and I agree completely.

Everyone has been in anguish that Congress has done so little (and I had irrational hopes for them, too, until sometime last summer). Unlike most, I always had hope that careerists would start pushing back, and some did. It started a while ago, but the 2006 elections gave courage to more of them, and momentum builds.

Sometime the media will have to rebuild itself, as even they are forced to recognize all their credibility is gone. Expect a year or so of maudlin self-examination pieces which decry the state of the media without actually accepting any responsibility (you know, "if I'd only been a saint" type stuff).

with one tiny quibble.

I don't think Cheney et al see themselves in the role of "coup" - I believe they see their own actions as "counter-coup", a blow against the imposition of what they clearly believe to be an original coup d'etat - the imposition of what they see as un-American values - the Church Commission, FOIA, the 60's, the Iran-Contra exposures and trials, executive constraint and accountability.

Incredible when expressed like that, of course. But I believe that's clearly their frame - you can watch them in all of those historical fights dragging their heels and fighting until the bitter end. What we call "progress" and "accountability" and "transparency" they view as the imposition of an alien value system, producing obstruction and constraint.

Of course, what that says about them is obvious.

So what does Wolfowitz's return to the State Dept mean? They are trying to gain control of diplomatic negotiations?

there's danger down the path of permitting the military to overrule the civilian government. That's turf you have to watch very carefully. And this is absolutely true. The counterargument of course is that the Nuremburg trials demonstrate that in the case of illegal orders, disobedience of those orders is expected - in fact demanded - of all military personnel of all nations, at pain of bearing the consequences for obeying that order.

or have seen re-runs of Rockie and His Friends, a very popular cartoon filled with great humor and some satire from the '60's might remember Captain Peter "Wrongway" Peachfuzz. Here is his story. Ring any bells?

getting real abuse for noting that Rice was usually on the side of sanity these last couple years.

I heard retired Gen John Abizaid speak to a Middle East Institute student-attended lecture last month. Without prompting, as a part of his talk, he suddenly and vehemently announced that the US would not bomb Iran. His remarks were also notable for his offering the statement that he would always uphold his oath, and he wouldn't criticize the current president. Then he went on to speak exactly to what his preferences were relative to Iraq, and they contradicted the WH right down the line. I, too, think that the Navy and Gates have effected a military contre coup, and not a moment too soon.

That doesn't help with diplomacy, but if the war mongers are at least neutered, the barking may not be perceived as being as dangerous.

Superb piece Numi!!

I have to wonder whether W.'s de-facto pardon (i.e., "commutation") of Scooter Libby was the last straw, insofar as the Intelligence Community was concerned? Is there a Battle Royale being fought behind the scenes with the Neocons, AIPAC and Israeli Intelligence on one side, versus the Washington Defense and Intelligence Establishment on the other? The latter seems to view itself as used, abused - and dying -for what they see as clearly not in the US of A's best interests.

And, what about this Sibel Edmonds woman? It seems that she has been subject to Bush Justice Dept. GAG orders for years! Will she ever be free to spill the beans on the Neocons and their interactions with both Israeli and Turkish intelligence?

wonderful post indeed. i drank it up greedily. sooo thirsty for good news. mighty welcome words.

A well written and well informed piece. Totally spot on and the best thing on Agonist this year. You are ready for the big time and should consider cross-posting on the blogs with a larger audience like TPM and Huffington Post.

Remember that Cheney, Rumsfeld et al went in deep cover when the good ship Watergate went down 34 years ago. You don't think they haven't seeded the whole Federal bureaucracy with their clones who are vowing revenge on the hippies in the DOD at this very moment?
We will need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission starting in 2009. Also, I believe that just another hole in the crazy box has been shut. I'm certain they have a whole pack gnawing away at another hole.
There are all sorts of straw man scenarios where Fallon would have no choice but to bomb Iran.
The Bush legacy to the next prez is, after all, a hopeless war.
Somalia was Daddy Bush's present to Clinton.
And the press reform itself? Huh? We have a press like the old Soviet press where you have to read between the lies to figure out what is going on. The only difference is our press filler is blood and guts and T&A instead of agricultural production figures from the Central Asian republics.
Whoah...I feel a rant coming on...better stop now.

