BREAKING! Carly Fiorina has seen video proof of zombie outbreak!

Here it is!

 

 Just in case you were wondering, when Ms. Fiorina said at the debates last night:

"I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, to watch these tapes. Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says, 'We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain,'" Fiorina said Wednesday night at the GOP presidential debate, during a discussion about a congressional vote on defunding Planned Parenthood.

1. No scene anything like the one she described were in any of the versions--edited or unedited--of the Planned Parenthood videos put out by Center for Medical Progress.

2. There was a scene of a baby in a mini documentary by Center for Medical Progress that was not filmed at any Planned Parenthood, that may have simply have been ten-year-old stock footage of a preemie that was used to *illustrate* someone's never proven claims about Planned Parenthood.

See here, here, here (and numerous other sites).

But by all means, let's shut down the entire government over a scene that was not in the videos she claimed it was in and that did not show what she claimed it did!

And, by the way, when she was the CEO of Hewlett-Packard, she illegally sold hundreds of millions of dollars of computer products to Iran, meanwhile every single investigation of Planned Parenthood about those videos has turned up nothing illegal.

Pittsburgh Iran Vigil: Lighting 100 Candles Against the Darkness

Approximately 100 gathered Tuesday evening in Market Square to show support for the democratic movement now underway in Iran and to honor those who have lost their lives in this struggle.

The crowd was a mix of old and young; Persian and non Persian. Many greeted each other with "salam"as the vigil grew.

A poem was read in honor of Neda Agha Soltan, the 26-year old woman shot in the heart at a protest in Iran, who has become the face of the movement when her death was broadcast on YouTube.

A woman who said she had lived through the 1979 revolution in Iran stood up and spoke. She said that she had been waiting a long time to see a new generation of Iranians seek change. She then led many in the crowd in singing an old Iranian folk song. I heard someone behind me comment that it was the old anthem -- the one that was sung "before the monsters took over."

Another vigil/rally is planned for Sunday. Details to be announced.












(Kudos to WPXI for covering the event on the 11:00 news broadcast.)
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Ha! Funny!

Tom Tomorrow brings up an interesting point in his most recent cartoon.

About the conservatives who are criticizing President Obama for not speaking out more forcefully in support of the protesters in Iran, he says that some of the same folks, not too long ago, were advocating mass death in Iran. Remember this?


Or remember how William Kristol said that Bush might bomb Iran if he thought Obama was going to win?

Or when Joshua Muravchik, resident scholar over at the American Enterprise Institute wrote an Op-Ed in the LA Times in November, 2006, that began with these words:

WE MUST bomb Iran.

Who did they think would get hurt when the bombs dropped?

Glenn Greenwald has the story.

Three things you can do in the next two days

TODAY:

1. Call your PA state senator today about Sen. Eichelberger's outrageous statement that "We’re allowing them [gays] to exist."

Here's a link to find your senator. More details on this story here.

(Your calls and emails are working! We've got hits today on our original post from: Commonwealth of PA, PA Senate, and US Senate Sergeant at Arms. Please keep the pressure on!)

TOMORROW:

1. Attend The Citizens Police Review Board meeting (and the press conference) tomorrow.

There are some very real issues being raised about how police respond to incidents of domestic violence spurred by the Donna Williams case. Details on this case here and here.

Citizen Police Review Board Meeting
June 23, 2009, 6:00 PM (Please attend the press conference at 5:30 PM before the meeting)
Freedom Unlimited Building
2201 Wylie Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15219

2. Attend the Pittsburgh Peace Vigil for Iran tomorrow.

Date: Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Time: 8:00-9:30 PM (dark)
Location: Market Square, downtown Pittsburgh, PA

This will be a quiet/silent show of support for the historic democratic movement now underway in Iran, and for those who have given their lives in the name of their cause. Please bring a flashlight.

More details here.
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President Obama Speaks Out About Iran

From Whitehouse.gov:

The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.

As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.

Martin Luther King once said - "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.

And to those who wonder why he hasn't spoken out more forcefully, there's this from CBS:

Harry Smith: People in this country say you haven't said enough, that you haven't been forceful enough in your support for those people in the street, and which you say?

President Obama: To which I say the last thing that I want to do is to have the United States be a foil for those forces inside Iran who would love nothing better than to make this an argument about the United States. That's what they do. That's what we've already seen. We shouldn't be playing into that. There should be no distractions from the fact that the Iranian people are seeking to let their voices be heard.

And he was right. Here's something from Yahoo.com on Wednesday:

Iran directly accused the United States of meddling in the deepening crisis over a disputed presidential election and broadened its media clampdown Wednesday to include blogs and news Web sites.

It's a volatile situation over there. No need to make it worse by pouring gasoline on it. No matter what the neocons (and they were so right about Iraq!) say.

Authorities Fire On Crowds in Tehran

People dying for democracy:


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Live Blogging the Iranian Demonstrations

Huffington Post.

Andrew Sullivan.

