This is in today's Ottawa Sun.
I find it interesting that presumably the White House is ignoring data much like they did for Iraq. It's ironic that of all the avenues I've heard regarding Iran willing to co-operate with the U.S and other international agencies, that perhaps the U.S will forgo diplomacy, usually a staple for democracy and invade Iran anyway.
I guess Bush is just waiting for a call from Sharon and his crack team of intel specialists, that being Mossad to give 100% proof of WMD like they did for Iraq.
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Disastrous deja vu in the Middle East
By MICHAEL HARRIS -- For the Ottawa Sun
It has been more than a year since the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee was told that the United States was "almost all wrong" about its reasons for invading Iraq -- alleged stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and a re-started nuclear weapons program.
That testimony from David Kay, the first leader of the Iraq Survey Group, laid bare the same thing that was exposed by 9/11 itself; a catastrophic failure of U.S. intelligence agencies. During his appearance before the committee, Kay said that the government had to create an independent commission to analyse the intelligence failures of the current system. Only then, after studying the facts, should reform begin in institutions like the National Security Agency, the CIA and the FBI.
The Bush administration took half the advice. It created the independent commission, but didn't wait for its report. Ignoring what Kay calls the "foundational" erosion of the base of U.S. intelligence, the president opted yesterday for a major shuffle at the very top, creating a new national intelligence czar. If confirmed, John Negroponte will preside over the same intelligence establishment that gave us 9/11 and the Iraq war -- bright and shiny at the top, still creaky at the bottom.
Meanwhile, the Bush Administration is reading from the same script that led to the Iraq War. Despite epic blunders in his assessments of pre and post-war Iraq, U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney is promoting a sense of clear and present danger over Iran's nuclear program, which he says, the U.S., (and the Sharon government), will not "tolerate." The question is, what evidence does the Bush administration have for the vice-president's bellicose musings about Iran? The answer is none.
In fact, the International Atomic Energy Agency, (IAEA) has now inspected Iran's nuclear program and found absolutely no evidence of a nuclear weapons program. After 18 years of not cooperating with the IAEA, Iran is now complying with international inspections. Like Hans Blix before him, Mohamed El-Baredei is now the object of ridicule by hawkish figures in the Bush administration. Ignoring facts learned from hard inspections on the ground in Iran, Washington is once again quoting disgruntled exiles to back up its fears about Tehran.
David Kay sees this as dangerous deja vu. These exiles may or may not have valuable information to share. But after the fiasco of the Iraqi exiles, who grossly misled U.S. intelligence, their stories must be confirmed by better sources than other Iranian exiles who clearly have their own agenda for regime change back home. Having gone once to the UN Security Council to "prove" that Iraq had WMD only to be totally discredited by the work of the Iraq Survey Group, the U.S. won't find much of a coalition of the willing to thunder into Iran without evidence that can stand the test of international scrutiny.
Nevertheless, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's foot is already tapping over what the U.S. sees as protracted diplomatic discussions between the European Union and Iran, openly talking about the need for there to be "an end to this." Colin Powell exhibited the same impatience with the Security Council members, many of them from "Old Europe" and most especially with UN weapons inspector Hans Blix.
Once again, the U.S. is looking beyond the diplomatic effort while people like French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier have served notice that the EU is committed to letting diplomacy run its course. Despite warm and fuzzy rhetoric from Washington, the U.S. and Europe continue to operate from different play books.
This time the Europeans have a greater chance of setting the agenda, largely because as an item of foreign policy, the Iraq war has been a disaster.
According to top national security officials in the United States, the war in Iraq has actually helped to grow al-Qaida. Testifying before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, CIA Director Porter Goss confirmed that extremists have used the Iraq war and U.S. occupation as a successful means of gaining new recruits.
Vice-Admiral Lowell E. Jacoby told the senators that rather than shrinking, the Iraqi insurgency has grown "in size and complexity" since the end of the war. According to reports from Iraqi intelligence, the ragged band of so-called dead-enders, (Baathist supporters of Saddam) has grown into a battle-hardened core of 40,000 jihadists backed up by 200,000 part-time fighters. Last year, they averaged 25 attacks a day, according to the admiral: This year, the number is 60.
Nor was there much comfort for the U.S. in the wake of Iraq's election, whose results were finally ratified last Sunday. Majority victory went to the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution, a party with close ties to the theocracy in Iran, and led by senior Shia cleric Abdelaziz Hakim, an ardent critic of U.S. policy in Iraq.
Is it any wonder that David Kay doesn't want history to repeat itself in Iran?
http://www.ottawasun.com/