[NYTr] Bush's War Drums Beating Louder on Iran

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Counterpunch - Aug 22, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/mcgovern08222007.html


Bush's War Drums Beating Louder on Iran

By RAY McGOVERN
Former CIA Analyst

It is as though I'm back as an analyst at the CIA, trying to estimate
the chances of an attack on Iran. The putative attacker, though,
happens to be our own president.

It is precisely the kind of work we analysts used to do. And, while it
is still a bit jarring to be turning our analytical tools on the U.S.
leadership, it is by no means entirely new. For, of necessity, we
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have been doing
that for almost six years now -- ever since 9/11, when "everything
changed."

Of necessity? Yes, because, with very few exceptions, American
journalists put their jobs at grave risk if they expose things like
fraudulent wars.

The craft of CIA analysis was designed to be an all-source operation,
meaning that we analysts were responsible-and held accountable-for
assimilating information from all sources and coming to judgments on
what it all meant. We used data of various kinds, from the most
sophisticated technical collection platforms, to spies, to-not
least-open media.

Here I must reveal a trade secret and risk puncturing the mystique of
intelligence analysis. Generally speaking, 80 percent of the
information one needs to form judgments on key intelligence targets or
issues is available in open media. It helps to have been trained-as my
contemporaries and I had the good fortune to be trained-by past masters
of the discipline of media analysis, which began in a structured way in
targeting Japanese and German media in the 1940s. But, truth be told,
anyone with a high school education can do it. It is not rocket science.


Reporting From Informants

The above is in no way intended to minimize the value of intelligence
collection by CIA case officers recruiting and running clandestine
agents. For, though small in percentage of the whole nine yards
available to be analyzed, information from such sources can often make
a crucial contribution. Consider, for example, the daring recruitment
in mid-2002 of Saddam Hussein's foreign minister, Naji Sabri, who was
successfully "turned" into working for the CIA and quickly established
his credibility. Sabri told us there were no weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq.

My former colleagues, perhaps a bit naively, were quite sure this would
come as a welcome relief to President George W. Bush and his advisers.
Instead, they were told that the White House had no further interest in
reporting from Sabri; rather, that the issue was not really WMD, it was
"regime change." (Don't feel embarrassed if you did not know this;
although it is publicly available, our corporate- owned, war
profiteering media has largely suppressed this key story.)

One former colleague, operations officer-par-excellence Robert Baer,
now reports (in this week's Time) that, according to his sources, the
Bush/Cheney administration is winding up for a strike on Iran;" that
the administration's plan to put Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard
Corps on the terrorism list points in the direction of such a strike;
and that the delusional "neo-conservative" thinking that still guides
White House policy concludes that such an attack would lead to the fall
of the clerics and the rise of a more friendly Iran.

Hold on, it gets even worse: Baer's sources tell him that
administration officials are thinking "as long as we have bombers and
missiles in the air, we will hit Iran's nuclear facilities."


Rove and Snow: Going Wobbly?

Our VIPS colleague Phil Geraldi, writing in The American Conservative,
earlier noted that in the past Karl Rove has served as a counterweight
to Vice President Dick Cheney, and may have tried to put the brakes on
Cheney's death wish to expand the Middle East quagmire to Iran. And
former Pentagon officer, retired Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, who worked
shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the most devoted neo-cons just before
the attack on Iraq, has put into words (on LewRockwell.com) speculation
several of us have been indulging in with respect to Rove's departure.

In short, it seems possible that Rove, who is no one's dummy and would
not want to be required to "spin" an unnecessary war on Iran, may have
lost the battle with Cheney over the merits of a military strike on
Iran, and only then decided-or was urged-to spend more time with his
family. As for administration spokesperson Tony Snow, it seems equally
possible that, before deciding he had to leave the White House to make
more money, he concluded that his stomach could not withstand the
challenge of conjuring up yet another Snow job to explain why
Bush/Cheney needed to attack Iran. There is recent precedent for this
kind of thing.

We now know that it was because former defense secretary Donald
Rumsfeld went wobbly on the Iraq war-as can be seen in his Nov. 6, 2006
memo to the president-that Rumsfeld was canned. (That was the day
BEFORE the election.) In that memo, Rumsfeld called for a "major
adjustment" in war policy. And so, Robert Gates, who had been waiting
in the wings, was called to Crawford, given the test for malleability,
hired, and dispatched by the president immediately to Iraq to weigh in
heavily with the most senior U.S. generals (Abizaid and Casey). They
had been saying, quite openly, Please, please; no more troops; a surge
would simply give the Iraqis still more time and opportunity to diddle
us while American troops continue to die. So much for the president
always listening to his senior military commanders. And the bug of
reality was infecting even Rumsfeld.

In his memo to the president, Rumsfeld suggested that U.S. generals
"withdraw U.S. forces from vulnerable positions-cities, patrolling,
etc.," and move troops to Kuwait to serve as a Quick Reaction Force.
Bush, of course, chose to do just the opposite.

