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RUSH: The president flew to Omaha today in a campaign appearance, got off Air Force One and had more to say about Iran and the National Intelligence Estimate.

THE PRESIDENT: It is clear from the latest NIE that the Iranian government has more to explain about its nuclear intentions and past actions, especially the covert nuclear weapons program pursued into the fall of 2003, which the Iranian regime has yet to acknowledge. The Iranians have a strategic choice to make. They can come clean with the Internet community about the scope of their nuclear activities, and fully accept a long-standing offer to suspend their enrichment program and come to the table and negotiate, or they can continue on a path of isolation that is not in the best interests of the Iranian people. The choice is up to the Iranian regime.

RUSH: Meanwhile, Ahm-a-nutjob went up there to declare victory over the United States in light of this report. Yesterday we had news that the UN pretty much agreed with this report. Now they’re sort of backing away from that. The French are not totally sold on this report. I want to play back for you something I said yesterday on this program about the NIE. Listen up.


RUSH ARCHIVE: [W]hen you hear Department of State — what’s the other one that sticks out to me here, CIA, of course, we knew they were in there. You put the Department of State in there, I guarantee there’s more sabotage coming out of that place regarding the Bush administration, and in certain elements and certain rings of the Pentagon, you have to examine not just the motives of Iran and the intent of Iran, you gotta examine motives and the intent of the people at the NIE who put together this best guess of all of their estimates.

RUSH: All right. So last night on Studio B, Fox News Channel, Former Ambassador John Bolton is the guest. Shepard Smith said, with all due respect to the people who forecast hurricanes, it almost feels like those folks who get all the prediction wrong, it sounds like they’re just throwing all this up in the air.

BOLTON: I really think the House and Senate intelligence committees have to look at how this NIE was put together, because there are a lot of unexplained points in here. I think there is a risk here, and I raised this as a question, whether people in the intelligence community who had their own agenda on Iran for some time now have politicized this intelligence and politicized these judgments in a way contrary to where the administration was going. I think somebody needs to look at that.

RUSH: Yeah, and I’ll tell you who needs to look at it: members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, because all we’ve received so far is the key judgment. We have not received the full text of the report, but they have it, or they can get it. The full text will not be released to the public. It’s got highly classified stuff in it, but they will get it. Somebody needs to look at the whole thing, see what it says in the report. This is a point made by Herb Meyer. Herb Meyer was a official in the Reagan administration. He was special assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence and Vice Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, and in these positions, Herb Meyer managed production of the US National Intelligence Estimates during the Reagan administration. He writes this in AmericanThinker.com.

‘In the Intelligence business, you get paid for just one thing: to be right. So here’s the key question about the Key Judgment of the National Intelligence Council’s new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear intentions and capabilities: Is this judgment supported by the evidence? The judgment that’s stirring up all the controversy — and it’s a real shocker — comes in the very first sentence: ‘We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.’ The judgment is astonishing for two reasons. First, it flies in the face of virtually everything we know — or thought we knew — about the Iranian regime, its capabilities and its intentions. Second, if the new Key Judgment is correct, it means that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program fully two years before publication of the National Intelligence Council’s 2005 Estimate on this same subject, which concluded ‘with high confidence’ that Iran ‘currently is determined to develop nuclear weapons.’

‘Let’s hope that the new Key Judgment is correct, because it would be very good news for world peace — although it would raise the troubling question of how our Intelligence Community could have been so wrong back in 2005. But if the new Key Judgment is incorrect — in other words, if Iran in fact is now building nuclear weapons — the political impact of its publication will be catastrophic. That’s because it will make it virtually impossible for President Bush to stop the Iranians by launching a military attack on their nuclear facilities or by working covertly to overthrow the regime itself. And, of course, it would raise even more troubling questions about the capabilities of our Intelligence Community.’ This is key. This is key: ‘[I]t will make it virtually impossible for President Bush to stop the Iranians by launching a military attack,’ because they’re not developing their program anymore, so says the NIE. Who are they?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Back to Herb Meyer, former national intelligence expert, Reagan administration. ‘To understand what to do next, keep in mind that all NIEs consist of two parts: the ‘Key Judgments’ and the text itself. It’s the text that includes, or should include, the evidence that our intelligence agencies have gathered relevant to the issue at hand. Obviously, you complete the text before writing the Key Judgments, which emerge from the text itself. And because the Key Judgments are just that — judgments — it sometimes happens that the leaders of our various intelligence agencies will agree on the evidence but disagree about the meaning of the evidence. That’s why there are often dissenting opinions within the Key Judgments.

‘What was released on Monday is only the Key Judgments. The text itself hasn’t been released — and won’t be, because the text presumably contains highly classified data relating to what we’ve learned about Iran’s nuclear programs from all sources including, of course, our spies and satellites. But the text is available to leading members of Congress, including members of both the House and Senate intelligence oversight committees. Today — right now, this instant — every one of these individuals should get hold of a copy of the NIE and read it. More precisely, they should cancel whatever appointments and public events are on their calendars, turn off their cell phones, then sit quietly with a pen in hand and work their way, slowly and carefully, through the text of the NIE. And when they’ve done that, each Representative or Senator should step forward to report — without giving details — whether the Key Judgment about Iran’s nuclear weapons program is, or isn’t, supported by the evidence.’

