There's Still Time To Rethink Iran
By Ray McGovern
03/10/07 "ICH" -- - More than five years have passed since
President Bush labeled Iraq, Iran and North Korea the ''axis of
evil.'' It is imperative that we try to piece together what role
U.S. intelligence played in supporting the ''axis'' idea and the
misguided policies and actions that ensued.
For the ''axis of evil'' sobriquet morphed into axes for
grinding by accomplices like then-CIA Director George Tenet, and
the pandering was consequential. Here is the ''axis'' part of
Bush's State of the Union address on Jan. 29, 2002:
``North Korea is a regime arming with missiles and weapons of
mass destruction. . . . Iran aggressively pursues these weapons.
. . . The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax and nerve
gas and nuclear weapons for over a decade. . . . States like
these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil .
. . posing a grave and growing danger. . . . I will not wait on
events . . .''
Nor, apparently, wait on good intelligence, either.
It used to be that presidents made decisions based, at least in
part, on the judgments of the intelligence community. It was a
shock to see that process stood on its head, with the president
asserting a ''grave and growing danger'' and then telling
functionaries like Tenet to conjure up the ''intelligence'' to
support his rhetorical flourishes. We are talking about untruths
with tragic consequences.
• Iraq: Anyone who has been awake over the past five years is
aware of how the intelligence process was corrupted to justify
attacking Iraq. No thanks to the corporate media, but many have
also learned of the ''Downing Street Memorandum,'' which
provides documentary evidence of lying. That memo, acknowledged
by the British to be authentic, contains the minutes of a
meeting on July 23, 2002, at which the chief of British
intelligence gave Prime Minister Tony Blair an update on Bush's
plans for war.
Based on conversations with Tenet at CIA headquarters three days
before, the UK intelligence chief told Blair and his advisors
about the evidence that Bush intended to use to ''justify'' his
decision to make war on Iraq. When the British foreign minister
observed that the intelligence was ''thin,'' the intelligence
chief famously said, ``But the intelligence and facts were being
fixed around the policy.''
It does not get much clearer than that.
North Korea: It turns out that Bush's repeated claims, beginning
in the fall of 2002, that North Korea was secretly producing
highly enriched uranium in addition to its publicly known
plutonium program were, well, wrong. We should not be surprised,
since that dubious intelligence analysis was brought to us by
the same folks who were stretching those Iraqi ''aluminum
tubes'' well beyond their tolerance, and stretching our
credulity well beyond the breaking point.
Pyongyang had bought some nuclear equipment from Pakistan and
elsewhere but, according to multiple sources of veteran reporter
Jonathan Landay, there was never any evidence that the North
Koreans were able to assemble that equipment into a functioning
uranium enrichment program. This came up at a Senate Armed
Services Committee hearing on Feb. 27, when a senior
intelligence officer announced that the earlier judgment
(stated, mind you, with ''high confidence'') that North Korea
was building an industrial-scale uranium enrichment program has
now been downgraded to a ''mid-level confidence'' judgment.
Was the earlier judgment consequential? Judge for yourself: Bush
used the alleged uranium effort to renege in December 2002 on
deliveries of heavy fuel oil promised in return for North Korea
freezing its plutonium production program under the bilateral
agreement of 1994. The following month, North Korea ended its
freeze and expelled U.N. inspectors. It has now harvested enough
plutonium for about a dozen nuclear weapons and conducted its
first test.
Iran: Maybe, just maybe, this consistent record of hyping the
nuclear threat from the ''axis of evil'' will prompt sober minds
to look under the hood and kick the tires when it comes to Iran.
On Iran the intelligence community at least has been consistent,
but in a manner far from reassuring. In 1995 it started saying
-- every year -- that Iran was ``within five years'' of reaching
a nuclear weapons capability. When the last National
Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was published almost two years ago,
the forecast basically was moved out to 10 years. But in a fit
of nervous caution the estimators agreed on the expression
''early-to-mid-next decade.'' Testifying before the Senate on
Feb. 27, National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell was
consistent; he used that same formula.
A fresh NIE on Iran is said to be in final draft, and McConnell
surely had been briefed on how it addresses this question. OK,
let's assume the new consistent forecast is correct -- that Iran
does intend to produce nuclear weapons and could have that
capability within that time-frame.
Hello! That would mean there is still time for unconditional
U.S.-Iran bilateral talks to address Iran's intentions even if
-- especially if -- the Iranians are determined to create a
''grave and growing danger'' of the kind fraudulently posited
for Iraq. As Churchill put it, ``Better to Jaw-Jaw Than
War-War.''
Ray McGovern chaired National Intelligence Estimates during his
27-year career as a CIA analyst and is now on the Steering Group
for Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
This article was first published by the Miami Herald
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