The New York Times is reporting some senior Bush administration officials and top Republican lawmakers are accusing the intelligence community of playing down the threat posed by Iran. Much of the criticism is coming from Republicans who advocated for the invasion of Iraq. On Wednesday the House Intelligence Committee issued a report criticizing the intelligence community for not knowing more about Iran’s weapons of mass destructions programs and for being unwilling to make provocative conclusions about the danger Iran poses to the world. The consensus of the intelligence community is that Iran is still years away from building a nuclear weapon. But some Republicans have rejected that conclusion. Some veterans of the intelligence community say the current debate is similar to the one that preceded the Iraq war when backers of the Iraq invasion criticized the intelligence community for downplaying the threat posed by Iraq and for disregarding claims that Iraq had ties to Al Qaeda.