Why do the CIA/NSA/et al. hate America?

[wooderson]

From the NIE that couldn't be delayed anymore... Iran halted its nuclear weapons program four years ago.

[roo_ster]

Actually, a decent question.  When unelected intel officials go around trying to influence elections and undermine the elected representatives of America, I would call it a Bad Thing.  Both the State Dept and the CIA have been doing so for nigh on seven years. 




FWIW, the senior CIA folks responsible for the NIE referenced in the OP are old State Dept hands...who opposed GWB and the Iraq war from the get-go.  They also do not state WHY Iran stopped, which is about as important as the WHAT.

[drewtam]

4 years ago... 4 years ago... what happened four years ago that would convince Iran to stop a nuclear program... what happened in 2003?? hmmm....

[Waitone]

CIA, NSA, and State have a low view of elected officials.  They consider themselves to be the permanent government.  They will be here long after elected types go away.  The problem is particularly acute in State.  It was thought Rice would have the president's support in performing an enema in the department.   Alas that was not the case.  I remember a comment from an old State hand that said the Secty of State was the state department's envoy to the president as opposed to the other way around.  It is my view that the three years we lost in Iraq are the direct result of the president permitting State to conduct counter insurgency and nation building. 

CIA?  CIA and wall street are one in the same.  NSA?  Praetorian guard of the regime.

[Fly320s]

NIE?

[Sergeant Bob]

NIE?

I expect thats the National Intelligence Estimate.

[Paddy]

Bush has been trashing the CIA since the beginning, calling 9/11 an 'intelligence failure'.  The only 'intelligence' that 'failed' belonged to the Bush Administration, who ignored all the warnings.

This country needs to practice some MYOFB for a few decades.

[Perd Hapley]

Is that the same George Bush who failed to fire his CIA chief for quite some time after 11 September?  This is the guy who tried to pin it all on the CIA? 

[Paddy]

Yep, the same bozo who never holds anybody responsible for anything until some adult comes along to clean up his mess. 

[roo_ster]

Riley, I think you are getting your administrations mixed up, since your written words do not correlate with what has happened in the GWB administration. 

GWB is the POTUS who sticks with dud appointees long after they have proved themselves incompetent or backstabbing scum.  GWB stuck with that boob Tenet for years, when he should have *expletive deleted*it-canned him posthaste after 9/11.  I think GWB has, to borrow a bit from Count Rugen, "An overdeveloped sense of loyalty," to faithless, bumbling bureaucrats.

Also, GWB gave Tenet the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 

If the above counts as "trashing," I want some "trashing" from my boss.

FWIW, the CIA does need to be trashed.  We need a modern-day James Jesus Angleton to go through the CIA, State Dept, and many other agencies with hammer & tongs.

[Paddy]

If the above counts as "trashing," I want some "trashing" from my boss

And how many times have we heard Bush and his admin refer to 9/11 and Iraq WMD's as 'intelligence failures'?  Over and over again.

Also, if you're suggesting that Bush allowed incompetent subordinates to continue in their jobs out of a 'sense of loyalty', then I'd say his priorities are seriously screwed up.  His 'loyalty' needs to be to the American people.  I don't think it's 'loyalty' at all that allowed Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Brown and a dozen others to remain on the job.  It's more like a combination cronyism and Bush's own inabililty to recognize incompetence.

Anyway, undeterred, he's at it again this morning.  Still bloviating about Iran's nuclear capabilities.  Condoleeza has spoken with UK, Germany, France and Russia; what about speaking with IRAN?  We talked to the USSR during the Cold War after all.  It's clear Bush's path does not lead to the desired result.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22112907/

[ilbob]

intelligence failures are part of the game. even the most effective intelligence agencies are wrong more often than they are right. keep in mind the KGB (probably the most effective intelligence agency ever) thought Reagan was going to start a nuke war, when it was not even a remote consideration.

blaming intelligence agencies for not knowing all there is to know about everything after the fact is like blaming the weatherman for the weather when their guesses are not perfect.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Has anyone actually read the NIE?  Has anyone been following the aftermath of this NIE?  Turns out there are some serious doubts about the credibility of the report and its authors.  It's looking more and more like a blatant attempt by low-level bureaucrats influence policy.

[Waitone]

And Insight Magazine is pimping a story this week which says intel determined Iran already has nukes courtesy of the former soviet union in 1993.  Five plutonium devices IIRC. 

OK, so who is correct?  Bush shot his bolt in Iraq and now he is expecting us to believe his heavy breathing regarding Iran.  A suspect NIE gets big play in the mainstream media then we learn at least two of the three authors had a boner about Bush.  Then we learn a NIE is composed of two parts.  In this case the detail analysis does not support the conclusion of the executive summary.  And coming in late in the day we see a promo claiming Iran already has store bought nukes from 1993.

So who is correct?  Who is lying?

[De Selby]

Has anyone actually read the NIE?  Has anyone been following the aftermath of this NIE?  Turns out there are some serious doubts about the credibility of the report and its authors.  It's looking more and more like a blatant attempt by low-level bureaucrats influence policy.

What possible, imaginable interest would they have in helping Iran?  Seriously-what interest group in America wants Iran to get nuclear weapons, and still remains attractive enough that professional intelligence analysts would buy into their ideology?

This sounds a lot like a conspiracy theory, imho.

[roo_ster]

Has anyone actually read the NIE?  Has anyone been following the aftermath of this NIE?  Turns out there are some serious doubts about the credibility of the report and its authors.  It's looking more and more like a blatant attempt by low-level bureaucrats influence policy.

What possible, imaginable interest would they have in helping Iran?  Seriously-what interest group in America wants Iran to get nuclear weapons, and still remains attractive enough that professional intelligence analysts would buy into their ideology?

