Will Dick Cheney's fantasy of carpet bombing the tiny mushroom-capped house of Smurf-sized Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ever come true? President Bush kept the dream alive, barely, in a press conference this morning that centered on Monday's surprising report about Iran's nuclear intentions. The new National Intelligence Estimate concludes that the Islamic republic ditched an illegal nuclear weapons program four years ago, contrasting markedly with the Administration's talking points and the National Intelligence Estimate of 2005, which assured with "high confidence" that the nation was in hot pursuit of membership in the nuclear club.

But while acknowledging the significance of the report, Bush wouldn't cut-and-run from his hard-line stance on Iran. He hammered hard on reports that Iran is still testing ballistic missiles and enriching uranium, which he cited as "the most difficult aspect of developing a weapons program." By staying on-message, Bush may have mollified conservatives who smell a rat in the new report. National Review Online quotes a former CIA official who claims the intelligence estimate was "strongly influenced by two hyper-partisan anti-Bush officials who oversaw it," while "The Case for Bombing Iran" author Norman Podhoretz has articulated his dark suspicions about a conspiracy within the intelligence community to "head off the possibility that the President may order air strikes on the Iranian nuclear installations." Meanwhile, on the left, blogger Juan Cole is pinning a possible cause for the intelligence turnaround on an Iranian general who may have turned spy in 2003.