The State within the US state

Friday, 7th December 2007

In the Washington Post, John Bolton shows up the NIE report for the rubbish that it is in his typically incisive way. But the thing that really caught my eye was this:

Fifth, many involved in drafting and approving the NIE were not intelligence professionals but refugees from the State Department, brought into the new central bureaucracy of the director of national intelligence. These officials had relatively benign views of Iran's nuclear intentions five and six years ago; now they are writing those views as if they were received wisdom from on high. In fact, these are precisely the policy biases they had before, recycled as ‘intelligence judgments.’

They weren’t even independent intelligence officials at all. No wonder this NIE is such an insult to the intelligence.

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Fletcher

December 6th, 2007 10:39pm

So Iran doesn't have nukes. This is wonderful news! What's to stop the US (and/or Israel) from attacking it now?

Herbert Thornton

December 7th, 2007 2:18am

I think it very likely that the Israelis have the the most reliable information about Iran's nuclear programs.

Mladen Andrijasevic

December 7th, 2007 8:21am

On August 8, 2006 professor Bernard Lewis, the doyen of Islam studies in the West, wrote in the Wall Street Journal: " There is a radical difference between the Islamic Republic of Iran and other governments with nuclear weapons. This difference is expressed in what can only be described as the apocalyptic worldview of Iran's present rulers. " and " In this context, mutual assured destruction, the deterrent that worked so well during the Cold War, would have no meaning. At the end of time, there will be general destruction anyway. What will matter will be the final destination of the dead–hell for the infidels, and heaven for the believers. For people with this mindset, MAD is not a constraint; it is an inducement." I did a quick search of the National Intelligence Estimate "Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities" for the words "imam" or "12th" or "Mehdi". No hits. So I can judge with high confidence that NIE conclusions have not much to do with WHY Iran wants to what it wants to do . As long as that has not changed nothing has changed.

Bob Hatton

December 10th, 2007 11:05pm

Perhaps this is the same John Bolton who as US Ambassador to the UN delayed the ceasefire in Lebanon to allow Israel enough time to finish off Hezbollah. Shows how much he knows about the military capabilities and fighting spirit of his adversaries.

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Melanie Phillips is a Daily Mail columnist. She also writes for the Jewish Chronicle and is a panellist on BBC Radio Four's Moral Maze. Her most recent book is 'Londonistan', published by Encounter and Gibson Square.

For a complete set of Melanie's articles click here