This sounds a lot like a conspiracy theory, imho.

SS:

It would not be about helping Iran, but about hurting GWB & Co.  They wouldn't be the first bureaucrats to put political gain/support above the well-being of the USA.

[Paddy]

It would not be about helping Iran, but about hurting GWB & Co.  They wouldn't be the first bureaucrats to put political gain/support above the well-being of the USA.

There's a minority opinion, and it sounds like it came right out of Hannity/Rush. Anyone who dare contradict Bushco Inc cares not about the 'well being of the USA'.   The majority of us disagree that Bush is interested in the 'well being of the USA' .

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Don't have time now for a proper discussion on the credibility of the NIE.  Id love to be able to take it at face value.  If true, it would be a spectacular validation of "Bushco" foreign policy. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/05/AR2007120502234.html?referrer=emailarticle
http://opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010946
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071206/pl_nm/iran_usa_dc

Don't know whether Limbaugh or Hanity reported on any this.  Don't care.  Not sure why you do.

Go read the NIE.  Decide for yourself if it sounds authoritative and definitive, or overly bureacratic and vague and self-contradictory.

[Paddy]

Don't have time now for a proper discussion on the credibility of the NIE.  Id love to be able to take it at face value.  If true, it would be a spectacular validation of "Bushco" foreign policy.

Meaning Iran was so frightened by the invasion of Iraq that they immediately abandoned their nuclear program?   So, if North Korea begins to 'nuke up' we can stop them by invading China...........

Two of those links support their opinions with Bolton and the AEI, both right out of the bowels of neoconservatism.  Hardly an unbiased source.

[Archie]

The last section of the report does in fact admit Iran has the technological and industrial capability to produce a nuclear weapon in a fairly short period of time.

This whole 'report', complete with title and leading paragraphs is a blatant attempt by Democrat-leftist loyalists employed by the CIA and State Department to undercut President Bush for political ends.  Anyone who can't see that simply isn't looking.

I think the idea the CIA 'hates America' is not quite correct.  It is however very clear they hate President Bush more than they love America.

[Paddy]

It is however very clear they hate President Bush more than they love America.

Why does 'question Bush always=hate America?'

[roo_ster]

Three-Letter Menace   [Victor Davis Hanson]

Christopher Hitchens has a good piece on the bad CIA ("worse than useless"). Surely our various intelligence organizations are practicing a sort of subversion, whether due to a condescending animus toward George Bush, or to a more generic arrogance that their genius is not appreciated and so they leak and back stab against their betters to ensure someone out there knows just how brilliant they really are.

They remind one of the smug undergraduate English major who serially declares that he is too creative and brilliant ever to go on to graduate school-and then lets you know it for the rest of his life.[This is so sweet...and so accurate--jfruser]

We see a disturbing cynicism and disrespect for protocol almost everywhere. The freelancing and soon to be leaking Joe Wilson off to Niger on the recommendation of his 'nonpartisan' and 'undercover' wife, then the various memoirs of a Scheuer (with the charade of "anonymous") or a get-even 'slam-dunk' Tenet (add in the novelist Richard Clark)and then the latest Time essay by Joe Klein, sort of trumpeting the new transparency of an agency at odds with the administration, spiced up with very non-transparent anonymous quotes from the usual "senior intelligence official" who offers behind-the-scenes, real-deal take to get the always brilliant point across.

We are a long way from the old idea that operatives were loyal to their craft, did not leak to anyone, did not try to embarrass elected officials by "background" and anonymous spin, and argued for their dissident views behind closed doors.

The irony is that they could endure the old stereotyped slur that they went to excess in the Cold War to ensure the supremacy of the US, but they won't long live down the public's current impressions that our intelligence agencies are whiny, incompetent, subversive, and partisan.

The emperor has no clothes, and the public doesn't want to pay billions to the CIA and others only to be told that in 2005 we had an existential threat of a nuclear Iran, then two years later we did not, and all due to mysterious unnamed "diplomatic" pressures at work in 2003 (oddly not long after the unmentioned removal of Saddam)this from ying-yang agencies that now miss the real threat (cf. the Pakistani bomb) and then in a panic hype the nonexistent one (arsenals of Iraqi WMD).

I just wish I knew what cycle they were in at the moment, since the hour may be getting late.

P.S. And perhaps the report might have speculated why an Iran, awash in oil and natural gas, spending billions on a reactor while it imposes gas rationing on its citizenry, is enriching uranium at breakneck speed-and serially lying about its progress to international agencies. Or alternatively,is there much of a threat of terrorist organizations now in Iran being given radioactive materials for various missions against Tehran's enemies?

Hitchen's article is titled, "Abolish the CIA"
http://www.slate.com/id/2179593/pagenum/all/#page_start

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Britain, France, and Germany have all chosen to discount the NIE report, they still believe Iran is seeking nuclear weapons.  China is on record questioning whether the NIE is the product of an internal power struggle in the administration. 

Could it be that the rest of the world agrees that the NIE is full of crap?

[Paddy]

Could it be that the rest of the world agrees that the NIE is full of crap?

Interesting how you call on Britain, France and Germany to support your viewpoint.  Any other time they didn't agree with you, their opinions would be worthless, coming from 'commie socialist statist paradises' and all. 

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

I cite those countries because of their notable anti-war stance.  Even they say we shouldn't ignore Iran's nuclear threat.

For years we've heard from the anti-war, anti-Bush left that intelligence cannot and should not be trusted, and how Bush was stupid to act on intelligence that said Iraq was a threat.  Yet now that intelligence says what you all want to hear, it's suddenly rock solid reliable, beyond reproach.  You've made no criticism of that glaring piece of hypocrisy, Riley, and instead level stupid hypocrisy charges against me.  That's pathetic.