Right Wing Nut House

Well here we are - another post defending pedophiles, excusing GOP coverups, enabling child rapists, and may I throw in a little gay bashing too, please?

You lefties are no fun at all…

Actually, the scandal involving Congressman Foley was in desperate need of some fresh outrage, what with most of us having reached the point of outrage fatigue about 48 hours ago.

Never fear. More dirty IM’s and this time…PRESTO! We Got Orgasm!

Former Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL) interrupted a vote on the floor of the House in 2003 to engage in Internet sex with a high school student who had served as a congressional page, according to new Internet instant messages provided to ABC News by former pages.

ABC News now has obtained 52 separate instant message exchanges, which former pages say were sent by Foley, using the screen name Maf54, to two different boys under the age of 18.

Maf54: I miss you
Teen: ya me too
Maf54: we are still voting
Maf54: you miss me too

The exchange continues in which Foley and the teen both appear to describe having sexual orgasms.

I fully expect that by Friday, we will have solid evidence that Foley had personal, inappropriate sexual contact with a teenager. The revelation will occur when the story once again needs a boost to gin up the outrage, it not being enough that Foley is a criminally debauched scumbag who is now practicing the fine art of damage control by claiming 1) It was the booze; and 2) I was molested myself as a teenager by a priest. Excuse us while we collectively gag on the bile rising in our throats as we witness once again that time honored technique, honed to perfection by the high and mighty, who try and elicit sympathy for themselves by attempting to prove that their dastardly deeds were really not their fault.

It was Demon Rum or the Siren’s Song of Drugs or My Daddy Beat Me or My Momma Slept With Me or I Was a Victim Myself Once and on and on…

Predictable. And contemptible.

Speaking of contemptible, here’s a little bit of hypocrisy brought to you by that bastion of truth, justice, and the anti-American way at Daily Kos. Is it important in the scheme of things regarding Foley and the Republicans? Naw. But it sure is fun to make the left look more idiotic than they already are.

You may be aware that the Kos Kids have their very own liberal encyclopedia called “dKosopedia.” This saves them time and effort when needing to quickly identify what the party line is on any given historical event or individual in politics as well as giving them a shared narrative that surrounds them and binds their universe together. Kind of like the Force but without all those nasty religious overtones.

A good friend of this site who blogs at Superfun Power Hour has dug up some information that shows how very seriously the Kos Kommunity is taking this Foley business - so seriously that they have amended the entry in the dKosopedia describing the only similar incident in Congressional history - the Gerry Studds disgrace (or triumph depending on your point of view).

Here’s the original entry on the Studds Stud Scandal via a cached version:

On July 20, 1983, Gerry was censured for having an affair 10 years earlier with a male page. He turned his back as the charges against him were read. The anti-gay crew had worked hard to demonize him (as they would Barney Frank several years later over allegations of a male prostitute having clients in Frank’s apartment). Gerry held a press conference with the page and admitted to a relationship. They each firmly stated that what had gone on in their bedroom was their business, and absolutely no one else’s.

Now here is the version as it appears today after having undergone a slight revision - namely the highlighted section above disappears down the rabbit hole:

On July 20, 1983, Studds was censured for having an affair 10 years earlier with a male page. At the same time, Rep. Dan Crane (R-IL) was censured for having a relationship with a female page in 1980. Studds refused to apologize for his conduct and turned his back as the charges against him were read. He later held a press conference with the page and admitted to a relationship, and they each stated that what had gone on in their bedroom was their business, and absolutely no one else’s.

It seems that there are people who defend pedophiles like Studds by calling their accusers “the anti-gay crew” and people who condemn pedophiles like Foley unequivocally - except one of the groups gets to erase history whenever it’s convenient to do so. After all, it just wouldn’t do to apologize for one pedophile while putting on your outrage suit to condemn another.

Again, not particularly relevant to anything except its fun to catch the liberals with their pants around their ankles. And besides, its been 24 hours and no one has called me any vile names. I sorta miss it…

In what has to be considered something of a shocker, the Washington Times is calling on House Speaker Dennis Hastert to resign for his inaction and dissembling over the Foley matter:

Now the scandal must unfold on the front pages of the newspapers and on the television screens, as transcripts of lewd messages emerge and doubts are rightly raised about the forthrightness of the Republican stewards of the 109th Congress. Some Democrats are attempting to make this “a Republican scandal,” and they shouldn’t; Democrats have contributed more than their share of characters in the tawdry history of congressional sexual scandals. Sexual predators come in all shapes, sizes and partisan hues, in institutions within and without government. When predators are found they must be dealt with, forcefully and swiftly. This time the offender is a Republican, and Republicans can’t simply “get ahead” of the scandal by competing to make the most noise in calls for a full investigation. The time for that is long past.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert must do the only right thing, and resign his speakership at once. Either he was grossly negligent for not taking the red flags fully into account and ordering a swift investigation, for not even remembering the order of events leading up to last week’s revelations — or he deliberately looked the other way in hopes that a brewing scandal would simply blow away. He gave phony answers Friday to the old and ever-relevant questions of what did he know and when did he know it? Mr. Hastert has forfeited the confidence of the public and his party, and he cannot preside over the necessary coming investigation, an investigation that must examine his own inept performance.

Hastert has presided over what will probably go down in history as the most inept, corrupt, cynical, and arrogant Congress since perhaps near the turn of the 20th century when the robber barons held sway in Washington and openly bought and sold votes on the floor.

Hastert himself - a genial, if clueless sort - is probably one of the least blameless members in this camper’s stew of corruption and irresponsible lawmaking. His leadership style has been one of staying above the fray while allowing his whips full reign to twist arms and necks to get Republican majorities on major legislation. This allowed stronger personalities like Tom DeLay and Roy Blunt to dominate at times, making Hastert appear to be an appendage, especially to the publicity hungry DeLay. In short, Hastert never really seemed to be in charge - something that was exposed during the Foley matter as it still isn’t clear whether anyone ever bothered to inform the Speaker personally about Foley’s emails to the former page, telling his staff instead who may or may not have informed him.

I’m not sure the resignation of Hastert is either necessary or desirable. The voters will almost surely take care of Mr. Hastert and the Republicans come November. In fact, it seems pretty much of a lead pipe cinch at this point as the universal disgust over Foley and the leadership’s tone deaf response to the emails and their potential import becomes widely known. The only question now is how big a majority the Democrats are likely to be handed as the new Congress sits next January.

It should go without saying that if the Democrats presented anything like a positive agenda for the country, their victory would be of historic proportions, almost certainly surpassing the Republican gains of 1994 and approaching their own electoral tidal wave of 1974. But a combination of Republican advantages in redistricting and voter doubts about their national security bona fides will probably hold Democratic gains to a narrow majority in the House and a possible one seat advantage in the Senate, the latter by no means a certainty but the polls breaking that way of late.

None of the blame for this should necessarily fall entirely on the shoulders of the Speaker. But as a symbol of Republican malfeasance in the Foley matter, it may be hard for him to escape walking the plank. Most conservatives have expressed disgust with the leadership over everything from earmarks to their curious incuriosity when it comes to oversight - my own beef being the horrific waste already revealed in war reconstruction spending. New leadership will hardly have time to get settled before their almost certain replacement by Democrats. So I suppose my point is - what’s the point?

If it is to make a statement that we won’t tolerate this kind of malfeasance then we are all a little late to that party. These people have been playing patty cakes with the truth, with parliamentary procedure, with House rules, and with the faith and trust of the American people for going on 6 years. It is a little late for resignations and mea culpas.

