More Alarmism, Please!

There must be something deeply unpleasant about being a high-ranking Republican that I'm just not getting. Maybe they wear hair shirts under their three-piece suits. Maybe every Friday they have to gather at Speaker Hastert's house and perform unnatural acts. Whatever it is, it makes them grouchy. For the last six years or so their party has been in control of the White House, Congress, and the Courts, almost continuously. But are they happy? Not at all:

From the Washington Post

U.S. Spy Agencies Criticized On Iran
GOP-Led Panel Faults Intelligence

By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 24, 2006; Page A01

A key House committee issued a stinging critique of U.S. intelligence on Iran yesterday, charging that the CIA and other agencies lack "the ability to acquire essential information necessary to make judgments" on Tehran's nuclear program, its intentions or even its ties to terrorism.

The 29-page report, principally written by a Republican staff member on the House intelligence committee who holds a hard-line view on Iran, fully backs the White House position that the Islamic republic is moving forward with a nuclear weapons program and that it poses a significant danger to the United States. But it chides the intelligence community for not providing enough direct evidence to support that assertion.

...

The report relies exclusively on publicly available documents. Its authors did not interview intelligence officials. Still, it warns the intelligence community to avoid the mistakes made regarding weapons of mass destruction before the Iraq war, noting that Iran could easily be engaged in "a denial and deception campaign to exaggerate progress on its nuclear program as Saddam Hussein apparently did concerning his WMD programs."

Honestly. With the nation going deeper and deeper into debt to finance the ruins of neoconservativism, you'd think they'd welcome the chance to avoid a war. Ah well.