... but making them ACCOUNTABLE for it will be a "whole... nubber... lebbel"

The problem in accountability isn't the factual evidence. The problem is that in order for a free and open society to flourish, it requires an active, free press that has the intellectual honesty to ask questions and demand answers.

What has happened to that press? Is it now relegated to independents? Why was the Bush Administration able to delay the release of the NIE for a year and get a free ride, running his lying mouth about Iran for a whole year?

-Wexler

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Yesterday's NIE report stands as a stark and welcome contrast to the White House’s propaganda campaign laying the groundwork for military action against Iran, a campaign that dates back almost six years—to Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address in which he designated Iran as a founding member of the “axis of evil.” Since then, this drumbeat has waxed and waned as other concerns—primarily the disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq—have often commanded center stage. Now, with the Bush administration approaching its final year in office, a renewed push and a shorter fuse have become increasingly evident. My 3-minute YouTube video entitled “Forewarned Is Forearmed: Bush On Iran” is available HERE. It offers a very brief but deeply troubling chronicle of the president’s public warmongering and demonization of Iran.

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Absolutely incredible!!! This country is being so lied to and manipulated and yet there are still so many who are so frightened by the unknown that they are STILL willing to keep thier heads under the pillow and let the crazy lying war mongers running this govt. continue to kill and repress....

Every single person in this country who thinks they are a "god fearing patriot" should be standing on the lawns of the White House insisting Bush and Cheney are impeached immediately!!! and held accountable for the treason and war crimes they have committed and continue to commit against it's own citizens and other people of the world!!!!!!

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Well.. now nothing is off the table.. including war, which he has talked about quite a bit... because they might one day decide to restart a program they abandoned 4 years ago.

They might at some point decide to start seeking a weapon at some point in the future... so we have to stop them now. Bush is making a reason to attack any nation he wants to for no concrete reason at all. Any actions Bush takes militarily against Iran (and any Israel takes) are agressive war at this point, and are thus, illegal and should be opposed and condemned by the rest of the world.

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What has happened to this once great nation is incomprehensible.
Bush, Cheney, Rove,'Rummie', Wolfowitz.
These names will be remembered for the most shameful period in American history...
I am mad and I am not even an American. Just imagine..

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LOL

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Call it the end of the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive warfare. Call it a triumph of rational thinking. Call it the last effective day of the Bush presidency. Call it what you want. The fact is, the new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran’s nuclear non-capability released yesterday, is the revenge of the professionals.

For the past seven years, the grey men and women working anonymously in America’s 14-headed intelligence-gathering hydra were ignored, bullied, cajoled, demoted, humiliated, and outed by their political master’s who were hell-bent on twisting reality to meet the perception the White House wanted to sell. We’re speaking of the faceless, nameless – except, of course, Valerie Plame Wilson – people who have devoted their lives to sitting in small, windowless offices and large, brightly lit bull pens, huddling over satellite images, scanning computer printouts or interpreting facts scribbled on foolscap or torn from newspapers, talking with each other, sometimes risking their life, oft-times ruining their marriage and alienating their children, in an endless, frequently futile, effort to link countless bits of disjointed, seemingly-unrelated data, as they struggled to paint a coherent picture of the whole from minute pieces of disparate parts.

Yesterday, the professionals had their revenge.

The Bush White House was finally forced to reveal something it knew and had kept hidden for nearly a year: Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons programme in 2003, some four years before the president faced reporters and raised the haunting spectre of “World War III” started by a nuclear-armed Tehran.

Pundits and other bloviators are speculating on this dramatic turn of events, and Steven Hadley tried passing it off as something that just became known last Tuesday. Nonsense. It was known for years and confirmed well before Bush’s World War III pronouncement.

I suspect that the reason it was finally released was that it had been leaked and when the New York Times or McClatchey's Washington bureau or some reporter came to the White House for comment, the administration realised it had to get in front of the story and release the news itself, and quickly.

How was the information confirmed? In 2003 Turkey recruited a spy inside Iran who had access to highly sensitive information about not just the nuclear programme but the thinking of the Ayatollah's who actually run the country. The spy, whose name is believed to be Ali Reza Asghari, came under suspicion sometime in 2006 and fled to Istanbul in early 2007. He brought with him documents proving thst what he had been telling the Turks for years – who, in turn, told the Americans – was true: Iran abandoned its nuclear weapon programme in 2003.

