Actress Jennifer Love Hewitt complained about paparazzi taking photos of her “from unflattering angles” to make some kind of point. I don’t know her work, but her complaint makes sense. Anyone can be made to look bad, stupid, drunk etc. in a single frame.

The news media expresses its bias by choosing unflattering photographs. This is especially true of President Bush, who every twit thinks is their inferior. The stories about the Iran intelligence estimate in the LA Daily News featured three images of Bush looking petulant or stupid. Unfortunately, they don’t post them online so I cannot link to them.

This from the UK Telegraph is slightly better.

Regarding the meat of the story, instead of it reflecting badly on Bush, it demonstrates his willingness to change position based on new information. Isn’t that the opposite of being stubborn?

Here, the LA Times explains what happened:

Last spring, as U.S. intelligence agencies worked to complete an assessment of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, they were firmly on track to reach the same conclusion as previous reports: Tehran was bent on building the bomb.

But within weeks, there was an abrupt change of course. The earlier drafts were scrapped. Analysts began to assemble a new report built around the single, startling conclusion that Iran’s nuclear weapons program had actually been shut down for four years.

 What happened?

As U.S. intelligence officials sought Tuesday to explain the remarkable reversal, they pointed to two factors: the emergence of crucial information over the summer, and a determination to avoid repeating the mistakes that preceded the Iraq war.

According to current and former U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the matter, the information that surfaced this summer included intercepted conversations of Iranian officials discussing the country’s nuclear weapons program, as well as a journal from an Iranian source that documented decisions to shut it down.

“When we first got some of this stuff, the fact that we got it was exciting,” said a senior U.S. intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the subject. He said the information was obtained as part of a stepped-up effort targeting Iran that President Bush had ordered in 2005, but the problem with it “was digesting it to know what we had.”

The information triggered a cascade of recalculations across the 16 agencies in the U.S. intelligence community, the official said. Analysts at the CIA and elsewhere began to revisit classified reports that they had scrutinized repeatedly in recent years. As they did so, officials said, they saw details that added up to the new conclusion.

Bush, like every president, must rely on the nation’s intelligence services. Do we really expect him to don a trenchcoat and go a-spyin’?

The important issue is how to obtain better intelligence. Democrats have thwarted some efforts because of a privacy fetish, and because it makes good politics. In just 13 months, Bush will be out of office. The threats to America will continue. Damage done to us via FISA reform etc. will endure.

Finally, Big Baloney seems to be overlooking the fact that Iran apparently abandoned its nuclear program soon after we toppled Saddam Hussein. Coincidence?