ABSTRACT
Iranians sent a back-channel message via Switzerland in 2003 saying they would recognize Israel, according to the former dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Stephen M. Walt, but the message was rejected outright. It would be amusing, were it not so deadly serious, that the thirty-page National Intelligence Estimate, completed last April, has been leaked this week. It cites the “centrality” of the US invasion of Iraq and the chaos that followed it as the No. 1 inspiration for the new Islamic radical insurgents, cells and networks in Iraq. Revealingly, Cirincione’s organization, along with Foreign Policy magazine, recently compiled a poll of 116 leading experts on Iraq, the military and the region which concurs with the NIE report. At the Heritage Committee, a rare skeptic asked an avid pro-war speaker exactly how American soldiers from Iowa, Nebraska, and California would know the “good guys” from the “bad guys” in a brutal country like Iraq.
