Watch president Bush make the outlandish claim that he was only briefed in the 6-month-old National Intelligence Estimate last week.

This is either the president’s baldest lie yet, or the most deeply troubling evidence ever presented of the president’s bubble of detachment and insulation.

I don’t buy the dummy act, myself. Such a cosmic level of ignorance of his administration’s own best intelligence on one of America’s top threats, however, ought to be an impeachable offense.

You know I got so agitated about fact that we’ve been lied to for the past four years about Iran’s nuclear program, that I didn’t take a moment to savor the fact that Iran hasn’t had a nuclear weapons program for the last four years.

In a sea of bad news, that some rockin’ good news. Most importantly it means we have time — and a precious window of opportunity — to bring Iran to the table and defuse this threat without brinksmanship.

Earlier: Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program? What Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program?

“I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing Iran from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.” — George W. Bush, a couple months back

I puzzled for a bit over that distinction between WMD knowledge and actual weapons at the time. In light of the new NIE, it’s no wonder Bush was subtly trying to lower the bar for war.

The newly declassified National Intelligence Estimate on Iran [.pdf] says it clearly:

“We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.“

Wow. So what we’ve been hearing from the Bush administration for the last four years is a paranoid distortion of the facts on the ground? Shocked. We are absolutely shocked.

No wonder Dick Cheney worked so feverishly to keep this bottled up.

More key judgments:

Iran’s still not very close to a nuclear bomb:

• We judge with moderate confidence that the earliest possible date Iran would be technically capable of producing enough HEU [highly enriched uranium] for a weapon is late 2009, but that this is very unlikely.

• We judge with moderate confidence Iran probably would be technically capable of producing enough HEU for a weapon sometime during the 2010-2015 time frame. (INR [The State Dept's intelligence agency whose dissenting judgments on Iraq were spot on] judges Iran is unlikely to achieve this capability before 2013 because of foreseeable technical and programmatic problems.) All agencies recognize the possibility that this capability may not be attained until after 2015.

• We judge with high confidence that Iran will not be technically capable of producing and reprocessing enough plutonium for a weapon before about 2015.

The regime is rational, and sanctions may work well as a deterrent:

• Our assessment that Iran halted the program in 2003 primarily in response to international pressure indicates Tehran’s decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic, and military costs. This, in turn, suggests that some combination of threats of intensified international scrutiny and pressures, along with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways, might—if perceived by Iran’s leaders as credible—prompt Tehran to extend the current halt to its nuclear weapons program. It is difficult to specify what such a combination might be.

My interview with Ron Paul from the current issue — in which he denounces the “warmongering” of “chicken hawks” like Cheney and Giuliani — is now online

What do you make of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and current U.S. posturing toward Iran?

He’s a loudmouth, and he hurts their cause. But we help his cause when we gang up against him. When we pass sanctions against him, the dissidents in Iran who would like to get rid of him rally around him for nationalistic reasons.

We get hysterical over a guy who doesn’t have a single weapon, and nobody’s proven that he’s ever violated the arms-nonproliferation treaty. Matter of fact, the International Atomic Energy Agency is going to have an agreement with him by the end of the year. That’s why you have all of this warmongering going on: It is to try to find an excuse to start bombing him before they prove that he doesn’t have a chance of having a weapon. That’s exactly what we did with Iraq. I’m scared to death they’re getting ready to do that with Iran.

The Bush administration says Iran is supporting the Iraqi insurgency. How much can we trust that assessment?

About as much as what we heard about Iraq before the war. What was true about that? Very, very little, if anything. They’re capable of telling us anything if they want to go to war. And that’s what they want.

read more here…

Especially when one is classy enough not to play it:

“When we had a debate back in Iowa awhile back, we spent I think the first 15 minutes of the debate hitting me on various foreign policy issues. And I didn’t come out and say: ‘Look, I’m being hit on because I look different from the rest of the folks on the stage.’” — Barack Obama

The politics of victimhood are unpalatable. Even when people have made overtly racist attacks on Obama — Rush Limbaugh sang a song, don’t forget, Barack the Magic Negro, and Mitt Romney has tried to make Barack’s name mash up with Osama bin Laden’s — Obama never once said, ‘The Man is out to get me.’ Indeed, his candidacy is so revolutionary because he’s not running as a black candidate, he’s a candidate who happens to be black.

In contrast, Hillary Clinton is now suggesting that the “boy’s club” is ganging up on her, or rather, “piling on“. (You don’t have to have taken too many women’s studies classes to spot the veiled rape metaphor in there, do you?)

Are we really to believe that attacks Clinton drew in the debate Tuesday night had something to do with her gender — rather than her hawkishness toward Iran (with which she vowed not to prevent a war, but prevent a “rush to war”), her unwillingness to reveal the scope of her policy influence in the Clinton White House, or her seemingly reflexive inability to give a yes or no answer? To say nothing about her 20-plus point lead in the polls?

Clinton must have polling that says this kind of victimhood works for her. But I think she’s underestimating the value of the higher ground of grace and class she’s just yielded to Obama.

Thirty senators signed this letter, seeking to prevent Bush from launching a unilateral war on Iran:

We are writing to express serious concerns with the provocative statements and actions stemming from your administration with respect to possible U.S. military action in Iran. These comments are counterproductive and undermine efforts to resolve tensions with Iran through diplomacy.

This includes the Senate vote on September 26, 2007 on an amendment to the FY 2008 National Defense Authorization Act. This amendment, expressing the sense of the Senate on Iran, and the recent designation of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, should in no way be interpreted as a predicate for the use of military force in Iran.

We stand ready to work with your administration to address the challenges presented by Iran in a manner that safeguards our security interests and promotes a regional diplomatic solution, but we wish to emphasize that offensive military action should not be taken against Iran without the express consent of Congress.

Did yours?

Courtesy of Helen Thomas:

Q Would the President seek an explicit green light from Congress if he intended to bomb or attack Iran, or does he think he has that right?

MS. PERINO: Well, Helen, there is no intention of bombing Iran. We are on a diplomatic track. We are working with our partners, the U.N. Security Council. We have provided them, the Iranians, a road map to get to a civil nuclear program. They have walked away from that. We are hoping that they’ll come back. We are both working with our U.N. Security Council partners as well as pursuing sanctions on our own, and there is not an intention to bomb Iran, as you said.

Q Does the President think he has the right to do it without going through Congress?

MS. PERINO: That is — it’s a hypothetical situation, Helen. I’m not going to answer it.

Q It’s not hypothetical. It’s concrete.