The N.I.E. Mystery-Riddle-Enigma

Yesterday's news about Iran's nuclear weapons or, more accurately, lack thereof is an event that recalls Winston Churchill's description of the Soviet Union as a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma.

Even by Bush Administration standards of incompetence, illogic and intrigue, there is no sane explanation for the President's continuing public insistence that Iran come clean about weapons that his National Security Adviser now admits Bush has known for "months" do not exist.

Unless...

Going back to the 2003 Cheney gang massaging of intelligence about Iraq's WMDs that prompted Colin Powell to mislead the UN, the questions arise (1) Is Stephen Hadley trying to hide the fact that Bush was being similarly duped or (2) Did the desire for another invasion lead Bush and Cheney once again to hide evidence that would destroy the rationale for doing it until the intelligence agencies themselves finally rebelled against doing another George Tenet?

There are other, less likely possibilities. Did Congressional overseers threaten to blow the whistle (they deny it)? Did somebody finally wise up to the fact that the murky exile-terrorist group, Mujahedeen-e-Khalq or MEK, credited with "helping expose Iran’s secret nuclear program,” has been no more reliable than Ahmed Chalabi's grifters were in Iraq?

As conservatives scramble to explain that Iran stopped trying to produce nuclear weapons in 2003 because they were terrified by our invasion of Iraq (the most Hail Mary of passes in a gone game), the maddening opaqueness of what happened this week to derail Bush's milk run to World War III remains a 21st century mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma.

Fourteen months from now, maybe we can give up playing these heart-stopping Neo-Con games and start living again in a sane world.

Bulletin From the Bush Bunker

One of the few lines of communication into the besieged White House is Plame-thrower Robert Novak, who set off l’affaire Libby by naming Joe Wilson’s wife in print.

From the entrails of Novak’s recent columns, things do not go well for the Decider. Today he reports on the pre-holiday “scouting trip” of the President’s Security Adviser Stephen Hadley to check the mood of senior Senate Republicans.

“The tone set by Hadley,” Novak writes, “signaled that the White House did not understand that Lugar, in his fateful speech on the Senate floor the night of June 25, was sending a distress signal to Bush...that it is imperative he act now. Hadley was told that it is not too late to go back to the Iraq Study Group's 79 recommendations, neglected since their release in December.”

Novak’s account suggests that Bush’s deafness continues: “Based on what Hadley said, one senator concluded that ‘they just do not recognize the depth of the difficulty they are in.’”

In his convoluted style, Novak goes around the barn with Democratic Sen. Carl Levin reporting on generals who turned down the war “czar” job because "hawks within the administration, including Vice President Cheney, remain more powerful than the pragmatists looking for an exit strategy in Iraq."

This month, with an appropriations bill and a House anti-war resolution coming up, Congressional Republicans are going to have to join Democrats in speaking louder and more clearly to be heard. All indicators, including their message through Novak today, are that they will.

Bush's Behind-My-Back Purge

The President’s unwillingness to face reality has taken a new turn. While he is overseas disporting with his friend Vladimir, command of the war in Iraq is quietly being changed in Washington.

Yesterday members of Congress, at confirmation hearings of the new war “czar,” learned that Stephen Hadley, the White House national security adviser and chief cheerleader for the Surge, would no longer have anything to do with Iraq and Afghanistan.

Gen. Douglas E. Lute, who testified he would be reporting directly to the President, also told Congress he had expressed doubts about the new policy in January, believing "a military surge would likely have only temporary and localized effects."

Today the Secretary of Defense replaced Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Peter Pace with Adm. Michael G. Mullen, describing him as “a very smart strategic thinker.”

It is perfectly consistent with Bush’s refusal to admit mistakes to be transferring military power to realists about Iraq by letting it happen behind his back.

We can only hope.