They Are Like Cheap Hot Dogs
…they keep coming back up and they generate a lot of gas.
It’s the neonitwits, like Danielle Pletka, the American Enterprise Institute’s biggest supporter for Ahmed Chalabi, and John Bolton, who, even with a Republican-controlled Senate could only get a recess appointment as ambassador to the United Nations. They have arisen to fill the pages and screens with their paranoid delusions, hoping to blunt the increase in force of reality caused by the recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iran.
To be sure, they are PUNDITS, selected by the media to represent very serious people, and I can never hope to be a PUNDIT, basically because I am occasionally right about things and you can’t be a PUNDIT if you mess up and accurately forecast what is going to happen or if you rely on facts.
Danger Room ran a piece by someone who has actually been involved in preparing National Intelligence Estimates, Intel Insider: Iran Report Ain’t Political. The article explains how these things are put together.
The problem with the current NIE is that the intelligence community is fed up with the way in which the Hedgemony has been using it as a scapegoat to take the fall when their policies come apart, by selectively leaking parts of the NIEs, but keeping all of the qualifiers and dissent about conclusions secret. If you think back you will note that the earlier NIEs didn’t include “confidence levels.” We have no way of knowing whether the analysts felt that there was high, moderate, or low confidence that Saddam still had WMDs, all we read was Saddam had them. This time the qualifiers were included, because the intelligence community is thoroughly torqued off about being used.
If you remember Senator Jay Rockefeller’s letter about the warrant-less wiretapping, the pattern is clear. Selected Democrats are given briefings so that it can later be claimed that Congress and the Democrats knew what was going on the entire time. Of course, the Democrats can’t complain or even bring the matter up without being accused of violating national security laws and endangering on-going intelligence and military operations.
The selective classification and declassification is being used to cover criminal conduct, and garden variety incompetence. Anyone who attempts to point this out is a traitor, and the Pletkas and Boltons will be out if force on the talking head circuit to explain why the those that opposed the neonitwit plan for empire should be driven from the shores of the United States.
6 comments
Ever notice PUNDITS never admit mistakes? That’s why they are EXPERTS, because if they never admit them, they must never make them.
Kind of like the Hedgemony 😈
Harman and Hoekstra are at it again. They are just short of blaming the intelligence community for all its failings combined with all the administration’s failings… i.e., the Bushists got a free pass in this op-ed… but it’s still worth reading. (The original is in the WSJ, but it shows only once and then offers you a subscription the second time you try to view it. This link is an alternative source of the same op-ed. Personally I believe that public statements by elected officials should be available to everyone without having to pay an expensive subscription.)
(That is one terrified and terrifying cat!)
This is not a complete reversal of the 2005 estimate. The 2005 estimate was severely hampered by the outing of Valery Plame and the loss of her network and sources. It was also hampered by Chalabi spilling his guts to Tehran in an attempt to ingratiate himself with the Iranians. Add in the loss of Farsi speakers to the Afghanistan effort, and you have the intel community cut to the bare bones for coverage of Iran.
The 2005 Estimate was footnoted and asterisked with all kinds of warnings because of a lack of information and resources that were being tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan. There was entirely too much reliance on Likud sources, Iranian ex-pat groups, and the MEK [it is unclear how one combines nationalism, Marxism, feminism, and Sharia law – some interesting people in MEK]. MEK was the sole source of information on the Iranian nuclear program after the Plame outing and the lack of follow up on the AQ Khan nuclear yard sale.
Stainless Steel Colanders ™ for everyone!
The brain-rays are out in full force. :-p
You just can’t make up a good conspiracy theory these days without getting ripped off by a politician.