White House considers declassifying NIE report

Well, this is certainly interesting. The Bush White House is now considering declassifying the leaked NIE report. This is from The Washington Post:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration said on Tuesday it may declassify an intelligence report in order to respond to Democrats who say the
document shows the Iraq war has been a distraction from the war on terrorism.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said officials were "giving serious consideration" to releasing the National Intelligence Estimate on the U.S. terrorism threat to demonstrate that the section being seized on by Democrats is only one part of the overall picture.

The report, part of which was leaked to the media, has become an issue in the runup to November 7 mid-term elections when control of both houses of Congress is at stake.

Part of the report said U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded the Iraq war has made the worldwide threat from Islamist extremists more dangerous.

It has inspired their growing militant movement and created a ready source
of anti-American rhetoric, current and former intelligence officials familiar with the document say.

Perino said one paragraph in the lengthy report was "wildly taken out of context" and that some officials believe the whole document, provided to the U.S. Congress in
April, should be released to put that paragraph in context.

This is going to be another ongoing problem for the Bush White House. The Bush administration is trying to downplay this report, saying the Democrats are taking the report's conclusions out of context because they are only reading one paragraph from a few pages of the entire report--the report actually supports the Bush administration's rational for the Iraq war andGWOT . The problem here is that if the Bush administration releases the entire report, who knows what the conclusions, firestorm or criticisms would be once the Democrats get the full picture of this fullNIE report? We don't know what else is in that report--or if there is more damning evidence against the failed Bush policies on global terrorism and Iraq. By
releasing thisNIE report, the Bush White House could be adding more gasoline to this firestorm of controversy. But at the same time, if the Bush White House doesn't release the entire report, this controversy will continue to boil in the last weeks before the midterm elections, possibly hurting the Republican chances of maintaining control of Congress. The Bush administration may feel that releasing theNIE report
will quickly dampen this controversy before the midterm elections. It is certainly an interesting problem for President Bush.

My personal take--I'd love to see what is in that NIE report.