First As Tragedy, Then As Farce Worse Tragedy

by tristero

Via Atrios via Josh comes this reminder that there really is something terribly wrong both with the leaders of the US for thinking like this and with the people in this country who let them get away with it:

U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials say Bush political appointees and hard-liners on Capitol Hill have tried recently to portray Iran’s nuclear program as more advanced than it is and to exaggerate Tehran’s role in Hezbollah’s attack on Israel in mid-July. [Heard that one before.]

The struggle’s outcome could have profound implications for U.S. policy.

President Bush, who addresses the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, has said he prefers diplomacy to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon [And the moon is made of green cheese.], but he hasn’t ruled out using military force.

Several former U.S. defense officials who maintain close ties to the Pentagon say they’ve been told that plans for airstrikes – if Bush deems them necessary – are being updated. [To include nukes, I wonder?]

[snip]

The International Atomic Energy Agency complained in an unusual letter made public on Thursday that a House intelligence committee report on Iran contains “erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated information.”

A top official of the IAEA, which conducts nuclear inspections in Iran and elsewhere, wrote that the report exaggerated advances Tehran has made in enriching uranium, which can be used to fuel nuclear arms if made pure enough. The official, Vilmos Cserveny, said the report also falsely claimed that IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei had removed an inspector from Iran for being too aggressive.

Cserveny’s letter was addressed to intelligence committee chairman Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich.

Hoekstra spokesman Jamal Ware said that the reference to weapons-grade uranium in the report was in a photo caption [where it would stand out like it was, heh, radioactive], but that the report makes clear elsewhere that Iran has not yet achieved that capability.

[Snip, in which the article asserts that most experts agree that Iran is, unlike Iraq, actively seeking nuclear weapons technology.]

The dispute was a virtual rerun of the months before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, when ElBaradei and his agency questioned claims that Saddam Hussein was aggressively seeking nuclear weapons. Some top U.S. officials sought to discredit ElBaradei, although the IAEA’s assessment proved correct.

The IAEA’s written protest, dated Tuesday, was echoed privately by U.S. intelligence analysts, who saw the House report as an attempt to discredit the CIA and other agencies on Iran.

Some officials at the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department said they’re concerned that the offices of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney may be receiving a stream of questionable information that originates with Iranian exiles, including a discredited arms dealer, Manucher Ghorbanifar, who played a role in the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal.

Officials at all three agencies said they suspect that the dubious information may include claims that Iran directed Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, to kidnap two Israeli soldiers in July; that Iran’s nuclear program is moving faster than generally believed; and that the Iranian people are eager to join foreign efforts to overthrow their theocratic rulers.

The officials said there is no reliable intelligence to support any of those assertions and some that contradicts all three.

The officials said they fear a replay of the administration’s mishandling of what turned out to be bogus information from Iraqi exiles in the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, documented earlier this month in a Senate intelligence committee report.

But they said this time, intelligence analysts and others are more forcefully challenging claims they believe to be false or questionable.

“There’s no question that people are less afraid to speak up after what happened in Iraq,” said one intelligence official. “There’s less of an inclination to let Cheney and Rumsfeld run free.” [We’ll see how successful they are.]

[Snip]

“That is outright manipulation of information to suggest a predetermined policy,” Murray [retired CIA station chief] said.

I’d like to point out the bogosity of how this “debate” is played out in the press and in the rightwing media (I know, I know, but there is still at least a token difference between the two). And that is framing this as the Bush administration versus The Left.

Since when are retired ex-CIA station chiefs part of The Left? Since when are generals at the Joint Chiefs level, who are fighting the use of nukes as forcefully as they can communists? They’re not, in any description of reality that would attract a rational consensus. And that is something to bear in mind:

The political crisis in America today is not betwen the Left and the Right, but between a numerically small but extremely dangerous, very wealthy, well-connected, and powerful cabal of extreme rightwing radicals and the rest of the country.

At the moment, the cabal’s wealth and connections are all but impervious, give or take an Abramoff or two. But their power, that’s a different story, that’s where you and I come in. We have to vote. Yes, it’s quite conceivable that Bush will ignore Congress and launch an invasion or nuclear assault on Iran despite a hostile Democratically controlled Congress that forbids it. But at least we can help elect that Congress and, if he ignores their wishes, make the point even more explicit to the unconvinced that we are no longer living in anything remotely resembling a working democracy.