Gambling on the Good Word of a Tyrant *Updated and Bumped*
I am really intrigued by this story which reveals that President Bush had a National Intelligence Estimate which said, in part, that Iran had frozen its nuclear weapons program in 2003 but that our intelligence agencies weren’t sure if Iran intended to continue to pursue nuclear weapons.
The NIE sounds very similar to what our intelligence agencies were telling the President about Iraq and we all remember just how that turned out, so it’s entirely understandable to me that the President continued to act as if Mad Mahmoud was on the most dangerous course he was traveling prior to 2003.
It’s also interesting to me that Iran allegedly froze its nuclear weapons program at the same time the Coalition resumed hostilities against Iraq and toppled Saddam Hussein based, in part, on the world’s belief that he was producing WMDs. It seems that taking down Hussein not only scared Libya’s Khadaffi into ditching his WMD programs but also the Iranians. If true, that’s an incredibly good piece of news and it’s a very large point in the President’s favor.
It doesn’t fully explain, though, why the administration has continued to press Iran on a nuclear program that the report says it really doesn’t have (or, at least, isn’t active enough to concern us to the level the President is publicly concerned). There are quite a few folks who would have us believe that the President is just hell-bent on taking us to war with Iran, which is utter and complete nonsense. In order to hold that as true, you’d have to believe that George Bush is quite simply an inhuman monster who wants to engage in a hot war for no good reason at all. That’s not only a slander against the President, but an insult to our intelligences. No President nor anyone who has ever run for President in my lifetime would ever simply throw away the lives of thousands of human beings simply to fulfill some sort of inchoately described bloodlust. Never.
So what, then, is going on?
It looks to me like, for the past four years, the President has been walking a tightrope as tin as dental floss. On one hand, there is this NIE from our intelligence agencies. On the other hand, the IAEA has been steadily reporting unsettling news that Iran has been steadfastly enriching uranium and running some 3000 centrifuges whose use is primarly for weapon-grade material. It has also been incredibly aggressive with the IAEA, alternating between refusing to cooperate with it in any way and welcoming it with open arms. Who could reasonably assume that Mad Mahmoud and the Mullahs are acting in good faith when they have no done so for almost thirty years?
Let’s then add the fact that our intelligence organs have been incredibly unreliable for a long time. The CIA, in particular, has been dangerously dysfunctional. In its defense, the crippling cuts to its budget and the edict that it not deal with unsavory characters, both of which occurred under a Democratic administration, hurt it badly and it’s never recovered. Nevertheless, the CIA missed important things even before then, such as the collapse of the Soviet Union. So it’s understandable that the White House took the NIE with a Koh-I-Noor sized grain of salt.
I think the President has been more than just prudent to consider Iran a continuing threat, this NIE notwithstanding. Given the preponderance of the evidence we have seen from Iran over thirty years, assuming that Mad Mahmoud simply laid down his program without definitive proof to that effect would be reckless beyond belief and could well kill a great may of us. I have no interest in a President who would gamble our lives on the goodwill of a tyrant, regardless of what the left might say.
(Some links via memeorandum)
UPDATE: Tom Maguire points out the Times’ problems with reading comprehension. Meanwhile, Belmont Club has a must-read article on Iran’s nuclear program that is both sober and comprehensive.
And there’s this: Nobody puts liberals in a corner! Well, except for themselves.
UPDATE 2: Norman Podhoretz, noting that the 2002 and 2005 NIEs said exactly the opposite of the one in 2003, catches the faint whiff of a rat.
No related posts.
Category: General
Thanks for the link.
But…
Spoken like a true Republican.
Think so? then explain the damn speeches talking about WW3, ya moron.
That might work if I were actually a Republican. I'm not.
I am, however, a human being who refuses to believe that someone who could rise to the level of President in the most free and, indeed, progressive nation on the planet would seek to start a war for no better reason than to kill a few thousand people. I find such a notion either incredibly infantile or monstrous, depending on how much maturity I deem you to have.
