Yesterday, former top President George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove published an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal lamenting that the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden was regarded as an “epic achievement,” and stating that “Obama did what virtually any commander in chief would have done in the same situation.” “Even President Bill Clinton says in the film ‘that’s the call I would have made.’” Only, as ThinkProgress noted yesterday, Bush explicitly did not do what Obama did: take the decision to strike at bin Laden.

As for the selective and misleading Clinton quote, the Wall Street Journal was forced to acknowledge it, updating the online version of the article and appending this note:

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this column included an incomplete quote from Bill Clinton in the last paragraph.

Indeed, Clinton actually said, “I hope that’s the call I would have made.” But Rove’s politically-motivated deceitfulness went even farther than that. Among the various and gracious laudatory statements by former Bush officials about the raid that killed bin Laden were several from Karl Rove himself.

Speaking to Politico for an article published just the day after the raid, Rove said his first reaction was “elation.” The Politico article goes on:

“President Obama did a remarkable job of leadership. It was a very tough decision” to opt for a special operations assault rather than dropping a precision bomb, Rove said.

In his first email exchange with the former president, Rove said Bush wrote: “Great day for justice.”

Furthermore, Media Matters points out that Rove, also the day after the raid, tweeted, “Justice has been done to Osama bin Laden: all Americans are proud of our military, intel & Presidents Bush, Obama. USA! USA!” Here’s the tweet:

To recap: Rove experienced “elation” and thought Obama did a “remarkable job” in making a “tough decision” in ordering the raid to get bin Laden. But now it seems for Rove, politics trumps conviction.

The IAEA’s latest reports on Iran’s nuclear program and congressional testimony from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper have all come to the same conclusion. While Iran’s leadership is “keeping themselves in a position to [decide to make a nuclear weapon],” as Clapper testified, there is no strong evidence that Iran has decided to restart its nuclear weapons program.

A special report today by Reuters provides new evidence to bolster the U.S. and IAEA’s assessments that Iran hasn’t yet decided to pursue a nuclear weapon and has not reconstituted a clandestine nuclear weapons program.

Most strikingly, Reuters has learned of an intercepted phone call in 2006 or 2007 in which Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a leading figure in Iran’s nuclear program, complains that Iran’s nuclear weapons program has been stopped. The phone call helped form the backbone for a controversial 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) in which American spy agencies expressed “high confidence” that Iran had halted its nuclear program in 2003.

The Reuters report finds that intelligence officials have a high-degree of confidence that Iran has no secret uranium enrichment sites and an Iranian decision to enrich uranium to weapons grade levels will be detected by U.S. intelligence and IAEA monitoring mechanisms.

“I think they are years away from having a nuclear weapon,” a U.S. administration official told Reuters.

Intelligence officials tell Reuters that they were aware for “years” of the construction of the secret Fordow uranium enrichment site and that “They had a deep understanding of the facility, which allowed them to blow the whistle on Tehran with confidence,” a U.S. official said. Iran claimed when the facility was exposed that they were not responsible for declaring it until the facility was fitted for and began nuclear work.

“We are very confident that there is no secret site now,” a U.S. administration official said, but admitted that Iran may attempt to construct another covert plant in the future.

Experts speaking to Reuters confirmed the IAEA’s analysis that Iran’s efforts to procure nuclear-related and dual-use equipment and the country’s large cache of ballistic missiles are examples of growing capabilities that could potentially be used for nuclear weapons.

The debate over air strikes, Israel’s anxieties about a nuclear-armed Iran and election-year politics have all contributed to comparisons with the Iraq war, a war justified by inaccurate intelligence data suggesting Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction and unsubstantiated claims of significant ties between Iraq and al Qaeda. Paul Pillar, a former top CIA analyst told Reuters:

There are lots of disturbing similarities. One has to note the differences, too. The huge difference being we don’t have an administration in office that is the one hankering for the war. This administration is not hankering for a war.

President Obama said recently that Iran with a nuclear weapon threatens the nonproliferation regime and U.S. and regional security. The Obama administration has ruled out a policy of containing a nuclear-armed Iran but has emphasized that a diplomatic solution is “the best and most permanent way” to relieve mounting tensions over Iran’s nuclear program.

Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Ohio Josh Mandel sat down with the Findlay Publishing editorial staff this week to discuss the various issues in the campaign. When he eventually got to foreign policy and defense issues, Mandel picked up on a baseless theme the GOP presidential candidates have been hawking: Obama is friendlier to America’s enemies than its allies. Mandel chastised the president for allegedly trying to “sip tea” with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad while treating countries such as Israel, England, Honduras and Columbia “like garbage”:

MANDEL: I also think when it comes to defense, we need a foreign policy of peace through strength, and a foreign policy of clarity. It sickens me to see the President of the United States literally and figuratively bow down to leaders of other countries. I also believe that he was incorrect to try and sip tea and sing Kumbaya with people like Ahmadinejad in Iran and Chavez in Venezuela at the same time that he’s treated some of our best allies throughout the world like garbage.

You look like at the way he treats Honduras and England and Colombia and Israel and some of our other best allies, it just makes no sense. You can’t have a commander-in-chief, President of the United States, that treats our friends like garbage, and our allies like – and uh – our enemies like friends.

Listen to the clip:

It seems fairly clear where Mandel’s attack on Obama regarding Israel comes from. The Republicans have been trying their best to get the Obama-hates-Israel meme to stick, but the facts repeatedly stand in the way of that. Even top Israeli officials regularly debunk these claims. The baseless GOP claims on Obama and Israel led the Associated Press to get involved. An AP “fact check” notes that Republican attacks on Obama that he’s not sufficiently pro-Israel “have strayed well beyond reality.”

But it’s completely unclear where Mandel got this idea that Obama has been treating England, Honduras, or Colombia “like garbage.” He seems to have just randomly picked these countries out of thin air. In fact, British Prime Minister David Cameron just visited Washington and as the Guardian put it, “Obama rolled out the red carpet, literally and politically.” (HT: American Bridge)