No Kidding Sherlock

In 2007, Thomas Fingar, Kenneth Brill, and H. Van Diepen drafted a scandalous and incredibly harmful piece of fiction - the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) On Iran's Nuclear Program. Despite its name, it was not an intelligence estimate. It was a piece of partisan advocacy designed to tie the hands of the Bush Administration. As I wrote in some detail at the time, every one of those authors' major findings - that Iran's nuclear weapons program had ended years earlier, that their ongoing program was civilian in nature, that the Iranian regime would respond to negotiations with a mix of carrots and sticks, that they were rational, that the threat of force was not a viable option, etc. - were unfounded and, indeed, contraverted by all of the known facts. We would later learn that they were also contraverted by facts known then to our intelligence agencies - namely that Iran was constructing a secret nuclear enrichment plant whose size was only appropriate for military use. No matter. The NIE was embraced wholeheartedly by the left. But now . . . . now . . . . what do you know. The Obama camp has some suspicion that, perhaps, the 2007 NIE may have been wrong.

Mr. Obama’s top advisers say they no longer believe the key finding of a much disputed National Intelligence Estimate about Iran, published a year before President George W. Bush left office, which said that Iranian scientists ended all work on designing a nuclear warhead in late 2003.

There are times when saying "I told you so" brings naught but cold comfort. This is one of them. The stakes are too high. We have wasted two years while Iran's nuclear program has progressed ever nearer the point of weaponization and the rest of the Middle East has been drawn into pursuing their own nuclear arsenal. As I wrote about a month ago, Thomas Fingar, Kenneth Brill, and H. Van Diepen have much for which to answer. As do the Left who uncritically embraced the NIE fiction, prioritizing attacks on the Bush Administration over our national security.