Sen. Harry Reid and Company have sent a letter to the president asking for a new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. "In order to avoid repeating mistakes made in the run-up to the conflict in Iraq," they write, "we must have objective intelligence untainted by political considerations and policy preferences." The latter is, of course, pure garbage but I'd expect nothing less from senators who hope to be in the majority some day. That said, there's no doubt that the 2002 NIE was deeply flawed in its assessment of Iraq's wmd programs. But while the 2002 NIE vastly overestimated Iraq's programs, the one issued prior to the 1991 Gulf War vastly underestimated Saddam's nuclear program at the very least.

On August 11, 1991, the Washington Post reported:

International inspectors...unearthed one of the most important—and disturbing—finds of the post-Cold War era: a huge assembly line for the covert manufacture of equipment to make an Iraqi bomb.

The location of the sophisticated, secret factory for manufacturing hundreds of uranium gas centrifuges was unknown to any foreign intelligence agency despite intense scrutiny and untouched by five weeks of severe aerial bombardment during the Gulf War that supposedly eviscerated the Iraqi nuclear project. As such, it is a monument to the world’s ignorance about what a determined bomb-builder such as Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein can do.

The factory was a key component in Iraq’s elaborate highly redundant and largely secret network of physics, chemistry and metallurgical laboratories, industrial mines, metalworking factories, electrical power generators, nuclear research reactors and radioactive waste processing sites—all aimed at swiftly putting a nuclear weapon in the hands of one of the world’s most ruthless leaders.

The Post also reported:

Despite repeated warnings and Saddam’s own public statements, Western experts consistently underestimated Iraq’s scientific and technical capabilities. Inspection officials now believe Iraq was only 12 to 18 months from producing its first bomb, not five to 10 years as previously thought.

So if we are seeking an informed debate about Iran and the limits of our intelligence capabilities, shouldn't the public also know the extent to which US intelligence has underestimated a target nation's programs as well as overestimated them?