Today, the new Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, gave credence to Sy Hersh's report that John Negroponte stepped down as DNI because he didn't want to play ball with the Cheney cabal over Iran. No such problem with the new DNI, as his statement to Congress showed today. Not only did he make assertions on Iran which, as we have recently seen, are unsupported by the evidence or indeed senior military commanders - he also had a paranoic word or two for Russia and Venezuala
(But narry a single word of warning on Pakistan, notice. Oh, and can someone please tell McConnell that "we think" is not an accurate subsitute for "we assume without evidence"? The correct phrasing is "we guess".)
Joe Lieberman helped out with the narrative when he said that he had seen reports that Hezboullah were training Iraqi Shiite militias and asked the new DNI to confirm that he had seen the same reports.
Guess what, those reports track back to a New York Times article on November 28th of last year. The lead reporter was none other than Michael R. Gordon - beloved of the neocons for his faithful stenography over first Saddam's WMD's and now Iran's meddling in Iraq - and his source was yet another "anonymous official".
Now that's what I call reliable sources! NOT!
If Joe had really been paying attention, though, he would've seen the denial by Hussein Rahhal, Hizbullah's media chief, that appeared on the same day. Rahhal called the report "baseless, saying it was part of a US intelligence campaign circulated by the American media to vilify the guerrilla group."
If he had seen it, I'm sure Joe's reaction would have been to view it with "suspicion", something he isn't prepared to do with the Bush administration's many fabrications.
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