Tony Blair’s claims that Iran now poses as serious a threat as Saddam Hussein‘s Iraq have been dismissed as a “piece of spin” by the British ambassador to Tehran.

Sir Richard Dalton was fiercely critical of Blair’s testimony at the Iraq inquiry yesterday, in which the former Prime Minister compared Iran’s nuclear proliferation to the perceived threat of Saddam Hussein’s weapons program before the war.

One way to look at this, of course, is that Tony Blair — who, by any objective standard, stands thoroughly disgraced by all the revelations about the way he blindly and single-mindedly took Britain to war in Iraq — is trying to argue that Saddam Hussein posed as big a threat in 2003 as Iran poses now.

Well, no sane person right now is advocating that the free world needs to invade Iran in order to neutralize the threat it poses (to world peace, or to the strategic interests of the U.S. or Britain).

So even by Tony Blair’s own argument, there was no call to invade Iraq in 2003.

On top of that, if we note that most people who are not card-carrying neo-cons firmly believe that Saddam Hussein posed even less of a threat in 2003 than Iran poses today — Iran, at least, does give the appearance of making progress towards a nuclear weapon (although the very public manner in which they are going about it raises its own questions) — the invasion of Iraq starts to look even more indefensible.

(2)
Tony Blair, of course, is now a Middle East peace envoy. Somebody thought it was a good idea to take this unrepentant warmonger, with a pathetic-desperate need to justify his hard-on for invading Iraq, and give him a platform for advocating what next needs doing in the Middle East.

By all appearances, Blair now has a hard-on for invading Iran:

Tony Blair has been accused of warmongering spin for claiming that western powers might be forced to invade Iran because it poses as serious a threat as Saddam Hussein.

Sir Richard Dalton, a former British ambassador to Iran, accused Blair of trying to make confrontation with Iran an electoral issue after the former prime minister repeatedly singled out its Islamic regime as a global threat in his evidence to the Iraq war inquiry yesterday.

Blair said many of the arguments that led him to confront the “profoundly wicked, almost psychopathic” Saddam Hussein seven years ago now applied to the regime in Tehran.

“We face the same problem about Iran today,” he told the Chilcot inquiry.

Dalton, the UK ambassador to Iran from 2002 until 2006, said it was essential that all the political parties made clear in the run-up to the general election that there would be no repeat of Blair’s actions in respect of Iran.

“One result of Tony Blair’s intervention on Iran – he mentioned Iran 58 times – is to put the question of confronting Iran into play in the election,” he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

“We need to be much clearer, as voters, with our politicians and with our candidates that we expect a different behaviour and a greater integrity in our democracy next time.”

This hard-on has already lasted well over four hours. If the dude had any sense (or shame) he would retire from public life, and go see a doctor.

(If I were crafting a fitting epitaph for our Tony, I can see myself borrowing some of his own words. To wit, “profoundly wicked, almost psychopathic” would appear to fit like a glove. Though, I might, on reflection, change that last word to sociopathic.)

(3)
Any way you slice it, “Tony Blair, Middle East peace envoy” is an oxymoron.

And this is not about their nuclear ambitions, but something much more frightening. In retrospect, the nuclear nonsense was obviously just a clever subterfuge, a mere red herring while they continued their real work. Work that stands the soon-to-be-quaint phrase “weapons of mass destruction” on its obsolete head.

Here are the dots, just crying out to be connected:

See what I mean? The Iranian regime has secretly developed some unknown non-weapons technology that can be used to take out their enemies, not en-masse but individually. Non-weapons of individual destruction (NWID), if you will.

How does one even fight against such technology? If we delay, will we have any option except learning how to say “Yes, boss!” in Farsi?

Clearly, the time to act is now, before this nascent technology is refined and perfected and aimed against us. And if Obama won’t do it, we’ll just have to push him aside, and replace him with a real manly man. Someone like McCain.

Luckily, refusing to preemptively defend the U.S. against such a chilling threat is a clear act of high treason.

U.S. congressional leaders agreed late last year to President George W. Bush‘s funding request for a major escalation of covert operations against Iran aimed at destabilizing its leadership, according to a report in The New Yorker magazine published online on Sunday.

The article by reporter Seymour Hersh, from the magazine’s July 7 and 14 issue, centers around a highly classified Presidential Finding signed by Bush which by U.S. law must be made known to Democratic and Republican House and Senate leaders and ranking members of the intelligence committees.

