OH REALLY?

Posted at 12:51 p.m. ET:

A funny thing happened to the Iranian nuclear bomb on the way to being downplayed by some American intelligence officials and the American press.

A new guy became president.

The Los Angles Times reports that, Soviet style, the truth just changed in Washington.  Actually, it's good news for the truth tellers:

Little more than a year after U.S. spy agencies concluded that Iran had halted work on a nuclear weapon, the Obama administration has made it clear that it believes there is no question that Tehran is seeking the bomb.

In his news conference this week, President Obama went so far as to describe Iran's "development of a nuclear weapon" before correcting himself to refer to its "pursuit" of weapons capability.

Can you imagine press reaction if Dick Cheney had said it?  Can you just imagine?

The language reflects the extent to which senior U.S. officials now discount a National Intelligence Estimate issued in November 2007 that was instrumental in derailing U.S. and European efforts to pressure Iran to shut down its nuclear program.

As the administration moves toward talks with Iran, Obama appears to be sending a signal that the United States will not be drawn into a debate over Iran's intent.

That's nice.  Where were you last year, pal?

"When you're talking about negotiations in Iran, it is dangerous to appear weak or naive," said Joseph Cirincione, a nuclear weapons expert and president of the Ploughshares Fund, an anti-proliferation organization based in Washington.

Nice to know that.  This guy was a world-class Bush basher.  But how the party line changes with administrations.

U.S. officials said that although no new evidence had surfaced to undercut the findings of the 2007 estimate, there was growing consensus that it provided a misleading picture and that the country was poised to reach crucial bomb-making milestones this year.

Isn't that what President Bush and his allies - you know, the imperialist warmongers - were saying all along?

By November, Iran had produced an estimated 1,400 pounds of low-enriched uranium, not nearly enough to fuel a nuclear energy reactor, but perilously close to the quantity needed to make a bomb.

Of course, there's a lot of talk in the air about...talks.  Always talks.  There's a problem, however:

But experts said Iran was now close enough to nuclear weapons capability that it may be less susceptible to international pressure.

"They've made more progress in the last five years than in the previous 10," Cirincione said.

Scare tactics?  Scare tactics, anyone?  When BUSH (!!) said things like this, he was accused of fear mongering.  That was then, this is Obama.

February 12, 2009.