Kenneth Timmerman of Front Page Magazine reports on the testimony given by the Director of National Intelligence, Michael McConnell that I posted upon at great length earlier this week (video included).  Timmerman notes the refreshing candor of McConnell, something I too had noticed and was relieved with, in describing a series of events over the course of the past 30 years that has brought this nation to where we are today in terms of the threats faced.

While McConnell did not mention what could have happened thirty years ago nor was he asked by senators trying to score political points and television time moreso than just ask questions regarding national security, McConnell’s statement of just that time period relates to a very important occurrence almost three decades ago.  It was the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and the rise of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

And many of today’s challenges for not just the United States, but for the entire world, can be traced back to that one moment in history.  It is therefore quite telling on how the refusal to back the Shah when his government was in peril has pushed the world into the course we all are headed in now.

Timmerman notes some of the political posturing given at the testimony by senators on board.

The Democrats tried repeatedly to get McConnell to say that al Qaeda was more powerful today than it had been before 9/11. Unfortunately for their 2008 game plan, the facts just don’t line up that way.

“First of all, just let me say that al Qaeda leadership, as it existed prior to 9/11 or prior to going into Afghanistan — somewhere in the neighborhood of three-quarters of the leadership have been killed or captured,” McConnell said.

And then, there’s the little detail about the Afghan training camps that flourished under Taliban rule. “Now, when I looked at prior to going into Afghanistan, there were literally thousands of those forces in training with multiple camps. That’s gone,” McConnell said.

Sure, al Qaeda is recruiting. And yes, Senator: they are a danger. “They are attempting to rebuild in the North-West Frontier of Pakistan,” he said. “But the numbers are not the same.”

It was, surprisingly, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) who asked direct questions and at least tried to stay out of the political mess, and it was McConnell’s answers to Sen. Graham that were the most revealing.

As I wrote in the previous post on this testimony, you really do need to watch the full three-hour testimony (skip ahead on dates as there’s no direct link to the video) if you are interested in the war on Islamism and what is around without the constant spin of journalistic punditry.  There is a good deal of talk on North Korea and some on both China and Venezuela, therefore if those issues are of no interest to you then you can skip ahead.

If you are not willing to sit for three hours and watch a video on the Internet, and who can blame you, watch the 10-minute excerpted video I made that catches many of the main points on Iran and Al Qaida.  McConnell’s testimony was remarkable in both its insight and, again, candor; it’s nothing like former DNI John Negroponte used to deliver where things were left unanswered as Negroponte ebbed and flowed around political hot potatoes.  McConnell delivered.