What is needed is a reckoning - a settling of accounts by the voters for all the broken promises, the wasteful spending, the arrogant mismanagement, and the irresponsible lawmaking which have combined to bring the Republican party to its sorriest state I’ve seen in my 30 years of membership.

Let the voters change the leadership in Congress. And then let the chips fall where they may.

I might as well make this clear at the outset. If I’ve learned anything over the last two days about lefty commenters who visit The House it is that their attention span and reading comprehension skills leave much to be desired. Therefore, I will write about the issues that we can all agree on right up front so that I don’t get idiots accusing me of supporting Foley or abetting a cover up by the GOP House leadership simply because they don’t take the time or make the minimal effort to actually read what I write.

This is what we know and what we can extrapolate from the facts:

* Foley is a pervert. And I cannot believe that these raunchy IM’s published so far is the limit of his perversion. Not only am I sure that there are more victims out there but that I think it possible that he has had physical contact with pages of an inappropriate nature. I base this on the fact that he showed an inordinate amount of interest in the pages throughout his career which would give him the opportunity and that the IM’s demonstrate the desire for such contact. I understand that the age of consent in Washington D.C. is 16 so it is probable that no laws were broken. But that doesn’t mitigate against the horrific violation of trust if such acts occurred.

* The House GOP leadership - indeed probably many on both sides of the aisle - knew of Foley’s predilections and did nothing about it. Are you trying to tell me that if Republican House pages were warned about Foley 5 years ago that at least some Democratic Pages weren’t also aware? That’s laughable. I’m sure the FBI will have some interesting conversations with former pages that will reveal not only that the Democratic pages had heard the rumors about Foley also but that they had dutifully passed them on to Democratic staffers.

* Foley’s sick behavior through the years was suspected, never proven. For that reason, when the email exchange with the ex-Page took place last year, the House leadership dropped the ball by not carrying out some kind of an investigation. Would that have revealed the existence of the IM’s and perhaps other things? Maybe not. But any such investigation would have ruined his career and left the leadership wide open to attacks by the left that they were persecuting a gay man. In effect, it was a damned if you do damned if you don’t situation which makes the smug charges by Democrats today - some of whom may have known about Foley as well - ring a little hollow. Nevertheless, to out a potential sexual predator in their midst should have overrode any other concerns.

* There will be a torrent of revelations over the coming weeks as the FBI investigation reveals all the seamy details as well as the extent of knowledge by both Democrats and Republicans about Foley’s perversion. Look also for an investigation in just how those emails and IM’s came into the possession of the mainstream media.

And it is on that front that I will address the remainder of this post. Because like it or not, this has become a political story. And certainly a large part of the politics of it is the growing realization that this story has been an electoral black bag operation, that it may have been planned for months, and that it was timed to explode for maximum political effect.

THE STRANGE GOINGS ON AT STOPSEXPREDATORS

Yesterday, I gave a detailed analysis of the blog that started the whole affair by publishing the emails of a former page from Congressman Foley last Sunday.

Since then several amazing things have come to light. First, and least importantly, the formatting of the email from Foley to the former page sent last year is different on the SSP website than those displayed on the CREW website.

First noticed by Barking Mad who left a link in my comments about it, a full analysis by Just One Minute commenter JM Hanes shows the discrepancy to be interesting :

The Foley messages themselves occupy the next 5 pages, which is where it gets interesting. It looks like the first message (which would logically be e-mail 1), in which Foley verifies the email address, is the only one which has actually been forwarded in its entirety. The remaining messages appear to have been pasted into separate emails of their own (hence the subject lines listing e-mail 2, etc), and not forwarded. I.E. they contain the putative text alone, without any headers attached.

It appears that the STOP blog took the header from the first message (p. 4), cropped out the redundant [Maf54@aol.com] in the “From” line, and eliminated the “To” line altogether — and then spliced it onto each of the other individual texts.
In other words, there’s no way of knowing whether the incriminating text provided to the recipient in the CREW pdf represents actual emails at all. It could have come from anywhere. It’s also possible that the young man didn’t want to pass on the emails in their entirety, opting instead to extract and paste in relevant material alone. One might wonder who was determining what might or might not be relevant — as well as wondering precisely who the redeacted recipient of this collection on Aug. 31, 2005 might have been.

In any case, the only email which includes the Foley header is completely innocuous, and if you click on the individual emails at STOP, you’ll notice that, oddly enough, the jpeg titles include “cropped.”

(See the whole comment for links to the emails found on the SSP site and a pdf filed of the CREW version of the emails)

What makes this little more than an historical curiosity is the fact that reporters for several news organizations - including the St. Petersburg Times - confirmed the authenticity of the emails with the former page himself thus making any effort to cast aspersions on this or that version of them moot.

The authenticity of the IM’s may be a different story. But the emails that were reported to the House leadership last year have been authenticated so that any attempt to debunk them is doomed to failure.

But that’s not the only thing about the SSP website that is curious. The entire website has vanished as of today. All 8 posts (as Tom McGuire sardonically remarked of the site “which started in July and brought down the Congressional leadership with its sixth, seventh and eighth posts.”) are gone along with the emails and all the archives. The domain name “stopsexpredators.blogspot.com” seems to have been taken over either by a strawman or someone who is genuinely concerned about stopping sexual predators.

Of one thing we can be absolutely certain; Stop Sexual Predators had nothing whatsoever to do with the issue of fighting child pedophiles and everything to do with publicizing the emails from Congressman Foley to the former page. There can be no other explanation for its disappearance. Why would it close up shop just when it had scored a great coup that advanced its reason for being?

This means, of course, that at least as far as the publicizing of the emails, this was a clandestine Democratic/leftist effort to at the very least, raise questions about Foley’s behavior. And given what happened less than 24 hours after the emails were brought to the attention of Brian Ross at ABC News - the revelatory and raunchy IM’s being given to ABC news - a genuine dot connecting exercise can be undertaken to link both events. While not a certainty, it is compelling evidence that whoever published the emails on the SSP blog was either aware of the incriminating IM’s or had both in their possession.

NOTE: The link above is to the site “Stop Sexual Predators” not Stop Sex Predators. I apologize for the mixup. Someone sent me an incorrect link.

Obviously, that weakens the case that SSP was definitely set up to dump the emails onto the blogosphere. However, I find it strange that the person in charge of the website has not posted anything else since aknowledging his coup with the emails. Mission accomplished, perhaps?

THE KOS CONNECTION

Almost a month ago, a “two comment wonder” at Daily Kos known as WHInternnow revealed that it was an “open secret” that Foley liked the young interns and pages on the Hill and at the White House. Blog PI picks up the story:

They are probably also the same person: On Sept. 24, WHInternNow posted a dKos diary about the SSP posts almost as soon as the scans went up, but claimed to have innocently stumbled upon them via Google. Yeah, right.

And earlier this last week, before ABC’s Brian Ross obtained the more-damning Foley IMs and took the story national, Wonkette’s Alex Pareene took notice of SSP’s e-mails, and was uncharacteristically constrained in deeming the e-mails false…

One immediately wonders where Wonkette would have gotten a hold of the emails (or at least directed to the incredibly obscure SSP website). Even though they believed them to be fakes, given the enormous readership of the blog, it is likely that this is what triggered MSM interest in the story.

