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One would have thought that both Israel and the United States, not to mention Mahmoud Abbas, would have finally realized that there is no military solution to Hamas in Gaza, but the newer, more robust attitude is a product of the resurgence of Vice President Dick Cheney and the neocon hawks that surround him.
Cheney and his friends are again planning to attack Iran before Bush leaves office. The Vice President's ability to dictate White House foreign policy went into decline last year when a series of articles appeared in The Washington Post detailing how he was the main force behind many administration policies, not the president. President Bush was reportedly miffed by the implication that he was a political lightweight compared to his deputy and he shifted his support to the more moderate policies being promoted by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Bob Gates.
Cheney's success at reassuming control over the foreign policy process came through exploitation of President Bush's mistrust of the intelligence community, which he has long seen as hostile to his interventionist policies. That the intelligence community works for the president and is structured with so many checks and balances that it would be incapable of playing such a role has long been irrelevant as the administration and its cheerleaders have sought to find a convenient scapegoat for its foreign policy disasters. The release of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran in early December provided the critical wedge issue that enabled Cheney to shift the president in a more bellicose direction. As the estimate made a case that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program, it was widely seen as contradictory to the administration policy which has sought to demonize Iran and set it up for regime change. Bush, an immoderately stubborn man at the best of times, was not about to let facts change his thinking.
During President Bush's just concluded visit to the Middle East, this process of distancing from the intelligence agencies culminated in the president's telling both Prime Minister Olmert and the Saudis that the NIE did not influence his thinking about Iran. At one point, he said "I defended our intelligence services, but made it clear that they're an independent agency; that they come to conclusions separate from what I may or may not want." Bush also told Olmert that an Israeli intelligence assessment, which detailed the threat posed by Iran and claimed that the weapons program is again up and running, more closely matched his own assessment. The Bush claim that the intelligence community is somehow independent of the government of which it is apart is, of course, completely absurd, but it is symptomatic of the thinking of Cheney and his supporters.
Bush and Cheney are now back on track for a program of bringing American democracy to the Middle East through force of arms if necessary. When the Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and senior CIA analysts briefed Vice President Cheney about the potential blowback coming from a military confrontation with Iran early in January, Cheney was dismissive, responding that the US could handle any consequences. The Vice President, who has reportedly been regularly disparaging US intelligence assessments at National Security Council meetings, has taken the position that CIA and the intelligence community have been getting "payback" for their being blamed for the poor intelligence that contributed to the invasion of Iraq and have been quite deliberately undermining American policy on Iran.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-giraldi/the-return-of-dick-cheney_b_82566.html
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