Is Israel fixing the intelligence to justify an attack on
Iran?

Netanyahu's rhetoric has eerie echoes of the run-up to the
Iraq war

By Ray McGovern
 July 30, 2012
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-israel-iran-20120730,0,5791324.story

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's strong
pro-Israel statements over the weekend, including his
endorsement of Jerusalem as Israel's capital (a reversal
of long-standing U.S. policy), increases the pressure on
President Barack Obama to prove that he is an equally
strong backer of Israel.

The key question is whether Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak will
interpret the presidential campaign rhetoric as an open
invitation to provoke hostilities with Iran, in the
expectation that President Obama will feel forced to jump
in with both feet in support of our "ally" Israel. (Since
there is no mutual defense treaty between the U.S. and
Israel, "ally" actually is a misnomer -- at least in a
juridical sense.)

As we saw 10 years ago with respect to Iraq, if one
intends to whip up support for war, one needs to find a
casus belli -- however thin a pretext it might be. How
about juxtaposing "weapons of mass destruction" with
terrorism. That worked to prepare for war on Iraq, and
similar rhetorical groundwork for an attack on Iran is now
being laid in Israel.

Mr. Netanyahu broke all records for speed in blaming Iran
and Hezbollah for the recent terrorist attack that killed
five Israelis in Burgas, Bulgaria, and in vowing that
"Israel will react powerfully against Iranian terror."

But what is the evidence on Iranian or Hezbollah
involvement? Bulgarian officials keep saying they have no
such evidence. More surprising still, government officials
in Washington and elsewhere keep warning against jumping
to conclusions.

So far the "evidence" against Iran consists primarily of
trust-me assertions by Mr. Netanyahu. On Fox News Sunday
on July 22, Mr. Netanyahu claimed Israel has "rock-solid
evidence" tying Iran to the attack in Bulgaria. The same
day onCBS's Face the Nation, Mr. Netanyahu said, "We have
unquestionable, fully substantiated intelligence that this
[terrorist attack] was done by Hezbollah backed by Iran,"
adding that Israel gives "specific details to ...
responsible governments and agencies."

Did the Israelis somehow forget to give "specific details"
to Bulgarian and U.S. officials?

At a joint news conference with White House
counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan in Sofia early last
week, Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov admitted that
he was aware of no information concerning the terrorist or
those who dispatched him.

Mr. Brennan's July 25 talks with top Israeli officials, it
appears, were similarly unproductive. According to the
Israeli newspaper Haaretz on July 26: "A week after the
Burgas attacks, Israeli, Bulgarian, and U.S. [officials]
still have no leads regarding the identity of the suicide
bomber."

These events took place against an historical backdrop
pregnant with relevance. July 23 was the 10th anniversary
of a meeting at 10 Downing Street, at which the head
British intelligence casually revealed the fraudulent
origins of the coming attack on Iraq.

The official minutes of that meeting were leaked to
London's Sunday Times, which ran them on its front page
May 1, 2005. No one has disputed their authenticity.

This is how the minutes record the core of the briefing by
Sir Richard Dearlove, the British intelligence chief, who
had just conferred with his U.S. counterpart, George
Tenet, at CIA headquarters on July 20, 2002, on what was
in store for Iraq:

"... Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush
wanted to remove Saddam, through military action,
justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD [weapons
of mass destruction]. But the intelligence and facts were
being fixed around the policy. ..."

The "fixing" of intelligence is bad enough. But note Mr.
Dearlove's explanation that war with Iraq was to be
"justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD."
Translation: We will claim Saddam has weapons of mass
destruction and that he might well give them to terrorists
-- unless he is stopped forthwith.

Mr. Netanyahu is now taking the same line on Iran. On Face
the Nation on July 22, he pointedly asked:

"Just imagine what the consequences would be if these
people [terrorists] and this regime [Iran] got a hold of
nuclear weapons. ... [We need to] make sure that the
world's most dangerous regime doesn't get the world's most
dangerous weapons."

Never mind the elusive evidence on the perpetrators of the
attack in Bulgaria. Never mind that Defense Secretary Leon
Panetta posed the direct question to himself on Face the
Nation on January 8 and then answered it: "Are they [the
Iranians] trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No." Never
mind that 10 days later Israeli Defense Minister Ehud
Barack said essentially the same thing during an interview
on Israeli Army Radio.

The likelihood of hostilities with Iran before the
presidential election in November is increasing. Beware of
"fixed" intelligence.

-------------
Ray McGovern is a retired 27-year veteran of CIA's
analysis division whose responsibilities included
preparing and delivering the president's daily brief. His
email is [log in to unmask]

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