As the dust settles

Hugh Hewitt: The NIE and the Chumps at the NYT

Keep in mind that the National Intelligence Estimate, portions of which were declassified today --hailed by the New York Times on Sunday as "a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government"-- begins its "Key Judgments" section this way:

United States-led counterterrorism efforts have seriously damaged the leadership of al-Qa'ida and disrupted its operations; however, we judge that al-Qaida will continue to pose the greatest threat to the Homeland and US interests abroad by a single terrorist organization.

The Times' reporters and editors that ran Sunday's stories were either chumps who got played by anti-Bush leakers, or purposefully deceptive agenda journalists from the anti-Bush fanatics division.

Read all of the declassified sections of the report. Nothing in it supports the Pelosi-Dean-Reid-Murtha Democrats' demand to cut-and-run from Iraq. Just the opposite in fact: "If democratic reform efforts in Muslim majority nations progress over the next five years, political participation probably would drive a wedge between intransigent extremists and groups willing to use the political process to achieve their local objectives."

The chumps are unabashed this morning, and refer to an "implicit" question raised by the NIE:

... whether postponing the confrontation with Saddam Hussein and focusing instead on securing Afghanistan, or dealing with issues like Iran’s nascent nuclear capability or the Middle East peace process, might have created a different playing field, one in which jihadists were deprived of daily images of carnage in Iraq to rally their sympathizers.

Anybody else remember the MSM hallucinating "implicit" Palestinian recognition of Israel? Oy, will they never learn to just stick to the explicit?

Also, I heard on NPR this morning 1) yesterday's "news" (repeated) that the NIE concluded that the war in Iraq has worsened the threat of terrorism, and 2) that Hillary Clinton and Carl Levin are calling for more of the document to be declassified. Nothing on the fact that the President declassified the "judgments" section yesterday.

The Democrats are so Perpetually Aggrieved, they remind me of the poorpalestinians and their PA.