{"id":8582,"date":"2006-09-27T11:16:42","date_gmt":"2006-09-27T15:16:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8582.html"},"modified":"2006-09-27T11:16:42","modified_gmt":"2006-09-27T15:16:42","slug":"well-see-the-other-nie-just-as-soon-as-the-elections-are-over","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/well-see-the-other-nie-just-as-soon-as-the-elections-are-over\/","title":{"rendered":"We’ll see the other<\/i> NIE — just as soon as the elections are over"},"content":{"rendered":"

OK, so now we’ve seen some of the National Intelligence Estimate involving the administration’s counter-terrorism efforts, and the results are hardly encouraging<\/a>. But what about the other<\/i> NIE, focused exclusively on Iraq?<\/p>\n

As Josh Marshall explained<\/a> yesterday, there’s one NIE on terrorist threats in general, and another exclusively on Iraq. Any chance we’ll get a sense of what’s in that one<\/a> before the election? Apparently not<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In a conference call with reporters last night, White House Homeland Security Advisor Fran Townsend acknowledged the existence of the report, but said it wouldn’t be available until January 2007:<\/p>\n

“My understanding is the planned release date, given the work that must be done to have it be comprehensive and complete, is January of ’07. But I will tell you, that’s still quicker than most NIEs get done.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Townsend added, “The timing has got nothing to do with the election.” No, of course not. Who could ever imagine the Bush White House allowing political considerations to dictate the release of a government report?<\/p>\n

But that’s not the only problem here.
\n
\nRep. Jane Harman (D-Calif), who helped expose this second NIE yesterday, told reporters<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“It should be clear five years after 9\/11 that we need accurate and actionable intelligence — actionable in real time<\/b> — and we need our leaders to read that intelligence and cite it accurately.” (emphasis added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s the point that’s bothering me about this. We know the document exists and we know the White House has it. We also know that the administration can summarize, redact, and declassify a document in a hurry, when it wants to.<\/p>\n

With this in mind, the White House line yesterday is, to put it mildly, unpersuasive. Townsend said it’s important that this Iraq-only NIE be “comprehensive and complete.” Isn’t it already<\/i> “comprehensive and complete”? If not, why not? And if so, why not release it? Before the election?<\/p>\n

Inquiring minds want to know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OK, so now we’ve seen some of the National Intelligence Estimate involving the administration’s counter-terrorism efforts, and the results are hardly encouraging. But what about the other NIE, focused exclusively on Iraq? As Josh Marshall explained yesterday, there’s one NIE on terrorist threats in general, and another exclusively on Iraq. Any chance we’ll get a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8582","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=8582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8582\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}