This is a complete reversal from the 2005 estimate, a 180. The Intelligence Community has had pretty poor success about all sorts of intel problems for many years. The CIA in particular has been chowder-headed about HUMINT and incompetent to furnish it reliably for decades, essentially since Angleton was fired. And for penetrating key decision-making by governments like those of Iran and Iraq you need good HUMINT sources.

Nor is the IAEA to be trusted, any more than any other UN agency.

The Mossad’s estimate is likely to be more reliable.

Members of the 101st Airborne Division showed the “5″ EYEWITNESS NEWS crew bunker after bunker of material labeled ‘Explosives.’ Usually it took just the snap of a bolt cutter to get into the bunkers and see the material identified by the 101st as detonation cords.

It is clear from the Channel 5 account, videos and photographs, that WMD related materials under international control were recovered intact by the US Army during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. However these materials, located at the Al Qaqaa storage facility, were not secured by the U.S. Army, despite the fact that the IAEA had alerted the United States government to the presence of WMD related materials at the IAEA facility.

The Los Angelas Times on November 4, 2004, troops from the two military units, the Army 317th Support Center and the 258th Rear Area Operations Center, watched explosives being plundered from the al Qaqaa facility by looters over a several day period of time. “On our last day there, there were at least 100 vehicles waiting at the site for us to leave,” one soldier reported.

US Weapons Inspector David Kay visits Al Qa’qaa facility in May. He stated: “I saw it in May and it was heavily looted at that time. Sometime between April and May most of the stuff was carried off. The site was in total disarray.”

I tell the whole story on my blog:
http://weblog.xanga.com/bartoncii/571774819/george-bush-and-the-emporers-new-clothes.html

There is a school of thought out there that thinks the Iraqi WMDs wound up in Syria and Lebanon. This theory is bolstered by satellite photos of truck convoys in the weeks leading up to the war in Iraq. The recent bombing of a mystery site in Syria that was not protested by any other Arab nation lends credence to the theory that Syria has something very nasty to hide. Several news reports have come out and said that the site was for the manufacture of nuclear weapons.

Many of us here look with great skepticism at the NIE report. That doesn’t mean we’re drunk.

Gareth Porter of IPS reports that the NIE has been floating between intelligence agencies and the Bush Administration for a year, because Chaney refuses to accept it, and the Intelligence agencies refuse to back down on their estimate.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has known since 2004 that the A.Q. Khan gang sold the Iranians defective centrifuge designs that can only enrich Uranium to reactor grade fuel, not atomic weapon material.

CNN reported at that time: “IAEA inspectors detailed its findings in the report titled “Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement in the Islamic Republic of Iran” — a report compiled for the June 14 meeting of the IAEA board of governors in Vienna, Austria. ”

The Iranian Nuclear project was blocked by the inability of the Iranians to perfect their production of the P-2 centrifuge. The IAEA has recently closed its case on Iranian centrifuges concluding that the Iranians were currently unable to produce weapons grade U235, and not interested in obtaining the technology to do so.

Most US intelligence agencies, recalling that the IAEA was spot on about the fraudulent Bush/Chaney claims about Iraqi nuclear weapons programs, dug in and refused to kowtow to Chaney’s demands for more dummied up intelligent estimates. There is no0 mystery here, only further evidence of the disgusting, corrupt, dishonesty and insane methods of the Bush Administration.