1 Boring Old Man

That such a flawed product could emerge after a drawn-out bureaucratic struggle is extremely troubling.

While the president and others argue that we need to maintain pressure on Iran, this "intelligence" torpedo has all but sunk those efforts, inadequate as they were.

Ironically, the NIE opens the way for Iran to achieve its military nuclear ambitions in an essentially unmolested fashion, to the detriment of us all.

There’s more here than meets the eye. John Bolton doesn’t care what Iran is or is not doing. He thinks that doesn’t matter. Like most neocons, he wants to go after Iran no matter what’s happening there, to stop them from what they might do in the future. He’s been saying it for years and years. It’s the Neoconservative logic called "regime change."

The truth is that we are so onto what the neoconservatives want that we’re forced into a position of looking much more dovish than we are. I, for one, want us to keep the closest of eyes on Iran. They scare me too. But I know that the John Boltons of the world are wanting to pull off another one of their pre-emptive strikes – independent of the facts. And look where that got us in Iraq. I once heard that one could put a huge dent in the suicide rate if you locked up all male alcoholics. They account for most suicides. But it’s hardly a practical solution. It’s Bolton’s answer to foreign affairs. Unseat anyone who might become our enemy. Assasination politics has been tried for centuries. It hasn’t worked so well.