It also looks like some of the allegations made during yesterday's hype regarding the content of the memo were off-target.
For instance, it has been alleged that the memo recommended the contrasting of administration claims with *classified* intelligence estimates, but the memo actually recommends that *declassified* intelligence be used for this purpose. That's a world of difference.
Also, this line,
Intelligence issues are clearly secondary to the public's concern regarding the insurgency in Iraq.
has been interpreted as showing Democrat willingness to subordinate "intelligence issues" to the possibility of scoring political points -- as though they were saying "screw the intelligence concerns, we have political hay to make!". But this interepretation doesn't make sense given the line that follows it,
Yet, we have an important role to play in revealing the misleading -- if not flagrantly dishonest methods and motives -- of the senior administration officials who made the case for a unilateral, preemptive war.
The key is in how the term "intelligence issues" is interpreted. Hannity and others are interpreting this to mean the possible harm that will be done if certain intelligence is brought into the open and used against the administration. But if you read carefully, you'll see that that's not how it is used in the memo. Instead, whoever wrote the memo uses "intelligence issues" to mean the administration's overestimations of Iraqi WMD's and other flawed intelligence leading to a hasty move towards war etc, etc.
With this in mind, you can see that what the memo is actually saying is "Even though the intelligence issues (i.e. the overestimation of the WMD threat, etc) aren't weighing on the public's mind as heavily as the present situation on the ground in Iraq, still we have a role to play in revealing these issues..."
And this doesn't add up to the Dems playing dirty ball, IMO. I think this is much ado about not much.