From Andrew Sullivan:

8.51 am. This photo is making the rounds. Reports are coming in of the first clashes as riot police try to prevent access to all the main squares.

The Revolution will not be televised. The Revolution will be live - on twitter.

Penguins Party in Pittsburgh

Tens of thousands of supporters of the Penguins are streaming to the center of Pittsburgh in a boisterous celebration of the Stanely Cup winners.

My bad.

Make that: "Tens of thousands of supporters of pro-reform leader Mir Hossein Mousavi are streaming through the center of Tehran in a boisterous protest against election results that declared President Mamoud Ahmadinejad the winner."



.

Iran.

The heck with everything else.

Watch this:

Santorum Spins

Former Senator Rick Santorum is at it again.

This time Santorum is spinning about Current Senator Barack Obama.

Senator Man-on-Dog begins:

Over the past weeks much has been made of Barack Obama's hard right turn toward the center of the political spectrum. There's been no greater about-face than his embrace of the Bush Doctrine on the next likely foreign policy crisis - Iran.

The Bush Doctrine refers to the strategy of preemptive warfare that President Bush set forth in 2002. It's the idea that the United States will not wait for menacing enemies to attack us; we will attack preemptively in certain cases

And then quotes Obama to back up his assertion:

Last month, Obama declared, "I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon - everything."

And then connects the dots:

When a would-be commander in chief says "everything" three times in one sentence - and says so publicly - he is not just talking about continued diplomacy and sanctions. He's saying that he has not taken the military option off the table.

With that statement, Obama, the definitive antiwar candidate, ended any serious debate over preemption in the post-9/11 world.

And so if we were to take Lil Ricky seriously (and I mean really does ANYONE take Rick Santorum seriously these days? Apart from the wingnuts, I mean), could we actually conclude that Senator Obama has "embrac(ed) the Bush doctrine" of "preemptive warfare"?

Uh, no.

Let's take a look at what Obama actually said when he said what Rick quoted. It was June 4, 2008 and the Senator was speaking before American Israel Public Affairs Committee's Annual Policy Conference. Here's a fuller context. This transcript can be found at the New York Times:

Now, there's no greater threat to Israel or to the peace and stability of the region than Iran. This audience is made up of both Republicans and Democrats. And the enemies of Israel should have no doubt that, regardless of party, Americans stand shoulder-to-shoulder in our commitment to Israel's security.

So while I don't want to strike too partisan a note here today, I do want to address some willful mischaracterizations of my position.

The Iranian regime supports violent extremists and challenges us across the region. It pursues a nuclear capability that could spark a dangerous arms race and raise the prospect of a transfer of nuclear know-how to terrorists.

Its president denies the Holocaust and threatens to wipe Israel off the map. The danger from Iran is grave, it is real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat.

But just as we are clear-eyed about the threat, we must be clear about the failure of today's policy. We knew in 2002 that Iran supported terrorism. We knew Iran had an illicit nuclear program. We knew Iran proposed a great threat to Israel.

But instead of pursuing a strategy to address this threat, we ignored it and instead invaded and occupied Iraq.

When I opposed the war, I warned that it would fan the flames of extremism in the Middle East. That is precisely what happened in Iran. The hard-liners tightened their grip, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president in 2005. And the United States and Israel are less secure.

I respect Senator McCain, and I look forward to a substantive debate with him these next five months. But on this point, we have differed, and we will differ.

Senator McCain refuses to understand or acknowledge the failure of the policy he would continue. He criticizes my willingness to use strong diplomacy, but offers only an alternative reality, one where the war in Iraq has somehow put Iran on its heels.
The truth is the opposite: Iran has strengthened its position. Iran is now enriching uranium, and it has reportedly stockpiled 150 kilos of low-enriched uranium. Its support for terrorism and threats towards Israel have increased.

Those are the facts. And they cannot be denied. And I refuse to continue a policy that has made the United States and Israel less secure.

Now, Senator McCain and others offers a false choice: stay the course in Iraq or cede the region to Iran.

I reject this logic, because there is a better way. Keeping all of our troops tied down indefinitely in Iraq is not the way to weaken Iran; it is precisely what has strengthened it. It is a policy for staying, not a policy for victory.

I have proposed a responsible phased redeployment of our troops from Iraq. We will get out as carefully as we were careless getting in. We will finally pressure Iraq's leaders to take meaningful responsibility for their own future.

We will also use all elements of American power to pressure Iran. I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, everything.

That starts with aggressive, principled, tough diplomacy, without self-defeating preconditions, but with a clear-eyed understanding of our interests.

We have no time to waste. We cannot unconditionally rule out an approach that could prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

We have tried limited, piecemeal talks, while we outsourced the sustained work to our European allies. It has not worked. It is time for the United States to lead.

Now, there will be careful preparation. We will open up lines of communication, build an agenda, coordinate closely with our allies, especially Israel, and evaluate the potential for progress.

And contrary to the claims of some, I have no interest in sitting down with our adversaries just for the sake of talking. But as president of the United States, I would be willing to lead tough and principled diplomacy with the appropriate Iranian leaders at a time and place of my choosing, if and only if it can advance the interests of the United States.

