FALLING PANDA: News From Iran Shows Bush Doctrine Works

For several years now we have heard conspiracy theories floated by Iraq war opponents everywhere that the Bush administration had pretty much settled on attacking Iran. To hear them tell it, it wasn't simply going to be a strategic bombing of the rogue nation's nuclear facilities, but rather an all-out, Iraq-style, ground war.

Of course, there is no evidence that the administration was planning such an attack. But with the mission in Iraq going badly, it was political rhetoric which succeeded in making the far-left and the Democratic base hate the president even more and unite the left around the idea that a war against Iran was inevitable unless John Edwards or some other far-left dove was brought in immediately to stop it.

Now, keep in mind: all of this fear-mongering of another Bush war came against the backdrop of an Iran which most believed was in the process of (or close to being in the process of) building a nuclear weapon. Despite the obvious danger of such a prospect, the left showed that they were far more concerned with an imperialist America actually using its military than they were of a radical Islamic nation with a nuke.

Now a new NIE intelligence estimate tells us that Iran halted their development of nuclear weapons in 2003.

The left seized on this finding immediately and pointed to it as evidence that the Bush administration over-hyped the threat posed by Iran, with the goal of bringing us into another war. We've come to expect this type of knee-jerk reaction from the tin-foil hat crowd and Bush haters, but as is usual these days, on matters of foreign policy the opposition let their mouths get a couple steps ahead of their brains on this one.

Let the grown ups explain.

First of all, I shouldn't even have to point out that those who are trying to score political points off of this NIE report are the same folks who have been calling the President a liar or implying that he misled the nation in the lead up to the Iraq war. Of course, the intelligence that the president received which led him, as well as almost everyone else to believe that Saddam Hussein had WMD's and was possibly well on his way to acquiring a nuclear weapon was laid out very clearly in an NIE intelligence estimate.

It's political opportunism right out of the Clinton playbook. When the intelligence estimate says something that is subsequently investigated and turns out to be wrong, the president is a liar. However, when believing the NIE estimate can help the Democrats politically, they will use it as fact to try and make the president look like a liar.

Of course, the Democrats will never admit how hypocritical this pick-and-choose politics is. They will also never admit that this news is evidence that the war in Iraq has served as a deterrent to other regimes who seek weapons of mass destruction. Of course, to hear the left tell it, this whole war was about oil anyway so they probably wouldn't have the intellectual honesty or capacity to understand that deterrence was one of the major, strategic goals of the Iraq invasion in the first place.

We now know that Iran suspended their development of a nuclear weapon around the same time that we invaded Iraq in order to disarm Saddam. Coincidence? You can make the call on that one.

Common sense would suggest that like Libya, the powers that be in Iran decided that acquiring a nuke was not worth the threat of having the United States put the smackdown on them and overthrow their government. Something that they now saw we were perfectly willing to do, with or without the blessing of the U.N.

So our show of force in Iraq worked perfectly in that sense. Recently, North Korea has also promised to end their nuclear weapons program as well. So there you have it. The Axis of Evil is no longer a threat to the world or the stability of the Middle East, right?

Not quite. We know that we can't trust regimes like Iran or North Korea in the long run. Despite the fact that both Iran and Saddam were not as far along in their WMD capabilities as we thought, both regimes felt it necessary to keep the world guessing.

Iran is still enriching uranium, North Korea lied to us once before when we made a deal with them. You simply can't trust these guys.

Therefore, President Bush is correct in his assertion that Iran is still dangerous even without a current nuke program.

While we must keep Iran on a steady diet of sanctions and carrots attached to sticks, in order to ensure that they improve their behavior in the region, today's revelation is good news for everyone.

For the time being, Iran's neighbors don't have to worry about having a bomb lobbed at them.

For now the U.S. does not have to be concerned with Iran handing off a nuke to Al-Queda or some other Islamic extremist group. The fact that it appears that Iran couldn't even possibly construct a nuclear weapon before the middle of the next decade buys us some much needed time to fight the War on Terror, without Iran having the bargaining power which a nuclear weapon would give them.

The real story here however is the left's continued attempts to spin every positive into a negative. To spin even the most promising intelligence into a gotcha moment for the administration.

But their days are numbered. As the surge in Iraq continues to work and democracy continues to evolve in the region, the Bush administrations decision to go into Iraq will eventually begin to get the credit it deserves for the dominoes which continue to fall as a result.

Of course I could be wrong. Maybe Iran just stopped their nuke program in 2003 because they were bored or lazy, or because they just wanted to be nice guys.

But if you are still not convinced, ask yourself this: If Iran had announced that it had suspended its nuclear weapons program a few days after the U.S. attacked Iraq, how would the media and the Democrats have reacted to that?

Whatever the case, it's time for some honesty from the Democrats and those in the media, who seem to believe that this story is more about the Administration's credibility than our sucesses in the War on Terror.

-Dan Joseph