The Anchoress

A very interesting chain of events.

First someone leaks and the press runs to print.

The White House responds that the leak was misrepresentative and cherry-picked.

Writes John Hinderaker: Sadly, I don’t think the answers to these questions are much in doubt. The bureaucrat leakers are Democrats who wanted to advance their party’s interests, and the reporters at the New York Times and Washington Post were also Democrats, and were happy to oblige. The bottom line is that you just can’t get adequate information from these news sources. Their grotesque biases outweigh the resources that, in theory, they are able to devote to covering the news. They can’t even provide a balanced account of a single bureaucratic report, let alone of a war.

(insert sneers and guffaws and other cynical sounds here…)

Then, uh-oh…someone else leaks other parts not reported…which makes the initial report look…ummm…misrepresentative and cherry-picked.

The White House, tired of this non-stop game, says, fine, we’ll release the report.

There is a similar rule that both good lawyers and good poker players live by: lawyers say, “don’t ask a question unless you already know the answer.” Poker players say, “play your own close to the vest.”

And then Nancy Pelosi tries closing the doors for the first time since 1983:

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi asked her colleagues Tuesday to close the House’s doors for a highly unusual secret session to discuss a classified intelligence analysis on global terrorism.

Such a session hasn’t happened in the House since July 1983, when the chamber went into a closed session to discuss the United States’ support for paramilitary operations in Nicaragua.

To paraphrase Barbara Billingsley in “Airplane,” “Chump wanna leak a piece of the report, chump gonna get the whole report.”

Why do I get the feeling Chump ain’t gonna really like the report?

Oh, and terrorism existed before the Iraq War, just as Hamid Karzai quickly reminded AP reporter Jennifer Loven, who seems to think the “leaking” of the report to be an unpolitical act, but President Bush’s “releasing” of the report to be an overtly political one:

Q: Why is that declassification not a political act?

BUSH: Because I want you to read the document so you don’t speculate about what it says.You asked me a question based upon what you thought was in the document _ or at least somebody told you was in the document. And so I think you’ll be able to ask a more profound question when you get to look at it yourself, as opposed to relying upon gossip and somebody, you know, who may or may not have seen the document trying to classify the war in Iraq one way or the other. [...] But, anyway, you all take a look at it, and then you’ll get to see.

KARZAI: Ma’am, before I go to the remarks by my brother, President Musharraf, terrorism was hurting us way before Iraq or September 11. The president mentioned some examples of it.

These extremist forces were killing people in Afghanistan and around for years, closing schools, burning mosques, killing children, uprooting vineyards with vine trees, grapes hanging on them, forcing populations to poverty and misery.

They came to America on September 11, but they were attacking you before September 11 in other parts of the world.

We are a witness in Afghanistan as to what they are and how they can hurt. You are a witness in New York.

Do you forget people jumping off the 80th floor or 70th floor when the planes hit them? Can you imagine what it will be for a man or a woman to jump off that high?

Who did that? And where are they now? And how do we fight them, how do we get rid of them, other than going after them? Should we wait for them to come and kill us again?

Thank you, sir. Watch the video here. It is stirring and serious, and Karzai (his words above come after Bush) is a serious man. And an elegant dresser.

The bottom line is, we were attacked all through the 1990’s and even before…and no one ever asked “what did Clinton,” or “Reagan” do to “make them mad at us?” The answer is, of course, nothing. They’ve been “mad at us” for at least 30 years. But somehow they only got mad at us once Bush went into Iraq. Yeah, that’s it. Except, it’s not.

And, just because you probably haven’t seen it anywhere else, Iraq President Talibani thanks the US. Read the letter.