Steven and I have spent a lot of electrons over the last year writing to you about a committed and sustained misinformation campaign to suggest that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program. We’ve highlighted many cases of dubious allegations being made against Iran’s role in the insurgency in Iraq. Steven and I do not have access to intelligence reports. We do not have a network of spies compiling data that we can analyze. We have open source information and our own common sense. And we were able to say with a high degree of confidence, over and over again, that the administration was lying to us, that Iran is almost definitely not actively pursuing a nuclear weapons program, and that their role in Iraq is poorly sourced and probably highly exaggerated. Now we have some confirmation.

President Bush got the world’s attention this fall when he warned that a nuclear-armed Iran might lead to World War III. But his stark warning came at least a month or two after he had first been told about fresh indications that Iran had actually halted its nuclear weapons program.

The latest National Intelligence Estimate says that Iran stopped their nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003. The right-wing is already using this as a justification for invading Iraq, suffering tens of thousands of casualties, bankrupting our treasury and destroying the value of the dollar. An argument can be made that the invasion of Iraq caused Iran to suspend their nuclear weapons program, but the NIE doesn’t make it.

The report judges that the halt was imposed by Iran “primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure.”

I have always believed that the debate over what to do about Iran’s nuclear weapons was a faux debate, based on little more than the baseless allegations of a handful of foreign policy hands that have ulterior motives for wanting more war and a regime change in Tehran. But it was clear that no one could retain a reputation for ‘seriousness’ if they didn’t have a plan for what to do about Iran’s ‘nuclear ambitions’.

Iran was going to be the foreign policy issue of 2008. Which candidate would have the balls to confront and contain Iran? And that is all gone now. It’s not that we have no legitimate differences or concerns with Iran, because we do. But they are not a mortal threat and they pale in importance to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, in terms of our national interests. And you can sense the wind coming out of the balloon by reading some of the reactions to the NIE from our foreign policy elites.

“You’d think that the effort to get a third [U.N. anti-Iran sanctions] resolution is dead,” said Bruce Riedel, a former senior official at the CIA, Pentagon and NSC now at the Brookings Institution. “This has got to be a very serious argument to be used by opponents of a third resolution. It will say America’s own intelligence community says Iran has halted its nuclear weapons program four years ago.”

“These findings are startling, not least because in key respects they represent a 180-degree turn from the conclusions of the last NIE on Iran’s nuclear program.”- Norman Podhoretz

Michael Rubin, an American Enterprise Institute scholar and a leading Iran hawk, agreed. “Certainly it makes diplomacy a lot more difficult,” he said. “It almost gives Berlin, Beijing and Moscow an excuse not to come together for a third round of sanctions.”

“While I was in the administration, I saw intelligence march up the hill and down the hill in short periods of time with no reason for them to change their mind,” said John R. Bolton, Bush’s former ambassador to the United Nations. “I’ve never based my view on this week’s intelligence.”

As Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, put it, the intelligence finding removes, “if nothing else, the urgency that we have to attack Iran, or knock out facilities.” He added: “I don’t think you can overstate the importance of this.”

The good news for Republicans is that they can now point to something positive that, at least circumstantially, came out of the war with Iraq. The bad news is that they just lost their bogeyman.

And that is going to change the whole flavor of the ’08 presidential campaign. Here’s how Steven Lee Myers put it in the New York Times:

Rarely, if ever, has a single intelligence report so completely, so suddenly, and so surprisingly altered a foreign policy debate here.

This is bad news for Hillary Clinton, who just a couple of months ago was such a foreign policy lightweight that she cowered in fear of ‘the Iran debate’ and voted for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment. What will Iowans think now? That she is a tool of Dick Cheney? That she is afraid of Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson’s insane ravings on the dangers of Iran? Too bad she didn’t know that the whole thing was being ginned up by a small cabal of people with other priorities than America’s security.

Hillary suddenly found herself on an island. While every other campaign sent out press releases criticizing the administration for their prior warmongering, she decided to use the news as an opportunity to bash Barack Obama for missing the Kyl-Lieberman vote. I mean…as if it were better to vote wrong than to miss the vote?

The loss of Iran as an immediate existential threat will hurt the Republicans more than it hurts Clinton. Ninety-percent of the gibberish that comes out their mouths will now be worse than gibberish…totally nonsensical…apropos of nothing…completely impertinent…a dead letter.

If we don’t face a threat of immediate annihilation then what the fuck are we doing bankrupting ourselves?

I only feel sorry for the immigrant communities, who will now be forced to bear the full brunt of Republican desperation. Immigration is all they’ve got left…and it’s a devil’s bargain. Even if they somehow won on a purely racist campaign, they’d never win again because the demographics won’t allow it.

Grab your popcorn. Or Get out the Vote.