Put World War III on hold!

A funny thing happened on the way to World War III: The bottom fell out. President Bush was determined to take us there, but, this time, thank God, we found out before the war that he was cooking the intelligence.

The release of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran was a clear repudiation of the Bush White House and a hopeful new chapter for American intelligence agencies. For years, George Bush and Dick Cheney, with ever escalating rhetoric, have been beating the war drums over Iran. In October 2004, Cheney flatly stated: "They have been trying to develop nuclear technology now for some time." And in October 2007, Bush famously warned: "I told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."

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It was, in so many ways, a re-enactment of the buildup to war in Iraq. Change one letter, from Iraq to Iran, and what we heard from the administration reads exactly the same: They're building nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. We can't let that happen. We must launch a pre-emptive strike to stop 'em. It wasn't a question of whether the United States would launch military strikes against Iran, but when.

Then came the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. According to conclusions reached independently by 16 different intelligence agencies, Iran isn't a threat after all. Yes, they did once have an active nuclear weapons production program, but they shut it down four years ago. Suddenly, Bush has had his magic carpet to war pulled out from under him.

This contradiction of everything Bush said about Iran is significant for three reasons. First, it shows that intelligence officers learned their lesson with Iraq. Sadly, in the run-up to the war on Iraq, intelligence agencies, starting with the CIA, allowed themselves to be used as political puppets. Led by the cowardly George Tenet, their mission changed from determining whether there was sufficient justification for going to war to cooking up evidence to justify a war decision already made in the White House. But no longer. This time, they refused to play Bush's political games. They decided to tell the truth about Iran, even though it exposed Bush as either stupid or a liar.

Second, by documenting Iran's abandonment of its nuclear weapons program, the NIE also disproves what columnist David Ignatius, with enviable alliteration, calls "the myth of the mad mullahs." Iran is not led by a group of inflexible religious fanatics after all. Its leaders are subject to international pressure. Indeed, they've already demonstrated their willingness to change policies, which opens a window of opportunity for serious diplomacy. The time to strike is now: not with bombs, but with direct talks between Tehran and Washington.

Finally, the Iran NIE makes a mockery of the so-called "Bush Doctrine," that military action is the primary vehicle for conducting foreign policy. No matter how badly Bush and Cheney wanted to carpet-bomb Iran, it's clear now that doing so would have been a tragic mistake. As it turns out, we achieved our objective, shutting down Iran's nuclear-weapons program, without one pre-emptive strike or without one missile being fired. For all practical purposes, the Bush Doctrine is dead.

If publication of the NIE on Iran was stunning; even more stunning was Bush's initial attempt to deny he knew anything about it. He didn't learn that Iran had abandoned its nuclear production until the day before the rest of us did, Bush insisted to reporters.

Liar, liar, pants on fire! White House Press Secretary Dana Perino later confirmed that CIA Director Mike McConnell told Bush in August 2007 he had new information that was causing a complete reassessment of the potential threat from Iran. In other words, the entire time Bush was warning of a nuclear threat from Iran and invoking fears of World War III, he knew – he knew! – it might not be true.

Do you see a pattern here? Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And he lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iran. The only difference is that this time he got caught.

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