Democrats have lost the definition of "lie"

Mort Kondracke:

The new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran ought to be greeted with cheers and bipartisan agreement on vigorous carrot-and-stick diplomacy to get Iran to open its nuclear program to international inspections.

Instead, Democrats tried to use it to accuse President Bush of lying about and hyping the Iran threat — and Bush claimed that it changed nothing about U.S. policy.

Of course, it changed everything, both politically and geopolitically.

The finding that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 — reversing a 2005 declaration that Iran had such a program — ended any possibility that Bush could win support for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

It also undercut Bush’s ability to win support for United Nations sanctions, though European sanctions still are possible.

Politically, it removed one of the two I’s from the probable top tier of 2008 election issues. Iran — at least, the question of whether to go to war — is gone. Immigration, however, remains.

Depending on who the nominees are, there will be a debate on Iran, but it will be over whether diplomacy should emphasize direct “engagement” (the Democrats’ idea) or “sanctions and pressure” (the GOP’s). That’s a significant nuance but not a wedge.

The sensible policy, based on a full reading of the NIE, is both engagement and pressure.

Bush needs to drop his objections to direct talks with the Iranians, and Democrats should support sanctions as a means of controlling Iran’s ongoing nuclear program.

The NIE emphatically did not say that Iran had abandoned its clandestine nuclear weapons program. It said that in 2003, in response to international “scrutiny” and “pressure,” Iran “halted” its effort to fashion enriched uranium into a bomb and probably has not resumed it.

But uranium enrichment goes on, the program is not subject to international inspection or control and Iran continues to build ballistic missiles.

...

Why have Democrats adopted the childish definition of lying, even though it is not in the dictionary? They did the same thing over WMD giving great aid and comfort to our enemies and they are doing it again on the Iran report.

Anyone who looks at the facts of why the NIE changed should know that Bush did not lie nor did the intelligence community. Only an idiot or a partisan could call the new information proof of a lie. Intelligence reports rely on certain assumptions about unproven facts. When the assumptions are shown to be invalid and the evaluation changes. No lie has occurred. Intelligence estimates are somewhat like financial projections. If the underlying assumptions prove invalid you are unlikely to meet projected profits. If the underlying assumptions of an intelligence estimate change, you have to change the estimate.

Democrats need to get over this sick approach to politics.

As for Kondrake's point about the effects of the new NIE on forcing Iran to stop producing the feed stock for a bomb, he may be right, but Bush is also right to continue to press the Iranians to comply with the UN resolutions.

Robert Tracinsky has more thoughts on how Iran's propaganda victory will make it more difficult for the US to stop their ambitions.