White House avoiding truth and consequences

The Senate has been waiting for a new National Intelligence Estimate for well over six months. The White House has been avoiding urgently needed delivery of the document for all this time for the usual political reasons. Negroponte refused to deliver one before the midterm election because its assessment is expected to be so bleak that it would embarrass the President. That's fine for Bush, but since when has avoiding accountability become a criteria for national security? Call me crazy but I had this silly idea that keeping the country,(or at the very least the Senate), informed on the consequences of his great decisions should take priority over whether the results are discomfiting to him.

In any event, the NIE is still being withheld from the Senate Armed Services Committee, who expected to recieve it at a recent closed door hearing. The National Intelligence Council's excuses for the continued delay were about on par with "the dog ate my homework," claiming some agencies haven't delivered their portions of the report because they're so busy preparing for the "new stragegy" for the redux of last summer's failed sweep in Baghdad and thus they haven't been able to complete the assessment.

One certainly hopes that's a lie and they really have it in their possession, but it's just so bad they don't want to release it. I would hate to think our military planners are undertaking the new escalation operations in Iraq without the benefit of the latest intelligence or even worse that our President made this momentous decision, against nearly universal criticism, without availing himself of the same.