There’s no downside to the news that Iran hasn’t got the bomb, right? Try telling that to the Bush administration.

Despite this week’s release of the latest National Intelligence Estimate’s conclusion that Iran halted its covert nuclear weapons program in 2003, the Bush administration has said it will continue to pursue sanctions.

And it turns out the president knew the general gist of the NIE’s conclusions about no-nukes Iran at least as early as August.

But just six weeks ago Bush worried out loud, near a microphone, about a nuclear-armed Iran setting off “World War III.” And Vice President Cheney warned in a speech that America “cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions”.

Back in October the US media were in a frenzy, whipped along by the administration, over the possibility of Iran dropping the big one after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s US visit and The New Yorker’s Seymour M Hersh report revealing that the Bush administration were redrawing long-standing plans for a possible attack on Iran.

But a subtle shift in Bush’s atomic language has taken place preceding the public release of the NIE. According to Flynt Leverett, former senior director on Bush’s National Security Council, the October rhetoric subtly slid from Iran’s imminent weapons of mass destruction, to its imminent plans to gain the capability for making weapons of mass destruction. Sound familiar?

But this time the intelligence community, who’ve learnt their lessons the hard way, say they’re scrutinising the intelligence forensically, making no assumptions, resisting political pressure to go a certain way and making a concerted attempt to prevent the US administration from distorting their findings by going public with their contradictory findings.

But criticism about the capability of the intelligence community is starting to surface, suggesting that if their new report contradicts earlier findings, how can their latest report be trusted?

Crikey has scooped the cream off the top of the US commentariat, many of whom are crucifying the Bush administration over the issue, an administration which seems to have vastly underestimated the reaction to the NIE report:

The view from the intelligence community: “Based on the 2002 experience we’ve really tried to make our process much more robust,” said a senior intelligence official this week, referring to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, which said that Iraq was pursuing nuclear weapons and had advanced with its chemical and biological weapons programmes – conclusions which turned out to be wrong. — Financial Times

How to deal with Iran? How do you say “sorry” in Farsi? That’s the question the White House may need to answer in the wake of this week’s stunning reversal of official US opinion about Iran’s nuclear ambitions. But now that US intelligence believes Iran halted its nuclear arms effort in 2003, Bush administration hawks must do more than wipe the egg off their faces. They must still find a way to resolve the remaining impasse over uranium enrichment. — The Christian Science Monitor

Bush sticks to his lines: Many foreign policy experts believe that the disclosures this week seriously damaged U.S. efforts to obtain a third round of international sanctions against Iran, but Bush indicated today that he remains undeterred. He said his top national security advisers and diplomats had discussed the situation in recent days with their counterparts from France, Great Britain, Russia and Germany. — The Washington Post

Implications for the 08 race: Clinton’s rivals took her to task for supporting a Senate resolution in September calling on the Bush administration to declare the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization and proliferators of mass destruction. — Voice of America

When in doubt, ignore the findings: Ironically, that political cowardice [of the intelligence community], which of course extends back to the Iraq-WMD debacle, could help Iran war hawks discredit the new NIE: If intelligence agencies have been so wrong before, why should we believe them now? Certainly President Bush is ignoring the findings. Today in a speech in Omaha he continued to urge Iran to “come clean” about its nuclear program or face world isolation. — Joan Walsh, Salon

Iran takes the Iraq approach? Whoever makes decisions in Iran decided that working on an actual nuclear arms program would be extremely risky, so they ordered the program shut down. Meanwhile, they continued to build up their knowledge base and nuclear enrichment capabilities–activities that are legal under the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty–while striking a defiant pose against the United States and seeking to expand their influence in the Persian Gulf, all the while insisting that they have no nuclear weapons program underway. — The New Republic

CIA flip flops: The larger worry here is how little we seem to have learned from our previous intelligence failures. Over the course of a decade, our intelligence services badly underestimated Saddam’s nuclear ambitions, then overestimated them. Now they have done a 180-degree turn on Iran, and in such a way that will contribute to a complacency that will make it easier for Iran to build a weapon. Our intelligence services are supposed to inform the policies of elected officials, but increasingly their judgments seem to be setting policy. This is dangerous. — The Wall Street Journal

The Pentagon breathes a sigh of relief: The latest National Intelligence Estimate on Iran was the final factor in a military equation that now appears to guarantee that there will be no war with Iran during the Bush Administration. It meshes with the views of the operational types at the Pentagon, who have steadfastly resisted the march to war led by some Administration hawks. The anti-war group was composed of Defense Secretary Robert Gates; Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs; and Admiral William Fallon, who oversees the U.S. forces that would have had to wage that war. — Time

Is Bush lying? During Tuesday’s news conference, the president said that he was first briefed on the NIE last Wednesday, November 28. This was a gigantic lie. National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley inadvertently and preemptively debunked it on Monday when he said that the president was briefed much earlier — perhaps as early as August or September — about the content of the NIE. Then we have this from the president: “In August, I think it was John Mike McConnell came in and said, we have some new information. He didn’t tell me what the information was.” Uhh… Huh? – The Huffington Post

Don’t overestimate NIE findings: I’m afraid I agree with President Bush and others who are cautioning that the Iranian threat remains alive. I say so not because I agree with those who want to make Iran the next Iraq, and not because I even believe that Iran will ever be able (or allowed) to obtain nuclear weapons. I say so because I think the reassurances that can be inferred from the new national intelligence estimate are being vastly overstated. — William M. Arkin, The Washington Post

Iran’s Take on America: There are two intelligence analyses that are relevant to the balance of power between the U.S. and Iran — one is the latest U.S. assessment of Iran, which certainly gave a much more complex view of what is happening there. The other is the Iranian National Intelligence Estimate of America, which — my guess — would read something like this… — Thomas L Friedman, The New York Times

War talk v diplomacy: It’s great that this information is before the country before we blindly launch what could have been World War III. But it also ought to be a reminder about how Team Bush substitutes war talk for diplomacy. — Seattle Post Intelligencer 

Iran needs to come clean: The only way to know for sure that Iran had ceased its weapons program would be for Iran to offer up that evidence itself. If the leadership were to allow open IAEA inspections of its facilities and agree to the proposals on the table to cease its uranium enrichment program, we would have a public component to these whisperings. — The Atlantic Monthly