Conservative Principles Now

The Washington Post’s David Ignatius reports from Afghanistan:

I asked Lt Gen. David Rodriquez, the No. 2 US commander here, in a briefing tonight how long the deployment of the extra 30,000 would take. He answered that “it will happen between nine and eleven months,” starting in January 2010. Which means that some troops might not arrive until November 2010.

The next month after that, December 2010, is when Obama plans to assess how well the troops are doing — so he can decide how many to pull out when the withdrawal begins in July 2011. That doesn’t give him much time to make good decisions.

Am I the only person who worries that “fuzzy math” is being used here?

No he’s not. Heritage scholars Lisa Curtis and James Phillips wrote after President Obama’s Afghanistan speech:

President Obama’s West Point speech announcing his long-awaited decision on Afghanistan sent mixed messages that raise more questions about his Administration’s commitment to success than they answered. On the one hand, the President announced that he will dispatch 30,000 more U.S. troops within the next six months to reinforce the 68,000 already there and ask American allies, who currently have about 37,000 troops in theater, to bolster their commitment. On the other hand, this surge falls at least 10,000 troops short of General Stanley McChrystal’s “medium risk” option, and 30,000 troops short of his “low risk” option.

Moreover, Obama indicated that U.S. troops will begin to withdraw in 18 months–an unrealistically brief timeframe in which to accomplish their mission. The announcement of a withdrawal date also provides a psychological advantage to the Taliban who will convince their recruits that America has lost its will and thus they can just “wait us out.” Instead of acting as a decisive commander-in-chief firmly committed to success, President Obama came across as an uncertain political leader eager to split the differences within his divided Administration to implement an exit strategy, despite the likely disastrous consequences of such a plan.

Hopes for a quick diplomatic breakthrough in the long-running stalemate over Iran’s nuclear weapons program have been dimmed by Iranian backtracking on a tentative agreement reached on October 1 in Geneva and Iran’s foot-dragging on future negotiations. Reuters today quoted an anonymous senior Iranian official as saying “Time is on our side” and declaring that Iran plans to slow-walk the diplomatic negotiations that will resume on October 19 by sending junior officials who do not have the authority to make firm commitments.

This confirms previous suspicions that Tehran will exploit the P5+1 talks to engage in a diplomatic filibuster that will defuse momentum for further international sanctions while Iran continues to move forward on its nuclear program.

The value of the “agreement in principle” reached in Geneva on October 1 also has been substantially downgraded by a blockbuster revelation publicized today in a Washington Post column by David Ignatius. Ignatius cited an article in Nucleonics Week that reported that Iran’s supplies of low-enriched uranium appear to be contaminated by impurities that could wreck centrifuges if Tehran tries to boost it to weapons grade fissile material. Ignatius wrote:

You’ve got to hand it to the Iranians, though, for making the best of what might be a bad situation: In the proposal embraced in Geneva, they have gotten the West to agree to decontaminate fuel that would otherwise be useful only for the low-enriched civilian nuclear power they have always claimed is their only goal.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal today reported that U.S. intelligence officials are considering whether to rewrite the controversial 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear activities. The findings of that NIE, which concluded that Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003, have been disputed by intelligence agencies from Britain, France, Germany and Israel. Even IAEA officials, who have long treated Iran with kid gloves and accorded it the benefit of the doubt, have been critical of the NIE’s findings. The recent revelation of Iran’s secret uranium enrichment facility hidden inside a mountain near Qom also has cast further doubt on the NIE.

Congressional pressure is building to review the flawed 2007 NIE. Last week Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, urged Congress to establish an independent “red team” of outside experts to review the 2007 NIE in light of disturbing recent revelations about the Iranian nuclear program. Rep. Hoekstra is right: a re-evaluation of the NIE is long overdue.

For more on the 2007 NIE, see: The Iran National Intelligence Estimate: A Comprehensive Guide to What Is Wrong with the NIE

For more information on the Iran nuclear program see: Iran Briefing Room