"Game over, turn off the X-Box, put on your pajamas, and go to your rooms." In effect, that’s what the 16 agencies that make up the U.S. Intelligence Community just told George Bush, Dick Cheney and Ehud Olmert, who in recent months have been banging pots, jumping up and down on furniture, and starting small fires around the house as they play-act scenes from "Nuke Iran (and Syria, Too). The Home Version 3.0".
If you really want to understand the timing of the release December 4 of the new Iran NIE, you need to understand that the CIA and Pentagon are sick and tired of cleaning up these messes – this is the third time the Fire Dept. has been called -- created by the neocons in the Persian Gulf, most recently the Israeli Air Force attack September 6 on Syria, which quite rightly has been taken as a threat of preemptive Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear sites. This was just spinning out of control. Enough.
There was that mention last time by the Fire Lieutenant about notifying Child Protective Services. Hon, someone’s at the door, can you get that?
Find out who's at the door below the fold . . .
"There Will Be No More Warnings Given, Sir."
When these problems with the boys playing with matches started, the solution seemed so simple. The kitchen matches got tossed, the X-Box went back onto the top shelf in the hall closet. The boys were sent off to bed, no cookies, tonight, kids. The world can get to sleep without worrying that tomorrow brings Armageddon. Right?
If only it were still so easy.
This time, two days ago, the Fire Marshall came inside the house with a video camera and a note pad, and the lady from Child Protective Services showed up at the door with two Sheriff’s Deputies. Maybe, we should have sent the boys to that Special School, the nice one, while we still had a choice.
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According to the original New York Times article that broke the NIE story Monday, the CIA finally decided to release the long-delayed Iran report after Bush and Cheney started making overt threats about starting World War III. The intel community assessment also directly contradicts the portrayal of Iran as an irrational rogue state in the grip of an all-powerful dictator hell-bent on the destruction of its neighbors. http://www.nytimes.com/...
While the new report does not contrast sharply with earlier assessments about Iran’s capabilities, it does make new judgments about the intentions of its government.
Rather than portraying Iran as a rogue, irrational country determined to join the club of nations that possess a nuclear bomb, the estimate says Iran’s "decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic and military costs."
The administration called new attention to the threat posed by Iran this year when Mr. Bush suggested in October that a nuclear-armed Iran could lead to "World War III." Mr. Cheney also said that month that as Iran continued to enrich uranium, "the end of that process will be the development of nuclear weapons."
Yet even as Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney were making those statements, analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency were well under way toward revising the earlier assessment about Iran’s nuclear arms program. Administration officials said the White House had known at the time that the conclusions about Iran were under review but had not been informed until more recently that intelligence agencies had reversed their 2005 conclusion.
In September, officials said, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A. director, and his deputy, Stephen R. Kappes, met with Iran analysts to take a hard look at past conclusions about Iran’s nuclear program in light of new information obtained since 2005.
"We felt that we needed to scrub all the assessments and sources to make sure we weren’t misleading ourselves," said one senior intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
In other words, having been badly burned before, the CIA is refusing to allow another fire to be set by the White House, one that could lead to even more massive destruction.
And, what about Israel, upon which the U.S. has in past relied for much of its intelligence input about Iran and other countries in the region. The Times report, continues:
Israel intelligence officials for years have put forward more urgent warnings about Iran’s nuclear abilities than their American counterparts, positing that Iran could get a nuclear bomb this decade.
Intelligence officials had said just weeks ago they were ending the practice of declassifying parts of intelligence estimates, citing concerns that analysts might alter their judgments if they knew the reports would be widely publicized.
But in a statement on Monday, Donald M. Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence, said that since the new estimate was at odds with the 2005 assessment — and thus at odds with public statements by top officials about Iran — "we felt it was important to release this information to ensure that an accurate presentation is available."
ANOTHER TIME-OUT, OR IS IT OFF TO JUVENILE HALL?
The release of the new Iran NIE comes right after of a string of increasingly disturbing events involving Israel and its neighbors. On September 6, a flight of Israeli F-15s violated Turkish airspace in an airstrike on what has been alternately described as an Iranian Scud missile nerve gas warhead site or a North Korean "nuclear reactor" under construction in Northeastern Syria. The alleged target is shown to have been a building located in a remote desert area near the border with northernmost Iraqi closest to the Iran frontier. See, http://a.abcnews.com/... http://www.mapsofworld.com/...
Whatever was truly on the ground when Israeli warplanes struck – and everyone who knows has been remarkably closed-lipped about the details -- the implied connection with Iran wasn’t lost on anyone. On 16 September 2007 former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton said "it will be very unusual for Israel to conduct such a military operation inside Syria other (than) for a very high value target and certainly a Syrian effort in nuclear weapon area will qualify. ... I think this is a clear message not only to Syria, this is a clear message to Iran as well that its continued efforts to acquire nuclear weapons are not going to go unanswered..." See, http://www.globalsecurity.org/...
So, it seems the timing of the Israeli attack was proximate to the meeting at which CIA leadership decided to release the NIE. Or, is it the other way around? Regardless, even if the public release wasn’t entirely triggered by the airstrike, there can be little doubt that the incident emphasized the seriousness of the mounting conflict between Israel, Iran, and Syria.
As is obvious to everyone, except perhaps George W. Bush, the release of this particular document publicly signals a new direction for dealings with Iran, as well as showing the hand of who is really making decisions in Washington these days. Inasmuch as the Office of the Vice President has been the major force reportedly resisting its release since late last year, this signals that the strategy of tension with Iran has reached the end of its utility in the view of the adults in the intelligence community. The chief proponents of the Washington Bomb Iran Brigade, led by Dick Cheney, who last week was briefly hospitalized for another in a long series of heart problems, may also be on the way out the door.
There is no question that the neocons have reached the end of the line. The Washington Post, which has been an enabler of the White House’s bellicose policies, reported in its December 4 article titled, "A Blow to Bush’s Tehran Policy", see, http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
The new intelligence report released yesterday not only undercut the administration's alarming rhetoric over Iran's nuclear ambitions but could also throttle Bush's effort to ratchet up international sanctions and take off the table the possibility of preemptive military action before the end of his presidency.
That, in effect, puts an end to Bush-Cheney’s raison d’etre, in the foreign policy arena. The same applies to Prime Minister Olmert’s equally unpopular government. Together, they are now the deadest of dead ducks, capable of little more than mischief, and a downright liability to the critically important process of rebuilding United States interests in the Middle East.
Their quick removal to a more structured environment seems to be the only remaining option.
Quick, pack their bags, Laura, there’s a lady and two Deputies at the door who are waiting.