A Very Bad Bill Posted by Ilan Goldenberg

Via Andy Grotto we find out that Senator Ensign (R-NV) is trying to introduce a bill  this week that would create a commission to look into the Iran NIE. 

The draft legislation is reportedly a cut-and-paste job from the the so-called Rumsfeld Commission that the Congress established in 1998 to undermine a 1995 NIE on ballistic missiles — with one, telling alteration.

Predictably, the Rumsfeld Commission condemned the ’95 NIE. Conservatives then used the Rumsfeld Commission’s findings to bolster the case for withdrawing from the ABM Treaty and pouring resources into development of a national missile defense.

The second this bill is introduced, or if it passes, it automatically undermines the credibility of the NIE and the intelligence community.  Inevitably this commission probably won't end up reporting until after 2008 and in the meantime the consistent conservative talking point will be "well, the intelligence isn't solid and we don't know if Iran is developing nuclear weapons because we have a bipartisan commission working on that."  Even a floor debate on the commission would automatically generate stories questioning the intelligence.

The reality is that we really don't need a public commission to restudy the conclusions of the Intelligence Community.  As I've written before, that's been tried by conservatives in the past and consistently these Team B exercises get it wrong and result in bad policy decisions (See Team B, Rumsfeld Commission and Office of Special Plans). 

This bill is a blatant attempt to undermine the intelligence community.  It needs to go away.

Comments

[PeaceCo]

Once again it appears that the Republicans are trying to create a fantasy and disregrading the "Reality Based," community.