Surprise, surprise? Not quite. Just as the
UN Security Council plus Germany reach agreement
on a resolution to impose further sanctions on
Iran, the Wall Street Journal, in true Rupert
Murdoch style, sees fit to publish sexbomb-em-all
Norman Podhoretz's boobs on its equivalent of Page
3. Unfortunately, the attempted titillation by the
editor-at-large of Commentary magazine amounts to
a not very sexy - indeed an incredibly flabby -
case for bombing Iran now rather than imposing yet
more boring old sanctions.
For anyone not
familiar with Podhoretz's mental anatomy, just
tweak one of his cerebral nipples and he will
start spraying
pheromones with the intensity
of a white phosphorus grenade (he's author of a
book titled World War IV: The Long Struggle
Against Islamofascism - get the picture?). But
for anyone with half a brain, Podhoretz's
pulchritude stimulates only mental detectors for
bovine things of the soft, brown sort.
So
why do we focus now on Podhoretz's boobs? Because
apparently all too many other people do, and we
have an uncontrollable desire to point out the
fallacies of his mammaries, which at the time of
writing had been exposed for 24 hours on the main
page of Google News - which can only mean, Google
assures us, that this is what readers read (go
ogle it on Google, it's there alongside stories
about reports about a video of some "celebrity"
wastrel named Amy Winehouse smoking crack).
Enough sexual innuendo. This is what
Podhoretz has to say:
Up until a fairly short time ago,
scarcely anyone dissented from the assessment
offered with "high confidence" by the National
Intelligence Estimate [NIE] of 2005 that Iran
was "determined to develop nuclear weapons".
... Then, in a trice, everything
changed. Even as Mr Bush must surely have been
wrestling with the question of whether it would
be on his watch that the decision on bombing the
Iranian nuclear facilities would have to be
made, the world was hit with a different kind of
bomb. This took the form of an unclassified
summary of a new NIE, published early last
December. Entitled "Iran: Nuclear Intentions and
Capabilities", this new document was obviously
designed to blow up the near-universal consensus
that had flowed from the conclusions reached by
the intelligence community in its 2005 NIE. In
brief, whereas the NIE of 2005 had assessed
"with high confidence that Iran currently is
determined to develop nuclear weapons", the new
NIE of 2007 did "not know whether [Iran]
currently intends to develop nuclear weapons".
In fact, the headline finding of the
2007 NIE was that Iran had ceased its nuclear
weapons program way back in 2003, even more
damaging for the 2005 assessment.
But hold
on, says Podhoretz, why should we believe US
intelligence agencies? They got it wrong about
Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and
they couldn't even predict 9/11. He provides a
litany of other US intelligence blunders to
bolster his case, and throws in political
machination for good measure: "To me it seemed
obvious that it [the 2007 NIE] represented another
ambush by an intelligence community that had
consistently tried to sabotage Mr Bush's policies
through a series of damaging leaks and was now
trying to prevent him from ever taking military
action against Iran."
So, clearly, the
2007 NIE is not to be trusted. But what of the
2005 NIE? Unfortunately for us, its findings
remain classified, as far as we can ascertain. The
most thorough assessment of its contents at the
time of its (classified) release appeared in an
article in the Washington Post dated August 2,
2005, titled "Iran Is Judged 10 Years From Nuclear
Bomb" and subtitled "US Intelligence Review
Contrasts With Administration Statements".
The article cites "government
sources with firsthand knowledge" of the 2005 NIE.
These sources say the findings are
"carefully hedged" - unlike, the Post adds,
the "forceful public statements by the White House",
and unlike, we add, the forceful "high
confidence" now attributed to the NIE.
The most
significant finding of this NIE, according to the
Post, was that Iran was 10 years away from
acquiring nuclear weapons capability, extending
the five-year timeframe that had been bandied
about previously. Still, the Post reports, "A
senior intelligence official familiar with the
findings said that 'it is the judgment of the
intelligence community that, left to its own
devices, Iran is determined to build nuclear
weapons'."
Iran won't have a nuclear
weapon until 2015, according to the spooks. This,
of course, Podhoretz takes in his stride. Tearing
the (classified) 2005 NIE to shreds, he reminds us
again that the spooks are more likely wrong than
right, and the US must bomb Iran NOW before it's
too late: "[O]nly by relying on the accuracy of
the 2005 NIE would Mr Bush be able in all good
conscience to pass on to his successor the
decision of whether or when to bomb the Iranian
nuclear facilities. But that estimate, as he could
hardly help knowing from the CIA's not exactly
brilliant track record, might easily be too
optimistic."
But now it's our turn to say
"Hold on!" Norman, may we remind you of your
introductory sentence? In case you had forgotten,
it says: "Up until a fairly short time ago,
scarcely anyone dissented from the assessment
offered with 'high confidence' by the National
Intelligence Estimate of 2005 that Iran was
'determined to develop nuclear weapons'." Yet now
you are telling us that like the 2007 NIE, the
2005 NIE is not worth the paper it's written on?
So where exactly do you find the evidence to back
your unwavering assertions that Iran is on the
brink of developing a nuke? In Vice President Dick
Cheney's office? Dang, Norman, it really is time
to consider a mental silicone implant.
The
funny thing is, to the best of our knowledge
(including exhaustive web searches) the actual
contents of the classified 2005 NIE remain unknown
to anyone outside the intelligence establishment
or their masters (and clearly, Podhoretz is not a
member of the intelligence community).
It
was not until the 2007 NIE findings were released
that we discovered that the 2005 NIE allegedly
assessed "with high confidence that Iran currently
is determined to develop nuclear weapons". The
2007 NIE lays out for us exactly how its findings
differ from those of 2005, all neatly tabulated
and in your face (see the public version of the
NIE here ). How does
Podhoretz know what the 2005 assessment (with which
"scarcely anyone dissented") said, without getting the
information from the 2007 NIE that he has so
thoroughly discredited?
Actually, there is only one
question arising from this tangled web of NIEs,
and it's not whether Iran should or should not be
bombed, or whether Podhoretz needs hormone
therapy, or why people read garbage like his
article. The question is, why did the authors of
the 2007 NIE see fit to publicly flaunt the
(allegedly) inaccurate and previously unknown
findings of the 2005 NIE? Could it have been
intended as a message to people like Podhoretz's
neo-con dog handlers to butt out this time around?
We think that's quite possible: the 2007
key findings were released to the public hard on
the heels of reports that the NIE had been delayed
for months because of pressure from Cheney's
office to make it more congenial to aggressive
military action against Iran (see Spooks refuse to toe Cheney's line
on Iran, November 10, 2007).
Bring on that Amy nymphet. Rack off,
Norman.
- Allen Quicke, Asia
Times Online editor in chief.
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online Ltd.
All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
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