EckerNet.Com

At first glance, this National Intelligence Estimate on Iran would seem like a setback for the Bush Administration, because as the NYT reports:

A new assessment by American intelligence agencies concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains frozen, contradicting judgment two years ago that Tehran was working relentlessly toward building a nuclear bomb.

The conclusions of the new assessment are likely to reshape the final year of the Bush administration, which has made halting Iran’s nuclear program a cornerstone of its foreign policy.

Ok fair enough, on it’s surface that appears to be the case. However, if you consider it a little more I see a NIE that is full of problems for liberals.

Remember that five years ago an NIE stated with as much certainty as intelligence can offer, that Iraq was virtually packed to the gills with WMDs. And therein lies the problem, no matter what way you spin this, it presents an ideological pitfall for the left.

So either you take the approach that NIEs are our nation’s best guesstimate at what is going on in the world and are worthy of being taken seriously, or you don’t.

If you think NIEs are worth listening to, then yes this does seem to run counter to the Bush administration’s desire to deal with Iran before the end of his term. However, at the same time it virtually destroys the whole “Bush Lied” mantra that the left has been using for seemingly the last 28 years. Because if you want to use the credibility of a NIE report to attack Bush on Iran, you have to grant the same credibility to the NIE report on Iraq, which stated that Iraq had WMDs and was creating more.

On the other hand, if you think the NIEs are little more than Wild Ass Guesses (WAGs) and have no credibility Then you have a questionable, but still tenable ability to cling to your old mantra, but it does little to counter the Bush Administrations hints at having to deal with Iran before the next election. Indeed it leaves us in the same place, with Iran being rather uncooperative with a UN seeking to confirm Iran’s claims of peaceful use of nuclear technology.

Alternately, one could take the intellectually dubious approach of saying the Iraq NIE was uncredible, due to internal political forces. But that despite those same forces, this NIE on Iran came out somewhat countering the administration’s position. Ok let’s for the sake of argument, allow that that fly….despite it’s extremely flawed logic.

You still have the situation where in 2003, Iran took a look at the world stage and decided that nukes just weren’t the answer. Not exactly unprecedented because Libya did the same thing, albeit much more publicly. And you have to give credit to what, in large part, was the reason for those conclusions. The invasion of Iraq.

It would be pretty unlikely that the United States invasion of Iraq, on the premise that they couldn’t be trusted with WMDs was not a major factor in Libya, and apparently Iran, deciding that WMDs were more of a political and military liability than an asset. While US foreign policy can be rather fickle and unpredictable, the Iraq War proved that WMDs were one issue where the US was willing to draw a line in the sand with a rather large sword.

So as a result, the liberals would have to give credit to the Bush administration for several foreign success stories. Not only did the invasion of Iraq, in what appears increasingly likely to result in the first stable and democratic government in the Arab region. But it also convinces two dangerous and untrustworthy countries in the region to abandon WMDs. Both are accomplishments worthy of praise.

And if the liberals aren’t willing to give that credit, then they are stuck right back where we were last week. Iran very possibly is developing nuclear weapons, they’ve been irrational in their foreign policy, have been uncooperative with the world community in the form of the UN and have very vocally threatened other countries in the region with destruction.

No matter which way you spin this report, the liberal left has some very very bitter pills to swallow.

[H/T : The Corner]