Republicans in Washington Push for Fear:

The New York Times reported today that Republican leaders in Washington are complaining that the intelligence agencies are not reporting Iran as an imminent threat:

The new report, from the House Intelligence Committee, led by Representative Peter Hoekstra, Republican of Michigan, portrayed Iran as a growing threat and criticized American spy agencies for cautious assessments about Iran’s weapons programs. “Intelligence community managers and analysts must provide their best analytical judgments about Iranian W.M.D. programs and not shy away from provocative conclusions or bury disagreements in consensus assessments,” the report said, using the abbreviation for weapons of mass destruction like nuclear arms.

This is the same sort of abusive pressure that the administration employed in its aggressive runup to war with Iraq. Considering the failure of the Iraq policy, I confess to being a bit more than flabbergasted, but this certainly fits the story I was told more than a year ago by a Republican insider who insisted that the plan had been to go into Iran all along.