“The Finding was focused on undermining Iran’s nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change,” the article cited a person familiar with its contents as saying, and involved “working with opposition groups and passing money.”

I wonder what else happened late last year that might be related…

Iran ‘has halted its nuclear weapons programme’ – The Independent (12/4/07):

In a blow to Bush administration hawks demanding military strikes on Iran, a US intelligence report reveals that Tehran’s secret nuclear weapons programme was shut down four years ago.
[...]
President Bush seemed to prepare the ground for just such an attack last month when he declared that any international effort to avoid “World War III” would have to start by preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear capability. Vice-President Dick Cheney then threatened “serious consequences” if Tehran did not abandon its nuclear programme.

As these threats were being made, the CIA had secretly concluded that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ended the nuclear weapons work years ago in the face of diplomatic pressure and the threat of sanctions.
[...]
Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, said the assessment was “directly challenging some of this administration’s alarming rhetoric about the threat posed by Iran.” The administration should “appropriately adjust its rhetoric and policy”.

As Senate Majority leader, Reid is exactly one of the “congressional leaders” who would have had to sign off on Bush’s funding request. Heckuva job, Harry!

What they do not realize, of course, is that McCain too will have a badly depleted campaign war-chest. Because he has been diverting a significant proportion of the money he has raised to unconventional non-campaign uses. A parallel intelligence-gathering operation, for example. And we’re not talking political intelligence or dirty tricks either:

He said he believed Iran was still seeking to acquire the means to develop a nuclear weapon, although a recent National Intelligence Estimate had suggested otherwise.

A reasonable and prudent man, a man with McCain’s experience and expertise in matters of national security, would hardly dismiss the carefully considered consensus of the nation’s intelligence apparatus without probable cause, would he? He must have a parallel intelligence-gathering operation. Because he wouldn’t just dismiss our intelligence agencies on a whim, and say that I, John McCain, know better than those effing c**ksuckers (it can’t be helped, he talks like that) because I used to be a Navy pilot, and then, of course, I was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, and there’s footage of me giving up my name, rank and serial number and nothing else, and did I tell you about my father and his father before him? I did? Then how about my distant ancestor who served on General Washington’s staff? (It’s not a proud military tradition in the family, it’s his ruddy “martial heritage”, if you please.)

He has shown us several times before that he’s thoroughly confused about the reality on the ground in Iraq, but his performance in Amman on Tuesday was still a new low for him.

Let’s remember that McCain is on a Middle East trip to showcase his so-called experience and expertise in international affairs and national security matters. He has presumably been briefed and rehearsed within an inch of losing his famous temper, just so that he would manage to remember his basic facts. And he still blew the most basic distinction that anyone talking about Iraq has to be able to make:

Speaking to reporters in Amman, the Jordanian capital, McCain said he and two Senate colleagues traveling with him continue to be concerned about Iranian operatives “taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back.”

Pressed to elaborate, McCain said it was “common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that’s well known. And it’s unfortunate.” A few moments later, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, standing just behind McCain, stepped forward and whispered in the presidential candidate’s ear. McCain then said: “I’m sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda.”

Yes, that’s right, Senator. The Iranians are Shi’ites, and they are aiding and abetting Shi’ite militias. And al-Qaeda, on the other hand, is a Sunni group. That’s why they are aided and abetted by Saudi Arabia, instead of Iran.

Bush thought — and Cheney still thinks — there was a nexus between Iraq and al-Qaeda. John McCain goes one better and thinks there’s a nexus between Iran and al-Qaeda. Can’t we please put one more blundering idiot in the White House?

(By the way, it’s interesting, isn’t it, how Joe Lieberman seems to be one of McCain’s handlers?)

*** Update, 6:56 am ***

I hadn’t realized that McCain had also made this exact same mis-statement on Monday night on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show.

It not only makes McCain look even more idiotic than he did before, but it makes the McCain campaign’s attempt to explain away McCain’s gaffe in Amman doubly dishonest:

McCain spokesman Brian Rogers: “In a press conference today, John McCain misspoke and immediately corrected himself by stating that Iran is in fact supporting radical Islamic extremists in Iraq, not Al Qaeda…

He didn’t misspeak and immediately correct himself. He carried this piece of untrue “common knowledge” around in his head for an extended period of time. He said it on Hewitt’s radio show Monday night, and did not correct himself at all, not immediately, not later. He corrected himself in Amman only after Lieberman whispered into his ear. Misspoke and immediately corrected himself? Only in Bush-Cheney-McCain’s inside out universe.

