We don't need no intel !

Arthur Silber articulates a vitally important point here. He contends that it's a mistake to believe that the reason Bush invaded Iraq was because he had bad intel. Arthur claims (as the Downing Street memo made clear) that the decision was made to invade and then the intelligence was fixed around selling that conclusion. That's scary enough, but Arthur doesn't think that they're done yet. They've already started doing it again... with Iran. Read it all here.

If you contend that it is crucial for the intelligence to be correct and given how the argument is almost always presented, you are assuming that major policy decisions are made on the basis of that intelligence, at least to a significant degree. This is buying into Bush's defense entirely: "But everyone thought Iraq had WMD and was a serious and growing threat!" Never mind the lie about "everyone" having thought this, which everyone most certainly did not. The crucial point is that Bush is saying that he only launched the war on Iraq because of what the intelligence indicated. And even liberals still repeat this propaganda.

The record has been indisputably clear for some time now -- and the record is amplified almost every day -- that the decision to go to war was made first, entirely separate and apart from the intelligence, whatever it may have indicated and whether it was correct or not. Subsequently, the intelligence was "fixed" around the policy. To be more exact in terms of its purpose: the intelligence was used selectively and misleadingly as the propaganda to justify the war to the American public, and to the world. The servile media was the indispensable transmission belt used to convey the administration propaganda to the rest of us.

This is not a complicated point, and I cannot understand why people are so resistant to it.

[...]

Yes, accurate intelligence, both tactical and strategic, is of critical importance. But whether and to what extent that intelligence, accurate or not, actually influences decisions of policy is an entirely separate inquiry. As Tuchman, Kolko and many have others have noted, and as history has proven repeatedly, most of the time it does not.

A crucial part of the Iran propaganda campaign has been to steadily reduce the relevant time horizon, as I noted in this essay. The administration began with estimates of approximately a decade before Iran could have nuclear weapons -- which then got reduced to five years -- which then was further shrunk to a year or two -- then to a few months -- and now they are offering ludicrous stories about Iran having nukes within 16 days. Let me repeat the critical point: this is all propaganda. It doesn't matter in the least that they say this is what the intelligence indicates. Even if it were accurate, which almost all of it is not, the intelligence is not the foundation of the administration's foreign policy, with regard to Iran or more broadly.

In fact, I have thought for a few years that the decision to attack to Iran was made some time ago. I am more convinced of that now than I ever was before. The constant stream of scare stories about Iran is designed only to terrify the American public sufficiently, so that when Bush holds a press conference to announce air strikes against Iran that have already begun, enough people will believe that the strikes were necessary -- since Iran was about to launch nuclear weapons against us momentarily.

As with Iraq, all the major points will be lies. All of it will be war propaganda. And given our cowardly, inept, and fatally incompetent media and the lack of any significant political opposition -- which opposition, if it existed, ought to be making itself known now and not after the press conference -- and provided enough people are scared to the required degree, it will work. Again.

But let no one be heard to say that they were taken by surprise, or that they didn't see it coming, or that they didn't believe "they really meant it." We all see it coming and we all know they do mean it, and almost no one is doing a damned thing to stop it. No one is off the hook this time.

No one.