lets hope the egadministration isn't that stupid

Scott (in full, i hope he doesn't mind):

Release the Iran NIE! and Hoaxter Hoekstra

According to former CIA officer, Philip Giraldi, writing in the August 9th edition of the American Conservative magazine, the Bush administration is withholding a new CIA National Intelligence Estimate on Iran.

“The United States government’s intelligence community has prepared a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran, but the White House has decided that it is not “finished” yet and has decided to postpone any decision on issuing it until after the November elections. NIEs are the government’s document of record on international issues that confront the United States and they are supposed to be both impartial and definitive. Vice President Cheney’s office has reportedly objected to many of the conclusions in the draft Iran NIE, or, more to the point, to the lack of any conclusions that he would welcome.

“The draft document indicates that there is no solid intelligence confirming that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, contradicting many recent statements made by the Administration. It also states that Iran exercised virtually no control over Hezbollah in the recent fighting in Lebanon and that there is little to no confirmed information supporting the often cited contention that Iran is arming the militias and insurgents in neighboring Iraq. The report ruefully observes that there are plenty of weapons floating around inside Iraq without any assistance from Iran, though it does note, without hard evidence, that Iran could have provided some bomb making expertise and possibly sophisticated timers and detonators to the insurgency’s arsenal. For what it’s worth, most US intelligence officers working on Iran believe that Tehran is concealing a weapons program even if the hard evidence is lacking.”

The people of the Unitary Executive State of America have a right to know what that NIE says now, before the mid-term elections. Before the next war.

The rest of the piece is regarding Pete “Hoaxter” Hoekstra and Capital Hill staffer Vaughn S. Forrest’s visit with Manucher Ghorbanifar’s sock-puppet, Fereidoun Mahdavi, which Larisa Alexandrovna also covered for RawStory earlier this week. Giraldi writes:

“The House Intelligence Committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra has been receiving information reports from an Iranian exile source in Paris who is believed to be Fereidoun Mahdavi, a close associate of discredited Iran/Contra fabricator Manucher Ghorbanifar. Hoekstra, who has stated his contempt for the US intelligence community, has been using Vaughn Forest, a well-known Hill staffer who has a reputation for right-wing activism, as a channel to the Ghorbanifar circle. Hoekstra recently made a trip to Paris with Forest to meet the source who has been providing information on Iranian intentions in the nuclear field that CIA and DIA analysts consider to be largely fabricated. Unfortunately, some of these reports have been stove-piped to Vice President Cheney’s office through the Pentagon’s Abe Shulsky, who heads up an “Iranian Directorate”, an office that replicates the disbanded Office of Special Plans that was previously used as a clearinghouse for fabricated and speculative exile reports on Iraq. The Ghorbanifar information is also disseminated to the intelligence community from Hoekstra’s House Intelligence Committee. Ghorbanifar and his associates have no access to genuine information about Iran, often just repackaging media reports and propaganda handouts from the Paris-based Mujahedin e-Khalq (MEK), a Pentagon protected Iranian exile group that is on the US State Department’s list of terrorist groups. Ghorbanifar and Mahdavi are also reported to be the sources of Pennsylvania Congressman Curt Weldon, who advocates pre-emptive war against Iran. Weldon has written a sensational and factually challenged book on Iran that describes Tehran as the number one threat to world peace, a line that is curiously similar to that being promoted by the Israeli lobby AIPAC.”

Scott (in full, i hope he doesn't mind):

War Gaming Iran

Philip Giraldi’s Deep Background from the American Conservative for September 25th:

The Pentagon continues to develop a series of contingency plans that respond to the likely scenarios that the US will face in the event the President orders direct military action against Iran after the November elections. The following scenario, based on intelligence analysis, suggests a rapidly escalating conflict that might only be concluded through the use of nuclear weapons:

If the US conducted an air assault against Iran, the Persian Gulf island of Bahrain, which has a majority Shi’a population that has been strongly influenced by Tehran in the past, would become a prime target, particularly since the US Navy has a major base there. The Joint Chiefs expect that Iran’s national TV would begin calling for an uprising on the island and that US F-16s belonging to Bahrain’s Air Force and military communications centers could easily be taken out through sabotage, making the government isolated and vulnerable. An uprising of Fifth Column partisans in Manama would be able to overwhelm security forces and seize control of government and media centers. The U.S Fifth Fleet is based at the tip of Bahrain, but if the government became unstable, there isn’t much the US could do to prop it up. Manama would become a battlefield and Iran would probably be able to make successful strikes against Bahrain’s air defenses, eliminating any ability to resist. Control of Bahrain would give Iran the key to Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Gulf by way of the strategic King Fahd Causeway, whose possession would provide Iran with a land bridge into the region.

Iran’s Kilo-class subs, purchased from Russia, would be able to patrol the waters of the Gulf and disrupt key shipping lanes. Since Iran has underground missile batteries for HY-2 Silkworm and Scud C missiles on the southwest tip of Abu Musa Island, it could also hit any point in the Gulf, forcing the US to take those batteries out. Iran would then probably opt to make devastating strikes on the tiny oil rich emirates lining the gulf, including the UAE, Abu Dhabi and Dubai and could also begin to attack Saudi Arabia with a series of car bombs, using high quality hexogene and the plastic explosive pentaerythritol tetra nitrate (PTN). Major terrorist bombings of Saudi targets would begin and could include all major cities and oil producing centers. Surviving Iranian missiles and small suicide craft would be used to try to close the Straits of Hormuz. By then the US would be forced to broaden the scope of its attacks, striking Tehran as well as all of Iran’s other major cities and ports, densely populated areas that would produce thousands of civilian casualties. Another concern is that the Iranians would activate their Hezbollah cells that are presumed to have entered the United States via Mexico since 1984. Such cells, if present, might attack soft targets in the continental United States, to include trains, subways, malls, and sports stadiums. If Iran were to unleash its terrorist surrogates, the US military would probably argue for the use of tactical nuclear weapons to end the conflict.

Evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, lets hope the egadministration isn't that stupid.