CT Blue

A lot of very unsurprising things have been revealed lately. A few days ago I noted that Bush and al-Maliki had all but sealed a sweetheart deal that, in the case of Bush, helped his cronies tremendously, and in the case of al-Maliki, promised to preserve his power, all to the detriment of their respective countries. Now we learn that despite the fact that Bush has known for months that the best intelligence available indicates that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons, he has been, in those very same months, spewing heated rhetoric about those very, once again, non-existent weapons.

I’m sure someone else has noted, though I haven’t seen it, that the fact that the various intelligence agencies felt free to give this assessment, in the teeth of Bush and Cheney’s preferences, says something about their waning power. The Democrats might still be cowed, but the bureaucrats, apparently, are not. Rightly or wrongly, they must have decided that the Prince of Darkness and his puppet are no longer a threat.

Now we will see whether there will be a replay of 2002, when the far more tentative conclusions of the intelligence community, which cast some, but not enough. doubt on the Iraqi WMDs, were ignored or ridiculed by the neocon ideologues. This time, no doubt, they will argue that since the intelligence agencies were wrong before (having concluded that Iraq might, just might have WMDs) they are no doubt wrong again, proving beyond doubt that Iran most certainly must have them.