That is my position. I want it to be absolutely clear.

Only recently have some come to think that diplomacy by definition cannot be tough. They forget the example of Truman, and Kennedy, and Reagan. These presidents understood that diplomacy, backed by real leverage, was a fundamental tool of statecraft.

And it is time to once again make American diplomacy a tool to succeed, not just a means of containing failure.

We will pursue this diplomacy with no illusions about the Iranian regime. Instead, we will present a clear choice: If you abandon your dangerous nuclear program, your support for terror, and your threats to Israel, there will be meaningful incentives, including the lifting of sanctions and political and economic integration with the international community. If you refuse, we will ratchet up the pressure.

My presidency will strengthen our hand as we restore our standing. Our willingness to pursue diplomacy will make it easier to mobilize others to join our cause.
If Iran fails to change course when presented with this choice by the United States, it will be clear to the people of Iran and to the world that the Iranian regime is the author of its own isolation. And that will strengthen our hand with Russia and China, as we insist on stronger sanctions in the Security Council.

And we should work with Europe, Japan, and the gulf states to find every avenue outside the United Nations to isolate the Iranian regime, from cutting off loan guarantees and expanding financial sanctions, to banning the export of refined petroleum to Iran, to boycotting firms associated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, who Quds Forces have rightly been labeled a terrorist organization.

Anyone reading that and believing that it supports the Dubya Doctrine of preemptive warfare has to have his or her head examined. Please note that after the section Santorum quoted, Obama follows it immediately with:

That starts with aggressive, principled, tough diplomacy, without self-defeating preconditions, but with a clear-eyed understanding of our interests.

That in itself is a repudiation of the Bush doctrine of shoot now and lie about it later.

On Iran's nuclear capabilities, Rick's spinning there, too. He writes:

International Atomic Energy Administration director Mohamed ElBaradei said last month that if Iran expelled the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency, Iran would need six months to produce a nuclear weapon. Couple that with last week's test firing of missiles capable of delivering that weapon to Israel, and it is no wonder you have seen a rash of stories about the Israelis training for strikes against Iran.

But here's exactly what ElBaradei said:

Mohamed ElBaradei: "If Iran wants to turn to the production of nuclear weapons, it must leave the NPT, expel the IAEA inspectors, and then it would need at least... Considering the number of centrifuges and the quantity of uranium Iran has..."

Interviewer: "How much time would it need?"

ElBaradei: "It would need at least six months to one year. Therefore, Iran will not be able to reach the point where we would wake up one morning to an Iran with a nuclear weapon."

Interviewer: "Excuse me, I would like to clarify this for our viewers. If Iran decides today to expel the IAEA from the country, it will need six months..."

ElBaradei: "Or one year, at least..."

Interviewer:"... to produce [nuclear] weapons?"

ElBaradei: "It would need this period to produce a weapon, and to obtain highly-enriched uranium in sufficient quantities for a single nuclear weapon." [...]

So it's not just a matter of expelling the the UN, Iran would also have to leave the NPT and THEN it would take 6 months to a year to build the thing, including obtaining the uranium needed.

Something Lil Ricky left out.

Now on those missiles. I found this from fellow conservative Pat Buchanan. In a column calling this a "phony crisis" Pat points out something about the missiles Rick was warning us about:

One rocket appears twice in the same photo. The large missile, on inspection, was not the new Shahab-3b, which has a range of 1,200 miles, but a Shahab-3a, with a range of 900 miles. It is no longer in production.

The missiles fired with the Shahab-3a turned out to be Scuds, a short-range missile that is no threat to Israel.

Oh, and ElBaradei? He also said this in the same interview:

"In my view, a military strike would be the worst thing possible. It would turn the Middle East into a ball of fire."

Interviewer: "It would be worse than sanctions?"

ElBaradei: "Much worse, because a military strike would mean, first and foremost, that even if Iran does not produce nuclear weapons today, it would implement a so-called 'crash course,' or an accelerated plan to produce a nuclear weapon, with the agreement and blessing of all the Iranians - even the Iranians living in the West."

So a preemptive attack would only hasten an Iranian nuke.

Good thinking, Rick. Nice to see you're still on the ball.

Killing Iranians on the Brain

From The Huffington Post:

Responding to a question about a survey that shows increased exports to
Iran, mainly from cigarettes, McCain said, "Maybe that's a way of killing them."

He quickly caught himself, saying "I meant that as a joke" as his wife, Cindy, poked him in the back.

Video:


Of course he was joking! Everyone knows that when it comes to Iranians, McCain would prefer to bomb, bomb, bomb them:



BONUS POINTS for making his latest joke in da 'Burgh! (Notice the Primanti Brothers sign in the background.)

Senator McCain's Foreign Policy Expertise

Yesterday in Jordan. From the Washington Post:

Speaking to reporters in Amman, the Jordanian capital, McCain said he and two Senate colleagues traveling with him continue to be concerned about Iranian operatives “taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back.”