In fact in the original conception of the 7 deadly sins what we consider greed appears twice: as Avaritia and as Luxuria, but this latter sin changed over time from extravagance to lust. Still, shouldn't the church be combating all this greed?

To consider how warped modern thinking has become, there is a whole evangelical/fundamentalist preaching that says God wants you to be wealthy. What else could the pastor say when he has a private jet, mansion, and luxury cars?

I believe you are dealing with major societal forces of a long term nature. Also, you live in unusual times when greed has paid well. If I could put this in business terms, the extent and duration of the global stock market advance has been unprecedented since 1982. We are overdue for a significant correction of this advance, when greed becomes dangerous and counterproductive for the investor.

I suspect we are on the cusp of this correction. If so, your battle will appear to be won. Greed will reappear five or ten years from now, but in a chastened form and quite defensive. Long term material shortages and global warming may also make avarice and hoarding highly unsocial activities.

Keep up the battle because it seems the tide is turning your way, maybe soon.

Sic Semper Tyrannis

The "jungle telegraph" in Washington is booming with news of the Iran NIE. I am told that the reason the conclusions of the NIE were released is that it was communicated to the White House that "intelligence career seniors were lined up to go to jail if necessary" if the document's gist were not given to the public. Translation? Someone in that group would have gone to the media "on the record" to disclose its contents.

It is no wonder that the AEI crowd and their congressional helpmates are running around with their hair on fire over this estimate. In sharp contrast to the ease with which the neocon Jacobins were able to control the content of the October 2002 NIE on Iraq, this time they failed utterly to use a national intelligence estimate as a propaganda tool.

Hearings? Good! Let there be hearings! Let there be many hearings! The more the better and let them be public hearings. Bring them on!. pl

Ewen MacAskill in Washington
Saturday December 8, 2007

Guardian Unlimited - The intelligence came from an exotic variety of sources: there was the so-called Laptop of Death; there was the Iranian commander who mysteriously disappeared in Turkey. Also in the mix was video footage of a nuclear plant in central Iran and intercepts of Iranian telephone calls by the British listening station GCHQ.
But pivotal to the US investigation into Iran's suspect nuclear weapons programme was the work of a little-known intelligence specialist, Thomas Fingar. He was the principal author of an intelligence report published on Monday that concluded Iran, contrary to previous US claims, had halted its covert programme four years ago and had not restarted it. Almost single-handedly he has stopped - or, at the very least, postponed - any US military action against Iran.

His report marks a decisive moment in the battle between American neoconservatives and Washington's foreign policy and intelligence professionals - between ideologues and pragmatists. It provided an unexpected victory for those opposed to the neocon plans for a military strike.
The report, the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which represents the consensus of the 16 US intelligence agencies, gave President George Bush one of his most difficult weeks since taking office in January 2001.

Fingar's findings were met in many Washington offices occupied by foreign policy and intelligence professionals not only with relief but with rejoicing. They had lost out in the run-up to the war in Iraq in 2003, but they are winning this one.

A backlash is under way; with the neocons being joined by even moderate foreign policy specialists who claim the report seriously underestimates the threat posed by Iran. Senate Republicans are planning to call next week for a congressional commission to investigate the report.

Senator John Ensign, a Republican, said: "Iran is one of the greatest threats in the world today. Getting the intelligence right is absolutely critical."

Flynt Leverett, a former CIA analyst and former National Security Council adviser in the Bush administration, was among those celebrating this week, and praised Fingar and his colleagues. "We seem to have lucked out and have individuals who resist back-channel politics and tell it how it is," he said. "That is what the CIA and other agencies are supposed to do."

He continued that Fingar and one of his co-authors, Vann Van Diepen, national intelligence officer for weapons of mass destruction, had opposed the war in Iraq. "They both felt the intelligence was misused in the run-up to the Iraq war. The conservatives are now attacking them, saying they are taking their revenge," Leverett said. "It is not mutiny for intelligence officers to state their honest views."

