"From Hell's Heart, I Stab At Thee/For Hate's Sake, I Spit My Last Breath At Thee"

I Am Laughing At The Superior Intellect

By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Iran | John Bolton | National Security | NIE | Steve Clemons — Comments (6) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

It is no secret that blogger Steve Clemons has been a wee bit obsessed when it comes to the subject of former UN Ambassador John Bolton, leading, of course, to the titling of this post and the comparisons with one of the characters in this somewhat well known story. Clemons rarely misses a chance to let his obsessions go unsatisfied and so, today, in response to this editorial by Ambassador Bolton on the issue of the recent NIE on Iran, Clemons has this post comparing Bolton's rhetoric with MoveOn.org's "General Betray Us" ad that so spectacularly backfired. According to Clemons, Bolton is trashing intelligence analysts the same way that MoveOn.org trashed General David Petraeus, even stating that Bolton "essentially accuses the entire national security intelligence establishment of betraying American interests in the 2007 Iran National Intelligence Estimate."

Really? Let's look at the "proof" that Clemons offers for this . . . interesting proposition, proof that is presented in the form of an excerpt from Bolton's editorial.

Read on . . .

. . .many involved in drafting and approving the NIE were not intelligence professionals but refugees from the State Department, brought into the new central bureaucracy of the director of national intelligence. These officials had relatively benign views of Iran's nuclear intentions five and six years ago; now they are writing those views as if they were received wisdom from on high. In fact, these are precisely the policy biases they had before, recycled as "intelligence judgments."
That such a flawed product could emerge after a drawn-out bureaucratic struggle is extremely troubling. While the president and others argue that we need to maintain pressure on Iran, this "intelligence" torpedo has all but sunk those efforts, inadequate as they were. Ironically, the NIE opens the way for Iran to achieve its military nuclear ambitions in an essentially unmolested fashion, to the detriment of us all.

Nowhere--except in Clemons's fevered imaginings--can this be read as accusing the intelligence community or the national security apparatus as a whole of "betraying American interests." Bolton took issue with the methodology behind the NIE, as is his right to do. As a former Undersecretary of State for Arms Control, his commentary should be taken seriously. If Clemons wishes to take issue with that commentary, that would be his right, of course, but Clemons doesn't do that. Instead, he merely seeks to equate Bolton with the destructive caricature that MoveOn.org created for itself when it released the "General Betray Us" ad to near universal groans of disbelief and disapproval. Such attempts at character assassination are par for the course for Clemons, and they are driven by his obsession with Bolton, but they do not a substantive national security argument make.

It is, of course, a pity that Clemons chooses to ignore the substance of Bolton's commentary and instead relies on a smear job to substitute for an argument. But then, that is what we have come to expect from "the reality-based community," which once again shows that it is anything but. In the meantime, for Clemons, here is a little cinematic tribute that naturally comes to mind when thinking of his blogging style:

So quotable all around, that movie by Neil Stevens

"Our shields are lowering." "Raise them!"

"You lied." "I exaggerated."

"By the book?" "By the book."

Just so many compact, perfect little retorts.

HTML Help for Red Staters

Reply To This — User Info — #2

This is one of my all-time by Ksb

This is one of my all-time favorite quotes and it fits the subject perfectly. Clemens is more than a wee bit obsessed, he's terminally neurotic.

Reply To This — User Info — #3

I must be too geeky but i'd swear the display came off a TRS-80 by Joliphant

NT
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

Reply To This — User Info — #4

I don't know about the entire intelligence community by johnt

I'll just settle for most of them. But what's the difference,their incompetence is fast becoming legendary. If anything dangerous does develop they will just wash their hands of it and blame you know who.

Has anyone considered this whole thing may be just a plant, a counter-intelligence slight of hand. Like Iranian leaders don't know where the American media stands and how they would react to it? Like false info has never been planted before by intel agencies?

Somehow this has been treated as a defeat for Bush, when in fact he was depending on information from the sames sources as now. Yet again the left shows who they really regard as the enemy, product of an obsessive hatred.

"a man's admiration for absolute government is proportinate to the contempt he feels for those around him". Tocqueville

Reply To This — User Info — #5

Definitely Neurotic by SCClemons

This was a clever post. I think that the comparison is more apt than you think -- but clearly John Bolton's questions about the process of assembling the NIE and the key drafters involved is in part designed to cast doubt on them, their findings, and their motivations. I think Bolton should be able to pose any questions he likes. I do all of the time. I frequently questioned his motivations at the UN and at the State Department -- but what I found interesting is that this practice of questioning the motivations and the soundness of judgment is something Move On was attacked for in the Petraeus set up. Clearly, Move On was more strident -- but our role as participants in civil society should be to robustly challenge all the key players in these national security debates -- no one should get the edge of moral superiority. I should have written that in the Bolton post -- and didn't. But thanks for the interesting commentary. I just wish I knew more about video games....best regards, the frequently (though not terminally) neurotic. . .

Steve Clemons
Publisher, http://www.TheWashingtonNote.com

Reply To This — User Info — #6

Redstate