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August 24, 2006

The GOP and what Army?

Apparently the press isn't doing a good enough job of fear mongering the American people into a whipped up frenzy over Iran:

Some senior Bush administration officials and top Republican lawmakers are voicing anger that American spy agencies have not issued more ominous warnings about the threats that they say Iran presents to the United States.

Some policy makers have accused intelligence agencies of playing down Iran’s role in Hezbollah’s recent attacks against Israel and overestimating the time it would take for Iran to build a nuclear weapon.

The complaints, expressed privately in recent weeks, surfaced in a Congressional report about Iran released Wednesday. They echo the tensions that divided the administration and the Central Intelligence Agency during the prelude to the war in Iraq.

The criticisms reflect the views of some officials inside the White House and the Pentagon who advocated going to war with Iraq and now are pressing for confronting Iran directly over its nuclear program and ties to terrorism, say officials with knowledge of the debate.

It would seem that the learning curve for the "Iraq has WMD and are a bunch of terrorist loving-America haters" crowd is pretty steep. And while the intelligence community seemed more than willing to be cowed into trumping up bullshit on Iraq to appease the GOP--they don't appear to be so accomodating with Iran.

Some dude known only to NY Times readers as a "senior United States official" even goes all Clinton on us:

Some policy makers also said they were displeased that American spy agencies were playing down intelligence reports — including some from the Israeli government — of extensive contacts recently between Hezbollah and members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. “The people in the community are unwilling to make judgment calls and don’t know how to link anything together,” one senior United States official said.

“We’re not in a court of law,” he said. “When they say there is ‘no evidence,’ you have to ask them what they mean, what is the meaning of the term ‘evidence’?”

Maybe I'm going out on a limb here, but I'd imagine the word "evidence" means the same to the intelligence folks as it means to me and Webster's:

Main Entry: ev·i·dence

Pronunciation: 'e-v&-d&ns, -"dens

Function: noun

Etymology: Medieval Latin evidentia, from Latin, that which is obvious, from evident- evidens clear, obvious, from e- out of, from + videns, present participle of videre to see

: something that furnishes or tends to furnish proof; especially : something (as testimony, writings, or objects) presented at a judicial or administrative proceeding for the purpose of establishing the truth or falsity of an alleged matter of fact —

I'm thinking its that whole "fact" thing that's throwing them off. It sure must suck when people start holding politicians to them.

For the politicians, that is.

Posted by Carla at August 24, 2006 10:13 AM