NIE STARTS DRIBBLING OUT: YES IT'S A CIVIL WAR BUT WE'RE CALLING IT SOMETHING LESS UPSETTING

Six months ago-- like last August-- Congress asked the intelligence community for a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). The Bush Regime, knowing what it would reveal about their failed policies and gross, venal incompetence, refused to allow it out before the election. It's starting to trickle out now-- and it doesn't paint a pretty picture. Is there a Civil War in Iraq? Yes, but intelligence officers know that using that charged phrase is a career ending move.

With Bush trying to get Navy Vice Adm. John M. McConnell confirmed to replace John Negroponte as the uber-fuehrer of intelligence, he had no choice but to stop sitting on the NIE. Dianne Fienstein (D-CA), not exactly a firebrand when it's come to holding Bush's feet to the fire, pointed to the one-eyed screaming aunt in the attic: "One of the sort of deeply held rumors around here is that the intelligence community gives an administration or a president what he wants by way of intelligence." McConnell said lessons have been learned and he implied that intelligence analyses would be more rooted in reality than in ideology and that he won't be manipulated by the Regime. "There have been a number of occasions in my career when I had to not be popular but to speak truth to power." I'm sure that's why Bush and Cheney chose him.

Even a total Bush tool and GOP hack like Christopher Bond (R-MO) made a show of being rough with McConnell at the hearings, huffing and puffing-- after years of criminally aggressive rubber stamping all Bush's lies and distortions-- "we are not going to accept national security issue judgment[s] without examining the intelligence underlying the judgments, and I believe this committee has an obligation to perform due diligence on such important documents." Had Bond insisted on this previously-- instead of allowing the Bush Regime to run roughshod over Congress-- we would certainly not be in the situation in Iraq we are in now.

One senior congressional aide said the NIE had been described to him as "unpleasant but very detailed." A source familiar with its language said it contained several dissents that are prominently displayed so that policymakers understand any disagreements within the intelligence community -- a significant change from the 2002 document, which listed most key dissents in small-type footnotes.

The main points are that the biggest problem is sectarian strife (which is what the Bush Regime calls the Civil War since it doesn't sound as catastrophic on TV) and that neither al-Qaeda nor Iran (Bush's two bogeymen) are the root of the problem in Iraq. The public, of course, isn't likely to see the NIE anytime soon-- and even congressmen with a high level security clearance-- you know high level like the kinds of clearance given to crooks like Rove and Cheney and Libby so they were able to out Valerie Plame as a CIA agent-- can only look at it in a secure room and not even take any notes out of the room.

If you missed it yesterday, Bush was lying when he claimed how many troops the McCain Escalation would be sending to Iraq and how much it would cost; double the troops and quadruple or so the dollars. Every passing day makes me more and more certain that we are dealing with a rogue regime with no sense of boundaries and that the only solution is impeachment.