Pressed to elaborate, McCain said it was “common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that’s well known. And it’s unfortunate.” A few moments later, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, standing just behind McCain, stepped forward and whispered in the presidential candidate’s ear. McCain then said: “I’m sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda.”

The mistake threatened to undermine McCain's argument that his decades of foreign policy experience make him the natural choice to lead a country at war with terrorists. In recent days, McCain has repeatedly said his intimate knowledge of foreign policy make him the best equipped to answer a phone ringing in the White House late at night.

And the New York Times:

But all did not go according to plan on Tuesday in Amman, Jordan, when Mr. McCain, fresh from a visit to Iraq, misidentified some of the main players in the Iraq war.

Mr. McCain said several times in his visit to Jordan — in a news conference and in a radio interview — that he was concerned that Iran was training Al Qaeda in Iraq. The United States believes that Iran, a Shiite country, has been training and financing Shiite extremists in Iraq, but not Al Qaeda, which is a Sunni insurgent group.

His campaign, of course, did its best to cover it all up:

Brian Rogers, a spokesman for the McCain campaign, responded: “In a press conference today, John McCain misspoke and immediately corrected himself by stating that Iran is in fact supporting radical Islamic extremists in Iraq, not Al Qaeda — as is reflected in the transcript. The reality is that the American people have deep concerns about the Democratic candidates’ judgment and readiness on matters of national security, and that’s why the D.N.C. launched their attack today.”

Uh, not quite. You see my friends, Senator John McCain did not make that mistake only once - in Jordan.

He also made the same mistake on Hugh Hewitt's radio program:

HH: What’s the concern you have about Iran, and about, in particular, Ahmadinejad? Some people want to meet with him. He’s not on your agenda this trip.

JM: (laughing) The day I meet with the president of Iran will be the day after he announces his country no longer is dedicated to the extinction of the state of Israel, the day after they stop exporting these most lethal explosives into Iraq. Just yesterday, up in the Mosul area, they uncovered a cache of weapons, and a lot of it was these Iranian copper, high…most lethal explosives. As you know, there are al Qaeda operatives that are taken back into Iran, given training as leaders, and they’re moving back into Iraq.

This is the guy who wants us to know that he's the expert on foreign affairs in the presidential race.

Not good. Not good at all.

He's lucky that he made this embarrassing gaffe the day that Senator Obama gave his speech. Had it been otherwise we might be talking about McCain's flubbing another important issue.

George Bush and the NIE

The story's been floating around for a day or so. In case you're interested in actually reading the NIE. Here it is.

From Newsweek:

In public, President Bush has been careful to reassure Israel and other allies that he still sees Iran as a threat, while not disavowing his administration's recent National Intelligence Estimate. That NIE, made public Dec. 3, embarrassed the administration by concluding that Tehran had halted its weapons program in 2003, which seemed to undermine years of bellicose rhetoric from Bush and other senior officials about Iran's nuclear ambitions. But in private conversations with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last week, the president all but disowned the document, said a senior administration official who accompanied Bush on his six-nation trip to the Mideast. "He told the Israelis that he can't control what the intelligence community says, but that [the NIE's] conclusions don't reflect his own views" about Iran's nuclear-weapons program, said the official, who would discuss intelligence matters only on the condition of anonymity.

Then there's this from Slate.com:

For the president of the United States to wave away the whole document—which, in its classified form, is more than 140 pages and has nearly 1,500 source notes, according to an enlightening story in today's Wall Street Journal—is gratuitous and self-destructive.

Then again, such behavior is of a piece with the pattern of relations between President Bush and his intelligence agencies. In September 2004, when he was asked about a pessimistic CIA report on the course of the occupation in Iraq, Bush replied that the agency was "just guessing."

And then:

And therein lies the irony of the present situation. In decades past, the CIA has often lost credibility as a result of its own failures and scandals. Now President Bush is splashing doubt not just on the CIA, but on all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, simply because their judgments are out of synch with his policies.

Of course the White House spins it all into near complete confusion. This is from yesterday's press conference:

Q This is addressed to both of you, if you could answer. My question is based to some extent on the exchanges that the President had with my Fox News colleague, Greta Van Susteren. In your own discussions with the President about the NIE and its central finding that the weaponization aspect of the Iran nuclear program has been suspended, do you find that the President fully accepts this conclusion? Or is there any -- has the President expressed to you, are you aware of any feeling on the President's part that, however sincere the analysts might have been, they might have gotten it wrong? Has he admitted the possibility at all in his mind that the analysts may be wrong about this?

MS. PERINO: I've not heard the President express anything but support for the intelligence community. But I think what he has said, and he has repeated both privately and publicly, is that he does not believe that the NIE that was produced -- was it two months ago -- should provide anyone any comfort that Iran is not a threat. In fact, it underscored for him and for many others, as we've learned from around this region, that they also believe that Iran remains a threat.

