Who is willing to cross the consensus of all 16 American intelligence agencies that Iran suspended their nuclear weapons program in 2003? Who is willing to assert that their own personal opinion is superior to the collective wisdom contained in the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)?
It turns out they are exactly the same people that passionately supported the 2002 NIE that was wrong on almost every particular. And, if you look at the culprits something fairly obvious emerges.
“If this N.I.E. is true, the evidence would have to be awfully good,” he continued in another version of the argument, posted to the right-leaning National Review’s website. “And evidence of that quality has been in famously short supply.”
“While I was in the administration, I saw intelligence march up the hill and down the hill in short periods of time with no reason for them to change their mind,” said John R. Bolton, Bush’s former ambassador to the United Nations. “I’ve never based my view on this week’s intelligence.”
Michael Goldfarb of William Kristol’s Weekly Standard.
Given the poor performance of the U.S. Intelligence Community (“IC”) in drafting previous NIE’s, we should review the IC’s work with a skeptical eye–no matter what conclusions are drawn. Interestingly, the IC now concedes that it is certain Iran had a nuclear weapons program. But that isn’t getting the headlines. And after having read the little that has been made public from this NIE, we are left with substantive questions.
From Israel:
Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that Iran was continuing in its efforts to produce a nuclear bomb despite the report. According to the minister, Iran had indeed stopped its program four years ago but has since renewed it…
…Asked if the new U.S. assessment reduced chances that the U.S. will launch a military strike on Iran, Barak said that was possible.
However, he said, “We cannot allow ourselves to rest just because of an intelligence report from the other side of the earth, even if it is from our greatest friend.”
Mordechai Kedar, who served in Israel’s military intelligence for 25 years and is a researcher at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv, said Israel’s intelligence community disagrees with the latest estimate.
“This is a matter of interpretation of data. I do believe that the U.S. and Israel share the same data, but the dispute is about interpreting the data. … Only a blind man cannot see their efforts to put a hand on a nuclear weapon. They are threatening the world.”
Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said he “doesn’t buy” the National Intelligence Estimate findings that Iran had stopped making a nuclear weapon. He said Israel should “not take any risks” and keep up its campaign against Tehran.
In other words, a full two years after Iran supposedly called a halt to its nuclear program, the intelligence community was still as sure as it ever is about anything that Iran was determined to build a nuclear arsenal. Why then should we believe it when it now tells us, and with the same “high confidence,” that Iran had already called a halt to its nuclear-weapons program in 2003?…
…But I entertain an even darker suspicion. 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. This time the purpose is to head off the possibility that the President may order air strikes on the Iranian nuclear installations.
New York Sun editorial:
t’s advancing a line that could be described with the word astounding if it didn’t come from the same intelligence bureaucrats that so famously failed to foresee the attacks of September 11, 2001.
One doesn’t have to be privy to our country’s secret sources to know that this last statement strains credulity. Iran has been enriching uranium, or nuclear fuel, for nearly two years despite two Security Council resolutions urging them to suspend. To believe the Mullahs have halted their nuclear weapons program, one has to believe that all of those spinning centrifuges in Natanz are to fuel power plants in a country that is the world’s third leading exporter of petroleum and natural gas.
I could go on.
What is obvious in these reactions is that each of them has a very strong relationship to Israel. And I don’t begrudge Israel their right to be concerned about Iran and any potential nuclear program they might have now or might develop in the future. But Israel’s allies in the U.S. government and in the press, have been shameless in promoting lies about Iran. The Intelligence Community finally got sick of it and pushed back.
…in a statement on Monday, Donald M. Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence, said that since the new estimate was at odds with the 2005 assessment — and thus at odds with public statements by top officials about Iran — “we felt it was important to release this information to ensure that an accurate presentation is available.”
Going unspoken is the fact that the 2005 NIE was politicized and deliberately inaccurate, just as the 2002 NIE was that was wrong in almost every particular. Donald M. Kerr is saying that the NIE was declassified because public officials were making inaccurate claims based on the 2005 NIE. Never mind that many of those the public officials, like the president and vice-president, had access to newer intelligence. The contours of our foreign policy can be seen clearly in the reaction to the 2007 NIE. Without any doubt, Israel has too much influence over our foreign policy, desperately wants us to fight a war for them with Iran (and Syria), and is willing to disregard the truth anytime it doesn’t further their agenda.
No politician can say this outloud, so I’m saying it. Because it is true. And, in my honest opinion, the American public’s patience for this behavior is limited. It will wind up doing two things. It will weaken domestic support for strong U.S.-Israel relations, and it will increase dramatically anti-Semitic feelings…as people are increasingly drawn to simplistic answers to the nation’s problems.
Those that are concerned for Israel should be much more alarmed by the reaction of Israel’s advocates to this NIE than they are about the possibility that the NIE might be wrong.
No politician can say this outloud, so I’m saying it. Because it is true. And, in my honest opinion, the American public’s patience for this behavior is limited. It will wind up doing two things. It will weaken domestic support for strong U.S.-Israel relations, and it will increase dramatically anti-Semitic feelings…as people are increasingly drawn to simplistic answers to the nation’s problems.
