With former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton and other critics complaining that the National Intelligent Assessment (NIE) of Iran’s nuclear capabilities is tantamount to policy-making by “refugees from the State Department brought into the new central bureaucracy of the director of national intelligence” who have been hostile to the Bush administration’s foreign policy objectives,  Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) is planning to introduce legislation to constitute a bipartisan congressional commission to investigate the report’s conclusions and specific intelligence on which they are based.

Some details about the intelligence that went into the 2005 and 2007 NIE reports are trickling out. The Washington Post reports that an Iranian defector with a laptop computer stuffed with “thousands of pages of drawings and information stored on the computer indicating that Iran had been trying to retrofit its longest-range missile, the Shahab III, to carry a nuclear payload … formed the backbone of a National Intelligence Estimate issued in 2005 that declared 'with high confidence' that Iran was working to build a bomb.”

According to the WaPo, President Bush was specifically interested in the status of Shahab III and pressed intelligence agencies for more information. The effort yielded communications intercepts that included conversations between Iranian military officials involved in the weapons development program - one whose names appeared on the Iranian defector’s laptop. The New York Times reports that the military officials “complained bitterly about what they termed a decision by their superiors in late 2003 to shut down a complex engineering effort to design nuclear weapons, including a warhead that could fit atop Iranian missiles.”

Ironically, these intercepted communications were corroborated by the information on the laptop that led the NIE to conclude that Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons: The laptop contained no new drawings on its hard drive after February 2003.

Nonetheless, as Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) points out, “If [the NIE] is inaccurate, it could result in very serious damage to legitimate American policy."  Writing in The Christian Science Monitor security expert Bennett Ramberg suggests a way to keep tabs on Iran’s nuclear intentions without resorting to cloak-and-dagger methods that may unearth disinformation as well as actionable intelligence:

In 2005 and 2006, Tehran called for "international partnerships" and "joint ownership" of fuel-cycle facilities that would allow complete transparency through co-management of enrichment plants. Reluctant to legitimize Tehran's enrichment foothold, the US ignored the overture. But, unable to get support from China and Russia for more economic penalties, Washington today doesn't have any practical alternative. …

Looking forward, however, the US intelligence community concedes that "we do not know whether it [Iran] currently intends to develop nuclear weapons." The estimators warn that Tehran will continue to expand the number of enrichment centrifuges. Today, Iran operates 3,000 machines despite "significant technical problems." In time, it proposes to have 50,000 which, un-tethered, will provide it with the option to go nuclear. …

[T]he "international joint ownership" and "international partnerships" Tehran advocated would include co-decisionmaking and facility access that assures Iran's nuclear fuel cycle remains on the straight and narrow to avoid a weapons breakout.

A new door would open to resolve the enrichment impasse if two things happened. First, tethering must be linked to Iran's promised ratification and implementation of the Additional Protocol, allowing inspectors unimpeded visits to all suspicious nuclear enterprises. Second, it must be tied further to Security Council adoption of automatic onerous punitive measures to combat cheating – a military blockade of the country, for example.

Those who would oppose this strategy by claiming that it would enhance Iran's weapons breakout capacity ought to acknowledge that today's untethered program poses the greater risk.

Would the Iranians have floated this trial balloon if they had something to hide? By the time Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s was elected president of Iran in June 2005 the country’s nuclear program had been had been halted for roughly 18 months, according to the NIE – so why did he defy the U.S., International Atomic Energy Agency and UN Security Council? Standing up to President Bush not only played well on the Arab street, but could have been an elaborate fake-out to get the administration to overplay its hand as it had with WMD in Iraq, further damaging America’s international credibility. 

Mormonism And The MSM

For months, the MSM has been deeply deceptive about Mormonism – almost as deceptive as Mitt Romney himself.

It’s not just that the MSM is not asking the right questions. Since Romney announced his candidacy, the media has aided and abetted him in deliberately sidestepping or miscasting the issues raised by his faith.

Writing in Slate, Vanity Fair columnist Christopher Hitchens calls Romney’s handling of the rare media question about his beliefs a form of “three-card monte.” The tactic is working: “Most journalists have tacitly agreed that it's off-limits to ask the former governor about the tenets of the Mormon cult.”

