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NIE Report - Strategic Setback
For Globalist Warmongering?
- Don't Count On It

By Joel Skousen
Editor - World Affairs Brief
12-6-7


This week's dramatic consensus analysis by all 16 US intelligence agencies claiming that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003 is not what it seems. The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) has always been more of a political document to justify administration threat policies than honest intelligence analysis. This one has all the signs of serving multiple political purposes. First, its conclusions exonerating Iran may or may not be true (probably not). Second, this issue is outside the purview of at least half of the supposed 16 separate intelligence agencies, leading us to believe that there was enforced political unanimity rather than real consensus. In real life, the 16 agencies never fully agree on anything, and only the top 3 or 4 are consulted on major issues like this. Third, the leaking of information on source documents justifying these conclusions is never done in legitimate intelligence summaries unless the administration is trying hard to convince the public of something devious. Fourth, the current NIE is a total contradiction of the 2005 NIE. One or both, are therefore suspect. This week, I'll tell my readers what I think the globalists are up to by appearing to cut the rug out from under their own interventionist policies.
 
President Bush's reaction to this "new" intelligence bordered on an outright fib, bolstering my belief that this whole dramatic revelation is a carefully crafted deception. Bush told the world, "I was made aware of the NIE last week. In August, I think it was Mike McConnell [Director of National Intelligence] came in and said, 'we have some new information.' He didn't tell me what the information was; he did tell me it was going to take a while to analyze."
 
Nonsense. My reaction to that was identical to former CIA analyst Ray McGovern who said, "The notion that the head of National Intelligence whispered in Bush's ear 'I've got a surprise for you and it's really important, but I'm not going to tell you about it until we check it out' -- The whole thing is preposterous!" --especially when the DNI knows that Bush is making a fool of himself every week decrying Iran's nuclear program. He would at least have told him to hold off on the nuclear claims until we check this out. This story is a complete fabrication by Bush to both save face and obscure the months of devious planning that went into this new NIE.
 
The previous 2005 NIE which claimed Iran had an active nuclear weapons program was just as flawed as it relied on the discovery of a single laptop computer obtained from an Iranian engineer. The documents on the laptop described two programs, termed L-101 and L-102 which "appeared to be related to weapons work." --Clearly, a less than definitive statement on the evidence.
 
Contrast this with the current intelligence estimate which has been devastating to this administration's strident campaign to vilify Iran and build the case for military intervention--failing to do so, according to Bush, would "lead to World War III." Using military force on Iran, for now, is politically unjustifiable. That's the BIG change. Iran is trumpeting its vindication to the world--still denying that it ever had a weapons program, but the president's European allies are defying their own public opinion and calling for increased pressure on Iran. As Kaveh L Afrasiabi pointed out in Asia times, "instead of factoring in the sea-change caused by this report, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown have joined hands in a desperate
show of unity, calling for staying the course and initiating new sanctions if Tehran continues to defy 'the will of the international community.'"
 
I believe Iran does have a nuclear weapons program, and I think the US knows it-despite the NIE's new claims. It would be stupid for Iran not to seek to have one. Iran knows it is being targeted by the globalists for military intervention and control. But, my objection to the administration's warmongering agenda is not because Iran is innocent of the charges, but because the intent of the globalists is an even greater evil. It is NOT to ensure our safety, Israel's safety or that of anyone else--the intent is to manage and create conflict that will eventually result in global war, out of which they can justify more global reorganization and control. If Iran is a threat it a limited one, and mostly concerns Israel which is fully capable of defending itself.
 
Israel, having built up a large media campaign against Iran still insists that Iran has an active nuclear weapons program, and if anyone knows, they do. They have the best spies in the world. This, in itself, is interesting because almost all of US intelligence in this area comes from Israeli sources within Iran. How could the US claim one thing and its primary source another? To bolster its case and counter the NIE, Israeli intends to brief the Joint Chief's Admiral Michael Mullen who will travel to Israel Sunday. He will be meeting with IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, and Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
 
According to the NY Times (the recipients of this convenient leak about the original sources), "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." The key piece of disinformation here is that they only became aware "last summer." Even if they do have such intercepts the timing of the claim is nonsense. The NIE was already written by last summer, and supposedly suppressed by the administration for more than a year because it failed to support the Bush/Cheney attack plans for Iran. Thus the "new intercept notes" could not have appeared only last summer. It takes months to analyze new and contradictory intelligence, let alone explain how this sudden change gets enacted so quickly into an NIE that takes almost two years to prepare and vet through the various intelligence communities.
 
