suicidal, and using them would be national suicide, so they are not a threat.
People say Bush denies reality. This is untrue. The neocons are making their own reality, Bush is just a puppet, and when you control congress, the MSM, and everyone else, thats easy to do.
cu, you’d appreciate this editorial by Chris Hedges, excerpt:
…Dying empires cling until the very end to the outward trappings of power. They mask their weakness behind a costly and technologically advanced military. They pursue increasingly unrealistic imperial ambitions. They stifle dissent with efficient and often ruthless mechanisms of control. They lose the capacity for empathy, which allows them to see themselves through the eyes of others, to create a world of accommodation rather than strife. The creeds and noble ideals of the nation become empty cliches, used to justify acts of greater plunder, corruption and violence. By the end, there is only a raw lust for power and few willing to confront it….
Helluvapost, Barb. Your analysis of the intelligence community refusing to spin the facts to conform to the Bush doctrine is exactly on the money. The WSJ is delusional to think that it was opponents of the Bush doctrine, who spun the facts to undermine the administration. They (CIA & company) did the analysis and came out with a conclusion based on the best evaluation of available facts.
This make an attack on Iran less likely, because an attack on a facility to produce nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes – lacks credibilty. Let’s take a look at the board again. Assume this is about oil. The goal remains; deliver oil to the ‘right’ companies.
Iran is a threat; they could easily annex a chunk of the best oil fields in Iran if US forces are withdrawn or the mission redefined to be anti-terrorist only. So here’s the new game; a military strike against Iran is off the table; and only 13 months remain to physically secure the oil fields for US oil companies prior to a drawdown of troops under a Dem president.
Remember, it’s not enough to secure contracts with the gov’t in the green zone. The ‘good guys’ (US oil companies) have to secure reliable access to the wells. Keep your eye on the ball.
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Don’t they teach logical reasoning anymore? In law school exams, there are only a few points awarded for citing the correct rule of law and for reaching the correct conclusion, and the bulk of the points are allocated for spotting the issue explaining the application of the law to the facts given in the question.
But the examinee is limited to those facts, and no answer, however well written, will receive a passing score if it relies upon information made up by the test-taker. We’re all entitled to our own opinions, but we’re not entitled to our own facts.
The issue here is who is to blame for the NIE scandal?
The WSJ spots the issue and reaches the correct conclusion, for Bush is responsible for this latest mess. So I’d give them 20 points for that. But their reasoning is faulty and they simply made up most of their “facts,” so they get no points for that section.
Total score = 20/100 (Fail)
Sadly, this isn’t a test. Watching the neocons try to make up reality as they go along would be funny if it wasn’t tragically real.
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/11471
Cannistraro said everyone was pointing towards General Ali-Reza Asgari, a former deputy defence minister, who disappeared in Turkey in February. But he insisted Asgari had been a long-term agent run by the West who has since been debriefed and given a new identity.
You mean the neocons are wrong and our intelligence commuity, far from being a bunch of unprofessional losers, are actually still professional and capable enough to penetrate the highest levels of Iranian gov’t and then smuggle our man out from under their noses?
Somehow I think if the neocons were in charge they would have leaked his status to the WSJ and then, since he was no longer useful, sat on their hands as he was executed.
And what do you think of Obadiah Shoher’s arguments against the peace process ( samsonblinded.org/blog/we-need-a-respite-from-peace.htm )?