The National Intelligence Estimate
2007

"The bullshit piled up so fast in Vietnam, you needed wings to stay above it."
- Capt. Willard, Apocalypse Now

"Clear it with Hezbollah"
- Stan, Syriana

"The thousand nations of the Persian Empire descend upon you."
- Messenger, 300

The Narratives

When it comes to the Bush Administration, there's always been a little something for everyone.

If you're a liberal, commie, pinko, tree-hugging, baby-killing, tax-and-spend Hillary lover, Bush is an incompetent man-child blundering his way through history.

If you're a tinfoil hat wearing, illuminati-investigating , Chomsky-reading, JFK conspiracy theorist with your own sandwich board and weekly bullhorn speaking gig on the steps of City Hall, then Bush is an idiot meat puppet cynically manipulated by the dark forces of history in the person of Darth Cheney.

If you're a right wing, born-again, evolution-denying, bible banging fundie, Bush is basically the opening act for the Rapture and everything he's been doing is part of God's plan, which makes a certain amount of sense because certainly no human being could come up with a plan this dumb.

These competing narratives have hummed along nicely for the past few years, like the alternative theories in an Agatha Christie novel. Whichever one turns out to be right will largely be arbitrary: "Col. Mustard in the Oval Office with the Man-Sized Safe(tm)!"

Until this week. The national intelligence estimate has thrown quite a third-act twist into the story. It'll be fascinating to see how this turns out.

To wit: there is no, as far as I can see, not-completely-insane explanation for what has just happened, no matter what theory of history you care to apply.

Quick review: over the past year or so, the administration has been casting Iran as the new Iraq, Ahmedinejad as the new Saddam and the Iranian nuke program as the new WMDs (not that that particular brand has been testing so well lately.)

The problems with going to war against Iran have been covered elsewhere, but safe to say that as sequels go, this idea was generating all the excitement of Deuce Bigalow II.

Still, they were trying to make this turkey fly, going so far as to put the words "World War Three" into the president's mouth.

And then, the NIE took all the wind out of the sails. Long story short: Iran is years away from having a nuke...probably at least a decade...and they are not actively pursuing it at this time.

Of course, there was the usual attempt to spin this comet of repudiation into safe orbit around Planet Vindication: not only did the NIE say that Iran could (conceivably someday maybe if they really tried to) get a nuke, vindicating all the "look out, here comes WWIII!!!" talk, but also see how they stopped their nuke program in response to international pressure? That just shows that our tough talk worked!

Again, the Orwellian mind-contortions required to believe that have been covered elsewhere. What hasn't been so thoroughly discussed is why does it appear that the president was blindsided by this NIE?

In an age when every nuance, every policy proposal, every new haircut is focus-tested, trial ballooned and talking-pointed to death, how is it possible for the president of the United States to even appear to be flatly contradicted by his own intelligence agencies?

Even if the NIE does vindicate him, why hasn't he been ahead of the ball for the past few months? Why were we taken by surprise? Especially since the report itself has been done for six months and apparently the key findings have been known for about year?

The Scenarios

Here are the scenarios I can imagine or that I've seen others imagine:

1) The president did substantially know the contents of the NIE but intended to revive Dick Cheney's Office of Intelligence Filtration to massage and cherry pick those points that would make the case against Iran.

Motivated by a desire not to be dragged in front of Congress to explain, yet again, why they failed to get the truth out before leading the country to war, the heads of the intelligence agencies decided to end run the Cheney filter and put the kibosh on the war run up.

This is your basic mainline Democratic theory.

2) The president was blindsided by liberal cabal that has taken over the intelligence community and issued a completely false and unreliable report in an effort to publicly humiliate the president and help the Democrats look good.

This is your basic right wing "vast left wing conspiracy" theory.

3) Nothing to see here. The estimate is just an estimate. It doesn't mean Iran isn't dangerous. No one has been seriously talking about attacking Iran. That's step 10. We're at step 2. This is all part of the process.

This is your basic mainline Republican theory.

4) Bush did not substantially know anything about the NIE. He blindsided himself because he's more invested in truthiness than in factiness.

This is your basic left wing "drooling idiot" theory.

5) Bush never wanted to attack Iran. He has been using saber-rattling rhetoric to get Iran to back down and he authorized the release of this estimate as an excuse to back down himself having gotten everything he wants. It has the added benefit of discrediting the Cheney camp, which Bush has started to realize is way, way out of control.

This is your basic "Beltway Baseball" theory, with extra nuance!

The Analysis

Each of these sounds plausible enough. Unfortunately, none of them speak particularly well of how the ship of state is being steered. These aren't just unwise or naive scenarios; they're totally insane.

Start with (1). After the spectacular success of the Iraq prewar intelligence program, can anyone seriously vouch for the sanity of a president who would apply those exact same methods to Iran? And what kind of president wants to start a third war in the last year of his administration, even if the intelligence is solid?

So, if it's (1), then the president is manifestly nuts and we should just remove him on those grounds.

I think the lunacy of (2) speaks for itself. Not that government employees can't be political; they can. But are we seriously to believe that the entire intelligence apparatus has become so inured of liberal politics that no one, NO ONE, in the 16 agencies would have felt duty bound to slip the president a note as to what was coming? Really? No one?

(3) is the least odious interpretation. All (3) implies is that part of the natural "carrot and stick" approach to dealing with delicate wartime diplomacy with a prominent adversary is to have the leader of the free world invoke World War III at a public press conference.

(4) implies that not only is the president himself a drooling idiot, but so is everyone around him. How is it possible to not know what 16 intelligence agencies are thinking with regard to our most pressing international situation?

This would mean one of:

a) The president is not receiving executive intelligence summaries
b) The president is receiving but not reading executive intelligence summaries
c) The president is receiving, reading but choosing to ignore executive intelligence summaries

Pick your favorite.

(5) is the only scenario that doesn't have everyone being an idiot or a liar. The problem is that if the president spread one impression knowing that he was going to have to undermine it later on to neutralize the threat of war, then he's basically admitting that the best strategy for fighting the war on terror is for the president of the United States to throw his own credibility under a bus.

This is not a president who likes to admit mistakes, look weak or be contradicted. If he's wiling to go through all that as part of a conscious plan, he must really have no cards left to play.

The Legacy Play

The only other thing that makes sense is that this is part of a coordinated effort with Karl Rove. Rove floated the trial balloon of blaming Congress for the war. Funny thing to want to credit Congress for the noble, outrageously successful liberation of Iraq which has been going so swimmingly for lo these many years.

It's a long shot, but I think the proposed story goes like this:

Congress prematurely marched the president, unwillingly, into war with Iraq.

The president did his level best to implement Congress' mandate, but without adequate preparation the war became an opportunity for Iran.

Nobly, the president chose to sacrifice his own credibility by playing a high-stakes game of cat and mouse with the wily Iranians.

By escalating aggressive talk against them ahead of the NIE, Bush cleverly got the Iranians to blink first while never actually risking war.



Jason sez, it'll never fly, Wilbur.