25 September 2006 - 8:55am
News media spin US intelligence assessment of national security into political brinksmanship
Democrats cite report to undermine GOP
Note: Yahoo News is using the same URL for this version of the report which had a different headline and different byline. So much for any hope of transparency of process on the part of Yahoo (and/or the Associated Press).
Yahoo and AP are not the only ones playing this game. Some other spin:
The New York Times: "Study of Iraq War and Terror Stirs Strong Political Response"
Democratic lawmakers, responding to an intelligence report that found that the Iraq war has invigorated Islamic radicalism and worsened the global terrorist threat, said the assessment by American spy agencies demonstrated that the Bush administration needed to devise a new strategy for its handling of the war.
Again, the Democratic response is the lead, not the report itself.
USA Today (quoting the AP): "Democrats blast Iraq handling as report says war has increased threat"
Democrats on Sunday seized on an intelligence assessment that said the Iraq war has increased the terrorist threat, saying it was further evidence that Americans should choose new leadership in the November elections.
The Democrats hoped the report would undermine the GOP's image as the party more capable of handling terrorism as the campaign enters its final six-week stretch.
Another major news publication treating the Democrats as the news, and the report itself as just a prop.
The LA Times: "White House Rebuts Bleak Report on Iraq"
The White House on Sunday sharply disagreed with a new U.S. intelligence assessment that the war in Iraq is encouraging global terrorism, as Bush administration officials stressed that anti-American fervor in the Muslim world began long before the Sept. 11 attacks.
White House spokesman Peter Watkins declined to talk specifically about the National Intelligence Estimate, a classified analysis that represents a consensus view of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies.
A little better. At least the focus is on the players reponsible (instead of the Democrats, who aren't).
The question remains: Why are the news media positioning this as a Democratic Party story, and not a national security story?
I note that The Washington Post gets it right: "Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Hurting U.S. Terror Fight"
The war in Iraq has become a primary recruitment vehicle for violent Islamic extremists, motivating a new generation of potential terrorists around the world whose numbers may be increasing faster than the United States and its allies can reduce the threat, U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded.
A 30-page National Intelligence Estimate completed in April cites the "centrality" of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the insurgency that has followed, as the leading inspiration for new Islamic extremist networks and cells that are united by little more than an anti-Western agenda. It concludes that, rather than contributing to eventual victory in the global counterterrorism struggle, the situation in Iraq has worsened the U.S. position, according to officials familiar with the classified document.
"It's a very candid assessment," one intelligence official said yesterday of the estimate, the first formal examination of global terrorist trends written by the National Intelligence Council since the March 2003 invasion. "It's stating the obvious."
Thank you, Washington Post, for reporting the news and not the spin.
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Comments
The agencies are neglecting to get Democratic views on the rest of the report the part where it is determined that leaving at this time would be even more harmful.
Good point on the way the report, or "parts" of the report are reacted to, instead of the report itself. The FULL report.
The Director of National Intelligence did issue a statement yesterday, and amazingly enough, when read in full, it doesn't say anything near what the reports have been.
OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE
PUBLIC AFFAIRS OFFICE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
20511
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SEPTEMBER 24, 2006
Statement by the Director of National Intelligence, John D. Negroponte, in response to news reports about the National Intelligence Estimate on Trends in Global Terrorism
"A National Intelligence Estimate is a comprehensive assessment comprised of a series of judgments which are based on the best intelligence our government develops. Characterizing only a small handful of those judgments distorts the broad strategic framework the NIE is assessing . in this case, trends in global terrorism.
"Although the NIE on Global Terrorism is still a classified document, I and other senior intelligence officials have spoken publicly, and in a way consistent with the NIE’s comprehensive assessment, about the challenges and successes we have had in the Global War on Terror. What we have said, time and again, is that while there is much that remains to be done in the war on terror, we have achieved some notable successes against the global jihadist threat.
"We have eliminated much of the leadership that presided over al Qaeda -- our top global terror concern . in 2001, and U.S.-led counterterrorism efforts continued to disrupt its operations, remove its leaders and deplete its cadre. The Estimate highlights the importance of the outcome in Iraq on the future of global jihadism, judging that should the Iraqi people prevail in establishing a stable political
and security environment, the jihadists will be perceived to have failed and fewer jihadists will leave Iraq determined to carry on the fight elsewhere.
"Those statements do nothing to undermine the assessment that we have an enormous and constantly mutating struggle before us in the long war on terror. They simply demonstrate that the conclusions of the Intelligence Community are designed to be comprehensive and viewing them through the narrow prism of a fraction of judgments distorts the broad framework they create."
Statement can be found here: http://www.dni.gov/press_releases/20060924_release.pdf
...that the Bush Administration spins its own performance as well.
What we don't see much of is any factual reporting, with fact-checking and bullshit detection. The right wing (largely) has successfully intimidated the mainstream media into truth agnosticism. Thus any bullshit anyone says is a fact, and the truth behind it is considered "unbalanced."
Noooooo, we don't want to report on the absence of WMD.
Noooooo, we don't want to report on the melting icecaps and glaciers.
Noooooo, we don't want to report on all the missing money and incomplete projects by Halliburton.
Noooooo, we don't want to report on, well, anything that isn't being said by a politician.
If it doesn't spin, it's not fit to print. Apparently.