George Bush The Damaja

President Bush may be down, but not out:

President Bush called on Iran to "come clean" about the scope of its nuclear activities Wednesday, as the White House made it clear there will be no change in its policy toward Tehran despite new intelligence questioning his claims about the country's nuclear ambitions.

Traveling here for a political fundraiser, Bush indicated that he still sees Iran as a serious threat. He demanded that its leaders fully disclose details of its nuclear weapons program, which the intelligence community said Monday was shut down in the fall of 2003.

"The Iranians have a strategic choice to make," Bush told reporters. "They can come clean with the international community about the scope of their nuclear activities and fully accept" the U.S. offer to negotiate if they suspend their nuclear enrichment program -- "or they can continue on a path of isolation."

"The choice is up to the Iranian regime," the president said.

"Come Clean?" Bush went back to 1994 and pulled out the Jeru the Damaja! Well, if you're feeling lucky duck, then press your luck:

American intelligence agencies reversed their view about the status of Iran’s nuclear weapons program after they obtained notes last summer from the deliberations of Iranian military officials involved in the weapons development program, senior intelligence and government officials said on Wednesday.

The notes included conversations and deliberations in which some of the military officials complained bitterly about what they termed a decision by their superiors in late 2003 to shut down a complex engineering effort to design nuclear weapons, including a warhead that could fit atop Iranian missiles.

The newly obtained notes contradicted public assertions by American intelligence officials that the nuclear weapons design effort was still active. But according to the intelligence and government officials, they give no hint of why Iran’s leadership decided to halt the covert effort.

Ultimately, the notes and deliberations were corroborated by other intelligence, the officials said, including intercepted conversations among Iranian officials, collected in recent months. It is not clear if those conversations involved the same officers and others whose deliberations were recounted in the notes, or if they included their
superiors.

See, this is what "intelligence agencies" do: they gather information about other organizations and institutions. They are not supposed to take someone else's pre-conceived notions and try to make questionable data support it. The people behind this NIE report did exactly what Bush is asking for, they acquired details about Iran's nuclear programs.

So this wasn't, as the right puts it, a conspiracy to undermine Bush. In fact, to quote Jeru: "My attack is purely mental and its nature's not hate/It's meant to wake ya up out of ya brainwashed state."

This revelation puts Bush in a corner more than the NIE report itself, which is why Bush is making a near-impossible demand: that the Iranians themselves disclose what they know. Think about it for a minute; how silly is it to demand that a country you never really wanted to talk to in the first place disclose their secrets when your own staff has already documented said secrets and it's waiting on your table to be read?

One thing's pretty clear now: bombing Iran is now 456,395 on our list of options. Not to say this is happy-happy time ("Wishin he'll go away won't help the weapons stop/The skills are shot/cuz any idiot can let off a glock."), however, to keep pushing war as the only solution will no longer sell. But Bush and VP Cheney don't have to worry about all of their super-secrets being exposed:

The American officials who described the highly classified operation, which led to one of the biggest reversals in the history of American nuclear intelligence, declined to describe how the notes were obtained.

Fred Kaplan's take?

Bush should have started serious talks with Iran two years ago, for a variety of reasons. The NIE offers two additional, compelling reasons for starting them now.

First, the estimate reveals that the window of opportunity—the span of time before Iran can pose a nuclear threat—is much wider than anyone had thought. We can afford to take some risks and try out new approaches.

Second, the estimate will unavoidably, and understandably, spur many world leaders to drop all concerns about Iran and push for an end to all sanctions. This may, in turn, spur Iran's leaders to resume and step up their nuclear program while the pressure is off.

In other words: just for frontin' you got that ass whipped...