Democrats are fond of saying that President Bush lied about Iraq's WMD preogram. We now know that Bush and the intelligence agencies were duped by Saddam himself. Saddam wanted everyone to think he had WMD to protect himself from his enemies in neighboring countries. He thought his friends in France and Russia would protect him from America. He sent an agent to defect into Germany, who was designated "curveball," to convince the West that he had a secret WMD program. Then, the US acquired recordings of Saddam's staff meetings where the WMD programs were discussed. Then phone conversations were intercepted in which hiding the WMD programs were discussed. The Iraqi's knew that we were able to intercept their phone calls, but our intelligence agents were not clever enough to realize that the intercepted phone calls were fake, as were the discussions of Saddam's staff. The Iraqi military was also unaware that the programs were not real, so human intelligence we were able to obtain also confirmed the existence of the programs. Not only were all Western intelligence agencies fooled, but so was the Iraqi military. It is not clear to me why Democrats think that President Bush knew the truth when everyone one else was fooled.

Now we have a similar situation with Iran. One difference is that we know that Iran is producing nuclear materials; that is certain. Now our intelligence agencies think that Iran does not have a WMD program. (Remember, these are they guys who were unaware of the Pakistan nuclear program until the first bomb went off, and were unaware that the Soviet Union was collapsing.) Our intelligence agents are relying on a defector from Iran, General Ashgari, who says the Iranian program was stopped back when the A. Q. Khan enterprise was exposed after the US invaded Iraq. How do we know that Ashgari is not working for Iran, feeding us false information? Is there any reason to believe the latest NIE report? The Israeli's, who have better intelligence than we do, don't agree with the latest NIE report. The report was prepared by people who have worked against Bush for the past seven years, and is more a policy statement than an intelligence estimate. The report does seemingly make it more difficult for the US to get any useful sanctions program against Iran. Democrats want to negotiate with the Iranians. They apparently believe that Iran is rational. They also believe that a peace can be negotiated between Muslims and Israeli's, even though the Muslims say that they will not agree with any deal in which Israel continues to exist. Actually, I think the Muslims are completely rational because it is clear that they can eventually win, and there is no significant penalty for them if they continue to refuse to budge from their position. Iran is rational if they make the assumption that the West will not force them to stop. Saddam lost his gamble because of President Bush, but Democrats in the US have stripped Bush of the power to act. It is a long shot, but Arabs fear the rising power of the Persians, so at some point they may work with Israel to stop Iran.