It is becoming increasingly clear that the Bush administration's policy aspirations are essentially without respect to the factual structure of the given situation. The announcement that sixteen of the nation's intelligence agencies, which is quite reasonable to say represents a cross-section of the domestic intelligence community, have released an intel product stating that it is their conclusions that Iran discontinued its nuclear weapons program in 2003. This discontinuation may have been in response to the US invasion of Iraq, which would actually make it a rare foreign policy success stemming from the unilateral invasion.
It is becoming increasingly clear that the Bush administration's policy aspirations are essentially without respect to the factual structure of the given situation. The announcement that sixteen of the nation's intelligence agencies, which is quite reasonable to say represents a cross-section of the domestic intelligence community, have released an
intel product stating that it is their conclusions that Iran discontinued its nuclear weapons program in 2003. This discontinuation may have been in response to the US invasion of Iraq, which would actually make it a rare foreign policy success stemming from the unilateral invasion.
In spite of this, in a press conference Bush referred to this document as a "warning sign." How he arrived at this conclusion is particularly baffling, because it controverts the Bush administration
rhetoric that Iran poses a threat to the US because of its continued pursuance of a nuclear weapons program. Given the administration's hawkish positions on West Asian foreign affairs and tendency to overstate threats, it is unsurprising that they have been using heated rhetoric about in Iran in the past, such as Bush's assertion that a nuclear armed Iran could lead to World War III (perhaps as much of a threat as a forecast).
This rhetoric has been mirrored by the vanguard of 2008 presidential candidates, who have stated virtually without exception that a military option is still on the table in regard to Iran. But given the details of the new National Intelligence Estimate's (NIE) narrative on Iran, one could conclude that in any reasonable political environment the discourse about Iran would become decidedly less hawkish, because the basis for the previous stance has been effectively refuted by our nation's own much-maligned, but still respected intelligence community. However, that isn't the case, and the Bush administration is still making the push for conflict with Iran, in spite of eroding evidence of an Iranian nuclear threat.
It is important to qualify all of this by saying that Kucinich's articles of impeachment against Cheney included an article (III) that
asserted that it was a violation of Article II Section 4 of the UN Charter, and thus unlawful under Article VI of the US Constitution, to use the "threat... of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state." The Bush administration's cavalier attitude toward international relations have led it to time and again throw caution to the wind, perhaps to the detriment of all concerned parties.
However, the Bush administration's policy toward Iran is not irredeemable. Bush could employ the State Department rather than the Defense Department for a change and open up a dialogue with Iran, setting the stage for future negotiations which promote peaceful settlement and likely enhance domestic and international security.