THE STRANGE GENESIS OF THE RAUNCHY IM’S

Questions about the IM’s authenticity are already arising as a result of the altering of the emails. However, the WaPo story seems to indicate that it was common knowledge among pages that Foley sent raunchy IM’s:

Also yesterday, a former House page said that at a 2003 page reunion, he saw sexually suggestive e-mails Foley had sent to another former page. Patrick McDonald, 21, now a senior at Ohio State University, said he eventually learned of “three or four” pages from his 2001-2002 class who were sent such messages.

At the very least, this would seem to indicate that even if the IM’s are fakes, others will testify that they received such raunchy IM’s from Foley. This is probably why he resigned from office.

But how do you “save” an IM? I’m sure there’s a way to do it but it can’t be easy. A better question would be why hang on to the IM’s for 4 or 5 years? My guess would be that such personal messages from a person of such power could have come in handy if questions ever arose about a relationship with Foley. Not blackmail but protection.

If the IM’s were in the possession of the left wing Public Interest Group CREW who then handed them over to ABC News, a legitimate question can be raised about how long they had those IM’s and why they didn’t notify the FBI sooner. If they had them for months (and since the SSP website went up in July we can assume as much) then CREW should be severely criticized for holding back information that placed young lives at risk. In the end - if they did indeed hold on to the IM’s for months - CREW can be singled out for the harshest criticism for the preferment of political gain at the expense of the safety of the pages.

How much of a story will this black bag operation be? Since it was done partly in the cause of ridding the Congress of a pervert, one perhaps cannot condemn it completely. However, it does demonstrate a nauseating cynicism on the part of the left when it comes to electoral politics and makes the hypocritical charges of “cover-up” resonate all the more with those who are disgusted by such tactics.

First, you absolutely must go to American Thinker and read this post from Clarice Feldman on the Foley scandal. It is, to put it mildly, flabbergasting in its implications.

In her article, Clarice mentions the website that started it all. Stop Sex Predators came on line in late July with one post announcing its intention to “serve as a clearing house for the public to report sex predators and as a resource for concerned parents and citizens.”

The next blog post wasn’t until August 17th where the writer listed in a rather desultory manner some more notable sex predators. After that, two posts on August 26, including this curious item:

HOLY MOTHER OF JESUS! On a whim, I googled “Congressional sex scandals.” WHOA! You hear stories about ‘things’ that happen along the gilded halls of power in Washington. But I was shocked to see how much of it goes on the record! From a Washington Post article, here are five…yes, FIVE members of Congress who had incredibly inappropriate relationships with minors. What’s worse is that some continued to serve in Congress and one of them is still in office!! How much more of this is going on??

How much more, indeed. The fourth and last post for the entire month of August was a cut and paste from Wikpedia of the Gary Condit affair. More “political predators” on a site dedicated to sex predators in general? Why?

This brings us to September and what could be construed - if one had a suspicious nature - as a “build-up” of sorts to the Foley emails.

After a short post giving a link to a safety website on 9/2, there is another Capitol Hill sex story about an issue that stirred the blogs a bit on 9/4; the “skintern” culture on the Hill that saw young women dressing provocatively in order to get ahead.

Then comes a post on 9/21 that mentions Foley for the first time:

I have been away for a while, so please accept my apologies for the lack of blog posts. BUT….while I was away, the blog has been noticed and some shocking emails have been received! I can hardly believe it! I’m posting each one below. It’s proof that the Congressional Corruption of the past is alive and well today. It’s up to us to expose it and stop this predatory harassment! Please promote the blog and email any further information to stopsexpredators@gmail.com . Together we will make a difference!

Why would anyone notice this blog? It has posted nothing original in its short existence. The rare postings means that it has not built up any audience whatsoever. The first Technorati reference to the blog is from two days ago. Even a Google search doesn’t show it on the first 10 pages when searching for “Stop Sex Predators.”

And yet, 3 separate people who had contact with Congressman Foley somehow found this website independent of one another and supposedly sent emails to the owner of this site to complain about Foley’s inappropriate behavior.

Possible? Yes. Probable? I’ll let you decide.

The question is, are they real emails from real former pages and interns? Does this sound plausible to you?

My dad who gives a lot of money to republicans got me an internship capitolhill. I thought that I was hot shit, having such a good internship after myfreshman year of college.After a few weeks, I was finally learning my way around DC and I wasenjoying my job.One night, I decided to go out with my new fake ID to my first gay bar.I went to this bar named Coblot.There was old guy who would not leave me alone. He kept following me around.I tried to get him to leave me alone by going to the bathroom.Instead he followed me in and tried to grope me.A few days later my boss had me run something over to another congressmansoffice. It turned out that the guy who groped me was Representative MarkFoley.

All three emails sent independent of one another naming the same Congressional pervert? That is really stinking up the smell test.

Finally, we get to the emails sent from Foley to the former Page. These are the emails that the House Republicans knew about and, after investigating the situation, ordered Foley to stay away from the boy and have no more contact outside of official Congressional duties. This was posted last Sunday, 9/24 - a full 5 days before the story broke:

This is absolutely amazing. I just received these emails. They were sent by Congressman Mark Foley to a 16-year-old male page. I have removed his name to protect his identity. But how shocking is this? I can’t believe this was emailed to me? There must be even more out there. Email me at stopsexpredators@gmail.com and let me know what we should do!! Something must be done!!

The emails are blurry - probably faxed and not, as the author claims, emailed. But the question is how did they migrate from an incredibly obscure website into the mainstream media? This is indeed a mystery. It is possible that an opposition researcher could have Googled “Foley” and found the tiny website. But search engine rankings being what they are, that would have had to have been one dedicated oppo researcher to find the emails on Stop Sex Predators, a blogspot blog with virtually no posts and zero incoming links.

Clarice informs me that an old friend might be behind the Stop Sex Predators blog:

One of the JOM (Just One Minute) posters who’s been paying attention thinks Jason Leopold is the owner of stopsexpredators. The only place we can find a link to the story is another site (from the desk of patrick J fitzgerald which we also think is Leopold) Leopold you may recall was writing all those crazy stories for Truthout including the one that Rove was indicted and the indictment would be unsealed in 24 hours.

Highly speculative, but it fits. Leopold would have been able to make CREW aware of the emails published on the blog. Here’s ABC News on the genesis of the story:

Yesterday, we asked the congressman about some much tamer e-mails from one page, and he said he was just being overly friendly. After we posted that story online, we began to hear from a number of other pages who sent these much more explicit, instant messages. When the congressman realized we had them, he resigned.

Instant messages not emails. As ABC makes clear, there are two different stories. The question is, how many sources?

Clarice picks up the narrative:

As soon as the ABC story ran, and organization called C.R.E.W., which said it had the original exchange which Hastert had heard of and the St Peterburg paper had seen, put them on their website .They said they’d earlier conveyed them to the FBI, were releasing them because of the ABC story, and asked for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the Republican leadership.It is abundantly clear to me that C.R.E.W. and ABC communicated and may have coordinated the release of this story.

CREW is a liberal public interest group funded by George Soros and seems to have its fingerprints all over this scandal.

The question isn’t whether or not Foley is a lowlife pervert who belongs in jail. He does. The question isn’t whether the House leadership did a good enough job with the Foley case when it came to their attention. They probably didn’t.

The real question is if CREW sat on these emails for months with the knowledge that children were at risk on the Hill thanks to stalker Foley. And if CREW knew, why release the raunchy IM now?

For maximum political damage to Republicans, of course. And I would hope that some enterprising reporters and bloggers out there will ferret out the details of this story and bring to light everything that needs to be known.

