Fred Thompson provides his take (warning: could cause drowsiness ) on the Iran NIE over at RedState.
By Fred Thompson
The accuracy of the latest NIE on Iran should be received with a good deal of skepticism. Our intelligence community has often underestimated the intentions of adversaries, including Saddam Hussein's Iraq and North Korea. And are all of the CIA detractors now going to take intelligence pronouncements at face value? It's awfully convenient for a lot of people: the administration gets to say its policies worked; the Democrats get to claim we should have eased up on Iran a long time ago: and Russia and China can claim sanctions on Iran are not necessary. Who benefits from all this? Iran.
And what if the NIE estimate is accurate? It's essentially an analysis of Iran's intentions at a point in time. Meanwhile, Iran continues to enrich uranium for allegedly peaceful purposes, but which would allow them to easily transition to a nuclear weapons program at any point in the future. Maybe even now--now that so many seem willing to forget Iran's past deceptions and ongoing intransigence. After all, a nuclear weapons program is simply an extension of the process by why uranium is enriched for civilian nuclear fuel. To this day Iran has yet to comply with international demands and its Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty requirements for open inspections and other safeguard measures.
The bottom line is that the United States must continue to improve its human intelligence capabilities and intelligence analysis. We must hope for the best, but not let our guard down for a moment. If something appears to be too good to be true, it very well may be.
By Fred Thompson
The accuracy of the latest NIE on Iran should be received with a good deal of skepticism. Our intelligence community has often underestimated the intentions of adversaries, including Saddam Hussein's Iraq and North Korea. And are all of the CIA detractors now going to take intelligence pronouncements at face value? It's awfully convenient for a lot of people: the administration gets to say its policies worked; the Democrats get to claim we should have eased up on Iran a long time ago: and Russia and China can claim sanctions on Iran are not necessary. Who benefits from all this? Iran.
And what if the NIE estimate is accurate? It's essentially an analysis of Iran's intentions at a point in time. Meanwhile, Iran continues to enrich uranium for allegedly peaceful purposes, but which would allow them to easily transition to a nuclear weapons program at any point in the future. Maybe even now--now that so many seem willing to forget Iran's past deceptions and ongoing intransigence. After all, a nuclear weapons program is simply an extension of the process by why uranium is enriched for civilian nuclear fuel. To this day Iran has yet to comply with international demands and its Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty requirements for open inspections and other safeguard measures.
The bottom line is that the United States must continue to improve its human intelligence capabilities and intelligence analysis. We must hope for the best, but not let our guard down for a moment. If something appears to be too good to be true, it very well may be.
1 comment:
Fred thinks it's still 1970 so all this is new to him. Fred would have to hire Karl Rove back and get Dick as his VP. Just like the Gerbil just stands to speak as the puppet President so would Fred. Except Fred would fall asleep.
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