A Pattern of Deception

Not Believable?

Bush's assertion that he didn't know about the intelligence reversal until last week struck some observers as flatly absurd.

Steven Lee Myers and Helene Cooper write in the New York Times: "Mr. Bush opened himself to new criticism over his credibility when he said that the director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, alerted him about new intelligence about Iran's weapons program in August but did not explain what it was in detail.

"As recently as October, Mr. Bush continued to warn darkly of Iran's nuclear weapons threat, invoking World War III, despite the new information. He responded to a question about that on Tuesday by saying he had received the final assessment, with its drastically altered findings, only last week."

CNN reports: "Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Joe Biden on Tuesday said he can't believe President Bush hasn't known for months about a recent intelligence estimate that downplays the nuclear threat from Iran. . . .

"'Are you telling me a president that's briefed every single morning, who's fixated on Iran, is not told back in August that the tentative conclusion of 16 intelligence agencies in the U.S. government said they had abandoned their effort for a nuclear weapon in '03?' Biden asked in a conference call with reporters.

""I refuse to believe that,' he added. 'If that's true, he has the most incompetent staff in modern American history, and he's one of the most incompetent presidents in modern American history.'"

Roxana Tiron write in The Hill that several Democrats "said that Congress should investigate the discrepancy between the Bush administration's recent doomsday rhetoric on Iran and the NIE's judgments."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid "charged that the president knew Iran halted its nuclear weapons program months ago even while he warned that the international community must prevent Iran from having the know-how to make a nuclear weapon and avoid 'World War III.'"

And David Morgan writes for Reuters: "On Tuesday, some former intelligence officers said Bush and other top White House officials were probably briefed about the intelligence findings long before the NIE was published.

"'I can't imagine that McConnell . . . would tell the president about this and not tell him what the information actually said,' remarked Flynt Leverett, a former member of Bush's National Security Council."

Alternate Timeline

There are also questions about the administration's narrative that the intelligence reversal came recently.

Greg Miller writes in the Los Angeles Times: "Last spring, as U.S. intelligence agencies worked to complete an assessment of Iran's nuclear weapons program, they were firmly on track to reach the same conclusion as previous reports: Tehran was bent on building the bomb.