Advance word of a new National Intelligence Estimate casts doubt on the idea of "victory" in Iraq, creating problems for both John McCain and Barack Obama on the issue of withdrawal.
"A nearly completed high-level U.S. intelligence analysis warns that unresolved ethnic and sectarian tensions in Iraq could unleash a new wave of violence, potentially reversing the major security and political gains achieved over the last year," the McClatchy Newspapers report today.
Such a prediction undermines McCain's claims of "victory with honor" and complicates Obama's promises to begin immediate withdrawal if and when he takes office.
A consensus of all 16 US intelligence agencies, the new NIE cites as sources of continuing tension the struggle among Sunnis, Kurds and Turkmen for control of oil-rich Kirkuk and the Shiite-dominated central government's stalling over hiring former Sunni insurgents converted, for a price, into members of Awakening groups as well as fragility of the truce by Shiite militias led by Muqtada al Sadr.
Unlike McCain, Gen. David Petraeus is still refusing to proclaim victory, calling the situation "fragile" and "reversible," and the soon-to-be former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice this week publicly said that "nothing is certain in this life. And success in Iraq is not a sure thing."
Meanwhile, our troops continue to die there, albeit at a slower rate, and $10 billion from a strapped economy keeps being poured into the war that should never have started and shows no signs of ending.
Showing posts with label NIE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NIE. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Nuts-and-Bolton on Iran
As most thinking Americans breathe a sigh of relief over the NIE report on Iran, John Bolton on the editorial page of the Washington Post, that island of insanity in a screw-loose world, is here to preserve our patriotic paranoia.
The thing has flaws, and who are these spooks to tell us what the stuff they gather means? "Too much of the intelligence community," Bolton writes, "is engaging in policy formulation rather than 'intelligence' analysis, and too many in Congress and the media are happy about it."
The man who was too disagreeable to be confirmed as US Ambassador to the UN, Scooter Libby's defender, who lectured Jon Stewart with fake news about Lincoln on the Daily Show, who has been out-Cheneying the Neo-Cons in pushing Bush to attack Iran, that John Bolton wants us to know that the NIE is rash in its "psychological assessment of the mullahs' motives and objectives" based on "internally contradictory and insufficiently supported" data, is being suckered by disinformation from Iran and relies too much on "the latest hot tidbit" from its spies.
Moreover, Bolton reveals, many are "not intelligence professionals but refugees from the State Department" who had "relatively benign views of Iran's nuclear intentions five and six years ago, now...writing those views as if they were received wisdom from on high."
Bolton, who has been hearing voices from on high much longer, outranks them all and is just the clear-sighted expert to set us straight.
The thing has flaws, and who are these spooks to tell us what the stuff they gather means? "Too much of the intelligence community," Bolton writes, "is engaging in policy formulation rather than 'intelligence' analysis, and too many in Congress and the media are happy about it."
The man who was too disagreeable to be confirmed as US Ambassador to the UN, Scooter Libby's defender, who lectured Jon Stewart with fake news about Lincoln on the Daily Show, who has been out-Cheneying the Neo-Cons in pushing Bush to attack Iran, that John Bolton wants us to know that the NIE is rash in its "psychological assessment of the mullahs' motives and objectives" based on "internally contradictory and insufficiently supported" data, is being suckered by disinformation from Iran and relies too much on "the latest hot tidbit" from its spies.
Moreover, Bolton reveals, many are "not intelligence professionals but refugees from the State Department" who had "relatively benign views of Iran's nuclear intentions five and six years ago, now...writing those views as if they were received wisdom from on high."
Bolton, who has been hearing voices from on high much longer, outranks them all and is just the clear-sighted expert to set us straight.
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