For once, the good guys won one. Bush, Cheney and the neocons have been boxed into a corner where, hopefully, they'll cower until noon on Jan. 20, 2009. And the world is a wee bit safer as a result.

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Iran stopped its program in 2003? That would be right about the time they started voluntary co-operation with the IAEA inspections wasn't it?

Then when Bushie started ratcheting up the BS, they started enrichment (their right under the NPT) only to be branded as 'defying' calls for inspection, which were voluntary, remember.

Who else has nukes in the area that is not a member of the treaty? Israel, Pakistan, India, you don't hear much about that though. Yet the Iranian masterminds behind the 'axis of evil' are so bent and twisted that they would become signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty? Then they have the balls to submit to voluntary inspections, which have to date, revealed zero evidence of a weapons program? The evil bastards!

Don't worry about this little NIE, Bush and his crew of merry pranksters have never let one of those slow them down before.

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Someone, somewhere has decided to tell the truth. This is what should have happened just prior to Powell's now infamous presentation at the UN. I hope it's as good as it seems to be. I'm not sure that attacking Iran was ever a real possibility but it sure was a big black cloud. Let's see what happens. Thanks, ANNA

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Why not both?

plur

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Can't argue with that. But understand where she's coming from; it's called the Democractic Leadership Council, or as John Edwards' calls it, the "Corporate Democrats". Check it out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Leadership_Council If Hillary gets elected it'll be (in Roger Daltrey's words) say hello to the new boss, same as the old boss. The "boss" being the corporations who fund campaigns, who own the media and get to declare who's to be taken seriously as candidates and who's to be marginalized, etc. Hillary's husband ran the country for 8 years and did we see a lick of good achieved for the environment in that time? I mention the environment as an example, because his Vice President had to find himself outside the halls of political power in order to start actually DOING something that might impinge on the profits of companies like GM, Exxon Mobil, and all the rest of the corporate polluters. Put Pelosi on the list if you like, but recognize that there will never be a return to democracy until the corporations are disenfranchised. Kick the lobbyists out, make media independent, make polluters and exploiters pay. And for God's sake, vote for Edwards or Kucinich.

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They got busted! Here we go again... ignore the intelligence and let Cheney try to bully the intelligence community to fix the "facts" to fit the policy.

These jokers continue to believe they will get away, yet again, with this bullsh*t. What I think is that those inside the intelligence community decided to cover their bases so as not to be blamed for another war based on faulty intelligence - they weren't going to let Cheney, et al., get away with it again.

It could be called an "inside coup" by the intelligence community. Tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may.

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I was feeling rather nauseated as I watched Bush's little rat face spew crap. But then Rachel came on. Thank you darlin for your reasonable and delightful commentary. As always she is a breath of fresh air.

As for Bush and his gang of liars, creeps, and political H-O-S, they will not let the intel stop their plans. They will continue with the plans for the 08 'surprise'.

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I am sure that the neocons will find a way to take it to Iran. People think George is stupid, but what if it is just an act? If someone had the intent of bringing about the Rapture the president certainly has put us there.

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Please search U Tube by keying in "Hillary Clinton AIPAC" for her speech advocating nuclear bombing of Iran to make the world safe for Israel. Democrats are insane to contemplate the candidacy of Ms. Clinton, the apologist for the Bush Administration. Look at her perfect Bush agenda voting record; Iraq war authorization votes, Patriot Act (twice), tax cut bills for the rich, Homeland Security Act and others. This woman is a stealth Republican and corporatist. The Republican owned media will proceed to brand all other Democratic contenders as un-electable as they did for their most pro-Wall Street choice, Kerry, in 2004. Hillary needs to be discredited now as the hawk and AIPAC agent she is.

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This article (reported in NYT and Washington Post) on Hadley's announcement is the best news in months. This may represent a coup on the part of the intelligence agencies against VP Cheney. This is a strong indication that, along with the Pentagon, there are many sane people in security cleared positions who take the Iran attack threat very seriously and are doing what they can to stop the plans. We can also hope they are for preservation of US Constitution.

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HERE ARE SOME STA;S HILTER IN THE NAZI ERA HAD 18.2 MILLION SOLDIERS WITH A POPULATION APRX. 65 MILLION OK. THE U.S. HAS 2.9 MILLION IN ITS ARMED FORCES AND POPULATION OF 303 MILLION AND 20 MILLION OTHERS OK. WHY ARE WE THE PEOPLE LETTING A HAND FULL OF NEOCONS AN GLOBALIST DESTROY THIS GREAT CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC. WHY, ITS TIME

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