Iran: A Bridge too Far?

[theknife]

Originally Posted by multi

This NIE was apparently finished a year ago, and its basic parameters were almost certainly common knowledge in the White House well before that. This means that all the leaks, all the World War III stuff, all the blustering about the IAEA — all of it was approved for public consumption after Cheney/Bush/Rice/etc. knew perfectly well it was mostly baseless.

Nothing smells better in the morning to the Neocons than war propaganda. That’s why Cheney tried to hold up the report from coming out.

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 go aggressive policy toward Iran, according to accounts of the process provided by participants to two former Central Intelligence Agency officers.

via Amanda: “As ThinkProgress has documented, the White House’s manipulation of the Iran NIE bore a striking resemblance to the controversies that played out over pre-war Iraq intelligence.” ...more

go figure. it's amazing anybody takes the Bush administration seriously about anything when they've been wrong about, well, pretty much everything.