And the very fact that they were hiding their weaponization program from the world, that nobody knew about, should not give anyone comfort that all of a sudden now we know that they had one, and that they halted it. What the international community has called on them to do is to halt their enrichment of uranium. And we are united in that, and we are going to continue to press for sanctions.

But there is no doubt that across the world the NIE that was put out by our intelligence community did cause some confusion. And one of the things the President has done at every stop is to tell them that he believes that Iran was a threat, they are a threat, and they will continue to be a threat if they are allowed to have a nuclear weapon. He believes that they have the right to have civilian nuclear power. He has provided, along with his international partners, a way for Iran to come to the table and have a negotiation for civilian nuclear power if they verifiably suspend. And so until we see that, I think that we will remain concerned and skeptical, and continue down the diplomatic path.

Another point that the President has made when this has come up is that he does believe that this problem can be solved diplomatically.

But I also want to underscore for you that it is a mistake to think that these meetings that the President has had across this region have been about Iran. If it has come up, it has been brief. Now, I'm not there, sitting at the President's shoulder, or by his side, when he has one-on-one meetings, but I can tell you, in the meetings that we have been in -- and we have been very fortunate on this trip to have been included in everything except for the one-on-ones -- my observation is that while it has come up, what they were looking for was reassurance from President Bush that he agrees -- that he still believes what he had said before the NIE came out. And the fact is that that is what he believes.

Q But my question was not about perception or misperceptions of the report's findings, or the implications, or whether or not Iran remains a threat. My question to you is whether or not the President admits at all in his own mind of the possibility that the central finding was actually wrong?

MS. PERINO: Again, I said he has complete confidence in the intelligence community. They work very hard to get as much information as they possibly can. They brought this new information to the attention of their superiors back in late August. They said they were going to need some more time to vet it out before they were able to fully understand it. And intelligence is not an exact science and they continue to seek out more information. But the President agreed with the intelligence community that it was important to get this information out so that everyone knows what they're dealing with. And again, the fact that the Iranians had a secret, covert program that they were hiding from the world should not give any of us comfort.

If you asked yourself, after reading all those words, whether Dana Perino actually answered the question, you'd have to admit that the answer would be a resounding no. Take another look.

--Does the president think the NIE was wrong?
--The president has full confidence in the intelligence community and Iran is a threat.

That's not an answer.

Back to Slate.com:

This remark has three baleful consequences. First, it can't help but demoralize the intelligence community. NIEs are meant, ultimately, for only one reader, the president; and here's the president telling another world leader that he doesn't believe it because, well, he doesn't agree with it.

Second, it reinforces the widespread view that the president views intelligence strictly as a political tool: When it backs up his policies, it's as good as gold; when it doesn't, it's "just guessing." This result is that all intelligence is degraded and devalued, at home and abroad. Let's say that six months from now Bush publicizes an NIE concluding that Iran has resumed its nuclear-weapons program or that, say, North Korea is reprocessing more plutonium. Given that he pooh-poohed an NIE that rubbed against his own views, why should anyone take him seriously for embracing an NIE that confirms them?

Third, by telling Olmert that it's all right to ignore the NIE, Bush is in effect telling him that Israel should go ahead and behave as if its findings had never been published. Hirsh reports that, when Olmert was asked whether he felt reassured by Bush's words, he replied, "I am very happy." ABC News reported Monday that, at a closed hearing of the Israeli parliament's foreign affairs and defense committee, Olmert testified, "All options that prevent Iran from gaining nuclear capabilities are legitimate within the context of how to grapple with this matter."

Dana Perino is right on one thing, however. None of this should give us any comfort.

Jack Kelly Sunday

Jack Kelly...tackles the...NIE.

In today's P-G.

And, as usual, he spins and misdirects. He also completely misses the point.

But before we try to deconstruct J-Kel yet again, let's just take a look at how the NIE describes its own construction (if only to head off the inevitable righwing talking point that it was written by 3 disgruntled former State Department officials). Here it is, page 3 of the estimate:

National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) are the Intelligence Community’s (IC) most authoritative written judgments on national security issues and designed to help US civilian and military leaders develop policies to protect US national security interests. NIEs usually provide information on the current state of play but are primarily “estimative”—that is, they make judgments about the likely course of future events and identify the implications for US policy.

The NIEs are typically requested by senior civilian and military policymakers, Congressional leaders and at times are initiated by the National Intelligence Council (NIC). Before a NIE is drafted, the relevant NIO is responsible for producing a concept paper or terms of reference (TOR) and circulates it throughout the Intelligence Community for comment. The TOR defines the key estimative questions, determines drafting responsibilities, and sets the drafting and publication schedule. One or more IC analysts are usually assigned to produce the initial text. The NIC then meets to critique the draft before it is circulated to the broader IC. Representatives from the relevant IC agencies meet to hone and coordinate line-by-line the full text of the NIE. Working with their Agencies, reps also assign the level of confidence they have in each key judgment. IC reps discuss the quality of sources with collectors, and the National Clandestine Service vets the sources used to ensure the draft does not include any that have been recalled or otherwise seriously questioned.

