Of course they're lying. The evidence is in Iran.

The main theme surrounding Bush and the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran seems to centre on whether Bush (and company) are lying about when they came into possession of the information contained in the NIE or whether they, and Bush in particular, are just stupid.

Joe Scarborough, hardly a Republican detractor, ripped into Bush this morning making that same assertion. Bush is either lying or he's stupid.

From the comments on this post yesterday the immediate consensus seems to be that Bush is both stupid and a liar. Certainly Bush seems quite willing to appear stupid rather than admit that, despite his escalating rhetoric, he was aware that Iran's nuclear program had long ago been halted.

Josh Marshall picked up the "tell" in Bush's 17 October press conference, where Bush changes the imperative from stopping Iran's weapons development to preventing Iran from possessing the knowledge to develop nuclear weapons. That provided a means of cover.

Cheney too, was manipulating the rhetoric. In his 21 October speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy this line is also a "tell":

And now, of course, we have the inescapable reality of Iran's nuclear program; a program they claim is strictly for energy purposes, but which they have worked hard to conceal; a program carried out in complete defiance of the international community and resolutions of the U.N. Security Council. Iran is pursuing technology that could be used to develop nuclear weapons.

He didn't say it was being used. Why? Because Cheney was in full possession of the facts. The inconvenient truth for Cheney, who was leading the charge to bomb Iran, was that Tehran was not developing nuclear weapons - just that they could . The same could be said for Boliva, Ghana or Jamaica for all the weight it carried.

However, there is another piece of evidence which proves Bush and Cheney are lying about when they were aware of the contents of the NIE, and that is in Iran itself.

The 2005 NIE on Iran stated with high confidence that Iran was engaged in a nuclear program to enrich uranium to build a bomb. With that estimate in hand, Cheney had everything he needed to formulate and execute a bombing campaign. Given his disdain for world opinion of his policies, he might well have proceeded except for one thing. The March 2005 presidential commission on Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction issued a scathing assessment of the way intelligence and raw data was refined to form conclusions. The 2005 NIE, put together by many of the same people who had produced the highly flawed NIE on Iraq's WMD, was placed under review. This time there were new people working on the case.

But Cheney still had that 2005 NIE and an overwhelming desire to bomb Iran. (That goes back to the 1979 hostage-taking.) With that NIE and enough of an obvious push-back by Iran on facility inspections, Cheney could have had Bush order a naval air strike by late 2006 or early 2007. Certainly, the required naval strike forces had been assembled in the Persian Gulf in preparation for just that kind of attack.

Two things got in the way.

Iraq went off the rails and required much more attention. The insurgency was taking the lives of US troops at an unacceptable level. In order to combat the insurgency a troop escalation would be necessary and it would have been impossible to sell an Iraq-fatigued American public on the idea of increasing forces and operational tempo in Iraq plus a whole new theatre of operations in Iran. So, Cheney was forced to accept that Iraq would have to be dealt with first. The only bright side, from his point of view, was that Iran could be used as a point of blame for the insurgency in Iraq, whether Tehran had anything to do with it or not.

The second thing was the review of the 2005 NIE. By 2006, the initial assessments would have been available and, at the very least, the emphasis of at least some of the sixteen intelligence agencies working on the new NIE would have indicated a different direction - Iran's nuclear program had been halted.

Here's where Iran provides the evidence that Bush and Cheney, despite their rhetoric, knew well before last Wednesday Iran had halted their nuclear program and are lying about it now. It wasn't seven days ago they learned of it. It was more like seven months or even seventeen months. Because if they had not known the true high confidence estimate Iran would already have smoking holes in the ground.

If the progress on the draft 2007 NIE had not been generating new and very different information Cheney would have felt confident to instruct Bush to order the carrier strike groups in the Persian Gulf to proceed with an air assault.

The new NIE however, prevented Cheney from acting. If he attacked Iran, based on the 2005 NIE and the information in the new NIE was made public after the fact, it would be Iraq all over again. It quite possibly could have sparked a revolt at home as the American public watched a second betrayal of their trust and a second act of leading them into a war based on lies.

