The Political Chase

Bush: Iran remains a danger

President Bush: “Iran remains a threat.”

In a forty-minute news conference this morning, President Bush said Iran remains a danger, criticized Congress for not supporting the troops because they had not provided him funding bills that meet his approval, and reporters largely carried out their stenographer roles quite well.

Bush began with the worn-out, tiresome accusations that Congress wasn’t doing anything and they were putting the troops in danger because Congress would not send him funding bills that met his exact specifications for Iraq and other government operations. Of course he didn’t bother to mention how many funding bills Congress has sent him, he chose to veto, and that he may be the obstacle rather than Congress.

Most of the questions in the session focused on the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) released yesterday, which contradicted the administration’s claims of the past two years that Iran had an active nuclear weapons program and posed a grave threat to the world.

Bush’s rhetoric was not as bellicose as in the past — no World War III threats — but his basic message on Iran did not change. He said Iran was a threat, is a threat, and will remain a threat. Moreover, he repeated the same ludicrous statement Stephen Hadley made yesterday — the NIE confirmed they (the administration) were right all along about Iran. It simply defies any sense of logic.

Two claims the administration has frequently made against Iran were noticeably absent: Iran is the largest contributor to state-sponsored terrorism in the world, and Iran’s alleged intervention in the Iraq war (e.g., supplying IED’s, funding, militia training, etc. ). While the state-sponsorship of terror has been part of the administration’s continuing rhetoric against Iran, the accusations related to the Iraq war have been diminishing lately. Why?

The press failed to make the connection between the NIE released yesterday and prior administration claims of Iran’s alleged involvement of counter-coalition and terrorist-related activities in Iraq. They politely carried out their normal role as stenographers and failed to ask about anything other than the narrow-focus the administration provided. Bush was challenged– minimally at best — on the dire warnings he and Dick Cheney have made in the last six weeks.

Asked by one reporter if the administration did not know about the NIE before his World War III speech and Cheney’s “inescapable reality” speech, he replied “No.” The reporter accepted the answer.

Another reporter probed a bit further and asked Bush if the administration had any knowledge of any kind, from any of the intelligence agencies, prior to their speeches that might have raised suspicions about Iran’s alleged nuclear program. Bush said Mike McConnell, Director of National Intelligence, told him in August they had intelligence that needed further analysis before making a formal conclusion, but McConnell did not tell him anything further. Bush added he first learned of the new intelligence two weeks ago. Reporters promptly wrote his answer down and simply let it go.

What person with a modicum of intelligence actually believed McConnell simply told the president he needed to delay an extremely important intelligence report on Iran and nothing more was said or asked by the president or McConnell. And if that is what happened, which we know is not the truth,, should not the reporters stenographers have exposed Bush’s gross incompetence by asking questions why he dismissed McConnell as if McConnell had just told him he would be a few minutes late for a meeting because he needed to call his wife first? Of course the media should not be posing such questions. As Tim Russert once said, “the opposition party should ask those questions.”

Bush had no choice but to moderate his tone, but the message did not change. Tomorrow will likely be different. Mistakes or not, nothing changes the Bush Manichean principle.

The burning question I have is why did Bush really decide to release this report, when just days ago Mike McConnell declared NIE’s would no longer be made public. Why did Bush release a report that he knows proves Cheney and himself wrong? Forget the idiotic statements that it proves they were right — that’s just spin. They know the report contradicts virtually everything they’ve said for more than two years. After seven years, Bush and Cheney suddenly succumb to an infusion of integrity?