"Invade Iran Now!" Where did I read that headline? The American Spectator? The Weekly Standard? National Review? Nope. Its right there at the "liberal" NY Times.
Today, the NY Times reports with the lede "Some senior Bush administration officials and top Republican lawmakers are voicing anger that American spy agencies have not issued more ominous warnings about the threats that they say Iran presents to the United States."
I almost did a spit take with my coffee when I read that. But it doesn't stop there. The Times continues to spit out GOP spin "reporting" how various officials in DC think that the intelligence community is gun-shy and refuses to report the "truth" and declare that Iran is filled with nukes and we need to bomb the shit out of them.
Think I'm joking? Check the flip
Not content to actually think about what they are reporting and take some journalistic responsibility, like deciding if what they are "reporting" is just partisan spin, the Times ominously intones:
The new report, from the House Intelligence Committee, led by Representative Peter Hoekstra, Republican of Michigan, portrayed Iran as a growing threat and criticized American spy agencies for cautious assessments about Iran's weapons programs. "Intelligence community managers and analysts must provide their best analytical judgments about Iranian W.M.D. programs and not shy away from provocative conclusions or bury disagreements in consensus assessments," the report said, using the abbreviation for weapons of mass destruction like nuclear arms.
Oh shit - Iran has nukes? Oh dear god - is that true? The Times sure seems to suggest it:
Some policy makers also said they were displeased that American spy agencies were playing down intelligence reports -- including some from the Israeli government -- of extensive contacts recently between Hezbollah and members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard. "The people in the community are unwilling to make judgment calls and don't know how to link anything together," one senior United States official said.
"We're not in a court of law," he said. "When they say there is `no evidence,' you have to ask them what they mean, what is the meaning of the term `evidence'?"
Damn those intelligence analysts and their insistence on having "evidence". Who do they think they are? Don't they know that Iran has W.M.D.s just like Saddam did?
It keeps getting better. Apparently, in the eyes of the GOP (and their lapdogs in the media), our intelligence services, having actually learned a lesson from the clusterfuck of Iraq, have decided that you need some actual facts before issuing statements like "Bomb the shit out of Iran now."
Several intelligence officials said that American spy agencies had made assessments in recent weeks that despite established ties between Iran and Hezbollah and a well-documented history of Iran arming the organization, there was no credible evidence to suggest either that Iran ordered the Hezbollah raid that touched off the recent fighting or that Iran was directly controlling attacks against Israel.
Buh-buh-buh, whadda ya mean? Heck with what our spys tell us - we KNOW that Iran is pulling the strings, we KNOW that Hezzbollah's attacks are because Iran ordered it. Hezzbollah is Iran's puppet.
"There are no provable signs of Iranian direction on the ground," said one intelligence official in Washington. "Nobody should think that Hezbollah is a remote-controlled entity." American military assessments have broadly echoed this view, say people who maintain close ties to military intelligence officers.
"Does Iran profit from all of this? Yes," said Gen. Wayne A. Downing Jr., the retired former commander of the Special Operations Command and a White House counterterrorism adviser during President Bush's first term. "But is Iran pulling the strings? The guys I'm talking to say, `no.' "
OK, obviously you are not listening. Look, we are the NY Times and its our job to say what is what. And that means whatever George Bush says we should say. Like this:
Many senior Bush administration officials have long been dismissive of the work of the intelligence agencies. Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon set up an office led by Douglas J. Feith, the Defense Department's third-ranking civilian official at the time, that sifted through raw intelligence to look for links between terrorist networks and governments like Iraq's.
See? SENIOR Bush officials say you guys don't know what you are doing. SENIOR officials - that means they are experienced guys who know what they are doing.
Thomas Fingar, the deputy director of national intelligence for analysis, said analysts now had much more information about the sources of raw intelligence coming from the field.
"Analysts have to know more about the sources than was generally the case before the [2002 National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq ]," Mr. Fingar said.
Analysts also are required to include in their reports more information about the chain of logic that led them to their conclusions about sensitive topics like Iran, North Korea and global terrorism -- "showing your work," as Mr. Fingar put it.
Showing your work? That's for, like, math homework in high school. This is national security. Can't you guys just connect the dots?
At the same time, Mr. Fingar dismissed the notion that intelligence analysts should try merely to connect random intelligence findings. "As a 40-year analyst, I'm offended by the notion of `connecting dots,' ''he said. "If you had enough monkeys you could do that."
GAAAHHHH!! This is this is the last straw. Read my lips: Iran has nukes. Better yet, read Newt Gingrich's:
The consensus of the intelligence agencies is that Iran is still years away from building a nuclear weapon. Such an assessment angers some in Washington, who say that it ignores the prospect that Iran could be aided by current nuclear powers like North Korea. "When the intelligence community says Iran is 5 to 10 years away from a nuclear weapon, I ask: `If North Korea were to ship them a nuke tomorrow, how close would they be then?" said Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives.
Yeah, what he said. We need to bomb Iran because its theoretically possible that North Korea could sell a nuke to Iran. And we all know that if Iran gets a nuke, they will use it to theoretically sneak it across our borders (probably using Mexicans) and theoretically blow up something with it. And since they could theoretically do all this, we need to bomb Iran NOW. You guys need to get with the program and realize this is a fight between good and evil.
Some veterans of the intelligence battles that preceded the Iraq war see the debate as familiar and are critical of efforts to create hard links based on murky intelligence.
"It reflects a certain way of looking at the world -- that all evil is traceable to the capitals of certain states," said Paul R. Pillar, who until last October oversaw American intelligence assessments about the Middle East. "And that, in my view, is a very incorrect way of interpreting the security challenges we face."
sigh Screw you guys, I'm going...home.