Only 4% of Experts Believe Iran Is Our Biggest Threat
The neoconservatives, who were dead wrong about Iraq, and dead wrong about terrorism despite their superior public relations image, have nevertheless been itching for a chance to redeem themselves by beating the drums for war in Iran. There is great concern that the Bush Administration is seriously considering a military attack.
Now the thing to remember about the conservative intellectuals who are regarded as neoconservatives is that most of them belonged to that branch of conservative Cold War hawks who were always overestimating the danger of the Soviet Union but who managed to find jobs in think tanks and sometimes in conservative administrations despite their poor records; since the fall of the Soviet Union, these same neocons have been looking for other things to do with their 'talents' and war with Iraq has been one of their big projects and big failures.
We are fortunate that neocons have not had a monopoly on foreign policy in the last sixty years. The thing to keep in mind is that there are experts out there, both Democrat and Republican, who know what they're talking about. Here's a survey that was done by the Center for American Progress and the magazine, Foreign Policy:
Four per cent of the top 100 experts regard Iran as our greatest threat. We have a problem. We have a president who voluntarily stumbled into a war in Iraq and has made a mess. We need to clean up that mess and then turn Iraq over to the Iraqis. We need to finish the job in Afghanistan. We need to get back to having al Qaida on the run. Remember, for most of 2002 and 2003, Bush, with the help of many countries, had al Qaida on the run. Given the energy situation, no one in the world wants war with Iran. If real nuclear weapons and real WMDs are the top threat to the United States, we need the cooperation of the world. The blunt truth is that Bush has succeeded in starting a third world nuclear arms race. That's not an accomplishment. That's a disaster that has to be laid directly to Bush's unwillingness to sit down and negotiate with anyone. You simply cannot get the agreements necessary unless you sit down and do the work. The Bush Administration has not done the work.
At the G8 meeting this summer, it became obvious that most world leaders have trouble trusting George W. Bush these days. In fact, it's worse than that. They have trouble taking him seriously. The credibility of the United States has fallen dramatically in the last five years. Bush has squandered the goodwill the United States had in the weeks after 9/11. How will our deteriorating relationship with the world translate into the cooperation that's needed to clean up Bush's fiascos while dealing realistically with terrorism? When it comes down to it, what useful thing has Bush accomplished in five years? If we're to understand where we're to go from here, don't we need facts? It's time for the American people to find out what the facts are and it's essential that we find out the facts before the midterm election, not after.
Democrats are demanding that we, the voters, have the right to know what's going on in Iraq. We don't need censored and slanted intelligence summaries that are cherry picked the same way that intelligence was cherry picked in 2002 when Bush made a phony case for war; we need the real facts. And if Republicans won't join Democrats in demanding that those facts be made public, then it's time for them to go.
Now the thing to remember about the conservative intellectuals who are regarded as neoconservatives is that most of them belonged to that branch of conservative Cold War hawks who were always overestimating the danger of the Soviet Union but who managed to find jobs in think tanks and sometimes in conservative administrations despite their poor records; since the fall of the Soviet Union, these same neocons have been looking for other things to do with their 'talents' and war with Iraq has been one of their big projects and big failures.
We are fortunate that neocons have not had a monopoly on foreign policy in the last sixty years. The thing to keep in mind is that there are experts out there, both Democrat and Republican, who know what they're talking about. Here's a survey that was done by the Center for American Progress and the magazine, Foreign Policy:
The press reports said that the Bush administration's new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq concluded that America faces greater danger of terrorist attacks precisely because of the invasion of Iraq and its bloody aftermath. The NIE analysis, prepared in April, is the consensus conclusion of 16 U.S. government intelligence agencies.
This is essentially the same consensus conclusion that CAP [Center for American Progress] and Foreign Policy discovered when we did our own independent polling at about the same time, asking over 100 of America's most esteemed terrorism and national security experts for their assessment of the war against terrorist networks. This survey, titled The Terrorism Index, mined the highest echelons of the U.S. national security establishment across the ideological spectrum for their insights on the war on terrorism.
The result, we know today, shows a surprising consensus among the experts inside and outside of the U.S. government about terrorism and U.S. national security. In our survey, a vast majority think that the world today is more dangerous for the American people. So, too, does the NIE. Over half of the experts we polled list Islamic animosity and the Iraq war as the main reasons why the world is becoming more dangerous. That's also the consensus conclusion of the NIE.
In our survey, fewer than two in 10 believe the United States is winning the war on terror. More than eight in 10 believe we are likely to face a terrorist attack on the scale of September 11 within the next 10 years. These experts put nuclear weapons and materials as the top threat, followed closely by weapons of mass destruction (WMD) as a whole and then terrorism. Only four percent rank Iran as the greatest threat.
Four per cent of the top 100 experts regard Iran as our greatest threat. We have a problem. We have a president who voluntarily stumbled into a war in Iraq and has made a mess. We need to clean up that mess and then turn Iraq over to the Iraqis. We need to finish the job in Afghanistan. We need to get back to having al Qaida on the run. Remember, for most of 2002 and 2003, Bush, with the help of many countries, had al Qaida on the run. Given the energy situation, no one in the world wants war with Iran. If real nuclear weapons and real WMDs are the top threat to the United States, we need the cooperation of the world. The blunt truth is that Bush has succeeded in starting a third world nuclear arms race. That's not an accomplishment. That's a disaster that has to be laid directly to Bush's unwillingness to sit down and negotiate with anyone. You simply cannot get the agreements necessary unless you sit down and do the work. The Bush Administration has not done the work.
At the G8 meeting this summer, it became obvious that most world leaders have trouble trusting George W. Bush these days. In fact, it's worse than that. They have trouble taking him seriously. The credibility of the United States has fallen dramatically in the last five years. Bush has squandered the goodwill the United States had in the weeks after 9/11. How will our deteriorating relationship with the world translate into the cooperation that's needed to clean up Bush's fiascos while dealing realistically with terrorism? When it comes down to it, what useful thing has Bush accomplished in five years? If we're to understand where we're to go from here, don't we need facts? It's time for the American people to find out what the facts are and it's essential that we find out the facts before the midterm election, not after.
Democrats are demanding that we, the voters, have the right to know what's going on in Iraq. We don't need censored and slanted intelligence summaries that are cherry picked the same way that intelligence was cherry picked in 2002 when Bush made a phony case for war; we need the real facts. And if Republicans won't join Democrats in demanding that those facts be made public, then it's time for them to go.
posted by Craig at 6:04 PM
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