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September 26, 2006
Is This Real?
This re-printed AP report in today's online Trib had to have been written before the document was released because no one could be this dishonest. The time stamp is 7:27pm EDT which would have been after the NIE was released but you wouldn't know it be reading it.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The war in Iraq has become a "cause celebre" for Islamic extremists, breeding deep resentment of the U.S. that probably will get worse before it gets better, federal intelligence analysts conclude in a report at odds with President Bush's portrayal of a world growing safer.
In the bleak report, declassified and released Tuesday on Bush's orders, the nation's most veteran analysts conclude that despite serious damage to the leadership of al-Qaida, the threat from Islamic extremists has spread both in numbers and in geographic reach.
Bush and his top advisers have said the formerly classified assessment of global terrorism supported their arguments that the world is safer because of the war. But more than three pages of stark judgments warning about the spread of terrorism contrasted with the administration's glass-half-full declarations.
I especially love the next sentence and how they piece parts of the report together.
"If this trend continues, threats to U.S. interests at home and abroad will become more diverse, leading to increasing attacks worldwide," the document says. "The confluence of shared purpose and dispersed actors will make it harder to find and undermine jihadist groups."
According to actual released documents, found here, the above sentence isn't quite complete. The first part of that sentence can be found on page one and is the second of 3 bullet points. The second part of the sentence is the last sentence of a paragraph preceeding the second set of bullet points and grouped as above, has completely changed context. The full paragraph is:
We asses the global jihadist movement is decentralized, lacks a coherant global strategy, and is becoming more diffuse. New jihadist networks and cells, with anti-American agendas, are increasingly likely to emerge. The confluence of shared purpose and dispersed actors will make it harder to find and undermine jihadist groups.
It is then followed by a couple of bullet points essentially stating that as our efforts grow to fight them, their efforts grow to fight us and that Europe, as well as America, is being seen as a point to attack western interests.
The phrase used in the opening paragraph of the piece is the biggest misuse of the report and it's no wonder it wasn't used in this piec because it blows apart the whole context of the articles argument:
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. Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight.
I added the bold type. That states, that if we defeat them in Iraq, they will be less inclined to continue the fight out of Iraq. Leaving would embolden them. This report is a disaster for the cut and run crowd, which is why it's being spun as negatively for the Bush administration as possible.
The writers of this article are patently dishonest, as is the Tribune for re-printing it.
Posted by Jonathan at September 26, 2006 6:34 PM
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