13271820c18e1cc84146…

are you seriously going to take the position that it’s a good idea for us to roll up our own intel networks just to make the world feel good about us?

As long as intel networks are just gathering intel and not engaging in any black ops stuff or interfering with the operations of other nations, I have no problem with them. It’s our military network and our tendency to interfere with foreign governments (Iran being a great example of an American sandbox gone wrong) that is making the world hate and distrust us (and attack us). I just don’t see how pre-revolution intel changes would have affected our ability to gather information from Iran. I’d think that the revolution would have wiped the slate clean regardless.

Curveball is exatly the same scenario but the US players were diferrent. Mind you, the new guys could have worked for the earlier players and learn’t the wrong lesson.

Romeo13 on December 4, 2007 at 5:50 PM

Lets not forget the past…
May 1998, when India and Pakistan conducted multiple nuclear weapons tests, stunning U.S. and Western intelligence agencies who had absolutely no idea either country was so close to getting the Bomb….Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), then the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, called this a “colossal failure” of the U.S. intelligence community….(see CNN: “CIA caught off guard on India nuclear test.” and George Washington University national security archive of declassified documents: “U.S. Intelligence and the Indian Bomb: Documents Show U.S. Intelligence Failed to Warn of India’s Nuclear Tests Despite Tracking Nuclear Weapons Potential Since 1950s.”
-
complements Joel Rosenberg

Its most dramatic conclusion — that Iran shut down its nuclear weapons program in 2003 in response to international pressure — is based on a single, unvetted source who provided information to a foreign intelligence service and has not been interviewed directly by the United States.

Hmmm…. kinda what I thought… its the only thing that made sense.

IMO we’re being played here folks… they get more time…

Remember, it only took us FOUR years to create the atomic bomb, with 1940s technology.

Hat tip: Rush Limbaugh

Norman Podhoretz

But I entertain an even darker suspicion. It is that the intelligence community, which has for some years now been leaking material calculated to undermine George W. Bush, is doing it again.

AND

American Thinker (with an update from Kenneth Timmerman at the end)

What does the fresh National Intelligence Estimate tell us? A secret Iranian nuclear project, one that we don’t know about, but which may already have produced a Bomb, is “plausible but unlikely.”

As Michael Ledeen just wrote, this is exquisite CYA. If Iran already has a nuke, the spooks can’t be faulted, because they said it was “plausible.” If it doesn’t have a nuke, they can’t be criticized either, because they said it was “unlikely.”

By God, it’s good to have a 100 billion dollar intelligence bureaucracy that can really protect us. Isn’t it, though?

Here’s the kicker: If Iran already has fissionable material, they are invulnerable to attack. So the spooks have thrown their hot potato right back at the White House and the Pentagon. Our soldiers’ lives are on the line, right next door in Iraq. “Plausible but unlikely.” I bet the Pentagon is really grateful.

No wonder A’jad is laughing.

Ken Timmerman says we may have been duped.

Its most dramatic conclusion — that Iran shut down its nuclear weapons program in 2003 in response to international pressure — is based on a single, unvetted source who provided information to a foreign intelligence service and has not been interviewed directly by the United States.

There are a lot of problems with Moran’s analysis.

Bryan on December 4, 2007 at 4:49 PM

What specifically?

It seemed pretty balanced to me.

baldilocks on December 4, 2007 at 4:39 PM

There are a lot of problems with Moran’s analysis.

Now we come to the distasteful question of what in God’s name the Bush Administration has been doing sitting on this damn thing for year?

MB4 on December 4, 2007 at 2:36 PM

Bush said specifically that he had just been briefed about the findings of the NIE a week ago. I believe that he was slapping down one Mr. Gregory at the time.

clghitis on December 4, 2007 at 2:55 PM

Yup. And Obama isn’t the only one who fits that description. He’s just the most obvious one.

There HAS to be either some new asset in place… or someone new in charge of deciding what it means. This is a MAJOR shift that must have caught the President by suprise…

My guess is that its all about that Qud’s force General who apparently “defected” a few months ago…

Now, the big question… why would they trust him?

Enquiring minds really want to know…

Its also interesting that this was DECLASSIFIED so rapidly…

Jerk.

rockhauler on December 4, 2007 at 3:18 PM

well said,
also they and/or their weapons have killed U.S. Troops in Iraq.

I don’t have the stomach for that crap; it makes me want to strangle the reporter, and we’re not allowed to do that, so I turned it off.

Here’s the point; it doesn’t matter if Iran has nukes, wants nukes, or is trying to build nukes. What matters is Iran has made threats against us, against western civilization. What matters is Iran’s mad mullahs are attempting to rally Muslims world wide in a jihad against western civilization.

It doesn’t matter what weapon Iran intends to use; nuclear weapons, demographics, economics, or machetes and pitchforks.

What matters is Iran is making threats against us.

We once had a moralistic, somewhat naive president who took a well-intentioned action to reassure the world that the US is good. We’ve been living with the consequences of that boneheaded move ever since.

This is why everytime I hear Obama, I think he sounds like the next Jimmy Carter.

Mark Jaquith on December 4, 2007 at 2:04 PM

Probably not. But are you seriously going to take the position that it’s a good idea for us to roll up our own intel networks just to make the world feel good about us? That’s a very Ronulan position to take.

If you believe Iran isn’t trying to make Nuclear weapons your life is one of stupidity and has no meaning.

For those disposed to disbelieve or reject this NIE, it would be well to remember that if a consensus about something this vital to our security was found among such a fractious, quarrelling, multi-agenda driven group of spooks, you can bet the information it’s based on is pretty solid.

I understand the need for regime change in Iran. I am not naive enough to believe that the Iranian government doesn’t represent a threat to our friends, allies, and interests in the region – nukes or no nukes. But this Administration has made a nasty habit for 7 years now of employing rhetoric on national security matters that doesn’t match what the situation actually is.

Romeo13 on December 4, 2007 at 2:03 PM

Point taken Mr.R…..hat tip!

We once had a moralistic, somewhat naive president who took a well-intentioned action to reassure the world that the US is good. We’ve been living with the consequences of that boneheaded move ever since.

So, pretend he hadn’t eliminated “spook” presence in Iran. Would it have really turned out any differently? Wouldn’t the revolution have closed the country to our intelligence services anyway?