{"id":12691,"date":"2007-08-28T13:45:13","date_gmt":"2007-08-28T17:45:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/12691.html"},"modified":"2007-08-28T13:45:13","modified_gmt":"2007-08-28T17:45:13","slug":"petraeus-softened-the-nie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/petraeus-softened-the-nie\/","title":{"rendered":"Petraeus ‘softened’ the NIE?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, a declassified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq said<\/a> there has been “measurable but uneven improvements in Iraq’s security situation,” in the midst of what was otherwise a gloomy<\/a> and depressing report. Indeed, the NIE added that, despite some security improvements, severe violence in Iraq was likely to continue over the next six to 12 months.<\/p>\n

As it turns out, the NIE may have intended to go further, but Gen. Petraeus gave the report a little touch-up<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The NIE, requested by the White House Iraq coordinator, Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, in preparation for the testimony, met with resistance from U.S. military officials in Baghdad, according to a senior U.S. military intelligence officer there. Presented with a draft of the conclusions, Petraeus succeeded in having the security judgments softened to reflect improvements in recent months, the official said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, intelligence agencies were poised to paint an even bleaker picture of Iraqi’s security situation, but Petraeus apparently lobbied for wording such as “measurable but uneven improvements.”<\/p>\n

Giving Petraeus a chance to review the NIE? Sure. Giving Petraeus an opportunity to submit intelligence reports for consideration in the drafting of the report? Of course. But to “soften” conclusions is to spin the consensus opinion of intelligence officials and agencies.<\/p>\n

As Faiz noted<\/a>, “Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA) suggested recently that the White House would ‘tweak’ the upcoming ‘Petraeus report.’ But if Petraeus is so willing to alter intelligence findings, it appears the White House may not have much tweaking to do.”
\n
\nIndeed, Kevin Drum makes an excellent case<\/a> that Petraeus, aware of the political dynamic, may help the White House play a coy game in a few weeks.<\/p>\n

Petraeus has been very<\/i> shrewd about providing dog-and-pony shows to as many analysts, pundits, reporters, and members of Congress as he could cram into the military jets criss-crossing the Atlantic to Baghdad on a seemingly daily basis this summer. And those dog-and-pony shows don’t seem to have been subtle: rather, they’ve been hard-sell propositions complete with “classified” PowerPoint presentations (always a winner for people with more ego than common sense); visits to a handpicked selection of the most successful reconstruction teams in the country; a plainly deceptive implication that the surge played a role in the Anbar Awakening; feel-good stories about how local power generation is a good thing; the recent insistence that civilian casualties are down, which increasingly looks like a book-cooking scam that wouldn’t stand the light of day if Petraeus allowed independent agencies access to his data; and, of course, the ongoing campaign to scare everyone by kinda sorta claiming that Iran and al-Qaeda are ramping up their activities and then getting suddenly slippery whenever anyone asks if they have any real evidence for this.<\/p>\n

Petraeus is still a smart guy. He won’t go too far overboard. But he’s obviously been treating the September report like a military operation, trying to generate as much good press and congressional change of heart as he possibly can in the weeks leading up to 9\/11. I now expect him to provide … a consistently upbeat report studded with just enough accommodations to reality to keep him from seeming completely ridiculous.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To which reporters and sympathetic lawmakers will no doubt swoon.<\/p>\n

Something to look forward to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, a declassified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq said there has been “measurable but uneven improvements in Iraq’s security situation,” in the midst of what was otherwise a gloomy and depressing report. Indeed, the NIE added that, despite some security improvements, severe violence in Iraq was likely to continue over the next six to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12691\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}