National Intelligence Estimate Shows We're in Deep Doo-Doo

A National Intelligence Estimate prepared for El Presidente back in July offered "a dark assessment of prospects for Iraq" (according to this a.m.'s NYTimes), yet our SuperChristian in the Oval Office, who never tells a lie, has continued to campaign as though Iraq ended successfully for the U.S. several months ago and that we have nothing to fear now but homosexual marriage.

Hell, it doesn't take a classified document like this National Intelligence Estimate to confirm what is perfectly obvious, assuming you can find any news coverage anywhere in this country that even hints at what's going on over there. The U.S. military has essentially ceded many of the largest Iraqi cities to the "insurgents." Whatever "bunkering down" in "green zones" our guys are doing -- on orders from Bush to reduce casualties in the run-up to the November election? -- isn't reducing casualties. Over 1,000 Americans dead. The last figures I remember seeing about the wounded was well over 7,000 soldiers horribly wounded.

And this National Intelligence Estimate done in July -- still classified but being talked about pretty openly as of yesterday -- says the worst is yet to come.

"The situation in Iraq prompted harsh comments from Republicans and Democrats at a hearing into the shift of spending from reconstruction to security. Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, called it 'exasperating for anybody looking at this from any vantage point,' and Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, said of the overall lack of spending: 'It's beyond pitiful, it's beyond embarrassing. It is now in the zone of dangerous.' "

But not much of this penetrates the skulls of Americans addled by the cheerleading and flash graphics of Fox News, which surely by now has a special place hollowed out for itself in hell.