1115.org

After the NYT published leaked excerpts from the NIE on Sunday, the Democrats launched a political offensive to exploit what the NYT said the NIE said. Namely, that the war in Iraq has increased the threat of terrorism, not reduced it. It has made us less safe, not more safe.

The context, of course, is that President Bush received this NIE in April. And as recently as September 7, he was telling the American people:

Five years after 9/11, are we safer? The answer is, yes, America is safer.
[…]
Five years after September the 11th, 2001, America is safer — and America is winning the war on terror.

Now that we have seen the White House response to the political firestorm triggered by the NYT revelations, the question that arises is: Is this the best Bush and his minions can do in response?

First, they are pretending they don’t understand those simple statements.

So we had Bush lecturing us on Tuesday:

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 (addressing Hamid Karzai). We weren’t in Iraq when they first attacked the World Trade Center in 1993. We weren’t in Iraq when they bombed the Cole. We weren’t in Iraq when they blew up our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Georgie, the fact that there were many terrorist attacks even when “we weren’t in Iraq” has zilch to do with whether invading Iraq has made us less safe or more safe. If the best you can do is try to confuse the issue so pathetically, then clearly you got nothin’.

We had Tony Snow flailing around on Wednesday saying that

even if the United States had not been fighting the Iraq war, the threat from Islamic extremists would still exist.

Tony, you can’t get away with pretending you don’t understand that the question is not whether the threat would exist or not, but whether the war in Iraq has increased or decreased the threat.

Or here’s Tony again:

Think of it this way, if we had done nothing after September 11th, would the threat have vanished?

No offence, Tony, but only a moron would think of it that way. Because no one in their right mind would ever suggest or imply that the choice was between invading Iraq and doing nothing. The choice was between staying focused on al-Qaeda and terrorism, or diverting attention and resources to the war on Iraq.

They even trotted out that suave persuader, John Bolton:

“If you said after the attack on Pearl Harbor that the American response had increased the violence in the Pacific, you would be right, wouldn’t you?” he asked reporters in New York.

Johnny, the issue is not whether violence has increased (in Iraq, or wherever the battlefield is supposed to be). The issue is whether America is safer because we attacked Iraq, whether the Iraq war is helping or hurting the war on terror.

Second, they charged that the NYT summary was misleading. They made a big song and dance about declassifying the NIE so that America could see for itself what the NIE actually said. Of course, what they actually delivered was a dance of the seven veils in which the burka never comes off. And what they showed of the NIE did nothing to prove the NYT’s summary inaccurate. All it did was muddy the waters a bit. And surely they don’t need to declassify NIEs to achieve that?