UPDATE

Tom McGuire, doing what he does best, lays out what we know about this website and has some more information on how the former page’s emails migrated from SSP to the mainstream press:

The River City Mud Bugle has even more backstory:

In a previous Daily Kos diary about Foley, “WHInternNow” made an early attempt to draw attention to Foley’s peccadilloes.

So the Kos Kids acted pretty responsibily under the circumstances for which they should be praised.

Come to think of it…if the Kos Kommunity wasn’t buying Foley as internet stalker, maybe you liberals out there would like to explain to me why the GOP leadership should have been more skeptical about Foley than their most rabid opponents?

After posting my piece on Foley yesterday, I settled back into my recliner to watch a little college football and rest my still sick and weary bones, fighting a chest cold that is hanging on more fiercely than the unhinged left hangs on to the fantasy that Bush stole Ohio in 2004. I was prepared to relax for the rest of the day, napping in between the day games and night games, secure in the knowledge that Saturday’s on the blog are usually quiet and nothing of great import would occur.

What I was not prepared for was the mind boggling assault from lefty commenters that, at various times accused me of 1) supporting pedophilia; 2) defending Foley; 3) trying to “sweep the scandal under the rug;” 4) blaming Democrats for the scandal; 5) apologizing for the GOP leadership who were “obviously” covering up the scandal.

It was that last point that set me off. It appears to me that our friends on the left were guilty of a kind of intellectual flabbiness we’ve become all too familiar with over the last few years. Wild exaggerations, jumping to conclusions, practicing 20/20 hindsight, twisting what people say and write in the most grotesque ways imaginable, and getting the facts of the story so laughably wrong one wonders what matchbook cover school they attended to learn how to read.

From their point of view, it was “obvious” that the GOP leadership, when presented with emails from Foley to a former page and which were examined and evaluated by several newspapers, knew that Foley was an internet stalker of young boys and should have taken action. This despite the fact that those emails were so innocuous that the aforementioned newspapers - including the St. Petersburg Times - saw nothing improper in their content. The Editor for the Times issued a statement in which he said:

There was nothing overtly sexual in the emails, but we assigned two reporters to find out more. We found the Louisiana page and talked with him.He told us Foley’s request for a photo made him uncomfortable so he never responded, but both he and his parents made clear we could not use his name if we wrote a story. We also found another page who was willing to go on the record, but his experience with Foley was different. He said Foley did send a few emails but never said anything in them that he found inappropriate. We tried to find other pages but had no luck. We spoke with Rep. Alexander, who said the boy’s family didn’t want it pursued, and Foley, who insisted he was merely trying to be friendly and never wanted to make the page uncomfortable.

So, what we had was a set of emails between Foley and a teenager, who wouldn’t go on the record about how those emails made him feel. As we said in today’s paper, our policy is that we don’t make accusations against people using unnamed sources. And given the seriousness of what would be implied in a story, it was critical that we have complete confidence in our sourcing. After much discussion among top editors at the paper, we concluded that the information we had on Foley last November didn’t meet our standard for publication. Evidently, other news organizations felt the same way.

So what all my commenters were skewering Republicans for - not censuring Foley and having him thrown in jail - was exactly what several media outlets had decided as well; while inappropriate, there was nothing in those particular emails to that particular page that warranted any other action than what they ended up taking; telling Foley to leave the kid alone.

Now I know the left don’t do nuance but later, as other GOP leaders became aware of the emails and inquired about them, the parents refused permission to have their child’s privacy violated any more. The leadership should certainly be taken to task for being uninformed on this issue - Reynolds and Shimkus are fools not to have told Boehner and Hastert right away - but it appears to be a question of incompetence and not a cover-up.

None of this has anything to do with the dirty IM’s that were released by ABC on Friday. These are two separate and distinct issues - something that the dim bulbs among my commenters have just not been able to wrap their infantile brains around. They believe that since Hastert et al knew about the one incident that they “obviously” (there’s that word again) knew about the others. This flies against the facts as we know them now.

If, as I eventually tired of repeating, it turns out that Hastert and Co. knew of the dirty IM’s THEN OF COURSE THEY SHOULD ALL RESIGN OR BE KICKED OUT AND PROBABLY PROSECUTED FOR OBSTRUCTING JUSTICE.

Similarly, if Democrats knew of the dirty IM’s months ago and were sitting on them in order to release them when they would do maximum political damage, they too should resign and be prosecuted for obstruction.

I don’t imagine any of this will make a difference to those who have the reading comprehension of a Llama or the cognitive skills of a Tapir. They will continue accusing me of excusing this or trying to hide that or maybe of being a pedophile myself. All they’re doing of course is showing how truly clueless they are.

At least when Alice fell down the rabbit hole, she could be reasonably certain that the creatures she met were blessed with some kind of intelligence. Visiting this blog yesterday and reading the comments from leftist twits, I envy Alice her advantage in that regard.

Catchy headline, eh? The point of it is that the netnuts are either implying as much in their criticisms or are actually saying so.

Taylor Marsh: “MARK FOLEY: Just Another Republican Pervert”

John Aravosis: “GOP House page board chair may have helped cover-up Foley scandal.”

Oliver Willis: “Republican Pedophile Scandal: They Knew”

The Democratic Daily: “Got Values? Republican House Leadership Cover Up for Suspected Pervert in Congress”

Facts you say? You want facts? Why in God’s name do you want to ruin a perfectly good scandal 40 days before the election by muddying the waters with a bunch of facts?

Well, maybe we can start with the statement issued by the Chairman of the House Page Board, Representative Shimkus:

“As chairman of the bipartisan House Page Board in late 2005, I was notified by the then Clerk of the House, who manages the Page Program, that he had been told by Congressman Rodney Alexander about an email exchange between Congressman Foley and a former House Page. I took immediate action to investigate the matter.

“In that email exchange, Congressman Foley asked about the former Page’s well-being after Hurricane Katrina and requested a photograph. When asked about the email exchange, Congressman Foley said he expressed concern about the Page’s well-being and wanted a photo to see that the former Page was alright.< [> “Congressman Foley told the Clerk and me that he was simply acting as a mentor to this former House Page and that nothing inappropriate had occurred. Nevertheless, we ordered Congressman Foley to cease all contact with this former House Page to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. We also advised him to be especially mindful of his conduct with respect to current and former House Pages, and he assured us he would do so. I received no subsequent complaints about his behavior nor was I ever made aware of any additional emails.

“It has become clear to me today, based on information I only now have learned, that Congressman Foley was not honest about his conduct.

“As Chairman of the House Page Board, I am working with the Clerk to fully review this incident and determine what actions need to be taken.

The “jumping to conclusions” crowd has ignored this statement and the facts contained therein to accuse the Republican House leadership of covering up the actions of a known pervert. While by any stretch the contact with the page was inappropriate, it hardly rises to the level of “perversion” as it was reported to the Page Board last year and trying to make it seem so is the dirtiest kind of politics.

It disturbs me that the parents of the page did not want to pursue the matter at that time. There are many reasons for that but one that leaps out and begs to be investigated further is if there was pressure put on the parents by Republican members of Congress to drop the matter. Another perfectly logical explanation is that the emails were, in fact, innocent sounding attempts to inquire as to the youth’s well being and the parents were satisfied with the Congressman’s explanation.