If Bush and Cheney had not known some considerable time ago what was contained or going to be contained in the 2007 NIE, Iran would already have a landscape pocked with bomb craters.

That's why the rhetoric in Bush's 17 October press conference and Cheney's 21 October speech contain parlance such as "knowledge necessary to produce nuclear weapons" and "could be used to produce nuclear weapons".

Well aware that Iran poses no immediate threat, Bush and Cheney are trying to lower the bar and make "potential" a reason for a pre-emptive strike on Iran.

So, the landscape of Iran is how we know both of them are lying about how long ago they knew Tehran had halted its nuclear program. If they hadn't known, Iran would have a few more scars today.

And, yes, Bush remains stupid along with being a liar.

So, what's it going to be, George?

Bush is either the dumbest president in US history or he's an incredible liar. The White House press conference this morning contained some interesting stuff. On one hand we have Bush telling everyone that he wasn't aware of the contents of the NIE on Iran until last Tuesday.

At a press briefing this morning, President Bush said he was told by his Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell “in August” that “we have some new information” regarding Iran’s nuclear program. But Bush asserted “he didn’t tell me what the information was”:

BUSH: I was made aware of the NIE last week. In August, I think it was John — Mike McConnell came in and said, We have some new information. He didn’t tell me what the information was. He did tell me it was going to take a while to analyze.

Later, when a reporter followed-up on this statement, Bush asserted no one ever told him to stop ratcheting up the rhetoric against Iran:

REPORTER: Are you saying at no point while the rhetoric was escalating, as World War III was making it into conversation — at no point, nobody from your intelligence team or your administration was saying, Maybe you want to back it down a little bit?

BUSH: No — I’ve never — nobody ever told me that.

This is the Bush defence for the outrageous rhetoric intended to convince the American public and the world that there was a need for a military strike on Iran. At this point though, it makes Bush look like little more than a clueless buffoon. Is he the president or isn't he?

To recap: At the same time Bush was ratcheting up the rhetoric on Iran, he was told by his National Intelligence Director that that have “some new information.” Yet Bush wants the public to believe he never learned what the information was, nor was he interested.

That's more than a little hard to believe and Josh Marshall calls immediate bullshit, noting that Bush has been changing the terms of his rhetoric on Iran because he had to be aware that the NIE was going to crush his case for attacking Iran.

[W]hen you look back at his speeches, there's evidence that the president was shifting his terms because he knew that the intelligence on which his push for war was based was likely too collapse.

If you go back to his October 17th press conference, the one where he spoke of 'World War III' he changes his wording. It's no longer the need to prevent the Iranians from getting the bomb. Now it's the necessity of "preventing them from hav[ing] the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."

That's the tell.

That change is no accident. He wants claims that will survive the eventual revelation of this new intelligence -- while also continuing to hype the imminence of the Iranian nuclear threat that his spy chiefs are telling him likely does not exist.

So, the rhetoric will probably continue and increase as Bush now tries to sell the idea that Iran needs to be bombed because they possess the knowledge necessary to create a nuclear weapon. He (on Cheney's orders) would bomb them because of what they know.

So, despite what Bush says about when he finally got the information in the NIE, there is already an indication that he was aware of its contents before October 17th.

Back on November 10th Gareth Porter wrote an article which I linked to describing the delay in releasing the NIE. In it he described the fight between Cheney, who wants desperately to attack Iran, and the intelligence community which refused to alter the findings or material. In fact, Porter pointed out that there had already been casualties in Cheney's campaign to attack Iran.

Cheney's desire for a "clean" NIE that could be used to support his aggressive policy toward Iran was apparently a major factor in the replacement of John Negroponte as director of national intelligence in early 2007. Negroponte had angered neo-conservatives in the administration by telling the press in April 2006 that the intelligence community believed that it would still be "a number of years off" before Iran would be "likely to have enough fissile material to assemble into or to put into a nuclear weapon, perhaps into the next decade".

If Negroponte knew that, and stated it publicly, Bush also had to know. The pounding of the war drums continued however and the pattern of rhetoric appeared to be a carbon copy of the model employed by Bush and Cheney to attack Iraq. The problem this time, however is that there was a comprehensive intelligence estimate that would expose the Bush/Cheney claims as fraudulent.

