Guilliani Employs Insane People by Kevin

Via Josh Marshall, we see that the NIE stating that Iran had given up its nuclear weapons program in 2003 is the result of a conspiracy by the CIA:

I entertain an even darker suspicion. It is that the intelligence community, which has for some years now been leaking material calculated to undermine George W. Bush, is doing it again. This time the purpose is to head off the possibility that the President may order air strikes on the Iranian nuclear installations. As the intelligence community must know, if he were to do so, it would be as a last resort, only after it had become undeniable that neither negotiations nor sanctions could prevent Iran from getting the bomb, and only after being convinced that it was very close to succeeding. How better, then, to stop Bush in his tracks than by telling him and the world that such pressures have already been effective and that keeping them up could well bring about “a halt to Iran’s entire nuclear weapons program”—especially if the negotiations and sanctions were combined with a goodly dose of appeasement or, in the NIE’s own euphemistic formulation, “with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways.”

Do I really need to point out that this is insane? The CIA — the folks who do extraordinary rendition and torture people — are trying to appease Iran and make Bush bad. Next week, Podhoretz is going to explain how Santa Claus is really a Chinese spy. Why not? It makes more sense that the tripe he just wrote about the CIA and the NIE.

And this man is one of Guillani’s top foreign policy advisers. And Guilliani is one of the front runners for the GOP nomination. The fact that Guilliani can employ a man of such laughable opinions and not be hooted out of the primary is a serious failing of modern American politics and media. If we had a functioning media Guillinia press conferences would consist of variations of the question “Why are you taking advice from a lunatic?”