Bushies forgot the report, and who helped make this mess again?

Fascinating details coming out about the new U.S intelligence estimate on Iran. It was released two days after a major meeting of world powers in Paris, a meeting where sanctions and Iran were discussed. So what's with the timing? Did Condoleeza just not get it back from Kinkos in time? If you're about to release a major report that will reshape half a decade of U.S.-Iranian relations, maybe you whip up a quick power point presentation for the weekend powwow in Paris?

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is touting this as a victory for his country: "This is a declaration of victory for the Iranian nation against the world powers over the nuclear issue." I'm not sure it's exactly a victory but it is a confirmation of what he's been claiming for years: Iran is not building a bomb. The victory is in the Bush Administration implicit acknowledgment that it's not always right. Of course Bush is not the kind of guy who can really ever admit he's wrong and he's still throwing snipes out: Condi "told reporters in the Ethiopian capital Wednesday that the U.S. intelligence report's public release showed the Bush administration was committed to transparent democracy while Iran was not."

Now I actually agree that we can't downplay Iran. The country doesn't have the kind of openness and democracy that should be a basic human right. If it could get the bomb, I'm sure it would. What major regional power wouldn't want it? With all the internationally bullying going around it's not a bad thing to have in your back pocket.  President Bush declared a de facto Cold War against Iraq in his 2002 State of Union "Axis of Evil" speech.

But one thing about Iran is that it's Iraq twenty years later. If Iran's civic structure is broken, then the West is largely to blame. The British and Soviets invaded Iran in 1941 to secure oil supplies and it was they who put in power Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as Shah of Iran. When Pahlavi lost power in the early 1950s, the U.S. Central Intelligence agency led a covert operation called Operation Ajax to put him back in power (the project was led by Kermit Roosevelt Jr., Teddy's grandson). In 1969 the so-called Nixon Doctrine formalized the Shah's Iran as a key American ally. The Iranian Revolution changed all this and along with the brutal Iran-Iraq War created the Iran we know today.

It's easy to forget that we've long supported dictators who promised us a steady supply of oil. Saddam Hussein was our buddy until he threatened Kuwaiti oil fields. If the United States had spent the last thirty years working on building strong democracies in the Middle East then both Iraq and Iran would most likely be peaceful, strong nations without any great strong incentive to put in the massive investment needed to develop weapons of mass destruction. Might oil cost a few dollars more a barrel? Sure. But isn't that worth the thousands of American, Iraqi and Iranian lives that have been destroyed in twenty years of near-constant warfare?