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Topic: An Inconvenient Assessment : Bush and the NIE (Read 932 times) |
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Blunderov
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An Inconvenient Assessment : Bush and the NIE
« on: 2007-12-05 13:11:29 » |
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[Blunderov] In a press conference hastily convened by the Whitehouse in response to the NIE statement that Iran had abandoned nuclear weapons research in 2003, President George Walker Bush responded with a resounding "Ekke Ekke Ekke Ptang Zoo Boing".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_who_say_Ni
In the face of this apparently completely surprising report, Bush seemingly found himself with no other choice than to resort to a reprise of his "Crusty the Clown searches for WMD in the Whitehouse" shtick as a deflection technique. I'm sure that every psychiatrist in the nation must have sat up a little straighter at this sight of yet more evidence of Dubya's uniquely puerile pathology. Strange how such a smiling man can exude so little charm, or inspire so little confidence they must have thought; how could they not?
But could this "Crusty routine" really be a segue into a diplomatic volt face vis a vis Iran? (Never underestimate the enemy; Dubya may not really be the complete fool that he so very much appears to be. There is a subtle difference between cunning and intelligence; just because he is not intelligent...) It would be sensible, strategically, to settle for the ownership of Iraq's oil resources for now, and only go for those in Iran later. In the meantime, Iraq can only be stabilised if Iran plays along...
Alarm bells are ringing in Tel Aviv I'm sure! Their cat's paw looks to be faltering! And is demanding talks with Arabs! And one of his friends (Blair) carries a bible everywhere he goes. And the cat's paw keeps sending this schwartze shicksa over to Jerusalem to prattle about his "legacy". Oi fuckin' vey.
At this rate the Israelis will be just as pleased to see Bush go as everybody else in the world. But the alarm
bells will not clamour too much I suppose. Tomorrow Bush will be gone. And the day after that, a little bit more of Palestine will be gone too. We have seen this all before.
Some analysis from Stratfor.com which, assuming that there really are some grownups left in Washington, seems cogent.
The NIE Report: Solving a Geopolitical Problem with Iran
By George Friedman
The United States released a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Dec. 3. It said, "We judge with high confidence that in the fall of 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program." It went on to say, "Tehran's decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005." It further said, "Our assessment that Iran halted the program in 2003 primarily in response to international pressure indicates Tehran's decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic and military costs."
With this announcement, the dynamics of the Middle Eastern region, Iraq and U.S.-Iranian relations shift dramatically. For one thing, the probability of a unilateral strike against Iranian nuclear targets is gone. Since there is no Iranian nuclear weapons program, there is no rationale for a strike. Moreover, if Iran is not engaged in weapons production, then a broader air campaign designed to destabilize the Iranian regime has no foundation either.
The NIE release represents a transformation of U.S. policy toward Iran. The Bush administration made Iran's nuclear weapons program the main reason for its attempt to create an international coalition against Iran, on the premise that a nuclear-armed Iran was unacceptable. If there is no Iranian nuclear program, then what is the rationale for the coalition? Moreover, what is the logic of resisting Iran's efforts in Iraq, rather than cooperating?
In looking at the report, a number of obvious questions come up. First, how did the intelligence community reach the wrong conclusion in the spring of 2005, when it last released an NIE on Iran, and what changed by 2007? Also, why did the United States reach the wrong conclusions on Iran three years after its program was halted? There are two possible answers. One is intelligence failure and the other is political redefinition. Both must be explored.
Let's begin with intelligence failure. Intelligence is not an easy task. Knowing what is going on inside of a building is harder than it might seem. Regardless of all the technical capabilities -- from imagery in all spectra to sensing radiation leakage at a distance -- huge uncertainties always remain. Failing to get a positive reading does not mean the facility is not up and running. It might just have been obscured, or the technical means to discover it are insufficient. The default setting in technical intelligence is that, while things can be ruled in, they cannot simply be ruled out by lack of evidence.
You need to go into the building. Indeed, you need to go into many buildings, look around, see what is happening and report back. Getting into highly secure buildings may be easy in the movies. It is not easy in real life. Getting someone into the building who knows what he is seeing is even harder. Getting him out alive to report back, and then repeating the process in other buildings, is even harder. It can be done -- though not easily or repeatedly.
