Blue Spot

Democracy Now! | Ex-CIA Officials Tied to Rendition Program and Faulty Iraq Intel Tapped to Head Obama's Intelligence Transition Team

...questions are already being raised about the people heading Obama’s transition efforts on intelligence policy. John Brennan and Jami Miscik, both former intelligence officials under George Tenet, are leading the review of intelligence agencies and helping make recommendations to the new administration. Brennan has supported warrantless wiretapping and extraordinary rendition, and Miscik was involved with the politicized intelligence alleging weapons of mass destruction in the lead-up to the war on Iraq.

MELVIN GOODMAN: OK. John Brennan was deputy executive secretary to George Tenet during the worst violations during the CIA period in the run-up to the Iraq war, so he sat there at Tenet’s knee when they passed judgment on torture and abuse, on extraordinary renditions, on black sites, on secret prisons. He was part of all of that decision making.

Jami Miscik was the Deputy Director for Intelligence during the run-up to the Iraq war. So she went along with the phony intelligence estimate of October 2002, the phony white paper that was prepared by Paul Pillar in October 2002. She helped with the drafting of the speech that Colin Powell gave to the United Nations—[inaudible] 2003, which made the phony case for war to the international community.

So, when George Tenet said, "slam dunk, we can provide all the intelligence you need,” [inaudible] to the President in December of 2002, it was people like Jami Miscik and John Brennan who were part of the team who provided that phony intelligence. So what I think people at the CIA are worried about—and I’ve talked to many of them over the weekend—is that there will never be any accountability for these violations and some of the unconscionable acts committed at the CIA, which essentially amount to war crimes, when you’re talking about torture and abuse and secret prisons. So, where are we, in terms of change? This sounds like more continuity.

The left-wing is starting to show concern over Obama's recent choices for his transition team, his cabinet and what seems to many in the anti-war movement as an embrace of the militaristic policies of the 90's. Obama's foreign policy critics may soon come from many on the left-wing who may have supported Obama's campaign but now want to make sure he lives up to the promises he made for true change.

Labels: Afghanistan, anti-war movement, Congress, FISA, Foreign Policy, Gitmo, Impeachment, Intelligence, Iran, Iraq War, Liberals, Obama administration, Obama critics, Pakistan, Rahm Emanuel, WMD

The Iranian president raised some eyebrows with his "conciliatory" tone during his interview with Brian Williams.

Labels: Iran, Nuclear power

Obama Seeks to Clarify His Disputed Comments on Diplomacy - NYTimes.com

While Mr. Obama has said he would depart from the Bush administration policy of refusing to meet with certain nations unless they meet preconditions, he has also said he would reserve the right to choose which leaders he would meet, should he choose to meet with them at all.

The issue presents one of Mr. Obama’s biggest political and policy tests yet as he appears headed toward a general-election contest against Senator John McCain of Arizona: How to continue to add nuance to a policy argument that he views as a winning one, without playing into a fierce round of accusations that he is either shifting positions or appeasing the enemy.

Already the McCain campaign was accusing Mr. Obama of “backtracking,” particularly in the case of whether he would talk with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran.

Mr. McCain, who has almost daily raised Mr. Obama’s stated willingness to meet with the Iranians, hit the theme again Wednesday, asking a crowd in Reno, Nev., “Why is it that Senator Obama wants to sit down with the president of Iran, but hasn’t yet sat down with General Petraeus, the leader of our troops?”

Later, Mr. Obama dismissed the critique, saying: “This is a typical sarcastic comment that doesn’t have anything to do with the substance and is patently untrue, since I just saw General Petraeus when he was testifying in Washington.”

I think somebody needs to teach Mr. Obama the meaning of "sit down."

This week, Mr. Obama said that he was still considering meeting with Iranian leaders, though he would not necessarily guarantee a direct meeting with Mr. Ahmadinejad.

“There is no reason why we would necessarily meet with Ahmadinejad before we know that he is actually in power,” Mr. Obama told reporters. “He is not the most powerful person in Iran.”

Last week, Mr. Obama offered a similarly nuanced explanation about meeting with President Raúl Castro of Cuba, saying he would do so only “at a time and place of my choosing.”

The caveats belie the simple answer Mr. Obama gave during a debate last summer, when the issue was first raised in a major public forum. Without hesitation or qualification, Mr. Obama said he would hold direct talks with America’s enemies, drawing strong and immediate criticism from his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

“Would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?” asked Stephen Sixta, a video producer who submitted the question for the CNN/YouTube Democratic debate.

