Didn’t our national security team miss the current global economic, what’s the president call it? Catastrophe? Just in the last few weeks, the global economy was added to the president’s daily national security brief: too late.
Now our U.S. intelligence assessment is that Iran does not have any highly enriched uranium.
“We assess now that Iran does not have any highly enriched uranium,” said Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair before the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday.
But what if he’s wrong? Hasn’t our intelligence community been wrong before?
Did they predict September 11 and the death of 3,000 Americans?
Didn’t the United States invade Iraq based upon a sure national security warning which was wrong? Didn’t our national security team miss the impending fall of the Soviet Union?
The mistakes made by our national security team have had far reaching impact and have been much more significant in recent times than its successes.
The Times (London) reported today that a former Gitmo prison inmate was again killing U.S. and British troops in Afghanistan. “The revelation of Rasoul’s return to the battlefield underscores the challenges faced by the Obama administration in carrying out its vow to close Guantanamo, and raises fresh questions about the quality of American intelligence….”
On Iran and its ability to make a nuclear weapon, what if they are wrong? What will that do to Israel, to world relations and to our national security?
Did our national security team know North Korea had a nuclear bomb? India? Pakistan? Did they know that A.Q. Khan was selling nuclear secrets all over the place?
Did our national security team know that those relesed from Gitmo would end up fighting the United States again?
Pardon me but I take no solace from yesterday’s national security assessment on Iran’s nuclear potential.
I’ll bet Israel doesn’t either….
On March 8, 2009, Israel’s Military Intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin, who told the cabinet on Sunday that Iran had “crossed the technological threshold” and that its attainment of nuclear military capability was now a matter of “incorporating the goal of producing an atomic bomb to its strategy.”
Amos Yadlin
Israeli’s view the possible development of a nuclear weapon in Iran as a life and deth proposition for Israel. They are not comforted by Iran’s President Ahmadinejad when he says the Holocaust didn’t happen, the Zionist State (Ahmadinejad refuses to say the word “Israel”) is illigitimate and Israel should be removed from the world’s map. And Israeli’s have been lied to in negotiations so often — and then attacked — that they put little stock in negotiations.
But the new U.S. president is sure he can negotiate for them with Syria, Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, even the Taliban.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Israel’s took little comfort in President Obama and in the estimates of his national security team.
And you’ll have to pardon Israel if some there believe that U.S. intelligence may sometimes be politicized. Obama’s seclection of known anti-Israel advocate Charles Freemanto be Chairman of the National Intelligence Council was proof enough for Israel.
This is life and death stuff in Israel. It isn’t clear yet that this is life and death to the Obama Administration which is waging war against Rush Limbaugh and eliminating the word terrorism from the government lexicon….
Related:
Obama’s Next Challenge: Iran, Israel, Russia? It’s Here Now
Obama Policy On Gitmo, Taliban, Afghanistan, Intel: As Stupid as It Gets
Peace and Freedom Global Future 
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