Morning Buzz: Dec. 5, 2007

Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said yesterday in a statement that he has fired the landscaping company that used illegal immigrants to do work at his Boston house. The announcement comes after a sharp exchange last week between Romney and fellow GOP presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani at the CNN/YouTube debate, in which Giuliani accused Romney of employing illegal workers at his "sanctuary mansion."

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates is in Iraq today to personally assess the sustainability and progress of recent military advances there. Pentagon officials say he will also be appraising the state of attempts by the U.S. military to halt the flow of weapons from Iran to Iraq.

In the wake of a U.S. national intelligence estimate released yesterday indicating that Iran formally abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003, President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reiterated their belief that the country is still "a dangerous power in international politics." Rice reasoned: "At this moment, it doesn't appear to have an active weaponization program. That frankly is good news. But if it causes people to say, 'Oh, well, then we don't need to worry about what the Iranians are doing,' I think we will have made a big mistake."