Someone took away their pony, and they are not happy:
Senate Republicans are planning to call for a congressional commission to investigate the conclusions of the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran as well as the specific intelligence that went into it, according to congressional sources.
The move is the first official challenge, but it comes amid growing backlash from conservatives and neoconservatives unhappy about the assessment that Iran halted a clandestine nuclear weapons program four years ago. It reflects how quickly the NIE has become politicized, with critics even going after the analysts who wrote it, and shows a split among Republicans.
Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) said he plans to introduce legislation next week to establish a commission modeled on a congressionally mandated group that probed a disputed 1995 intelligence estimate on the emerging missile threat to the United States over the next 15 years.
Just to review, when the intelligence says what you want, you commence bombing. When it doesn’t say what you want, you find some that does. Scary brown people who want to nuke us is such a good election issue.
r€nato
Team B, here we come. Everything old is new again!
r€nato
I can understand the outrage of the war party. How dare intelligence professionals base their assessments upon carefully-vetted intelligence and rational analysis of facts leading to logical conclusions, rather than taking the word of a single defector and running with it!
Wilfred
This Col. Pat Lang’s assessment:
cleek
they’re just trying to deflect criticism. the hawks are taking a pounding from this NIE; and it’s damaging the GOP in general.
the only thing they can do to fight back is to say the NIE was wrong and that they were too justified in beating the war drums. and luckily, if their calls for ‘investigation’ fail – as they will – they’ll use that as proof that they are right about the weakness of the NIE (“those sneaky liebruls at the NSA won’t let us verify their work! aha!”), and therefore they were right all along about needing to bomb Iran – and it will be Harry Reid’s fault.
they know they won’t get an investigation, or a Team B. but now, at last (!), they can say there’s a liebrul conspiracy to destroy America by letting Iran nuke the baby Jesus.
John Rohan
Really? When did we bomb Iran? I must have missed that.
Last I checked we hadn’t – even after they have been supplying insurgents with bombs in Iraq for at least three years now. I know that the anti-war crowd has had millions of looney conspiracy theories about how an attack against Iran was imminent, but it never happened, even if it should have.
Or are you referring to the invasion of Iraq? The one that both Republicans and (shhhh!) emocratsday voted to authorize?
Cindrella Ferret
Where were these guys in 2002? But, attacking the analysts? SOP for the right wing crowd these days. Shoot the messenger!
I do find it interesting that about a week ago either Mukasey or Chertoff said the NIE would NOT be made public. Voila! Here it is now. Methinks we have a bit of a revolt in the intelligence community (Ha! Intelligence? Oh yeah, that kind of intelligence.) trying to head of Cheney and the neocon push for pre-emptive war with Iran. Good on them, if in fact that is the truth.
r€nato
anti-semite!
(thought I’d get that one out of the way)
r€nato
he was talking about the intelligence bamboozlement that led to the Iraq war, you schmuck. Please do try to keep up.
over_educated
The current Republican leadership will never decide not to keep digging, no matter how deep the hole is. Considering Bush’s credibility right now is somewhat below the benefit of the doubt we give to our country’s Professional Wrestling community, the fact that Republicans want to “investigate” this is laughable.
The irony is I bet dollars to donuts that if they do an investigation, the chances of uncovering Administration chicanery in trying to supress this NIE is far greater than discovering any malfeasance in the intellegence community.
To be honest I think the military and intellegence community has decided to ride out this Presidency and do everything humanly possible to insure that Bush spends his remaining months in office thoroughly discredited.
r€nato
over, as I mentioned in the comments to the post above this one, all the GOP has to sell is fear.
And if the NIE tells us not to be afraid of Iran’s nuclear program… that simply won’t do. The GOP needs a boogey man and they’re going to find one dammit, facts be damned.
jenniebee
Goddamn, you give those clowns enough rope to hang themselves with and they just demand more rope.
r€nato
so when are they going to get around to hanging themselves? I’d be happy to help with the noose if they’re having trouble tying the knot.
ThymeZone
John Rohan? DougJ, can’t you stick with one handle for a while?
Anyway, we know now that the fuckstains in the White House have been lying about the Iran threat for a long time, and now pretty much all remaining shreds of their credibility are gone. I don’t think they’ll be ginning up a new war any time soon.
