Tortured Logic

First, lets look at the main points of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran's nuclear program (thanks to Ray McGovern who wrote here)

• We judge that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program...
• We assess with moderate confidence Tehran has not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007.
• We do not have sufficient intelligence to judge confidently whether Tehran is willing to maintain the halt of its nuclear weapons program indefinitely...
• We judge with moderate confidence Iran probably would be technically capable of producing enough highly enriched uranium sometime during the 2010-2015 time frame.
• We judge with high confidence that Iran will not be technically capable of producing and reprocessing enough plutonium for a weapon before about 2015.

The same NIE also has the following in bold:

This NIE does not assume that Iran intends to acquire nuclear weapons. Rather, it examines the intelligence to assess Iran’s capability and intent (or lack thereof) to acquire nuclear weapons, taking full account of Iran’s dual-use uranium fuel cycle and those nuclear activities that are at least partly civil in nature.

Now look at the Presidents comments:

Look, Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous and Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon

So, I view this report as a warning signal that they had the program, they halted the program. And the reason why it's a warning signal is that they could restart it

In just these few words, the deeply racist nature of the establishment becomes painfully clear. It also leads to the dark and inescapable conclusion that even a million new Intelligence Reports will be completely useless against a barbaric, racist and genocidal policy.

As Arthur Silber points out in his very informative and insightful blog

The decision to go to war is one of policy, and the intelligence -- whatever it is alleged to show -- is irrelevant. Don't argue in terms of intelligence at all. If you do, you'll lose. The administration knows that; many of its opponents still haven't figured it out, even now.