I was in Starbucks yesterday, and I’m in the habit of scanning over the newspapers while I wait for my drink. I caught this headline in the New York Times:

Some in G.O.P. Say Iran Threat Is Played Down

WASHINGTON, Aug. 23 — Some senior Bush administration officials and top Republican lawmakers are voicing anger that American spy agencies have not issued more ominous warnings about the threats that they say Iran presents to the United States.

Here is the link, but I think that’s only publicly available for seven days, so the link will soon be useless.

I didn’t read the whole article then, but I’m glad that the first thought I had was also covered in the article: geez, this sounds pretty damn familiar, doesn’t it? The only difference between this intelligence situation and the slightly-post-9/11 intelligence situation is that we’re actually hearing about it ahead of time. But it still comes to:

(okay, think of Jon Stewart doing Dick Cheney as Burgess Meredith doing the Penguin:)

“Hwahhh hwahhh hwahhh! Need better intelligence! Can’t you see the threat posed by this disjoint, arbitrary collection of events that I can group together to draw conclusions I like, hwahhh? Hwahhh!”

ugh. I mean. If you’re going to hire experts, believe the experts. If you don’t believe them then don’t pay lip service to the idea you need them.

ah hell this post could be much better. think it needs someone with more insight to treat it properly.