Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: George W. Bush: A CIA Analysis

George W. Bush: A CIA Analysis 
 
by Ray McGovern 
It is as though I'm back as an analyst at the CIA, trying to estimate the
chances of an attack on Iran. The putative attacker, though, happens to be
our own president.
It is precisely the work we analysts used to do. And, while it is still a
bit jarring to be turning our analytical tools on the U.S. leadership, it
is by no means entirely new. For, of necessity, we Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have been doing that for almost six years
now – ever since 9/11, when "everything changed." 
Of necessity? Yes, because, with very few exceptions, American journalists
lose their jobs if they expose things like fraudulent wars.
The craft of CIA analysis was designed to be an all-source operation,
meaning that we analysts were responsible – and held accountable – for
assimilating information from all sources and coming to judgments on what
it all meant. We used information of all kinds, from the most
sophisticated technical collection platforms to spies to open media.
Here I have to reveal a trade secret, which punctures the mystique of
intelligence analysis. Generally speaking, 80 percent of the information
one needs to form judgments on key intelligence targets or issues is
available in open media.
It helps to have training from past masters of media analysis, which began
in a structured way in targeting Japanese and German media in the 1940s.
But, truth be told, everyone with a high-school education can do it. It is
not rocket science.
This is not to denigrate the contribution of CIA operations officers, case
officers running sensitive agents, for though small in percentage of the
whole nine yards available to be analyzed, information from such sources
can often make a crucial contribution.
Consider, for example, the daring recruitment in mid-2002 of Saddam
Hussein's foreign minister, Naji Sabri, who was "turned" into working for
the CIA and quickly established his credibility. Sabri told us there were
no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
My former colleagues, perhaps a bit naively, were quite sure this would
come as a vast relief to President George W. Bush and his advisers.
Instead, they were told that the White House had no further interest in
reporting from Sabri; rather, that the issue was not really WMD, it was
"regime change."
(Don't feel embarrassed if you did not know this; our corporate-owned,
war-profiteering media has largely suppressed all this.)
So our former colleague, operations officer par excellence Robert Baer,
reports (in this week's Time) that, according to his sources, the
Bush/Cheney administration is winding up for a strike on Iran, that Bush's
plan to put Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the terrorism list
points in the direction of such a strike, and that delusional
"neoconservative" thinking that still guides White House policy concludes
that such an attack would lead to the fall of the clerics and rise of a
more friendly Iran.
Hold on, it gets even worse: Baer's sources tell him that administration
officials are thinking that "as long as we have bombers and missiles in
the air, we will hit Iran's nuclear facilities."
VIPs member Phil Giraldi, writing in The American Conservative, earlier
noted that Karl Rove has served as a counterweight to Vice President Dick
Cheney, determined as Cheney seems to be to expand the Middle East
quagmire to Iran.
And former Pentagon analyst retired Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, who worked
shoulder-to-shoulder with the most rabid Pentagon neocons just before the
attack on Iraq, has put into words (on LewRockwell.com) speculation
several of us have been indulging in with respect to Rove's departure.
In short, it seems a good bet that Rove, who is no one's dummy and would
not want to have to "spin" an unnecessary war on Iran, lost the battle
with Cheney over the merits of a military strike on Iran, and only then
decided to spend more time with his family.
Whatever else Rove has been, he has served as a counterweight to Dick
Cheney's clear desire to expand the Middle East quagmire into Iran.
As for White House spokesperson Tony Snow, it seems equally possible that,
before deciding he has to make more money, he concluded that his stomach
could not withstand the task explaining why Bush/Cheney needed to attack
Iran.
With the propaganda buildup we have seen so far, what seems most likely,
at least initially, is an attack on Revolutionary Guard training
facilities inside Iran, and that can be done with cruise missiles.
With some 20 targets already identified by anti-Iranian groups, there are
enough assets already in place to do that job. But the while-we're-at-it
neocon logic referred to above may well be applied after, or even during,
that kind of attack from the air.
 
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 by Ray McGovern
Mi sembra attendibile la previsione sui tempi del possibile attacco,
del resto deve avvenire prima della fine del mandato
dell'amministrazione Bush, con il tempo necessario a completarne la
prima fase, ma con l'obiettivo di lasciare la gestione della fase
successiva alla prossima amministrazione.  Purché sia ancora
abbastanza acuta, tanto da costringere il prossimo presidente a
prendersene carico.
Visto che le elezioni ci saranno a gennaio 2009, che occorre mantenere
ad una certa distanza da quella data, diciamo almeno 6 mesi; che la
preparazione mediatica e logistica dell'attacco, in assenza di qualche
fatto eclatante che accelererebbe ogni cosa, potrebbe richiedere un
paio di mesi a partire dalla attribuzione dello status di
organizzazione terroristica ai pasdaran.
Dunque, la finestra temporale per l'attacco potrebbe andare da
dicembre 2007 a giugno 2008.
Certo, l'attacco all'Iran nelle attuali condizioni in M.O., nel mondo
e anche all'interno sarebbe un'operazione talmente rischiosa per gli
stessi USA che viene da pensare una cosa.
Viene da pensare che il gruppo di potere che ha portato Bush alla
presidenza e che ve lo mantiene ritiene ancora peggiore la situazione
che si determinerebbe se l'attacco all'Iran non vi fosse.

 dicembre 2007 a giugno 2008.
E l'astronave con gli alieni nascosta dietro alla luna potrebbe
atterrare sulla Terra tra novembre 2007 e aprile 2008 :)
*LOL*
-Stefano

 Visto che le elezioni ci saranno a gennaio 2009,
e da quando hanno spostato le elezioni a gennaio? Mi risulta che si
voti sempre a novembre, a gennaio il nuovo presidente entra in
carica...


Vero, ho "contratto" tutto a gennaio. Comunque, trattando di questioni che 
riguardano i poteri di governo, mi riferivo all'insediamento del presidente, non 
alle elezioni.