The three main authors of this report are former State Department officials with previous reputations that should lead one to doubt their conclusions. All three are ex-bureaucrats who, as is generally true of State Department types, favor endless rounds of negotiation and ‘diplomacy’ and oppose confrontation.

These three officials, according to the Wall Street Journal, have ‘reputations as hyper-partisan anti-Bush officials.‘ ‘They are Tom Fingar, formerly of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research; Vann Van Diepen, the National Intelligence Officer for WMD; and Kenneth Brill, the former U.S. Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’

Tom Fingar was a State Department employee who was an expert on China and Germany — he has no notable experience, according to his bio in the Middle East and its geopolitics.

Vann Van Diepen is also a career State Department bureaucrat, who, according to the New York Sun, is one of the State Department bureaucrats who want ‘revenge’ for having their views regarding Iran ignored by the Bush Administration. He is now seeking to further his own agenda.

As the Sun wrote in their editorial yesterday:

‘Vann Van Diepen, one of the estimate’s main authors, has spent the last five years trying to get America to accept Iran’s right to enrich uranium. Mr. Van Diepen no doubt reckons that in helping push the estimate through the system, he has succeeded in influencing the policy debate in Washington. The bureaucrats may even think they are stopping another war.’

Vann Diepen also shares a lack of experience in dealing with Iran or the region.

The third main author comes in for particular criticism in the Wall Street Journal editorial. Kenneth Brill served as the US Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (the IAEA). This is an agency that has served to enable Iranian’s quest for nuclear weapons.

The head of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, has even been called a friend by the Iranian regime.

As he should be, for he has been an enabler of its nuclear weapons program and has stiff-armed European Union diplomats who have worked to restrain Iran.

ElBaradei and the IAEA have over-reached and now seek to control diplomatic negotiations with Iran — a function that is beyond its mandate.

Brill was apparently unwilling to stop this mission creep and put an end to ElBaradei’s efforts to help Iran. Or, as the Wall Street Journal hints, maybe he was just incompetent.

“Brill also has no previous history of experience dealing with Iran. (He graduated from Business School at Berkeley in 1973.)”

So exactly what a number of people have suspected is certainly true here. You have some disgruntled State Department people, one of them actively pursuing a program of allowing the Iranians to enrich uranium, sabotage, unhappy with the Bush administration.

It’s exactly the kind of thing that I suspected and feared yesterday, and the president is not backing down from this and he’s not accepting this per se in the sense that this doesn’t mean they’re not a threat, this doesn’t mean that they’re not going to continue to try later on down the road, if they have, indeed, stopped.

They’re still enriching uranium, and you don’t do that to drive cars around and provide electricity for the Iranian people.