The Truth Lies Somewhere In Between ...

Blogs leaning to the left mostly conclude that releasing the recent National Intelligence Estimate should be one of—if not the—most urgent issues Democrats have on their plate, while those on the right predominantly reiterate it's a classified manner and the liberal media is (once again) running amok.

So it was refreshing, once again, to have Jim Lehrer sit down former CIA official Paul Pillar and shoot the shit tonight about what the real story is. And while Pillar said that what, basically, amounts to the most sensational of newsworthiness is what gets reported and helps "give a distorted impression," that final bit of dialogue exchange really tells me just how deep of an impression has been left that the Iraq War's done more harm than good:

JIM LEHRER: Back to the substance, at least as far as we know it at this point, and what Iraqi President Talabani told Ray Suarez in an interview we're going to see in a moment, he said that he doesn't agree with the finding that it increases the terrorist threat on the United States because the terrorists are on all now focused on Iraq. Does that make sense to you?

PAUL PILLAR: No, it doesn't. Well, it makes sense for the president of Iraq to say it because the president of Iraq has to have Iraqi interests uppermost in mind, and evidently President Talabani have concluded, as have many other Iraqi officials, that keeping the U.S. presence there longer rather than shorter amount of time is in Iraqi interest.

But his point about all the terrorists in the world are being attracted to Iraq -- this is the flypaper theory -- and therefore they're going to stay away from the United States, the flaw in that is we don't have a fixed number of terrorists in the world. I think the more appropriate comeback to that was what Secretary Rumsfeld raised the question in another leaked memo, a year or so ago, as you may recall.

JIM LEHRER: I do.

PAUL PILLAR: And the question was, "Are we breeding more terrorists faster than killing or incarcerating the ones we already have?" That's really the issue that is at stake here with the Iraq war.

JIM LEHRER: And if what's been in the press is correct, this intelligence estimate appears to suggest that we are breeding more than we're catching, is that right?

PAUL PILLAR: It does. And that's my judgment, as well.

Unless Karl Rove's supposed routine of having Bush pull a bunny from the hat next month scores big (sniff, sniff: I smell another bin Laden capture conspiracy theory), the Dems would have their incompetence upgraded to 100 percent if they fail to make up ground in BOTH the Senate and the House.

Period.