The National Intelligence Council is giving Bush some analysis that was apparently not fully vetted and approved by the vice president's office and the Republican National Committee: U.S. Intelligence Shows Pessimism on Iraq's Future by Douglas Jehl New York Times 09/16/04:
A classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared for President Bush in late July spells out a dark assessment of prospects for Iraq, government officials said Wednesday.
The estimate outlines three possibilities for Iraq through the end of 2005, with the worst case being developments that could lead to civil war, the officials said. The most favorable outcome described is an Iraq whose stability would remain tenuous in political, economic and security terms..
The intelligence estimate, the first on Iraq since October 2002, was prepared by the National Intelligence Council and was approved by the National Foreign Intelligence Board under John E. McLaughlin, the acting director of central intelligence. Such estimates can be requested by the White House or Congress, but this one was initiated by the intelligence council under George J. Tenet, who stepped down as director of central intelligence on July 9, the government officials said.
As described by the officials, the pessimistic tone of the new estimate stands in contrast to recent statements by Bush administration officials, including comments on Wednesday by Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, who asserted that progress was being made. (my emphasis)
Doesn't that sound an awful lot like this Chatham House paper that I discussed in a recent post?
Laura Rozen, linking to the Times report, also holds forth on the Bush administration's attitude toward the press. She doesn't mention the threatened Congressional investigation over CBS' documents on Bush' failure to fulfill his National Guard duty. But there is a similar pattern:
I wonder if the neocons will put Jehl on the 'enemies list' I am told they are creating of articles and reporters they don't like, or, I suppose, find threatening. After all, not only is Jehl reporting a brutally grim forecast for Iraq, but he's citing the National Intelligence Council for his forecast, and we all know the neocons' dim view of the US intelligence community ...)
There's something just fascistic about that sort of behavior of creating an enemies' list. Seriously fascistic. To try to target people who are trying to report the truth.
The neocons call those reporting unfavorably on Iraq, on the FBI counterintelligence investigation of alleged espionage and who allegedly leaked US Iran intel to Chalabi, etc. McCarthyites. But who's really McCarthyite?
Let's be clear about what is going on here. They are trying to intimidate people from reporting on an existing investigation. To act as if it does not exist, as if that will make it go away. They are not just saying the allegations are not true, which they have a right to say, if that's their opinion. They are obviously not the judge or jury. They are trying to make it illegitimate to even report on the investigation at all. As if reporting on its existence is in and of itself an unethical act. Think about it. Would they also want us not to report on allegations of, say, Saudi espionage in the US, or of Congressional investigations into terrorist finance? No, they champion that. What about French espionage at, say, NATO? We've heard of those cases during the Kosovo war. No, they champion reporting on that. They just want to prevent reporting on an existing investigation into who allegedly leaked US Iran intel to Chalabi and Aipac. Does that investigation make some of those people uncomfortable? Sure. Does that give them a right to try to threaten and intimidate people trying to report on it? To understand and report what the investigation is about? An investigation, after all, that the reporters did not create, but government agencies did? That's insane. (my emphasis)
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