Bush Comes Up Short Defending His Policies On Terror

Bush spoke about the NIE report that says that Bush's invasion of Iraq has made us less safe in the United States. He tried to turn the tables by saying that the leak was politically motivated. Even if it was, the substance of the report is the same. Bush's policies are wrong. Dead wrong.

And they use it as a recruitment tool because they understand the stakes. They understand what will happen to them when we defeat them in Iraq.

You know, to suggest that if we weren't in Iraq we would see a rosier scenario, with fewer extremists joining the radical movement, requires us to ignore 20 years of experience.

We weren't in Iraq when we got attacked on September the 11th. We weren't in Iraq and thousands of fighters were trained in terror camps inside your country, Mr. President. We weren't in Iraq when they first attacked the World Trade Center in 1993.

Yes, we were not in Iraq then... and neither was Al Qaida. They were in Afghanistan. A nation that we have put 1/7th the effort into as Iraq. Why is it that the terrorist were 1/7th as important to Bush as Saddam?

Now, you know what's interesting about the NIE? It was an intelligence report done last April. As I understand, the conclusions — the evidence on the conclusions reached was stopped being gathered on February — at the end of February.

And here we are coming down the stretch in an election campaign and it's on the front page of your newspapers. Isn't that interesting? Somebody's taken it upon themselves to leak classified information for political purposes.

Hmmmm.... I am trying to remember if anyone has leaked an NIE report for political purposes before... Oh, yes... THE WHITE HOUSE! Live by the leak, die by the leak. And where is the proof that it was released for political purposes? And even if it was, is not keeping the damaging report secret not political also? If you can release the key findings now, you could have released the key findings 6 months ago also.

But once again there's a leak out of our government, coming right down the stretch in this campaign in order to create confusion in the minds of the American people.

I wonder if that is anything like raising the terror threat constantly just before the 2004 election and then having the vice president coming out and saying if you vote for Kerry, you will die?

And so we're going to — I told the DNI to declassify this document. You can read it for yourself. It will stop all the speculation, all the politics about somebody saying something about Iraq; you know, somebody trying to confuse the American people about the nature of this enemy.

Again, is using selective and distorting reports about the WMDs in Iraq "somebody trying to confuse the American people about the nature of the enemy?"

And so John Negroponte, the DNI, is going to declassify the document as quickly as possible — declassify the key judgments for you to read yourself.

So, basically, it is a declassification of the NIE report for political purposes... and not even the entire thing. Only the sections that Bush agrees with.

Bush exploits 9/11 at every chance he gets. You can play a drinking game with the number of times he says 9/11. But the fact remains. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. The people that did have something to do with 9/11, Bush has ignored before and after the fact. His grand experiment is failing to keep us safer. I still believe that we need to stay in Iraq to finish the job. But the key was to have never gone in to Iraq in the first place. The immanent threat was not Saddam, but Bin Laden. Now the Bush administration has no clue as to his wereabouts.

Sobering Conclusions On Why Jihad Has Spread

In addition to the "politics" Bush claims is surrounding the leak of the NIE, comes the claims that Bush is hiding an even more damning report. The report is being held as a draft until after the elections.

Amid furor over Iraq report, calls to release another
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- As political debate churned over an intelligence report released Tuesday, a top Democrat called for the release of a second, new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq that she says "paints a grim picture."

The White House denied a charge by Rep. Jane Harman, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, that another intelligence report is being kept in draft form so that its contents won't be public until the midterm elections in November are over.

"I hear it paints a grim picture. And because it does, I am told it is being held until after the November elections. If this estimate is finished, it should not be stamped 'draft' and hidden from the American people until after the elections," Harman said in a statement.

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