Faith-based Intelligence

How’s that for an oxymoron?

On his photo-op junket to the Middle East, President Bush has told the Israelis (and, apparently, anyone else who won’t laugh at him) to disregard the conclusions of the recent National Intelligence Estimate that declared, based on the work of SIXTEEN different American intelliegence entities, that Iran has suspended its nuclear weapons program. His intelliegence community has said Iran is no longer working toward a nuclear weapon, yet the President publicly rejects the conclusions of his own intelligence community because their pronouncements, based on actual facts, don’t agree with his preconceptions and opinions.

This is not the first time this has happened. We’ve been down this road before. Before the Iraq invasion, UN Weapons Inspector Hans Blix found no evidence of WMD’s in Iraq. A typical insult by right-wing mouth-breathers in 2002 and 2003 was that Blix couldn’t tell his ass from a hole in the ground. Using the right-wing’s logic, apparently neither could the American military. There is a myth today that we went into Iraq based on faulty intelligence. It wasn’t the intelligence. It was the leadership. There were many in the intelligence community who were telling the President, through his gatekeeper Dick Cheney, that there were no WMD. In fact, Secretary of State Colin Powell was quoted by Newsweek as telling his aides the night before his notorious address to the Security Council that the evidence he was to present was, in his words, “Bullshit.” Bush’s minions finessed the intelligence, rejected that which did not back-up the conclusions that had already been made, and flat out fabricated intelligence. The only thing faulty before the Iraq War was the integrity of the President.

Now, as the President tries to slide the United States into a third war since becoming President, we are going through the very same process. The intelligence community is giving the President information that does not conform with what he has been saying. We know that the NIE was submitted to Vice-President Cheney more than a year ago, but publication was withheld at his order as he tried unsuccessfully to finesse changes in the report to reflect the official party line. All the while, he and Mr. Bush were making speeches declaring Iran’s continued development of nuclear weapons, knowing the NIE showed this was false. Of course, the White House says the President was unaware of the NIE conclusions. If this is true, which is almost impossible, then either the President is incompetent and should be removed from office and the aides who failed to tell him removed from office and prosecuted, or he is a liar and should be removed from office.

Then again, it is possible God has spoken to George W. Bush. He was fond of telling evangelicals in 2000 that God had told him to run for President. Perhaps, God has told him that the NIE is wrong.

Mirrian-Webster’s Online Dictionary defines faith as: “firm belief in something for which there is no proof.” Apparently, this is how the United States is now running its foreign policy.