Jestaplero

Mike Sulzer

That other thread is still open. WTF?

Having said I'm not comfortable, as nobody could be who has been hoping for so much from Obama, it's still worth noting that there have been some glimmers and we really may be hopeful for better things after he is inaugurated.

I couldn't be happier than to have Dawn Johnson appointed head of the OLC, for all the right reasons. If this appointment is indicative or even suggestive core principles that Obama believes, then all may not be lost.

For example, I would rather have Obama "operationally" in charge of a FISA law amended as it was going to be amended than have McCain and his appointees in that position, and it is on that basis that I disagreed with, but did not feel utterly betrayed by, Obama's vote on those amendments. Maybe Obama doesn't see a Stephanopolos interview as the right forum for debate over the NIE, that's possible too.

I'd feel better having Obama definitively weigh in on the shameless suggestion that we acquiesce in torture and not prosecute anyone because "they meant well", but I'm willing to allow as to how coming out for vindication of the Rule of Law might cause more "complications" in the pre-inaugural timeframe than if he waits another week....

Rose-colored glasses? Preferable to declaring defeat before the starter's pistol goes off.

And so is Obama.

See:

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=14046

Justin Raimondo writes today about the overall plan that Isreal is following. You can read it, as it is not a myth. He writes perhaps the most chilling essay on the middle east I have ever seen.

"... All these scenarios have played out, and quite recently, in rapid succession. Reading "A Clean Break," one might almost be scanning today's headlines. This is more than mere prescience: these are policymakers, not college professors, we're talking about. Nearly all of them were central players in the foreign policy councils of the past administration. All are exemplars of the neoconservative network, a camarilla of pro-Israel ideologues that has wreaked such havoc in eight years that it may take 800 more before we recover. ..."

Read it.

Little by little, bit by bit, I'm more and more convinced that I made the correct choice by voting for Nader.

Kitt, you now have the floor.

Book coming out tomorrow:

David E. Sanger is the chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times. Reporting for this article was developed in the course of research for “The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power,” to be published Tuesday by Harmony Books.

* * * * *

Top story on front page of Sunday's NYTimes dead tree edition:

http://nytimes.com/2009/01/11/washington/11iran.html?pagewanted=all

U.S. Rejected Aid for Israeli Raid on Iranian Nuclear Site

By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON — President Bush deflected a secret request by Israel last year for specialized bunker-busting bombs it wanted for an attack on Iran’s main nuclear complex [...]

[...] This account of the expanded American covert program and the Bush administration’s efforts to dissuade Israel from an aerial attack on Iran emerged in interviews over the past 15 months with current and former American officials, outside experts, international nuclear inspectors and European and Israeli officials. None would speak on the record because of the great secrecy surrounding the intelligence developed on Iran.

Several details of the covert effort have been omitted from this account, at the request of senior United States intelligence and administration officials, to avoid harming continuing operations. [...]

[...] The interviews also indicate that Mr. Bush was convinced by top administration officials, led by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, that any overt attack on Iran would probably prove ineffective, lead to the expulsion of international inspectors and drive Iran’s nuclear effort further out of view. Mr. Bush and his aides also discussed the possibility that an airstrike could ignite a broad Middle East war in which America’s 140,000 troops in Iraq would inevitably become involved.

Instead, Mr. Bush embraced more intensive covert operations actions aimed at Iran, the interviews show, having concluded that the sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies were failing to slow the uranium enrichment efforts. Those covert operations, and the question of whether Israel will settle for something less than a conventional attack on Iran, pose immediate and wrenching decisions for Mr. Obama.

[...]

An Intelligence Conflict

Israel’s effort to obtain the weapons, refueling capacity and permission to fly over Iraq for an attack on Iran grew out of its disbelief and anger at an American intelligence assessment completed in late 2007 that concluded that Iran had effectively suspended its development of nuclear weapons four years earlier.

[...]

The “key judgments” of the National Intelligence Estimate, which were publicly released, emphasized the suspension of the weapons work.

The public version made only glancing reference to evidence described at great length in the 140-page classified version of the assessment: the suspicion that Iran had 10 or 15 other nuclear-related facilities, never opened to international inspectors, where enrichment activity, weapons work or the manufacturing of centrifuges might be taking place.

The Israelis responded angrily and rebutted the American report, providing American intelligence officials and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with evidence that they said indicated that the Iranians were still working on a weapon.

While the Americans were not convinced that the Iranian weapons development was continuing, the Israelis were not the only ones highly critical of the United States report. Secretary Gates, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said the report had presented the evidence poorly, underemphasizing the importance of Iran’s enrichment activity and overemphasizing the suspension of a weapons-design effort that could easily be turned back on.

In an interview, Mr. Gates said that in his whole career he had never seen “an N.I.E. that had such an impact on U.S. diplomacy,” because “people figured, well, the military option is now off the table.”

Prime Minister Olmert came to the same conclusion. He had previously expected, according to several Americans and Israeli officials, that Mr. Bush would deal with Iran’s nuclear program before he left office. “Now,” said one American official who bore the brunt of Israel’s reaction, “they didn’t believe he would.”

[...]

Last June, the Israelis conducted an exercise over the Mediterranean Sea that appeared to be a dry run for an attack on the enrichment plant at Natanz. When the exercise was analyzed at the Pentagon, officials concluded that the distances flown almost exactly equaled the distance between Israel and the Iranian nuclear site.

“This really spooked a lot of people,” one White House official said.

[...]

http://nytimes.com/2009/01/11/washington/11iran.html?pagewanted=all