The fog of turf wars

I had previously been skeptical of claims that Israel struck a nuclear facility in Syria. Now apparently the reason everyone was assuming that it was a nuclear facility is because the word “nuclear” was floating around the halls of power.

ABC News recently confirmed that Israel presented evidence to the Bush administration that Syria did indeed have a nuclear program underway. Meryl Yourish predicted that

From the left and from the Israel-haters, they will insist that Israel’s intelligence was cooked. This, in spite of North Korea’s reaction, and in spite of the fact that Syria has had nothing to say, and has not demanded a UN investigation, or a Security Council or General Assembly resolution condemning the raid.

Indeed that has happened. There’s been a proliferation of articles over the past couple of weeks arguing that the Israeli intelligence was uncertain but it was Vice President Cheney and his neo-cons who supported the strike.

Michael Isikoff and Dan Ephron wrote in Newsweek about the possibility that the Israel strike on Syria may be a foreshadowing of a strike on Iran.

In Washington, on the other hand, the consensus against a strike is firmer than most people realize. The Pentagon worries that another war will break America’s already overstretched military, while the intelligence community believes Iran is not yet on the verge of a nuclear breakthrough. The latter assessment is expected to appear in a secret National Intelligence Estimate currently nearing completion, according to three intelligence officials who asked for anonymity when discussing nonpublic material. The report is expected to say Iran will not be able to build a nuclear bomb until at least 2010 and possibly 2015. One explanation for the lag: Iran is having trouble with its centrifuge-enrichment technology, according to U.S. and European officials.
. . .
There are still voices pushing for firmer action against Tehran, most notably within Vice President Dick Cheney’s office. But the steady departure of administration neocons over the past two years has also helped tilt the balance away from war.

The Newsweek article isn’t entirely bad. It does give weight to Israeli concerns about an Iranian nuclear bomb.

The Jewish state has cause for worry. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vows regularly to destroy the country; former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, considered a moderate, warned in 2001 that Tehran could do away with Israel with just one nuclear bomb. In Tel Aviv last week, former deputy Defense minister Ephraim Sneh concurred. Sneh, a dovish member of Israel’s Parliament and a retired brigadier general, took a NEWSWEEK reporter to the observation deck atop the 50-story Azrieli Center. “There is Haifa just over the horizon, Ben-Gurion airport over there, the Defense Ministry down below,” he said, to show how small the country is. “You can see in this space the majority of our intellectual, economic, political assets are concentrated. One nuclear bomb is enough to wipe out Israel.”

Still even if they understand Israel’s concerns, the reporters pretty harsh in describing Cheney and his staffer, David Wurmser.

A few months before he quit, according to two knowledgeable sources, Wurmser told a small group of people that Cheney had been mulling the idea of pushing for limited Israeli missile strikes against the Iranian nuclear site at Natanz—and perhaps other sites—in order to provoke Tehran into lashing out. The Iranian reaction would then give Washington a pretext to launch strikes against military and nuclear targets in Iran. (Wurmser’s remarks were first reported last week by Washington foreign-policy blogger Steven Clemons and corroborated by NEWSWEEK.)

The Clemons article is breathtaking. It alleges that, in an administration that values loyalty above all, VP Cheney and his staff have worked to undermine the President. I can believe that Wurmser could have made remarks such as the ones attributed to him, but only quoting Cheney as presenting one of several possibilities not as a policy prescription. If he really boasting of a policy at odds with the President attributed of his boss, I can’t believe that President Bush wouldn’t have fired Cheney on the spot.

The New York Times is the latest media outlet to (over)emphasize the split in the administration. (via memeorandum)

At issue is whether intelligence that Israel presented months ago to the White House — to support claims that Syria had begun early work on what could become a nuclear weapons program with help from North Korea — was conclusive enough to justify military action by Israel and a possible rethinking of American policy toward the two nations.The debate has fractured along now-familiar fault lines, with Vice President Dick Cheney and conservative hawks in the administration portraying the Israeli intelligence as credible and arguing that it should cause the United States to reconsider its diplomatic overtures to Syria and North Korea.

By contrast, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her allies within the administration have said they do not believe that the intelligence presented so far merits any change in the American diplomatic approach.

