Redstate

Posted at 11:19am on Dec. 11, 2007 Some Further Thoughts on the Iran NIE

By Dan McLaughlin

A few thoughts on last week's announcement of the National Intelligence Estimate, which estimates that Iran ceased its nuclear weapons program in 2003:

1. As Reagan used to say, trust, but verify. U.S. intelligence has historically been lousy regarding other nations' WMD programs, especially police states, going back as far as the USSR and Red China getting The Bomb. The errors haven't even all been in one direction: threats have been underestimated at least as often as overestimated. And if the post-9/11 bureaucratic imperative was to avoid charges of failing to 'connect the dots,' the post-Iraq War imperative is to avoid charges of overestimating WMD threats. So this may well be yet another case of fighting the last war. Taranto's column last Wednesday collected some good analyses, of which there are many more. At a minimum, the NIE should not be taken at face value as holy writ. There's a reason they call these things "estimates."

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