Intelligence failures, intelligence failures. The United States spends more than $40 billion a year on intelligence, but, gosh darn it, we just can't seem to get it right. The latest fiasco, of course, concerns the now infamous National Intelligence Estimate about Iran which concludes that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program more than four years ago.
Let me suggest, however, that the real problem is not repeated intelligence failures, as conventional wisdom has it. In fact, I believe we have the opposite problem -- namely, intelligence successes. By that I mean successful disinformation operations, black propaganda operations that have promoted falsehoods for decades in an extraordinarily successful series of attempts to mislead the American people and shape U.S. foreign policy to serve neo-conservative ideological ends.
One can trace such operations back to 1976, when a number of young neoconservatives, including Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, helped assemble a group of hawkish anti-Communist foreign policymakers to put together intelligence showing that that the "liberal" CIA had dangerously underestimated the Soviet threat. Even though U.S.-Soviet relations had thawed considerably thanks to détente, Team B, as the group became known, thought that the Soviets wanted to wipe out America, so it created a report showing a Soviet Union hell bent on world domination. It had no factual evidence to back up its assertion that the Soviets had a top secret non-acoustic antisubmarine system. Nevertheless, it concluded that the Soviets had probably "deployed some operational non-acoustic systems and will deploy more in the next few years." The absence of evidence, it reasoned, merely proved how secretive the Soviets were!
Similarly, in the early '80s, neo-con firebrand Michael Ledeen falsely blamed the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II on the KGB. In a 1987 article in The Nation, Italian intelligence operative Francesco Pazienza said that Ledeen "was the person responsible for dreaming up the 'Bulgarian connection' behind the plot to kill the Pope." Again, a disinformation scam heated up the Cold War.
More recently, of course, there were the Niger documents, the forgeries that said Saddam agreed to buy 500 tons of yellowcake uranium from the Republic of Niger. Astoundingly, as I report in my new book, The Fall of the House of Bush, on at least 13 different occasions Western authorities discredited the information in the Niger documents, yet they still found their way into President Bush's 2003 "State of the Union" address as a casus belli to start a war against Iraq. No fewer than nine former intelligence and military analysts who have served in the C.I.A., the State Department, the Defense Intelligence Agency (D.I.A.), and the Pentagon told me on the record that they believed that the Niger documents were part of a covert operation to deliberately mislead the American public and start a war with Iraq.
All of which brings us to U.S. policy with Iran -- and a narrative that by now should be all too familiar, but that somehow still escapes the attention of the mainstream press. In December 2001, secret back channel meetings took place in Rome between Michael Ledeen and Manucher Ghorbanifar, the Iranian arms dealer and con man. Members of the Mujahideen e-Khalq, or MEK, an urban-guerrilla group of Iranian dissidents that practices a peculiar brand of revolutionary Marxism, reportedly attended, suggesting that a rogue group of neo-cons had notions about trying to implement regime change in Iran. In August 2006, House intelligence committee chairman Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) released a congressional report which overstated both the number and range of Iran's missiles and neglected to mention that the International Atomic Energy Agency found no evidence of weapons production or activity. And, of course, there have been countless reports that an Iranian nuclear weapon was imminent.
Last week, however, with the release of the Iran NIE, intelligence professionals from the CIA and analysts from the State Department finally triumphed over the neo-con ideologues for change. As a result, former ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, a hard-liner if ever there was one, is now screaming that the NIE may be a product of "disinformation" from Iran and that someone "is pursuing a policy agenda."
It is fair to say that many unanswered questions remain about Iran's intentions. But if history is any guide, John Bolton has it exactly backwards.
"...with the release of the Iran NIE, intelligence professionals from the CIA and analysts from the State Department finally triumphed over the neo-con ideologues for (a) change."
That's the real news.
A shift in power in our nation is suggested. How else could such a report get released? It takes political muscle to allow it. Or we will never see another like it for a long time.