Our domesticated press has not yet been able to put two and two
together on this story, so it has been left to investigative reporters
like Robert Parry to do so. In his Aug. 17 essay, "Rumsfeld's
Mysterious Resignation", Parry closes with this:

    "The touchy secret about Rumsfeld's departure seems to have been
that Bush didn't want the American people to know that one of the chief
Iraq War architects had turned against the idea of an open-ended
military commitment ­ and that Bush had found himself with no choice
but to oust Rumsfeld for his loss of faith in the neoconservative
cause."

Granted, it is speculative that similar factors, this time with respect
to war planning for Iran, were at work in the decisions on the
departure of Rove and Snow. Someone ought to ask them.

Surgical Strikes First?

With the propaganda buildup we have seen so far on Iran, what seems
most likely, at least initially, is an attack on Revolutionary Guard
training facilities inside Iran. That can be done with cruise missiles.
With some twenty targets already identified by anti-Iranian groups,
there are enough assets already in place to do that job. But the
"while-we're-at-it" neo-con logic referred to above may well be applied
after, or even in conjunction with, that kind of limited cruise missile
attack.

Cheerleading in the Domesticated Media

Yes, it is happening again.

The lead editorial in yesterday's Washington Post regurgitates the
allegations that Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps is "supplying the
weapons that are killing a growing number of American soldiers in
Iraq;" that it is "waging war against the United States and trying to
kill as many American soldiers as possible." Designating Iran a
"specially designated global terrorist" organization, says the Post,
"seems to be the least the United States should be doing, giving the
soaring number of Iranian-sponsored bomb attacks in Iraq."

It's as though Dick Cheney and friends are again writing the Post's
editorials. And not only that: arch neo-con James Woolsey told Lou
Dobbs on Aug. 14 that the US may have no choice but to bomb Iran in
order to halt its nuclear weapons program. As Woolsey puts it, "I'm
afraid within, well, at worst, a few months; at best, a few years; they
could have the bomb."

Woolsey, self-described "anchor of the Presbyterian wing of the Jewish
Institute for National Security Affairs," has long been out in front
plumbing for wars, like Iraq, that he and other neo-cons myopically see
as being in Israel's, as well as America's, interest. On the evening of
9/11, Woolsey was already raising with Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings
the notion that Iraq was a leading candidate for state sponsorship of
the attacks. A day later, Woolsey told journalist James Fallows that,
no matter who proved responsible for 9/11, the solution had to include
removing Saddam Hussein because he was so likely to be involved the
next time (sic).

The latest media hype is also rubbish. And Woolsey knows it. And so do
reporters for the Washington Post, who are aware of, but have been
forbidden to tell, a highly interesting story about waiting for a key
National Intelligence Estimate-as if for Godot.

The NIE That Didn't Bark

The latest National Intelligence Estimate regarding if and when Iran is
likely to have the bomb has been ready since February. It has been sent
back four times-no doubt because its conclusions do not support what
Cheney and Woolsey are telling the president and, through the
domesticated press, telling the rest of us as well.

The conclusion of the most recent published NIE (early 2005) was that
Iran probably could not acquire a nuclear weapon until "early to
mid-next decade," a formula memorized and restated by Director of
National Intelligence Michael McConnell at his confirmation hearing in
February. One can safely assume that McConnell had been fully briefed
on the first "final draft" of the new estimate, which has now been in
limbo for half a year. And I would wager that the conclusions of the
new estimate resemble those of the NIE of 2005 far too closely to suit
Cheney.

It is a scandal that the congressional oversight committees have not
been briefed on the conclusions of the new estimate, even though it
cannot pass Cheney's smell test. For it is a safe bet it would give the
lie to the claims of Cheney, Woolsey, and other cheerleaders for war
with Iran and provide powerful ammunition to those arguing for a more
sensible approach to Iran.

But Attacking Iran Would Be Crazy

Despite the administration's war-like record, many Americans may still
cling to the belief that attacking Iran won't happen because it would
be crazy; that Bush is a lame-duck president who wouldn't dare
undertake yet another reckless adventure when the last one went so
badly.

But rationality and common sense have not exactly been the strong suit
of this administration. Bush has placed himself in a neoconservative
bubble that operates with its own false sense of reality. Worse still:
as psychiatrist Justin Frank pointed out in the July 27 VIPS memo
"Dangers of a Cornered Bush," updating his book, Bush on the Couch:"

    "We are left with a president who cannot actually govern, because
he is incapable of reasoned thought in coping with events outside his
control, like those in the Middle East.

    "This makes it a monumental challenge-as urgent as it is
difficult-not only to get him to stop the carnage in the Middle East,
but also to prevent him from undertaking a new, perhaps even more
disastrous adventure-like going to war with Iran, in order to embellish
the image he so proudly created for himself after 9/11 as the commander
in chief of 'the first war of the 21st century.'"

Scary.

[Ray McGovern was a CIA analyst from 1963 to 1990 and Robert Gates'
branch chief in the early 1970s. McGovern now serves on the Steering
Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). He is a
contributor to Imperial Crusades, edited by Alexander Cockburn and
Jeffrey St. Clair. He can be reached at: rrmcgovern at aol.com An earlier,
shorter version of this piece appeared on Consortiumnews.com ]