But why let common sense or common decency for that matter spoil a good smear campaign? The muddy hoofprints left by Democrats over the last few years as they have dirtied the reputations of several Republicans who have later turned out to be innocent (Karl Rove in Plamegate for one) reveals a party so totally bereft of ideas that their only hope to take advantage of the monumentally stupid and disastrous Republican leadership is to pray for more Americans to die in Iraq and Afghanistan, hope that gas prices go higher, and wish for an economic downturn. Even with Republicans as weak and vulnerable as they have been in a generation or more, the Democrats still could lose thanks to a party so intellectually bankrupt and morally ambivalent that they can’t bring themselves to tell the American people the truth about their cut and run strategy in Iraq or that they fully intend to initiate impeachment proceedings against the President of the United States at the earliest possible moment after they achieve power in the House.

It is clear from the polls that the American people are so fed up with Republicans that this summer, they turned toward the Democrats to see what they had to offer in the way of new ideas and new leadership. What they got was a blend of deranged Bush bashing, conspiracy mongering, and outright lies about their intentions. This latest Republican scandal will probably not amount to much (despite the efforts of the netnuts to make it into something larger than it is as they tried to do with the Gannon/Guckert affair) which means that as the American people continue to implore the Democrats to give them something that they can vote for, all they do is remind the country why they have lost so many previous elections in the first place.

UPDATE

As is usual when TBogg links here, the knuckledraggers with IQ’s smaller than their penis length swarm my site and spit vulgarity in the comments section with a regularity that makes me think they are either under 10 years of age or have the same familiarity with the English language than they do with the ideas of Proust or Kierkegaard - or Donald Duck for that matter.

I will brook no vulgarity (save mine) in the comments. If that doesn’t sit well with you, eat me.

Secondly, here is the sum total of what is known about GOP leadership knowledge of Foley’s perversion:

Shimkus recalled that when he initially questioned Foley about the e-mails, the congressman assured him that he was “simply acting as a mentor” and that “nothing inappropriate had occurred.”

Foley said he was e-mailing to find out if the teenager was OK after Hurricane Katrina and “wanted a photo to see that the former page was all right,” Shimkus said.

Foley was ordered to have no further contact with the former page and advised “to be especially mindful of his conduct,” Shimkus said.

“And he assured us he would do so,” Shimkus’ statement added. “I received no subsequent complaints about his behavior nor was I ever made aware of any additional e-mails.”

In his e-mails, Foley purportedly asked the page to send a picture of himself to the congressman, asked the teen what he wanted for his birthday and made comments about another former page in which Foley allegedly said he acted “much older than his age” and was “in really great shape.” (More details)

Some GOP leaders knew of contact

An aide to Rep. Tom Reynolds, the New York congressman who heads the National Republican Campaign Committee, said he knew about the matter a year ago.

The GOP panel coordinates election efforts for House Republicans, who now must find a candidate to replace Foley in Florida’s 16th District, six weeks before the election.

Majority Leader John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, learned about the contacts from Louisiana Rep. Alexander in the spring, said Boehner’s spokesman, Kevin Madden.

“It was Congressman Alexander’s opinion that the contact was not of a professional nature,” Madden said.

Now I realize how eager many of you are to connect all these dots and start accusing people of all sorts of conpsiracies to keep this thing quiet. And I will happily join you in hanging by their toes the entire Republican leadership if it turns out that they knew more than what is reported here and failed to do anything.

But people - there is no “there” there. All you have to ponder at the moment is the very good question of what did they know and when did they know it. Nowhere in my post do I say that we shouldn’t get to the bottom of this (as one idiotic mouthbreather suggested breathlessly in the comments - so pleased with himself that he could string more than 4 words together and make a sentence) and in fact, I open a whole other line of questioning that even you netnuts have failed to highlight - the possibility of obstruction of justice by GOP members who worked to keep the parents of the boy whose case came before the Page board quiet.

But the fact of the matter is all you are doing at the moment is engaged in a gigantic smear campaign. Period. There is no argument there because the facts are, at the moment, unknown. You have jumped the gun making the wildest of charges without any knowledge whatsoever of the facts and all it does is expose you for the brutish louts you truly are.

Keep it clean or begone.

UPDATE II

My good friend and fellow American Thinker contributor Clarice Feldman left a comment that deserves to be elevated for greater readability. It is, something of an eye popper:

Reportedly the St Pete Times had the same information in August 2005 and wrote nothing about it either, apparently because the emails do not constitute illegal conduct, they are just creepy, and the boy’s parents did not wish to pursue this.

Pardon an old lady’s suspicions. I’ve seen this dance too many times before.

I read this morning that a Monroe, LA newspaper also had the story and didn’t run with it because there appeared to be no impropriety.

And one more point that our dimwitted lefty friends can’t seem to wrap their miniscule brains around; the incident that was brought to the attention of the Page Board is unconnected to any of the raunchy, sick emails ABC news got from, as Clarice informs us, CREW.

Why the release of the emails and IM’s now is a question that answers itself 40 days before an election. And if it turns out that the GOP leadership is blameless in this - if Foley carried on his perversions in secret with only the terrified children knowing of his activities - then the question rightly arises why a Democrat connected organization allowed someone they knew as a pervert to continue to stalk children in the House of Representatives, failing to release the information until maximum political damage could be done to the opposition.

It would be too much of a stretch to believe that Bob Woodward is in cahoots with the Democrats and has timed the release of his new book State of Denial for any other reason save the fact that political books are best published during the political season.

That said, it is fascinating to see the Democrats and the press leap upon this book like ravenous beasts, eagerly pointing out this little tidbit and that in order to “prove” something. What they are trying to prove is a mystery since from what I can gather from this story in the New York Times, there are absolutely no factual revelations contained between its covers. Instead, we have a typical Woodward book that gives us all the gossipy details of history in the making; what were people thinking and feeling as the Iraq War went to hell in a handbasket.

In fact, as is Woodward’s wont, he has relied on unsurpassed access to policymakers who for one reason or another, spill the chatty details about who they like, who they hate, why someone is strange or weird or just plain awful. They highlight their little stories by illustrating their points with vignettes of what goes on behind the scenes when high matters of state are being decided. Dishing dirt on co-workers may not be very elevating but it makes for damn fine reading.

Woodward then takes this raw material and fashions a narrative that is at once both gossipy and historical - an instant classic inside the beltway where people are always interested in gossip about politicians and their fellow travellers.

In this respect, Woodward will always be a highbrow Kitty Kelly, never quite descending into the personal muck that Kelly eagerly wallows in but at the same time, giving us the same angles and views of the high and mighty that Kelly so relishes. Both writers expose the powerful in ways that bring them down to the level of the rest of us by ripping aside the mystique of high office to reveal the petty, the quirky, the personality conflicts, and - dare I say it - the humanity of our national leaders.

The problem is that once you’ve read one Woodward book and the technique becomes familiar, most intelligent readers will start asking basic questions. How does he get those long, extended quotes from conversations between principals? How can he possibly know this particular detail of what someone else was thinking? Woodward’s books are usually riveting affairs because he has a reporters eye for important details and a novelist’s flair for making those details interesting. The question ultimately arises then; does he ever get his two personae confused? Does he try and logically extrapolate what was said or thought from known facts? Or does he truly have people on record revealing such intimate details of their thoughts and reactions?

Here’s Woodward himself on how he is able to write the way he does:

Woodward says that people talk to him because they know he has the time to get it right — which is also part of the reason these seemingly unattainable sources show him a little leg. “I have the significant luxury of time, which enables me to really look at something in depth,” he says. “I can go to people and then go to other people, and then go back and track and try to develop a documentary trail. I have time; most reporters don’t have time. Like you, for instance,” he said to me, “when you called me you said you had a tight deadline [for this story]. I don’t have that.”