By the way, the 16 government entities with intelligence units mentioned in the NIE are: Air Force Intelligence, Army Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, Coast Guard Intelligence, Defense Intelligence Agency, Department of Energy (even I wasn't aware of this one), Department of Homeland Security, Department of State, Department of the Treasury, Drug Enforcement Administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Marine Corps Intelligence, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Office, National Security Agency, and Navy Intelligence.
 
According to Sanger and Myers in the NY Times, "The notes included conversations and deliberations in which some of the [Iranian] military officials complained bitterly about what they termed a decision by their superiors in late 2003 to shut down a complex engineering effort to design nuclear weapons, including a warhead that could fit atop Iranian missiles." This is hardly definitive evidence.
 
In any major "reversal" of intelligence assessments, the new intelligence would have to overcome the weight of all the prior intelligence that establishes claims to the contrary. That isn't done easily unless the previous intel was flimsy (which is close to the truth). A totally new direction can almost never be justified based on one or two intercepts of notes passed between Iranian officials-especially concerning a claim as easy to falsify as "frustration about shutting down a program." One of the most common tactics of deception (straight out of Counter-Intel 101) is to create one or more phony conversations or letters and allow them to be intercepted. Every nation does this. No honest intel officer is going to buy this kind of intercept, claiming "we are shutting down our nuclear program" as legitimate without a lot of corroboration--which, in this case is very difficult, if not impossible, to confirm.
 
The leaks to the NY Times even addressed this issue: "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." Naturally, "In the end, American intelligence officials rejected that theory." They don't tell us why.
 
Despite all these anomalies, the media and public are all too willing to accept the new NIE as fact. It's what most people want to hear. After all, the Bush/Cheney justifications for attacking Iran were looked upon with almost universal suspicion, though repeated without question by the media. Only the most devoted lackeys of President Bush in the US Senate are calling for an investigation to challenge this new assessment.
 
What is telling is that president Bush still insists that Iran remains a threat. While touting the virtues of continued diplomacy, his rhetoric is just as antagonistic as before. The administration denies no error in judgment, and even went so far as to say the NIE bolstered their own opinions. On the day the NIE was finally released, National Security advisor Stephen J. Hadley gave this predictable interpretation:
 
"It confirms that we were right to be worried about Iran seeking to develop nuclear weapons.... It tells us that we have made progress in trying to ensure that this does not happen. But the intelligence also tells us that the risk of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon remains a very serious problem... it concludes with 'moderate confidence' that the program had not restarted as of mid-2007."
 
That "moderate confidence" statement is all that is needed to give the impression of risk--enough to justify continued hostile demands toward Iran. That is the script Bush seems to be following--demanding that Iran "come clean" and reveal all about past programs. So, while the military option is temporarily off the table, the antagonization strategy continues in full force. Bush is demanding another round of economic and military sanctions against Iran.
 
Here's what the NIE really does:
 
1) It affirms in the public's eye that the Bush/Cheney team was right about Iran's weapons program (without having to rigorously justify this to the public). The writers knew that the public's eagerness to believe the weapons program had stopped would negate any further pressure to justify the former claim that Iran's nuclear weapons program actually existed in the first place. Slick.
 
2) It gives the Bush administration a reason to back down from the attack on Iran (for now).
 
3) It still guarantees an open-ended threat from Iran: i.e., "If they had a program once, they could have it again."
 
Matthew Rothschild wrote yesterday, "The risk of Bush attacking Iran is not yet over. When the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran came out earlier this week, a lot of people jumped to the conclusion that Cheney and the hardliners have lost, and so we can all breathe a sigh of relief. Well, I'm not exhaling at the moment--because I still believe Bush and Cheney are going to do the deed.
 
"First, let's examine what Bush said at his Tuesday press conference: 'Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous, and Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.' Note well that he didn't say Iran will be dangerous when it acquires such a weapon, but prior to that, when it acquires the knowledge to make one. That's a big difference, and it shortens the timetable laid out in the NIE, which doubted Iran would have such a weapon until 2015.
 
"Bush's new definition allows him to denounce Iran at almost any time on the nuclear issue. He reiterated that 'Iran needs to be taken seriously as a threat to peace,' adding: 'My opinion hasn't changed.' And he remained as macho as ever in boasting that he wouldn't allow Iran to acquire such a weapon while he's around. 'If Iran shows up with a nuclear weapon at some point in time, the world is going to say, what happened to them in 2007? How come they couldn't see the impending danger?' He added five more similar rhetorical questions, and concluded by saying: 'It's not going to happen on my watch.' He also said yet again that 'the best diplomacy' is when 'all options are on the table.'"
 
