By David Bromwich | The Huffington Post
President Bush, at his press conference on Tuesday, pleaded ignorance as his excuse for statements going back many months--statements which, if made with knowledge and not from ignorance, were treacherous, deceptive, and entailed a deliberate risk to the security of the United States.
He said he didn't know the contents of the December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate until a few days ago. This, he implied, was the reason why he spoke freely and provocatively through the summer and fall about the direness of the international threat posed by Iran. A pardonable error, since he was using the best intelligence available to him at the time.
The NIE seems to have been made public as a result of pressure within the intelligence community. The new findings about Iran, if kept secret and distorted, might deeply affect the future of the United States; and so their release became a patriotic obligation. A similar motive can be heard in some recent court decisions and in public statements by leaders of the armed forces.
The National Intelligence Estimate of December 3 says: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program."
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