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Podhoretz’s ‘Dark Suspicion’:
Intel Community Trying To Sabotage Bush With NIE
Think
Progress
Wednesday December 5, 2007
Norman Podhoretz, widely reputed to be the “godfather” of
neoconservatism, has been one of the most aggressive hawks clamoring for
war with Iran. Podhoretz laid out the “The Case For Bombing Iran”
in a June cover story in the right-wing Commentary Magazine. He insisted
that the Iranians were very close to developing a nuclear weapon:
[Iran’s] effort to build a nuclear arsenal makes it the potentially
most dangerous one of all. […]
“[A]ll this negotiating has had the same result as Munich had
with Hitler. That is, it has bought the Iranians more time in which
they have moved closer and closer to developing nuclear weapons.”
Yesterday’s NIE proved Podhoretz’s claims were false. Rather
than modify his views on Iran, Podhoretz — who was awarded the Presidential
Medal of Freedom in 2004 — aired a nasty conspiracy theory yesterday,
attacking the authors of the NIE and accusing the intelligence community
of deliberately “leaking material calculated to undermine George
W. Bush:”
I must confess to suspecting that the intelligence community, having
been excoriated for supporting the then universal belief that Saddam had
weapons of mass destruction, is now bending over backward to counter what
has up to now been a similarly universal view (including as is evident
from the 2005 NIE, within the intelligence community itself) that Iran
is hell-bent on developing nuclear weapons. […]
But I entertain an even darker suspicion. It is that the intelligence
community, which has for some years now been leaking material calculated
to undermine George W. Bush, is doing it again. This time the purpose
is to head off the possibility that the President may order air strikes
on the Iranian nuclear installations.
After insisting that Iran was “only a small step away from producing
nuclear weapons,” and after pushing for military strikes against
Iran for months, Podhoretz is apparently determined not to let facts
get in the way of his prayers for an Iran war.
UPDATE: Podhoretz isn’t the only conservative desperately spinning
the NIE to buttress his hawkish positions. Some other examples from conservative
blogs:
Strata-Strata: “This smells like another leak by forces in our
intel community trying to — once again — influence our national
elections.”
Powerline: “But the report offers no reason to be less concerned
about the likelihood that Iran will possess nuclear weapons in the near
future, and no reason to doubt that our own willingness to take military
action is one of the factors that will influence decision-making in
Tehran.”
Michelle Malkin: “What’s not making headlines (the certainty
that Iran indeed had a nuke program) is as telling as what is making
news (the halting of the program in 2003).”
Seth Liebelson at the Corner: If Iran shut its program down in the
fall of 2003 MIGHT, MIGHT, MIGHT it have anything to do with it noticing
that the US militarily took out its neighbor (another enemy of the U.S.)
earlier that year for, among other things, having a concealed WMD program?
Michael Rubin at the Corner: “If Iran was working on a nuclear
weapons program until 2003, what does this say about U.S. policy in
the late Clinton period and European engagement?”
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