{"id":10056,"date":"2007-02-27T15:45:31","date_gmt":"2007-02-27T20:45:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/10056.html"},"modified":"2007-02-27T15:45:31","modified_gmt":"2007-02-27T20:45:31","slug":"i-wouldnt-start-with-suspicion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/i-wouldnt-start-with-suspicion\/","title":{"rendered":"‘I wouldn’t start with suspicion’"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s certainly not my intention to criticize Joe Lieberman every<\/i> day, but this one<\/a> just floored me.<\/p>\n

Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) said today that he is upset that critics have been questioning the administration’s intelligence on Iran, calling the reaction “unwarranted.” Lieberman said the “danger point” learned from the criticism is that the media and politicians reacted with “suspicion.” “I wouldn’t start with suspicion,” Lieberman said.<\/p>\n

Lieberman also encouraged the intelligence community to push their conclusions further and complained that there has been a reluctance of people in the administration to do so. He spoke out against what he sees as “a kind of defensiveness — I dare not call it timidity” of the intelligence community due to incorrect judgments made in the lead-up to Iraq.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Look, I realize that Lieberman has teamed up with the White House on foreign policy. And I appreciate the fact that Lieberman accepts the Bush administration’s line on the Middle East, no matter how many times it’s wrong. But to suggest that it’s “unwarranted” to be “suspicious” of the administration’s claims is simply breathtaking.<\/p>\n

Lieberman has it exactly backwards. For one thing, the administration, by its own admission, already experienced one of the greatest intelligence failures in American history in the lead-up to the war in Iraq. Now the same administration officials are coming forward with even more dubious claims about Iraq’s next door neighbor. Lieberman not only wants us to suspend doubt, he wants the intelligence community to be even more aggressive in jumping to conclusions.<\/p>\n

Lieberman has been awake and in the country the last four years, hasn’t he?
\n
\nFor that matter, while Lieberman’s arguing that we shouldn’t “start with suspicion,” our allies are reviewing the administration’s intelligence that Lieberman likes so much. Guess what they concluded<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Diplomats [in Vienna] say most U.S. intelligence shared with the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency has proved inaccurate and none has led to significant discoveries inside Iran….”Since 2002, pretty much all the intelligence that’s come to us has proved to be wrong,” a senior diplomat at the IAEA said. Another official here described the agency’s intelligence stream as “very cold now” because “so little panned out.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And, finally, how can any reasonable person not<\/i> be suspicious when the president and his intelligence team contradict each other<\/a> on the Iranian “threat”? You’ll recall that just two weeks ago, Bush administration officials asserted without evidence that bombs used by Shiites in Iraq had been tied to “the highest levels of the Iranian government.” Shortly thereafter, the president denied being sure about this, while White House officials said intelligence officials went “a little too far<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Faiz concluded<\/a>, “A Senate Intelligence Committee inquiry on pre-war Iraq intelligence found that more action was needed to “challenge assumptions and group think.” Lieberman’s approach dooms Congress to repeating its previous failure.”<\/p>\n

This need not be complicated. When an administration starts making dubious claims about an enemy, after establishing a record of making dubious claims about other enemies, it’s Congress job<\/i> to be “suspicious.” If Lieberman wants to just accept the White House’s claims at face value, he’s in the wrong place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s certainly not my intention to criticize Joe Lieberman every day, but this one just floored me. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) said today that he is upset that critics have been questioning the administration’s intelligence on Iran, calling the reaction “unwarranted.” Lieberman said the “danger point” learned from the criticism is that the media and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10056\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}