Mission Accomplished

Just two days ago I brought up the ancient history of a National Intelligence Estimate that was bizarrely spun by our media as clearing Iran of the charge of having secret nuclear weapons programs:

The NIE summary on Iran's nuclear ambitions completely floored me. Not because the report was that bad, mind you, but because it was actually read as clearing Iran of the charge that they are pursuing nuclear weapons. I actually read the summary. It didn't say what the press reported it as saying.

Now we find that the Germans believe--and did back then--that the Iranians have secret nuclear weapons programs:

President Obama has committed to trying diplomacy to stop the Iranian bomb. Time, though, is on the mullahs' side, not least because so much of it was wasted after the 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate made the improbable case that Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003. This assessment not only contradicted previous U.S. intelligence consensus but -- as recent court documents show -- also the conclusions of a key U.S. ally with excellent sources in Iran -- Germany.

The Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany's foreign intelligence agency, has amassed evidence of a sophisticated Iranian nuclear weapons program that continued beyond 2003. This usually classified information comes courtesy of Germany's highest state-security court. In a 30-page legal opinion on March 26 and a May 27 press release in a case about possible illegal trading with Iran, a special national security panel of the Federal Supreme Court in Karlsruhe cites from a May 2008 BND report, saying the agency "showed comprehensively" that "development work on nuclear weapons can be observed in Iran even after 2003."

Well what do you know? To be fair, our NIE never said the Iranians weren't progressing toward nuclear weapons. The language was far too nuanced for that. The sum total for me was the conclusion that Iran was making progress in critical areas and other areas were unknown. Yet our press was nearly unanimous in reporting that the NIE cleared Iran.

And now here we are two years later with Iran two years closer to the bomb and Ahmadinejad retained in power.

And we still operate under the assumption that we have all the time in the world to talk Iran's mullahs out of nukes.

Lovely decade this one is, eh?