Trust Me...Not the NIE !

Prelude: Can't kill bin Laden? here's a hint ...

International:

Eleven dropping Venezuela-backed Citgo?
7-Eleven Inc. dropped Venezuela-owned Citgo as its gasoline supplier after more than 20 years as part of a previously announced plan by the convenience store operator to launch its own brand of fuel. 7-Eleven officials said Wednesday that the decision was partly motivated by politics

New polls show a "strong majority" of Iraqis want U.S.-led military forces to immediately withdraw from the country, saying their swift departure would make Iraq more secure and decrease sectarian violence. Nearly 75 percent of Baghdad residents said they would feel safer if U.S. forces left Iraq.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai tried to persuade oil-giant Chevron to invest in Afghanistan. "The rules are simple: Just come and look for oil, and then we'll see what we can do with you," Karzai said. Meanwhile, attacks in Afghanistan are growing more frequent and lethal. Since 2000, workers' health insurance premiums have risen a total of 84 percent, while their wages have increased 20 percent and inflation has risen 18 percent.

National:
As you know, an April National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) -- the key findings of which the Bush administration declassified yesterday -- reveals that Islamic extremists are "are increasing in both number and geographic dispersion." Worse, the NIE found that "the underlying factors fueling the spread of the movement outweigh its vulnerabilities." One of the main factors fueling terrorists: "the Iraq jihad." Meanwhile, the Bush administration has insisted that "America is winning the war on terror," "America is safer" and the idea that Iraq is fueling terrorism doesn't hold water. Nevertheless, nothing in the NIE will come as a surprise to the nation's national security experts. A bipartisan survey of 100 national security experts conducted by American Progress and Foreign Policy magazine found that overwhelming majorities believed: 1) we are losing the war on terror (84 percent), 2) the Iraq War is making the terror threat worse (87 percent) and 3) we are not safer (86 percent).

So does "staying the course" mean putting America at risk? In 2003, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wrote a memo that famously asked the question, "Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?" The NIE definitively answers this question: "a large body of all-source reporting indicates that activists identifying themselves as jihadists...are increasing in both number and geographic dispersion."

The Bush administration's response to the NIE was puzzling. White House homeland security official Fran Townsend sought to undermine the conclusions of the administration's intelligence services: "It's difficult to count how many have been added. ... It would be very difficult to count them." Townsend also said of the new jihadists: "it's not clear that those are people willing to commit murder."As grim as the April NIE is, there is evidence that, if anything, it's overly optimistic. The report says that if leaders like Musab al-Zarqawi were killed, "the resulting splinter groups would, at least for a time, pose a less serious threat to US interests than does al-Qaida." Zarqawi was killed in June. Since that time, violence in Iraq has increased sharply.

The White House released only a few pages from a document that is reportedly 30 pages long. What are they trying to hide? Yesterday, Jane Harman, the ranking member on the House intelligence committee said that "the body of the NIE provides additional information to support the key judgments, and I see no reason why it cannot also be declassified."

THE OTHER NIE?
There is another NIE being created by the intelligence community that focuses specifically on Iraq. Yesterday, Harman "called for it to be shared with the American public -- before the November elections." Thus far, it hasn't even been shared with Congress. Yesterday, Townsend acknowledged it's existence but said it wouldn't be ready for distribution, conveniently, until Jan. 2007.

In Oher News...

The journal Nature reports that Bush administration officials "blocked release of a report that suggests global warming is contributing to the frequency and strength of hurricanes," the third such cover-up accusation in the last two weeks.

Three Senate Democrats proposed emergency legislation on Tuesday to reimburse states for printing paper ballots in case of problems with electronic voting machines on Nov. 7, but Republican leadership aides were skeptical about its prospects.

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has spent $1.4 million on the CIA leak investigation. The relatively low cost establishes him as remarkably frugal in the ranks of recent special investigators. (Ken Starr spent $71.5 million over eight years.)

From The Right:

”Some people have guessed what's in the report and have concluded that going into Iraq was a mistake. I strongly disagree. I think it's naive. I think it's a mistake for people to believe that going on the offense against people that want to do harm to the American people makes us less safe.” - George W. Bush, 9/27/2006

From the Left:

VIDEO: Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) speaks on the floor of the House on how Bush has made us LESS SAFE.

Thought To Ponder:
None of the airliners said to be used in the September 11, 2001 attacks were reconstructed by the NTSB. Yet, during a 17-month NTSB investigation into an explosion aboard TWA Flight 800 (after it crashed into the Atlantic Ocean) -about 90 percent of the reconstruction was completed within 6 weeks following the erection of the truss framework at the hanger.

(Sources: Office of the DNI, Whitehouse website,Townhall, Center For American Progress, USA Today, WashingtonPost, Brookings, US House Of Representatives, AP, Nature, Bloomberg, NYTimes, CNN, NTSB)