Mr. Obama, the first candidate to respond, answered, “I would.”

Several aides immediately thought it was a mistake and sought to dial back his answer. But on a conference call the morning after the debate, Mr. Obama told his advisers that he had meant what he said and thought the answer crystallized how he differed from his rivals.

“I think that it is an example of how stunted our foreign policy debates have become over the last eight years that this is an issue that political opponents try to seize on,” Mr. Obama said in an interview on Wednesday. “It is actually a pretty conventional view of how diplomacy should work traditionally that has fallen into disrepute in Republican circles and in Washington.”

Even after Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton called his position naïve, Mr. Obama refused to shy away from it, at times speaking explicitly in terms of a potential meeting with Mr. Ahmadinejad.

But in the last few weeks Mr. McCain and the Republican National Committee have attacked Mr. Obama on his position more fiercely and consistently than his Democratic rivals ever did, with an especially acute focus on Mr. Ahmadinejad, who recently called Israel “a stinking corpse.”

And Mr. Obama and his advisers have responded with more policy details and a more stringent defense. They have, for instance, said that Mr. Obama’s opponents had used his comments that he would be willing to meet with the Iranian leadership — who they do not necessarily define as Mr. Ahmadinejad — to assert incorrectly that he had definite plans to do so.

They have also drawn a distinction between “preconditions” and “preparations” for such talks. In saying he would not impose preconditions on discussions, Mr. Obama said he was referring, for instance, to a Bush administration policy of making high-level meetings contingent upon Iran’s agreement to suspend its uranium enrichment program. Mr. Obama said he viewed its suspension as a goal of any talks, not a starting point for them.

But, he said, he would order lower-level preparatory talks to determine Iran’s motives before agreeing to higher-level meetings.

In the interview Wednesday, Mr. Obama conceded that he might need to do a better job explaining his policy.

Labels: Election 2008, Foreign Policy, Iran, Obama

Dan Froomkin - Neck-Snapping Spin From the President - washingtonpost.com

By concluding that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program four years ago, the national intelligence estimate released yesterday undermined a key element of President Bush's foreign policy. It raised questions about whether the president and vice president knowingly misled the public about the danger posed by Iran. And it added to Bush's profound credibility problems with the American people and the international community.

But to hear Bush talk about it at the White House press conference this morning, the new NIE vindicated his beliefs and makes his warnings about Iran more potent.

It was neck-snapping spin even by Bush standards. He intentionally misread the report's central point, failed to acknowledge a huge change in his argument for why Iran is dangerous and exhibited pure bullheaded stubbornness.

When Chicago Tribune reporter Mark Silva noted that Bush appeared dispirited and asked if he was troubled about what this would do to his credibility, Bush replied: "No, I'm feeling pretty spirited, pretty good about life, and have made the decision to come before you so I can explain the NIE. And I have said Iran is dangerous, and the NIE doesn't do anything to change my opinion about the danger Iran poses to the world. Quite the contrary. I'm using this NIE as an opportunity to continue to rally our colleagues and allies. . . .

"And so, you know, kind of Psychology 101 ain't working. It's just not working, you know? I am -- I understand the issues. I clearly see the problems and I'm going to use the NIE to continue to rally the international community for the sake of peace."

Yesterday's report came as something as a shock to the general public. Bush and Vice President Cheney have long asserted that Iran was actively seeking nuclear weapons, and Cheney, in particular, had been accelerating what some observers saw as a drumbeat for war. But the nation's 16 intelligence agencies didn't come to their conclusion overnight. In fact, this NIE had been in the works for 18 months, during which some of its authors were reportedly harried by Cheney for not being sufficiently hawkish.

So what did Bush know and when did he know it?

Bush insisted today that he had not been formally briefed on the NIE until last week, and that his director of national intelligence simply told him in August that there was some new information. "He didn't tell me what the information was," Bush said. "He did tell me it was going to take a while to analyze."

Bush insisted the NIE would not lead to any changes in policy. "I'm saying that I believed before the NIE that Iran was dangerous, and I believe after the NIE that Iran is dangerous."

Labels: Intelligence, Iran, Nuclear Weapons

Good and Bad News About Iran - New York Times

There is a lot of good news in the latest intelligence assessment about Iran. Tehran, we are now told, halted its secret nuclear weapons program in 2003, which means that President Bush has absolutely no excuse for going to war against Iran. We are also relieved that the intelligence community is now willing to question its own assumptions and challenge the White House’s fevered rhetoric. The president and his aides are apparently too worried about getting caught again shaving intelligence to stop that.

