Israel Knew About NIE Before Bush Says He Was Informed

What a total crock! How can anyone possibly believe this?

Of course, let's take a stroll in Bushland for a moment and pretend that it is true. What does it say about this administration? The N.I.E on Iran was known to Israel before our own president knew about it? Who gave it to them? Why isn't the government looking for the person who gave Israel this information. Seems, does it not, that that would be a treasonous act? If the president didn't even know about it, he could not have ordered the NIE released to Israel?

Who gave the NIE to Israel?

Report: Israeli Defense Officials Knew At Least a Month Ago About NIE Findings, Weeks Before Bush Claims He Was Informed

Submitted by mark karlin
Thu, 12/06/2007 - 7:22am. EditorBlog

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

December 6, 2007

According to the authoritative Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, "Israel has known about the report for more than a month. The first information on it was passed on to Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and to Shaul Mofaz, who is the minister responsible for the strategic dialog with the Americans. The issue was also discussed at the Annapolis summit by Barak and U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and it seems also between Bush and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert."

To say the least, this would put Bush in the unexplainable position of claiming he just found out about the NIE, while his administration had told the Israelis weeks ago that the Iranian nuclear bomb program was stopped in 2003. In short, Bush is basically wanting us to believe that he was the last to know about this "bombshell" intelligence finding.

Furthermore, the one mainstream media company that regularly seeks out the story behind the story (McClatchy Newspapers), reported this story on Nov. 4: "Experts: No firm evidence of Iranian nuclear weapons."

Yet, Bush would have us believe a diligent newspaper reporter knew about the NIE findings before he did.

This is just one in a long series of lies and deceptions that the Bush Administration has inflicted on the American people.

Let's just take three examples that had disastrous consequences.

1) Bush originally claimed that he had received no warning about a potential 9/11, but it turned out later that he and Condoleezza Rice were briefed about the determination of Osama bin Laden to strike in the United States and to use hijackings. That was in the summer just before the fateful day of September 11th. Bush and Rice did nothing to put airports on heightened security. When a reporter actually pressed Bush on the summer warning, Bush claimed, as did Rice, that if they had been specifically warned that planes were going to be specifically flown into the World Trade Center Towers that they would have done something. Reporters didn't manage to summon the common sense to challenge him that the 9/11 tragedy was a result of hijackings, and that they had been warned about likely hijackings by Al-Qaeda and did nothing to heighten security at airports. In fact, Bush reportedly dismissed a CIA briefer from his Crawford Ranch, telling him derisively that now that he [the briefer] had covered his ass by warning Bush he could leave.

2) In the fall before the infamous and false Niger statement in Bush's State of the Union that tried to tie Saddam Hussein to the acquisition of uranium to make a nuclear bomb, George Tenet and the CIA warned the White House that the claim was dubious at best. It was removed, as a result, from an October speech Bush was going to make. But seeking to ratchet up fear among Americans about a potential Iraqi nuclear bomb, the White House knowingly reinserted the claim several months later in the State of the Union address. Rice, Bush and Cheney claimed that they had never been told that it was an unfounded assertion.

3) Bush claimed, earlier this week, that he was just given the findings of the NIE document a few days ago. HE may be parsing words here by sticking to a technical truth: he was just given the final NIE document, as a document, last week. But he was briefed in August about what would be in the report, including the "bombshell" finding that Iran was not now developing a nuclear weapon.

Once again, Bush plays fast and loose with the truth, in order to ensure that the facts will never get in the way of his and Cheney's "Masters of the Universe" agenda.

Israeli officials knew that the combined American intelligence agencies had concluded that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program four years ago, while Bush and Cheney continued to push for an attack that would probably ignite the Middle East.

Americans have once again been played for fools by the Bush Administration on matters of utmost importance to our national security.

The question remains that since the Director of Homeland Security had vowed not to release the NIE (obviously because it made Bush and Cheney out to be liars and undercut their exhortation to stop World War III by starting it with a limited air nuke attack on Iran), why was it suddenly released without explanation?

In an interview, Cheney hinted that the fear that it might be imminently leaked was behind the startling public appearance of the document and its damning [to the Bush Administration] findings: "Cheney said the assessment was released because “there was a general belief that we all shared that it was important to put it out — that it was not likely to stay classified for long, anyway." [BuzzFlash italics]

One can speculate that the intelligence community or Pentagon brass had had enough of catastrophic decision making by Bush, Cheney and their extremist aides -- almost all personally blinded by their zealotry in military and intelligence matters.

We can only hope that this is the real explanation, because that would mean that there is a real mutiny taking place and that the military and the spooks are determined not to allow the worst to happen. Nevertheless, all it would take is an attack that could be blamed on Iran and the Joint Chiefs and all the Intel. agencies would be helpless to stop the madmen in the White House.

Perhaps the Bush Administration, faced with a simmering rebellion or an imminent leak, had to fire the smoking gun themselves, in order to spin it the best that they could.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


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