A Little Knowledge Is A Dangerous Thing

There's an enormous danger in having a conservative movement so committed to their own failed beliefs that they are contempuous of information that conflicts with it, or the government professionals who practice their trade. This is exactly the kind of bullcrap we saw in the run-up to Iraq. Any contradictory information was dismissed because "Saddam's a liar, you can't trust anything that comes out of that country!" And now...

Last night on PBS’s Charlie Rose, former senator Fred Thompson added his own conspiracy theory to the mix, stating that Iran may have deliberately “leaked” the information on their lack of nuclear program to distract the U.S. “Nobody knows” if Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, he declared:

"We’re just going to have to wait and see, why they would start it up and move away without telling anybody. Unless of course they have leaked this themselves. So, just a bunch of unanswered questions. […]

This is perhaps a weak, faint attempt to cause us to divert our attention a little bit from what they’re doing."

These people don't understand intelligence and don't understand government. We got a retired Iranian general to flip and give us new intel, and it revealed that the nuclear weapons program was put on ice in 2003. Even Dick Cheney is accepting that.

“I don’t have any reason to question what the [intelligence] community has produced,” he said. “Now, there are things they don’t know. There’s always the possibility that circumstances will change. But I think they’ve done the best job they can with the intelligence that’s available.”

Now, Cheney also thinks Iraq will be self-governing by 2009 (they are NOW, you idjit), so he's got his own problems. And the entire Administration could be climbing down from the precipice of what would be a catastrophic war. But the point is this: people who are more wedded to their ideology than the truth need to be drummed out of public life.

UPDATE: I just saw Frank Gaffney on Hardball argue for a "Team B" intelligence assessment to challenge the NIE. Team B, of course, was even more wrong than the CIA about the Soviet Union's capabilities. Pat Buchanan asked Gaffney if he was calling for a Team B to the NIE on Iran in 2005, when the intelligence community thought there was a nuclear program. He said "No, because I agreed with it."

There you have it, folks. The conservative ideology explained: agree only with what validates your ideology, and question every other fact.