The recent leak of the NIE report on terrorism was immediately hailed as a fatal blow to Bush's policies regarding Iraq and terrorism.

The report seemed to suggest that all the efforts to the contrary have made terrorism worse.   I have not researched it fully, but here are a couple links about it

NIE: Ending 12-Year Iraqi Quagmire Made Terrorism Worse

About that leaked NIE ‘report’

What has made this curious to me is some of the odd reactions this report leak has generated.

I expected Bush to refute it, as he has done according to MSNBC.  But he has gone further and that is surprising.  He wants to declassify more of it.

Consider this:  If the report is that damning, if it shows Bush as espousing policies that are so damaging to world peace, then why is Bush currently pushing to declassify it?  The Media has latched on to selected leaked passages but Bush wants to release more that I assume will provide a wider context.

The implication is that the whole report carries a different tone then some cherry picked passages. 

But then I read that the House wanted to discuss the report in a secret session before releasing it, and immediate the "aha!" light lite.   The Republicans are scared of it, and want to suppress it, was my first thought.

Err....no.  The demand to discuss it secretly was spearheaded by Nancy Pelosi, the minority leader.

Huh?  The house has not had a secret session since 1983, so I am unsure why they need one now.  But more interestingly, why do the Democrats want one if the report is so clearly critical of Bush.

Honestly this makes no sense at all.

Democrats failed Tuesday to push the House into an unusual secret session to discuss a classified intelligence analysis on global terrorism that says the Iraq war is nourishing a new generation of extremist operatives.

The proposal from House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was denied by a vote of 171-217. Such a session hasn't happened in the House since July 1983, when the chamber went into a closed session to discuss the United States' support for paramilitary operations in Nicaragua. 

In an interview with The Associated Press, Pelosi said the secret session was needed to allow members to better understand the intelligence community's most recent assessment on global terrorism, some of which leaked to the news media over the weekend.

According to media reports, the intelligence estimate "is the administration's worst nightmare. It is not a corroboration of what the president is saying. It is a contradiction of what the president is saying," she said.

So why the need to discuss it in secret?

The House has only had five closed sessions since 1812, according to the Congressional Research Service.

In the Senate, any single member can take the chamber into closed session. As a result, the chamber has held several dozen secret sessions since 1929, including one last November called by Democrats who wanted to discuss the intelligence used by President Bush in the run-up to the Iraq war.

Pelosi surprised even most of her fellow Democrats in offering the motion. She said she was not trying to use the closed session for political purposes, but rather to discuss a serious assessment that is relevant to Iraq and U.S. national security. She wants to see the administration declassify the document _ without using a selective lens.

"Quite frankly, my view is that any responsible declassification will change the course of this debate on Iraq," she said.

I hope more details and explanations are forthcoming, but frankly I just have to sit here bemused.  I just don't understand.

Even Michelle Malkin was reduced to a single word comment:

Pelosi: Behind closed doors

Hmm 

The whole business however does remind us that the media has their own agenda for reporting news. After all, this started due to yet another information leak.

Sister Toldjah sums it up this way:

Isn’t it a shame in this country that in a time of war, the MSM and their Democrat pals work so hard to undermine that war with illegal leaks to the point that the WH feels it has to declassify items that really should remain classified for national security concerns in order to refute the leakers? Pathetic.

Were it only one report and leak I might disagree, but some in the media, like the NY Times have had a consistent pattern of trying to release and publicize and secrets they can find, and more then a few successes and it is troubling that they seem to have no concept of national security, or any apparent comprehension of the potential repercussions.  Are we ready to forget the Quron Flushing fiasco so soon?

More to be told here I am sure...

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