(Cross-posted at VetVoice.com)
I’m sure we all remember when the admistration got this egg on their face:
A new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) released today concludes with "high confidence" that "in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program." From the report’s findings:
We assess with moderate confidence Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007, but we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.
We continue to assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapon.
Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005
Now, I don’t work in Washington, but I was under the impressionthat NIEs "are the authoritative assessment of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) on intelligence related to a particular national security issue" and "are produced by the National Intelligence Council and express the coordinated judgments of the United States Intelligence Community, the group of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies" and that the Director of National Intelligence was "the principal adviser to the President, the National Security Council, and the Homeland Security Council for intelligence matters related to the national security".
So, correct me if I’m wrong, but the President gets his intel from the same guy who is responsible for the NIE. Alright, are we all on the same page now?
Apparently not:
In private meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert this week, Newsweek reports that President Bush disowned the U.S. intelligence community’s judgments:
But in private conversations with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last week, the president all but disowned the document, said a senior administration official who accompanied Bush on his six-nation trip to the Mideast. "He told the Israelis that he can’t control what the intelligence community says, but that [the NIE’s] conclusions don’t reflect his own views" about Iran’s nuclear-weapons program, said the official, who would discuss intelligence matters only on the condition of
anonymity.
Who knows? Maybe PNAC gets better intel than the National Intelligence Council.