If the above counts as "trashing," I want some "trashing" from my boss
And how many times have we heard Bush and his admin refer to 9/11 and Iraq WMD's as 'intelligence failures'? Over and over again.
Also, if you're suggesting that Bush allowed incompetent subordinates to continue in their jobs out of a 'sense of loyalty', then I'd say his priorities are seriously screwed up. His 'loyalty' needs to be to the American people. I don't think it's 'loyalty' at all that allowed Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Brown and a dozen others to remain on the job. It's more like a combination cronyism and Bush's own inabililty to recognize incompetence.
Anyway, undeterred, he's at it again this morning. Still bloviating about Iran's nuclear capabilities. Condoleeza has spoken with UK, Germany, France and Russia; what about speaking with IRAN? We talked to the USSR during the Cold War after all. It's clear Bush's path does not lead to the desired result.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22112907/
Has anyone actually read the NIE? Has anyone been following the aftermath of this NIE? Turns out there are some serious doubts about the credibility of the report and its authors. It's looking more and more like a blatant attempt by low-level bureaucrats influence policy.
What possible, imaginable interest would they have in helping Iran? Seriously-what interest group in America wants Iran to get nuclear weapons, and still remains attractive enough that professional intelligence analysts would buy into their ideology?
This sounds a lot like a conspiracy theory, imho.
Has anyone actually read the NIE? Has anyone been following the aftermath of this NIE? Turns out there are some serious doubts about the credibility of the report and its authors. It's looking more and more like a blatant attempt by low-level bureaucrats influence policy.
What possible, imaginable interest would they have in helping Iran? Seriously-what interest group in America wants Iran to get nuclear weapons, and still remains attractive enough that professional intelligence analysts would buy into their ideology?
This sounds a lot like a conspiracy theory, imho.
SS:
It would not be about helping Iran, but about hurting GWB & Co. They wouldn't be the first bureaucrats to put political gain/support above the well-being of the USA.
It would not be about helping Iran, but about hurting GWB & Co. They wouldn't be the first bureaucrats to put political gain/support above the well-being of the USA.
There's a minority opinion, and it sounds like it came right out of Hannity/Rush. Anyone who dare contradict Bushco Inc cares not about the 'well being of the USA'. The majority of us disagree that Bush is interested in the 'well being of the USA' .
Don't have time now for a proper discussion on the credibility of the NIE. Id love to be able to take it at face value. If true, it would be a spectacular validation of "Bushco" foreign policy.
Meaning Iran was so frightened by the invasion of Iraq that they immediately abandoned their nuclear program? So, if North Korea begins to 'nuke up' we can stop them by invading China...........
Two of those links support their opinions with Bolton and the AEI, both right out of the bowels of neoconservatism. Hardly an unbiased source.
It is however very clear they hate President Bush more than they love America.
Why does 'question Bush always=hate America?'
Three-Letter Menace [Victor Davis Hanson]
Christopher Hitchens has a good piece on the bad CIA ("worse than useless"). Surely our various intelligence organizations are practicing a sort of subversion, whether due to a condescending animus toward George Bush, or to a more generic arrogance that their genius is not appreciated and so they leak and back stab against their betters to ensure someone out there knows just how brilliant they really are.
They remind one of the smug undergraduate English major who serially declares that he is too creative and brilliant ever to go on to graduate school-and then lets you know it for the rest of his life.[This is so sweet...and so accurate--jfruser]
We see a disturbing cynicism and disrespect for protocol almost everywhere. The freelancing and soon to be leaking Joe Wilson off to Niger on the recommendation of his 'nonpartisan' and 'undercover' wife, then the various memoirs of a Scheuer (with the charade of "anonymous") or a get-even 'slam-dunk' Tenet (add in the novelist Richard Clark)and then the latest Time essay by Joe Klein, sort of trumpeting the new transparency of an agency at odds with the administration, spiced up with very non-transparent anonymous quotes from the usual "senior intelligence official" who offers behind-the-scenes, real-deal take to get the always brilliant point across.
We are a long way from the old idea that operatives were loyal to their craft, did not leak to anyone, did not try to embarrass elected officials by "background" and anonymous spin, and argued for their dissident views behind closed doors.
The irony is that they could endure the old stereotyped slur that they went to excess in the Cold War to ensure the supremacy of the US, but they won't long live down the public's current impressions that our intelligence agencies are whiny, incompetent, subversive, and partisan.
The emperor has no clothes, and the public doesn't want to pay billions to the CIA and others only to be told that in 2005 we had an existential threat of a nuclear Iran, then two years later we did not, and all due to mysterious unnamed "diplomatic" pressures at work in 2003 (oddly not long after the unmentioned removal of Saddam)this from ying-yang agencies that now miss the real threat (cf. the Pakistani bomb) and then in a panic hype the nonexistent one (arsenals of Iraqi WMD).
I just wish I knew what cycle they were in at the moment, since the hour may be getting late.
P.S. And perhaps the report might have speculated why an Iran, awash in oil and natural gas, spending billions on a reactor while it imposes gas rationing on its citizenry, is enriching uranium at breakneck speed-and serially lying about its progress to international agencies. Or alternatively,is there much of a threat of terrorist organizations now in Iran being given radioactive materials for various missions against Tehran's enemies?
Hitchen's article is titled, "Abolish the CIA"
http://www.slate.com/id/2179593/pagenum/all/#page_start
Could it be that the rest of the world agrees that the NIE is full of crap?
Interesting how you call on Britain, France and Germany to support your viewpoint. Any other time they didn't agree with you, their opinions would be worthless, coming from 'commie socialist statist paradises' and all.