NIE spin begins

The National Intelligence Estimate released yesterday, which concluded that Iran halted its WMD program in 2003, once again highlights the atrocious mendacity of the Bush administration. The report was completed a year ago, yet its findings fly in the face of all the anti-Iran propaganda the administration has been cranking out ever since then. No wonder they suppressed it for so long. Someone must have put enormous pressure on the administration to release the report -- who, and what they were threatening, remains to be seen. A feverishly spinning Georgie rationalized today:

"At a press conference Tuesday morning, President Bush said the proper way to view a new report by US intelligence agencies on Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons is as a warning for the international community to be vigilant about Iran's nuclear ambitions.

"I view this report as a warning signal that they had the program, they halted the program," Mr. Bush said. "The reason why it's a warning signal is they could restart it.""

Bush declared that "the intelligence community has made a great discovery", as if the "great discovery" is something so recent that all the sabre-rattling towards Iran this past year was justified. But but but... from May 2006:

"Iran's "mad mullahs" want nuclear weapons to destroy Israel and can only be stopped by the threat or use of military force. That's what the Bush administration would have the public believe, as it pushes toward a confrontation with Iran over that country's nuclear program. A key link in the argument is that Tehran has shown no interest in negotiating over the nuclear issue. As State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters last January, the administration didn't then see "anything that indicates the Iranians are willing to engage in a serious diplomatic process on the nuclear issue."

In the woeful history of falsehoods about the targets of potential U.S. force, however, this one is particularly egregious. In the spring of 2003, the Islamic Republic of Iran not only proposed to negotiate with the Bush administration on its nuclear program and its support for terrorists but also offered concrete concessions that went very far toward meeting U.S. concerns."

Overtures from Iran started in the spring of 2003. The NIE says Iran halted their nuclear program in 2003. Coincidence?

Breaking up is hard to do

When do "closest allies" become "poor performers"? When they decide to leave:

"The White House no longer views Britain as its most loyal ally in Europe since Gordon Brown took office and is instead increasingly turning towards France and Germany, according to Bush administration sources.

"'There's concern about Brown,' a senior White House foreign policy official told The Daily Telegraph. 'But this is compensated by the fact that Paris and Berlin are much less of a headache. The need to hinge everything on London as the guarantor of European security has gone.'" [...]

"'Operationally, British forces have performed poorly in Basra', said the official. 'Maybe it's best that they leave. Now we will have a clear field in southern Iraq.'"

Niiiiiiiice. And these guys? Meh. Poor performers.

Profiles in Projection

Shorter Dick Cheney (at West Point graduation ceremonies yesterday):

"The terrorists know what they want and they will stop at nothing to get it. By force and intimidation, they seek to impose a dictatorship of fear, under which every man, woman, and child lives in total obedience to their ideology. Their ultimate goal is to establish a totalitarian empire, a caliphate, with Baghdad as its capital. They view the world as a battlefield..."

Replace "terrorists" with "war-mongering White House assholes" (or maybe just leave it as "terrorists", what's the difference?), "Baghdad" with "Washington DC" and "caliphate" with "one-party state", and you've pretty much got Cheney's own agenda in a blood-smeared, shit-encrusted nutshell. Ugh.

I hope the men and women graduating will remember Mr. Cheney's own distinguished military career, and recognize his words for the chickenhawk ravings that they are.

(h/t PSA at canadian cynic)

The Puppetmaster plans a coup

Elroon at Rants from the Rookery posted about this a couple of days ago, but it sufficiently alarmed the crap out of me that I wanted to screech about it here (lateness to the party notwithstanding).

The White House is being divided by infighting over the approach to Iran policy -- between those who favour diplomacy and those who want to turn the place into a big sheet of glass. The warmongers will not be denied:

"There is a race currently underway between different flanks of the administration to determine the future course of US-Iran policy.

On one flank are the diplomats, and on the other is Vice President Cheney's team and acolytes -- who populate quite a wide swath throughout the American national security bureaucracy. (...)

However, the Department of Defense and national intelligence sector are also preparing for hot conflict. They believe that they need to in order to convince Iran's various power centers that the military option does exist.

But this is worrisome. The person in the Bush administration who most wants a hot conflict with Iran is Vice President Cheney. The person in Iran who most wants a conflict is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Iran's Revolutionary Guard Quds Force would be big winners in a conflict as well -- as the political support that both have inside Iran has been flagging.

Multiple sources have reported that a senior aide on Vice President Cheney's national security team has been meeting with policy hands of the American Enterprise Institute, one other think tank, and more than one national security consulting house and explicitly stating that Vice President Cheney does not support President Bush's tack towards Condoleezza Rice's diplomatic efforts and fears that the President is taking diplomacy with Iran too seriously.

This White House official has stated to several Washington insiders that Cheney is planning to deploy an "end run strategy" around the President if he and his team lose the policy argument." (...)

"... Cheney believes that Bush can not be counted on to make the "right decision" when it comes to dealing with Iran and thus Cheney believes that he must tie the President's hands."

"End run strategy around the President"? "Tie the President's hands"? Cheney is determined to get what he wants, a conflict with Iran. His strategy also involves collusion with Israel, a scenario in which Israel would fire some cruise missiles at Iran, Iran would retaliate by attacking US forces in the gulf, and the diplomatic option would be off the table. This strategy is worrisome for a few reasons, not the least of which is that it willingly sets up the US military in the gulf as targets. Cheney wants Iran to attack the US military? But more disturbing still are the longer-term implications -- a conflict between the US and Iran might bring Russia and/or China into the picture.

Impeach this bastard, or at least put him in a Home for the Criminally Insane.