Left I on the News

Some may have thought I was completely off-base when I wrote this yesterday:

Or perhaps its impetus is Bush himself, realizing that there's no way the U.S. can go ahead with an attack on Iran so he might as well salvage some credit by claiming that his "diplomacy" made Iran abandon its alleged nuclear weapons program.

What I didn't write yesterday here, but did on comments on other blogs, was to elaborate on this thought - not only might it be that Bush wanted to credit his "diplomacy," but in fact might use this to strengthen his push for more sanctions, based not only on the questionable continuing assertion that Iran had a nuclear weapons program, but on the all-important and factually-challenged assertion (see my post) that Iran's leaders really want nuclear weapons, whether they have a currently active program or not.

And sure enough, here comes Bush to say precisely that:

President George W. Bush said the international community must keep up pressure on Iran because the government there could restart development of a nuclear weapon at any time.

Now I still don't claim to know whether this is a post-facto exploitation by Bush of the report, or a "pre-facto" motivation for the release of the report. But you have to admit that the latter is certainly a distinct possibility, given that the report was released and made public in the first place, something that Bush almost certainly could have prevented if he didn't realize he could use the report to advance his goals. Since (in my opinion) the U.S. realizes it cannot attack Iran at this time, increasing the economic warfare is really their only option, so anything that allows them to do that is right in line with their goals.

Labels: National Intelligence Estimate