Recruiting someone who works in the building is an option, but at the end of the day you have to rely on his word as to what he saw. That too, is a risk. He might well be a double agent who is inventing information to make money, or he could just be wrong. There is an endless number of ways that recruiting on-site sources can lead you to the wrong conclusion.
Source-based intelligence would appear to be the only way to go. Obviously, it is better to glean information from someone who knows what is going on, rather than to guess. But the problem with source-based intelligence is that, when all is said and done, you can still be just as confused -- or more confused -- than you were at the beginning. You could wind up with a mass of intelligence that can be read either way. It is altogether possible to have so many sources, human and technical, that you have no idea what the truth is. That is when an intelligence organization is most subject to political pressure. When the intelligence could go either way, politics can tilt the system. We do not know what caused the NIE to change its analysis. It could be the result of new, definitive intelligence, or existing intelligence could have been reread from a new political standpoint.
Consider the politics. The assumption was that Iran wanted to develop nuclear weapons -- though its motivations for wanting to do so were never clear to us. First, the Iranians had to assume that, well before they had an operational system, the United States or Israel would destroy it. In other words, it would be a huge effort for little profit. Second, assume that it developed one or two weapons and attacked Israel, for example. Israel might well have been destroyed, but Iran would probably be devastated by an Israeli or U.S. counterstrike. What would be the point?
For Iran to be developing nuclear weapons, it would have to have been prepared to take extraordinary risks. A madman theory, centered around the behavior of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was essential. But as the NIE points out, Iran was "guided by a cost-benefit approach." In simple terms, the Iranians weren't nuts. That is why they didn't build a nuclear program.
That is not to say Iran did not benefit from having the world believe it was building nuclear weapons. The United States is obsessed with nuclear weapons in the hands of states it regards as irrational. By appearing to be irrational and developing nuclear weapons, the Iranians created a valuable asset to use in negotiating with the Americans. The notion of a nuclear weapon in Iranian hands appeared so threatening that the United States might well negotiate away other things -- particularly in Iraq -- in exchange for a halt of the program. Or so the Iranians hoped. Therefore, while they halted development on their weapons program, they were not eager to let the Americans relax. They swung back and forth between asserting their right to operate the program and denying they had one. Moreover, they pushed hard for a civilian power program, which theoretically worried the world less. It drove the Americans up a wall -- precisely where the Iranians wanted them.
As we have argued, the central issue for Iran is not nuclear weapons. It is the future of Iraq. The Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988 was the defining moment in modern Iranian history. It not only devastated Iran, but also weakened the revolution internally. Above all, Tehran never wants to face another Iraqi regime that has the means and motivation to wage war against Iran. That means the Iranians cannot tolerate a Sunni-dominated government that is heavily armed and backed by the United States. Nor, for that matter, does Tehran completely trust Iraq's fractured Shiite bloc with Iran's national security. Iran wants to play a critical role in defining the nature, policies and capabilities of the Iraqi regime.
The recent U.S. successes in Iraq, however limited and transitory they might be, may have caused the Iranians to rethink their view on dealing with the Americans on Iraq. The Americans, regardless of progress, cannot easily suppress all of the Shiite militias. The Iranians cannot impose a regime on Iraq, though they can destabilize the process. A successful outcome requires a degree of cooperation -- and recent indications suggest that Iran is prepared to provide that cooperation.
That puts the United States in an incredibly difficult position. On the one hand, it needs Iran for the endgame in Iraq. On the other, negotiating with Iran while it is developing nuclear weapons runs counter to fundamental U.S. policies and the coalition it was trying to construct. As long as Iran was building nuclear weapons, working with Iran on Iraq was impossible.
The NIE solves a geopolitical problem for the United States. Washington cannot impose a unilateral settlement on Iraq, nor can it sustain forever the level of military commitment it has made to Iraq. There are other fires starting to burn around the world. At the same time, Washington cannot work with Tehran while it is building nuclear weapons. Hence, the NIE: While Iran does have a nuclear power program, it is not building nuclear weapons.
Perhaps there was a spectacular and definitive intelligence breakthrough that demonstrated categorically that the prior assessments were wrong. Proving a negative is tough, and getting a definitive piece of intelligence is hard. Certainly, no matter how definitive the latest intelligence might have been, a lot of people want Iran to be building a nuclear weapon, so the debate over the meaning of this intelligence would have roared throughout the intelligence community and the White House. Keeping such debate this quiet and orderly is not Washington's style.
