A weekend online editorial from the Wall Street JournalAnother Iran Curveball- once again demonstrates the potency of the neo-con Kool Aid years after it has been drunk.
President Bush has been scrambling to rescue his Iran policy after this week's intelligence switcheroo, but the fact that the White House has had to spin so furiously is a sign of how badly it has bungled this episode. In sum, Mr. Bush and his staff have allowed the intelligence bureaucracy (to undermine) four years of U.S. effort to stop Iran's nuclear ambitions.
This kind of national security mismanagement has bedeviled the Bush Presidency. Recall the internal disputes over post-invasion Iraq, the smearing of Ahmad Chalabi by the State Department and CIA, hanging Scooter Libby out to dry after bungling the response to Joseph Wilson's bogus accusations, and so on. Mr. Bush has too often failed to settle internal disputes and enforce the results.
My immediate response follows along with further excerpts and commentary on this truly deluded pile of steaming ideology:
One hardly knows where to begin with this wondrous fantasy: The smearing of Amhad Chalabi? Good lord folks. This guy was touted as the next leader of Iraq, yet in a general election generated about the polling numbers of Sam Brownback. Not to mention the fact that he was busy feeding intelligence to the folks you claim are our mortal enemies in Iran. Not to mention the fact that he managed to maneuver himself into postion within the Iraqi oil ministry in order to further enrich himself in a pattern which runs throughout his career and most of all, not to mention that the crap he continually fed our intelligence services about the Iraqi government played a huge role in setting up the full range of policy blunders carried out by the Bush administration from the moment the shooting stopped in Baghdad.
Hanging Scooter Libby out to dry after bungling the response to Joe Wilson's "bogus" allegations? Pay careful attention here because otherwise we will have to hit you between the eyes again with the two-by-four: In ALL of the kefluffle by the right wing smear machine over Joe Wilson, there NEVER was ANY attempt to show where Mr. Wilson was wrong. If he were wrong, a plain set of facts should have sufficed to relegate him to irrelevance.
Instead, the Scooter and the Vice President and Mr. Rove set out to destroy Mr. Wilson by innuendo, by outing his wife as a CIA agent, and in the process by laying waste to years of undercover work in (oh the irony of it) control of weapons of mass destruction.
There are facts and there is reason and then there is ideology. Yours had blinded you to reality and to the truth and it is that blindness which today places our nation in perhaps the greatest peril it has ever faced, diplomatically, militarily, economically and ethically. Your role in that process is shameful and ethically and morally corrupt. Tens of thousands are dead. Hundreds of billions have been wasted, and all as a result of lies, fomented by those you support and given "credibility" by your wilful ignorance of the truth.
The WSJ post continues:
What's amazing in this case is how the White House has allowed intelligence analysts to drive policy.
No gentlemen. What is truly amazing is your opinion and that of the administration you have so feverishly aided and abetted for the past six-plus years, that policy is driven by ideology and that when "intelligence" fails to match what you want to believe, the proper action is to demand "intelligence" which does. It was just such an approach which was used to frame the justification for the Iraq war, and to accept the dubious claims of Curveball, and to believe that Mr. Chalabi was the Iraqi version of Joan of Arc instead of the corrupt weasel he turned out to be.
The editorial post goes on:
In this regard, it's hilarious to see the left and some in the media accuse Mr. Bush once again of distorting intelligence. The truth is the opposite. The White House was presented with this new estimate only weeks ago, and no doubt concluded it had little choice but to accept and release it however much its policy makers disagreed.
Sorry Mr. Gigot......numerous sources from the media and intelligence back channels make it clear that this NIE has been completed for at least a year now and that the administration - most notably the guy with by far the greatest track record of ideological ineptitude - vice president cheney -- has been trying frantically to supress it, precisely because it conflicts totally with feverish attempts to conjure up rationales for starting military action against Iran as soon as possible and the hell with the consequences.
Finally Mr. Gigot....the last thing the "left and some in the media" are feeling is hilarity. What they are feeling is a continuing and seething anger at the distortions, the lies, the twisting of the truth, the misuse of the Constitution and the laws of secrecy and intelligence to drive a policy based -- not on the truth and reality -- but on an ideology which is completely discredited and tragically, is steadily destroying our nation.