American Thinker: Mind-reading George W on the Middle East: "So here's what W decides: Why not let the libs write that NIE? Nobody is going to believe it anyway. (And right on cue, the Europeans dropped leaks saying they didn't.) But it will cause a fuss in the media in Israel (which is under the gun most directly), but also in Saudi, the Gulf States, Europe, the United States, and even Russia, where everybody has been happily demagoguing W for ages, secure in the knowledge that Uncle Sam would help them if they encountered real danger from the martyrdom brigade. It's very clever. Some countries are suddenly getting serious about Tehran's nukes. The UK Guardian (!) has been writing about the danger, the same folks who've been blowing superheated steam like Old Faithful ever since the overthrow of Saddam. The Brits, Germans and French have told the press that the Americans are just wrong again, just like with Saddam, but now in the opposite way. With Saddam, the myth goes, there were no WMDs, but now Iran has them coming for sure."
I'd been thinking similar thoughts, but hadn't really formulated them. Now I don't need to.