On Wednesday Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 (H R 4986), which among other things, effectively declared Iran an (eventual) nuclear threat to the United States. This, after the National Intelligence Estimate from last November concluded that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003 and it had remained halted as of mid-2007.

The text from Section 229 of the Act:

Congress finds that Iran maintains a nuclear program in continued defiance of the international community while developing ballistic missiles of increasing sophistication and range that:
(1) pose a threat to--
(A) the forward-deployed forces of the United States;
(B) North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies in Europe; and
(C) other allies and friendly foreign countries in the region; and
(2) eventually could pose a threat to the United States homeland.

The Act goes on to call for the U.S. to "develop, test, and deploy, as soon as technologically feasible, in conjunction with allies and friendly foreign countries whenever possible, an effective defense against the threat from Iran." Is this a call for a missile-defense system or something more aggressive?

Bush has ignored the NIE findings from day one and has continued to beat the drums of war. That was no surprise; I just assumed that when the intelligence community contradicted his WMD fear-mongering this time around, he would simply be ignored.

But when legislators aren't held accountable for their votes, why would they worry about accurate intelligence or the consequences of their decisions? How many of Senators who voted for war five years ago, when Bush was makings similar false WMD claims about Iraq, have lost their reelection bids? Hell, two of the three top contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination voted to go to war in 2003. We have only ourselves and our short memories to blame. We can hold politicians accountable, yet we let them deflect blame and spin their votes for war as votes for peace, and we forgive them with our votes and our partisan support.

The bill will now go to the Senate, and I'm interested to see how Senators Obama and Clinton handle this issue.