The only problem with this is that we’re assuming that the members of these committees are smart enough to do this. ‘Given today’s partisan political atmosphere — and, even more distressing, the limited intellectual abilities of the people we elect — this may not be sufficient to provide the confidence we need. … It is no exaggeration to say that Iran holds the key to whether or not the world is facing a nuclear war. Surely, it’s worth an extra effort to be confident that this time, our Intelligence Community has got it right.’ That’s Herb Meyer, served during the Reagan administration, special assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence and Vice Chairman of the National Intelligence Council.

Now, also at AmericanThinker.com today, a piece by Ed Lasky entitled: ‘The Suspect Provenance of the NIE Report.’ For those of you in Rio Linda, provenance is essentially credibility. ‘The Wall Street Journal editorial that ran this morning echoes and expands upon suspicions first articulated by the New York Sun that the National Intelligence Estimate was cooked up by bureaucrats eager to embarrass George Bush and transform US policy towards Iran.’ Well, I must say, ladies and gentlemen, I first raised those suspicions myself on this program and did so yesterday, and you just heard the audio sound bite of me from my program yesterday doing so. ‘A dynamic is at work that will serve Iranian interests by throwing a wrench in plans to expand sanctions against it for its nuclear program; it also will serve to veto any plans to attack its nuclear facilities.’ I cannot emphasize enough how crucial a point this is.

Because of this NIE Key Judgment that was put out on Monday, ‘they haven’t been working on their nuke program since 2003,’ we’re hamstrung now, folks. We can’t attack ’em. We can’t increase sanctions, and, of course, a number of Democrats in this country, leftists around the world, are already pointing fingers of blame at George W. Bush and warning him. The Russians are saying, ‘We’re not going to help you increase sanctions on Iran, we’re not going to do it.’ Politically it would be impossible to attack even if you had the evidence now, because of this report. ‘The three main authors of this report are former State Department officials with previous reputations that should lead one to doubt their conclusions.’ Would you go back, Mr. Maimone, grab audio sound bite number two. I want you to hear again, in my own words, what I said about all this yesterday, mounting suspicion. This was intelligence guided by experience, folks. This was not a wild guess.

RUSH ARCHIVE: [W]hen you hear Department of State — what’s the other one that sticks out to me here, CIA, of course, we knew they were in there. You put the Department of State in there, I guarantee there’s more sabotage coming out of that place regarding the Bush administration, and in certain elements and certain rings of the Pentagon, you have to examine not just the motives of Iran and the intent of Iran, you gotta examine motives and the intent of the people at the NIE who put together this best guess of all of their estimates.

RUSH: Yesterday, that was me on this program. ‘The three main authors of this report are former State Department officials with previous reputations that should lead one to doubt their conclusions. All three are ex-bureaucrats who, as is generally true of State Department types, favor endless rounds of negotiation and ‘diplomacy’ and oppose confrontation. These three officials, according to the Wall Street Journal, have ‘reputations as hyper-partisan anti-Bush officials.’ ‘They are Tom Fingar, formerly of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research; Vann Van Diepen, the National Intelligence Officer for WMD; and Kenneth Brill, the former U.S. Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’ Tom Fingar was a State Department employee who was an expert on China and Germany — he has no notable experience, according to his bio in the Middle East and its geopolitics. Vann Van Diepen is also a career State Department bureaucrat, who, according to the New York Sun, is one of the State Department bureaucrats who want ‘revenge’ for having their views regarding Iran ignored by the Bush Administration. He is now seeking to further his own agenda.

‘As the Sun wrote in their editorial yesterday: ‘Vann Van Diepen, one of the estimate’s main authors, has spent the last five years trying to get America to accept Iran’s right to enrich uranium. Mr. Van Diepen no doubt reckons that in helping push the estimate through the system, he has succeeded in influencing the policy debate in Washington. The bureaucrats may even think they are stopping another war.’ Vann Diepen also shares a lack of experience in dealing with Iran or the region. The third main author comes in for particular criticism in the Wall Street Journal editorial. Kenneth Brill served as the US Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (the IAEA). This is an agency that has served to enable Iranian’s quest for nuclear weapons. The head of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, has even been called a friend by the Iranian regime. As he should be, for he has been an enabler of its nuclear weapons program and has stiff-armed European Union diplomats who have worked to restrain Iran. ElBaradei and the IAEA have over-reached and now seek to control diplomatic negotiations with Iran — a function that is beyond its mandate. Brill was apparently unwilling to stop this mission creep and put an end to ElBaradei’s efforts to help Iran. Or, as the Wall Street Journal hints, maybe he was just incompetent. This hint comes from former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton’s (who headed counter-proliferation efforts in the State Department previous to his UN posting),’ and he has a book out, you’ve heard what he said about all this on Fox last night.

‘Brill also has no previous history of experience dealing with Iran. (He graduated from Business School at Berkeley in 1973.)’ So exactly what a number of people have suspected is certainly true here. You have some disgruntled State Department people, one of them actively pursuing a program of allowing the Iranians to enrich uranium, sabotage, unhappy with the Bush administration. It’s exactly the kind of thing that I suspected and feared yesterday, and the president is not backing down from this and he’s not accepting this per se in the sense that this doesn’t mean they’re not a threat, this doesn’t mean that they’re not going to continue to try later on down the road, if they have, indeed, stopped. They’re still enriching uranium, and you don’t do that to drive cars around and provide electricity for the Iranian people.

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