The Neo-Cons who got us into such hot water with twisted intelligence and propaganda for war in Iraq and who are now trying it for Iran, who angered and fired up Muslims around the world, who regenerated some Cold War confrontation echoes with Russia, who support torture and never-ending imprisonment without trial, who broadened domestic spying and control of U.S. citizens, who lost us friends abroad and who spent our surplus money like drunken sailors for their war industry and business friends that plunges us deep in debt--these friendly folk are now in retreat, discredited in front of those who allowed them to run the country for soon-to-be eight years.
The scramble is on-- in the face of sure election losses in 2008 despite their best spin control up to now (watch out for surprises, though!)
The question is: who will get the power--or who already has gotten the power-- to run the country now? And will they give us a new direction?
It's obvious change is in the wind.
fit senarios. If you want to go to war with
Iraq, you find something that proves the need.
If Iran is capable to make a nuclear weapon, or
as Bush has said many times, "possess the knowlege" of how to make a weapon, then you
need to prove the intent. Despite having stopped
the weapons program, the "proof" was there that
they indeed had the "knowlege". So, now Bush is
attempting to get as many UN nations as possible
on board to take that knowlege out of Iran.
The real question is when Bush is told about
these pieces of information. He claims he knows
when America is told.
And let's add to that "volunteer" your time and talents to educating people about the importance of obeying traffic laws and not bringing harm to our neighbor.
Who's ready to join us in this effort?
It'd mean - going the speed limits, using your turn signal, not run orange (or RED of course) lights, stop at stop signs and WAIT until the intersection is clear before proceeding, not indulge in drugs...including alcohol...before driving, and the list goes on.
And to those concerned about "fuel" going 50 miles per hour "saves" fuel.
On 9/11, it was known there was an "imminent" threat, but the information was lost and skewed in the Bush Admin and neocons rush to war in Iraq. The intelligence did not support their goals.
There are flaws in the system. The federal agencies need to communicate with each other. But, it is one thing to deliberately misinform the American people, so as not to reveal national security objectives and another to politicize the information to "lie" to the people and the Congress.The Congress and the Admininstration need to have unvetted info, to make responsible decisions. The neocons took integrity, honor and responsibility out of the reports. They manipulated the system and have killed thousands of innocents in the name of American taxpayers.
It's a waste of good talent and time to keep speculating, judging, bitching, denegrating, and raising the voice to shrill whine.
Serves no good purpose.
With that as a given, let's move on revolutionary action we CAN do, that will have a healthy impact on our nation and world...and that is to obey traffic laws and bring no harm to our neighbor. We'll save billions of dollars, but more importantly- save lives.
Thank you.
They show no sense of fairness and show no remorse for the damage that they have inflicted on this country and individuals that oppose them!
They will destroy anybody that they can rather than play on a level playing field! This country needs ethics restored before we will ever be able to hold up our heads and be proud of our country.
Swaggering around and being proud of being a bully, is nothing to be proud about.
Our human rights record is the worst in the world because we continue to reward those with slave labor with lucrative contracts while pretending that we don't know about them!
This is done for corporate profits and those that benefit from them through political donations and other perks!
We were proud of our service academies when they had a 'real' honor code! There was a time when breaking the rules was not tolerated by those running the academies, or those attending!
Now we hear of rapes, cheating and cowardess being overlooked!
The recent trial and conviction of a Navy Chaplin whose victim was commissioned even though he was 'intimidated' into not reporting the Chaplin is an example of how low the standards have become. We are turning out officers that have shown qualities that would have never been tolerated before the Viet Nam fiasco!
As adults, we have a responsibility to provide good, healthy "role models" for our children.
If for example, we obeyed traffic laws, in 2006 alone, we could of saved over 30,000 lives.
Lack of manners converts into costing our culture billions.
despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and then to provide new guards for their future security. The government has forgotten where their roots came from. We fought a war over less shit than we put up with now from "W" and his criminals. Intelligence?? Where?