It sounds plausible but it doesn’t answer some critics who believe he has actually fabricated some of the more noteworthy incidents in some of his books. Perhaps most famously, his 1987 book Veil which chronicled the extraordinary exploits (and crimes) of William Casey’s CIA, Woodward claims to have visited Casey on his deathbed in a hospital and gotten a confession from him that he knew about the transfer of funds from Iran to the Contras in Nicaragua. Casey’s widow stated that Woodward could not possibly have gotten access to her dying husband at that time - especially with a cadre of FBI agents guarding the Director’s door.

Somehow, this kind of thing has never damaged Woodward’s credibility. His eye opening books on the Clinton presidency - the towering rages by Clinton, the fights with Hillary, a cowed and brutalized staff - made for fascinating reading. But again, there really were no earth shattering revelations regarding policy or world events. Instead, the reader was treated to a front row seat at the greatest show on earth - how the powerful behave in various circumstances and the fact that they truly are no more or less human than the rest of us.

Woodward’s latest effort in this regard happens to arrive on book shelves at a very inopportune moment for the Administration. Just as the Republicans are making some headway in focusing attention on the fact that voting Democratic in November means handing the reins of power to politicans who have yet to annunciate anything approaching a policy on Iraq, the War on Terror, or homeland security, people are reminded once again what a truly botched effort the Iraq War has been and that the principals involved either through overweening hubris or tragic miscalculation quite simply blew it.

This hasn’t stopped the New York Times (who apparently got an advance copy - even before the Post was able to serialize the book prior to publication) from breathlessly reporting as “news” those facts which are already well known and whose only shock value will be in the way they are reported not that there is anything revelatory about them. In this respect, the Times and other news organs do the Democratic party a favor by going “green” and recycling - not to conserve but rather to destroy.

For instance:

* Did we know the White House was warned that we would need hundreds of thousands of more troops in Iraq in order to get control of the country following the invasion? Perhaps we should ask General Shineski who testified before Congress and sounded that very warning.

* Did we know that Rumsfeld mismanaged the occupation and reconstruction? One need only look at Iraq today in order to draw that conclusion.

* Did we know that Rummy had lost credibility with the Generals by last fall? I guess the Times doesn’t read their own newspaper very often because that fact has been widely reported.

* Did we know that the Administration was in a state of denial about the insurgency? This is a little trickier because again, the Times would have to read their own newspaper to see the 180 degree change in policy regarding how we were fighting the insurgency in the spring of 2004 compared to the previous summer.

What we are treated to and told is “news” are all the little gossipy details like the fact that Rummy hated Condi and wouldn’t return her calls unless the President told him to or that Cheney was obsessed with proving that WMD’s existed in Iraq by going so far as calling David Kay, who was in charge of finding Saddam’s weapons, in the middle of the night to give him satellite coordinates of a place to look for them. (Now what does that do to the moonbat theory that we absolutely knew there were no WMD’s in Iraq and invaded anyway?)

As an inside look at the Bush Administration, I have little doubt that Woodward’s book will be an entertaining read. But its political utility will be to block the small amount of momentum that Republicans had been gathering this month in their efforts to keep control of the House and Senate not by revealing anything new but by dressing up old news in the latest anti-Bush couture.

UPDATE

Allah describes the impact of the book in much more apocalyptic terms and is filled with “heart-ache.”

I hadn’t read the Daily News blurb about Tenet coming to Rice in July of 2001 begging for funds to go after Bin Laden. If true, all it does in my mind is add to the ongoing argument about how responsible Bush or Clinton was for 9/11. And, of course, going after al-Qaeda at that point would not have stopped the 9/11 plot which was ready to step off, only needing a the Saudi muscle guys to show up in America and a firm date (the date was set in early August).

As for the descriptions of Rummy, this again is nothing new. He’s an incompetent fool and Republicans on the Hill who didn’t join with Democrats in getting this guy kicked out should be ashamed of themselves. When the investigations into what’s gone wrong in Iraq begin, we will not have to look any farther than Rumsefeld’s extraordinary mismanagement of the entire occupation. One disasterous decision after another while going before the American people and telling us how rosy things really were.

The gossip dished on Rumsfeld in the book will reveal nothing we didn’t know about him already. And I will reiterate what I said above; the impact of this book will not be in anything new but in how it is being reported. In that respect, it may, as Allah thinks, be something of an earthquake. More likely, it will stall the Republican comeback and cost some GOP representatives their seats. And in a close race like this one, that may be enough to tip the balance toward the Democrats in the House.

Robert Kagan asks, “How do you count the number of terrorists?”

According to the Times, the report is agnostic on whether another terrorist attack is more or less likely. Rather, its authors claim that the war has increased the number of potential terrorists. Unfortunately, neither The Post nor the Times provides any figures to support this. Does the NIE? Or are its authors simply assuming that because Muslims have been angered by the war, some percentage of them must be joining the ranks of terrorists?

As a poor substitute for actual figures, The Post notes that, according to the NIE, members of terrorist cells post messages on their Web sites depicting the Iraq war as “a Western attempt to conquer Islam.” No doubt they do. But to move from that observation to the conclusion that the Iraq war has increased the terrorist threat requires answering a few additional questions: How many new terrorists are there? How many of the new terrorists became terrorists because they read the messages on the Web sites? And of those, how many were motivated by the Iraq war as opposed to, say, the war in Afghanistan, or the Danish cartoons, or the Israel-Palestine conflict, or their dislike for the Saudi royal family or Hosni Mubarak, or, more recently, the comments of the pope?

Interesting, isn’t it? This is what the National Intelligence Estimate has to say about increased numbers of jihadists:

* Although we cannot measure the extent of the spread with precision, a large body of all-source reporting indicates that activists identifying themselves as jihadists, although a small percentage of Muslims, are increasing in both number and geographic dispersion.

* If this trend continues, threats to US interests at home and abroad will become more diverse, leading to increasing attacks worldwide.

In other words, we don’t know how many jihadists there are, but we know that their number is increasing. Okay, I’ll accept that. We can’t possibly know the sources and methods used to calculate those facts so we just have to believe that our analysts know what they are talking about.

How do we know that the reason there are more jihadists is because of our blundering around in Iraq? Let’s go to the NIE:

We assess that the Iraq jihad is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives; perceived jihadist success there would inspire more fighters to continue the struggle elsewhere.

* 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.

In other words, there are several reasons why jihadists become radicalized and the Iraq War - while being a “cause celebre” for international jihadism - is only one of them. Better yet, is there any way to measure the effect of the Iraq War on the recruitment of jihadis specifically?

All very good questions that the press and the Democrats are ignoring this morning in their haste to use the NIE for their own political purposes. And as I said yesterday, the narrative on what this report contains is just about set and no amount of research or analysis will be able to counter the political effects of its release.

This is not to say we shouldn’t accept some of the report’s basic conclusions; that the number of terrorists is growing, that they are less centralized and therefore harder to kill, and that our confronting the jihadis in Iraq has thrown up new leaders in the movement and they are being shaped by the conflict there.

These are the headlines we’re reading this morning. But also contained in the NIE are some interesting tidbits that have been deliberately buried - especially by Democrats - because highlighting them would undercut their critique of the war.

For instance, the NIE points out that staying in Iraq and somehow achieving the goal of a forming a Democratic Iraq would mean fewer terrorists would be created:

Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight.

