The story about Iran’s potential nuclear capability is, of course, not about Iran at all. It’s about Iraq. It’s the story that the CIA (and the Post) wish had been written about Iraq in 2002 — a story that says not to worry, there’s lots of time and they’re nowhere near as frightening as we think. None of that is in the story, but it’s impossible to read it without substituting the word Iraq for the word Iran. Now here’s the kicker. The presumption of the Duelfer report and everything else we know about Iraq’s degraded nuclear capability is that even in its degradation, it could have been ramped up and made ready to work within a decade. The key sentence in Bush’s preemption doctrine stands, and is perhaps even more potent and suggestive given this story: “If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long.”