Bolton calls report on Iran quasi-putsch

This story is from Reuters. See my comments below.

BERLIN—U.S. intelligence services attempted to influence political policy by releasing their assessment that concludes Iran halted its nuclear arms program in 2003, said John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Der Spiegel magazine quoted Bolton on Saturday as alleging that the aim of the National Intelligence Estimate, which contradicts his and President Bush’s position, was not to provide the latest intelligence on Iran.

“This is politics disguised as intelligence,” Bolton was quoted as saying in an article appearing in this week’s edition.

Bolton described the report, released Monday, as a “quasi-putsch” by the intelligence agencies, Der Spiegel said.

The intelligence estimate said Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program four years ago but was continuing to develop the technical means that could be used to produce a bomb. This contradicted Bush’s assertion that Iran was actively trying to develop a nuclear weapon….

Of course, this contradicts Norman Podhoretz’s idea that President Bush believes the NIE is valid and that’s why he endorsed it. If, as Bolton says, Bush believes that the NIE is false and that Iran is still actively trying to develop a nuclear weapon, why didn’t Bush squelch the NIE and bring forth his own reasons for disbelieving it?

The upshot is that while Podhoretz says that Bush is controlled against his will by the NIE’s truth, Bolton says that Bush is controlled against his will by the NIE’s falsity. Though Bolton’s and Podhoretz’s explanations contradict each other, they agree in considering President Bush a helpless naif buffeted about by forces more powerful than himself. No matter what Bush does, he must never be found at fault.

And what could be more ridiculous than for Bolton to call the NIE a putsch? Did anyone hold a gun to Bush’s head and tell him to allow the report to be published? Did a bunch of State Department liberals carrying wooden clubs and wearing leather leggings take over the White House and force Bush to give a press conference endorsing the report? It is routine in politics for supporters of a president to blame his bad actions on his bad advisors, not on the president himself. But I’ve never seen a supporter of a president blame that president’s bad actions on a putsch. That takes the cake.

I’m reminded of how when things were going very badly in Iraq in 2004 and 2005, David Horowitz constantly insisted that it was all the left’s fault, because the left was preventing Bush from waging the war the way he wanted to wage it. The neocons’ identification with Bush, their investment in his rightness and perfection, and their concomitant belief in the left as the source of all evil, is nothing short of pathological.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 10, 2007 01:52 AM | Send