NIE Stuff: Joint Chiefs Chmn Off To Israel To Examine IDF Evidence On Iranian Nukes
The soon-to-be-former Iranian Nuclear Facility at Natanz.
Disappointed after failing to make their case on Iran and influence the outcome of the United States’s National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) released this week, Military Intelligence will present its hard core evidence on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program on Sunday to the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff during a rare visit he will be making to Israel.
Admiral Michael Mullen will land in Israel Sunday morning for a 24-hour visit that will include a one-on-one meeting with IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, as well as with Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
According to a Time magazine article published Wednesday, Mullen is a member of the Pentagon’s “anti-war [with Iran] group” that includes Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral William Fallon, current commander of the US Central Command.
In a recent press briefing in Washington, however, Mullen took a hard-line approach, refusing to rule out the possibility that military force will be used to stop Iran’s race towards nuclear power.
“I would never take the military option off the table,” Mullen told reporters, although he stressed that his remark did not mean that force would be used. Diplomacy, he added, was very important.
Mullen’s visit to Israel will be exactly a week after the publication of the NIE report that claimed Iran had frozen its nuclear military program in 2003 and has yet to restart it. During his visit, Military Intelligence plans to present him with Israel’s evidence that Iran is in fact developing nuclear weapons.
“The report clearly shows that we did not succeed in making our case over the past year in the run-up to this report,” a defense official said Thursday. “Mullen’s visit is an opportunity to try and fix that.”
In addition to Iran, Ashkenazi and his staff will also discuss with Mullen America’s commitment for Israel to retain its qualitative edge in the face of the sale of advanced JDAM missiles to Saudi Arabia.
F-22
In the past, Israel had asked the Pentagon to permit the sale of the F-22 fifth-generation stealth fighter jet - also known as the Raptor - but the request was rejected.
Mullen’s visit will be the first time a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has visited Israel in the past decade.
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Dam, that F-22 looks good, that said, fuck a bunch of diplomacy. You’d think their jaws would have locked-up by now.
December 7th, 2007 at 4:30 pmThe NIE is a poorly written political piece of crap. Any military officer that signed off on it should be relieved of their duties pronto.
Iran is steadily building up its nuke capacity. The IDF will straighten up the intel wonks.
Intel should never be political.Intel should be just the facts, not some political diatribe designed to make a CIC look either bad or good.
We need to purge all the Intel agencies of the attention whores like Plame and Wilson. These groups need to go back to the days of being apolotical in their reporting.
At present, anytime you see an NIE report, be a skeptic. Or do what I do, and laugh at it.
December 8th, 2007 at 6:47 amI hate to say this, but I wdn’t trust a damn word from one of Olmurderer’s errand boys.
I hate to say THIS, but I am 100% sure Bush has gone YELLA over the past year, and he IS gonna leave the Iran mess for his successor to clean up. He deliberately maneuvered to have the NIE “neutrally” abort any real smash against Iran. It is misguided to blame the reliably anti-intervention StateDept flunky bureaucrats for their predictable conclusions.
The script is already written, folks–our great nation is going BACK TO SLEEP, and it will take something much bigger than 9/11 to wake us up again. [Same in Israel]
Oh, well.
December 8th, 2007 at 10:20 am