Nepal. Tibet. Whatever.

By Michael J.W. Stickings

What is it with these Republican foreign policy "experts" and their repeated stumbles?

John McCain claims to be the candidate with the most experience and expertise, and yet can't even get the whole Sunni-Shiite thing straight.

And yesterday, on ABC's This Week, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley mixed up Nepal and Tibet -- or, rather, talked about Nepal when what he really mean was Tibet. And this happened over and over again -- Think Progress has the video and part of the transcript.

Now, sure, Hadley knows better, and, sure, it can be easy enough to make such mistakes, and, sure, he may have been thinking about Nepal after hearing the previous guest, Jimmy Carter, talk about the historic elections in that country, but I'm not sure such excuses suffice.

Hadley's the NSA, after all, and This Week is an important show on a national network, and the situation in Tibet is rather pressing at the moment -- not to take anything away from the pressing situation in Nepal -- what with China's brutal crackdown and the upcoming Olympics and all (which Carter also talked about). It's one thing to get it wrong once or twice. But repeatedly -- as many as eight times?

You think he'd have done better -- that is, gotten it right. Or is that too much to ask?

NIE reaction round-up

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(My own reaction is here.)

Slate's Fred Kaplan, one of my go-to commentators on military and national security issues, examines the recently-released NIE and admits that "President Bush and the administration's hawkish faction, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, can take some solace from the new intelligence estimate. For instance, the NIE states, again 'with high confidence,' that until the fall of 2003, the Iranians were developing nuclear weapons. It also notes that they are continuing civilian work 'related to uranium conversion and enrichment.'"

However, it was "increasing international scrutiny and pressure" that prompted Iran to halt the militarized component of its nuclear program, not the saber-rattling of Cheney and the warmongers.

Kaplan's very sensible conclusion: "If there was ever a possibility that President George W. Bush would drop bombs on Iran, the chances have now shrunk to nearly zero."

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But wait. Not so fast.

As I argued yesterday -- see link above -- Bush's NSA/mouthpiece, Stephen Hadley, responded to the NIE by patting the Bush Administration (and himself?) on the back, by praising his boss's "strategy" (which, as spun, includes aggressive international diplomacy, not gearing up for war), and by issuing, between the lines, a carefully and indeed esoterically presented advocation of the warmongering position.

That advocation continued at Bush's press conference yesterday -- needless to say, the scribes on hand were curious: the NIE seems to refute the claims made by Cheney and the warmongers with respect to Iran's nuclear intentions and current capacity. In response to the first question, the president said this: "Here's what we know. We know that they're still trying to learn how to enrich uranium. We know that enriching uranium is an important step in a country who wants to develop a weapon. We know they had a program. We know the program is halted."

In other words, fuck the NIE.

The militarized component of the program may have been halted, but Iran still seeks nuclear weapons and therefore remains a serious threat. Note that this was one of the revisionist arguments made in support of the Iraq War: Saddam may not have had any WMDs, but he once had them and may have sought them again and was therefore a threat -- and so pre-emptive war was justified. The case for immediate war -- Cheney's case -- may have suffered a serious blow with the release of this NIE, but the case for war, according to the warmongers, remains.

To Bush's credit, however, he praised the intelligence community for its "good work" and declared that ongoing international pressure is required -- on the latter point, I agree; on the former point, I assume the intelligence community got this right and is therefore deserving of praise. Still, he argued that "[t]he best diplomacy, effective diplomacy, is one of which all options are on the table" -- this is the thin end of the wedge, an opening for the warmongers. If and when the U.S. determines that diplomacy is not working and/or that Iran is not negotiating in good faith, the "option" of pre-emptive military action can be triggered.

And for all the pro-diplomacy talk from the president, I return to a point made by Kevin Drum (among others): "This NIE was apparently finished a year ago, and its basic parameters were almost certainly common knowledge in the White House well before that. This means that all the leaks, all the World War III stuff, all the blustering about the IAEA -- all of it was approved for public consumption after Cheney/Bush/Rice/etc. knew perfectly well it was mostly baseless." Which means that Bush and his top officials have essentially been lying about, or at the very least misrepresenting, the Iranian threat for at least the past year -- but probably for much longer.

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Some important articles/posts to check out:

Scott Horton, Harper's: "[We] have been pointing for the better part of the year to the very strange goings-on surrounding the preparation and issuance of a vital intelligence report on the state of Iran’s nuclear project. The White House, and particularly Vice President Cheney, has been feverishly attempting to stop its issuance. The Director of National Intelligence, McConnell, has been at odds to oppose its declassification. In sum, something was there and the war party was intensely upset about it."