Time magazine's James Poniewozik wonders whether "Romney is banking on the squeamishness of the media” on matters of faith: “The media are nervous to begin with about being painted as secularist elitists out of touch with 'real America.' This might make the press more likely to give credit to claims of 'bigotry' and frame the question as to whether Romney 'overcame' them - rather than, say, whether … voters' reasons for rejecting him are valid in the first place."

In contrast to Hitchens, who demands “straight answers” from Romney about why he is being secretive – if not downright dodgy (second item) – about his beliefs, The Wall Street Journal’s John Fund and other “journalists” actually advised Romney to flick away inconvenient inquires with glib answers. One reader vainly pleaded with Fund to do his job and not cover the Romney campaign by recycling PR backgrounders put out by the Mormon Church.

Romney himself is faulted by some for being fuzzy about his beliefs to woo a group of voters who are fervent about theirs.

Writing in The Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan argues that, "He simply cannot elide the profound theological differences between the LDS church and mainstream Christianity. … [I]f you are appealing to religious people, especially fundamentalists, on the basis of faith, you cannot logically then ask them to ignore the content of the faith."

It is precisely what Romney wants the media and voters to ignore – plus his wounded swan act – that drives Hitchens to apoplexy (to be fair, he’s perpetually in a state of near-apoplexy so it doesn’t take much for him to get the rest of the way there):

Romney makes himself absurd by saying that Mormons may not be asked about the tenets of their faith, lest this infringe the constitutional ban on a religious test for public office. Here is another failure of understanding on his part. He is not being told: Answer this question in the wrong way, and you become ineligible. He is being told: Your family is prominent in a notorious church that proselytizes its views in a famously aggressive manner. Are you only now deciding to make a secret of your beliefs? And if so, why?

Would he expect a Scientologist to be able to avoid questions about L. Ron Hubbard? … If an atheist was running against him, would Romney make nothing of the fact? …

Jay Cost of RealClearPolitics explains why Romney’s strategy of preaching to the evangelical choir was doomed from the start:

Five years ago, he had little to do with evangelical Christians. Now - through his positions, his language, and his emphases - he wants them to believe he is just like they are. … But surely he must expect those voters to be wary of the systematic changes that a 60 year old man has undergone ... Is it unreasonable for those whom he is openly courting (on their terms) to inquire a bit about the origins of his policy preferences, to want some insight into his inner being, to see whether he will remain faithful to his promises once in office?

The Speech was billed as "an opportunity for Governor Romney to share his views on … how [his] own faith would inform his presidency if he were elected" – but ended up being “a caricature of Clintonian triangulation,” which left many Christians unsatisfied and unmoved:

† Republican Steve Carlson, a Pentecostal Christian and a consultant for the nonprofit voter-education organization Iowa Christian Alliance tells The Wall Street Journal (subscription required): "If my choice is between Mike Huckabee, who I know is saved, and Gov. Romney, who as a Mormon … [sic] I'm going to pick Mike Huckabee" while fellow Iowan and Huckabee supporter Bernie Hayes says, "I don't want a president who believes something so off-base. The fact that Mr. Romney doesn't want to discuss his faith "makes it worse."

† Peter Bonnano, pastor of Grace Capital Church in Pembroke, NH, tells The Concord Monitor that The Speech was “pretty generic” and that “I don't think he's going to change anyone's mind who knows the doctrine of Mormonism." Bonnano adds: "He made a comment in his speech that he was unwilling to describe the distinctive doctrines. Why not? It's deceptive when you're unwilling to say, 'I really do believe in that.' Tom Cruise is willing to talk about Scientology."

† Father Jonathan Morris, a Catholic priest who comments on matters of faith for Fox News, is also troubled by Romney’s evasiveness: “[I]f today becomes the unraveling point of his candidacy, it will be because Mitt Romney did not have the courage or wisdom to say what he, as a Mormon, actually believes - all of it, without pretending his creed is no different than the Christian creed.”

Taken together, these folks are saying that The Speech amounted to nothing more than putting lipstick on a pig – while maintaining that the pig is, in fact, a horse. Honesty is always the best policy.

Editorial Note: Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly and other conservatives made hay out of The Washington Post’s editorial that The Speech “fell short” because of Romney’s “failure to recognize that America is composed of citizens not only of different faiths but of no faith at all and that the genius of America is to treat them all with equal dignity.” With all due respect, implicit in freedom of worship is freedom not to worship so O’Reilly is wrong on this one – it’s not a “secular-progressive” thing, it’s a Constitutional rights thing.

