::::::::

Now, the question is, was it leaked as red-meat bait to take Dems and progressives off-guard?

Bush, in a joint press conference with Afghan President Hamid Kharzai, announced that he had directed National Intelligence Director, John Negroponte to declassify the document.

Of course, it will be a redacted document. Bush made it clear that information that could reveal source information would be excluded.

Shall we trust Bush and Negroponte to declassify all the information in the document? That's for each of us to decide.

My guess is this new chess move will embarass Democrats and help Republicans. One must wonder whether this two step process-- the leak, then the de-classification was a two step gambit strategized by Karl Rove.

I guess we should add this to my growing collection of "call me paranoid" conspiracy theory article.

But on this one, I'm not alone, In his artice, Beware the NIE, Robert Dreyfus writes

In their eagerness to knock down Bush's war in Iraq by using reports about the NIE, the Democrats risk giving another boost to the president in the "other" war, namely, the so-called war on terrorism. By embracing the NIE's reported conclusion that the war in Iraq has made the threat of terrorism worse, the Democrats play into Bush’s strong suit. While most Americans think that the war in Iraq is wrong and not worth fighting, polls continue to show that support for President Bush as the commander in chief of the Global War on Terror. Ironically, by endorsing the idea that radical Islamist terrorism is a major threat to the United States, the Democrats could end up driving U.S. voters into the arms of the president once again.

Since August, the president and his political team have been trying to "change the subject" from Iraq, where they are weak, to terrorism, where they believe that they are strong. By provoking sharp controversies over issues such as electronic surveillance by the National Security Agency and by aggressively asserting the need to torture terrorist detainees, the White House has sought to put Democrats on the defensive, portraying them as lily-livered vacillators unwilling to take ugly but necessary steps against the terrorist enemy. So far, whether this cynical (and un-American) strategy is working isn’t clear. But the image of the president as terrorist-fighter is a powerful one, still.

The Democrats had better be smart and nimble on this one. And they should expect more of this kind of machination from the Republicans. The Republicans have the advantage of holding the white house, the congress, the military, the Intelligence agencies, the mainstream media-- and they are surely going to use all of them, through leaks, through statements by generals and heads of government agencies.

Me, I don't trust Bush's generals or his appointees. I think they lie for him. Even COlin Powell compromised his integrity for Bush. Somehow, the Dems need to get the American public to view any report from Bush's government with distrust.

Authors Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.

Rob Kall Wikipedia Page

Rob Kall's Bottom Up Radio Show: Over 400 podcasts are archived for downloading here, or can be accessed from iTunes. Or check out my Youtube Channel

Rob Kall/OpEdNews Bottom Up YouTube video channel

Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.

Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.

To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.

For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.

Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

Talk Nation Radio interview by David Swanson: Rob Kall on Bottom-Up Governance June, 2017

Here is a one hour radio interview where Rob was a guest- on Envision This, and here is the transcript..

To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.

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Rob's articles express his personal opinion, not the opinion of this website.

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