The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin, recently under fire for making stuff up about realist foreign policy hand Robert Zoellick, has another whopper today. In a piece helpfully explaining to the Romney campaign “how to counterattack Obama” — an interesting exercise for a journalist actually covering a campaign to engage in, when you think about it — Rubin writes that President Obama “wanted to force a mosque on the ashes of Ground Zero.”

Here’s what the Washington Post reported at the time:

Speaking to reporters during a family vacation visit to Panama City, Fla., Obama reiterated the stand he took Friday night at a White House dinner observing the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. “In this country we treat everybody equally and in accordance with the law, regardless of race, regardless of religion,” Obama said.

But he went on to explain that he was not endorsing the construction of the Islamic center. “I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there,” he said. “I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding.”

There’s simply no way to square those remarks with Rubin’s claim that Obama “wanted to force a mosque on the ashes of Ground Zero.” It’s been clear for some time that Rubin enjoys a special dispensation from the Post’s editors with regard to her playing fast and loose with facts. But it’s worth asking how much of this sort of thing they, and the Post’s readers, should reasonably tolerate.

Back in December, the Washington Post’s ombudsman Patrick Pexton criticized his newspaper for conflating Iran’s nuclear program with a nuclear weapons program. Noting that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) “does not say Iran has a bomb, nor does it say it is building one,” Pexton warned Post writers against asserting that Iran has a nuclear weapons program because it could “undermine The Post’s credibility” and “also play into the hands of those who are seeking further confrontation with Iran.”

Yesterday, torture apologist and Washington Post “opinion writer” Marc Theissen ignored that advice, twice. In a column on the Post’s website attacking Vice President Biden’s recent speech touting the Obama administration’s Iran policy, Theissen claimed:

But since Biden is so proud of the increased “pressure” the Obama administration has put on Iran to stop its drive for the bomb, it’s fair to ask: What are the results of that increased pressure? [...]

But make no mistake: Iran is determined to obtain a nuclear weapon. And the regime in Tehran has arguably made more progress toward this goal in the past three years under Obama than it has in the three decades since the Iranian Revolution.

Indeed, while Pexton noted that the IAEA does not share this view that Iran is “determined to obtain a nuclear weapon,” neither does U.S. and Israeli intelligence. Iran “is going step by step to the place where it will be able to decide whether to manufacture a nuclear bomb. It hasn’t yet decided whether to go the extra mile,” Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz said last month.

But the thrust of Theissen’s argument however, is that Iran is closer to getting a nuclear weapon under President Obama’s watch than at any other time. “Before Obama took office, Iran needed months to make a dash to a bomb. Today, it could make that dash in a matter of weeks.” This is also not true, as a recent CAP report on Iran’s nuclear capabilities notes:

The most common estimates by U.S. and Israeli government officials, as well as outside groups such as the nonpartisan Institute for Science and International Security, are that Iran could develop a crude but workable nuclear explosive device within a year of deciding to do so. [...]

Other estimates such as the joint technical assessment by a U.S.-Russian team of scientists reached similar conclusions in early 2009, with the caveat that the year timeframe for a simple nuclear explosive would occur only “under the most favorable circumstances.” … In fact, Russian team members concluded that more unfavorable circumstances would be more realistic, leading them to suggest a timeframe of two years to three years to build a simple nuclear bomb. The U.S.-Russian team estimated it would take Iran another 5 years after testing a bomb to develop a deliverable nuclear weapon.

And New America Foundation president Steve Coll noted in a recent New York Review of Books article that in order to move forward with a weapons program, Iran “would have to defy international inspectors and break the monitoring seals they have attached to its enrichment sites.” By doing this, Coll adds, “Iran would instantly expose its intentions and invite a response from the Security Council.”

Iran with a nuclear weapon does indeed pose a threat to regional and international security. American officials including President Obama vow to keep “all options on the table” to deal with the Iranian nuclear program, but questions about the efficacy and consequences of a strike have led U.S. officials to declare that diplomacy is the “best and most permanent way” to resolve the West’s crisis with Iran.