Speaking of atheists, Hitchens ridicules Romney’s “glib slogan that ‘freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom’” and argues that “we do not require pious lectures on the American founding” from “a fool for Joseph Smith, a convicted fraud and serial practitioner of statutory rape who at times made war on the United States and whose cult has been made to amend itself several times in order to be considered American at all.”  

The Stiletto’s friend at waka waka waka takes issue with Romney in equally indignant – and only slightly less incendiary – terms:

Well, we’re all still drying off after our dousing last night from Mitt Romney’s Gatorade barrel of holy water. Like JFK in 1960, Romney saw that his campaign was imperiled by a controversial religious affiliation; in this case, however, the risk was not that he was afraid of being seen as some sort of religious kook, but rather that he might be seen as the wrong sort of religious kook. … Mitt now feels the need to reassure the fundamentalist Protestant Republican base that he is every bit as tight with Jesus as they are, and that trivial details - such as polygamy, or that the Garden of Eden was in Jackson County, Missouri, and so forth - need not come between them. …

Of course, the ones who are conspicuously unwelcome under this big revival tent - as always - are poor wretches like me: agnostics, atheists, apostates and other legions of the damned. It might have been nice if Romney had so much as acknowledged our existence, or made mention of the fact that here in America freedom of religion might reasonably be construed also to embrace freedom from religion, but that isn’t what Mitt was selling last night - far from it. It would have seriously undercut his message, as far as his target audience was concerned, to have distended good Christian charity so far as actually to include doubters, Godless heathens, and other such rabble. Tolerance is one thing, and fine as far as it goes, but this is America, after all.

And you think evangelicals have a problem with Mormonism? They’re purring pussycats compared to atheists!
 

Hunting For Some Food

The Washington Post published a deeply weird editorial complaining that “deer hunting season in Montgomery County [MD] just became a little more lethal for the deer” after the county council unanimously voted to issue new rules that take effect in 2008 permitting hunters to “blast away” at deer using shotguns and muzzle-loading guns (but not rifles) within 50 yards of a road, as long as they stay a prudent distance from homes and offices. The rules are the result of two years of ruminating over what to do about the ruminants, blamed for the spread of Lyme disease and for 2,000 vehicular collisions a year – one of which severely injured Dem George Leventhal, an at-large member of the council. The WaPo reports that Leventhal “decided against recusing himself from voting to thin the herd” after he “publicly searched his soul” and concluded he did not harbor “anti-deer bias.”

Elsewhere in the WaPo is a report that “Area food banks are experiencing a critical shortage of supplies as donations drop dramatically and as demand for free and discounted food continues to soar.” And the crisis isn’t just hitting the Washington, D.C. area. “Food banks around the country are reporting critical shortages that have forced them to ration supplies, distribute staples usually reserved for disaster relief and in some instances close,” reports The New York Times. The shortages are attributed not only to rising demand, but also to a drop in surplus crops like apples and potatoes that the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Bonus Commodity Program buys from farmers; better supermarket inventory controls that cut down over-ordering; and the Senate sitting on the farm bill, which includes a provision to increase emergency aid for food banks to $250 million a year, from $140 million.

So what does this have to do with deer hunters? Glad you asked. It turns out that each year deer hunters in Montgomery County and nationwide donate thousands of pounds of game meat to food banks and other charities. "Believe me, (game) is a valuable product. High-protein foods are the hardest foods for our food banks to come by," America's Second Harvest spokesperson Ross Fraser tells The Associated Press.

Instead of lamenting that deer herds in Montgomery County will be thinner next year, the WaPo should applaud the role that hunters will play in helping ensure that food pantry larders will be more robust.

NYC Councilman To Introduce Horseless Carriages Bill

Councilman Tony Avella plans to introduce a bill to ban the horse-drawn carriages that have taken tourists and lovebirds around New York’s Central Park for decades, claiming that the horses are treated inhumanely and are endangered by traffic in the congested midtown area. The Horse & Carriage Association of New York counters that "NO ONE is more invested in the health, safety and welfare of our horses” than the Irish and Italian families who have made their livelihoods in the horse carriage industry for generations.

Avella tells The Associated Press that he visited the stables on the West Side of Manhattan, and he found them small and cramped. Perhaps Avella should take a tour of several $2,500/month Manhattan studios to see what small and cramped really looks like.