"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast"
-Oscar Wilde		 Brilliant at Breakfast title banner "The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself."
-- Proverbs 11:25
"...you have a choice: be a fighting liberal or sit quietly. I know what I am, what are you?" -- Steve Gilliard, 1964 - 2007

"For straight up monster-stomping goodness, nothing makes smoke shoot out my ears like Brilliant@Breakfast" -- Tata

"...the best bleacher bum since Pete Axthelm" -- Randy K.

"I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum." -- "Rowdy" Roddy Piper (1954-2015), They Live
Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Okay, here it is
Posted by Jill | 5:52 AM
John Aravosis has loaded up the declassified section of the National Intelligence Estimate.

While the right can try the blurb-whore method of selective excision and simply quote this:

United States-led counterterrorism efforts have seriously damaged the leadership of al-Qa’ida and disrupted its operations


...the rest of the report is far more sobering. If you read on after the above, you find this:

We also assess that the global jihadist movement—which includes al- Qa’ida, affiliated and independent terrorist groups, and emerging networks and cells—is spreading and adapting to counterterrorism efforts.


The most devastating part for the Bush Administration is the contention that the Iraq War is making the situation worse:

The Iraq conflict has become the “cause celebre” for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement. Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight.

We assess that the underlying factors fueling the spread of the movement outweigh its vulnerabilities and are likely to do so for the duration of the timeframe of this Estimate.

• Four underlying factors are fueling the spread of the jihadist movement: (1) Entrenched grievances, such as corruption, injustice, and fear of Western domination, leading to anger, humiliation, and a sense of powerlessness; (2) the Iraq “jihad;” (3) the slow pace of real and sustained economic, social, and political reforms in many Muslim majority nations; and (4) pervasive anti-US sentiment among most Muslims—all of which jihadists exploit.


The Bush Cultists will seize upon the last sentence of the first paragraph as reason to continue fighting in Iraq in perpetuity, but the report states clearly that "the underlying factors fueling the spread of the movement outweigh the vulnerabilities". As long as our presence in Iraq is fueling the jihadists, they will not perceive themselves to have failed.

The other part of this report that jumped right out at me was item 3: "the slow pace of real and sustained economic, social, and political reforms in many Muslim majority nations". Exhibit A on this front is George W. Bush's good friends the Saudi Royal Family, whom we have propped up for years. Rather than continuing to prop up autocratic regimes in the Middle East while giving lip service to Democracy, the most constructive policy would be to institute a Marshall-type plan to get this country off of Middle Eastern Oil once and for all, and stop this hypocrisy of bombing Middle Eastern countries to smithereens and torturing its citizens -- and then setting up puppet regimes led by people like Unocal shill Hamid Karzai and the series of clowns the Bush Adminstration has put up in Iraq.

Perhaps if we stop acting like an invading horde, we won't be perceived as an invading horde.
0 comments
Bookmark and Share