I am glad to see that I’m not alone in my skepticism of the recently released N.I.E. concerning Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The report claims that Iran halted it’s covert nuclear weapons program back in 2003.

However, since it took U.S. intelligence more than a decade to discover they had such a program in the first place doesn’t inspire much confidence in their findings.

Combine that with the many rogue elements within the intelligence community who actively try to undermine the Bush Administration’s foreign policy, and you get the perfect storm for a bunk intelligence report.

According to Rasmussen Reports just 18% of American voters believe that Iran has halted its nuclear weapons program. A whopping 66% of voters believe that Iran has not halted it’s program.

Here are some other interesting bits of data:

The Rasmussen Reports survey also found that 67% of American voters believe that Iran remains a threat to the national security of the United States Only 19% disagree while 14% are not sure.

Fifty-nine percent (59%) believe that the United States should continue sanctions against Iran. Twenty percent (20%) disagree and 21% are not sure.

Forty-seven percent (47%) believe it is Very Likely that Iran will develop nuclear weapons in the future and another 34% believe Iran is Somewhat Likely to do so.

Twenty-nine percent (29%) of liberal voters believe that Iran has stopped its weapons program but 54% disagree.

Among conservatives, just 8% believe Iran has stopped and 81% disagree.

So it looks like the American people just aren’t buying the liberal hogwash that Bush “lied” about Iran so he could take us to war. Clear thinking Americans know full well that Iran was a threat before the NIE report, and remains a threat after the NIE report.

-Chris Jones

Vice President Cheney is predicting that Iraq will be a self-governing democracy by the time he leaves office, calling the current U.S. surge strategy “a remarkable success story” that will be studied for years to come.

“I am fairly confident we’ll have [Iraq] in a good place, where we’ll be able to look back on it and say, ‘That was the right decision. It was a sound decision going into Iraq,’”

“We’ve got a lot of work to do. We’re sort of halfway through the surge, in a sense. We’ll be going back to pre-surge levels over the course of the next year.”

The Vice President also said that he has no reason to to doubt the newly released National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. He said he thinks the intelligence community is doing the best job it can with the limited amount of information that’s available. He also made it clear that the Administration remains very concerned about Iran.

“We still think there’s need to continue the course we’ve been on to persuade the Iranians not to enrich uranium,” he said. “The long pole in the tent in terms of developing nuclear weapons, traditionally, historically, has been developing fissile material, either highly-enriched uranium or plutonium. In this case, they’re embarked upon the program to develop uranium, obviously.”

The Vice President also acknowledged that the Administration pretty much had to release the NIE, because it wouldn’t have stayed secret for very long. I suspected that was probably one of the reasons it was released. Unfortunately, nobody at any level of the government can keep their damn mouths shut anymore.

It really is ridiculous for Bush critics to seize upon this intelligence estimate as proof that Bush lied again. Liberals for some reason equate lying with being wrong. Secondly, the Israeli’s are saying today they believe the intel estimate is dead wrong.

I personally view the intel estimate with deep suspicion. Our intelligence community has gotten it wrong a lot recently, so just because they say Iran has “suspended” its weapons program doesn’t mean a whole lot to me. We should continue to exert as much political pressure as we possibly can on Iran, because at the very least they’re killing our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

-Chris Jones