About the NIE report on Iran, Dan Froomkin writes:

By concluding that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program four years ago, the national intelligence estimate released yesterday undermined a key element of President Bush's foreign policy. It raised questions about whether the president and vice president knowingly misled the public about the danger posed by Iran.

Doesn't this sound all too familiar? Hasn't the NIE enlightened us before, then as now contradicting Bush/Cheney statements and views?

One would think there's no way at this point that war with Iran is possible, at least not in the next several months, right? Well, at least that would apply to most reasonable, sane people....

Baker and Wright make a good point, "President Bush got the world's attention this fall when he warned that a nuclear-armed Iran might lead to World War III. But his stark warning came at least a month or two after he had first been told about fresh indications that Iran had actually halted its nuclear weapons program."

Did Bush already know about the NIE revelations before once again choosing to scare the bejesus out of the American electorate, this time blaring "World War III" over and over? Nah, our president would never do that.

The facts are the following: either Bush/Cheney knew about the NIE intel and decided to lie and fan the flames of fear anyway as only they know how, or they didn't know about the intel and then it (further) makes the case that these ignorant morons do not deserve to be the leaders of our country. Period.

Oh, and thanks to Mike Malloy for catching this startling Orwellian double-speak during national security adviser Hadley's press conference. The question was asked about Bush cranking up the threatening rhetoric and Hadley responded:

MR. HADLEY: Two things. One, when the President was told that we had some additional information, he was basically told: stand down; needs to be evaluated; we'll come to you and tell you what we think it means. So this was basically -- as we said, this is information that came in the last few months, and the intelligence community spent a lot time to get on top of it.

The follow-up question came, "The President -- you said the President was told to stand down on that --" and Hadley stated:

MR. HADLEY: No, I said just the opposite. I said the President was told, we have some information, we have some new information not to stand down -- said, we have some new information; give us some time to analyze it, and we will come to you and tell you what we think it means.

Go to the official whitehouse.gov link and read it for yourself. (I can't believe they didn't edit it out, like they've done before). Hadley literally says the President was told to "stand down" and then thirty seconds later, after a reporter logically asks a follow-up question regarding this "stand down" comment, Hadley suddenly reverses course and cancels what he had just said seconds prior, "No, I said just the opposite...not to stand down..."

Look, it's obvious they can't get their story straight on this latest caught-in-a-lie predicament. And a reminder: they're in charge of securing our country! We're talking psychopaths, serial liars. Absolute madness, sheer insanity.

I guess the one saving grace is someone(s) within the NIE felt the need to get this report out ASAP. In the past, we would've expected such a report to be held up, delayed, and then redacted, edited, with massive political pressure applied to get the report to say what the administration wanted it to say. Amazingly, that didn't occur here, which could mean that many in the intel business have had enough, are proactively initiating change, and frankly looking to steer off what could be another war started on false pretense and bogus information. We can only hope.