The flip side of that argument is that leaving Iraq will create more terrorists than staying. The report points out that “perceived jihadist success there (Iraq) would inspire more fighters to continue the struggle elsewhere.”

In fact, the report would seem to validate the Administration’s main anti-terrorism aim of democratization:

If democratic reform efforts in Muslim majority nations progress over the next five years, political participation probably would drive a wedge between intransigent extremists and groups willing to use the political process to achieve their local objectives. Nonetheless, attendant reforms and potentially destabilizing transitions will create new opportunities for jihadists to exploit.

The wild spin on this report coming from Democrats completely ignores the consequences of an Iraq pullout as far as creating even more terrorists and the potential war-winning strategy of democratization - something they have been telling us for years is doomed to failure.

In other words, it is not the President’s policy of invasion, occupation, and democratization in Iraq that has been wrong, it is the Democrat’s counter strategy of leaving Iraq too soon and abandoning or downgrading democratization efforts that runs counter to the report’s analysis, conclusions, and recommendations.

The Editors at NRO:

In explaining that only selective parts of the NIE were leaked, director of national intelligence John Negroponte noted: “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.”

Winning, however, is something Democrats rarely talk about. The NIE leak was an occasion for even more defeatism from the party that, insofar as it offers any distinct policy prescriptions for Iraq, advocates a premature withdrawal that would only ensure defeat. That would be the ultimate jihadi recruiting tool. Terrorists would be emboldened by their victory — since they are always more aggressive when we appear to be the “weak horse,” in bin Laden’s phrase — and would perhaps control some or most of Iraq as a base of operations.

Properly understood, the NIE leak confirms President Bush’s argument that Iraq is an important front in the War on Terror, and that achieving victory there is essential.

The President’s policy is correct; it is the implementation of that policy that has been badly botched.

This would seem to leave a political opening of gargantuan proportions for the Democrats. All they have to do is tell us how they would win the war in Iraq, right?

Instead, we hear nothing about attempting to win the war but rather how to lose it in as painless a way as possible. Withdrawing our forces based on an arbitrary timetable that bears no relationship whatsoever to how the Iraqi government is doing in bringing stability and democracy to that country is a strategy that runs 180 degrees counter to what the NIE report recommends. And yet, according to the Washington Post, Democratic members of Congress have had this report since April and still insist on promoting a policy of withdrawal:

Copies of the NIE were sent to the House and Senate intelligence, armed services and foreign affairs committees at the time, through normal electronic information channels available to all members, intelligence and congressional sources said. It arrived at the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on April 26.

In the House, “there was a bit of a snafu with this particular document,” said a spokesman for Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the intelligence committee chairman. “We had a massive computer failure on our classified side.” The first that the committee knew of its existence was late last week, when “it was requested specifically by a member. That was when it was found and scanned into our system.”

Whether the document was ignored or disappeared into cyberspace, however, it seemed to have made little impact on Capitol Hill at the time. No one in either chamber, on either side of the aisle, requested a briefing or any further information on its conclusions until now, the sources said.

The fact that the report has been available to Democrats on the Hill since April begs the question; who leaked it and why now? After all, there apparently is nothing much new in the document:

The intelligence community has had its own problems with the attention the document is now receiving. Several active and retired intelligence officials stressed that the judgments were nothing new and followed a series of similar assessments made since early 2003 about the impact of the Iraq war on global terrorism.

“This is very much mainstream stuff,” said Paul R. Pillar, the CIA’s national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005. “There are no surprises.”

The only possible conclusion one can draw is the one that President Bush mentioned yesterday; that the leaking of this document was a political hit job designed to give Democrats ammunition for the November elections.

The leak comes at a time when Republicans have built some momentum and are trying to scratch and claw their way back into the race for control of the House of Representatives. Through this leak and the creation of the “instant narrative” that Iraq was a “mistake” (the report doesn’t say that anywhere) and that because of Iraq the United States is “less safe” (again, the report is silent on that issue), the Democrats are attempting to blunt the “terrorism card” that the GOP has used to trump the Democrats in the last two elections.

Will it work? The narrative has had a head start of 4 days. It will be very difficult to overcome the spin being put out by Democrats and argue about the report on the merits of what it actually says.

UPDATE

Ed Morrissey and I are on the same wavelength this morning:

This is why we have to endure the Iraqi “jihad” until we succeed. The insurgency will collapse when Iraqis grow strong enough to defend themselves and rebuild their infrastructure in peace. In fact, no other strategy could possibly address factors one and three. Even if we packed up and walked out of Iraq, those factors would still exist — as they have for decades — and the fourth factor would remain from our economic engagement with the oppressive regimes that control the region. We have an opportunity to address all four factors by prevailing in Iraq.

What do the Democrats offer? Withdrawal from the one theater in which we face our terrorist enemy and the one place that has to replace a missing tyrant. If we continue our resolve, we can firm up a democracy as Saddam’s replacement and begin to address the factors that drive jihadism. As the NIE concludes, a victory in Iraq would seriously damage the radical Islamist movement, perhaps even mortally. We have no chance to strike a blow against them by retreating. Democrats have badly misrepresented this report and offer the one solution guaranteed to result in making the problem worse — as the NIE also concludes.

I can see why the President wanted the National Intelligence Estimate on Terrorism declassified: it gives a little context to the sensational conclusions that our anti-terror policy has created more terrorists and placed the United States in greater danger.

For instance; news reports never mentioned that the 16 agencies involved in compiling the NIE basically agree that democratization is the correct policy:

* Greater pluralism and more responsive political systems in Muslim majority nations would alleviate some of the grievances jihadists exploit. Over time, such progress, together with sustained, multifaceted programs targeting the vulnerabilities of the jihadist movement and continued pressure on al-Qa’ida, could erode support for the jihadists.

Funny how that never made it into the Times. (AP either)

And then there’s this:

* If democratic reform efforts in Muslim majority nations progress over the next five years, political participation probably would drive a wedge between intransigent extremists and groups willing to use the political process to achieve their local objectives. Nonetheless, attendant reforms and potentially destabilizing transitions will create new opportunities for jihadists to exploit.

Also, the report makes clear that part of the problem has been a result of some of our success; that the reason the jihadists have become so diffuse is because we’ve taken away their main sanctuaries - although we may want to revisit that question in a year or so and see how Pakistan and Afghanistan are turning out.

I also found this interesting:

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. Iraq Jihad

3. The slow pace of real and sustained economic, social, political reforms in many Muslim majority nations; and

4. A pervasive Anti-US sentiment among most Muslims all of which jihadists exploit.

In other words, Iraq is only part of the reason for the growth of jihad. A large part to be sure. And a place where our intelligence people believe the next generation of terrorists are getting training and experience right now. But it kind of knocks the chocks from underneath the position that pulling out of Iraq (or not going into Iraq in the first place) would have made much difference.

One question not addressed by this or any other analysis I’ve ever seen is this; how many terrorist recruits were there after 9/11? After Madrid? After London or Bali or Egypt or any other successful attack?

Does a terrorist success breed more jihadists?

As long as we’re using common sense here, my answer to that; there are a lot of people who want to play with the winning team.

An interesting analysis would be if you could find out the number of recruits who signed up following the spectacular success of 9/11 and compare it to when we bombed the snot out of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and kicked Osama and Omar out. Would there be a significant difference? Would more oppressed, anti-US jihadists sign up after a Muslim defeat? Or would more recruits flock to al-Qaeda’s banner after a surge in Muslim pride following a 9/11 type attack?

No answers, of course. I’m just throwing the questions out there for discussion.

