Posted on 09/27/2006 10:23:51 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON - The White House refused Wednesday to release in full a previously secret intelligence assessment that depicts a growing terrorist threat and has fueled the election-season fight over the Iraq war.
Press secretary Tony Snow said releasing the full report, portions of which President Bush declassified on Tuesday, would jeopardize the lives of agents who gathered the information.
It would also risk the nation's ability to work with foreign governments and to keep secret its U.S. intelligence-gathering methods, Snow said, and "compromise the independence of people doing intelligence analysis."
"If they think their work is constantly going to be released to the public they are going to pull their punches," Snow said.
In the bleak National Intelligence Estimate, the government's top analysts concluded Iraq has become a "cause celebre" for jihadists, who are growing in number and geographic reach. If the trend continues, the analysts found, the risks to the U.S. interests at home and abroad will grow.
Snow said the report confirms the importance of the war in Iraq as a bulwark against terrorists. "Iraq has become, for them, the battleground," he said. "If they lose, they lose their bragging rights. They lose their ability to recruit."
The document has given both political parties new ammunition leading up to November's midterm elections.
For Republicans, the report provides more evidence that Iraq is central to the war on terrorism and can't be abandoned without giving jihadists a crucial victory.
For Democrats, the report furthers their argument that the 2003 Iraq invasion has inflamed anti-U.S. sentiments in the Muslim world and left the U.S. less safe. Democrats continued their push Wednesday for release of the rest of the report.
"The American people deserve the full story, not those parts of it that the Bush administration selects," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (news, bio, voting record), D-Mass.
Rep. Peter Hoekstra (news, bio, voting record), R-Mich., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, warned, however, that releasing more of the intelligence assessment could aid terrorists. "We are very cautious and very restrained about the kind of information we want to give al-Qaida," Hoekstra said.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, in Tirana, Albania for a meeting of defense ministers, said Bush had declassified the report's key judgments, after parts of it were leaked to the news media, so that "the American people and the world will be able to see the truth and precisely what that document says."
The NIE report, compiled by leading analysts across 16 U.S. spy agencies, says the "global jihadist movement — which includes al-Qaida, affiliated and independent terrorist groups, and emerging networks and cells — is spreading and adapting to counterterrorism efforts."
A separate high-level assessment focused solely on Iraq may be coming soon. At least two House Democrats — Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California and Rep. Jane Harman (news, bio, voting record) of California — have questioned whether that report has been stamped "draft" and shelved until after the Nov. 7 elections.
An intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the process, said National Intelligence Director John Negroponte told lawmakers in writing only one month ago that he ordered a new Iraq estimate to be assembled. The estimate on terrorism released Tuesday took about a year to produce.
The broad assessment on global terror trends, completed in April, escalated an election-year battle over which party is the best steward of national security.
At a news conference Tuesday, Bush said critics who believe the Iraq war has worsened terrorism are naive and mistaken, noting that al-Qaida and other groups have found inspiration to attack for more than a decade. "My judgment is, if we weren't in Iraq, they'd find some other excuse, because they have ambitions," the president said.
But Sen. Joe Biden, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said Wednesday that Bush has allowed Iraq to fester as a training ground for terrorists, and U.S. voters are worried about it.
"On Election Day, that morning, if there's still the carnage in the streets of Iraq, then it will be clear that they have concluded that this administration's policy has failed and there will be a political price for it," Biden, D-Del., predicted on CBS' "The Early Show."
Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the intelligence committee's top Democrat, said the decision to invade Iraq shifted focus away from U.S. counterterrorism efforts.
"There is no question that many of our policies have inflamed our enemies' hatred toward the U.S. and allowed violence to flourish," he said. "But it is the mistakes we made in Iraq — the lack of planning, the mismanagement and the complete incompetence of our leadership — that has done the most damage to our security."
In the declassified excerpts on terrorism, the intelligence community found:
• The increased role of Iraqis in managing the operations of al-Qaida in Iraq might lead the terror group's veteran foreign fighters to refocus their efforts outside that country.
• While Iran and Syria are the most active state sponsors of terror, many other countries will be unable to prevent their resources from being exploited by terrorists.
• The underlying factors fueling the spread of the extremist Muslim movement outweigh its vulnerabilities. These factors are entrenched grievances and a slow pace of reform in home countries, rising anti-U.S. sentiment and the Iraq war.
• Groups "of all stripes" will increasingly use the Internet to communicate, train, recruit and obtain support.
White House Press Secretary Tony Snow holds a copy of the national intelligence assessment, that has been partially declassified, Wednesday, Sept. 27, 2006, as he answers questions about the report during his daily briefing in Washington. President Bush on Tuesday said it is naive and a mistake to think that the war with Iraq has worsened terrorism, disputing a national intelligence assessment by his own administration. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)
It's almost like the AP doesn't realize we have access to the same document so we can see what they left out of this report.
What could be declassified or extracted, was. The rest cannot be released. The Jackasses (aka Dims) know that, but there's political hay to be maid in bashing the President, even though *he* is not up for election and won't be in '08 either.
It doesn't matter, they know that the average person will not take time to read it, innuendo and speculation is all they have ever needed.
I'll be so glad when this election is toast and we can get a breather from all this crap ..
I can't even imagine what the summer and fall of '08 will be like.. and to make it even more interesting, in the middle of a war, we will have No standing WH incumbent in the mix..
These dems are liable to spontaneously combust on the convention floor as they reach critical mess..
It's amazing how the media continues to harp on half a paragraph while omitting the key second part of that paragraph - even though the truth is readily available.
The AP is proving yet again the wisdom of Orwell's observation that omission is the most powerful form of lie.
I keep reading what Katherine Shrader and Jennifer Loven wrote and compare it to the actual conclusions in the NIE. I wonder if they actually know what they are doing. Are they that crazy?
Do they really want to see the part left out how John Kerry and John Murtha comments about our troops have caused more terrorists and in fact have led to retribution attacks which caused the deaths of american servicemen. i.e., Kerry and Murtha killed our soldiers. That will make a great campaign commercial. If the lunatics on the left can't see this they are stupid.
A friend of mine just sent me a picture of the leaker from the US Capitol bldg. How do I insert the pic on this thread ?
I'm graphically-challenged, as it were :)
Jennifer Loven? Nothing but a DNC tool but at least she found a head of state that told her how the cow eats the cabbage. I wonder if she'll ever ask President Karzai a question again. LOL!
No big deal. The New York Times will do it.
Roger that
I forgot to ask - are you saying that I can't post a pic directly from my PC ?
"are you saying that I can't post a pic directly from my PC ?"
It has to be uploaded to a server first.
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