More articles on the Iran NIE

Here are some additional articles on the new NIE on Iran's nuclear weapons program.

NeoCons Go Ballistic on Iran NIE by Larry Johnson, No Quarter blog 12/04/07:

This blog was one of the first to report that the NIE was being delayed for political reasons. George Bush tried his moron act again today (i.e., “I didn’t find out about this until last week.”) but this time the turd ain’t floating. The news that Iran ended its nuclear program in 2003 was briefed to George Bush in the Presidential Daily Brief. He has known about this, I am told, for at least one year. George Bush is lying when he insists he had no inkling, until last week, that the intelligence community believed Iran halted its nuke program in 2003.

This is the kind of earthshaking intel that analysts rarely get to see. What is remarkable about the NIE is the consensus in the intelligence community about the validity of this info. Compare this to the execrable 2002 NIE on Iraq. There was no consensus in the intelligence community about Iraq’s efforts to acquire nukes. The”true believers” held the day and their position was prominently featured in the final draft. Dissenters–State’s Intelligence and Research Bureau and the Department of Energy–were relegated to footnotes and comments separated from the claim.

An Iran bombshell for Bush by Mark Follman Salon 12/05/07:

But the president knew the thrust of the NIE's conclusions about a nuke-less Iran at least as early as last August, according to Flynt Leverett, a top Middle East expert and former senior director on Bush's National Security Council. In an interview Tuesday, Leverett said that the bellicose rhetoric in October was accompanied by a telling shift of the goal posts. It was déjà vu all over again. Bush no longer spoke of Iran's imminent weapons of mass destruction, he spoke of its imminent plans to gain the capability for making weapons of mass destruction.

Bush knew the NIE report was going public, of course, and he has tried to spin it as a measure of successful policy. But the White House failed to anticipate the impact of the report, says Leverett, now a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. "Obviously," he says, "this NIE does damage to the credibility of their representations on Iran."

What is George Bush Smoking? by Farideh Farhi, Infored Comment Global Affairs blog 12/04/07. Analyzing one of Bush's public statements on the NIE, Farhi writes:

This goes even beyond deception and reaches the level of unreal. The man must either think that no one is watching or he must have really convinced himself that prior to Ahmadinejad things were going all swell with Iran.

Iran still dangerous, Bush says by James Gerstenzang and Paul Richter Los Angeles Times 12/05/07.

Tags: farideh farhi, iran war, larry johnson, mark follman