Spencer Ackerman* has the details of Clinton's comments on Iran at her confirmation hearing yesterday. She repeated the line that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons, just as Obama has done. The 2007 NIE saying exactly the opposite seems to have passed from the villagers' memory without a whimper, so "all options" are still on the table. And she very definitely didn't, even given multiple opportunities, say that the Obama administration will despatch and envoy to Iran in its first year. Although since the frontrunner for that job is rumored to be neocon-enabler Dennis Ross, I'm not sure whether to be thankful about that.

Hugely disappointing, as was Kerry's agreement talk of "big sticks". No wonder the Iranians call her "Madame AIPAC". With Obama seemingly giving more than just lip service to the anti-Iran pro-AIPAC lobby, the next Israeli leader won't even have to worry about calling up the American president to give his SecState her marching orders.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

(H/t David E) The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, when finally released after months of the Bush administration trying to get it changed without success, said that "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program." Since then every major Western media outlet and political leader, especially including Barack Obama, has done their level best to ignore that finding - well, after the wingnuts got over crowing about how it proved Bush's invasion of Iraq was a good thing, at least - yet there's not a shred of real evidence for doing so. Much of the narrative which allows the consensus view of the entire US intelligence community to be ignorable centers around the infamous "laptop of death" and around statements last year at a private briefing by the IAEA's Oli Heinonen. However, the documents contained upon the laptop are of questionable provenance, probably at least in part forged by their provider - the MeK terrorist group - and in any case refer to programs from before 2003. Heinonen’s briefing likewise referred to programs from before 2003 - as it would, since it was based on those laptop documents, given to the IAEA by George Schulte so that Hoinonen would brief members and Schulte could then leak his notes of that briefing to the media establishing a stage of plausiblity between him and the information. However, the information given at that briefing was public knowledge even in 2005, something not even mentioned by David "Judy in Drag" Sanger at the NYT when he recycled his 2005 report on the laptop's information for his widely cited 2008 report on the briefing. By this weekend, Sanger had entirely dismissed the NIE and was willing to bend the IAEA's findings and briefings all out of shape in service of the narrative. David Sanger may be the finest stenographer for his "unofficially official" sources at the White House in the history of journalism. The IAEA's assessment to date is in full agreement with the NIE: that there "is no evidence that the weapons program continued after 2004" but you'd be forgiven if you hadn't realized that, as much reporting on the subject has deliberately played games with tense. Given that's there's no evidence that Iran has a current nuclear weapons program, warmongers have been reduced to arguing that there's no proof positive that it doesn't. The inability to prove a negative, to prove "evidence of absence" was what got us into Iraq too, so they hope it serves again. Unfortunately, Obama's recent statements would indicate that it will serve again. On Sunday he told George Stephanoupolis that "they are pursuing a nuclear weapon that could potentially trigger a nuclear arms race".

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Yet another from the over-stuffed cabinet of Iraq invasion and occupation "nobody could have anticipated" files. And another sign that all is not the rosy victory that the right would wish us to believe it is. (h/t Kat)

Marine Maj. Gen. John F. Kelly told The Associated Press that his greatest "mission failure" was his inability to bring together the government in Baghdad and the Sunnis in Anbar to take advantage of the steep decline in violence.

"What the Iraqi government in Baghdad should have done is said Anbar is getting peaceful, let's commit," Kelly told the AP in a telephone interview from his headquarters southwest of Baghdad, as he begins to make preparations to hand over command of 23,000 Marines next month to Maj. Gen. Richard T. Tyron.

"It drives me to distraction," he said. "I would count it as a mission failure."

Reconciliation? Meh, not so much. The many faction feuds and sectarian rivalries which helped make Iraq so bloody are still there, just tamped down for a while - hopefully long enough for the US to declare victory and (pretend to) withdraw. I'm mostly OK with that, since it's the Iraqi people's "pottery barn" and it should always have been their perogative to break it more or mend it as they see fit. I just wish the US government, politicians, militrary and mainstream media would be honest about it.

By the time it flares up again, US leaders appear to be hoping, those troops left in Iraq will be rebranded as trainers and securely inside fortified bases where they can get on with their original primary mission, as conceived by neo-whatevers from left and right, of being the US dog in the Gulf manger.

And I fully expect the Obama administration's strategy for Afghanistan to be doing exactly the same thing there.

