Distrust of the intelligence estimates

Norman Podhoretz:

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But I entertain an even darker suspicion. It is that the intelligence community, which has for some years now been leaking material calculated to undermine George W. Bush, is doing it again. This time the purpose is to head off the possibility that the President may order air strikes on the Iranian nuclear installations. As the intelligence community must know, if he were to do so, it would be as a last resort, only after it had become undeniable that neither negotiations nor sanctions could prevent Iran from getting the bomb, and only after being convinced that it was very close to succeeding. How better, then, to stop Bush in his tracks than by telling him and the world that such pressures have already been effective and that keeping them up could well bring about “a halt to Iran’s entire nuclear weapons program”—especially if the negotiations and sanctions were combined with a goodly dose of appeasement or, in the NIE’s own euphemistic formulation, “with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways.”

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Conservative have good reason to be suspicious of the liberals in the intelligence community who have been desperately trying to avoid responsibility for their Iraq estimates. Rowan Scarborough recently published a book called Sabotage, America's Enemies Within the CIA which suggest that the CIA has become a rogue agency. I am not sure that is the case here. As I point out in my earlier post, the 2005 estimate which suggested the program was still active was based on finding a notebook computer containing plans for an Iranian bomb. I still think the real situation with Iran is that they are biding their time and waiting for us to retreat before going forward with their plans. The Democrats appear to be playing into their strategy.

Michael Ledeen is another skeptic about the intelligence estimate. More skepticism is found in this NY Sun's Van Diepen Demarche.

Westhawk says Iran gave up nothing in 2003.

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But arms control advocates are making too much from this assessment. For Iran, halting work on nuclear weapons development in 2003 (shortly after the clandestine nuclear program became public knowledge) was a “no-brainer.” It is the industrial processes of the nuclear effort, the large-scale uranium conversion and enrichment complexes, the construction and running of a large heavy water reactor for plutonium, and the construction and operation of an industrial-scale plutonium separation plant, that would govern the pace and timescale of the entire nuclear effort. Compared to these engineering and industrial problems, the final machining, fabrication, non-critical implosion testing, and assembly of a nuclear weapon are relatively well-known, straight-forward, and could wait until the aforementioned industrial processes were nearing culmination. Iran lost nothing by “halting” its nuclear weapons engineering work.

By contrast, had Iran explicitly continued its nuclear weapons engineering work after 2003, it would have made it that much easier for the international community to rally against it.

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He thinks the NIE will make war with Iran more likely because it will reduce the international pressure on Iran.