First, the report says “with high confidence” that Iran did have a secret nuclear weapons program and that it stopped only after it got caught and was threatened with international punishment. Even now, Tehran’s scientists are working to master the skills to make nuclear fuel — the hardest part of building a weapon.

Anyone who wants to give the Iranians the full benefit of the doubt should read the last four years of reports from United Nations’ nuclear inspectors about Iran’s 18-year history of hiding and dissembling. Or last month’s report, which criticized Tehran for providing “diminishing” information and access to its current program. In one of those ironies that would be delicious if it didn’t involve nuclear weapons, an official close to the inspection agency told The Times yesterday that the new American assessment might be too generous to Iran.

Unfortunately, this report — preceded by months of White House saber rattling — is going to make it harder to keep up the international pressure on Iran to curtail its fuel program and cooperate fully with inspectors, the only way to ensure that it doesn’t get back into the secret weapons business.

After Iraq and Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, it is hard to imagine that this administration could do any more damage to this country’s credibility. Then it does.

Less than two months ago, Mr. Bush was warning that Iran’s nuclear ambitions could unleash World War III. Yesterday, the president insisted that he found out about the new assessment only last week. He also said that his top intelligence adviser told him in August that analysts were looking at “new information.” We know that the president is an incurious man, but given all his fears about Iran, and those missing weapons in Iraq, it’s hard to fathom why he wouldn’t have asked for a preview.

The new report is not an argument for anyone to let down their guard when it comes to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. What it does say is that some combination of intensified pressures and opportunities might — “if perceived by Iran’s leaders as credible” — prompt Tehran to “extend the current halt to its nuclear weapons program.”

Yesterday, Mr. Bush insisted that he believes in a carrot-and-stick approach. But he has yet to make a serious offer of comprehensive talks and real rewards if Iran is willing to give up its fuel program and cooperate fully with inspectors. He is going to have to send someone a lot higher ranking than the American ambassador in Baghdad to deliver the message. We suggest Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for the job.

We don’t know if the Iranians will find any offer credible, or if they even want to. It is the least Mr. Bush can do to try to salvage his credibility with the American people and America’s allies.

Labels: Iran, Nuclear Weapons

A Blow to Bush's Tehran Policy - washingtonpost.com

President Bush got the world's attention this fall when he warned that a nuclear-armed Iran might lead to World War III. But his stark warning came at least a month or two after he had first been told about fresh indications that Iran had actually halted its nuclear weapons program.

The new intelligence report released yesterday not only undercut the administration's alarming rhetoric over Iran's nuclear ambitions but could also throttle Bush's effort to ratchet up international sanctions and take off the table the possibility of preemptive military action before the end of his presidency.

"It's a little head-spinning," said Daniel Benjamin, an official on President Bill Clinton's National Security Council. "Everybody's going to be trying to scratch their heads and figure out what comes next."

Critics seized on the new National Intelligence Estimate to lambaste what Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards called "George Bush and Dick Cheney's rush to war with Iran." Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.), echoing other Democrats, called for "a diplomatic surge" to resolve the dispute with Tehran. Jon Wolfsthal, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, termed the revelation "a blockbuster development" that "requires a wholesale reevaluation of U.S. policy."

Labels: Intelligence, Iran, Nuclear Weapons

U.S. and Iran to discuss Iraq only - Yahoo! News

BAGHDAD - The United States said ambassador-level talks with Iran in Baghdad on Tuesday will focus solely on the situation in Iraq despite rising tensions over American-Iranians detained by Tehran and Iranians held in U.S. custody in Iraq.

"This is an opportunity for direct engagement on issues solely related to Iraq," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters in Washington on Monday. "We are going to raise the need for Iran to match its actions with its words in seeking strategic stability in Iraq."

McCormack said Iran has not taken any steps to help bring about a stable Iraq, a goal he said Iran professes to share with the United States.

"We'll see, if, as a result of these engagements, they will change their behavior."

Labels: Iran, Iraq War

Halliburton VP, Sherry Williams testifies at a Senate hearing about the company's dealings with Iran. NYC Comptroller, William Thompson (D) was also at the hearing.

Federal sanctions prohibit American companies from conducting business with Iran. Halliburton used a loophole to sell oil services to Iran via a subsidiary in the Cayman Islands.

Labels: Cheney, GOP Hypocrisy, Halliburton, Iran, Oil, Senate, World news