You have it backwards. Bush started from the analysis in the 2005 NIE, which said nothing about Iran shutting down the weapons project. He is clearly skeptical of the new NIE, and rightly so when its analysis on Iran is 180 degrees from the conclusions the CIA drew in 2005.
As for why the NIE was released, you more or less said it, it was a political hit job, designed to influence policy and make the Administration look bad. As we have learned in recent history, on big intelligence questions, the CIA is totally wrong as often as it is right. So today most people assume that Iran does not currently have a weapons program, but that could be a completely false assumption. After all, they had a secret nuclear weapons program for twenty years, didn't they? On Dec 9, 2007 1:39 PM, Dana wrote: > I think the key point is that Bush started from a conclusion. The > analysis was supposed to support that conclusion. But ::whoops:: the > analysts went with the facts instead. Give those people a medal I say > ;) > > The most interesting question in all this imho is why, given that the > estimate makes the president look like an idiot, it was released > anyway. Research that a bit, just to have your faith in human nature > restored ;) > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Download the latest ColdFusion 8 utilities including Report Builder, plug-ins for Eclipse and Dreamweaver updates. http;//www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=labs%5adobecf8%5Fbeta Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:248020 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