But even as casting Cheney and his allies as credulous, the Times seemingly endorses their premises.

It has long been known that North Korean scientists have aided Damascus in developing sophisticated ballistic missile technology, and there appears to be little debate that North Koreans frequently visited a site in the Syrian desert that Israeli jets attacked Sept. 6. Where officials disagree is whether the accumulated evidence points to a Syrian nuclear program that poses a significant threat to the Middle East.

It’s also interesting that Turkey seemingly were alarmed by the Israeli intelligence.

Last week, Turkish officials traveled to Damascus to present the Syrian government with the Israeli dossier on what was believed to be a Syrian nuclear program, according to a Middle East security analyst in Washington. The analyst said that Syrian officials vigorously denied the intelligence and said that what the Israelis hit was a storage depot for strategic missiles.

Finally the Times quotes Bruce Riedel who argues

Still, Mr. Riedel said Israel would not have launched the strike in Syria if it believed Damascus was merely developing more sophisticated ballistic missiles or chemical weapons.“Those red lines were crossed 20 years ago,” he said. “You don’t risk general war in the Middle East over an extra 100 kilometers’ range on a missile system.”

Or unless Israel suspected that Syria was getting actually getting close to using those weapons (even if the facility didn’t represent a nascent nuclear program).The article goes on to argue that the deal with North Korea was a good one that only upset “conservatives.”

Writing in the Weekly Standard, Thomas Joscelyn notes the problem with a different reporter, in Sy Hersh’s Overactive Imagination :

So, we have come full circle. Baer suspected that Mugniyah and his masters were involved in 9/11 when he wrote about it in 2002. Hersh approved of Baer’s informed deduction. And the 9/11 Commission found evidence confirming Baer’s suspicion. But, you would never know any of this by reading Hersh’s reporting on the Bush administration’s supposed intentions regarding Iran over the last couple of years. The long-time investigative journalist has been focused purely on the neoconservatives’ supposedly nefarious influence in Washington.Make no mistake: none of this is intended to suggest that Hersh or his sources do not have the right to be skeptical about the efficacy of military strikes against Iran. Indeed, this author shares their skepticism, but for different reasons. And certainly one can be critical of the Bush administration for not doing more to probe the evidence cited by the 9/11 Commission.

But wouldn’t Hersh’s reporting on Iran be better served if he were to revisit the issue of Iran’s and Hezbollah’s possible complicity in 9/11? That may not be an easy sell for readers now hooked on tales of executive branch duplicity and neoconservative plotting told by sources who gladly share hearsay. However, it would certainly improve the public’s understanding of our terrorist enemies.

The problem of the Israeli strike against Syria is that the target remains classified. So no reporters can know how good the Israeli information is. Absent those hard facts, the story changes from being what threat Syria, Iran and North Korea pose to the West to administration infighting. Reporters can casually sidestep the real issue to reinforce their own prejudices. (Secretary Rice is responsibly focusing on diplomacy; VP Cheney is recklessly advocating war.)

Kevin Drum lends his own reading to the situation:

But one thing is sure: the Israeli evidence must have been pretty far from a smoking gun if there’s this much confusion even among the top mucky mucks. Very peculiar.

Given the Syrian silence, the Turkish concerns and the risks Israel incurred, I would draw the opposite conclusion. Like Israel Matzav, the skepticism ought to be cast on the diplomacy-first crowd:

I wonder if there is any scenario in which Rice could be convinced to drop the ‘diplomatic approach’ to Syria and North Korea. I doubt it. Because I doubt it, I discount what she says. Of course, both the Syrians and North Koreans are denying anything was there, but that makes the North Korean reaction to the strike awfully strange: If they had nothing there, why did they react? They are ten thousand miles away!

The Hashmonean adds:

The failure to at least confront North Korea in the open before proceeding maddeningly down the road of six party talks speaks volumes to the path of multilateral weakness now being pursued by the USA, and speaks just as loudly to the looming issue of Iran.The notion that the US will be able to deal with Iran is now a fleeting one…

That is why it is dangerous for the media to get too caught up in Washington turf wars and ignore the real one against terror.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.