A key House committee issued a stinging critique of U.S. intelligence on Iran yesterday, charging that the CIA and other agencies lack "the ability to acquire essential information necessary to make judgments" on Tehran's nuclear program, its intentions or even its ties to terrorism.
The 29-page report, principally written by a Republican staff member on the House intelligence committee who holds a hard-line view on Iran, fully backs the White House position that the Islamic republic is moving forward with a nuclear weapons program and that it poses a significant danger to the United States. But it chides the intelligence community for not providing enough direct evidence to support that assertion.
"American intelligence agencies do not know nearly enough about Iran's nuclear weapons program" to help policymakers at a critical time, the report's authors say. Information "regarding potential Iranian chemical weapons and biological weapons programs is neither voluminous nor conclusive," and little evidence has been gathered to tie Iran to al-Qaeda and to the recent fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, they say.
What worries me here is that the Bush administration is following the same path of confrontation with Iran in the same manner as the United States confronted Iraq. The Bush administration sold the American people a poorly-planned war and an intractable occupation of Iraq based on faulty intelligence that Iraq was building WMDs--when in fact, Iraq had no WMDs. Now the Bush administration is confronting Iran with ordering Iran to halt its own nuclear program--an Iranian nuclear program which U.S. intelligence hasn't a clue as to the size and scope of. The war drums are starting to pound again. Continuing with the Post story:
The House panel's report comes at a time when the Bush administration is scrambling for leverage in its effort to force Iran to suspend its nuclear program. On Tuesday, Tehran rejected a U.N. Security Council resolution requiring it to halt its uranium-enrichment work.
For weeks, the White House has said that it would push for international sanctions if Iran failed to comply with the council's demands. But none of its allies spoke of sanctions yesterday, a day after Iran said it was willing to engage in serious discussions with the United States -- but not if it had to stop its nuclear program first.
The State Department issued a terse response to the Iranian offer yesterday, saying it fell "short" of Iran's obligations but making no mention of sanctions.
Some Republicans privately oppose President Bush's current policy of potential engagement with Iran and believe it is crumbling in the face of European reluctance to impose strict measures.
Now toss in the American public's distaste for the Bush administration's blundering war in Iraq, the continued tensions between Israel, Syria, and Lebanon, and the president's and Republican Party's dropping poll numbers less than three months before the midterm elections, and you have one clusterfracked disaster waiting to happen to the Bush White House and Republican Party. The Republican's "War on Terror" message is being ignored by the American public. The big fear that I see is that the Bush White House and Republican Party will either play up another terror fear a week, or perhaps days, before the midterm elections. And if there is no terror fear to play up at that time, then will the Bush administration consider an air attack against Iran as the last option to stop Iran's nuclear program--an air strike that would occur just before the midterm elections?
No comments:
Post a Comment