By Philip Giraldi
"Twenty-first century going-to-war requires that the proper procedures be observed, even if the United States Congress has become shy about declaring war as required by the constitution. There was never any doubt that George W. Bush and his neocon team would go to war with Iraq, but they first obtained what they believed to be adequate justification from the United Nations and a green light in the form of a congressional resolution before they actually initiated conflict. Currently, there is no piece of paper relating to a possible new war that is more important than the impending National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran, which has been a work in progress for more than a year and a half. The last NIE on Iran, released in late 2007, was controversial in that it concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and had not resumed it. The document was immediately attacked by neoconservatives and the media, who responded that the Iranians might have a secret program and were intending to revive their efforts. Israel and its supporters have since been insisting that there is, in fact, a hidden program and have been constantly sending out alarms suggesting that a nuclear weapon is only six months or a year away. They keep revising forward the date whenever six months or a year passes without a weapon actually making an appearance.
"Twenty-first century going-to-war requires that the proper procedures be observed, even if the United States Congress has become shy about declaring war as required by the constitution. There was never any doubt that George W. Bush and his neocon team would go to war with Iraq, but they first obtained what they believed to be adequate justification from the United Nations and a green light in the form of a congressional resolution before they actually initiated conflict. Currently, there is no piece of paper relating to a possible new war that is more important than the impending National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran, which has been a work in progress for more than a year and a half. The last NIE on Iran, released in late 2007, was controversial in that it concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and had not resumed it. The document was immediately attacked by neoconservatives and the media, who responded that the Iranians might have a secret program and were intending to revive their efforts. Israel and its supporters have since been insisting that there is, in fact, a hidden program and have been constantly sending out alarms suggesting that a nuclear weapon is only six months or a year away. They keep revising forward the date whenever six months or a year passes without a weapon actually making an appearance.
The new Iran NIE has been delayed a number of times because of conflicting demands from the CIA analysts involved and from the White House. The analysts, badly burned by the heavily politicized 2002 NIE on Iraq, which led to a war, and also nervous about the barrage of criticism of the 2007 NIE on Iran, want the estimate to be completely credible and very tightly analyzed and reviewed. The Obama Administration wants, instead, a document that will give it whatever option it seeks to pursue vis-à-vis the Mullahs......"
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