The Iran Bombshell (Pt. II)

Well, a day after the NIE report turned upside down much of what the Bush administration has been saying about Iran for the past year or two, we finally have their official reaction. "Nothing's changed," the President said.

Rather than use this as an opportunity to take the Iranian leadership (the actual leadership, bypassing Ahmadinejad) up on their past diplomatic overtures and step back from the brink (which is no fun), the Bushies are sticking to their guns-

President Bush said Tuesday that the international community should continue to pressure Iran on its nuclear programs, asserting Tehran remains dangerous despite a new intelligence conclusion that it halted its development of a nuclear bomb four years ago.

"I view this report as a warning signal that they had the program, they halted the program," Bush said. "The reason why it's a warning signal is they could restart it."

Of course. They could restart the program that you had insinuated, if indirectly, was close to its goal already, risking immediate WWIII. The smoking gun could be a mushroom cloud. But you have lost the benefit of the doubt yet again. I trust facts, not rhetoric.

Note also the shifting rationale, as after the Iraq invasion, when inconvenient truths arise.

Andrew Sullivan sums up the Bush/Cheney approach to reality-

"[Y]ou have here a classic example of Bush's foreign policy thinking: his position is that Iran is a threat and must be countered by all necessary means. This applies whether Iran is cooperating or not cooperating. It applies if Iran is accelerating work toward a nuke or if it has suspended its work. Like other idees fixes, i.e. tax cuts, the data are less important than the assertion of doctrine."

Now watch the President address what he knew, and when he knew it, on Iran-



Okay, so let's sum this whopper up. The Director of National Intelligence told the President in August that they had "some new information", but didn't tell the President what it was (because, ya know, the President's not high enough up on the food chain for that info) and the President didn't care to ask. Bush insists that he-- the leader of the free world-- found out basically the same time as the NY Times and the rest of us. Even Byron York at the National Review seemingly calls bullshit on that.

Andrew Sullivan adds that, in regards to the release of this report at last, "My hunch is that this is the final collapse of the neocon wing of the Bush administration." I hope that is the case... and I truly believe that this report now makes it impossible for them to sell a war with merely one year left. But the neocon elders-- including Norman Podhoretz, who's now advising Giuliani-- aren't going down without a fight.

Still, there's now hope Iran will end up being another North Korea, and not another Iraq.