GOP presidential candidates and right-wing pundits are quick to push for military action against Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. But a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that the American public is largely in support of Obama’s diplomacy-first strategy towards Tehran and, by a sizable margin, opposes military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The poll finds that while 84 percent of Americans believe Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon — a conclusion that neither U.S. intelligence nor the IAEA have yet made — 53 percent of poll respondents oppose bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities “to try to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.” Only 41 percent of respondents supported taking military action. When asked about Israel bombing Iran’s nuclear sites, respondents offered nearly identical responses with 51 percent opposing Israeli military action and 42 percent supporting.

Indeed the widespread opposition to military action appeared to be bolstered by a belief — held by 76 percent of respondents — that if Israel attacked Iran, it would “risk starting a larger war in the Middle East.” That opinion was shared by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week when she observed that a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran at this time “is not in anyone’s interest.”

Former Israeli Mossad Chief Meir Dagan gave voice to similar views last month when he warned that bombing Iran would “ignite, at least from my point of view, a regional war” and that no military attack would be able to be able to permanently halt the Iranian nuclear project. The view that military action could only delay Iran’s nuclear program, and not stop it, is also shared by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and U.S. based military analysts.

While the Post’s poll shows general opposition to military action by the U.S. or Israel, the U.S. public support the sanctions regime and diplomacy pursued by the White House. Eighty-one-percent of respondents support “direct diplomacy talks between the United States and Iran to try to resolve the situation” and 64 percent think it’s a “better idea” to “see if economic sanctions against Iran work, even if that allows more time for is nuclear program to progress.”

Top U.S. officials and the IAEA agree that Iran is continuing to develop its nuclear capabilities and warn that some of their activities may have a military dimension. But the IAEA, U.S. and Israeli intelligence agree that Iran has yet made the decision to develop a nuclear weapon.

The Washington Post poll shows that Americans, by a large margin, are not yet ready to write-off diplomacy and non-military pressure to bring Iran to the neogotiating table. Last week, Panetta told the CBC that sanctions are proving effective at pressuring the Iranian government. “There is evidence that these sanctions are hurting, that it’s impacting on their economy, it’s impacting on their ability to govern themselves,” he said.

The new Post/ABC News poll results also match up with other recent polls on this issue. A poll released last month by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) and the University of Maryland showed Americans exhibiting strong support for the U.S. and its partners “continuing to pursue negotiations with Iran” while an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released on March 5 found that Americans prefer diplomacy over military action to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper have all recently said that while they believe Iran may be moving toward a nuclear weapons capability, the regime has not made a decision to build a bomb. President Obama said just today that “ultimately the Iranians’ regime has to make a decision to move in that direction, a decision that they have not made thus far.”

Washington Post ombudsman Patrick Pexton recently highlighted this distinction of fact between Iran’s nuclear program (which the country admittedly has) and its alleged nuclear weapons program and cautioned against “getting ahead of the facts.” “The IAEA report does not say Iran has a bomb, nor does it say it is building one,” he wrote, adding that news outlets stating that Iran is building a nuclear weapon is “misleading.”

But it seems that Pexton’s direction doesn’t extend to the Post’s op-ed pages. GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney wrote an op-ed published this afternoon on the newspaper’s website attacking Obama’s Iran policy (while at the same time calling for all of what Obama is already doing) and referred to Iran wanting to build a nuclear weapon three times:

America and the world face a strikingly similar situation today; only even more is at stake. The same Islamic fanatics who took our diplomats hostage are racing to build a nuclear bomb. Barack Obama, America’s most feckless president since Carter, has declared such an outcome unacceptable, but his rhetoric has not been matched by an effective policy. While Obama frets in the White House, the Iranians are making rapid progress toward obtaining the most destructive weapons in the history of the world. [...]

Until Iran ceases its nuclear-bomb program, I will press for ever-tightening sanctions, acting with other countries if we can but alone if we must.

Sticking to the facts about Iran or Obama’s policy toward the Islamic Republic isn’t exactly Mitt Romney’s strong suit. Just this weekend, the former Massachusetts governor was caught falsely claiming Obama “failed to communicate that military options are on the table” regarding Iran’s nuclear program and that Obama never said “it’s unacceptable to America for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.” (Obama has, in fact, communicated both sentiments.)

But the Washington Post should know better, particularly in light of Pexton’s recent plea, than to allow Romney to get away with unverifiable claims about Iran’s nuclear program that, as Pexton said, “play into the hands of those who are seeking further confrontation with Iran.”