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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RJA_ who wrote (26038)	12/5/2007 2:09:37 PM
From: carranza2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217750

It appears that the NIE, as late as 11/14, was not intended to be made public. See the entry on this very excellent blog dated 11/14 re: the NIE [you must scroll about 3/4 of the way down to find it on the page.] armscontrolwonk.com Sometime between 11/14 and yesterday, a contrary decision was made. My hypothesis is that the decision was made by folks higher in rank than McConnell, who is Director of National Intelligence, and who as late as two weeks ago did not intend to make the NIE public. Very, very few folks outrank McConnell. I think the chain of command leads directly from McConnell to Bush. Draw your own conclusions. I think that a lot of noise about attacking Iran is part of the negotiating environment. Just as Iran makes a lot of noise which can be disturbing, we make a lot of noise which makes them quite concerned. Impossible to tell if the publication of the NIE was done in exchange for a concession from Iran. Cannot be proven to a certainty, but it seems to me that there was no reason to go forward with it unless (1) W deliberately wished to deflate tensions and give diplomacy a chance or (2) there is some deal in place. Take your pick, one of them is right. I like (2) simply because it fits in with the non-yielding character of the Administration. There is the possibility, too, that W knew the NIE would be leaked and that its unintended publication could cause more harm than good. Thus, the Administration may have struck the intelligence community preemptively and ordered its publication before it leaked. This is a very real possibility because the Administration and the intelligence community are at war, IMO.