The new NIE report retracts previously-asserted intelligence about Iran's nuclear weapons program, but the remaining claims in the NIE are no more believable either.
A lot of anti-Bush bloggers are seizing on the NIE's claim that Iran supposedly stopped its "nuclear weapons program" in 2003 as evidence against Bush. But I think there's a reason why the same Bush decided to release this part of the NIE. It allows the Bush administration to explain away the fact that based on the IAEA's conclusions, there is no actual evidence of any nuclear program in Iran. It also also allows people like Steven Hadley to claim some sort of success for Bush's policies against Iran:
“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.”
But more importantly, according to the IAEA, there is no evidence that Iran ever had a nuclear weapons program - not now, not in 2003, not ever. According to the Financial Times, the NIE's assessment that Iran had a nuclear weapons program in 2003 is based on materials obtained from the "Laptop of Death" - a highly questionable laptop computer which was supposedly smuggled out of Iran and which has not been confirmed to be authentic by the IAEA (since the US has never turned it over to the IAEA.)
There's no real reason to assume that the NIE is accurate in claiming that Iran had a nuclear weapons program until 2003, just as there is no reason to have believed the now-discredited NIE report of 2005 which claimed that Iran had an active nuclear weapons program at that time.
So in short, while anti-Bush bloggers are happily citing the NIE as evidence against Bush, they should be careful not to put too much credence in the NIE itself. As far as I am concerned, the only source with credibility is the IAEA, not the US intelligence agencies, and certainly not carefully selected portions of a report that are released in a self-serving fashion.
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