All NIEs are reviewed by National Intelligence Board, which is chaired by the DNI and is composed of the heads of relevant IC agencies. Once approved by the NIB, NIEs are briefed to the President and senior policymakers. The whole process of producing NIEs normally takes at least several months.

Ok now that that's done, let's get down to business. Here's how Commando Kelly begins:

Iran suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and probably won't be able to build a bomb before 2015 if it does restart it, a new National Intelligence Estimate has concluded. That's very good news ... if it's true.

But that's a big if. The NIE is a SWAG (Scientific Wild-Assed Guess), not a statement of proven fact. It's a SWAG from an intelligence community whose predictive record about the Middle East has been poor. It's a SWAG that's challenged by Israeli intelligence, whose predictive history is much better. And it's a SWAG that is diametrically opposed to the last SWAG the intelligence community issued on Iran's nuclear program.

Not that big, if you read how the thing was put together. Jack is relying on the rhetorical device that goes something like this: they were wrong before so why should we believe them now? Turns out that the answer to that has been written into the current NIE.

The NIC has undertaken a number of steps to improve the NIE process under the DNI. These steps are in accordance with the goals and recommendations set out in the SSCI and WMD Commission reports and the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Prevention of Terrorism Act. Most notably, over the last year and a half, the IC has:

• Created new procedures to integrate formal reviews of source reporting and technical judgments. The Directors of the National Clandestine Service, NSA, NGA, and DIA and the Assistant Secretary/INR are now required to submit formal assessments that highlight the strengths, weaknesses, and overall credibility of their sources used in developing the critical judgments of the NIE.

• Applied more rigorous standards. A textbox is incorporated into all NIEs that explains what we mean by such terms as “we judge” and that clarifies the difference between judgments of likelihood and confidence levels. We have made a concerted effort to not only highlight differences among agencies but to explain the reasons for such differences and to prominently display them in the Key Judgments.

We've written on this before, but it might be a good idea to go over this again. How (or at least why) did they change their minds on this?

Here's something (again) from the Washington Post:

A pivotal moment occurred in early summer 2005, when President Bush discussed the new Iran NIE with advisers during a routine intelligence briefing. Why, he asked, was it so hard to get information about Iran's nuclear program?

The exchange, described by a senior U.S. official who witnessed it, helped instigate the intelligence community's most aggressive attempt to penetrate Iran's highly secretive nuclear program. Over the coming months, the CIA established a new Iran Operations Division that brought analysts and clandestine collectors together to search for hard evidence.

Communications intercepts of Iranian nuclear officials and a stolen Iranian laptop containing diagrams related to the development of a nuclear warhead for missiles both yielded valuable evidence about Iran's nuclear past as well as its decision in 2003 to suspend the weapons side of its program.

But there was no "eureka" moment, according to senior officials who helped supervise the collection efforts. The surge in intelligence-gathering helped convince analysts that Iran had made a "course correction" in 2003, halting the weapons work while proceeding with the civilian nuclear energy program.

The result, ironically, was a new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran that reached conclusions far different from what many intelligence officials expected.

So here we have the President asking why it was so hard to get good evidence on the Iranian nuclear program and that spurred on the Intelligence community to take a closer look at the data at hand. When they looked harder, they reassessed what they saw. The result was the latest NIE. And DNI McConnell had a different methodology in place as well. Again, from the Washington Post:

Former and current intelligence officials say the new NIE reflects new analytical methods ordered by McConnell -- who took the DNI job in January -- and his deputies, including Thomas Fingar, a former head of the State Department's intelligence agency, and Donald M. Kerr, a former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and an expert on nuclear weapons technology.

Besides requiring greater transparency about the sources of intelligence, McConnell and his colleagues have compelled analysts working on major estimates to challenge existing assumptions when new information does not fit, according to former and current U.S. officials familiar with the policies.

Then there's this from the New York Times:

American intelligence agencies reversed their view about the status of Iran’s nuclear weapons program after they obtained notes last summer from the deliberations of Iranian military officials involved in the weapons development program, senior intelligence and government officials said on Wednesday.

So. Different data, different methology, why shouldn't there be a different conclusion? Jack, then (kinda) pushes the "disinformation" button only to (kinda) slap it away a paragraph later.

But what if the notes were disinformation planted to mislead us? It was uncorroborated statements which proved to be false from an Iraqi defector (Curveball) which were chiefly responsible for the intelligence community's apparently erroneous conclusions about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.

The notes and deliberations were corroborated by other intelligence, including intercepted telephone conversations among Iranian officials, sources told The New York Times.

Ah, Curveball. The gift that keeps on giving. Too bad that Curveball (aka Rafid Ahmed Alwan) wasn't a direct intelligence source for the US. He was controlled by the Germans who did not permit US Intelligence any access to him. Before dubya's war, the head of German Intelligence even tried to warn off US Intelligence about him. Calling him "crazy" and a "waste of time." But this administration needed a reason to go to war and Curveball gave it to them. He was a part of the Administration's lies leading up to the war.

