The NIE’s Accuracy

The New York Times is reporting:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 —New York Times- 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.

In reading between the lines on this thing, it would seem to be creating a bit of a headache for democrats who have been making lots of noise lately about the White House not doing anything about stabilizing the remainder of the region.  That, because the first thing that one gets out of the report, is that there’s been a lot going on in the background that nobody’s been telling us about.  Most notably, the press charged with the job.

Further, these same democrats who have been complaining for upwards of the year that the republicans who were stiff arming Iran were simply warmongers who are responding to a threat that didn’t exist for political purposes, I now faced with the evidence that Iran backed off of its nuclear program almost incidental to our invasion of Iraq.  If you’ll recall, they said this, too, would destabilize the region, only to world war three, Armageddon, body bags, following cakes, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria.

What they would be admitting to, was that it was, in fact, our military action in Iraq, that put Iran off of its nuclear program.  Thereby, that our foreign policy, under President Bush, wasn’t quite so ineffective, after all.

There is of course, the issue that the current national intelligence estimate directly contradicts the one previous to it.  Could this, I wonder, be caused by the similarities between the similarly all of base intelligence estimate as regards Iraq?

Let’s remember, where these intelligence agencies are largely getting their information from; each other, through the United Nations and through NATO.  All of this, rather than bolstering the case Monday by anti-war democrats, that President Bush lied about then current intelligence, suggest instead that Mr. Bush was acting on information that he was getting from people whose job it was to collect such information.  The dramatic turnaround between these two NIE’s suggests that whatever intelligence problems there were incidental to the Iraq report, remain.

Here’s a thought to take with you today; business intelligence estimate one we can trust? With that thought, I’m sympathetic to Beck’s argument…

If these appalling imbeciles say that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons, then I say it’s time to go long on bomb shelters.

…. because that’s certainly the safe play. Dan Riehl’s point about the Syrian site Israel bombed a month or so back comes into play here, too. At the same time, they got it wrong the other direction with Iraq. Or did they?

Addendum: (Bit)

By way of Memeorandum,   Tom Joscelyn at the Weekly Standard asks five pertinent questions about all of this, and concludes:

We are left with a number of important questions. And without knowing the answers to these questions, the IC’s opinions are best viewed with a skeptical eye.

I suspect, that in the end a lot of this is simply how things are categorized within the halls of intelligence.  In showing us this, Joscelyn mentions one I neglected to:

Note that the IC argues that Iran supposedly gave up its covert uranium conversion and enrichment work. How does the IC know that? Are we to believe that the IC’s penetration of Iran’s intelligence services, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, and other parties controlled by the mullahs is so iron-clad that it can know this with certainty? Furthermore, is it possible that Iran did not need to do said work covertly because it has been openly enriching uranium?

Indeed, not only openly, but bragging about it.  And, probably overstating the case of how much uranium refining was going on… is this a case of ‘hiding in plain sight’?