Dittoheads on CNN's Late Edition, Sunday. Sajjan Gohel agrees the Mumbai culprits are the Lek, even though he told the WaPo the day before it was definitely Al Qaeda, and former CIA DDI John McLaughlin, with a straight face and without challenge, says Pakistan's ISI is "very responsive" to civilian authority.

The international community and media appear to have accepted India's allegations of Pakistani involvement in the Mumbai bombings, via an ISI proxy terror group. Yet no-one is mentioning India's atrocious record of widespread torture or the questionable nature of confessions gained by such methods.

The Washington Post's editorial today leads:

WITH EACH passing day, suspicions of a Pakistani link to the slaughter of 174 people, including six Americans, in Mumbai grow stronger -- and more plausible. A captured terrorist has reportedly confessed to Indian officials that he received training in Pakistan from Lashkar-i-Taiba, a guerrilla organization that was nurtured by Pakistani military intelligence to fight India in the disputed Kashmir region.

But really, that confession by one captured terrorist is the only evidence thus far advanced, and (until late Tuesday) everything we know about it has been leaked by unofficial officials rather than with the full backing of the Indian government.

We only have this detainee's alleged word that all the attackers were from Pakistan, that there were only ten of them, that the attacks were funded with Saudi money, that they trained at an LeK camp inside Pakistan, that they hijacked a single Indian vessel to transport then to Mumbai or that they had hoped to kill 5,000 rather than the 200 or so they did murder. All of this relies on the confession of one man, presumably not one of the attacks leaders because that possibility hasn't been mentioned at all and certainly would have been if it were there. The leaked details of his confession have then been amplified and added to by rumor and speculation, particularly by the understandably angry Indian press.

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I wrote earlier (at Newshoggers) that there was still an Iraq debate to be had - namely whether the US' word, as set down in the SOFA agreement with Iraq, is worth the paper it's printed on. There's a considerable body of opinion in military and neo-whatever circles that says it isn't.

Bob Fertik emails to note that, five minutes before Obama announced his withdrawal timetable, NBC was quoting commanders as saying it wasn't binding on them. Just before Obama's said "I intend to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011," NBC Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski told David Gregory that military commanders are making plans as if the SOFA and the orders of the Commander in Chief were irrelevant.

Miklaszewski: Secretary Gates, as early as 18 months to 2 years ago, was saying "look, everyone understands that we're going to have to start withdrawing from Iraq." But at the same time, Gates adds this caveat that he believes significant numbers of troops will remain in Iraq for years to come.

And in fact military commanders, despite this Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government that all US forces would be out by the end of 2011, are already making plans for a significant number of American troops to remain in Iraq beyond that 2011 deadline, assuming that Status of Forces Agreement agreement would be renegotiated.

And one senior military commander told us that he expects large numbers of American troops to be in Iraq for the next 15 to 20 years, David.

Gregory: 15 to 20 years, I think that takes a moment to really sink in. With a mission that is primarily what over that kind of time horizon, Mik?

Miklaszewski: Again it would evolve from a day-to-day combat mission, to more of an oversight mission. We mustn't forget the US is providing nearly 100% of all combat air support over Iraq, and the Iraqi military is not going to be ready to assume that mission within the next 18 months to 2 years, it's going to be impossible.

And there are some discussions, I know Richard Engel mentioned the area of Kirkuk up in the north recently, there are some discussions among Iraqis and I know some military commanders to establish what could end up as a permanent air base, US air base, in Kirkuk.

Gregory: Striking.

Which just goes to show that we should be very leary of leaving withdrawal up to those who have a natural inclination not to withdraw. Generations of "surprise" babies will tell you how well that works out. Bob Gates may say that senior commanders are all behind Obama's plan, but there's a lot of reporting says they aren't.

These people are treading a dangerous course, as Marc Lynch explains. He writes that "Iraqis will be watching carefully to see whether the United States honors its commitments" in the months leading up to an Iraqi referendum on the SOFA agreement on July 31st and that if they don't see the right answer then the referendum will be a resounding "no" - at which point the US will have only 12 months to get everyone out of Iraq or occupy the country illegally again.

The argument for a significant, early withdrawal of U.S. combat forces remains overwhelming. Indeed, a failure to deliver on the promise of early U.S. withdrawals is the most likely thing to cause a rapid deterioration in conditions in Iraq....The new administration will get only one chance to demonstrate the credibility of its commitments, and indefinitely leaving troops at current levels will only postpone rather than solve the problems.

The US must make a substantial down payment on withdrawal now, or suffer later. Not just in Iraq, although the problems there would be bad enough, but on the world stage.

Crossposted from Newshoggers