Rosemary's Thoughts: Is DNI trying to sabotage intelligence?

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Is DNI trying to sabotage intelligence?

Posted by Rosemary Welch at 12/05/2007 12:02:00 PM Labels: general, journalists, media, open tb, SW Asia

Many of the newspapers and TV Variety Shows (formerly known as newscasts) have found it their purpose in this war to sabotage all of President Bush' efforts to keep us safe every since September 11, 2001. They will not show what happened that day, but God forbid someone should shoot someone in a war! They are right there and ready with a camera, getting all their information from the nearest terrorist.

Enough about them. Let us now turn our eyes on the three people who delivered the National Intelligence Estimate. You will find it quite interesting if I were to tell you that all three of these people were against the Iraq war from the beginning, they came from the State Department, and one even believes Iran should be allowed to possess a nuclear weapon [heard on Rush Limbaugh's program], would you not?

Therefore I am going to refer you to an article written by the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal online:

Our own "confidence" is not heightened by the fact that the NIE's main authors include three former State Department officials with previous reputations as "hyper-partisan anti-Bush officials," according to an intelligence source. They are Tom Fingar, formerly of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research; Vann Van Diepen, the National Intelligence Officer for WMD; and Kenneth Brill, the former U.S. Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

For a flavor of their political outlook, former Bush Administration antiproliferation official John Bolton recalls in his recent memoir that then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage "described Brill's efforts in Vienna, or lack thereof, as 'bull--.'" Mr. Brill was "retired" from the State Department by Colin Powell before being rehired, over considerable internal and public protest, as head of the National Counter-Proliferation Center by then-National Intelligence Director John Negroponte.

If you did not read my latest article, I specifical stated that Mr. Negroponte should have been fired in 2001 along with George Tenet for allowing the disaster of September 11, 2001 and a terrible run of the aftermath of the Afghanistan war, let alone the awful destruction to our foreign policy in Iraq.

Another odd and curious factor is that the only action I can recall (as the Journal also notes) is the invasion into Iraq. Is this the 'international' fear that scared Iran? It was enough to scare Ghadafi, so who knows. This use of force is, however, the only thing the Iranian 'government' understands. Truly. So they stopped for a minute. How do we know this? Did they say so?

Well, I think not. This was also the time when Iranian dissidents showed us where there clandestine nuclear program was being used. Yes, President Bush did punt the ball over to the useless Europeans, but he had his reasons. Not that I agree with them, but so be it. It was years later that they finally went to their sacred cow, the UN. Remember, this was after Iran demanded that the Italian inspector be banned from the team, because he could not be bought or show symathy toward the Iranian 'government'.

Which brings to the last paragraph of this article:

The larger worry here is how little we seem to have learned from our previous intelligence failures. Over the course of a decade, our intelligence services badly underestimated Saddam's nuclear ambitions, then overestimated them. Now they have done a 180-degree turn on Iran, and in such a way that will contribute to a complacency that will make it easier for Iran to build a weapon. Our intelligence services are supposed to inform the policies of elected officials, but increasingly their judgments seem to be setting policy. This is dangerous.

One thing we may all agree on that we can take away from this NIE: Intelligence does not equal common sense. Too many people claim to be intelligent, not enough of our common sense folks are working in the government...hey! Is that another indication of good sense? Hmm...