" Second, the NIE is internally contradictory and insufficiently supported. It implies that Iran is susceptible to diplomatic persuasion and pressure, yet the only event in 2003 that might have affected Iran was our invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, not exactly a diplomatic pas de deux."
Just for the record, I won't be bashing the French here, calling for freedom fries, sledgehammering automobiles, pouring out bottles of Dom, shaking down recount trailers. So please don't tase me bro, that is, if you just so happen to be from one of the red states.
I'm actually happy to see that Mr. Bolton, unlike one of his predecessors, Mr. Rumsfeld, who appeared to have struggled so mightily with " situational awareness " that, 9/11 aside, he wasn't even aware by the spring of 2005 that Iraqis had been sex tortured at Abu Ghraib even though Seymour Hersch, a pulitzer-prize winning journalist and one of the paragons of his generation, had written about it a year earlier in the New Yorker. What that serves to demonstrate is the power of the mass media to persuade public perception. 9/11 could not have been more demonstrative of that power, which is what lends Osama bin Laden the almost surreal nature of his persona. But the question at hand here is whether some veritable combination of media and war have the same kind of power to persuade an entire nation-state like Iran.
Do I sympathize with Don ? In a way, yes. I felt bad that, as Maureen Dowd had reported, others members of the Bush cabal had treated him as the elder eccentric uncle. Don was upset for a time that the French had opposed the invasion. It led to French-bashing which costs America diplomatic capital, particularly at the U.N., where because America is a superpower, America is held to a higher standard. Iran-Contra didn't help the Republican cause either. And now it's torture, which clearly violates the High Commission on Torture, which went into force in June, 1987, but seems to have been contradicted by a loophole in the Torture Treaty passed by a Republican Congress in 1994, which many of its imcoming members, taking their cues from Newt, who appears, at this juncture to be resigned to World War III, probably failed to read.
I don't exactly follow Mr. Bolton when he claims that the Iraqi Invasion has had little effect on diplomacy relative to Iran. He makes it appear as if the invasion was nothing more than an insignificant element of a broader diplomatic policy and geostrategic calculus. The very theme of the invasion was Saddam's suspected weapons-of-mass-destruction program, although it might also be looked upon as vindication for Saddam's use of poison gas during Desert Storm and alleged involvement in the 1994 CIA-Langley attack documented in the 9/11 Report, which presumably led to Saddam's suspected involvement with 9/11 itself, an attack for which Saddam was vindicated by the commission.
But here's the rub, which, I would hope Mr. Bolton might agree, could even be likened to the kind of intelligence analysis that might have, and notevenwithstanding sodomy or waterboarding, stopped 9/11 : if we're just now discovering, via our much beloved mass media, that it was Iran that allegedly bombed Argentina in 1994, rather than Al-Qaeda, which might have been the obvious conclusion as a result of the 1993 World Trade Center attack, and which may have led to the idea of Saddam's involvement, as a function of the belief that he was, as a Sunni Muslim, supporting Osama, which was, as has been noted by Senator Carl Levin ( D-Mi ), since, dispelled by the DIA in 2003, prior to the invasion, then how do we know that it was not Iran that bombed Langley in 2004, assuming, as we witnessed with the 7/7/05, and then 7/21/05, London bombings, some measure or degree of coordination and simultanaeity ?
So Saddam didn't have weapons of mass destruction, wasn't supporting Osama, and may have had nothing to do with the 1994 attack on Langley which resulted in a Clinton counterattack and likely, the 1998 incursion of alleged 1441 violations, and yet Saddam is dead. What we do know about the 1994 Langley attack is that it involved Pakistanis, which is not at all unusual, as so too did the 7/7/05 London subway bombings. What we know about the Iranian nuclear program, with respect to the latest intelligence, that enriched uranium had been discovered on a centrifuge at the University of Tehran, is that the centrifuge was ascertained from Pakistan. And there have been unsubstantiated reports that Syria was able to acquire nuclear technology from North Korea. But again, how do we know that it wasn't acquired from Pakistan ?
Moreover, there were also nuclear triggers discovered in Dubai, caught by customs, in transit, about which the status is still somewhat ambiguous as Dubai has attempted recently to purchase a significant part of the Nasdaq, and as Halliburton is currently set up a regional headquarters there.
More importantly, there was a French teen who was sodomized in Dubai, but the case hasn't been presecuted because it does not violate UAR law, even though it certainly violates international law and if I was Nick Sarkozy, I would not hesitate for a second to make my case to NATO that the entire government be forcibly deposed until such time as there was a law that might address such an atrocity.
That said, I would hesitate to support the surreptitious use of force, NATO or otherwise, regardless of whether there was an international legal vacuum, because it would open the door too easily to intervention on grounds that might sometimes be perceived to be tenuous. I would, however, sympathize with the argument, support pressure on the UAR to reform, notify the U.N. and contact NATO where a compliance plan was not set into motion in a timely manner. In other words, regarding such a matter, there would be no place for indifference, whether it was Abu Ghraib, or Dubai. Such a sitution would have to be acted upon or the door would be kept ajar to the possible future use of force.
How many of us were aware that Iran had bombed Argentina in 1994, an immediate precedent and probably almost certain cause of the Argentinian credit crisis that lingers on even today, and was exacerbated after 9/11 in a way that continues to pose a threat to world credit markets ? Were those attacks coordinated, and moreover, coordinated in such a way as to precipitate a global credit market crisis which could, as it did in 1987, result in a major stock market correction, a correction that military dictatorships worldwide would almost invariably leverage, leaving the United States with much less diplomatic capital than even the current Iraqi Invasion ?
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