MY ANALYSIS: First, let me be very clear. The globalists have not repented of their ultimate intentions of antagonize the world sufficient to cause a massive nuclear retaliation against the country (by Russia and China). That's the real threat we need to be worried about--the next World War they are planning. They may well be postponing this Iran attack date to 2015 to form one of the actual trigger events, much as they have also been giving cover to North Korea's aggressive preparations all these years--because of NK's potential use as a trigger to start a war in the Far East. We will probably see the use of two trigger events, on both sides of the world at different times, as they did in WWII.
 
But clearly the Bush globalists were planning on attacking Iran now, and that has changed. They were unsuccessful at provoking Iran into a pre-emptive strike, and they had way too many people watching for a US-instigated provocation of Iran. This entire NIE process was done, in my opinion, including all the hype about the supposed infighting between "hawks and realists," merely to give the Bush administration an excuse to back out of the current attack plan--because they wanted to. The big question is WHY?
 
There are several possibilities, but here is what I think looms largest: While it is the globalists' plan to continue militarily intervention around the world (in the name of democracy and fighting terror) they can only continue this antagonization of the world if the American public remains stupid enough and compliant enough to believe in the phony excuses fed them by the media--by daily interviewing or parroting statements by government officials and neocon shills within the media. It's this latter part of the scheme--keeping the public believing in the intervention agenda--that is failing, and failing rapidly. American's fatigue with war, if not outright anti-war sentiment is growing. It is especially high about Iraq, despite recent claims of success. But, American tolerance for a broad-ranging attack on Iran is simply not there.
 
I believe the globalist neocons running the Bush administration saw that a perceived unjustified attack on Iran threatened to arouse a major rebellion among Americans that could potentially and radically alter who America would choose in the upcoming presidential primaries. The PTB see this period leading up to the primaries, as a period when their abilities to manipulate public opinion toward their favored globalist candidates (Giuliani and Clinton) are most at risk of failure. An Iran attack would have exacerbated that risk.
 
First, the public wasn't buying the justifications. They'd had too much of that in Iraq. Second, increasingly, huge numbers of thinking men and women in the military were becoming critical of this warmongering agenda and actively expressing those opinions on the internet (and donating to Ron Paul's campaign). Even normally supportive yesman Generals in the various services were balking and there was a not-so-minor revolt brewing in the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
 
Third, the surge in support of Ron Paul has them worried, even though they are still confident they can deny him the nomination. They fear that the one way to guarantee an even higher level of support for Paul is to attack Iran, which would have proved Ron Paul right: The price of oil would go shooting up toward $200 a barrel, the public deficit would become even more astronomical, and more hatred against America would result.
 
Economically, I also think the PTB are very worried. The economy is right on the edge of a major collapse despite appearances on the street. Certainly, higher fuel costs to consumers will continue to syphon off public buying power, as well.
 
There has been a run on Florida's state investment pool by participating municipalities, fearing that the state's investments in risky subprime mortgages and derivatives will soon become insolvent. That could easily happen in other states as well. Florida has halted further withdrawals from the pool to make sure they don't have to start liquidating investments that might have no real value--exposing how bad things really are.
 
The only thing keeping a cascade of investment, mortgage and bank failures from happening is the continued massive injection of liquidity by the fed into favored banks and brokerage houses--countering downward market forces with options plays and more spending. They can't keep this up forever without exacerbating effects on the dollar. In fact, the dollar would be falling more than it is if it weren't for the fact that international holders of dollar reserves are afraid of unloading large blocks of dollars at any one time lest the remaining value of their reserves collapses. The big holders have little choice but to continue holding dollars and/or try to invest them in something of value priced in dollars. That's why the Saudis are buying large stakes in US companies. In short, I believe the PTB may have decided that the fragile state of economic affairs cannot tolerate another oil/war shock right now.
 
Nevertheless, the attack is merely postponed, not cancelled. It could be a short postponement trying to get past this presidential primary or they could wait for the ultimate war scenario, in the next decade. The specter of Iran's nuclear weapons program can be resurrected as quickly as the NIE put it to rest. Worse, no new NIE will have to justify Iran's weapon's culpability--which was already established by presumption in this latest edition. All they will have to claim is that the weapons program "has been restarted", or worse, that "Iran never did shut it down" Intel of this sort is easy to create when you have access to black operations worldwide.
 
There is another possibility. Israel could play the role of rebellious sibling and attack Iran on its own. This is still a very real possibility. Iran would then retaliate against both Israel and nearby US troops and the US could then enter the war "reluctantly" and avoid blame in the eyes of the American people. In any case, my analysis is that this is merely a tactical postponement, not a victory for the opposition nor a reason to drop our guard.
 
 
 
World Affairs Brief - Commentary and Insights on a Troubled World
 
Copyright 2007 Joel Skousen - All Rights Reserved
 
Partial quotations with attribution permitted. Cite source as Joel Skousen's World Affairs Brief
 
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