Bush on Iran: Fool Me Twice

[marmar]

from Truthdig, via The Nation:



truthdig | posted December 5, 2007 (web only)
Bush on Iran: Fool Me Twice
Robert Scheer



Robert Scheer is editor of TruthDig, where this essay originally was published.

Bush is such a liar. Or is he just out to lunch on the most important issue that he faces? In October, he charged that Iran's nuclear weapons program was bringing the world to the precipice of World War III, even though the White House had been informed at least a month earlier that Iran had no such program and had stopped efforts to develop one back in 2003.

Is it conceivable that Bush was telling the truth at his press conference Tuesday when he stated that he learned of the National Intelligence Estimate report, which contained that inconvenient fact, only last week? Even if Bush read the NIE report, he clearly doesn't respect it, for at his press conference he said "the NIE doesn't do anything to change my opinion about the danger Iran poses to the world--quite the contrary." Not that he has anything against the NIE, whose directors he handpicked. "I want to compliment the intelligence community for their good work. Right after the failure of intelligence in Iraq, we reformed the intelligence community."

But whether or not the intelligence agencies are reformed, the President still ignores them. He didn't listen when they told him he was wrong in claiming that Iraq had purchased yellow cake uranium from Niger and he doesn't listen now when they tell him his alarms about Iran are without factual foundation. The difference this time around is that because Bush is a discredited lame duck the intelligence chiefs were a bit more forthcoming with their findings in a report that has, in part, been made available to the public.

The whole episode shows that our democratic system retains at least some essential checks and balances, but it also is depressing to see that, in this instance at least, the fanatical leader of a theocracy seems to have a higher regard for truth than does the president of the world's greatest experiment in representative democracy.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who took office as Iran's president in August of 2005, two years after Iran's nuclear weapons program ended, has now been vindicated in his claims that Iran has abandoned the weaponization program. Not so Bush, who has summarily dismissed the intelligence community's findings and, using his favorite tactic in dealing with debacles, is sticking to his original story. A story, as in the case of the earlier Iraq threat inflation, that too many in the mass media and Congress, including some leading Democrats, have bought. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071217/truthdig

[IntravenousDemilo]

1. Dubya is the little boy who cried wolf.

Eventually no one will believe in the wolves of his imagination, not even Congress. Some day. Maybe.