A new intelligence report is now reporting that Iran has halted it’s nuclear weapons program, and according to the National Intelligence Estimate(NIE), Iran had actually stopped this program in 2003. This would seem to be at odds with what our current administration had been telling us as recently as a week ago that Iran was indeed still trying to enrich uranium to make it weapons grade uranium. While Bush has been doing a bit of backpedaling, saying that Iran could at any time reconstitute these programs, he seems to be backing off the charge that Iran is actively seeking nuclear weapons, at least at this time.
So everything sounds wonderful, and to me, this is the problem. Bad intel(or at least cherry-picked) is how this administration decided to drag us into invading Iraq. While I never put too much stock in any one intelligence narrative, I have come to now distrust them completely. Different intelligence reports can(and most often do) have glaring differences between them, which makes the reports about as useful as a magic 8-ball. While all of the reports may indeed have facts in them, and some of their conclusions may be correct, to say that the entire report is correct is the surest way to lose the next war.
But so many people seem happy about this latest report, saying how it disproves our administration’s claims that Iran has hostile intents regarding the use of nuclear energy, to me they are missing the point. This administration has done countless things that are not just wrong, but illegal in my view, and I am looking forward to January of 2009(the next inauguration). I am somewhat hopeful that whoever is elected next does not use the office of the presidency as his/her personal throne, usurping so many of the powers that were orginally given to the other branches of our government. But even with all of the disgusting things this administration decided it would do, I cannot put to rest the thought that we are too busy fighting with each other politically to see what is happening on the rest of the planet.
I guess that is my problem with the latest intelligence estimate, it is now seen as a tool not to try to discern the true capabilities of a foreign government, but it is a tool in which politicians use an “estimate” to try to prove their side is right. And who knows what the next intelligence report will say, I hope it corroborates this last report, but I wouldn’t count on it
