Even The New York Times takes the opportunity to point out that the accuracy of the NIE is being questioned.

Iran has reportedly begun to deploy a new generation of machinery to produce nuclear fuel, a development bound to intensify a debate in Washington about whether a recent National Intelligence Estimate accurately portrayed Tehran’s progress toward the ability to build a nuclear weapon.

The testing of the new machinery, centrifuges known as IR-2s, was disclosed by European diplomats and American officials and was reported over the past two days in Europe…

Centrifuges spin at enormously high speeds to enrich uranium, which can be used to fuel nuclear reactors or, after more processing, nuclear weapons. The IR-2 is an Iranian improvement on a Pakistani design that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad boasted in an April 2006 speech would quadruple Iran’s enrichment powers.

Want a blood boiler? Our director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell now says he regrets what the National Intelligence Estimate, which claimed Iran stopped its nuke program in 2003, said.

WASHINGTON — The director of national intelligence is backing away from his agency’s assessment late last year that Iran had halted its nuclear program, saying he wishes he had written the unclassified version of the document in a different manner.

At a hearing yesterday of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the intelligence director, Michael McConnell, said, “If I had ’til now to think about it, I probably would change a few things.” He later added, “I would change the way we describe the Iranian nuclear program. I would have included that there are the component parts, that the portion of it, maybe the least significant, had halted.”

Ah, see that part is kind of important, Mike. There’s a difference between halting a nuke program and halting the least significant part of it. Oh, and did he mention this part?

But in his opening testimony, Mr. McConnell noted that two other components of the nuclear program were moving ahead — the enrichment of uranium, which he said was the most difficult part of making a bomb, and the development of long-range missiles capable of hitting North Africa and Europe.

Oh, so they’ve stopped possibly the least significant part, but have continued enriching uranium and developing missiles to deliver nukes. Funny, I didn’t hear much about that part when news broke late last year.

Allah links to this story, which says Mahmoud wants 50,000 centrifuges, which would be enough fuel for one bomb…per week.

What’s the magic number now? 20,000? What’ll it be by the time President Obama takes office and starts working his hope/change fu on them?

Heh.

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