Fingar, Van Diepen and Kenneth Brill, a former US ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), were able to put out what they regard as an objective assessment because those occupying senior roles in the Bush administration had changed. Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, Douglas Feith and Donald Rumsfeld have given way to those who oppose war with Iran, including Robert Gates, the defence secretary and former CIA director, and the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice.

Only the vice-president, Dick Cheney, remains to advocate military strikes against Iran. Wolfowitz, out of work since resigning from the World Bank earlier this year, has been invited back into the administration by Rice as an adviser on WMD, but that is an act of pity for an old mentor, not a shift in power to the neocons.

Joseph Cirincione, author of Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons, also welcomed the report, saying: "What is happening is that foreign policy has swung back to the grown-ups. We are watching the collapse of the Bush doctrine in real time. The neoconservatives are howling because they know their influence is waning."

The report is a disaster for Bush's Iranian policy. Although he still refuses to take the military option off the table, it is harder to give the order to go to war. It also makes it harder for the US to persuade Russia and China to back tougher economic sanctions against Iran.

Bush and Cheney might have tried to block publication but feared it would leak, leading to damaging charges of cover-up and the manipulation of intelligence. "It was not likely to stay classified for long, anyway," Cheney told Politico, the Washington daily devoted to politics.

The "howling" of the neocons that Cirincione spoke about began within hours of the report's publication. Bolton, who remains close to Cheney, appeared on CNN complaining about the authors without naming them. In the comment section of the Washington Post on Thursday he wrote: "Many involved in drafting and approving the NIE were not intelligence professionals but refugees from the state department." He accused the officials, who he said had held benign views of Iran's nuclear intentions five or six years ago, of presenting these same policy biases as "intelligence judgements".

The Wall Street Journal, the editorial pages of which have long been aligned with the neocon agenda, went straight on to the attack within a day of the report's publication, expressing doubt in the officials and their conclusions. It quoted an intelligence source describing Fingar, Van Diepen and Brill as having reputations as "hyper-partisan anti-Bush officials".

Bush has said repeatedly that the US will not allow Iran to secure a nuclear weapons capability. Air strikes were becoming an increasingly likely option, even though opposed by the US state department, the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies. As of last spring, American deployments in the Gulf had been completed, ready should the order be given.

A European official close to the discussions, who is copied in to key memos relating to Iran, spoke in the summer as if an attack was a given. He said that the war was containable only as long as the Iranians did not strike back.

Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA head of counter-terrorism, said Bush had been building up the anti-Iran rhetoric to justify the military option: "There was a set of contingency plans updated over the last year and a half. The intent was air strikes to destroy the nuclear programme to the extent that it could be done. Is it possible to destroy 100% underground nuclear facilities? No, it is not. Could they set it back 10 years? Yes."

Iran's covert programme can be traced back to the mid-1980s when the country was at war with Iraq and fearful that the then Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, might secure a nuclear weapon. The programme involved design, ballistic delivery systems and uranium enrichment; the NIE concluded in 2005 that it was continuing. In July that year US intelligence officials showed IAEA officials an alleged stolen Iranian laptop with thousands of pages relating to nuclear weapons experiments. It was nicknamed the Laptop of Death - it is still not clear whether it was genuine

Fingar and his colleagues have gone back over the material and subjected it to a higher level of scrutiny. They took the same data but reached different conclusions. They also had some new material.

Cannistraro said everyone was pointing towards General Ali-Reza Asgari, a former deputy defence minister, who disappeared in Turkey in February. But he insisted Asgari had been a long-term agent run by the West who has since been debriefed and given a new identity.
more at the link

_{1."George Washington did not cross the Delaware for Capitalism," -Shmuley Boteach.
2.The Dems haven't punished the GOP enough, so you're going to reward the Republicans?}

Well, finally I read an intelligent commentary on what's really going on in DC. The NIE was an extraordinary event. It showed total defiance toward Cheney-Bush and it was no accident. Even McConnell wasn't able to fence sit. He had to defend the troops.

