Source: Huffington Post Authors: David Bromwich Dated: 2007-12-06
President Bush, at his press conference on Tuesday, pleaded ignorance as his excuse for statements going back many months--statements which, if made with knowledge and not from ignorance, were treacherous, deceptive, and entailed a deliberate risk to the security of the United States.
He said he didn't know the contents of the December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate until a few days ago. This, he implied, was the reason why he spoke freely and provocatively through the summer and fall about the direness of the international threat posed by Iran. A pardonable error, since he was using the best intelligence available to him at the time.
The NIE seems to have been made public as a result of pressure within the intelligence community. The new findings about Iran, if kept secret and distorted, might deeply affect the future of the United States; and so their release became a patriotic obligation. A similar motive can be heard in some recent court decisions and in public statements by leaders of the armed forces.
The National Intelligence Estimate of December 3 says: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program." It adds: "We assess with moderate confidence that Tehran has not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007." And: "We continue to assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapon." And finally: "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." There are several other judgments, all in the same vein.
President Bush said in his December 4 press conference: "I was made aware of the NIE last week. In August, I think it was 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." Anyone who has ever told a lie or detected a lie, and who heard those words as the president spoke them, could pick out the tell-tale signs: the odd pause, the empty negative ("he didn't tell me"), the needless symmetry ("he did tell me"), the calculated vagueness about an entity already as vague as the month of August ("I think it was"), for which precise words had not been charted. It was not only a lie but a shallow lie, easy to expose, unworthy of him.
Compare the press conference of October 17 at which the president said: "We got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel. So I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. I take the threat of Iran with a nuclear weapon very seriously." The deliberate fudging around "the knowledge necessary," and the citation of the Iranian president's repulsive words about Israel as the worst we knew about Iran, together now suggest that on October 17 the president already knew the shape of the actual intelligence. He was doing the most he could with non-incendiary materials; but he didn't yet expect that the NIE would tell the country what he himself had been made to see.
Very likely, he knew of Iran's cutback already when he shot out the major quotation of the day on August 28, in his American Legion address in Reno: "Iran's active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust. Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere. And that is why the United States is rallying friends and allies around the world to isolate the regime, to impose economic sanctions. We will confront this danger before it is too late." Note the mention of Israel, conjoined with the ambiguous, exploitative use of the word holocaust (a word, in connection with "nuclear," seldom heard since the 1960s). Bush may have wanted to pique the interest of the American Legion, but his real audience for this part was Israeli politicians and the Israel Lobby. The president, moving our country closer to war, was reassuring a Middle East ally that he was still on course. A hidden indication that he knew of the NIE but thought it would stay a secret may be found in the words "active pursuit." A phrase that carefully says nothing but makes your pulse race anyway; implying, without asserting, that Iran's nuclear program is active.
In August, the president was sure of his cover; all he needed was plausible deniability. In December, he was caught in the open. He had to feign an innocence so ludicrous it amounts to a confession of incompetence in itself.
One set of reactions has been revealing. The power of anger is not in the Democrats. Some essential ingredient of the human passions has passed out of their system. Senator Biden, before the NIE appeared, had threatened to impeach the president if he went to war against Iran without authorization; but here was plain evidence of a four-year instigation toward a war, without authorization: why not now summon Cheney, Hadley, and Bush to testify what they knew and when they knew it before they try a similar experiment by a different route? And, while you are at it, call on Senator Lieberman, the author of two incendiary and (as they now appear) ill-informed resolutions on Iran. Many people would like to know who gave Lieberman his certain knowledge of the state of Iranian nuclear knowledge--a question the more interesting since, evidently, that certainty did not come from the United States.
Harry Reid issued a statement of consummate nervelessness. "I hope this Administration reads this report carefully and appropriately adjusts its rhetoric and policy vis-a-vis Iran. The Administration should begin this process by finally undertaking a diplomatic surge necessary to effectively address the challenges posed by Iran." Hillary Clinton, for her part, implicitly sided with the president when she did not have to, and, saying nothing about the abuse of intelligence, declared that the problem remains how to "stop Iran's nuclear ambitions"--for which she said (steering a middle path against the romantic illusions of the CIA) the cure is "neither saber rattling nor unconditional meetings." She spoke on December 4 as if she knew exactly as much as any of us knew on December 2. Barack Obama, a quarter-shade to the left of Clinton, noted without excitement that the NIE "makes a compelling case for less saber-rattling and more direct diplomacy." Of the leading candidates, only Edwards drew the obvious lesson with some sharpness: the NIE "shows that George Bush and Dick Cheney's rush to war with Iran is, in fact, a rush to war." Edwards implied that stopping the rush would call for continued pressure against Cheney and Bush by a determined opposition.
