WAR WITH IRAN STILL ON THE TABLE?

President Bush’s critics appear to be gloating over the recent National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). The NIE tells us that President Bush’s war mongering over Iran’s nuclear program has little merit. But the "We-told-you-so" celebrations may be premature. Don't be surprised if President Bush, like "Bush Propaganda Network" FOX News (FOX News: “Bush Calls on Iran to 'Come Clean' on Nuclear Activities”) chooses to ignore the NIE because it doesn’t tell him what he wants to hear.

This won’t be the first time President Bush has ignored a NIE (NIEs are summaries of intelligence gathered by all 16 intelligence agencies in the country). After 9/11 President Bush's team turned a blind eye to the NIE they had on hand because it wasn’t useful. Specifically, the NIE assessment at the time stated “Iraq did not appear to have reconstituted its nuclear weapons program.” This is not good enough when you want war with Iraq.
,
To fix the NIE assessment problem the Bush administration ordered up another NIE. But this time he had his team on hand to help “craft” and influence the report. It all started with a December 2001 NIE that stated “Recent Iraq procurements, however, suggest possible preparation for renewed uranium enrichment program.” And just like that, the Iraq war pendulum began to swing the other way for the intelligence community.

The December 2001 NIE helped pave the way for the subsequent October 2002 NIE report – "Iraq's Continuing Program for Weapons of Mass Destruction" – which claimed “Baghdad began reconstituting its nuclear program shortly after the departure of the UNSCOM inspectors in December 1998.” Apart from paving the way for war with Iraq, the October 2002 NIE became famous inside the CIA as the "Whore of Babylon" because it explicitly endorsed Dick Cheney's "Saddam has resumed efforts to acquire ..." rhetoric.

In an effort to keep the grand lie going, and to keep experts from calling the Oct. 2002 NIE what it was – i.e. highly politicized and undependable “intelligence” – the Bush administration had a pliant republican-controlled senate stonewall intelligence hearings (led by Senate Intelligence Chair, R-Pat Roberts). Then they tried to discredit and intimidate anyone who told the truth about the Oct. 2002 NIE and other administration claims. This helps explain why the Bush administration went after Ambassador Joseph Wilson and CIA Operative Valerie Plame. Wilson's trip to Niger and his op-ed in the NY Times (“What I Didn’t Find in Africa”) told the world that the Bush administration was offering little more than a "pack of lies" on the Iraq-Niger “yellowcake” story.

There’s more. But the moral of the story is President Bush has a history of dismissing what he does not like to hear and acting on things impetuously (because he trusts his “gut”). While we can hope that common sense prevails, don’t be surprised if this NIE report does not deter President Bush from war mongering on Iran in the future.