Just the headline is scary.  Yesterday’s The Corner at National Review had a short piece by Michael Ledeen on the news that Iran has a second nuclear plant in operation. 

Mr. Ledeen points out in the article (by leaders he is referring to Obama, Sarkozy, and Brown):

“Indeed, these leaders know things are even worse than they are saying today. There are still other facilities, including one at Parchin, about which some things are known, and yet another near the Afghan border, about which I am told we know much less. I doubt we know the full details of the Iranians’ secret nuclear-weapons program. Quite obviously, Obama, Brown, and Sarkozy think it’s a weapons program, not the civilian one the Iranians claim.”

America has known about the second nuclear facility since about two months before President Obama took office.  President Bush did not act on it because of the short time he would be in office, but there was another reason.  Since the election of President Bush, the Democrat party attacked his presidency.  They undermined the war in Iraq, saying Afghanistan was the only legitimate war (now that they have to actually fight that war, they are waffling and endangering our troops by doing so), and they attacked him personally in any way they could to undermine his role as President.  Had the Democrats encouraged support of President Bush as a wartime President, he might have been able to at least threaten Iran with force to the point where they stopped their nuclear program. 

Remember that Gaddafi gave up his nuclear program after we attacked Iraq because he did not want to be next.  Had the Democrats taken a different stand on the war on terror, we might have prevented the current situation with Iran.  We are now faced with a nuclear Iran whose leaders have no problem with the idea of committing nuclear suicide and an American President who believes that his charm will bring about world peace.  Thank God for Israel, it is the world’s only hope.  Meanwhile, this President sees fit to criticize only Israel and Honduras–two of our allies trying to protect their democracies.

Just a footnote on this article.  In an article posted yesterday, Power Line points out:

“The National Intelligence Estimate concluded that “in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.” The report defined “nuclear weapons program” to mean “Iran’s nuclear weapon design and weaponization work and covert uranium conversion-related and uranium enrichment-related work; we do not mean Iran’s declared civil work related to uranium conversion and enrichment.”

At the time, we and many others greeted the NIE with skepticism as an implausible, politically-motivated document. We now know that it was wrong. Beyond that, it is hard to understand how it could have been issued in good faith. Senior administration officials now say that our intelligence agencies have known about Iran’s covert facility in Qom for “several years.” That being the case, how could the intelligence community have believed, in November 2007, that Iran had “halted [its] covert uranium conversion-related and uranium enrichment-related work” in 2003?

The conclusion seems inescapable that the 2007 NIE on Iran was a deliberately false document that was designed solely to embarrass the Bush administration and undermine its policies toward Iran.”

Unfortunately, partisan politics prevented us from solving a serious problem.  There are some things that should not be political.