Larisa has a killer scoop on Raw Story

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http://www.rawstory.com/news/2007/Intelligence_officials_believe_White_House_chose_0108.html

Officials believe White House chose new Intelligence chief in effort to darken Iran Intelligence Estimate, broaden domestic surveillance

Larisa Alexandrovna
Published: Monday January 8, 2007

The nomination of retired Vice Admiral John Michael "Mike" McConnell to be Director of National Intelligence is part of an effort by the Vice President to tighten the Administration’s grip on domestic intelligence and grease the wheels for a more aggressive stance towards Iran, current and former intelligence officials believe.

If confirmed, McConnell will replace current National Intelligence Director John Negroponte, who was tapped Friday to become Deputy Secretary of State under Secretary Condoleezza Rice. According to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, Negroponte’s exit followed a lengthy internal administration battle between the Office of Vice President and the two-year-old Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

According to officials close to both men, two issues surround Negroponte’s departure and McConnell’s nomination: a forthcoming National Intelligence Estimate on Iran -- which the White House could use to buttress a case for military force -- and pressure from the Vice President to augment domestic surveillance.

Negroponte had resisted both efforts. Tensions soared after Negroponte made a public statement last year that countered the administration position that Iran was an immediate threat and that its alleged nuclear weapons program was in an advanced stage.

“The NIE on Iran is at issue,” said one former senior intelligence officer close to Negroponte...

[TayTay]

1. The NIE on Iraq was awful.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/themes/nie.html

That was one of the most dishonest documents ever put out for Congress. I have no doubt that Cheney thinks he can cook the Intel on Iran as well.

Not much has changed, except the dates, from this article Sy Hersh wrote in The New Yorker last April:

Would President Bush go to war to stop Tehran from getting the bomb?
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Issue of 2006-04-17
Posted 2006-04-08


The Bush Administration, while publicly advocating diplomacy in order to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack. Current and former American military and intelligence officials said that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups. The officials say that President Bush is determined to deny the Iranian regime the opportunity to begin a pilot program, planned for this spring, to enrich uranium.

American and European intelligence agencies, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (I.A.E.A.), agree that Iran is intent on developing the capability to produce nuclear weapons. But there are widely differing estimates of how long that will take, and whether diplomacy, sanctions, or military action is the best way to prevent it. Iran insists that its research is for peaceful use only, in keeping with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and that it will not be delayed or deterred.

There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush’s ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change. Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has challenged the reality of the Holocaust and said that Israel must be “wiped off the map.” Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official said. “That’s the name they’re using. They say, ‘Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?’ ”

A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was “absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb” if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do “what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,” and “that saving Iran is going to be his legacy.”

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060417fa_fact

This is what Hersh wrote in January of 2005 about the Bush Admin's plans for Iran:

“This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush Administration is looking at this as a huge war zone,” the former high-level intelligence official told me. “Next, we’re going to have the Iranian campaign. We’ve declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy. This is the last hurrah—we’ve got four years, and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism.” http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/050124fa_fact?050124fa_fact This has never been totally renounced

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2. Pardon my language,

but those fuckers.

I really wish we could put a moratorium on 2008 electioneering and concentrate on getting some real work done. As in, stop this agenda now.

It's incredible to me they can even find anyone who is willing to serve in this administration, knowing they either go along or get villified, steamrolled, or at least ignored. Why would anyone sign on at this point?

[TayTay]

3. Remember what they believe

This is from the Ron Suskind story that ran in the New York Times Magazine on 10/17/04:

But with a country crying out for intrepid leadership, does a president have time to entertain doubters? In a speech in Alaska two weeks later, Bush again referred to the war on terror as a "crusade."

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

Who besides guys like me are part of the reality-based community? Many of the other elected officials in Washington, it would seem. A group of Democratic and Republican members of Congress were called in to discuss Iraq sometime before the October 2002 vote authorizing Bush to move forward. A Republican senator recently told Time Magazine that the president walked in and said: "Look, I want your vote. I'm not going to debate it with you." When one of the senators began to ask a question, Bush snapped, "Look, I'm not going to debate it with you."

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4. A truth I keep trying to forget,

thought that has proved impossible.

You just look at what they are doing and look at their enablers - how do they sleep at night? Not the Bushies - they take their orders straight from god, but the enablers who know the truth and can't bring themselves to face it - McCain, Romney, (Lindsey) Graham, Hagel, Lugar, Lieberman. And even Biden, - who talk a good game but then reliably folds at the last minute.