These local tremors would have ended the story within two days, had it not been re-opened elsewhere. For the president's plea of ignorance was exploded once and for all in a country with a free press: Israel. Amos Harel reported in Haaretz on December 6: "Israel has known about the report for more than a month." Harel specified the Israeli Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, as one of those who knew the contents of the NIE; it was also, he said, a subject of discussion at Annapolis between George W. Bush and Ehud Olmert. The Haaretz story incidentally carries a subtext. Israel was surprised by the fact that American intelligence acted in American interests and made the report public, thus rendering questionable the case for a U.S. attack on Iran. One can understand the disappointment. The fears of a Barak may be warranted, as those of a Bolton are not, given the proximity to a hostile power and the danger even of a non-nuclear threat. But maybe these private understandings based on public falsification of the facts, on which Olmert and Bush had relied, are a consolation well lost to the leaders of two professing democracies. They should not be in the business of keeping secrets from their people in order to lead their countries into new wars of aggression. The Israeli analyst Harel keeps his balance more steadily than one can imagine an American doing, were the positions reversed. Israeli estimates differ in degree from those of the NIE, he remarks; so who is right? "It just might possibly be the Americans."
Suppose for experiment's sake the innocent hypothesis. The president ran into Michael McConnell some time in August, and heard there was something radically new in the NIE, but he didn't care to follow-up before the public release of the estimate. This is an old story with him. We heard it about George Tenet and the presidential daily briefing a month before the World Trade Center catastrophe, when the president was told Bin Laden intended to strike within the U.S. and he thought nothing of it. The lack of curiosity alone, in these cases, amounts to a public menace. Combine that with the arrogance, the restless anxiety, the love of vicarious action and the ability to look us in the face and lie -- and it makes a very toxic brew.
This president is a danger-maker, convinced he lives for all of us when he lives on the edge; and his authority must be curbed. Every statement issuing from the White House or its vicinity may now be assumed to be false unless supported by interests that are demonstrably separate from those of the White House. Trust has completely broken down. We are better off recognizing the truth and acting on the recognition than pretending for a moment longer. The pattern, from Iraq to Katrina to Iran, is not accident but character.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
[Blunderov] IMO what's happening here is that the fascists are getting away with their framing of events once again. (Karl? Karl? Is that you?) The question that has been bypassed by this debate over "facts" is not about facts : it is about elementary logic; the Iranians will never be able to prove a negative. They will never be able to prove that they will not , whether now or in the future, either build or gain the knowledge to build, a nuclear weapon.
Even if the Iranians were to cease not only uranium enrichment but also the nuclear program in its entirety the impossibility of satisfying this unrealistic condition would remain.
Therefore the only thing that would suffice is regime change.
("Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain...")
Suppose for experiment's sake the innocent hypothesis. The president ran into Michael McConnell some time in August, and heard there was something radically new in the NIE, but he didn't care to follow-up before the public release of the estimate. This is an old story with him. We heard it about George Tenet and the presidential daily briefing a month before the World Trade Center catastrophe, when the president was told Bin Laden intended to strike within the U.S. and he thought nothing of it. The lack of curiosity alone, in these cases, amounts to a public menace. Combine that with the arrogance, the restless anxiety, the love of vicarious action and the ability to look us in the face and lie -- and it makes a very toxic brew.
His incompetance is born of sociopathy. He's not incompetant because he's stupid, he's incompetant because he doesn't give a shit in the first place. He only begins to feel important when there is a crisis, and so he lets them happen or even encourages them. He's like a serial perpetrator of Munchausen by proxy; one of those nurses of death we hear about offing their patients for the opportunity to play the hero trying to save them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munchausen_by_proxy
Quote:
This president is a danger-maker, convinced he lives for all of us when he lives on the edge; and his authority must be curbed. Every statement issuing from the White House or its vicinity may now be assumed to be false unless supported by interests that are demonstrably separate from those of the White House. Trust has completely broken down. We are better off recognizing the truth and acting on the recognition than pretending for a moment longer. The pattern, from Iraq to Katrina to Iran, is not accident but character.
In another CoV post I mentioned this prior to this latest news on the NIE and said almost exactly this thing. Now when I listen to the propaganda which bathes the US media and emanates from the White House, I listen for what they DON'T say rather than what they do anymore. If they say it, its probably either an irrellevance used for framing rather than informing, or a lie, or both. Without the easy internet access to foreign media and dissenting domestic media, it would be a lot harder to discern the truth anymore.
An exceptional piece of justified outrage in the mainstream US media. Sadly it seems rather exceptional.
Olbermann to Bush "You Sir, Are a Bold-Faced Liar!"...
[Blunderov] A splendid vituperation!
