The Redhunter

First off, what makes the NIE the word of god? It will be described as holy writ by the left in the days to come, but just partisan politics talking.

Second, the NYT somewhat mischaracterized the NIE, as Tom Maguire points out on his blog (h/t Michelle Malkin), and says that the Washington Post was more accurate when it said that

Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 in response to international pressure, and while it continues to develop an enriched uranium program, it apparently has not resumed moving toward a nuclear capability, according to a consensus judgment of the U.S. intelligence community released today by Director of National Intelligence John M. McConnell.

The assessment states "with moderate confidence" that "Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program" as of mid-2007, but suggests that Tehran continues to keep that option open.

Third, the fact is that our intelligence agencies have not had a good record at figuring out the capabilities of other countries when it comes to weapons of mass destruction. Most of the time our enemies have developed weapons well before we thought they would.

The Soviet Union exploded their first atomic bomb in 1949, years before we thought they would. We based our estimate not knowing that we had been betrayed by spies. The first Chinese detonation was in 1964, again catching us by surprise. Ditto with the Indian bomb in 1974 and that of Pakistan in 1998.

We didn't think that Iraq was very far along in it's bomb program in the 1980s, which turned out to be wrong. After the Gulf War, the IAEA, with Hans Blix as it's director, went into Iraq and found out that their program was much more advanced than we had suspected. As Blix himself said "It's correct to say that the IAEA was fooled by the Iraqis".

On the other hand, we were obviously wrong in 2003. As it turned out, Saddam did not have the WMD that we thought he did. Whatever happened to it (unaccounted for to this day) it was not at the ready.

Further, the Manhattan Project itself was based on the Roosevelt's belief that Nazi Germany had an atomic bomb program. As it turned out, Germany had a small research program that never came anywhere close to developing weapons.

Let's not forget the "missile gap", which was used by then Senator John F Kennedy during the presidential race of 1960, in which he ran agains Vice President Richard M Nixon. The whole story is a bit complicated, but suffice it to say that several NIE reports in the late 1950s had it that the Soviet Union was or would over take us in Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs). Further, the USAF thought that the Soviets had more ICBMs than we did, but that the CIA said otherwise. Sen Kennedy seized on the NIE and USAF estimates and used them to attack the Eisenhower Administration, of which Nixon was of course a part, as being "weak on defense". Adding fuel to the fire was Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who had a habit of saying that his country was turning out nuclear-armed missiles "like sausages". As it turned out, the "missile gap" was as illusory as the "bomber gap" of a few years earlier, something President Kennedy learned after taking office.

The point, if I have to spell it out, is that sometimes we get it right and sometimes we get it wrong. It's hard to know at the time, but it all seems so obvious in retrospect.

I am not saying that the new NIE is necessarily wrong. It might be right. But it's not holy scripture.

Other Opinion

It would certainly be good news if it turns out that the NIE is correct. I'd be happy if Iran was truely not pursuing nuclear weapons. If they are, then at some point we'll have to attack them. While an attack will stop or at least set back Iran, it will also lead to all sorts of negative consequences, not the least of which might be riots or demonstrations by Shiites in Iraq.

But how do we know that the NIE is right? Thomas Joscelyn, writing in The Weekly Standard, has five questions of the NIE that need to be answered before we can be assured of its accuracy.

Victor Davis Hanson points out that contrary to what at first glance seems to be a Democrat advantage, it actually puts them in something of a pickle

Are they now to suggest that Republicans have been warmongering over a nonexistent threat for partisan purposes? But to advance that belief is also to concede that, Iran, like Libya, likely came to a conjecture around (say early spring 2003?) that it was not wise for regimes to conceal WMD programs, given the unpredictable, but lethal American military reaction.

I hadn't thought of that when I first saw the NIE, but he's right; if in fact Iran stopped work on their bomb in 2003, it's really too much to believe that it's coincidence that OIF started at the same time.

In the same vein, Richard Fernandez of The Belmont Club also has a few questions, among them is "Why was Iran not provoked into further and more frantic efforts to develop nuclear weapons by the invasion of Iraq?" Maybe because the invasion had the effect the evil neocons said it would have? Maybe. Whatever caused them to shut off their program (again, if they did), "no new sanctions were imposed on Iran between 2000 and 2005" so it couldn't have been that.

And as to leftists who claim that the whole Iranian threat was "overblown" and that nothing needed to be done, " that is a perverted argument which reverses the order of things. The reason the Iranian bomb program was prevented or slowed was because it was taken seriously and the necessary counter-pressures were implemented." As always when it comes to Fernandez, read the whole thing.

Writing at The Corner, Cliff May thinks that it's all political: "The purpose of this NIE is to prevent Bush from using military force during the remainder of his term to destroy Iran's nuclear weapons program." Maybe. It's been known that the CIA in particular is full of people who don't like GWB.

Either way, there will be a lot more about this NIE in the days to come.