He goes before the American people and says "We are safer, but we are not yet safe." Really? I am more likely to take the word of the counter-terrorism experts who comprise the National Intelligence Estimate than a proven pathological liar, and labeling him as a "pathological liar" is the nicest thing I can muster when I talk about the current occupant of the oval.
The NIE states, in contrast, "A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks."
The President stands stubbornly, jutting his jaw and insisting that the effort in Iraq is the central front in the "war on terror." Um...DUH! It is because we made it so by invading a sovereign nation, destabilizing the most sceular nation in the region and disbanding the military of that nation, telling the armed forces to go back home and letting them keep their guns. Doesn't take an expert security analyst to ferret out that little nugget of truth.
The classified NIE report attributes a direct link between the war in Iraq and the resulting increase levels of terrorist activity than that presented earlier recently released White House documents, or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee that references only declassified information. (Given this administrations penchant for reclassifying previously declassified information, I don't put much stock in that feel-good-about-the-war bullshit report released by a willfully-craven House committee.) The report, titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe. It further states that this metastasization has been abetted and encouraged under the policies of the current occupant.
The report opens with a section entitled “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,” and cites the war in Iraq as the main reason for the diffusion of jihadist ideology.The report states that "the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” one American intelligence official is on record as saying.
To put the importance of the NIE in perspective, National Intelligence Estimates are the most authoritative documents produced by the intelligence community on a specific national security issue. Theyare approved by John D. Negroponte, director of national intelligence. Conclusions are based on analysis of raw intelligence collected by all of the spy agencies.
From this mornings New York Times front page story:
Analysts began working on the estimate in 2004, but it was not finalized
until this year. Part of the reason was that some government officials were
unhappy with the structure and focus of earlier versions of the document,
according to officials involved in the discussion.
Previous drafts described actions by the United States government that were
determined to have stoked the jihad movement, like the indefinite detention of
prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, and some
policy makers argued that the intelligence estimate should be more focused on
specific steps to mitigate the terror threat. It is unclear whether the final
draft of the intelligence estimate criticizes individual policies of the United
States, but intelligence officials involved in preparing the document said its
conclusions were not softened or massaged for political purposes.
Indeed. "The NIE’s judgments confirm some predictions of a National Intelligence Council report completed in January 2003, two months before the Iraq invasion. That report stated that the approaching war had the potential to increase support for political Islam worldwide and could increase support for some terrorist objectives." (emphasis added)
The NIE goes on to take the Bush administration to task for cherry-picking the intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq: "Documents released by the White House timed to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks emphasized the successes that the United States had made in dismantling the top tier of Al Qaeda."
...since the Sept. 11 attacks, America and its allies are safer, but we are not yet safe,” concludes one, a report titled “9/11 Five Years Later: Success and Challenges.” “We have done much to degrade Al Qaeda and its affiliates and to undercut the perceived legitimacy of terrorism.”That document makes only passing mention of the impact the Iraq war has had on the global jihad movement. “The ongoing fight for freedom in Iraq has been twisted by terrorist propaganda as a rallying cry,” it states.
This has had an immediate impact on Bush's midterm-elections strategy, and has the White House scrambling to run damage control operations. I can't wait for the next presidential briefing when he tries to tell me what I "have to understand is..."
My mother raised me right - I do not as a rule take pleasure in the misfortune of others. But some people deserve their come-uppance, and it looks like just maybe, Georgie-boy's "come-uppance is coming." It's so deliciously - schaddenfreude.
Ummm...question if I may, and it is a pretty simple one - who is twisting fact and flogging propaganda, exactly? Because it sure as hell looks to me like the "terrists" have nothing on the current occupant and his handlers.
Now: Will this report get the attention it deserves, or will the sheeple buy the spin?
If we really lived in America, this would be the death-knell for the Republican congress and Bush's place in history (swingin' from a tree would be appropriate in the mind of this liberal blogger.) But the jury is still out on just which country I woke up in this morning.