I think that Cheney is the real danger; a man who will anyway resort to the Kenneth Lay defence long before any retribution will attend him. It strikes me that Bush will be able to shovel many of his own crimes into that same coffin, come the day.
Perhaps that day will come soon. Hope springs eternal. Meanwhile...
While I love the play, it is sad that Shakespeare's Richard the III was based on vile calumny written by his enemies, whereas he was quite possibly one of the most enlightened men of the day and possibly the best King England ever suffered under. For a quick easy read, I strongly recommend "The Daughter of Time" by Josephine Tey (1951) which, while fiction, assembles a powerful cocktail of heavier weight research referencing why Richard the III almost certainly deserves to be more favorably memorialized.
Unlike the current occupant of the White House.
Eric Margolis, who is one of those I regard as a highly competent, albeit right-wing aligned and sometimes idiosyncratic reporter, had this to say about the current farrago of lies emanating from the White House and their chorus. Unfortunately, contra the implications of the title of his article, I think the play is far from over. Once again strengthening my opinion that the faces are all that distinguish the Democratic War Party of Theological & Corporate America from the Republican War Party of Theological & Corporate America, as the Washington Post disclosed over the weekend, Mz Pelosi was not only a party to approving the torture of prisoners, apparently more than one in the briefing wondered if water-torture was sufficient. This leads to questions of whether Mz Pelosi is any less susceptible to blackmail than Bush and whether there is anyone in the Democratic or Republican party with the ability and the will to stop the US from its slide into self-imposed penury, ethical turpitude and ultimately well deserved oblivion - and whether they absolutely have to destroy all civilization in their spiral into darkness. Certainly the front runners in both parties seem as stridently determined to "nuke Iran" as these warmongers were to "Attack Iraq." And we have all seen where that got us.
Apropos of something rather remarkably significant, the intelligence world is abuzz that what lead to the release of the NIE was the fact that it had been leaked already and that to the grave discombobulation of Cheney, who was by all accounts the party preventing its release, the Whitehouse was receiving disconcertingly accurate questions about its contents - and the immanent threat of its publication. Whether it was the case that it was leaked or merely that leaks were threatened, it appears there are still a few people buried in the machinery who care about their professional and national reputation. How tragic that this might be a case of too little, too late. With the well deserved Press and government in America today this may not be sufficient to quieten the clamor for more war. As I see it, the only faint hope remaining is that now the entire world knows that Bush is a discredited liar, perhaps there may be some "push back" of external realities, like the on-going slow motion collapse of the global economic system and the biosphere. My what a legacy.
Final disgrace for Bush & Co.
Source: The Toronto Star Authors: Eric Margolis Dated: 2007-12-09
New intelligence report a devastating, humiliating blow to U.S. president and his neocons
"Merry Christmas, Mr. President," hissed the men in cloaks as they plunged a dagger into George Bush's back.
America's spooks finally had their revenge. After being forced by the White House in 2002-03 to concoct a farrago of lies about Iraq, and then take the blame for the ensuing fiasco there, the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies struck back this week.
U.S. intelligence chief Mike McConnell made public a bombshell National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report that concluded "with high confidence" Tehran had halted its rudimentary nuclear weapons program in 2003.
If restarted, Iran is unlikely to produce any weapons before 2015.
The new NIE is a devastating, humiliating blow to Bush, Dick Cheney and the neocons who have been fulminating for war against Iran. Only two months ago, Bush warned Americans that Iran's secret nuclear program threatened to ignite World War III.
A 2005 NIE report that billed Iran as a major nuclear threat was based on fabricated evidence supplied to the CIA, just like the bogus Niger uranium story used to justify war against Iraq. Who, one wonders, is behind this disinformation?
Bush was given the new NIE on Iran last August. But for the past four months, Bush, Cheney and Condoleezza Rice have been beating the war drums over Iran when their own massed intelligence agencies have been telling them there was no danger from that country. The White House hid its own intelligence community's findings from the public until the spooks threatened to leak the report.
AHMADINEJAD TRUTHFUL
Ironically, Iran's leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was telling the truth all along when he said Iran was not working on nuclear arms, while Bush & Company were lying through their teeth, just as they have over Iraq and Afghanistan.
This column has been reporting for two years the growing opposition at the CIA, the Pentagon, and the State Department to Bush/Cheney's plans to launch a war against Iran. I repeatedly heard the term "fifth column" used to describe the fanatical neocon ideologues pressing America into a second Mideast war.
Now, America's national security community is telling the White House to cease and desist before it drags the nation into another foreign catastrophe. While not a coup as in "Seven Days in May," it was the next closest thing.
At the heart of this drama lies the disturbing fact that Bush/Cheney & Co. were simply ignoring their own $40-billion-plus-a-year intelligence community.