Perhaps the Iranians are ready to deal, and so decided to open up their facility for the Americans to see. Still, regardless of what the Iranians opened up, some would have argued that the United States was given a tour only of what the Iranians wanted them to see. There is a mention in the report that any Iranian program would be covert rather than overt, and that might reflect such concerns. However, all serious nuclear programs are always covert until they succeed. Nothing is more vulnerable than an incomplete nuclear program.
We are struck by the suddenness of the NIE report. Explosive new intelligence would have been more hotly contested. We suspect two things. First, the intelligence on the Iranian nuclear program consisted of a great number of pieces, many of which were inherently ambiguous and could be interpreted in multiple ways. Second, the weight of evidence for there being an Iranian nuclear program was shaded by the political proclivities of the administration, which saw the threat of a U.S. strike as intimidating Iran, and the weapons program discussion as justifying it. Third, the change in political requirements on both sides made a new assessment useful. This last has certainly been the case in all things Middle Eastern these past few days on issues ranging from the Palestinians to Syria to U.S. forces in Iraq -- so why should this issue be any different?
If this thesis is correct, then we should start seeing some movement on Iraq between the United States and Iran. Certainly the major blocker from the U.S. side has been removed and the success of U.S. policies of late should motivate the Iranians. In any case, the entire framework for U.S.-Iranian relations would appear to have shifted, and with it the structure of geopolitical relations throughout the region.
Intelligence is rarely as important as when it is proven wrong.
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letheomaniac
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Re:An Inconvenient Assessment : Bush and the NIE
« Reply #1 on: 2007-12-11 03:53:24 » |
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[letheomaniac] I just knew that those damn Israelis would find a way of dragging the holocaust (not capitalized for a reason) into this, spuriously as always. It reminds me of the way that everything in South Africa is blamed on Apartheid. You missed the bus? Blame Apartheid. Your teachers are on strike because they get paid shit? A legacy of the Bantu Education System. Your politicians are a bunch of corrupt corporate fat cats? Guess what, it's Apartheid again... Not that I am denying that Apartheid has has some horrible and lasting effects, but it it is not a convienient blanket excuse for any type of bad behaviour. Ditto the holocaust.
Shas minister: Americans' attitude to report reminiscent of Auschwitz
Yitzhak Cohen says during cabinet meeting 'US intelligence report was ordered by someone who wants dialogue with Tehran. Minister Eli Yishai: 'We must not play dumb in the face of the report's findings'
Roni Sofer Published: 12.09.07, 14:30 / Israel News
"The manner in which the Americans relate to the intelligence report on Iran is similar to the way in which they viewed those reports they received during the Holocaust on railways transporting hundreds of thousands of Jews to their death at Auschwitz," Minister Yitzhak Cohen of Shas said during a security cabinet meeting Sunday morning on the Iranian nuclear issue.
"It can not be that (US President George W.) Bush is committed to peace as was declared at Annapolis, and then the Americans propagate such an intelligence report which contradicts the information we have proving Iran intends to obtain nuclear weapons," Cohen said. "How can we rely on the Americans if they publish this report that emasculates what the world explicitly knows regarding Iran, and renders impotent the entire struggle against the Iranians?"
[letheomaniac] I absolutely love the penis rhetoric in the paragraph above. Israel has the biggest cock in the Middle East and they want it to stay that way, even though all the evidence points to the fact that no-one else in those parts is even considering penis enlargement.
Minister Cohen asserted that the report must have been "ordered by someone who wants dialogue with Tehran" and formulated an historical analogy to express just how serious the situation is: "In the middle of the previous century the Americans received intelligence reports from Auschwitz on the packed trains going to the extermination camps. They claimed then that the railways were industrial. Their attitude today to the information coming out of Iran on the Iranians' intention to produce a nuclear bomb reminds one of their attitude during the holocaust."
Cabinet Member Cohen had this to say to his fellow ministers not present in the meeting: "Whoever thinks that the president of Iran is a lover of Zion, with Kosher certification from the Americans, misleads and is mislead. He is not a lover of Zion, but instead an aspiring strangler of Zion. Someone in America fell asleep on his watch, but we must remain awake and aware."