But back to whether the NIE was based on another "Curveball." This is how the New York Times described it:

But they said that the Central Intelligence Agency and other agencies had organized a “red team” to determine if the new information might have been part of an elaborate disinformation campaign mounted by Iran to derail the effort to impose sanctions against it.

In the end, American intelligence officials rejected that theory, though they were challenged to defend that conclusion in a meeting two weeks ago in the White House situation room, in which the notes and deliberations were described to the most senior members of President Bush’s national security team, including Vice President Dick Cheney.

“It was a pretty vivid exchange,” said one participant in the conversation.

The officials said they were confident that the notes confirmed the existence, up to 2003, of a weapons programs that American officials first learned about from a laptop computer, belonging to an Iranian engineer, that came into the hands of the C.I.A. in 2004.

No wonder Jack boiled down that meeting (with its "vivid exchange") to one bland sentence. It shows that Dick Cheney knew about the NIE by the third week of November.

Which leads me to the point that Jack Kelly, former National Security Correspondent to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette insisted on missing in his entire column.

The story is not only about the NIE, but about when the highest levels of the Administration knew about it. They've known for months what it said and yet continued to warn (as they did on October 17) about Iran, nuclear weapons, and World War III. As Scott Horton wrote about the timing of the release of the NIE and whether week-old intelligence was at the heart of it at Harpers:

Is this true? That will be a subject for further study. But one highly reliable intelligence community source I consulted immediately after Hadley spoke answered my question this way: “This is absolutely absurd. The NIE has been in substantially the form in which it was finally submitted for more than six months. The White House, and particularly Vice President Cheney, used every trick in the book to stop it from being finalized and issued. There was no last minute breakthrough that caused the issuance of the assessment.”

That, Jack, was the point of all this. Another lie from this Administration that would lead to more needless death and destruction. This time, though, they got caught before anyone got hurt.

The Trib's Take On The NIE

We're such big, huge, enthusiastic fans of the Trib here at 2PJ (it sez so here) that it pains me to offer some critical analysis of the editorial board's latest. It's on the recently declassified NIE.

The argument proffered by the loyalists at the Scaife-owned little-paper-that-could boils down (roughly) to this: the Intelligence Community said one thing two years ago and is now saying something else. So which is right? Which report do we believe? Oh, the confusion of it all!

Take a look:

The American intelligence apparat, in a major reversal, now says Iran halted a secret nuclear-weapons program in 2003.

Two years ago, the assessment suggested Iranian nuclear weapons were imminent; it fueled saber rattling from a Bush administration already at war in Iraq, based on faulty intelligence about Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction.

What could have possibly changed things so completely? One explanation can be found here at the Washington Post. First off, there's a new methology:

Drawing lessons from the intelligence debacle over supposed Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell required agencies to consult more sources and to say to a larger intelligence community audience precisely what they know and how they know it -- and to acknowledge, to a degree previously unheard of, what they do not know.

And with this new methology, they took a new look:

A pivotal moment occurred in early summer 2005, when President Bush discussed the new Iran NIE with advisers during a routine intelligence briefing. Why, he asked, was it so hard to get information about Iran's nuclear program?

The exchange, described by a senior U.S. official who witnessed it, helped instigate the intelligence community's most aggressive attempt to penetrate Iran's highly secretive nuclear program. Over the coming months, the CIA established a new Iran Operations Division that brought analysts and clandestine collectors together to search for hard evidence.

Communications intercepts of Iranian nuclear officials and a stolen Iranian laptop containing diagrams related to the development of a nuclear warhead for missiles both yielded valuable evidence about Iran's nuclear past as well as its decision in 2003 to suspend the weapons side of its program.

But there was no "eureka" moment, according to senior officials who helped supervise the collection efforts. The surge in intelligence-gathering helped convince analysts that Iran had made a "course correction" in 2003, halting the weapons work while proceeding with the civilian nuclear energy program.

And that lead to a new conclusion. Simple, really.

But the Trib has a few more cards to play.

Complicating the matter, however, is that the reassessment may rely on information from a senior Iranian official who defected. Is it a ploy? Much of the U.S.'s erroneous Iraq assumptions were based on the claims of a single and poorly vetted snitch.

So here's the other shoe dropping. Since much of Bush's run up to war was based on a "single and poorly vetted snitch," (that would be Curveball), and this turnaround "may rely" on a defector, why should we believe it?

From the Guardian:

The U-turn by US spy agencies over Iran, the biggest since the Iraq debacle five years ago, is the result of "physical" intelligence, likely to be a defector, according to various diplomatic and security sources in Washington today.

One of the main figures in the frame is General Ali-Reza Asgari, a former deputy defence minister and Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander.

Asgari apparently disappeared in Turkey over the last 12 months, having either defected or been kidnapped, and may be in US hands.