BTW - I don’t think the declassification of this report is going to stop the Democrats or the press from drawing whatever conclusions they wish. The narrative is pretty well set now and it will be very difficult to counter with what the report actually said. As we know, the report categorically did not say that going into Iraq was a mistake - which is something I’ve seen on more than one lefty website in the last couple of days. In fact, reading the entire report, it doesn’t even hint that. If anything, it makes that case that invasion and democratization of Iraq is a wash.

But the troubling aspect of the report to me is the continuing diffusion of jihadists and their spread in numbers and locations around the world. This does not bode well for tracking and capturing the bad guys unless we really start to get stronger international cooperation from other intelligence and police services.

Much to ponder in the reports contents. I’ll be interested to hear what some of our more thoughtful commenters (Andy!) have to say.

UPDATE: WAS THE LEAK POLITICALLY MOTIVATED?

You’re kidding, right?

The NIE was circulated last April. It takes a while to make it through the bureaucracy what with all the people that shouldn’t be seeing it getting a good look at it. Information is power in Washington and people who are continually judging their status in the bureaucratic hierarchy by who is in the know on some things and who isn’t make sure they see the conclusions of the NIE at the very least.

That said, I think it very likely that the partisans who first leaked the existence of the NIE were hoping to hold off until the middle of October before dumping it on the public. As it is, someone may have wanted to blunt any possible momentum the Republicans may have been generating since early this month and thought that now was as good a time as any.

President Bush is convinced:

Bush charged at the news conference that political opponents leaked select parts of the National Intelligence Estimate to media organizations last weekend “to create confusion in the minds of the American people” in the weeks before the Nov. 7 mid-term elections.

“Somebody has taken it upon themselves to leak classified information for political purposes,” Bush said. “I think it’s a bad habit for our government to declassify every time there is a leak.”

Timing is everything in politics. We’ll see how the timing of the leak in this case plays itself out.

UPDATE II

Michelle Malkin wonders will our intel agencies ever get it when it comes to the historical hatred of the west by radical Muslims:

Putting aside how the outdated portions still refers to Zarqawi in the present tense, the big thing that strikes me about the key judgements is that they reflect a dhimmi, historically ignorant view of jihad more suited for the moonbat Left than our premier intelligence agencies.

[snip]

Not a word about the 1,400-year-plus history of Islamic hostility to the West or Islamic imperialism from time immemorial or the Koran-inspired war on infidels–long, long before there was a United States and “pervasive anti-US sentiment.”

Remember what I said yesterday?

If our intelligence agencies are laboring under the moonbat illusion that Muslim hatred of the infidel West didn’t really start bubbling until the year 2003, we are really in deep, deep doo-doo.

Now I know we have some very smart and learned people working in our intelligence agencies. And I suspect that somewhere in that NIE - still classified for some reason - would be an analysis of historical/political roots of conflict between the Muslim world and the west. But Malkin has a point. Dumping this thing piecemeal on the public as first the leak from last weekend did and now the Administration scrambling to give a little more context doesn’t enlighten anyone. How do our agencies “count” jihadists in order to come up with the idea that their numbers are increasing as a result of the Iraq War? Why not Afghanistan as I asked above? Or because of their successes in the last few years?

Lots of questions and no good answers…

I predicted this last May:

And unless significant progress has been made in Iraq by next summer, I have no doubt that the Democrats would seek to pull a Viet Nam and try to cut off funding for our operations there. At the very least, they will seek to gain control of the conflict in some way by using the power of the purse strings.

Charlie Rangel, who would take over the powerful Ways and Means Committee if the Democrats were to win the House in November, said this recently and reported by The Hill today:

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) will chair the powerful Ways and Means Committee if Democrats win control of the House next year, but his main goal in 2007 does not fall within his panel’s jurisdiction.

“I can’t stop this war,” a frustrated Rangel said in a recent interview, reiterating his vow to retire from Congress if Democrats fall short of a majority in the House.

But when pressed on how he could stop the war even if Democrats control the House during the last years of President Bush’s second term, Rangel paused before saying, “You’ve got to be able to pay for the war, don’t you?”

Rangel’s views on funding the war are shared by many of his colleagues – especially within the 73-member Out of Iraq Caucus.

Some Democratic legislators want to halt funding for the war immediately, while others say they would allocate money for activities such as reconstruction, setting up international security forces, and the ultimate withdrawal of U.S. troops.

“Personally, I wouldn’t spend another dime [on the war,]” said Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.).

This is why the Democratic Party is the biggest bunch of snivelling cowards on the planet.

Knowing full well that they would lose votes if this position was made part of their campaign strategy (and probably energize the GOP base to boot), they are seeking to cover up their true intentions if they manage to win through in November:

Having lost the last two elections in part because of national security issues, Democratic leaders have been reluctant to spell out their exact Iraq war funding strategy.

“I don’t think the Democratic leadership should put that out at the moment,” Woolsey said.

But Democratic leaders will be under tremendous pressure from campaign donors and activists to take bold steps on Iraq should they be setting the legislative agenda in the 110th Congress.

“If we have the majority, it’ll be because of Iraq,” said Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii).

If what Abercrombie says is true, why hide the fact that Democrats want to cut off funding for our troops in the field? Why not spell out to the American people exactly how Democrats are going to end the war? After all, if the polls are to be believed, this is what the American people want - to leave Iraq. Why the subterfuge?

The reason is that the Democrats know full well that even though support for the way the Administration is waging the war is at just about rock bottom, only 17% of Americans believe we should leave immediately while another 31% want the troops home in 12 months time according to the latest Gallup poll (Must watch ad for access to premium content). What’s more, 51% of Americans believe we should stay as long as it takes or even send more troops to get the job done.

This is why the Democrats must cower in the shadows without revealing their true Iraq policy.

And let’s not forget the pressure on the Democrat’s new majority from “party activists” who will almost certainly take credit (deserved or not) for the victory. They will not only want an immediate Iraq exit but also an immediate impeachment inquiry in the Judiciary Committee. For that, I’m sure putative Committee chairman John Conyers will be more than happy to oblige.

Why can’t the Democrats be proud of what they’re about to do and announce it to the world? Why sneak around behind the voter’s backs?

The reason is that they are so confused about what the best political strategy would be that they are torn between satisfying their shrieking base who are screaming for us to get out of Iraq and acting like responsible adults who realize there is a war on:

Abercrombie stressed that Democrats are not going to sever funding for the troops. Cutting off funding is “easy to say and another thing to do,” according to Abercrombie.

What’s more like likely, he said, is to fund the conflict in a way that will end the war by reallocating money to new initiatives.

“We’re going to continue to give the troops everything they need,” said Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

A House Democratic leadership aide said, “The bottom line is that should Democrats regain the House, Democrats will leave no soldier left behind in Iraq. As long as there’s soldiers in the battlefield, funding will continue.”

Well, which is it? “reallocate” money or give the troops everything they need to continue the fighting? Not even the leadership can tell you.

Could the Republicans use Democratic confusion on what to do about Iraq? Not if they’re smart. The word “Iraq” is not being uttered much by Republicans who prefer “The War on Terror” as a catch all for our efforts against global jihadism. In this respect, Republicans are playing their own little political games with Iraq policy although with few exceptions, Republicans have made it crystal clear that they prefer staying until the Iraqis can protect themselves.

Iraq withdrawal and impeachment are both explosive issues to be sure. But considering the impact on the country, don’t you think that the Democrats should make it absolutely clear about their intentions before the American people vote for them?