[Peace-discuss] Iran -- Bush, Cheney, Rove et al.

[C. G. Estabrook]

[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.]

	August 22, 2007
	Bush's War Drums: Beating Louder on Iran
	By RAY McGOVERN, Former CIA Analyst
	http://counterpunch.org/mcgovern08222007.html

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.

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