The contention in Porter's article, and Negroponte's statement of 19 months ago, is supported today by Scott Horton in Harper's Magazine. Again, there is a stunned disbelief that Bush and Cheney continued to push for an attack on Iran despite being in possession of good intelligence that ran counter to their claims of Iran's nuclear capability and ambitions.

Ken Silverstein and I have been pointing for the better part of the year to the very strange goings-on surrounding the preparation and issuance of a vital intelligence report on the state of Iran’s nuclear project. The White House, and particularly Vice President Cheney, has been feverishly attempting to stop its issuance. The Director of National Intelligence, McConnell, has been at odds to oppose its declassification. In sum, something was there and the war party was intensely upset about it.

[...]

National Security Advisor Steve Hadley appeared this afternoon to answer questions about the NIE and to offer remarks. Hadley has never been a particularly effective figure at press gatherings of this sort, and today was a very weak showing even by Hadley’s standards. But the key question came right off the bat: What should we think about the fact that as recently as October 17, President Bush was giving public remarks in which he pointed to the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran as World War III on the horizon? Indeed, a quick check shows the mushroom cloud analogy, which we all so closely associate with the irrepressibly irresponsible Condoleezza Rice, flowing from the lips of President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Rice and Director of National Intelligence McConnell–with increased frequency since the post-Labor Day “roll out.” Hadley responded by saying that the NIE was only completed in the last two weeks and it rests on “new intelligence”–presumably newer than October 17–which pushed the analysts over the line and caused them to close their judgments on the issue.

Is this true? That will be a subject for further study. But one highly reliable intelligence community source I consulted immediately after Hadley spoke answered my question this way: “This is absolutely absurd. The NIE has been in substantially the form in which it was finally submitted for more than six months. The White House, and particularly Vice President Cheney, used every trick in the book to stop it from being finalized and issued. There was no last minute breakthrough that caused the issuance of the assessment.” So what, I asked, if not an intelligence breakthrough, what caused the last-minute change and the sudden issuance of the summary of the NIE? My source had no idea. He speculated, however, that a hardening of attitudes within the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the intelligence community, and in Israel against the plans for an air war in Iran had caused Cheney and his team to fold their cards. “But I’d leave that with a final note of caution,” the source added, “Cheney sometimes appears to give up, but he’s a tenacious son-of-a-bitch. He may very well be back at it tomorrow.”

In case anyone missed the obvious, this has always been a Cheney push and Cheney, between defibrillator sessions, is really the one in charge.

I suspect Cheney will indeed be back pounding the "Iran must be dealt with" drum very soon. And the push to bomb Iran will find itself back on the stage in short order.

But the question is, if there is no active nuclear program in Iran, what precisely are they going to bomb? If knowledge is the threat that would suggest the target might be a university.

That's the best you could come up with?

Umm, I don't think anyone, anywhere expected the wankosphere to spin the National Intelligence Estimate, that a nuclear program in Iran was halted four years ago, quite this way.

Glenn Reynolds:

This story lets the Bush Administration take credit for pressuring Iran into stopping its weapons program by invading Iraq -- meaning that the invasion really did end a major WMD threat -- and also punt further serious action on the Iran issue to the next administration. Cui bono? I think it's pretty obvious. . . .

Wow! I mean, just, wow! That's one helluva straw your grasping onto there, professor. So now the reason du jour for invading Iraq was to deal with a threat in Iran. Honestly, even the rest of the wankosphere would have trouble with that line of thought. Well, maybe not....

Victor Davis (I love war. Please start one so I can watch.) Hanson.

After all, what critic would wish now to grant that one result of the 2003 war — aside from the real chance that Iraq can stabilize and function under the only consensual government in the region — might have been the elimination, for some time, of two growing and potentially nuclear threats to American security, quite apart from Saddam Hussein?

Jeez! Another one!

So, if we are to understand the talking point correctly from these two, it made perfect sense to lay waste to Iraq to deal with a threat from Iran. I'm just guessing, but somehow I don't see the devastated population of Iraq buying into that line of reasoning.

