[rightwingintelligentsia]

Even the notoriously dovish International Atomic Energy Agency thought the NIE went too far. “To be frank, we are more skeptical,” a senior U.N. official told the New York Times.

You should know you're in trouble when the IAEA moves to the right of you.

[Brad from Tennessee]

Hans Blix, former UN nuclear watchdog, said in Jerusalem Post, 12-5, that the NIE report was a political cover-your-ass exercise:

[Blix said the US agencies likely acted because they heard “all the rhetoric of World War III - and either we have the Iranian bomb or we have the bombing of Iran.”]

[The report on Iran followed an inaccurate 2002 assessment by US intelligence of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program.]

[”The intelligence services got a lot of blame for the invasion of Iraq that they had exaggerated what they saw ,” Blix said. “This time they do not want to carry the responsibility.”]