Reaping What You Sow

See also: Karma, the Bitchiness of Payback, Pride going before a fall, etc.

Kevin Drum points to an interesting NYT piece today:

In mid-July, senior American intelligence officials called the leaders of the international atomic inspection agency to the top of a skyscraper overlooking the Danube in Vienna and unveiled the contents of what they said was a stolen Iranian laptop computer.

The documents, the Americans acknowledged from the start, do not prove that Iran has an atomic bomb. They presented them as the strongest evidence yet that, despite Iran's insistence that its nuclear program is peaceful, the country is trying to develop a compact warhead to fit atop its Shahab missile, which can reach Israel and other countries in the Middle East....

So - Iran is looking to get a bomb. Not exactly news, but it might be the smoking gun the US needs for it's hardline policies against Tehran. So, what's the problem?

Nonetheless, doubts about the intelligence persist among some foreign analysts. In part, that is because American officials, citing the need to protect their source, have largely refused to provide details of the origins of the laptop computer beyond saying that they obtained it in mid-2004 from a longtime contact in Iran. Moreover, this chapter in the confrontation with Iran is infused with the memory of the faulty intelligence on Iraq's unconventional arms. In this atmosphere, though few countries are willing to believe Iran's denials about nuclear arms, few are willing to accept the United States' weapons intelligence without question....

Without revealing the source of the computer, American intelligence officials insisted that it had not come from any Iranian resistance groups, whose claims about Iran's nuclear program have had a mixed record for accuracy....

The briefing landed with something of a thud. Some officials found its arguments superficial and inconclusive. "Yeah, so what?" said one European expert who heard the briefing. "How do you know what you're shown on a slide is true given past experience?"

Funny, you'd almost think that some people remembered being lied to sometime in the early months of 2003. Unfortunately for the world, their numbers didn't include the American public in November, 2004.

One of the things that amazed me was how, in the run-up to the war, Rumsfeld, Cheney and others all spoke and acted like the rest of the world had no memory. Some examples: Rumsfeld referring to France and Germany as "old Europe." Did Rumsfeld not think that the US would ever need French or German help again? How about Cheney's remarks:

"And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. I think Mr. ElBaradei frankly is wrong. And I think if you look at the track record of the International Atomic Energy Agency and this kind of issue, especially where Iraq's concerned, they have consistently underestimated or missed what it was Saddam Hussein was doing. I don't have any reason to believe they're any more valid this time than they've been in the past."

As it turned out, ElBaradei was 100% correct. Gee, it's a good thing the US doesn't need the IAEA's help with anything else these days, like say a hostile country developing a nuclear weapons program.

But I think what personally shocked me most was when Paul Wolfowitz called for the Turkish military to disobey it's civilian government:

“I think for whatever reason they did not play the strong leadership role on that issue that we would have expected.”

When politely reminded that the military (which has overthrown four elected governments in the last 45 years in Turkey) is usually criticized for interfering too much into politics, Wolfowitz responded: “I think it’s perfectly appropriate, especially in your system, for the military to say it was in Turkey’s interest to support the United States in that effort.(...) My impression is they didn’t say it with the kind of strength that would have made a difference.”

What would Wolfowitz have preferred, a coup? On second thought, don't answer that.

My point is this: For reasons passing understanding, the American leadership seemed to believe that, with a victory in Iraq, all would be forgiven, or at the very least forgotten. As it turns out, they got neither victory nor amnesia. And now, with an extremist running Tehran (in large part because or the Iraq war) rapidly seeking nuclear weapons, the US can't muster enough international support to oppose this real danger to the peace of the world. And, even if they could get international support, the US military doesn't have the spare capacity to attack any other country.

So now Iran gets to join the nuclear club without fear of reprisals, and Israel loses it's nuclear monopoly. If this is where we're headed, US interests in the Middle East will be ruined.