Skepticism proves right

Surprise! Looks like the NIE may have been less than dead-on. So much for being more accurate this time around. The IAEA has released documents--which, inevitably, the Iranians are calling "forgeries"--that show a commitment on the part of the Iranians to weaponize a nuke after 2003, which is the date the NIE said Iran had halted its nuclear weapons ambitions:

A senior diplomat who attended the IAEA meeting said that among the material shown was an Iranian video depicting mock-ups of a missile re-entry vehicle. He said IAEA Director General Oli Heinonen suggested the component — which brings missiles back from the stratosphere — was configured in a way that strongly suggests it was meant to carry a nuclear warhead.

This is of course just part of the evidence at hand. Most bizarrely, however, is that most of the material in the presentation came from the United States. If the US had evidence that Iran was developing nuclear weapons past 2003, why on earth was this not reflected in the NIE? Were the writers of the report so afraid of an American strike that they went so far as to intentionally put false and attention-grabbing information prominently in the document? Or, if the evidence came after the report was published, why was this not publicly and loudly corrected? The Bush Administration better get its act together on what the official story in Washington is, or it risks stunting whatever momentum is left in bringing a peaceful halt to the Iranian nuke program.