His generals, though, always knew what he meant. And most of them were careful not to say anything worth listening to. And the ones who weren’t? Well, Bush was listening. And he heard them loud and clear.

The most notable case in point used to be Gen. George W. Casey, Jr. (who used to be the top American commander in Iraq before his job was given to one of the generals who did the best job listening to George Bush, and showing that he knew what Bush meant, one David H. Petraeus). Gen. Casey opposed the surge. A little too openly. And Gen. Casey became history.

As of yesterday, Gen. Casey will have to share top billing with CENTCOM Commander Adm. William J. Fallon. He opposed going to war with Iran. A little too openly. Right around the time that George Bush — and his many minions — was starting to play variations on a theme with the phrase “World War III”, Adm. Fallon had the bad judgment and poor taste to make public statements against the emerging drumbeat to war.

(As an aside, what Casey and Fallon have in common is Petraeus. Petraeus succeeded Casey and was Fallon’s subordinate. It was reported in September that Fallon had called Petraeus “an ass-kissing little chickensh*t” to his face, but Fallon denied it recently.)

As he was preparing to take command of CENTCOM (he assumed command in March 2007), he reportedly expressed firm opposition to a war against Iran:

As he was preparing to take command, Fallon said that a war with Iran “isn’t going to happen on my watch,” according to retired Army Col. Patrick Lang.

Lang, a former analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency, said in an interview that he asked Fallon how he would avoid such a conflict. “I have options, you know,” Fallon responded, which Lang interpreted as implying Fallon would step down rather than follow orders he considers mistaken.

In the December interview, Fallon disputed the precise wording of the exchange. “That’s privileged information,” he said at first, later adding, “I can’t imagine making a statement like that.” He then recalled simply telling Lang that attacking Iran “wasn’t the first course of action” under consideration.

Then there was an Al-Jazeera interview broadcast on September 30, 2007:

In an interview with Al-Jazeera television in September, which Fallon himself had requested, according to a source at Al-Jazeera, he had said, “This constant drum beat of conflict is what strikes me which is not helpful and not useful.”

In November 2007, he spoke too frankly in an interview with The Financial Times:

“None of this is helped by the continuing stories that just keep going around and around and around that any day now there will be another war which is just not where we want to go,” he said.

“Getting Iranian behaviour to change and finding ways to get them to come to their senses and do that is the real objective. Attacking them as a means to get to that spot strikes me as being not the first choice in my book.” … Adm Fallon declined to comment specifically on whether the US rhetoric was feeding the speculation, but said that “generally, the bellicose comments are not particularly helpful”.

It is in this context that Defense Secretary Robert Gates said this yesterday, while announcing Fallon’s “resignation”:

He said “there is a misperception” that the admiral disagreed with the Bush administration’s policies towards Iran. “I don’t think there were differences at all,” Mr Gates said.

Let’s give Thomas P.M. Barnett (a former professor at the Naval War College, whose admiring article in Esquire precipitated Fallon’s departure) the last word:

And so Fallon, the good cop, may soon be unemployed because he’s doing what a generation of young officers in the U. S. military are now openly complaining that their leaders didn’t do on their behalf in the run-up to the war in Iraq: He’s standing up to the commander in chief, whom he thinks is contemplating a strategically unsound war.

And just as it was written, so did it come to pass. But the judgment of history on Adm. William J. Fallon is likely to be kind. The guy who listened to him? Not so much, I think.

The United States on Thursday lodged a formal diplomatic protest with Iran over an incident last weekend in which Iranian speedboats harassed U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf.

The protest repeats U.S. complaints about Sunday’s “provocative” action in the Strait of Hormuz and was sent to the Iranian Foreign Ministry via the Swiss Embassy in Tehran, which represents U.S. interests in Iran, the State Department said.

“It reiterates the points that we have made publicly in the last few days,” deputy spokesman Tom Casey told reporters. “We certainly don’t want to see the Iranians taking any kind of provocative actions or provocative steps against our ships or against any ships that are transiting what is a primary international waterway.”

U.S.: Voices on Recording May Not Have Been From Iranian Speedboats – ABC News (1/10/08):

Just two days after the U.S. Navy released the eerie video of Iranian speedboats swarming around American warships, which featured a chilling threat in English, the Navy is saying that the voice on the tape could have come from the shore or from another ship.

In light of the ABC News report, this guy Tom Casey really needs a promotion on the strength of this statement:

In his remarks, Casey dismissed Iranian claims that there was nothing unusual about the incident as well as a videotape aired by Iranian television on Thursday that appeared to be an attempt to show there had not been a confrontation between the vessels.

