On CNN this Tues, Yosemite Sam John Bolton, who previously has claimed that the threat from Iran's nuclear program is “Just like Sept. 11, only with nuclear weapons this time" and that he "absolutely" hopes that the Bush administration will bomb Iran in the coming months, insists his opinions remain unchanged following Monday's release of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. Blitzer tries to pin him down, but Bolton continues spinning every which way he can think of to downplay its findings throughout the entire interview.
Here's just a snippet of the bamboozlement:
Bolton: Well, I think it's potentially wrong, but I would also say, many of the people who wrote this are former State Dept employees who during their career at the State Dept never gave much attention to the threat of the Iranian program. Now they are writing as (fingers quote) 'members of the intelligence community' the same opinions that they've had four and five years ago.
Blitzer: President Bush says he has confidence in this new NIE. He says they revamped the intelligence community after the blunders involving the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He says there's a whole new community out there and he has total confidence in what the National Intelligence Director is doing.
Bolton: Well, I don't ...
This is the same guy who claims he tried to get an Iranian diplomat fired after he delivered an offer of peace and reconciliation with the US from the highest levels of the more moderate (pre-Ahmadinejad) Iranian government back in 2003 (when we now learn they stopped their nuclear weapons program) following their cooperation in the war on al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Does anyone really think there's anything, and I mean anything, that the NIE could have said or for that matter, anything that Iran could possibly have done that could curb John Bolton's priaprism to drop bombs on them?