Declassified

Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus of The Washington Post offer their analysis on the "sobering conclusions on why jihad has spread."

This comes after President Bush declassified portions of a National Intelligence Estimate that had been leaked (or cherry-picked) over the weekend.

It's nuts that Bush has to be fighting these leakers/cherry-pickers, these enemies at home.

Don't tell me that the leakers actively trying to undermine the U.S. mission in Iraq aren't our enemies.

Their actions are so irresponsible and so reckless. They are anti-American. They are cheerleaders for the terrorists.

Actually, I think this latest leak was directly related to the crushing blow that Clinton took over the weekend in his FOX News interview with Chris Wallace.

It was a diversionary tactic, an effort to make the Bush administration look worse.

From The Post:

Descriptions of the unseen document in media reports last weekend quoted intelligence officials as saying it described a global terrorist threat that was worsening as a result of the Iraq war. The reports led to an explosion of reaction, with the Bush administration and leading congressional Republicans saying that the published portions did not reflect the document's balanced view of successes and remaining challenges. It was no accident, Bush charged, that selective and potentially damaging parts had been "leaked" on the eve of the midterm elections.

What's with the quote marks around "leaked"?

A few days ago, DeYoung was touting the "new information" as if it were a leak. She wrote a foaming at the mouth lib hit piece, or if you prefer, hard news piece about the "very candid assessment."

Democrats, sensing advantage, contended that the administration had withheld a negative assessment for political reasons and demanded its release. The clamor apparently led Bush, in a meeting yesterday with Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte, to authorize publication of the judgments.

Democratic claims of an administration coverup seemed less justified yesterday as it became apparent that the complete classified report had been made available to lawmakers within days of its completion in April.

Suddenly, it's the Dems. That's incomplete.

THE WASHINGTON POST and THE NEW YORK TIMES SENSED ADVANTAGE.

Copies of the NIE were sent to the House and Senate intelligence, armed services and foreign affairs committees at the time, through normal electronic information channels available to all members, intelligence and congressional sources said. It arrived at the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on April 26.

In the House, "there was a bit of a snafu with this particular document," said a spokesman for Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the intelligence committee chairman. "We had a massive computer failure on our classified side." The first that the committee knew of its existence was late last week, when "it was requested specifically by a member. That was when it was found and scanned into our system."

Whether the document was ignored or disappeared into cyberspace, however, it seemed to have made little impact on Capitol Hill at the time. No one in either chamber, on either side of the aisle, requested a briefing or any further information on its conclusions until now, the sources said.

The assessment originally had little impact. It didn't cause anyone in the House or Senate to want more details. Even Russ Feingold didn't jump on it. (Perhaps he was busy making plans to visit Iowa again, or maybe he was wrapped up blogging on Daily Kos.)

So why now? Why report that information with such breathless urgency now?

That's extremely suspect.

Clearly, The New York Times and The Post chose to create a story now.

The intelligence community has had its own problems with the attention the document is now receiving. Several active and retired intelligence officials stressed that the judgments were nothing new and followed a series of similar assessments made since early 2003 about the impact of the Iraq war on global terrorism.

"This is very much mainstream stuff," said Paul R. Pillar, the CIA's national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005. "There are no surprises."

The Dems and the lib media look like idiots.

They manufacture the news. They're propagandists. They're disgraceful.