The US government’s top analysts released the National Intelligence Estimate report yesterday. According to the report, the Iraq War has become a “cause celebre” for radical Muslims whose numbers are increasing all over the world. “If the trend continues, the analysts found, the risks to the U.S. interests at home and abroad will grow,” reports Associated Press writer Katherine Shrader (White House refuses to release full NIE, 9/27/06).

This is news? I’m no government analyst or terrorist expert, but I’ve been saying this for years now! Anyone with common sense and the slightest insight into human nature could tell you that if you attack a country and occupy it for years, you are going to create more problems than you solve. For every innocent civilian killed accidentally, we create fifty new and motivated enemies out to get revenge. It is so much easier for people to hate an outsider than one of their own. Iraqis may have hated Saddam Hussein, but after four years of American occupation, most of them now hate us more.
Not only is this NOT news, the conservative reaction is completely predictable. Over the past 6 years, they have come up with a three-fold strategy for dealing with the revelations of their mistakes:

1. Cover up as much of it as possible for as long as possible.
2. Blame the media and liberals for the mistake and for “misrepresenting” it as such.
3. Backpedal by re-defining terms and qualifying previous claims.

So the White House is not releasing the full National Intelligence Estimate. (We’ll probably get it all later. Most likely, after the November elections.)
And Republicans are blasting the media for leaking parts of the report, claiming that such leaks aid al-Qaeda and hurt our anti-terrorism efforts. Please. The American media could never put this country in any more danger than this fruitless war has done. No leak of already obvious information will help al-Qaeda more than our military efforts have. The US offensive has probably been the single most important catalyst to al-Qaeda’s recruitment efforts.

Finally, we get the re-write of history; we’re told that we misunderstood what the administration was telling us when they justified the invasion. The American people are obviously idiots; when we heard that our action was necessary “to make the world safer,” (whitehouse.gov, news release 3/6/03) what we were really supposed to hear was that until every terrorist was wiped out, the world would actually be far more dangerous because of the war.

One of my fellow Hoosiers wrote an amusing letter to the editor of the Indianapolis Star today, saying that this intelligence report is getting too much credit. Are you kidding? It’s nothing like the credit conservatives gave to the “weapons of mass destruction” intelligence report. And let’s not forget that most of these intelligence analysts are not politicos. They don’t get shuffled every time a different party comes to power. A lot of the same people who were involved in the initial intelligence to justify the Iraq invasion were involved in this report.

Why are conservatives so hesitant to believe this NIE report when they were so eager to believe the WMD report? Of course, you could ask why liberals are so willing to believe this report when we disavow the WMD report. Well, I believed the WMD claim until none showed up. In four years, I might add. And this NIE report just makes sense. I always find it easier to believe something that makes sense, don’t you?

Anyway, I’m getting very tired of being told I’m an idiot by this administration. I know what I heard. I can even pull it up on the White House’s press release database. George W. Bush said invading Iraq would make us all safer. It didn’t. Wrong again, Mr. President.

843 days left in his term…