Ray Close, who served as the top CIA official in Saudi Arabia, has offered the following on the importance of the current NIE:
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"A National Intelligence Estimate is just exactly what the title says it is. An NIE isn't issued every day. It sometimes takes weeks to write and coordinate. Even the decision to prepare an NIE in the first place is a painstaking one. It is a BIG DEAL, in other words. An NIE is not a single report from a single agency, but represents the considered judgment of the entire intelligence community (16 different agencies, in theory) on a subject deemed to be of vital significance to makers of national security and foreign policy.
If key members of Congress (like Majority Leader Bill Frist, who claimed ignorance of this report), and neither the House nor the Senate intelligence committees, have seen the document since it was produced in April, then we have to ask ourselves whether the White House and Congress take any serious interest in the most important products of America's enormous (and extremely expensive) intelligence empire. Are we to conclude that the "brains" of the United States Government (presumably those who formulate and carry out national policy) are simply not interested in making use of the best information and advice available to them? That seems to confirm the growing impression that policy is influenced today more by considerations of ideology and political expediency than by painstaking and objective study of the world situation."
I think this point needs to be made by every Democratic candidate between now and November 7th, at every opportunity. Hammer, hammer, hammer the obvious truth of this ("How serious IS the GOP about national security, if they don't know about an NIE produced more than five months ago?") at every opportunity.UPDATE: Thanks again to Mr. Murder, I learn this is actually from a post by known puppy hater Larry Johnson.
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