NIE report repudiation of Bush doctrine?

Settling down into Salon - probably my least favorite place for Liberal opinion work and the anthesis of the much better written, much more sane Slate - I found this gem: Gary Kamiya trying to spein the recent NIE report as somehow bad for the President. How can you take an article seriously when it leads with this?

Bush's disastrous legacy is now locked in place. The National Intelligence Estimate released last week, which stated that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003, is an explicit repudiation of the Bush doctrine and a preemptive strike against war with Iran.

According to the new NIE, 6 months after the U.S. entered Iraq, Iran and gave up its nuclear weaponizing programs. At about the same time, Syria gave up their own nuclear and chemical weapons programs. Strange coincidence, isn't it? It just must be an absolute repudiation of Bush's foreign policy doctrine that during his time in office, his projection of American strength and willingness to engage in preemptive strikes led to Iran and Syria abandoning nuclear and chemical weapons.

Of course, Mr. Kamiya's article has to follow up with another interesting anecdote:

One of [National Iranian American Council President Trita] Parsi's more remarkable tales takes place in May 2003, just after U.S. troops occupied Baghdad. Fearing that the U.S. was about to invade Tehran, Iran approached the U.S. with an amazing offer. In a dialogue of "mutual respect," it offered to stop its backing of Hamas and Islamic Jahad, support the transformation of Hezbollah into a disarmed political party, open up its nuclear program to international inspection and accept the Arab League's two-state plan for Israel and Palestine, thus making peace with the Jewish state. In return, Tehran asked for the U.S. to abandon its plans to topple the reign of the mullahs, end sanctions, turn over antiregime terrorists and accept Iran's legitimate interests in the region.

Assuming that this is, indeed, more than a remarkable tale of an amazing offer, this seems to strengthen the position of the Bush Doctrine, does it not?

Bringing Iran in from the cold
Iran isn't a mad state bent on Israel's destruction but a rational actor that wants a place at the table.
Current Opinion for Salon

Bush's disastrous legacy is now locked in place. The National Intelligence Estimate released last week, which stated that Iran stopped its nuclear program in 2003, is an explicit repudiation of the Bush doctrine and a preemptive strike against war with Iran. The professionals have struck back against the ideologues.

But in spite of the NIE findings, Bush and the wider U.S. establishment still share a view of Iran as evil and unapproachable. Until Washington realized that it would be better off engaging with the Iranian regime than demonizing it, its Mideast policy will continue to flounder along the failed pat of Bush's "war on terror." To avoid that outcome, it's going to have to be willing to question everything it thought it knew about Iran.

Congress and the media's so-what response to the Bush administration's outrageous attempt to cook the Iran intelligence does not inspire confidence. The Bush administration sat on the NIE for more than a year, trying to change the report to make it harsher on Iran, and all the while beating the drums for war. This fact has gone largely uncriticized, even though it's Iraq all over again. Bush has gotten a pass on his deception yet again for a simple reason: America views Iran as so innately dangerous, irrational and undeterrable that it doesn't care what Bush lied about what he knew and when he knew it.

In the eyes of the mainstream media, Congress and much of the public, Iran is the ultimate bad guy, a combination of al-Qaida and Adolf Hitler. This substratum of fear and hatred, some reasonable but much irrational, explains why leading Democrats, from Harry Reid to Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama, have reacted so tepidly to the NIE and Bush's obvious lies about it. More important, it explains why even a Democratic president could still pursue a self-destructive course of confrontation with Tehran.