Think Progress: According to The New Yorker's Sy Hersh, "Bush actually knew about the NIE at least two days earlier and had a 'private discussion' about it with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert before the Middle East peace summit in Annapolis, MD, last week."

Think Progress: At his press conference yesterday, Bush admitted this: "I was made aware of the NIE last week. In August, I think it was John -- Mike McConnell came in and said, We have some new information. He didn’t tell me what the information was. He did tell me it was going to take a while to analyze." So McConnell didn't tell and Bush didn't ask? About something as important as Iran's nuclear program?

TP: "At the same time Bush was ratcheting up the rhetoric on Iran, he was told by his National Intelligence Director that that [sic] have 'some new information.' Yet Bush wants the public to believe he never learned what the information was, nor was he interested." More, WaPo is reporting that "intelligence officials began briefing senior members of the Bush administration" as early as July. Which means that Bush and the warmongers were making their case against Iran even after the new intelligence was first disseminated.

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None of this is stopping the warmongers, however. It didn't stop them earlier this year, and it certainly isn't now.

At Commentary, leading neocon Norman Podhoretz is attacking the intelligence community -- blaming the messenger, that is, and thereby casting doubt on the intelligence itself. It is "bending over backward" to avoid another Iraq fiasco, giving Iran the benefit of the doubt, and seeking to undermine Bush, against whom it has a serious grudge.

The Weekly Standard, home to neocon saber-rattling at its most grotesque, picks up on Podhoretz's sophistic attack and runs with it.

Bush at least talks positively about diplomacy, about the intelligence community, and about keeping all options on the table -- however insincerely. The neocons have no such diplomatic touch themselves. From the weeds of their rags, from the luxury of their think tanks, they can afford to be more blunt.

The drumbeat for war is as loud and as demanding as ever.

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Andrew Sullivan: "My hunch is that this is the final collapse of the neocon wing of the Bush administration. They simply couldn't survive Iraq."

I'm not so sure. Not yet. (See above.)

Glenn Greenwald:

Over the past year, the rhetoric from our Serious Foreign Policy establishment regarding the supposed threat posed by Iran's active pursuit of nuclear weapons has severely escalated both in terms of shrillness and threats. Opposition to this building hysteria has been led by Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who -- exactly as he did prior to the invasion of Iraq -- has been relentlessly warning that there is no real evidence to support these war-fueling allegations.

Because of that, he has been relentlessly attacked and smeared by our Serious Foreign Policy elite -- yet again. And yet again, ElBaradei has been completely vindicated, and our Serious Foriegn Policy Experts exposed as serial fabricators, fear-mongerers and hysterics.

A long and rewarding post. Make sure to read it all.

Josh Marshall: "If you look closely at what President Bush said this morning about the Iran intelligence, his dodge about what he knew and when is actually worse than the charge he was trying to deny."

John Aravosis: "Bush lied to the media and got us into a war with Iraq. The media refused to do their job, and led us into that war. Now Bush has been caught lying to us again, repeatedly, about going to war with Iran, and the media has, again, rolled over and kicked its legs up in the air.

Not that one should expect much else from the White House press corps.

Steve Benen: "So, let’s review what we’ve learned from the White House over the last 24 hours. The DNI told Bush there was important new information on Iran, but the president didn’t ask what it was. The president was, and was not, told to “stand down” when it came to Iran, advice he both ignored and did not receive. All the while, the White House was publicly making assessments of the Iranian threat, all of which contradicted the evidence they did, and did not, see. Just when it seemed as if the Bush gang couldn’t get any more embarrassing, these guys manage to kick things up a notch. It’s almost impressive."

For more see more Benen, Matt Yglesias, Cernig, Damozel, Clammyc, Kyle Moore here and here, Libby Spencer here and here, and much else at Memeorandum.

Warmongering fabrications: White House spin and the truth about Iran

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The top story at Memeorandum right now -- and, indeed, one of the top stories anywhere and everywhere -- remains yesterday's stunning release of a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that directly contradicts, and refutes, the claims made by Cheney and the warmongers with respect to the Iranian nuclear situation. (Creature commented on it briefly yesterday afternoon.) From the NYT:

A new assessment by American intelligence agencies concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains frozen, contradicting judgment two years ago that Tehran was working relentlessly toward building a nuclear bomb.

The conclusions of the new assessment are likely to reshape the final year of the Bush administration, which has made halting Iran's nuclear program a cornerstone of its foreign policy.

The assessment, a National Intelligence Estimate that represents the consensus view of all 16 American spy agencies, states that Tehran is likely keeping its options open with respect to building a weapon, but that intelligence agencies "do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons."

Iran is continuing to produce enriched uranium, a program that the Tehran government has said is designed for civilian purposes. The new estimate says that enrichment program could still provide Iran with enough raw material to produce a nuclear weapon sometime by the middle of next decade, a timetable essentially unchanged from previous estimates.

