Oh, my! I'm so... surprised? No, that's not the word.
Shocked? Nope, not that word either.
Depressed. Well, that'll do for now.
The CIA, it seems, is dismayed over its failure to predict Hamas' win. Oh, Betty or John on the street knew Hamas was going to win, but not our CIA. (link to article)
The U.S. intelligence community has been shaken in its failure to predict Hamas's victory in Palestinian legislative elections.
The intelligence failure came despite a Saudi assessment relayed to the United States that Hamas would win the elections. Officials said the CIA was influenced by an Israeli assessment that predicted a victory by the ruling Fatah movement led by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
Oh, that's just frickin' great, because it's the CIA and the Israelis that are telling us that Iran is pursuing nukes.
Here, the Israelis say that Iran is the most serious threat since WWII. They seem just as certain as they were when they said that Hamas would not win.
Of course, by forcing through Iran's referral to the Security Council, they forced Iran to follow through on its pledges about retaliation. NOW, the IAEA says that it can no longer monitor Iran for compliance (here). Of course, BushCo has been saying all along that we couldn't tell, for sure, what Iran was doing. Well, now that's a guaranteed assessment.
Does this sound like what happened to the U.N. mission on WMDs in Iraq? Well... duh!
You'll recall that the U.S. stopped U.N. inspectors from returning to Iraq (link); well, they can't tell the IAEA what to do, so they got the permanent U.N. members to refer Iran to the Security Council, which will have, essentially, the same effect.
So, you just know that BushCo will now say, "Oh, lookie, lookie! Iran isn't cooperating! We need to bomb them to stop emminent development of nukes!"
"Because our intelligence says it's so!"
"And our fairy frog mother croaked into my ear last night that Iran was going to nuke us!"
Let's just say Iran got - oh - 10 nukes. Their missiles won't go more than 3,000 km, so they might nuke Israel. Now, Israel is reported to have over 200 nukes, and I think we might still have a couple (of thousand) around somewhere, so the question becomes: what part of Iran would NOT be glass about 15 minutes after they launched?
Is Iran suicidal? Well, if they could take out Israel, they might be, but they can't (remember the anti-missile system that Israel developed that actually WORKS?).
However, if Israel is willing to take a few for Exxon, we get all those nice (albeit, slightly radioactive) oil fields for just a few nukes from our arsenal.
But, but, but... when we don't find any nukes in Iran, it will have been 'faulty intelligence, but still a good decision'.
And the Arab world up in arms, oil over $200/bbl and gas pushing $7/gal here. But, hey! It was worth it, right?