ANOTHER LEAKED NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATE PROVES BUSH HAS BEEN LYING NON-STOP SINCE APRIL

I hope the Democratic leadership will pick up on this, but both The Washington Post and The New York Times have important stories today about how, as John Kerry put it, "The National Intelligence Estimate provides jarring confirmation that the disastrous policy in Iraq is a giant recruiting poster for terrorists."

This week it will sink in that since April Bush has known, has covered up and has lied his ass off about what his own Intelligence services told him: that the occupation of Iraq has increased Islamic radicalism, worsened the terror threat and made Americans far less safe. Completed in April the NIE is titled "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States." According to The Post "it describes the situation in Iraq as promoting the spread of radical Islam by providing a focal point, with constant reinforcement of an anti-American message for disaffected Muslims. The Web sites provide a narrative of a war with frequent victories for the insurgents, and describe an occupation that they say regularly targets Islam and its adherents. They also distribute increasingly frequent and sophisticated messages from al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, urging Muslims wherever they are to take up arms against the 'Crusaders' on behalf of Iraq. Both Bush and bin Laden now consistently describe the Iraq war as the 'central front' of the global war, and both are depending on victory there to set the direction of future struggles far afield."

Rove, freaking out that the revelations will undercut the political arguments for staying the course-- and just when people are starting to think about Midterm elections-- had the White House (which normally never comments on classified intelligence leaks) try to rebut the NIE's potentially devastating impact on whatever is left on Bush's tattered credibility and on GOP policy in Iraq in general. Their efforts paled before the enormity of the revelations and 5 full months of Bush's blatant lies since he was briefed on the findings. which states flatly that the invasion and occupation of Iraq is "central" to the development and growth of the insurgency-- a not unnatural response-- and that it was the leading inspiration for an explosion of Islamic networks united by one factor: an anti-Bush agenda. Bush ignored his own NIE because it concludes, according to The Post "that rather than contributing to eventual victory in the global counterterrorism struggle, the situation in Iraq has worsened the U.S. position... 'It's a very candid assessment,' one intelligence official said yesterday of the estimate, the first formal examination of global terrorist trends written by the National Intelligence Council since the March 2003 invasion. 'It's stating the obvious.'"

Meanwhile, when Wolf Blitzer questioned Bush about Iraq on CNN today-- one would wish the House or Senate would do something like that, although it will take Democratic victories in November for Congress to turn from a rubber stamp outfit to a viable representative of the people's interests and concerns-- Bush stumbled badly. Apparently the pathetic imbecile had the colossal gall to say aloud what everyone knows his Regime believes anyway-- that to him, all the deaths and mayhem in Iraq, both American and Iraqi, will just be "a comma" in the history books. One can only pray to God that this whole episode will be a paragraph in the history books about the first American president to be tried, found guilty and imprisoned. Although Bush is currently seeking immunity for himself and his bandit regime from the War Crimes of which they are so clearly guilty.


UPDATE: HARRY REID GIVIN' 'EM HELL

Harry Reid has already lashed out at the pattern of Bush Regime lying exposed by the conclusions of the National Intelligence Estimate. Reid released a statement this evening entitled "President Bush’s Recent Claims of Progress in Combating Terrorism Are at Odds with Today's Press Reports of the National Intelligence Estimate's Conclusions." Raw Story has excerpts from the release, which systematically lays out lie after lie after lie that Bush fed the American public after the NIE had already been read and explained to him.


UPDATE: CNN TRAINED MONKEY PATROL ON THE NIE BEAT-- ALTHOUGH NED LAMONT CERTAINLY GETS IT RIGHT

I was just upstairs getting dressed for my morning hike, and I switched on CNN. They had two trained in-house monkeys on talking about the NIE scandal. Well, actually they weren't talking about the findings or about Bush's deplorable 5-month coverup. The two trained CNN monkeys were talking about the timing of the leak and how it was done to help the Democrats. I don't even think they get checks from the RNC or Rove. They're just... trained monkeys and trained monkeys do what trained monkeys do.

Of course, you might want to choose to get your reality-based news from a non-CNN-trained-monkey source. Two bad Olbermann's not on all day. Today, though, a good source of news on the NIE can be found at Ned Lamont's website in the form of a letter her wrote to the Bush Regime's favorite Lieberhound. "With this report being released on the eve of your major address on Iraq, I and thousands of other citizens in Connecticut expect to hear your response to this news in your speech, considering you have echoed President Bush’s claim that the Iraq War has made our country safer, and that staying the course will help keep us safe. As the NIE now shows, that is absolutely not the case-- in fact, the Iraq War has and continues to unnecessarily endanger U.S. national security. Never again can a political leader claim otherwise, lest they deliberately ignore the concrete facts presented to us by our intelligence agencies." It's worth reading the whole thing.