The N.I.E. Mystery-Riddle-Enigma

Yesterday's news about Iran's nuclear weapons or, more accurately, lack thereof is an event that recalls Winston Churchill's description of the Soviet Union as a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma.

Even by Bush Administration standards of incompetence, illogic and intrigue, there is no sane explanation for the President's continuing public insistence that Iran come clean about weapons that his National Security Adviser now admits Bush has known for "months" do not exist.

Unless...

Going back to the 2003 Cheney gang massaging of intelligence about Iraq's WMDs that prompted Colin Powell to mislead the UN, the questions arise (1) Is Stephen Hadley trying to hide the fact that Bush was being similarly duped or (2) Did the desire for another invasion lead Bush and Cheney once again to hide evidence that would destroy the rationale for doing it until the intelligence agencies themselves finally rebelled against doing another George Tenet?

There are other, less likely possibilities. Did Congressional overseers threaten to blow the whistle (they deny it)? Did somebody finally wise up to the fact that the murky exile-terrorist group, Mujahedeen-e-Khalq or MEK, credited with "helping expose Iran’s secret nuclear program,” has been no more reliable than Ahmed Chalabi's grifters were in Iraq?

As conservatives scramble to explain that Iran stopped trying to produce nuclear weapons in 2003 because they were terrified by our invasion of Iraq (the most Hail Mary of passes in a gone game), the maddening opaqueness of what happened this week to derail Bush's milk run to World War III remains a 21st century mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma.

Fourteen months from now, maybe we can give up playing these heart-stopping Neo-Con games and start living again in a sane world.

Nuclear Hiccup

Oops. "A new assessment by American intelligence agencies concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains on hold," the New York Times reports today.

Not that there is anything wrong with that. Bush's national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, issued a statement spinning the new National Intelligence Estimate as good news rather than a sign that the same intelligence mistakes that got us into Iraq are still being made today.

“It confirms that we were right to be worried about Iran seeking to develop nuclear weapons,” Hadley said. “It tells us that we have made progress in trying to ensure that this does not happen. But the intelligence also tells us that the risk of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon remains a very serious problem.”

Shameless but par for the Bush-Cheney course to toss off their months-long drumbeat for invading or bombing Iran as a slight glitch that proves we scared Ahmadinejad in stopping a nuclear weapons buildup that never was.

It was only five weeks ago that a Zogby poll showed that more than half of voters would support a military strike to prevent Iran from producing a nuclear weapon and believed it was likely the US would do so before next year's election.

But all that is old news. Looking to the future, Hadley now says, “The estimate offers grounds for hope that the problem can be solved diplomatically--without the use of force--as the administration has been trying to do.” Did Barack Obama sneak into the White House and take over without anybody noticing?

Someone please get the smelling salts for Joe Lieberman and Norman Podhoretz, and wipe the foam off the snouts of Cheney's Neo-Con attack dogs.