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“Between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the rise of the Sons of Aryas…”

– Robert E. Howard

A geoethnological map of blondness, courtesy of Strange Maps.

One result of Dr. Chet Richards converting Defense & The National Interest to DNI Blog is that I get to be the first blogger to award a coveted ” Hat Tip” to the notoriously technophobic, pipe-smoking, “Father of Fourth Generation Warfare”, William Lind ,for pointing to the new book Global Insurgency and the Future of Armed Conflict: Debating Fourth-Generation Warfare .

Read William Lind’s review here.

Briefly, as this issue has arisen, I will clarify as I expect that if one asks, ten wonder.

I am not in the habit of censoring commentary and certainly not because of the commenter’s political/religious/methodological/disciplinary/etc. POV or because they criticize my posts. Dissenting views are welcome here. That being said, I prefer that commenters try to maintain the same sort of civility and assumption of goodwill they would if they were talking with another person with whom they disagreed across a table. In my years of blogging, I have only deleted spam, a couple of guys who were repeatedly blogwhoring off-topic and one anonymous comment that I considered to be libelous as well as outrageously unfair.

In terms of functionality, if you put in a lot of links ( or goof up your homemade HTML coding), your comment will automatically be held for moderation by the spam filter. I will typically approve it,  ASAP, usually within a few hours. Otherwise, your comment should appear on the site immediately. I’m sorry for the delay but I’m not keen on spam messsages appearing in the sidebar, given that they usually involve enlarging one’s manhood with secret herbal formulas or winning the Nigerian lottery. Sort of detracts from the “new look” I’m going for here. ;o)

That’s it.

Jeremy Young, a.k.a. “Nonpartisan“, the founder and editor the respected and popular, left-wing, history group blog, Progressive Historians, had some kind words for me when he was interviewed by Scott McLemee, for an article  for Inside Higher Ed.com:

“I’m a liberal,” Young says. “ZenPundit” (Mark Safranski) is a conservative. So what? His history blog is one of the most best reads on the ‘Net. Whether he’s discussing small wars theory, political history, or Jack Kerouac, he’s unfailingly thorough and offers a unique, insightful perspective on every issue he covers.”

That was darn nice of Jeremy to offer up ( incidentally, Young has an article online over at HNN, “A Historian Against Obama“, arguing that progressive hopes for a Barack Obama administration may be misplaced), particularly in a venue where readers were not likely to have heard of Zenpundit. I think much the same way about visiting Progressive Historians where Young has a stable of  talented contributors, mostly younger scholars, digging into a wide range of historical and political issues and frequently engaging in vigorous debate. Despite my being on the conservative side of the spectrum I’ve never been made to feel anything but welcome in the comments section despite a wide divergence in political and economic views ( very wide, in some instances, as many Progressive Historian bloggers are well to the Left of Young, to say nothing of me).

This is how the blogosphere ought to be more often. Thanks Jeremy, much appreciated!

The release of the conclusions in the recent NIE  (PDF) on Iran’s nuclear program has provoked widespread commentary in the blogosphere. The pure politics of the release is best dealt with elsewhere but here are a few words from some folks with more than nimble typing fingers to back up their analysis:

Haft of the Spear:

“The declassified key judgments of the latest NIE on Iran are yet another opportunity to get a glimpse of the inner-workings of the highest levels of the intelligence community. The picture isn’t pretty. The key judgments are notable for many reasons, not the least of which is how they contrast with the last NIE on this same topic. In 2005, with access to an Iranian source’s laptop, the community was confident that Iran was determined to build a nuclear weapon “despite its international obligations and international pressure.” Today it is equally confident that Iran halted its weapons program in 2003 and that it remained suspended for several years”

Whirledview:

“I will note that the supposedly secret uranium enrichment program that the administration accused North Korea of, and broke up the Agreed Framework for, was disavowed by the intelligence community earlier this year in much the same way that this NIE disavows the 2005 NIE on Iran. I’ll also note that proving a negative is difficult, and one of the favorite tactics of the right: we say that you’ve got a secret program. Prove to us you don’t.”

ArmsControlWonk:

“ Dafna Linzer reports in the Washington Post that a crucial bit of information was an intercepted communication by a senior Iranian military official “complaining that the nuclear program had been shuttered.”The intercept – which Linzer notes was one of 1,000 footnotes in a 150 page document – was the final piece in the puzzle, and Linzer reports that the intercepts were briefed to the Bush Administration “beginning in July.”So, that timing would be consistent with Mike McConnell’s reference to “new information collected in late spring that caused a reconsideration of some elements of the assessment.”

Swedish Meatballs Confidential:

“The ‘new’ NIE on Iran’s nuclear weapons program [9-page pdf] — which has been [minor tweaks aside] in the can for nearly a year now — was released this afternoon. It is clear why the Cheney Cabal didn’t want this estimate to see the light of day.”

Counterterrorism Blog:

“ While the NIE clearly shifts the assessment of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, it acknowledges the regime continues to engage in dangerous behavior and comes down firmly on the side of political and economic pressure as an effective means of changing Iranian behavior. According to the NIE, Iran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program on the fall of 2003 was “in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure resulting from exposure of Iran’s previously undeclared nuclear work.” (It was around this time that the U.S. and other governments exposed the A.Q. Kahn network and its international nuclear weapons material black market). The key judgments conclude that “our assessment that the [nuclear weapons] program probably was halted primarily in response to international pressure suggests Iran may be more vulnerable to influence on the issue that we judged previously.”

Sic Semper Tyrannis:

” The chimera of Iran as deadly menace is a product of Israeli paranoia and debilitating fear of the “other.”  This fear saturates Israeli strategic thinking making impossible for them a rational contemplation of the odds against Iranian suicide attacks against Israel.  Israel rejects the concept of deterrence of nuclear attack through creation of MAD (mutual assured destruction).  I have described their reasoning elsewhere in these pages. Given the awful nature of Jewish history, such overwhelming fear of the return of the final “gollum,” or perhaps Azrael himself is comprehensible.”

Thomas P.M. Barnett:

“ Iran’s choice is reasonably smart: talk big like Libya, stop short of weapons like Japan, but signal willingness to aggressively defend like Israel. I told you these guys are not stupid.”

I recall, as a lowly grad student, that many of the documents I would have loved to have had my hands on – NIE’s and PDD/NSDD’s referred to in secondary literature – were locked up tight, despite having been issued sometimes decades earlier. It’s rather surreal, from a historian’s perspective, seeing even partial declassification of a just issued NIE. Until recently at least, the USG had still classified documents going back to 1917 ( most likely covering cryptological sources and methods)!

The devil is in the details, to which we are not privy. Traditionally, the NIC process constructing a NIE would have a NIO as point man and emerge as a consensus, with the CIA  often being the heavyweight in the interagency wrangling. Supposedly, procedures have changed since the pre-Iraq War days to clarify the degree of certainty in an inherently uncertain scenario. Given the general unwillingness of IC bureaucracies to reconsider even information-sharing habits, how robust were the changes in the analytical methodology ?