And here is a strange press release from the Defense Department saying that the leaked memo or annex, while prepared in response to a Congressional request and ok’d by the Intel community, was only raw data and did not draw conclusions. The conclusions are those of the author of the article on the memo, Stephen Hayes.

Looks like more intramural warfare in the administration.

http://www.dod.mil/releases/2003/nr20031115-0642.html

I had wondered about this. There have been a number of reports that some of the Iraq war supporters were cherry-picking raw data to support their cause, and doing an end run around the CIA analysis that would conclude whether or not the data was any good.

Here is an interesting article from the New Yorker:

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?031027fa_fact

Everyone cherry-picks intelligence information. That is standard proceedure.

Quoting the leftist New Yorker is odd.

Notice once again the fine political touch of the Bush administration. First, the memo surfaces showing the democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee are treating the Committee as a pure theatre of partisanship and their demands for evidence about the prewar state of knowledge are only cover for an attempt to set up an issue. Then, the memo showing tantalizing hints of extensive Al Qaeda - Iraq cooperation, and possibly even Iraqi control of operations suddenly leaks, after the democrats have been “pre - discredited.” Now anyone could reasonably have assumed extensive cooperation, knowing the nature of Islamic ressentiment, and sure enough it has begun to surface. Whereas earlier the FBI sought to throw cold water on reports of Mohammed Atta’s meeting with a senior Iraqi intelligence official in Prague, now those meetings are being suggested as having occurred. I believe we will see much more evidence as we get closer to the elections showing the Saddam was closely involved for a decade or more. This will leave the left and the anti-war right looking quite stupid.

Is Thucydides suggesting the Adminstration is playing rope-a-dope with the Dems? That is, deliberately withholding information on terrorist ties and WMDs in order to sucker the Dems into attacking the Administration, and then discrediting the Dems with further evidence? That would be an awfully complicated game to maintain control of. Also it would be terribly irresponsible to withhold information from the public, get the whole world insanely riled up about the lack of WMDs and so on, and then reveal the information at a later point to produce maximium impact. I doubt that they’re that Macchiavellian or that smart.

No rope - a - dope here. It is just necessary to carry out very thorough and careful investigation of matters of such importance. It would be irresponsible to put forth results prematurely. Nope, it is circumstances themselves that will entrap the democrats, who seem to always operate on what seems immediate or short term political advantage. They have rushed to bash Bush over the war, pandering to their constituencies, heedless of what the completion of thorough investigations could show. However, it is a fair inference that Saddam was dabbling in surreptitious terror, and this inference is only bolstered by various Iraqi fingerprints on the first World Trade bombing and on Oklahoma City. Indeed, it would be astonishing if Saddam had not been involved. Liberals however have such an unrealistic view of human nature and the character of people like Saddam that they are stumbling into a very bad situation.

Further to the FBI’s throwing cold water on the Atta meeting with a top Iraqi intelligence official in Prague, Andrew Sullivan posits that there is a cover-your-rear movement within our government bureaucracies going on, citing Epstein’s piece in Slate. Thus it may be that our investigative and intelligence agencies are taking pains to obscure information available pre-war and pre-9/11 showing Iraqi state involvement.