Dangerous Ambiguity

According to the New York Times, U.S. intelligence experts believe Iran isn't currently planning to build a nuclear weapon. Instead, it may be using Saddam Hussein's disinformation playbook -- not the smartest move when facing adversaries whose patience for "strategic ambiguity" has declined since Sept. 11:

[S]ome intelligence officials and outside analysts believe there is another possible explanation for Iran’s enrichment activity, besides a headlong race to build a bomb as quickly as possible. They say that Iran could be seeking to enhance its influence in the region by creating what some analysts call “strategic ambiguity.” Rather than building a bomb now, Iran may want to increase its power by sowing doubt among other nations about its nuclear ambitions. Some point to the examples of Pakistan and India, both of which had clandestine nuclear weapons programs for decades before they actually decided to build bombs and test their weapons in 1998.

Iran's Shi'a Pet?

Most of my former colleagues at the Center Previously Known As Nixon were skeptics about President Bush's invasion of Iraq. Now one of its scholars, Dov Zacheim, describes the strategic consequences of replacing Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated Baathist regime with Nuri al-Maliki, whom Zakheim calls "nothing more than a Shi'a strongman":

Maliki insists that he is not a tool of the Iranians. Strictly speaking, he is correct. Iraq will never allow itself to be completely dominated by Tehran. Nevertheless, just as there can be no denying that Iran was the real victor of Operation Iraqi Freedom because America defanged its only seriously powerful regional rival, so too is it true that Iraq has increasingly come to share Tehran’s perspective on regional affairs. Witness its abstention on the Arab League’s vote to suspend Syria. Iraq is now firmly rooted in what King Abdullah of Jordan years ago termed “the Shi’a crescent,” which includes also Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon, which also abstained from the Arab League vote, and Syria.

Defying The President

In a slashing critique of Donald Rumsfeld's new memoir, "Slate"'s Fred Kaplan essentially accuses the former secretary of defense and Vice President Dick Cheney of defying President Bush and helping fuel an insurrection that cost thousands of lives.

At issue are two disastrous orders by Jerry Bremer, who ran Iraq after the U.S.-led coalition ousted Saddam Hussein in 2003. One was to disband the Iraqi army, the other to ban members of Saddam's Baathist party from the new government. Many whom Bremer scorned ended up joining the bloody insurgency. Kaplan surmises that the orders came from Cheney, with Rumsfeld's blessing and in spite of decisions to the contrary in which the president had participated:

[T]he NSC did take up the issue of what to do with the Iraqi army and the Baathists. On March 10, a week before the invasion, a principals meeting—attended by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Tenet, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and all of their top aides—decided that, after the war, a truth and reconciliation commission would be set up, similar to those in post-apartheid South Africa and post-Communist Eastern Europe, to ferret out the undesirable Baathists from those who could work for a new government. Staff analysts predicted that only about 5 percent of the party would have to be removed. On March 12, at another principals meeting, it was decided to disband the Republican Guard—Saddam's elite corps and bodyguards—but to call the regular army's soldiers back to duty and to reconstitute their units after a proper vetting.

Both of these decisions were unanimous. In other words, Bremer's first two orders constituted acts of massive insubordination. Most of the NSC officials, including Bush, first read about the two orders in a newspaper.

Rumsfeld doesn't mention either of these meetings in his 815-page memoir.

Man Up, And Pass The Iced Tea

Richard Dreyfuss's snarling caricature of Dick Cheney in Oliver Stone's "W." seemed way off base. but now the former president himself has described being called out by his real-life #2 over fine bone china:

At one point during their private weekly lunch, Mr. Cheney questioned whether Mr. Bush would follow through on the threats against Mr. Hussein. “Are you going to take care of this guy, or not?” Mr. Cheney demanded.

Gone

Photo by Carolyn Cole, Los Angeles Times

"Come Home America" Watch, Day 33

Two New York University professors warn Barack Obama that since the public permits Democratic Presidents relatively little margin of error when it comes to foreign policy, he should take care to frame his Afghanistan decision, whatever it turns out to be, in just the right way. Their "New Republic" article continues with this bit of poll-based advice:

Current survey data show that Americans are much more enthusiastic about our military presence in Afghanistan--to the tune of 30 percentage points--if it is framed as an attempt to weaken terrorists' ability to attack the United States, rather than an attempt to build a stable democracy. Obama should repeat the first of these rationales over and over again. He should never mention the second one in a speech to the American people.

I'm sure the professors don't mean to suggest that if Obama's goals still include nation-building, he should cover it it up for political purposes. As a matter of fact, President Bush made exactly the same mistake in Iraq. Although he and his neoconservative advisers envisioned a war aimed at replacing Saddam Hussein with the Middle East's second democracy, they presented it to the American people, who are wisely averse to nation-building efforts, as a step to protect our national security against Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction. When it became clear that there had been no immediate threat, Bush insisted that the Iraqi people and the world were still better off without Saddam Hussein. They undoubtedly were, but that wasn't a good enough reason by itself to go to war.

That's why the fundamental question for Obama in Afghanistan (irrespective of what his speech says when he announces his policy) remains whether the threat to our interests posed by terrorist forces and enablers in the country is sufficient to justify a large presence of ground troops.

Hat tip to Mike Cheever

Frank Rich's Astonishing Accusation

Astonishingly, Frank Rich writes that Bush administration officials may have ordered Abu Zubaydah to be tortured in 2002 not because they feared an imminent terrorist attack, as they say, but so he would fabricate a connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein:

Five years after the Abu Ghraib revelations, we must acknowledge that our government methodically authorized torture and lied about it. But we also must contemplate the possibility that it did so not just out of a sincere, if criminally misguided, desire to “protect” us but also to promote an unnecessary and catastrophic war. Instead of saving us from “another 9/11,” torture was a tool in the campaign to falsify and exploit 9/11 so that fearful Americans would be bamboozled into a mission that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. The lying about Iraq remains the original sin from which flows much of the Bush White House’s illegality.

Astonishing, if true. If you are wondering about Rich's source, it's this comment by Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), who speculated to Rich about why investigators were putting so much heat on Zubaydah:

They’d say it was to get more information. But they were desperate to find a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq.

A politician's speculation leading to a direct charge, in print, of what would probably be an impeachable or indictable offense. Astonishing.