“We all understand what happened in this incident,” he said.

Now they have lost even the ability to properly lie this country into war.

Well, they did. And it is.

After lying through their teeth for more than 48 hours — said lies being repeatedly uttered by President George Bush, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, Press Secretary Dana Perino — they have suddenly chosen to come clean:

On Wednesday, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said McConnell told Bush in August that Iran may have suspended its nuclear weapons programme and that the new information might cause the intelligence community to change its assessment on Iran.

Speculation is now inevitably going to turn to the question of why. Why on earth are they admitting the truth?

It wouldn’t have anything to do with McConnell threatening to refute the President’s version of their August conversation, would it?

He did, after all, release the Iran NIE, very much against the administration’s wishes. And the president’s version of the August conversation — he told me there was new information about Iran’s nukes; I didn’t ask him what it was, and he didn’t tell me; and I never learned Iran was believed to have suspended its newkiller program till last Tuesday — not only made Bush look like a particularly incompetent twit, it also made McConnell look thoroughly unprofessional and derelict in his duties. Not only for not telling Bush right then, but also for keeping it out of Bush’s intelligence briefings till last week.

If McConnell did indeed make a policy decision that he’s not willing to let himself and the intelligence community be made to look like fools just to support Bush’s political agenda and his lies, he would have left Bush no choice but to come clean. No matter how much it hurts. No matter how much it goes against the grain.

The fallout of admitting this lie is going to be fun to watch over the next few days.

*** Update, 1:15 am, December 6 ***

Perino’s coming clean statement is a masterpiece of obfuscation, and is worth reading. It’s the most denial-of-reality truth-telling you will ever witness. It’s not a mea culpa at all. Rather it’s a just-like-we-have-always-said tour de force. With two short phrases buried like nuggets in a bedrock of misdirection.

In August, DNI Director McConnell advised President Bush that the intelligence community would not be able to meet a congressionally imposed deadline requiring a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran because new information had been obtained just as they were about to finalize the report.

He said that if the new information turns out to be true, what we thought we knew for sure is right. Iran does in fact have a covert nuclear weapons program, but it may be suspended. The Director advised that there were many streams of information that had the potential to be in conflict, and it would take more time to vet it all to determine validity, and that’s why they were not able to meet the deadline.

Director McConnell said that the new information might cause the intelligence community to change its assessment of Iran’s covert nuclear program, but the intelligence community was not prepared to draw any conclusions at that point in time, and it wouldn’t be right to speculate until they had time to examine and analyze the new data.

CNN is also reporting that:

Perino said her account came from a conversation that McConnell had Wednesday with another White House official. Earlier, Perino’s deputy, Tony Fratto, had refused to provide reporters with further details about the August meeting between Bush and McConnell.

That could mean many different things, so I don’t want to oversell it. But it could certainly mean that McConnell said: “This is what my version is going to be. Now, you want to tell them or shall I?”

*** Update 2, 6 pm, December 6 ***

Me myself:

The fallout of admitting this lie is going to be fun to watch over the next few days.

And it is. Here’s Perino tying herself in knots trying to explain to CNN‘s dim-witted Ed Henry how Bush’s claim that McConnell “didn’t tell me what the information was” in August is not a lie. And isn’t it simply breathtaking how much relevant information she is appallingly ignorant of, so late into this major story?

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.

This is, of course, what everyone suspects. All the more so because of this president’s, and this administration’s, reputation for playing fast and loose with the truth. But WaPo didn’t report it as a suspicion; they reported it as a fact. It was the opening paragraph in their front-page story.

It would be a huge story, an extremely serious allegation, if there was any evidence to support it.

As I argued yesterday, WaPo‘s Peter Baker and Robin Wright didn’t exactly support their sensational lede. They vaguely claimed that Stephen Hadley had said it:

Still, the administration understood how explosive the new conclusions would be and kept them tightly held. Hadley said Bush was first told in August or September about intelligence indicating Iran had halted its weapons program, but was advised it would take time to evaluate.

There was no direct quote. No mention of an exclusive interview. And the closest public statement Hadley has made about this is:

[W]hen was the president notified that there was new information available? We’ll try and get you a precise answer. As I say, it was, in my recollection, is in the last few months. Whether that’s October — August-September, we’ll try and get you an answer for that.