TRY ANOTHER SOURCE
When the White House didn't get the answers it wanted on Iran, it turned to Israel, whose renowned intelligence agency, Mossad, became a primary source. Mossad still insists Iran will have a nuclear bomb by 2008.
Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak declared the NIE report a "blow to the groin." Israel has been straining every sinew to get the U.S. to destroy Iran's growing nuclear infrastructure. Whether Israel, which has a large nuclear arsenal, will attack Iran on its own is uncertain.
This is the final disgrace for Bush & Cheney. Their war propaganda and efforts to suppress the new NIE should constitute grounds for immediate impeachment.
If Bill Clinton could be impeached for lying about oral sex, shouldn't Bush and Cheney face trial for attempting to lie and deceive Americans into yet another war of aggression? Alas, Congress, many of whose members also have been howling for war against Iran, lacks the guts for such action.
CONFIRMED
America's intelligence has been lousy in the past, and might be wrong again. But UN nuclear inspectors confirm the U.S. findings.
So does SVR, Russia's intelligence agency. Iran's civilian nuclear power program eventually could produce highly enriched uranium for weapons, but there is no sign of Iran developing any long-range delivery capability.
The NIE is likely to release Iran from U.S.-imposed isolation, and undermine the anti-Iran coalition the U.S. was assembling.
It should put the kibosh on Bush's idiotic plans for an anti-missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic. Sanity is slowly returning to Washington.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
An exceptional piece of justified outrage in the mainstream US media. Sadly it seems rather exceptional.
Olbermann to Bush "You Sir, Are a Bold-Faced Liar!"...
[Blunderov] A splendid vituperation!
Sadly the rest of the mainstream media tends to report this as "just another alleged scandal". Yes, some of the talking heads put a snarky "We gotcha" edge on it to please some of the remaining dissident audience, but generally none of them display the kind of appropriate outrage that Olberman shows . . . even his colleagues on MSNBC don't seem to quite get it even though they seem to understand he fills a certain audience niche. First of all, we aren't talking about lying about blow-jobs, this just happens to be NUCLEAR WEAPONS, and also this is further confirmation of the pattern Bush established with Iraq which has already lead to many THOUSANDS of needless American deaths, not to mention MILLIONS of needless Iraqi deaths, and the TRILLIONS of dollars it will take to finally clean up the mess. The only significant difference this time is that Bush tried scaring the shit out of everying by talking about WORLD WAR III when he already knew that his premise of Iranian nuclear program was bogus (see Olberman above). Why this gets so much less attention than 9/11 which claimed less than 3K American lives is beyond me. If the media were doing their job they would be howling their outrage. They got way more upset about Bill Clinton getting a blow job or Nixon covering up a burglary. It simply makes no sense unless one considers the recent strategy of right wing buyouts of mainstream media. Thank Dog for holdouts like Keith Olberman, and for the new media of the internet.
My positive spin on this is that this represents the hastening death of the mainstream media. The right wingers thought they could win by buying it out, and yet the lame duck victories of Democrats in the midst of the extreme handwringing over Clinton's ejaculation on Monica's dress proved that they were already out of touch with an increasingly interconnected American audience. They are now proving that they haven't improved a whit responding to the mood of their target audience, by giving this less interest than they did Clinton's semen at a time when the Internet is an even greater check on their propaganda machine, and certainly less interest than they showed in Nixon's burglary coverup a generation ago. Pretty soon, "Mainstream Media" will be dead and hopefully a lot of right wing wackos will have a net loss on their 90's era "investments". Power to the people!
If Cheney were suddenly gone, I don’t think the “danger” would go with him. I suspect that Cheney et al are servants of a greater master: greed. I think the banging of the war drums is primarily about channeling money into selected accounts.
“Thank Dog for holdouts like Keith Olberman, and for the new media of the internet.”
I fear that it is only preaching to the choir. Unless a significant mass of the sleeping batteries can awaken to challenge the matrix, all the information, no matter how accurate, will dissipate in grumbling echoes. If Olberman (about 163,000 for Keith Olberman) could only get as many hits as Britney Spears (about 3,730,000 for britney spears), I’d have more hope. (I know google search engine hits don't reflect how many people are paying attention Olberman, but it's still depressing)
"Mainstream Media" will be dead and hopefully a lot of right wing wackos will have a net loss on their 90's era "investments". Power to the people!
Unless media is mainstream, it is dead in terms of political effectiveness.
“My positive spin on this is that this represents the hastening death of the mainstream media.”
The problem lies at least equally with the audience. We, as a collective society, are so strung out on all the addictions fed by our credit card adventures, we can’t muster the political will to challenge the scoundrels who are robbing us, and blatantly lying about it. We all know it, and yet this post is probably the most I’ve done about it in too long.
Author
Logged
