Incompetence

I haven't done a political commentary in a while, but today's New York Times put two ideas in my head that I wanted to put out there:

• I am sorry to say this, just because too many people agree (never a good thing that) without being able to say why (even worse), but George W. Bush really is a moron. Maybe presidents like Ruther B. Hayes or Herbert Hoover were stand-outs in regard to incompetence, but Bush apparently can run with the best of them. The recent NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) compiled by all 16 (Does Germany even have two btw? Does anyone know this? Please help if you do.) American intelligence agencies stated that its 2005 report claiming that Iran was trying to acquire nuclear weapons was wrong and that they now are highly confident that Iran has not had a nuclear weapons program since 2003, when they supposedly caved in to pressure and halted it.
  
  Now, this is a 180 degree turn-around (and quite embarrassing considering the intelligence failure of the Iraq war), so how does the American President respond? Quite simply, he stays course. Obviously, why would you want to change policy in light of a change in intelligence, "what's to say they couldn't start another covert nuclear weapons program" after all? Please don't misunderstand me, I am not saying that no pressure should be applied on Iran, especially now that it seems to have worked in 2003, but a direct reversal of intelligence estimates should at least provide some incentive to reconsider old positions (like not negotiating directly with Iran) to sensible human beings, shouldn't it?
  
  Leaving the content side of this, Bush also apparently is either a liar or not in charge of his administration. He claims to have been informed of this new estimate LAST WEEK (sorry about the caps, had to let off steam), defending his recent gloomy predictions of World War III coming up soon because of Iran in that way. Now, let's assume for a second he isn't lying about this (That is a sin after all, isn't it? And a religious man like George W. wouldn't want to go to hell would he?), what does this say about the state of his administration? Barring some intelligence agency having stumbled over one piece of information changing everything last week (and that is not how the NY Times describes the change in assessment) this has been a slow process or reevaluating positions and intelligence. Did no one inform the President of this? Did they think it would be a good idea to just let him keep on babbling about World War III, while they were completely (literally completely) reassessing their intelligence estimate? Something is amiss in the state of Denmark. Aaaeh. Washington DC.


• Interestingly enough the second monumental failure award of the day goes out to....al-Qaeda. One of the reasons for the increased security situation - or relative calm which might be more appropriate, the emphasis being on relative - (the other two main ones being the surge (which I supported back in the day btw) and Sadr's militias keeping quiet for now) is the - temporary - coalition between Sunni neighborhood groups and the Americans. This has brought - again, temporarily - the native part of the insurgency to a stand still and has been caused by what? By al-Qaeda's stupidity. Through their indiscriminate bombings and murder of Iraqi civilians they have seemingly alienated the local Sunni population enough to get them to side with an occupying force against whom they were fighting only a few months ago. Good job guys (not that that is not good news, I guess we should be happy that the bad guys have as many morons making strategic decisions as the 'good' ones).