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NIE rapidly declassified - the antithesis of a coverup
President Bush held a 10am press conference this morning. As noted in an AP article:
Bush said Tuesday that he only learned of the new intelligence assessment last week. But he portrayed it as valuable ammunition against Tehran, not as a reason to lessen diplomatic pressure.
"To me, the NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) provides an opportunity for us to rally the international community—to continue to rally the community—to pressure the Iranian regime to suspend its program," the president said. "What's to say they couldn't start another covert nuclear weapons program."
He also asserted that the report means "nothing's changed," focusing on the previous existence of a weapons program and not addressing the discrepancy between his rhetoric and the disclosure that weapons program has been frozen for four years.
"I still feel strongly that Iran is a danger," he said. "I think the NIE makes it clear that Iran needs to be taken seriously as a threat to peace. My opinion hasn't changed."
As Byron York of NRO notes in The Corner:
At his news conference, President Bush just said that he didn't know the findings of the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran when he said, on October 17, "I believe they want to have the capacity, the knowledge, in order to make a nuclear weapon…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 have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon." After the NIE was released yesterday, when reporters went back to the president's statements, his emphasis on "the knowledge" seemed to suggest that Bush must have known about the new intelligence and was tailoring his words to fit the new conclusions. But he says he did not.
Captain Ed exposes the fallacy that the NIE was delayed:
So why did it take from August to the end of November to finalize the NIE? The data seemed so at odds with the conclusion of previous NIEs -- all of which insisted that Iran continued to pursue nuclear weapons -- that the DNI assigned a "red team" to punch holes in the new information. While that process continued, the White House continued its pursuit of sanctions against Iran, but began lowering the profile of the effort while the EU attempted talks. As soon as the red team finished its work, the NIE was completed and presented on Wednesday to the administration.
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This feels like shades of Iraq all over again. We have:
1) A rogue regime that acts provactively towards the West.
2) A consensus among intelligence communities that the regime is dangerous.
So what would happen if we attacked Iran, only to discover ... their nuclear program consisted of two goats powering a single cyclotron.
Oops.
I wouldn't feel badly about attacking Iran even under those circumstances. If you approach someone with your hand under your coat, pretending as though you have a gun, and are shot dead ... well, think about it more carefully next time.
Maybe the 'Red Team' approach was there so that the administration could claim due diligence, and kill any more 'cherry-picking' talk early on?
Here's the President's statement part of the presser (full Q & A in the link):
I remember reading in articles about this info that Tehran only stopped their program (allegedly) in 2003. I don't know about you, but that doesn't make me feel any safer. That was only four years ago, and still two years after 9/11. This is NOT old news and is still very much something to be concerned about. This is not an alcoholic boasting 20 years sober... this is a hateful regime still in the early steps of a 12-step program of giving up it's habit. Anything could happen, they are still very much a threat.
Can we even trust the Iranians at their word? Wouldn't it be wiser to assume that they do have a nuclear program, rather than find out after they detonate one?
Krog, that's the same avenue we took with Saddam - Resolution 1441 put the onus on Saddam to prove that he didn't have any WMDs. I don't trust the Iranian government either - is it fair to put the burden on them? Why not.
Powerline has a good read calling into question the NIE's motives, in an article titled "Five Years of the Condor" - most of it quotes editorials from yesterday's New York Sun and today's Wall Street Journal, including this quip from the WSJ:
[...] up on the prior discussion of the NIE here, former ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton has a piece in today’s Washington Post, which [...]
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