On the Iran NIE

John Cole sums up the Cheney administration:

Shorter George Bush- “I have no clue what the F* is going on.”

Don’t miss the comments. “The presidency isn’t worth a bucket of warm piss.” Heh. Indeed. :)

Comments

  1. a former european wrote:

    Yeah, but just remember how fantastic our intelligence agencies did in the run-up to Iraq. If your intelligence information is questionable, do you believe the new intel that Iran isn’t trying for a nuke, or the old intel that they are? Naturally, you will be judged in perfect, 20-20 hindsight by all the armchair strategists out there and flip-flopping politicos.

    As much as I dislike Bush, I have to be careful to give credit to ANY President or world leader that is required to make tough decisions based on limited intel. History is replete with political and military leaders making disastrous decisions but which, based on the limited information known at the time, seemed like good ideas at that time.

    Posted 04 Dec 2007 at 5:56 pm

  2. Redhand wrote:

    Don’t miss the comments.

    One of the best one is near the end, describing the NIE release as something of a “Caine Mutiny.”

    Posted 05 Dec 2007 at 9:27 am

  3. John the Marine wrote:

    You know maybe we should be asking why the intel community keeps getting it wrong, instead of wondering why Hillary and W have made bad decisions based on bad information. Honestly I don’t think Mrs Clinton or Bush are worth the powder it would take to blow their brains out, however the CIA’s recent record makes me wonder.

    Posted 06 Dec 2007 at 2:18 pm

  4. canuckistani wrote:

    I would say the alarming thing is not that intelligence has been wrong, but that Bush was either not told about the latest assessment, forgot the latest assessment or ignored the latest assessment. Maybe God speaks to him and tells him what the Iranians are up to, but if he’s been claiming that Iran is pursuing an atomic bomb after he’s been informed otherwise, it would be interesting to know what the information is that he’s overriding the entire intelligence community on..

    Posted 06 Dec 2007 at 4:53 pm

  5. a former european wrote:

    Has Bush really been ignoring the intelligence data sent to him? IIRC, there were a lot of intelligence failures in the lead-up to the Iraq war, both our own and some from our allies. When the data proved faulty, the intelligence community seemed to do a lot of ass-covering by pointing fingers elsewhere. Unlike Bush the Elder, Bush II was never an intelligence wonk. He relied on those intelligence agencies to do their jobs properly.

    Although I eagerly look forward to the day he exits office, fairness forces me to acknowledge that US intelligence really dropped the ball over the last few years and they need to bear the burden of those mistakes. Bush has made plenty of mistakes for which he should be appropriately criticized. We don’t need to shift failures of the intelligence community onto him as well.

    Posted 06 Dec 2007 at 7:44 pm

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