However:

Work on the latest NIE report on Iran has been under way for more than a year. Senior intelligence officials, quoted in the New York Times, cautioned against concluding that the turnaround had been the result of a single defector and pointed to an analysis of video footage of a tour by foreign journalists of Iran's nuclear facility at Natanz in 2005.

And notice the chronology. The Iran Operations Division was established in the months after the Summer of 2005 (let's say the fall of 2005). The defector (if he indeed defected and if he is indeed the source) has only been available for the past year or so.

To its credit, the Trib's editorial board does add this:

But, all this said, the new intelligence conclusions suggest that U.S.-led international pressure may have worked in stunting Iran's nuclear ambitions. Such pressure -- and a dedicated policy of containment -- actually was working against Iraq prior to the U.S.-led invasion.

So, what to believe?

It's simple. Just do a little research and see where the information takes you. I did that. Why couldn't the Trib's editorial board?

Jack Kelly and the NIE

Now that we've seen, via a recently released National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), that the nation's intelligence community believes:

• With "high confidence" that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003 (the report notes that they define the program as the "nuclear weapon design and weaponization work and covert uranium conversion-related and uranium enrichment-related work" not the civil work on uranium enrichment.
• With "moderate confidence" that Iran has not restarted the program as of mid-2007.
• With "moderate to high" confidence, that Iran does NOT have a nuclear weapon.

And so on. While not ruling out the possibility of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon (or fissionable material), they estimate that it would take years for Iran to produce enough weapons grade uranium for a bomb. As such:

We judge with high confidence that Iran will not be technically capable of producing
and reprocessing enough plutonium for a weapon before about 2015.

With all that now in the news-aether, what should we make of my friend Jack Kelly's pronouncements on the state of Iran's nuclear capabilities?

September 30, 2007:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had a highly successful visit to New York last week, thanks chiefly to Columbia University President Lee Bollinger.

The diminutive despot with the big smirk heads a repressive regime which promotes terrorism. Sophisticated IEDs supplied by Iran are the principal cause of U.S. casualties in Iraq. Mr. Ahmadinejad has called repeatedly for the obliteration of Israel and is seeking nuclear weapons to make this possible.

July 15, 200o7:

Poor Israeli performance in the war with Hezbollah last summer has inspired confidence the Jewish state can be beaten militarily. Fear in Tehran that its nuclear weapons program could trigger economic sanctions from the United Nations or air strikes from the United States makes the mullahs there more inclined to roll the dice.

December 17, 2006:

We've also seen how ineffective the United Nations has been at preventing outlaw regimes such as North Korea and Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

August 20, 2006:

Whether Israel's tactical gains matter more than Hezbollah's PR gains depends on how soon the inevitable confrontation over Iran's nuclear program takes place. "Because Iran, in conventional terms, is largely defenseless against an American bombing campaign, Iran's first objective will be to draw Israel into the conflict," wrote Noah Pollack in National Review Online. "The way Iran would drag Israel into the war and dramatically complicate the U.S. mission would be through Hezbollah."

I'm not saying that J-Kel should have known what was in the NIE when he wrote any of these statements but now that the NIE has been released and has shown what he wrote to be, well, less than accurate, when will we see Jack Kelly pointing out that he was incorrect about Iran's now dormant nuclear weapons program?

The Independent on Those Captured British Sailors/Marines

H/T to Meteor Blades at the dailykos for this.

Patrick Cockburn writes at The Independent:

A failed American attempt to abduct two senior Iranian security officers on an official visit to northern Iraq was the starting pistol for a crisis that 10 weeks later led to Iranians seizing 15 British sailors and Marines.

That's the first paragraph.

The story has made it all the way to John Nichols's blog at The Nation. I'm not sure what to think as it's also currently the above-the-name link at the Drudgereport.

But whatever.

Here's more from Cockburn:

Early on the morning of 11 January, helicopter-born US forces launched a surprise raid on a long-established Iranian liaison office in the city of Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. They captured five relatively junior Iranian officials whom the US accuses of being intelligence agents and still holds.

In reality the US attack had a far more ambitious objective, The Independent has learned. The aim of the raid, launched without informing the Kurdish authorities, was to seize two men at the very heart of the Iranian security establishment.

And:

The two men were in Kurdistan on an official visit during which they met the Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani, and later saw Massoud Barzani, the President of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), at his mountain headquarters overlooking Arbil.

"They were after Jafari," Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of Massoud Barzani, told The Independent. He confirmed that the Iranian office had been established in Arbil for a long time and was often visited by Kurds obtaining documents to visit Iran. "The Americans thought he [Jafari] was there," said Mr Hussein.

So these guys were on "an official visit" meeting with the leaders of the regime the US is currently supporting (and can't not support, out of fear it would collapse without that support). Dubya goes in and snatches 'em anyway.

Meteor Blades is very careful to point out some caveats here:

Hussein did not explain how he came by this knowledge. And The Independent apparently did not bother to seek the usual non-denial denial from U.S. authorities. So, some caution, as always, is in order regarding the newspaper’s claim.

Exactly right.