But the new estimate declares with "high confidence" that a military-run Iranian program intended to transform that raw material into a nuclear weapon has been shut down since 2003, and also says with high confidence that the halt "was directed primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure."

This is clearly not what Cheney and the warmongers wanted. What they wanted was, at most, ambiguity -- and enough of it to justify pre-emptive military action.

Although the NIE cites "international scrutiny and pressure" -- and not specifically American scrutiny and pressure -- as the reason Iran backed away from its militarized nuclear program, Bush could take credit for Iran's move, or at least try to. It could be argued, after all, if not without stretching credibility to the point of self-annihilation, that it was precisely Bush's toughness that ultimately kept Tehran under control. In these terms, Iran could be presented as another Libya.

But, again, the warmongers -- and Bush may be sympathetic to their position, if not necessarily among them -- want war. They certainly do not want diplomacy, and they certainly do not want to be told that international diplomacy, which they loathe with venomous irrationality, worked.

So what to do? How to respond?

Evidently, walk a fine line between acknowledging the NIE's findings and continuing to play up the Iranian threat. This is exactly what Bush's national security advisor, Stephen Hadley, did. Again from the NYT -- this time verbatim:

Today's National Intelligence Estimate offers some positive news. It confirms that we were right to be worried about Iran seeking to develop nuclear weapons. It tells us that we have made progress in trying to ensure that this does not happen.

But the intelligence also tells us that the risk of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon remains a very serious problem. The estimate offers grounds for hope that the problem can be solved diplomatically — without the use of force — as the Administration has been trying to do. And it suggests that the President has the right strategy: intensified international pressure along with a willingness to negotiate a solution that serves Iranian interests while ensuring that the world will never have to face a nuclear armed Iran.

The bottom line is this: for that strategy to succeed, the international community has to turn up the pressure on Iran — with diplomatic isolation, United Nations sanctions, and with other financial pressure — and Iran has to decide it wants to negotiate a solution.

In other words: Iran was developing nuclear weapons, we were right there, but we -- note the use of the first person here -- we have slowed them down. Note that Hadley does not say that Iran was but is not now seeding nuclear weapons. The implication is that Iran may still be seeking them. We "were right to be worried," and we still are. Furthermore, the threat remains. There is a "risk" that Iran will acquire nuclear weapons, just as there was a risk that Saddam would. But the world is full of risks. Are they all meant to be met with a military response?

Hadley goes on to spin the White House line. Of course we're not out for war, of course we don't want to use force, of course it is diplomacy that is at the forefront, of course Bush is right.

But what is not said here? Read between the lines. There is an admission here that diplomacy worked, but it is hardly a ringing endorsement of concerted international action. For what if "the international community" does not "turn up the pressure," if the U.N. does not enforce sanctions, if Iran does not want to negotiate? More to the point, what if the pressure is not turned up to Bush's liking, or if the sanctions aren't strong enough in Bush's view, if Iran goes not negotiate in good faith according to Bush? Who will ultimately judge whether there is enough pressure, whether the sanctions are strong enough, whether Iran is negotiating in good faith? Bush will, of course. He and the warmongers, in and out of his White House bubble, in and out of his administration.

Yes, what seems to be an admission that diplomacy worked, and may continue to work, is actually, upon reflection, a carefully and indeed esoterically presented advocation of the warmongering position.

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An mportant question pertaining to the NIE remains, however, and Kevin Drum (among others) asks it: Why was it released now?

• "This NIE was apparently finished a year ago, and its basic parameters were almost certainly common knowledge in the White House well before that. This means that all the leaks, all the World War III stuff, all the blustering about the IAEA — all of it was approved for public consumption after Cheney/Bush/Rice/etc. knew perfectly well it was mostly baseless."
• "Why were the key judgments finally released? Cheney didn't want them released, Bush surely didn't want them released, and DNI Mike McConnell told Congress a few weeks ago that he didn't want them released. So who did?"

It may have been "congressional pressure," Kevin speculates, and maybe he's right, we'll have to see. But what is certainly the case is that Bush and the top officials have essentially been lying about, or at the very least misrepresenting, the Iranian threat for at least the past year -- but probably much longer. They have been trying to build a case (to fabricate one, more correctly) against Iran -- developing a militarized nuclear weapons program, supplying arms to hostile Iraqi groups, supporting terrorism around the world, operating a terroristic military, threatening its neighbours and, indeed, the entire region -- as apparent preparation for war. In this respect, Iran is very much the new Iraq.

Unfortunately for them, but fortunately for the rest of us, and regardless of the spin coming out of the White House, this NIE has effectively overcome their fabrications with the truth.