Originally posted at The Seminal.
When the Director of National Intelligence dropped this bombshell of a National Intelligence Estimate last week, several notable conservative heads started spinning. John Bolton even went as far as to say "there is little substantive difference between the conclusions of the 2005 NIE on Iran's nuclear capabilities and the 2007 NIE." Think Progress quickly dispelled that myth pointing out the very basic differences between the two reports.
Why are neo-conservatives so upset about the new NIE? Perhaps it is because it makes the Bush administration's irresponsible rhetoric look completely ridiculous.
The key findings of the report begin with a bang:
We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.
Later in the document, they plainly show that Bush's-sabre rattling of late, had little if anything to do with the situation on the ground.
We judge with moderate confidence Iran probably would be technically capable of producing enough HEU for a weapon sometime during the 2010-2015 time frame. (INR judges Iran is unlikely to achieve this capability before 2013 because of foreseeable technical and programmatic problems.) All agencies recognize the possibility that this capability may not be attained until after 2015.
I see this is as a warning from the intelligence community. They are making it perfectly clear that there is no possible justification for a pre-emptive strike on Iran. The fact that a pre-emptive strike could be seen as a plausible option in some circles is evidence of how skewed our foreign policy debate has become. Due to criticism of the report from neocons, Donald Kerr, Deputy Direct of National Intelligence defended the NIE, calling it "one of the most well-sourced" assessments ever produced.
So why did the intelligence community release this report? It is highly uncharacteristic of the Bush administration or any subset of it to contradict the President, it just isn't how they do business. Patrick Lang has some insight on why the report may have been released:
I am told that the reason the conclusions of the NIE were released is that it was communicated to the White House that "intelligence career seniors were lined up to go to jail if necessary" if the document's gist were not given to the public. Translation? Someone in that group would have gone to the media "on the record" to disclose its contents.
Apparently the threat of leaked information from the report was a good enough reason to officially release it.
This may also be evidence of a growing divide between the intelligence community and neo-conservatives. The Bush administration has done everything in its power to blame the Iraq war on those who provided faulty intelligence. Nevermind the fact that intelligence was broadly manipulated in the run up to the 2003 invasion.
In 2005, a Presidential Commission called Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction was established. The report the Commission released was highly critical of the intelligence community, essentially blaming them for the Iraq war.
On the brink of war, and in front of the whole world, the United States government asserted that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear weapons program, had biological weapons and mobile biological weapon production
facilities, and had stockpiled and was producing chemical weapons. All of this was based on the assessments of the U.S. Intelligence Community. And not one bit of it could be confirmed when the war was over.
If I were a member of the intelligence community, I'd be sick of being made into a scapegoat too.