President Bush told us that the declassified NIE report would cure us of our naivete and set the record straight on Iraq’s role in global jihadism. Survey says…
The Iraq conflict has become the “cause celebre” for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement. BBC
So we’ve got that going for us. Which is nice.
The report does go on to suggest that victory in Iraq would seriously harm the jihadist movement. Bush will point this out as support for his policies. If we don’t “stay the course” we will only make matters worse. What he will forget to mention is that this all would have been a moot point if we’d never gone into Iraq in the first place. We wouldn’t be stuck in this catch-22 if the Bush administration hadn’t waged an all-out war of lies to “persuade” the people to accept its war.
In other news:
Congresswoman Jane Harman said there was a second NIE focused purely on Iraq.
“I hear it paints a grim picture,” she said. “And because it does, I am told it is being held until after the November elections.” BBC
Can’t wait to see just how naive Ms. Harman is, believing that Iraq could ever be described as grim.
I live in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Milwaukee, WI with my wife Jen, our daughter Emerson, and son Carter.
Releasing a report that is damaging to oneself: just more evidence pointing to the theory that Bush is, in fact, quickly slipping into senility. After all, he can’t comprehend how people can not see things in terms of absolutes as easily as he can, becoming upset with people who don’t agree him and his strange logic.
Senile
Dan,
Some interesting points to consider:
When the NYT released the portions of the leaked report, the right-wing noise machine immediately attacked them for “cherry-picking” only the data that supported their supposition. When the 4 pages were declassified, they immediately jumped on the the sentence, ‘Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves,
and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight.’, they immediately spun it as a validation of Bush’s foreign policy.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. The oft-quoted paragraph is in fact, two separate statements that stand on their own and don’t rely on the presence of the other statement for clarification.
A more accurate interpretation of the paragraph would be,
-Bush’s war of choice serves as a global recruiting tool for Islamic radicals. (1st sentence)
-The “success” of the jihadist movement relies on continued perseverance in their bloody struggle until the bitter end. (2nd sentence)
BOTH of these statements stand in direct contradiction to what the Bush Administration has claimed: Preemptive war is the best way to reduce Islamic radicalism; and, the jihadist movement will be quelled via further advancement of democratic process in Iraq.
The NIE report confirms what the majority of Americans already suspected: The Bush Administration has recklessly charged into a protracted war under false pretenses that now presents us only with an ever-foreboding list of alternatives.
Sorry Scott…I didn’t see that you posted the article until after I replied.
Please add the following revision to my previous comment:
Strike ‘Dan’ from line 1.
Insert ‘Scott’ in line 1.
No problem, Bill.