What Is Up With The DNI? By: Mark W Adams

Saturday Update: 1 GI; 65 68 Iraqis Killed, 35 38 Wounded;
100+ Iraqi Troops Poisoned

Credibility! Integrity!

“It was absolutely a bad decision. I regret it happened. Certainly … I should have stopped it,” said John “Pat” Philbin, FEMA’s director of external affairs. “I hope readers understand we’re working very hard to establish credibility and integrity, and I would hope this does not undermine it.”

While it's more amusing than disturbing that one of the idiots who set up the fake FEMA press conference, John "Pat" Philbin landed on his feet after resigning as Director of External Affairs (whatever that is) and takes a job at Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell's office as the head of public affairs -- but putting that together what EmptyWheel says about McConnell's transformation from openness and candor to the Cheney-like Dark Side of secrets and lies makes for interesting speculation -- like, did Philbin also get a raise? A medal? A Presidential Hug?

Michael McConnell started his first two months on the job with a solid record for candor and accuracy. He avoided political doublespeak. And then something strange happened. He became a shameless and irresponsible political propagandist.

The game is definitely afoot! And the Game is called Bullshit!

McConnell reversed his earlier practice of declassifying and releasing summaries of national intelligence estimates on the eve of a new NIE which will say Iran is years off from being a nuclear threat -- well after Bush/Cheney are out of power.

So let's see. We have Dick Cheney refusing to allow the information that refutes his warmongering to be declassified. We have these curious stories that both clash and happen to coincide with some of John Bolton's earlier warmongering. And we have Israel's and the US' choice to bomb this site rather than allow the IAEA to inspect it and tell us what it really was.

Bolton was feeding none other than Judy Miller his latest conspiracy theory on Syria trying to get nukes back in September -- the very same day those "before" pictures were taken of the site Israel knocked out. Now we'll never know for sure what was going on there, but the confluence of events, coupled with the news that there seems to have been zero activity at the site since 2003 when Bolton first got a hard-on for Syrian nukes -- inactivity that is now conveniently unprovable, makes me believe that a complex shadow-play is in the works. It's has a different effect on Pam's Panties -- but she's been first in line for the mustache rides for a while.

And from the world of "By The Way..." get a load of this:

The US military is building a base in Iraq less than 10 kilometers (about six miles) from Iran's border. The facility, known as Combat Outpost Shocker, is meant for American soldiers preventing Iranian weapons from being smuggled into Iraq. But it's also rumored that Bush authorized US intelligence agencies in April to run sabotage missions against the mullah regime on Iranian soil.

If ever there was a time when the director of National Intelligence needed a spin-meister with more balls than sense, it's now. Looks like McConnell found just the guy, someone capable of one heckuvajob.

[And by the way, Bolton is still up to no good. You see, he never finished the job he wanted to do to Iran.]