Solar Blemishes VII

In their zeal to latch onto anything that portrayed former President Bush in a bad light, in December 2007 the Sun editorial board fully endorsed the faulty National Intelligence Estimate that claimed Iran had halted its nuclear program in 2003.

President Bush, as recently as October, was warning of the specter of "World War III" because of the threat he said a nuclear-armed Iran could pose. Now, however, we know differently - much differently: A National Intelligence Estimate found that as far back as 2003 Iran had stopped work on its nuclear weapons program, contradicting previous White House claims.

The White House had been beating the war drums for some time with respect to Iran, saying the Islamic regime was developing a nuclear weapons program, but such talk generated considerable skepticism.

We now know that the NIE assessment was wrong. Not only that but the authors of the report may have known it was wrong at the time but released it anyway.

This report may have done some serious damage to American efforts to confront Iran. Critics of the Bush administration, including then-Senator Obama, used the report to dismiss attempts at taking a hard line against the Iranians as unnecessary saber-rattling. Those, such as the Democrats and the Sun editorial board, who used this report in this way weakened our position with Iran and set back our efforts in halting their very real and very active nuclear program.

There may be those who will dismiss this as a bit of Monday morning quarterbacking since none of us civilians had access to the data behind this report and we could not have known it was not true. But there were those who warned at the time to be skeptical of that NIE, including this bright, informed, articulate writer whose letter the Sun so graciously chose to print.

After having failed to foresee the collapse of the Soviet Union, underestimating Saddam's weapons programs in the early '90s, overestimating them in the late '90s, completely missing Iran's nuclear program for 18 years and issuing a contradictory report just two years ago, we are to believe that this time the intelligence agencies have it completely correct.

Already the Russians and the Chinese have used the NIE report to claim they will not support further U.N. sanctions against Iran. So we are now forced to approach Iran carrying only carrots and no sticks. For some, their hatred of Bush allows them to put their trust in the brutal Iranian theocracy that has pledged the destruction of the United States. Personally, I do not think that wise.

We now know that it was not wise. And, seriously, when the French mock you for being too wimpy...