Applied at a more local level, using the rationale of these two clowns, if I have an urge to get rid of the drug dealer in the crack-house down the street, it makes perfect sense to burn down his neighbour's house.

John Cole has found a much more traditional right-wing Bush cargo culture response. Yeah, I like it. Conspiracy theories are a lot more fun and reaffirming.

Update: Alright, this is becoming more than a coincidence. Now Ed Morrissey weighs in with the same line of reasoning as Reynolds and the highly irrelevant Hanson.

What might have happened in 2003 to convince Teheran to stop its nuclear-weapons pursuit? Could it have been the events on its western border, where the American military removed a dictator that they couldn't beat in eight years of brutal warfare? Libya's Moammar Ghaddafi certainly had the same idea in 2003, and for that very reason.

Which is to suggest that an unjustified beating on Iraq gains some purpose because, gee, look, Iran stopped their nuclear program, obviously because they were afraid they would be next on the Bush hit list.

Have another coffee Ed. You're making about as much sense as the PhDs and professors.

If Iran wanted to send a message that there was no reason to fear them, why did they continue to make noises to the contrary? And why did it take intelligence gathering to finally determine the state Iran's nuclear program when all the Iranians had to do was open the doors and let the world have a look? Iran wanted everyone to believe they had a nuclear program and taunted the US with it.

The NIE itself puts a lie to the Reynolds/Hanson/Morrissey "because of Iraq" talking point with this statement:

Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005. Our assessment that the program probably was halted primarily in response to international pressure suggests Iran may be more vulnerable to influence on the issue than we judged previously.

Not the invasion of Iraq.

Update II: Who left the window open?

I was wondering when the Canadian RWA crowd would weigh in. Frankly, I'm disappointed. Maybe that last blast of winter took something out of them. The basic premise of their talking point is the most predictable:

If the intelligence on Iraq was flawed, how credible is this intelligence estimate?

Really. You aren't even on the same field as Reynold/Hanson/Morrissey. For one thing the "intelligence" on Iraq wasn't. It was manufactured, cherry-picked and spun out forty-eight ways to Sunday. The real intelligence on that case was ignored and suppressed. If you need a further explanation, this should help.

So, go back into the basement, clear away the crumbs, open a new bag, pour in some Mountain Dew® and get to work. Come up with something stunning. Here are just a few more examples of real talking points. As you can see, you have a long way to go to achieve that level of sophistication.

We'll wait.

Update III: Ha! Chet has a complete all-in-one spin that is a do-not-miss. Honestly. It covers everything a wingnut could want, all in one sentence. Personally, I'd slap a copyright on it and make money off the royalties.

The US National Intelligence Estimate is out...

And it's bad news for the pant-pissing crowd.

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

This is the NIE that the Bush administration wanted redrafted.

The conclusions of the new assessment are likely to be major factor in the tense international negotiations aimed at getting Iran to halt its nuclear energy program. Concerns about Iran were raised sharply after President Bush had suggested in October that a nuclear-armed Iran could lead to “World War III,” and Vice President Dick Cheney promised “serious consequences” if the government in Tehran did not abandon its nuclear program.

The Bush administration wasted no time in spinning this.

The national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, quickly issued a statement describing the N.I.E. as containing positive news rather than reflecting intelligence mistakes. “It confirms that we were right to be worried about Iran seeking to develop nuclear weapons,” Mr. 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.”

“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,” Mr. Hadley said.

First off, sixteen different US intelligence agencies collaborated to produce this estimate and the final result says Bush and Cheney, pushing as hard as they could to garner support for an attack on Iran, were wrong. William Kristol was wrong; Jonah Goldberg was wrong; Rush Limbaugh was wrong; Victor Davis Hanson was wrong; they were all wrong.

Secondly, what rock has Hadley been living under? There is no diplomatic effort on the part of the Bush administration to deal with Iran. The Bush administration has rejected diplomatic discussions. It has refused to engage Iran with anything but rhetoric and threats.

Next up? You can expect Dick Cheney, between defibrillator therapy sessions, to tell us all that he has exclusive and much different information.

Must. See. What. Is. Happening. At. NRO.