Of course they're lying. The evidence is in Iran.

The main theme surrounding Bush and the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran seems to centre on whether Bush (and company) are lying about when they came into possession of the information contained in the NIE or whether they, and Bush in particular, are just stupid.

Joe Scarborough, hardly a Republican detractor, ripped into Bush this morning making that same assertion. Bush is either lying or he's stupid.

From the comments on this post yesterday the immediate consensus seems to be that Bush is both stupid and a liar. Certainly Bush seems quite willing to appear stupid rather than admit that, despite his escalating rhetoric, he was aware that Iran's nuclear program had long ago been halted.

Josh Marshall picked up the "tell" in Bush's 17 October press conference, where Bush changes the imperative from stopping Iran's weapons development to preventing Iran from possessing the knowledge to develop nuclear weapons. That provided a means of cover.

Cheney too, was manipulating the rhetoric. In his 21 October speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy this line is also a "tell":

And now, of course, we have the inescapable reality of Iran's nuclear program; a program they claim is strictly for energy purposes, but which they have worked hard to conceal; a program carried out in complete defiance of the international community and resolutions of the U.N. Security Council. Iran is pursuing technology that could be used to develop nuclear weapons.

He didn't say it was being used. Why? Because Cheney was in full possession of the facts. The inconvenient truth for Cheney, who was leading the charge to bomb Iran, was that Tehran was not developing nuclear weapons - just that they could . The same could be said for Boliva, Ghana or Jamaica for all the weight it carried.

However, there is another piece of evidence which proves Bush and Cheney are lying about when they were aware of the contents of the NIE, and that is in Iran itself.

The 2005 NIE on Iran stated with high confidence that Iran was engaged in a nuclear program to enrich uranium to build a bomb. With that estimate in hand, Cheney had everything he needed to formulate and execute a bombing campaign. Given his disdain for world opinion of his policies, he might well have proceeded except for one thing. The March 2005 presidential commission on Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction issued a scathing assessment of the way intelligence and raw data was refined to form conclusions. The 2005 NIE, put together by many of the same people who had produced the highly flawed NIE on Iraq's WMD, was placed under review. This time there were new people working on the case.

But Cheney still had that 2005 NIE and an overwhelming desire to bomb Iran. (That goes back to the 1979 hostage-taking.) With that NIE and enough of an obvious push-back by Iran on facility inspections, Cheney could have had Bush order a naval air strike by late 2006 or early 2007. Certainly, the required naval strike forces had been assembled in the Persian Gulf in preparation for just that kind of attack.

Two things got in the way.

Iraq went off the rails and required much more attention. The insurgency was taking the lives of US troops at an unacceptable level. In order to combat the insurgency a troop escalation would be necessary and it would have been impossible to sell an Iraq-fatigued American public on the idea of increasing forces and operational tempo in Iraq plus a whole new theatre of operations in Iran. So, Cheney was forced to accept that Iraq would have to be dealt with first. The only bright side, from his point of view, was that Iran could be used as a point of blame for the insurgency in Iraq, whether Tehran had anything to do with it or not.

The second thing was the review of the 2005 NIE. By 2006, the initial assessments would have been available and, at the very least, the emphasis of at least some of the sixteen intelligence agencies working on the new NIE would have indicated a different direction - Iran's nuclear program had been halted.

Here's where Iran provides the evidence that Bush and Cheney, despite their rhetoric, knew well before last Wednesday Iran had halted their nuclear program and are lying about it now. It wasn't seven days ago they learned of it. It was more like seven months or even seventeen months. Because if they had not known the true high confidence estimate Iran would already have smoking holes in the ground.

If the progress on the draft 2007 NIE had not been generating new and very different information Cheney would have felt confident to instruct Bush to order the carrier strike groups in the Persian Gulf to proceed with an air assault.

The new NIE however, prevented Cheney from acting. If he attacked Iran, based on the 2005 NIE and the information in the new NIE was made public after the fact, it would be Iraq all over again. It quite possibly could have sparked a revolt at home as the American public watched a second betrayal of their trust and a second act of leading them into a war based on lies.

If Bush and Cheney had not known some considerable time ago what was contained or going to be contained in the 2007 NIE, Iran would already have a landscape pocked with bomb craters.

That's why the rhetoric in Bush's 17 October press conference and Cheney's 21 October speech contain parlance such as "knowledge necessary to produce nuclear weapons" and "could be used to produce nuclear weapons".

Well aware that Iran poses no immediate threat, Bush and Cheney are trying to lower the bar and make "potential" a reason for a pre-emptive strike on Iran.

So, the landscape of Iran is how we know both of them are lying about how long ago they knew Tehran had halted its nuclear program. If they hadn't known, Iran would have a few more scars today.

And, yes, Bush remains stupid along with being a liar.