If you've been paying attention, you know there is another un-named NIE that has been done solely on Iraq that Bush is sitting on. Now the admin is saying it won’t be ready for release until after the election. Imagine that! Haven't we gone through this before? ------------------ Iraq intelligence report expected after November The Bush administration has begun work on a new intelligence report about Iraq that is not expected to be completed before the November 7 election and possibly not until January, officials said on Wednesday. But the report, which intelligence officials began working on about six weeks ago, has already been swept up in a political storm over the Iraq war and the U.S. war on terrorism, as Republicans and Democrats campaign for control of Congress. The document, known as a national intelligence estimate, would show how the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies judge the stability of the Iraqi government and the prospects for controlling sectarian violence that threatens civil war. The administration on Tuesday released key judgments from a separate April estimate on global terrorism after sections saying the Iraq war had strengthened the international Islamic militant movement were leaked to the media. Some Democrats, saying the new report would present a grimmer picture of Iraq than portrayed in White House rhetoric, want U.S. intelligence chief John Negroponte to produce the document within the next six weeks. But knowledgeable officials said the report was never expected to emerge before early November. "This is a two-to-four month process. There is no hard and fast deadline because of how fast they did the 2002 NIE on Iraq. They did that in three weeks, and it showed," said a Democratic Senate aide familiar with report preparations. The aide was referring to a notorious prewar estimate of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, which helped the White House justify war against Saddam Hussein but later was found to be based on faulty intelligence. 'STEADY FLOW OF INFORMATION' Negroponte ordered work to begin on the new Iraq assessment in mid-August. But an intelligence official said the first stage -- the setting of parameters known as "terms of reference" -- has not yet been completed. The last estimate on Iraq was in July 2004. The National Intelligence Council, which prepares intelligence estimates, has since produced about two-dozen classified reports on Iraq. "There has been a steady flow of information on Iraq," the intelligence official said. Senate Democrats requested the new report in a July 26 letter to Negroponte. A week later, the Senate adopted an amendment from Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy (news, bio, voting record) of Massachusetts that gives Negroponte 90 days to complete the report following enactment of the $377.6 billion defense appropriations bill. A final vote on the bill is expected on Thursday or Friday. That would set a late December deadline for the document and Negroponte could extend the deadline further simply by explaining to Congress his need for more time, officials said. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060927...dLoMnwb.3QA;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MXN1bHE0BHNlYwN0bWE-
From Josh this morning... Anybody in the White House press corps want to ask Tony Snow why he lied to you guys yesterday? Frances Townsend did the same thing the day before. But let's stick with Snow. When asked why the White House is holding up that Iraq-only NIE until after the November election, Snow said the following ... Well, that's just a crock. Justin Rood looked into this yesterday. And according to the 2004 Senate intel committee report, most NIEs take between two weeks (for a rush job) and two months to complete. And how long did it take to complete the Iraq WMD NIE. Less than three weeks. (Amazing what you can accomplish when your heart is really in it, isn't it?) According to the Council on Foreign Relations, NIE drafting guidelines "NIE drafting guidelines included in the July 9 Senate report describe three rough timeframes: a "fast track" of two to three weeks, a "normal track" of four to eight weeks, and a "long track" of two months or more." And what did Snow say when trying to deny the politics behind this NIE's delay? "These reviews take about a year to do ..." Am I wrong to say he lied to you guys? I don't think I am. Can we get this question asked again? -- Josh Marshall
Today's Times... Iraq Report Is Due in ’07; Skeptics Want to See It Now By MARK MAZZETTI WASHINGTON, Sept. 27 — In the fall of 2002, weeks before the midterm elections, American intelligence agencies were racing to complete an assessment of Iraq as the Senate prepared to vote on a resolution sought by the White House to prepare the groundwork for war. Four years later, in the shadow of another midterm campaign, the agencies are again drafting a formal assessment on Iraq. But this time, the document is one that the White House might prefer to see finished later rather than sooner. In mid-August, John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, gave the go-ahead for a National Intelligence Estimate that will address security in Iraq and the potential for civil war there. White House and intelligence officials say the work is still in its early stages and will not be done until next year. But Democrats contend that the White House is “slow rolling” the document — that is, deliberately withholding what could be bleak conclusions — until after the November elections. The Democrats have intensified those complaints since the White House, under political pressure, on Tuesday released parts of a separate intelligence report, a sober assessment of global terrorism. On Wednesday, Representative Jane Harman of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, even said sources had told her that a draft of the document had been finished. “I have heard that it’s complete, and that it’s grim,” Ms. Harman said. Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, fired back, calling Ms. Harman’s assertion “flat wrong.” “There is not a waiting Iraq document that reflects the National Intelligence Estimate that’s sitting around gathering dust waiting until after the election,” Mr. Snow said. The intelligence estimate is being done at the behest of members of Congress, including Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It will be the American intelligence community’s first comprehensive assessment on the state of the Iraqi insurgency and the sectarian violence in the country since the summer of 2004. Intelligence analysts are supposed to keep political calculations out of their work. At the same time, those who have worked at the National Intelligence Council, the group in charge of producing the intelligence estimates, say the sometimes politically charged nature of the reports’ conclusions make it impossible to operate in a political vacuum. “The challenge for intelligence officers is how to walk a fine line, not only with regard to judgments, but with regard to timing,” said Paul R. Pillar, who until a year ago oversaw American intelligence assessments about the Middle East. Alan Pino, Mr. Pillar’s successor at the National Intelligence Council, is now the one walking the fine line. As the national intelligence officer for assessments about the Middle East, Mr. Pino is in charge of a process that usually lasts several months: from first deciding what specific subjects a National Intelligence Estimate will examine to ensuring that the government’s 16 intelligence agencies sign off on the final draft. The clock on the current report started running with Mr. Negroponte’s approval in August, and on Tuesday, Frances Fragos Townsend, the president’s domestic security adviser, said it would probably be completed in January. In a letter to Mr. Negroponte on Wednesday, Ms. Harman called the timetable “unacceptable,” and suggested that he might be trying to hold the report until after Election Day. “N.I.E.’s have been produced in as little as several weeks, as in the case of the 2002 report on Iraqi W.M.D.,” Ms. Harmon wrote. Republicans counter that the 2002 Iraq assessment was hardly a model to emulate. Several government investigations have discredited the conclusions of that report, which asserted that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. That estimate was hastily assembled in the fall of 2002, requested by lawmakers who said they wanted the intelligence community’s best judgments about Iraq before they voted to authorize the invasion. But after American troops invaded Iraq in March 2003, Iraq became the primary focus of American intelligence agencies. They have produced volumes of analysis on the insurgency and sectarian violence in Iraq, and on the political and economic situation there. This, some experts say, already gives intelligence officials the building blocks for a National Intelligence Estimate that could be completed in a relatively short time. “There’s not a lot of basic research that needs to be done, that’s for sure,” Mr. Pillar said. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/washington/28intel.html?pagewanted=print
Bob Woodward on 60 Minutes ... Veteran Washington reporter Bob Woodward tells Mike Wallace that the Bush administration has not told the truth regarding the level of violence, especially against U.S. troops, in Iraq. He also reveals key intelligence that predicts the insurgency will grow worse next year. Wallace’s interview with Woodward will be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday, Oct. 1 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. According to Woodward, insurgent attacks against coalition troops occur, on average, every 15 minutes, a shocking fact the administration has kept secret. “It’s getting to the point now where there are eight, 900 attacks a week. That’s more than a hundred a day. That is four an hour attacking our forces,” says Woodward. The situation is getting much worse, says Woodward, despite what the White House and the Pentagon are saying in public. “The truth is that the assessment by intelligence experts is that next year, 2007, is going to get worse and, in public, you have the president and you have the Pentagon [saying], ‘Oh, no, things are going to get better,’” he tells Wallace. “Now there’s public, and then there’s private. But what did they do with the private? They stamp it secret. No one is supposed to know,” says Woodward. http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/
