One of my favorite George W. Bushisms was the time the leader of the
free world mangled a simple aphorism: "There's an old saying in
Tennessee, I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee, that says,
'Fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. (Pause.) Fool me -- you can't
get fooled again.' "
What he meant to say, of course, was "Fool me once, shame on you; fool
me twice, shame on me." But Monday, as the Decider nominated Gen.
Michael V. Hayden to take over what's left of the CIA, I thought of
Bush's "can't get fooled again" line, which some misfiring brain cells
must have borrowed (approximately) from the old song by The Who.
Whether Hayden sails through confirmation or Bush is forced to come up
with a Plan B, the primary mission of the CIA's new leader should be to
make sure that Americans don't get fooled on Iran the way we got fooled
on Iraq.
I know that's a lot to ask of the CIA in its present state of disarray.
I also know that in the final analysis, the White House will probably
fix the intelligence to suit whatever action it decides to take, as the
talismanic "Downing Street memo" and other evidence confirms what was
done on Iraq. But the stakes are so high that we have to at least hope
for miracles of competence and integrity.
Iran is serious business. An Iran with nuclear weapons wouldn't
inevitably trigger Armageddon, but it would shorten the odds.
The one point on which there is near-universal agreement in Washington
is that there are no "good" options on Iran, and this includes doing
nothing.
To make the right choice among these scary alternatives requires the
kind of solid, on-the-ground intelligence that only the CIA is designed
to provide. How far along, really, is the Iranian nuclear program? (And
please, something more specific than "slam dunk.") How long until they
can make an actual bomb? What are the differences of opinion, if any,
within the leadership? What are the Iranian people thinking?
And what effect is the Bush administration rhetoric having inside Iran?
The Iranian human rights advocate and Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi told
Washington Post reporters and editors last week that all this saber
rattling was not helpful. Does the CIA concur or disagree?
In the end, George Bush the Decider will decide. But the CIA should at
least tell him the truth, not what he wants to hear. This means that
Hayden, if he is confirmed, will have to do two things. First, he will
have to rebuild an agency that saw too many of its most experienced
managers and spies driven out by the current director, Porter Goss, who
seemed to value political loyalty over dispassionate analysis. Then he
will have to be courageous enough to make the amateurs in the White
House acknowledge the views of the professionals in Langley.
One obvious problem is that Hayden, who ran the super-secret National
Security Agency for many years, is an expert in electronic
intelligence, when satellites and other high-tech gear have already
told us what they can about Iran. What's really needed now is human
intelligence reporting from inside Tehran, not from the skies above.
Another big negative is that Hayden ran Bush's domestic spying program,
which I am convinced will be seen as one of this administration's most
shameful excesses.
But, hey, you were expecting a good choice from George W. Bush? If so,
I've got a "Wonders of Ancient Mesopotamia" tour bus parked in Baghdad
that I'd like to sell you.
Very low mileage.
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Robinson is a Washington Post columnist
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