I don't know what to make of the new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that concludes Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003.
Apparently everyone else is off and running with it.
The Bush administration, in the person of Steven Hadley, was quick to spin the NIE, saying it proved the administration was right that Iran wanted a nuclear weapon and that its diplomatic efforts are paying off.
Except, of course, if the NIE is right, the administration has been wrong all along, claiming non-stop that Americans must be very afraid of Iran's "new Hitler," President Ahmadinejad, because he and his government are working their little fingers overtime to build a bomb. Cheney, especially, has been pushing for military strikes against facilities where those "bombs" are being built. Just a speech or two ago, President Bush spoke of Iran and "World War III" in the same sentence, just as he used to invoke the specter of mushroom clouds and 9/11 in every sentence about Iraq.
Others are embracing the report and blindly trusting it, even though the NIE was completely wrong about Iraq, and gave the Bush administration some of the cover it needed to wage the war it had been lusting after since it came into power.
How can we trust the NIE now when it got things so wrong before? Could it be wrong again? Or is it doing exactly the same thing it did nearly five years ago? Is it simply doing the bidding of the Bush administration?
In 2002, the administration needed justification for their war, and one came in the form of the NIE. In 2007, it may need justification NOT to go to war, and a new estimate gives them just that.
A lot of people, including myself, believed strongly that Bush was heading for, at the very least, air strikes against Iran. None of us quite knew how he was going to do that, in that our military is so tied down, its resources squandered, in Iraq, but none of us have ever seen Bush as being practical, and so a strike against Iran was always a possibility, especially with uncle Dick pressing his protégé so hard.
But it seems a few with much more common sense - and sanity - than the vice president may have prevailed. The release of the NIE may be the work of the Secretary of State, who has favored diplomacy all along, and seems to have learned from her mistake in supporting the Iraq War. It also may be that this president finally realized striking Iran would not only further damage his legacy, but possibly destroy the Republican Party not only in the upcoming election, but for decades to come.
It's too early to know, however, why this report came out now, and why it includes what it does. For that matter, it's too early to even trust what it says.
