1 Boring Old Man

Battle Breaks Out in Media Over Bleak NIE Iraq Assessment is an article to read thoroughly. The only recently reported April National Intelligence Assessment apparently states in clear terms something we should all already know, our War in Iraq is not simply a bad idea, or a bad idea gone badly, it’s a very bad idea that’s making our primary objective, Terrorism, actually worse. But there are two other points. First, this report is six months old and the Administration has continued to preach that this is one fine war in which we need to stay the course. But secondly, as this article documents, the Administration immediately mounted a campaign against the truth in this report.

Our elected Administration is actively campaigning against the National Intelligence Assessment issued by our own Intelligence Community! This is the same thing they did in the lead-up to the Iraqi War – campaigned for the war by ignoring our experts, and when the opinion of the experts became known, campaigned against the experts! Instead of heeding the advice of our Intelligence Community, they are ignoring it, hiding it, campaigning against it. They are fighting for the right to drive the course of this country down a clearly wrong path against a gradient of the best advice we can muster.

The White House quickly issued a statement pointing out that Bush had noted that Osama bin Laden had declared the war in Iraq to be the most “serious issue today for the whole world.”