Depressing indeed

From Political Animal Kevin Drum:

.One of the most depressing stories of the weekend was William Broad and David Sanger's piece in the New York Times about a laptop computer captured last year that shows that Iran is actively trying to figure out how to design and build a nuclear warhead. It's depressing because a nuclear-armed Iran isn't exactly a comforting notion to begin with, and doubly depressing because after the Iraq fiasco the Bush administration is having trouble convincing our allies that the laptop isn't a fake:

...

This is what it's come to. A European diplomat talks openly about the possibility that the entire thing is a U.S. fraud. The Bush administration is forced to lean on France to establish its own credibility. And the Chalabi fiasco in Iraq combined with the dubious track record of Iranian resistance groups makes the provenance of the laptop about as iffy as Dan Rather's National Guard memos.

As recently as five years ago, none of this would have even occurred to anyone. Today it's the first thing that comes to mind.