I remain undecided of the import of the NIE on Iran, (at least I know that it exists, better than the GOP front runner in Iowa) but I do know that Jonah Goldberg is a moron.
- He accuses the Washington Post of saying that the revised intelligence was proof that reforms had worked. The first to say this was none other than George W. Bush, who took credit for said reforms in yesterday's news conference.
- He argues that in the case of Iraq "'European governments' were often even more convinced of Saddam's WMD programs and capabilities than US intelligence was." It is conceivable that there were moments over the decades of Saddam's reign when this was true. But at the critical moment, when Bush was urging war, Germany, France, Russia, and others made it perfectly clear that they considered the intelligence insufficient to justify war. Bush claimed that the intelligence was abundant. More important than comparing intelligence findings between Europe and the U.S. would be contrasting U.S. and Israeli intelligence. Goldberg fails to do so. He continues his dishonesty when he says that the IAEA's "findings also sometimes helped the argument for war."
Commenters on Goldberg''s post include Matthew Yglesias, who was dead on by responding to Jonah's notion that it would be better if the NIE erred in telling us that Iran has WMD than for the opposite error to be made, writing that "the notion that alarmism is a form of caution should have died in the sands of Iraq."
Another commenter was Hot Air, whose internally contradictory post can only be an attempt to confuse matters. He agrees with Goldberg that all assertions that the revised NEI could be the result of reforms made by Bush are patently ridiculous, unless of course it is Bush himself making the assertion. He goes on to focus on neo-con hero John Bolton who personally knows how venal and corrupt are those in the intelligence world. Proof positive is offered by Bolton's recounting of an error made about the wife of the foreign minister of Mexico back in 1986, Republican Ronald Reagan's fifth year in office. It seems the intelligence agency had said that the minister's wife had been a Soviet Citizen! In fact, says Bolton, she "was a nice Jewish lady who lived in New York and grew up in Brooklyn." (Bolton does not seem to understand that to the CIA under Reagan any 'nice Jewish lady' from Brooklyn was a Commie) This mistake proves to Bolton and HotAir how dangerous the NIE is to national security. HotAir goes on to support Bolton's theory that the new NIE was the creation of pinkos at The State Department, especially a man named Thomas Fingar. Despite Republican dominance at State for the last 50 years, shameless Joe McCarthy's narrative of commies in the Department still works.
A promoter of Thomas Fingar is none other than the liberal, death squad lover, Negroponte, so you know Fingar must have trained with Che Guevara. In fact he earned Bolton's enmity when he supported an underling who "could not concur" with Bolton's hallucinatory claims of bio-weapons programs in Cuba. Fingar is entirely a creation of the Bush administration.
My uncertainty about the meaning of the government's release of the NIE has only grown by reading The Corner and Hot Air. My confidence that Jonah Goldberg is a moron remains unchallenged.
Comments