Deja Vu All Over Again

This is from Wednesday's Washington Post.

The United States has intelligence that Iran is working to adapt missiles to deliver a nuclear weapon, further evidence that the Islamic republic is determined to acquire a nuclear bomb, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Wednesday.

This is from today's LA Times.

Some administration officials "were surprised he [Powell] went public on something that was weak and, because it was weak, was not supposed to be used," the source said.

One senior Democrat on the House International Relations Committee said Iran's efforts to build nuclear weapons and mount them on missiles have been known for years, but the United States faces new hurdles in making its case to the world.

"After crying wolf for so long about Iraq, how are we going to have any credibility on this?" said Rep. Gary L. Ackerman of New York, who recently returned from a trip to the Middle East. "People in the Arab world won't believe it and say we have a bad track record and just want to invade another country in the Middle East."

Ackerman added: "How do we expect anybody to believe us, even if we know it's true? This is the disaster we created for ourselves in lying about Iraq."

...

"I was surprised the administration put him out there or he put himself out there on this," said David Kay, the former head of the U.S. weapons search team in Iraq. "I thought if there was anyone in the administration that had been sufficiently burned by such sources, it would be Powell."