'Pressure on Iran must continue'
Neither Cohen nor the Shas party would confirm nor deny the remarks the minister made in the meeting.
Earlier a senior security source told Ynet that "Iran will do all in its power to proceed on the path (to a nuclear weapon), while trying to confuse the western world." In the meeting, policy makers attempted to formulate the Israeli response to the American National Intelligence Estimate, published last week, which asserted that Iran suspended its activities for acquiring nuclear weapons in 2003.
British Response
Report: UK spy chiefs believe Iran 'deceived' CIA over nuclear program Sunday Telegraph report says British intelligence has serious doubts that Tehran has shelved nuclear weapons program. 'Iranian nuclear staff, knowing their phones were tapped, deliberately gave misinformation; they will say anything to throw us off,' UK official quoted as saying .
Cabinet ministers were be briefed on the issue after the meeting but are not yet expected to make any decisions regarding the Israeli response to the report, which will likely prevent the imposition of a third round of economic sanctions on Iran by the UN Security Council.
The uniform stance of most cabinet members is that Israel must neutralize the effects of the American intelligence report.
According to senior ministers, Israel has information proving that Iran did not cease in its efforts to obtain a nuclear bomb, and is only acting in secret. Nevertheless, none of the three top ministers, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, or Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni seeks to create a confrontation with the American administration.
A senior security official who has seen the materials Israel possesses claims that there is enough incriminating information regarding Iran's intentions.
"Even if the world lacks clear evidence, the (Iranian) agenda is clear. We have no doubt that it is (President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollahs who are directing the program. Israel has gathered enough information to obligate the international community to continue with its intensive activity against creating a bomb," he said.
Yishai: Delaying the inevitable
Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishai, also of Shas, said before the cabinet meeting: "International pressure on Iran must continue. We know the truth, as does the rest of the world. We must not play dumb in the face of the report's supposed findings. This report is mistaken and is only trying to delay the inevitable. It has only intensified the danger. Don't say this is more of the usual, because we are thus likely to fall asleep and wake up with a nuclear Iran."
Minister Yishai warned that "these attempts at postponement endanger us and the world at large."
According to the minister, this is not the right time to address the possibility of an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, but that "we must act on all levels to eliminate the Iranian danger."
Over the weekend NATO foreign ministers met and decided to continue applying pressure on Iran after European Union leaders expressed the identical opinion in a meeting last week with American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Foreign Minister Livni, who met with Rice in Brussels during the NATO convention, welcomed the unified front, but instructed Israeli ambassadors and representatives throughout the world to expand the diplomatic struggle to impose additional sanctions on Iran.
The Foreign Ministry, it seems, fears Moscow and Beijing will use the NIE's findings as an excuse to veto any such sanctions on Iran in the Security Council, which is set to begin conducting on the issue Monday.
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MoEnzyme
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Re:An Inconvenient Assessment : Bush and the NIE
« Reply #2 on: 2007-12-11 11:21:34 » |
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If the NIE is wrong somehow, as far as I'm concerned that's just too fucking bad. We have already overextended ourselves with Iraq so on practical grounds its just not our problem to fix, mostly because we can't really do anything about it without further bankrupting ourselves. Also if its really wrong, then Bush lacks any credibility at this point to do anything about it. He should have thought about these things when he decided to lie to us about Iraq over four years ago. At this point he has lied to us so many times that if he said the sky was blue I wouldn't believe it, and if someone else told me it had turned green, there would be nothing Bush could do to correct my perception. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone on this. Anything Bush has to say anymore is purely static. He should just leave the public spotlight and go back to drinking whiskey and snorting cocaine. If Iran really is making a nuclear weapon, then Israel is truly alone in dealing with this problem. It was their neocon Washington lobbyists who greased the wheels that got us into Iraq in the first place, so too bad . . . they should have thought about that then as well. Maybe if we are lucky they will fire the whole damn lot of them. One way or another until we get rid of this administration (preferrably through forced-resignation/impeachment), this one needs to get filed under "not our problem".
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I will fight your gods for food,
Mo Enzyme
(consolidation of handles: Jake Sapiens; memelab; logicnazi; Loki; Every1Hz; and Shadow)
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