TigerHawk draws our attention to a report in the LATimes about how the intelligence community has reversed its absurd 2007 National Intelligence Estimate that claimed Iran had stopped trying to develop nuclear weapons in 2003. (Here’s NR’s editors weighing in at the time.) This was the intelligence-manipulation of all time (probably even worse than the fraud Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee perpetrated regarding pre-war intelligence). It was transparently carried out by the IC’s “we can deal with these mullah guys” chorus to undermine whatever small chance there may have been (I’d say non-existent) that the Bush administration would take military action to set Iran’s nuclear program back. But I won’t hold my breath waiting for recriminations about it.

I disagree with my estimable buddy TigerHawk’s assessment that admissions by the president and CIA Director Panetta about Iran’s ongoing nuke program mean “the Obama administration is clearly going to great lengths to educate Congressional liberals and the public at large on the danger posed by Iran[,]” and that Obama is now “committed” to an “aggressive (even if non-military) posture toward Iran.” (I agree, of course, that Obama is committed to a non-military approach.)

My sense is that the opposite is going on: The Obama administration is methodically inuring the country to the idea of a nuclear Iran. If we all just get used to the notion that the mullahs were busy as beavers on their nukes all along, even when our crack intelligence community thought they had stopped, the administration is banking that history will gradually be revised (with the usual assist from the Obamedia): Iran’s now inevitable nukes will become a fait accompli that Obama inherited from Bush rather than a problem that became a fait accompli because Obama quite consciously decided to do nothing about it.