Those that are concerned for Israel should be much more alarmed by the reaction of Israel’s advocates to this NIE than they are about the possibility that the NIE might be wrong.
Keep saying, because as the credit crash deepens our economic woes, as the war in Iraq continues to get worse, there is going to be a growing tide of anger that won’t take an objective view. The more citizens consider the wisdom of borrowing money from China so we can fund Israel, the more resentment will grow.
Thanks for putting this front and center, BooMan. Will this also be available in orange?
The truth is that many in Israel and among Jewish population in America do not support further wars in the Middle East because they see the resulting chaos as detrimental to Israel’s national security. Unfortunately, their voices and opinions are drowned out by the hard right in Israel, by AIPAC and by the neocons.
There is probably a strong majority among American Jews opposed to this saber rattling in the middle east. Groups like the AIPAC try to speak for the Jewish Movement in the United States, but they don’t.
or they do, but they shouldn’t.
link
No politician seeking re-election will say this; some retired politicians have. Thanks for saying it here. Will you be saying it over there?
Whoever gets the nomination and becomes the next president should make Bill Richardson Secretary of State.
he has a zipper problem
a truth problem
a pander problem
a being jackass problem
and a supporting wizzer white the anti-roe SC Justice who had too many blows to the head from his football days
he also uses Republican frames like “i’m a tax cutter, not a tax hiker” like all these fucking liberals around me…
and he is DLC
and he is running for Hillary’s VP.
No thanks. And im glad hes not running for senate.
This is a fairly candid admission that Ledeen applies a stricter standard to intelligence that rebuffs his own viewpoints than he does those that support them.
Which is to say, he’s essentially admitting that he is an ideologue and not a pragmatist. I don’t think he’s ever been deceptive about that point though.
Now that I think about it a little more, his statement doesn’t even make sense. The second part does not follow the first; If the NIE is true, evidence is unimportant; it’s true. I think what he meant is “If I’m to believe this N.I.E. is true…”
i think he means, ‘blah, blah, blah, I can’t hear you’.
My mistake. You’re correct.
Michael Ledeen’s standard response to the intelligence community:
Nice.
Can anybody think of another country, ally or enemy, who would be allowed to publicly say “your intel is complete bullshit” to our faces like this?
Better yet, our own President is basically taking Israel’s stance over our own intel agency’s one. It’s not like the CIA are innocent babes in the woods folks, but exactly who is Bush the president of, the US or Israel?
You’d better believe the AIPAC lobby — on both sides of the aisle — want this NIE buried and dead. Israel will stop at nothing to make sure we bomb Iran and they’ve made it clear the coming war is still on.
No, I can’t imagine it.
And, for the record, even though Germany and France thought a lot of our pre-war intelligence was total bullshit, they were unwilling to say so publicly, although we now know they did so privately.
And that is because they value liaison with our intelligence agencies and don’t want to alienate themselves from our government too much.
Israel never concerns itself with such worries. So, we see a parade of Israeli cabinet members and surrogates calling the NIE bullshit, right in our face. And the administration tacitly sides with them over their own IC community.
Like I said, the public’s tolerance for this is limited. It’s a dangerous game.
First, Booman, well done for writing this. It’s a sensitive subject, unfortunately, so thanks for taking it on.
Agree with the bulk of what you’re saying here, this paragraph in particular:
However, I would take issue with this argument:
You make three claims here. Two of them are clearly true – Israel (in common with most states) has no regard for truth whatsoever, and it does seem to want the U.S. to attack Iran, which it views, probably correctly, as a potential threat to its regional dominance (it’s plainly not a military threat).
My problem is with the assertion that Israel has too much influence over the U.S.’ foreign policy, because it seems to suggest that the tail is somehow wagging the dog. Israel is an American client state, not the other way around, and U.S. support for it, which has been virtually unremitting since the early ’70s, has always been based on strategic grounds. As the State Department observed in 1958, support for Israel was a “logical corollary” of opposition to Arab nationalism. Israel functions primarily as a bulwark of American power in the Middle East, which has long been considered the most important strategic region on the planet (for obvious reasons).
The U.S. would love to attack Iran, for the same reasons it invaded Iraq. Needless to say, in neither case do security fears over Iranian nuclear weapons have anything to do with it. The reason why the Bush administration hasn’t and probably won’t attack Iran is simply because, practically speaking, it would probably be a disaster. But in principle, if it could be done successfully, the U.S. establishment is all for it, and this support due not to some moralistic support for Israel, but rather a desire to maintain Israel’s (as an American client state) dominance in the region and to control the region’s oil reserves.
Now, none of this changes the fact that all the people you quote above seem to support an attack on Iran and they are supportive of Israel. There may well be a connection between the two – it’s almost certain, in fact – but if the U.S. attacks Iran it will not be because of “Israeli influence” over U.S. foreign policy, but in furtherance of long-standing U.S. objectives of the kind described above.
That’s my take, anyway.