The Iraq Assessment You Don't Get to See

[sabra]

Source: ABC News

<snip>

The lawmakers who asked for an unclassified version of the NIE for public consumption -- Armed Services Chairman Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich, and Teddy Kennedy, D-Mass, - issued a statement today which complained there is no reason an unclassified version should be released and complaining about the "For Official Use Only" marker on McConnell's letter to them denying the request for the NIE to be released.

The Senators take the "official use" marker to mean they can't release the letter from McConnell and they're a little miffed at the clampdown.

"It is incomprehensible that the reply sent to us is labeled ‘For Official Use Only,’ thus not even permitting the public to see the reasons given for hiding this information from public view," Kennedy and Levin wrote in a statement this afternoon.

McConnell said recently during a speech in Baltimore that releasing even an unclassified version of the NIE would show the hand of the US to potential enemies.

"At minimum I'm telling a foreign power what I know about him." he said, which could lead the foreign power to switch up, do things differently, and make things difficult for the intelligence community.



Read more: http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/04/the-iraq-assess.html

[Baby Snooks]

1. The reality...

The reality is we do have enemies. And we do have to be concerned with our national security which quite honestly this administration is not concerned with as reflected by the fact that our enemies at this point are our enemies because of this administration. And the previous one.

Madeline Albright's comment about the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children being "worth it" may not have garnered much attention in this country but it did garner attention among our enemies. And among our friends who since she made that comment have become our enemies.

The reality is we will have to let Iraq fall eventually the way we had to let Vietnam fall. The question is when will we do so.

Our hope should be that the next president and the next Congress will restore our integrity, despite our shame, in the world by dissolving the source of all of this. The CIA. Which has never served the American people and has only served the maniacal vision, really, of one family.

We must finally be a free people ourselves in order to exemplify what freedom is to the rest of the world. And we are not free.

The lies of our country, the lies for which we all must bear shame as the German people did, are the lies of the CIA and that should be the basis to finally be rid of it. And to be rid of the Bush family in the process. And their oligarchy which in the end has proven to have served absolutely no one at all. Not even the Bushes.

[maddezmom]

2. K&R

It's not going to show the hand to enemies, it's going to show what a failure it is.

[sabra]

3. when all else fails - claim national security ( I think Kissinger was the master of this)

[maddezmom]

4. Kissinger may have been the master, but this guys

are masterful in keeping anything that may be of importance to the masses out of the eyes of them.