It's your accusation. You back it up. Without the intellectually-vacant refuge of name-calling.
On World War III, tell me this. What if Mad Mahmoud actually does develop nuclear weapons. And what if he does with them what he's done with every other man-portable weapon in his arsenal – give them to Hezbollah with instructions to use them against the infidels. Do you really doubt that a nuclear attack on Israel, or US personnel, or British personnel, or French personnel, or any other nation capable of responding to such a horrible attack in kind wouldn't escalate the hot war of voices into a hot war of nuclear explosions? Are you really willing to risk that many lives on a guess, which is the very best you could do at this point?
I thought this was a parody, then I realized you are actually serious.
Look, just where the hell are those Iraq WMD's? That was the whole rationale for the invasion, remember? We weren't told that WMDs in Iran threatened us — We were told they were in Iraq. "They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north" — that's what Rumsfeld told us and the world. That's what this president used to scare the crap out of people and get them into that war.
This president told us again and again that Saddam was up to his mustache in the 9/11 attacks. And the vice-president still does. And this was a lie, too. As were all this administration's claims for the war.
If that's not bloodlust, then you need to explain what in fact it is that we're seeing. It sure as hell isn't national security — don't even say Saddam had something to do with 9/11.
No, you credulous person, this president has thrown away hundreds of thousands of lives for either no good purpose or a purpose he keeps hidden. This administration makes up new lies as the old lies are exposed.
Bloodlust isn't the only monstrous no-good reason for war. There's oil, imperialism, domestic political hegemony, family vendetta, and an unlimited supply of arrogance, ignorance and stupidity to provide plenty of no-good despicable reasons as to why this president has already thrown away so many lives.
By the way, starting a war based "what ifs" — on what "might be" — is a war crime. A pre-emptive war launched by lies with the underlying intent to remove a government and take their resources is surely so. Now that this NIE on Iran's years-old lack of nuclear capabilities has come out, the 'what ifs' and 'might bes' become either classic rightwing paranoia — or a monstrous and dishonest agenda for more war.
Bloodlust is not necessary to make this president inhuman and monstrous. He's responsible for enough inhuman and monstrous things without it.
It takes a stunning amount of credulousness for anyone to think this same man would only go to war with Iran for just and legal reasons. You already are defending the idea of a pre-emptive war with Iran in spite of the lack of nuclear weapons. The "utter and complete nonsense" you mentioned can be found in your own thinking.
You say "I have no interest in a President who would gamble our lives on the goodwill of a tyrant…" I say only a fool continues to trust this president to do any gambling whatsoever with lives and national security.
This foolish president and you and others like you have already gambled on Iraq. And lost. That lost bet has already cost 30,000 American casualties, half a million dead Iraqi civilians, and a trillion dollars.
There never were any nuclear weapons there. But that didn't matter, just like it doesn't matter there's none in Iran. But this president still talks of war with Iran.
Is that bloodlust now or just more criminal stupidity?
It takes an amazing lack of critical thinking to come up with the assertion you made regarding presidents and war. But what I can't decide is whether you're naive or just the typical kool-aid drinkin' deadender. Not that one must exclude the other…
> Look, just where the hell are those Iraq WMD’s? That was the whole rationale for the invasion, remember? We weren’t told that WMDs in Iran threatened us — We were told they were in Iraq. “They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north” — that’s what Rumsfeld told us and the world. That’s what this president used to scare the crap out of people and get them into that war.
Once again, we need to point back to the maturity of those posting such ill-informed trinkets of wisdom. The fact of the matter is that French, U.K., and American intelligence prior to and during Bush 43's administration all concurred that Iraq had and was continuing to develop WMDs. Equally important is the fact that the party whose kool-aid YOU ARE DRINKING also supported these conclusions before it became politically expedient to not do so. Why else would Bill Clinton completely support the war in Iraq from the onset only to change course by recently claiming that he was against it from the beginning. How short your memory is.