REPUBLICANS MOCK OBAMA FOR NOT BOMBING NORTH KOREA

Are all Republicans as mean as they sound? Are they all war mongers? Sometimes it appears that way. Consider the response of Newt Gingrich to Pres. Barack Obama's call for nuclear disarmament - he says it is naive and is making America "less safe," repeating a Cheney line. And John Bolton and Richard Perle also weigh in, criticizing Obama. But remember who these guys are - two of the biggest proponents of attacking Iran and bombing North Korea. Imagine the world with Gingrich, Bolton and Perle in charge.

Politico writers Jonathan Martin and David S. Cloud report on Republican reaction to Obama's proposals:

"Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said he would have attempted to knock out the missile. And Richard Perle, a former Reagan official who was a leading proponent of the Iraq war, mocked Obama for recently trumpeting the prospect for renewing an arms agreement with Russia, saying the president was practicing diplomacy that is utterly irrelevant.

"“Can anyone imagine a Russian nuclear attack on the United States?” said Perle, who said Obama should worry instead about terrorists getting a mass-destruction weapon, possibly with the aid of Iran.

"“Especially in light of the North Korean launch, I thought his speech was otherworldly," said John Bolton, the conservative former Ambassador to the United Nations under President Bush. "What is he saying about the real, concrete threat from proliferant states like North Korea and Iran? We'll take you to the Security Council. Say, there's a threat! That has had no practical impact on either Pyongyang or Tehran before and will not in the future.""

BUSH/CHENEY DELAY NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE REPORT ON IRAN BECAUSE N.I.E. FINDS NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM SINCE 2003

Here's another case about intelligence made to fit around the Bush/Cheney Iran policy. Because they disagreed with its conclusions, Bush and Cheney delayed the release of the National Intelligence Estimate for 2006. It has only just been released. The NIE's report says that Iran discontinued any program to build a nuclear weapon back in 2003, Walter Pincus reports today on The Washington Post web site.

Writes Pincus:


"Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 in response to international pressure, and while it continues to develop an enriched uranium program, it apparently has not resumed moving toward a nuclear capability, according to a consensus judgment of the U.S. intelligence community released today by Director of National Intelligence John M. McConnell.

"The assessment states "with moderate confidence" that "Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program" as of mid-2007, but suggests that Tehran continues to keep that option open.

""Tehran's decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005," according to one of the key judgments of the new assessment. Two years ago, the intelligence community said publicly that it had "high confidence that Iran was currently determined to have nuclear weapons," a senior intelligence official said today.

"After that assessment was released, the community increased its clandestine and open collection of information about Iran's program, actions that led to today's reassessment, the officials said.

"The major shift in the intelligence community's judgment about Iran's nuclear weapons intentions is contained in unclassified material from a new, classified National Intelligence Estimate sent to Capitol Hill today. The document represents the consensus opinion of the U.S. intelligence community."

Yet from 2003 to the present, George Bush and Dick Cheney have been beating the drums of war itching to start a war against Iran on the basis that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon. Thanks to Amanda at ThinkProgress.com for cataloging the sorry record of Bush/Cheney and neo-cons in accusing Iran and its leaders of trying to develop nuclear weapons.


Thanks again to Amanda at ThinkProgress, here's Cheney on Iran's nuclear threats just two months ago:

“Our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions. . . . The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course the international community is prepared to impose serious consequences.” [Cheney, 10/21/07]

ThinkProgress also points at at a story in the Inter Press Service News Agency (IPS). IPS ran an article back on November 8, 2007, by Gareth Porter detailing the inter-administration fight between Dick Cheney and the Rice/Gates group.


Writes Porter:


"A National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran has been held up for more than a year in an effort to force the intelligence community to remove dissenting judgments on the Iranian nuclear programme, and thus make the document more supportive of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's militarily aggressive policy toward Iran, according to accounts of the process provided by participants to two former Central Intelligence Agency officers."

After learning today of the NIE's conclusions that Iran has desisted pursuing nuclear weapons since 2003, I can understand why the NIE's report has been held up. Bush and Cheney wanted the NIE to bless their suspicions to the contrary that Iran was indeed engage in building nuclear bombs. But the folks at the NIE refused to go along. If they had, it would be deja vu all over again, reproducing exactly what happened to the intelligence services back in 2002 when they rolled over for Bush/Cheney and came out with garbage about Iraq's arsenal of WMD.

Porter continues in his report:

"Cheney's desire for a "clean" NIE that could be used to support his aggressive policy toward Iran was apparently a major factor in the replacement of John Negroponte as director of national intelligence in early 2007. Negroponte had angered the neoconservatives in the administration by telling the press in April 2006 that the intelligence community believed that it would still be "a number of years off" before Iran would be "likely to have enough fissile material to assemble into or to put into a nuclear weapon, perhaps into the next decade."


"Neoconservatives immediately attacked Negroponte for the statement, which merely reflected the existing NIE on Iran issued in spring 2005. Robert G. Joseph, the undersecretary of state for arms control and an ally of Cheney, contradicted Negroponte the following day. He suggested that Iran's nuclear programme was nearing the "point of no return" -- an Israeli concept referring to the mastery of industrial-scale uranium enrichment.

"Frank J. Gaffney, a protégé of neoconservative heavyweight Richard Perle, complained that Negroponte was "absurdly declaring the Iranian regime to be years away from having nuclear weapons". "

CHENEY'S TRIP TO MIDDLE EAST MAKES NO SENSE

So VP Dick Cheney is leaving today for a trip to the Middle East. Tom Raum of the Associated Press (published today in the Washington Post) reports the countries Cheney plans to visit:

"Cheney's first stop will be Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. Other announced stops include Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. Cheney also will visit the aircraft carrier John C. Stennis in the Persian Gulf."

Tom Raum explains the purpose of Cheney's visit:

"Vice President Dick Cheney is reaching out to moderate Arab leaders for help in bringing stability to Iraq, a mission that will include pleas for postwar support for minority party Sunnis."

Consider this: Cheney plans to visit Arab countries with a population made up of Sunnis. There are no countries on Cheney's itinerary that have a majority of Shia. The resulting question must be how can Cheney effect any change in the catastrophic situation and civil war in Iraq if the only governments he will be visiting are Sunni regimes? Iraq is predominantly Shia. The minority Sunnis and the majority Shia in Iraq are in the throes of a fierce civil war. What does Cheney think he can accomplish? Get the Arab Sunni governments to tell their Sunni counterparts in Iraq to cool it, and thus expose themselves to the guns and bombs of their Shia enemies?

This Cheney trip exposes the desperation of Bush & Co. over the looming American defeat in Iraq. A stinging defeat self-caused by Bush and Cheney and Rice and Rumsfeld and Tenet and all those other neo-cons like Wolfowitz and Perle and Feith.