Even though they stopped in 2003?

Dan Froomkin of The Washington Post:

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. And it added to Bush's profound credibility problems with the American people and the international community.

But to hear Bush talk about it at the White House press conference this morning, the new NIE vindicated his beliefs and makes his warnings about Iran more potent.

It was neck-snapping spin even by Bush standards. He intentionally misread the report's central point, failed to acknowledge a huge change in his argument for why Iran is dangerous and exhibited pure bullheaded stubbornness.

[snip]

Yesterday's report came as something as a shock to the general public. Bush and Vice President Cheney have long asserted that Iran was actively seeking nuclear weapons, and Cheney, in particular, had been accelerating what some observers saw as a drumbeat for war. But the nation's 16 intelligence agencies didn't come to their conclusion overnight. In fact, this NIE had been in the works for 18 months, during which some of its authors were reportedly harried by Cheney for not being sufficiently hawkish.

Read the whole thing for excellent links.

Steve Bates of The Yellow Doggerel Democrat points out the obvious: Cheney.

No. Just to remind you, not everybody thought Iraq had WMDs.

Scott Ritter shoots that excuse to shreds.

(Scott Ritter was one of the UN's top weapons inspectors in Iraq between 1991 and 1998. Before working for the UN, he served as an officer in the US Marines and as a ballistic missile adviser to General H. Norman Schwartzkopf in the first Gulf War. His latest book is Target Iran: The Truth About the White House's Plans for Regime Change.)

I can tell you what the Intelligence communities of the world were saying. And there was 100% agreement that Iraq had been fundamentally disarmed by 1998. There was not a single intelligence agency out there saying we have hard data that Saddam retains huge stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction or that he has reconstituted a meaningful WMD program. Not a single agency! And the reason is that because we had weapons inspectors in place and we could bring facts to table to show that Iraq did not had these weapons, that we had accounted for the vast majority of its weapons and there was no evidence of a reconstituted program.

Now where there was some unanimity that there were concerns over unaccounted-for materials. Not that these unaccounted-for materials presented a weapons threat as they were but that they might be part and parcel of an undeclared weapons program that had been dismantled and was in hiding and could be reconstituted at some later date. This is where the world shared some concern. But again the point I make, is that while you can be concerned, concern does not automatically translate to reality.

Not a single Senator, not a single Congressman was presented with viable intelligence that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Iraq retained weapons of mass destruction. Therefore you have to ask yourself: What intelligence did they receive? If you’re talking about going to war – and they voted for war – they need to be shown incontrovertible proof that a situation exists that manifests itself as a threat that warrants the use of military force. What I can tell you is that Senators and Congressmen may have believed Saddam had WMD, but that’s faith-based analysis not fact-based analysis. And there is a singular failure across the board for anyone who voted in favor of this war void of any hard, irrefutable evidence. I again re-iterate not a single one of them received such a briefing because frankly speaking such a briefing could not have existed.

Can the Democrats help nation intelligence agency whistle-blowers?

USAToday:
"Whistle-blowers employed by these [intelligence-gathering agencies]agencies must seek recourse within the same agency they are blowing the whistle on. And even if the investigators within their own agency confirm reprisal allegations, the investigators have no power to remedy the situation.

Devine says the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled against whistle-blowers in 125 of 127 of the reprisal cases seen by the court since 1994. “They've gutted the law,” Devine says, “and it's degenerated into a rubber stamp for retaliation.”

Lawmakers recently considered two sets of legislation that would affect whistle-blowers. One attempted to extend the Whistleblower Protection Act to cover intelligence agency employees through amendments to the 2007 Defense Authorization Bill.