Ray McGovern: Iran's Very Bad N-Word

[babylonsister]

http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/linkframe.php?linkpg=http://www.antiwar.com/mcgovern/?articleid=10605&linkid=31486

March 1, 2007
Iran's Very Bad N-Word
by Ray McGovern

Iran: how far from the bomb? That was one of the key questions asked of newly confirmed Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell yesterday at a Senate Armed Forces Committee hearing. McConnell had avoided this front-burner issue in his prepared remarks. But when asked, he repeated the hazy forecast given by his predecessor, John Negroponte . McConnell had these two sentences committed to memory:

"We assess that Iran seeks to develop a nuclear weapon. The information is incomplete, but we assess that Iran could develop a nuclear weapon early-to-mid-next decade."

At that point McConnell received gratuitous reinforcement from Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. With something of a flourish, Maples emphasized that it was "with high confidence" that DIA "assesses that Iran remains determined to develop nuclear weapons."

After the judgments in the Oct. 1, 2002 estimate assessing weapons-of-mass-destruction in Iraq – judgments stated with "high confidence" – turned out to be wrong, the National Intelligence Council saw a need to define what is meant by "assess." The council included a glossary in its recent NIE on Iraq:

"When we use words such as 'we assess,' we are trying to convey an analytical assessment or judgment. These assessments, which are based on incomplete or at times fragmentary information are not a fact, proof, or knowledge. Some analytical judgments are based directly on collected information; others rest on previous judgments, which serve as building blocks. In either type of judgment, we do not have ‘evidence' that shows something to be a fact."

So caveat emptor. Beware the verisimilitude conveyed by "we assess." It can have a lemming effect, as evidenced yesterday by the automatic head bobbing that greeted Sen. Lindsay Graham's, R-S.C., clever courtroom-style summary argument at the hearing, "We all agree, then, that the Iranians are trying to get nuclear weapons."

more...