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Unless you spent the last 24 hours hiding under a rock somewhere, you've likely heard the big news: it is the combined judgement of our national intelligence services that Iran stopped pursuing nuclear weapons in 2003. The reaction to this news has been as diverse as the people who provided it. But so far, no one beats Josh Marshall in either clarity or concision:

There's a secondary, though still very interesting question, of just why the NIE findings were released at all, and what intra-administration in-fighting might be behind it. But it shows us once again, for anyone who needed showing, that everything this administration says on national security matters should be considered presumptively not only false, but actually the opposite of what is in fact true, until clear evidence to the contrary becomes available. They're big liars.

The administration has been sitting on this report for months. Nevertheless, the president ran around talking about how the ongoing pursuit of nukes by Iran could lead to WWIII. We now know, as we have long suspected, that he had no idea what he was talking about. We now know that, just as they have been saying for quite some time, the Iranians are pursuing only civilian programs, programs that they are clearly allowed to pursue under international law.

Never mind all that, says the president:

President Bush asserted today that Iran's nuclear program remains a danger to international security despite an assessment in a new U.S. intelligence report that the Tehran government stopped work four years ago on a suspected effort to build nuclear weapons.

In a White House news conference, Bush argued that Iran continues to develop the capability to enrich uranium and that this know-how ultimately could be transferred to a new clandestine weapons program.

"Look, Iran was dangerous," Bush said. "Iran is dangerous. And Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."

In response to persistent questioning about the new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), a declassified summary of which was released yesterday, Bush emphasized the review's finding that Iran had a covert nuclear weapons program until 2003, when Tehran halted it under international scrutiny and pressure.

"What's to say they couldn't start another covert nuclear weapons program?" he asked. "I still feel strongly that Iran's a danger. Nothing's changed in this NIE that says, okay, why don't we just stop worrying about it. Quite the contrary."

Well at least now it has all been made clear. The facts? Never mind those. What's to say that in the future Iran might do some hypothetical thing? They might. We cannot know the future. And our president has "a feeling" about them, so they must still be dangerous.

This isn't complicated. Civilian nuclear technology and military nuclear technology are related. In fact, one fuels the other, both literally and figuratively. That's as true in Iran as it is in the US, France, Germany, India, or Pakistan. It might be more convenient for everyone if the two were separable, but they are not. They never have been, nor will they ever be. Thus, if Iran builds civilian reactors - again, something they are entirely within their rights to do under international law - they will by definition gain knowledge that leads inevitably to potential military use. We need to figure out how to live with this reality. Denying it won't make it go away.

As for Bush....

He denied that he knew about the new assessment before his Oct. 17 remarks, saying he was briefed on the latest NIE only last week. He said the director of national intelligence, John M. McConnell, informed him in August that the intelligence community had "some new information" about Iran's program. "He didn't tell me what the information was. He did tell me it was going to take a while to analyze."

Although we have every reason to assume that this is a lie, let's grant for a moment that it is entirely truthful and consider the consequences. The intelligence community has been sitting on this report for well over a year. It has been doing so at the behest of the Office of the Vice President because of a dispute over its findings. Taking Bush at his word, that would mean that the Vice President has known what the intelligence community was thinking about Iran for over a year, but that the president was largely in the dark, leading him to make a series of WWIII-related statements about a non-existent program. My question is...how on earth is this supposed to be a defense? I just don't get it.

UPDATE: Great catch by some of the readers over at TPM. We know Bush knew far earlier than he is admitting. His language gives it all away.

UPDATE II: Meanwhile, for those wondering how partisans on the right are going to handle this news, I offer three anecdotes.

First, Norman Podhoretz, Rudy Giuliani's advisor on the Middle East, had this to say:

I entertain an even darker suspicion. It is that the intelligence community, which has for some years now been leaking material calculated to undermine George W. Bush, is doing it again. This time the purpose is to head off the possibility that the President may order air strikes on the Iranian nuclear installations.

The CIA is apparently serving the needs of its Iranian masters. Or something. I don't get it, but the kids over at both Commentary and National Review do, so you might want to go ask them to explain.