This shows who the loyal opposition is and it's not in Congress. I've referred to this process as a civil war within "management" since the people are not represented (although we benefit by the reduction of power controlled by madmen). I've even written about it a couple of times - Brzezinski on the Path to War in Iran and Teardown.

It's not over and it never will be until there's a vetting and consequences , i.e., punishment, for this bype of aberrant behavior.

My hat's off to you for speaking about this so clearly and succinctly.

The former ambassador to the U.N. says the the latest intelligence estimate is meant not to inform but to influence policy.

Reuters, December 9, 2007

BERLIN — U.S. intelligence services attempted to influence political policy by releasing their assessment that concludes Iran halted its nuclear arms program in 2003, said John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Der Spiegel magazine quoted Bolton on Saturday as alleging that the aim of the National Intelligence Estimate, which contradicts his and President Bush's position, was not to provide the latest intelligence on Iran.

"This is politics disguised as intelligence," Bolton was quoted as saying in an article appearing in this week's edition.

Bolton described the report, released Monday, as a "quasi-putsch" by the intelligence agencies, Der Spiegel said.

The intelligence estimate said Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program four years ago but was continuing to develop the technical means that could be used to produce a bomb. This contradicted Bush's assertion that Iran was actively trying to develop a nuclear weapon.

Exile group says Iran still pursuing nuclear arms
Tue Dec 11, 2007 1:08pm EST

By Mark John

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - An Iranian exile group accused Tehran on Tuesday of pursuing efforts to develop nuclear weapons, dismissing as incomplete a U.S. intelligence report that Iran's nuclear arms program was frozen in 2003.

Sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in a study published on December 3 that Iran had stopped activities aimed at making nuclear weapons in 2003, though it continues to enrich uranium for nuclear fuel.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which first exposed Iran's nuclear fuel program in 2002, said it published information three years ago alleging that Tehran had restarted weapons-related work after a short break.

NCRI officials said they checked back with sources inside Iran after the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was released, and those informants reported that work on nuclear weapons was still being pursued at three sites.

"The clerical regime is continuing its drive to obtain nuclear weapons," Mohammad Mohaddessin of the France-based group, listed as a terror organization in the United States, told a news conference in Brussels.

Iran's president, who denies his country is seeking the atomic bomb, rejected the NRCI allegations.

"This group cannot be the basis for correct information," Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a news conference in Tehran.

The NIE report concluded that Iran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007. The halt applied to work on explosive device components and to uranium conversion activities, it said.

That conclusion contradicted earlier assertions by the Bush administration that Tehran was determined to develop the bomb. Analysts say it could complicate the U.S. drive for a new round of U.N. sanctions against Iran.

Tehran welcomed the report as proof Bush wanted to deceive the world about a nuclear arms agenda it has denied pursuing.

But major powers said their policy remained one of seeking negotiations with Tehran over inducements to suspend uranium enrichment, while threatening it with sanctions.

NEW SITES

Mohaddessin said the NCRI agreed with the NIE assessment that activities were suspended in 2003, and specified that in March 2003 Iran closed down a weaponization site in Lavisan, northeast Tehran, fearing it might be detected.

But it transferred the weapons activities to a new site in Lavisan and later to two additional sites, information the NCRI had made public from November 2004 onwards, he said.

In a second briefing in Washington on Tuesday, former NCRI spokesman Alireza Jafarzadeh presented photographs and lists of sites around Tehran, including Imam Hossein University, that he said played major ongoing roles in nuclear arms development.

The Iran Revolutionary Guards Corps initiated and led Iran's nuclear program, said Jafarzadeh, who identified 21 senior nuclear physicists at Imam Hossein University as "commanders and cadres of the IRGC."

"Anytime you have the military involved with the nuclear program, we are talking about the bomb," he told reporters.

....The NCRI's armed wing, the People's Mujahideen organization of Iran (PMOI), is banned in the United States and the EU.(MEK)
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