Decius wrote:
I was surprised to see Bolton calling the NIE a quazi-putsch in the press this weekend. Apparently Rudy's foreign policy advisor isn't the only one who feels this way. So which is it? Is this simply a new, improved CIA or is it an example of technology undermining hierarchal relationships?

More importantly, in 2008 will I be faced with having to select between a Republican candidate who wants war with Iran in spite of this estimate and a Democratic candidate who wants to pull out of Iraq immediately? Why is our country ruled by oversimplifications?

Wow. Okay, let's start with the problems here. First, Bolton and Podhoretz are joined at the hip and have been at least since their work on Project for the New American Century. These two holding the same party line would be about like someone currently at the White House publicly going against a stated position, it's not going to happen.

Problem 2, Bolton may describe this as a "quasi-putsch" but a better description might be, this is what you can expect out of the intelligence community when they don't have Dick Cheney, Doug Feith, Richard Pearle and others browbeating them the way they did when they cooked the books on Iraq. There may even be some particularly pointed backlash in the NIE releasing things in stronger terms than would normally have been stated because of that situation. They didn't like having the White House and OVP pounding then over Iraq, and they really didn't like the White House leaving CIA holding the bag when it was found out the Iraq NIE wasn't even good to wipe themselves with (20lb stock vs Charmin is no contest).

Problem 3, the either/or improved CIA vs broken hierarchy is too simple a way to describe this. Compared to the capabilities of the CIA 8 years ago vs now, I would hazard that the CIA may not be as capable now as it was then. The exodus of senior analysts, and the loss of basically the Mid-East WMD section in the Plame affair, are obvious reasons to say it is not, and no one knows how well those holes have been refilled. The Goss tenure is another case where things may have declined even further. On the other hand, the fact that they did take a position contrary to the policy position of the Neo-cons and White House may be saying that they are pissed off about getting burned on Iraq and they are reasserting their independence from political machinations. There are a lot of possibilities here, and the either/or proposition is itself oversimplifying it.

Problem 4, there are Republican candidates who are not all that gung ho about a war with Iran (Paul primarily, but McCain to an extent as well) but many of the others (Rudy in a big way) are for it. And then there's Huckabee, who may not have any clue about any of this, he was a couple of days late in even being aware of the NIE, and I have no idea what he thinks about it..

Problem 5, aside from Richardson and Kucinich, all of the Democratic candidates have said they expect there to still be troops in Iraq through at least the end of their first term. It seems they've hung their hats on the Iraqification of the war in the same way Nixon hung his on the Vietnamization of that war.

So, all of that said, my assessment of the NIE is two fold. First, no one has disputed any of the factual conclusions of the NIE, people like Bolton and Podhoretz (and William Kristol, thank you PNAC!) are saying CIA is biased and that led to the conclusions, but whether or not Iran stopped their weapons program? No. The neo-con argument is they could restart it at any time, and there's no difference between a nuclear power program and a weapons program which is an entirely different subject. So at that level, I am inclined to see the NIE as factual.

The second issue with the NIE is that it appears to be a flat rebuke to the neo-con position towards Iran which has been getting increasingly belligerent, and has been running as a repeat of the run up to the invasion of Iraq. CIA got left holding the bag on Iraq and if the White House wants another war, they weren't going to eat this one. That they also said there is no clear danger from Iran is the rebuke. Based on uncooked information, there is pretty strong consensus that Iraq posed no threat to the US, and if there is a war with Iran, and there isn't a WMD program, and CIA thinks there isn't, CIA wants the political heat to fall where it's supposed to, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

This is still a bit of a simplification, but here's the recap. The Neo-cons pretty much are monolithic, so Bolton and Podhoretz saying the same thing is to be expected. There are a couple of options in the '08 primaries, Rudy is four more years, with the rest of the Republican field filtering slowly away from the ultra-right towards the center-right, at which point you pick up Hillary with the rest of the Democratic field filtering towards the center, and even a bit left in some areas.

You've got options. Stop listening to the moron pundits, figure out where the candidates actually stand based on your own spin, and not that of O'Reilly, Olberman, Rush or anyone else, then make up your mind about which horse you want to back. Or, you can continue to listen uncritically to the pundits, bleat "baa" periodically, and wait until someone decides they want mutton chops and you're on the menu.

RE: The meaning of the NIE...