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George W. Bush: A CIA Analysis | |
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Editor's Note:
Another gem from former CIA, Ray McGovern...
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Video Clip Of The Week
Dick Cheney - 1994: Invading Iraq Would Be A Quagmire
In 1994, Dick Cheney gave a speech outlining the reasons
why the US should not go into Baghdad and depose Saddam
Hussein. The mainstream media has decided NOT to show you
this video clip, but we sure will. Please view!
View: Dick Cheney - 1994: Invading Iraq Would Be A Quagmire
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George W. Bush: A CIA Analysis
by Ray McGovern
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 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 lose their jobs 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 information of all kinds, from the most sophisticated
technical collection platforms to spies to open media.
Here I have to reveal a trade secret, which punctures 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 training from past masters of media
analysis, which began in a structured way in targeting
Japanese and German media in the 1940s. But, truth be
told, everyone with a high-school education can do it.
It is not rocket science.
This is not to denigrate the contribution of CIA operations
officers, case officers running sensitive 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
"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 vast 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; our
corporate-owned, war-profiteering media has largely
suppressed all this.)
So our former colleague, operations officer par excellence
Robert Baer, reports (in this week's Time) that, according
to his sources, the Bush/Cheney administration is winding
up for a strike on Iran, that Bush's plan to put Iran's
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the terrorism list
points in the direction of such a strike, and that
delusional "neoconservative" thinking that still guides
White House policy concludes that such an attack would
lead to the fall of the clerics and rise of a more friendly
Iran.
Hold on, it gets even worse: Baer's sources tell him that
administration officials are thinking that "as long as we
have bombers and missiles in the air, we will hit Iran's
nuclear facilities."
VIPs member Phil Giraldi, writing in The American
Conservative, earlier noted that Karl Rove has served as a
counterweight to Vice President Dick Cheney, determined as
Cheney seems to be to expand the Middle East quagmire to
Iran.
And former Pentagon analyst retired Lt. Col. Karen
Kwiatkowski, who worked shoulder-to-shoulder with the most
rabid Pentagon neocons 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 a good bet that Rove, who is no one's
dummy and would not want to have to "spin" an unnecessary
war on Iran, lost the battle with Cheney over the merits
of a military strike on Iran, and only then decided to
spend more time with his family.
Whatever else Rove has been, he has served as a counter-
weight to Dick Cheney's clear desire to expand the Middle
East quagmire into Iran.
As for White House spokesperson Tony Snow, it seems equally
possible that, before deciding he has to make more money,
he concluded that his stomach could not withstand the task
explaining why Bush/Cheney needed to attack Iran.
With the propaganda buildup we have seen so far, what
seems most likely, at least initially, is an attack on
Revolutionary Guard training facilities inside Iran, and
that can be done with cruise missiles.
With some 20 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 neocon logic referred to
above may well be applied after, or even during, that kind
of attack from the air.
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Cheerleading in the MSM
Yes, it is happening again.
The lead editorial in Tuesday's Washington Post
regurgitates the unproven 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 is again writing the Post
editorials. And not only that, arch neocon James Woolsey
has just told Lou Dobbs that the U.S. 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 way out in front plumbing for wars, like Iraq,
that he and other neocons myopically see as being in
Israel's, as well as America's, interest.
Within days of 9/11, Woolsey was arguing for war with Iraq
even while conceding, at the time, that there was no
evidence tying Iraq to 9/11.
The latest is also rubbish. And Woolsey knows it. And so
do the reporters for the Washington Post, who are aware
of, but have been forbidden to tell, a highly interesting
story.
The NIE That Didn't Bark
The National Intelligence Estimate on 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 folks like Cheney and
Woolsey are telling the president.
The conclusions of the most recent NIE on the issue (early
2005) was that Iran could probably not have 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. It is a safe bet that
the conclusions of the new draft resemble those of the 2005
estimate all too closely to suit Cheney.
It is a scandal that the congressional oversight committees
have not been able to get hold of the new estimate, even in
draft. 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.
Despite the administration's warlike 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 a new reckless
adventure when the last one went so badly.
But – with this administration – rationality has not
exactly been a strong suit. Bush has placed himself in a
neoconservative bubble that operates with its own false
sense of reality. As psychiatrist Justin Frank noted in
a July 27 memorandum 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.'"
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