Zifnab
I don’t know about that. The Democrats have become absolute professionals at rolling over, but not entirely inept about uncovering dirt. If the Republicans want to launch a full-scale probe into the creation of the NIE, they could easily be opening yet another Pandora’s Box of scandals. With Democratic Control of House and Senate, any investigation delegation will be packed with as many blues as reds. As likely as not, they’ll just end up finding more out about White House medealing.
cleek
OT… but you know what would be a neat blog feature? tag comments with a short cryptographic hash of the commenter’s IP address. that way, we could all know for certain if a person is commenting under multiple names: the hash on the comments would be the same. but because we wouldn’t see the actual IP address, there’d be no privacy concerns. sure, people could switch to different IPs, but it’d work in general. plus, i expect it’d be trivially simple to implement in most blog software.
Vladi G
The intelligence didn’t say what they wanted. Can you not read, you fucking idiot?
Robert Johnston
If the Republicans are trying to get Democrats to institute new congressional rules that completely cut the minority party out of the legislative and oversight processes, then this makes sense. The only committee that this “legislation” could be sent to in a reasonable world is the ethics committee, for a probe of Rep. Ensign.
Neo
It’s good to see the consensus here is that this investigation will be as fruitless as all the other investigations Congress has been holding this year.
Gus
John Rohan, you blithering idiot, seeing the Republicans as mendacious war-mongers is not the same as supporting Democrats. I know that’s hard for Republicans to understand, but try to wrap your tiny mind around it.
Wilfred
More from Col. Lang:
The joint timing of the NIE and the disclosure of the destroyed CIA evidence tapes is an indication that heroes are starting to emerge within the bureaucracy, not necessarily the government. Watch for the pushback.
pfrets
Translated: Watch the Republican Leadership / OVP / President stonewall another investigation into their misdeeds.
Kevin
Funny how these same Republicans thought the Iraq NIE from 2002, which got so much wrong about Iraq’s WMD and its “ties” to al Qaeda, was perfectly good, honest intelligence because it supported their views, yet this Iran NIE is “politicized” and should be investigated by Congress because it doesn’t support their views.
While the Democrats are the donkey party, the Republicans are the real party of asses.
qwerty42
Matt Y has posted this and this. on the attacks on the NIE. I am inclined to believe any “commission” that investigates the NIE is likely to dredge up information more damaging to current (and past) Republican leadership than anything else. However, while I believe this will appall the country, many of these folks now seem to live in a world of their own where hysteria is seen as reasoned assessment. Besides, Clinton is probably responsible.
Dreggas
Another one that should not breed.
John S.
Oh Rohan, you ignorant slut. It’s timne to put this tired old zombie meme to rest (at least on this thread). Yes, Democrats voted for the AUMF. However, many Democrats voted against it, whereas nearly all Republicans voted for it.
Here’s the Senate record. 21 Democrats voted against the war, while 29 voted for it. In contrast, only one Republican voted against it.
Here’s the record of the vote in the House. 126 Democrats voted against it while only 81 voted for it (i.e. more Democrats voted against the war than voted for it). This stands in even sharper contrast to the fact that only six Republicans voted against the AUMF.
Now try and make that same statement of equivalence about the voting record of Democrats and Republicans fort his war without looking like a fucking clown.
Tony J
2005 – “The NIE is the professional opinion of 16 different intelligence agencies, moonbat! And they all say that Iran really does have a nuclear weapons program just like The President has been saying since Day One of the Long War. The fact that you’d ignore this kind of solid, fact-based analysis just because it offends your twisted worldview only goes to show how much you liberal idiots hate America”
2007 – “The NIE is just a political hit-job by those stuffed-shirt Islamophiles at Foggy Bottom, moonbat! And they’re lying about Iran not having a nuclear weapons program because they’ve wanted to sabotage The President since Day One of The Long War. The fact that you’d jump on this kind of pro-appeasement, fiction-based hackery just because it agrees with your twisted worldview only goes to show how much you liberal idiots hate America”
Yeah, it really is that pathetic.
jcricket
“We have always hated the NIE/distrusted the CIA.”
When they’re not busy creating false equivalences, ruining the economy and generally antagonizing our allies, the Republicans find time for the occasional revisionist history lesson. Good to see they can multitask, although perhaps that only serves to dilute the evil.
binzinerator
But John S., these are the same people who insisted 51% of the vote = mandate, remember?
That’s how these people think. It’s not that they have trouble with numbers per se, it’s that they have trouble understanding what those numbers mean.
It’s a cognition deficiency, which is a kind of mental impairment or retardation.
That, or they’re just fucking dishonest.
On the other hand, there’s no reason they can’t be both.
John S.
Nope. No reason at all.
Enlightened Layperson
Let’s make a deal. We’ll agree to a thorough investigation of this report if you will agree to an equally thorough investigation of intelligence manipulation leading up to the Iraq War.