That is a very far cry indeed from “Hadley said Bush was first told in August or September about intelligence indicating Iran had halted its weapons program”. The only proper response to Peter Baker and Robin Wright’s story is skepticism (and not necessarily of the polite variety, either).

None of this was particularly hard to see. Yet so many respected liberal bloggers decided not to see it. To gleefully propagate WaPo‘s claim because it was so satisfying to believe it. (Isn’t this how the right-wing-nut blogs are supposed to operate, not us?)

But there was Salon’s War Room, pushing the story not once but twice yesterday. AMERICABlog danced a little jig as well. There was TPM, citing a different WaPo front page story that contains the exact same “Hadley said Bush was first told in August or September…” statement. On TPM‘s Horse’s Mouth, Greg Sargent invoked this statement to excoriate WaPo for uncritically reporting Bush’s claim that he had been first briefed on the Iran NIE only last week:

Bush was allowed to skate — even though the paper’s own reporting yesterday suggests that his “last week” claim was false.

And then there’s Shakesville, with a particularly egregious post. They don’t cite WaPo, they give us their own paraphrase of WaPo‘s claim:

Stephen Hadley made matters worse the other day by stating rather clearly that the NIE findings were given to Bush “a few months ago.” For anyone keeping track, this means Bush was already informed about the cease in Iran’s nuclear weapons program while he was claiming that World War III is right around the corner.

That embedded link takes you to:

HADLEY: [W]hen was the president notified that there was new information available? We’ll try and get you a precise answer. As I say, it was, in my recollection, is in the last few months. Whether that’s October — August-September, we’ll try and get you an answer for that.

This is Hadley stating very clearly that Bush was given the NIE findings a few months ago, before he started talking about World War III?

I don’t see how Shakesville lives this down.

QUESTION: Steve, what is the first time the president was given the inkling that something? I’m not clear on this. Was it months ago, when the first information started to become available to intelligence agencies? […]

HADLEY: [W]hen was the president notified that there was new information available? We’ll try and get you a precise answer. As I say, it was, in my recollection, is in the last few months. Whether that’s October — August-September, we’ll try and get you an answer for that.

Just to be perfectly clear what Hadley is saying: he cannot for the life of him recall whether he went “Oh, shit!” when he heard Bush declare on October 17 that he believed Iran was trying to build a nuclear weapon.

It was, of course, Hadley’s job to be aware of the strong consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003. And to bring this to Bush’s attention. Poor guy probably doesn’t remember either when he first became aware of this.

The fact of that matter is that the NIE on Iran has existed (in pretty much its present form, presumably) for more than a year. As Gareth Porter of Inter Press Service reported on November 8:

A National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran has been held up for more than a year in an effort to force the intelligence community to remove dissenting judgments on the Iranian nuclear programme, and thus make the document more supportive of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney‘s militarily aggressive policy toward Iran, according to accounts of the process provided by participants to two former Central Intelligence Agency officers.

But this pressure on intelligence analysts, obviously instigated by Cheney himself, has not produced a draft estimate without those dissenting views, these sources say.
[...]
Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi … told IPS that intelligence analysts have had to review and rewrite their findings three times, because of pressure from the White House.

The Bush administration — heartened, no doubt, by all the ox-crap Americans have swallowed without question over the last seven years — now wants us to believe that although a draft NIE on Iran has been in existence for more than a year, and although the Bush administration has been deeply engaged in urgent efforts to avert World War III by preventing Iran from pursuing its nuclear weapons program, they decided it was best not to take the draft NIE into account at all. In fact, to keep the commander-in-chief entirely in the dark about the contents of the NIE. That a policy decision was made that averting World War III, or nuclear war, works so much better when you’re groping in the dark.

(2)
For the record, WaPo has a front page story this morning (by Peter Baker and Robin Wright) which confidently declares:

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.

In fact, that’s the first paragraph.

It’s really hard to tell from the article, but it sounds to me like they’re simply referring to the Stephen Hadley quote I started the post with. If that’s true, WaPo is going to have a hell of a lot of egg on their face.

The only elaboration of this first-paragraph claim comes very late in the article, and consists of:

Still, the administration understood how explosive the new conclusions would be and kept them tightly held. Hadley said Bush was first told in August or September about intelligence indicating Iran had halted its weapons program, but was advised it would take time to evaluate.

No one else is reporting any such bombshell this morning.

*** Update, 8 am ***
According to AP, Bush claimed at his press conference this morning that “he only learned of the new intelligence assessment last week”.

The president is the last to know, apparently. Why cloud his decision-making?