Cherry Picking at Its Finest

Certain portions of the National Intelligence Estimate were leaked by the liberal media less than two weeks before the mid-term election. The NIE report was written 5 months ago, but only now does it get leaked. Blame it on a media holding back until an opportune time, or blame it on politically motivated leakers timing a leak they knew the media would rush uncritically into, but either way it’s nothing but a smear campaign with the media playing a prominent role. It’s a role that they should not have been part of–as skeptical as they claim to be–but they jumped in with both feet.

Today, President Bush called their bluff and released other parts of the report for folks to read for themselves. It’s a shame that in order to get a fair hearing the Bush administration has to declassify material. It appears that those on the Left and their supporters in the media are more than willing to compromise national security and break the law in order to gain political points.

So you wanna’ cherry pick quotations? John Hawkins highlights another blogger, allegedly a former member of the U.S intelligence community, who does his own cherry picking that paints a completely different picture. Worth a read.

Of course, Democrats, reading what they want and ignoring the rest, hold on to the spin and proclaim this as some sort of indictment against the war in Iraq. They’re playing pure politics with national security. Again. They’re holding up this snippet of a report as the gospel truth. Wonder what their thoughts were on the NIE report that there may be WMDs in Iraq. Actually, when that report was discussed, those on the Left noted more cherries picked other quotes from it that expressed doubt about their presence. At the time, as noted on Redstate,

But the NIE, I recalled from the discussions following the “NO WMD!” declarations from the Dems and the MSM, had said that there were WMD. When the MSM found snippets which expressed doubt, it was explained that the NIE contained a diversity of opinions and outlook.

That was then; diversity of opinion. This is now; monolithic groupthink. Short-attention-span Democrat voters will fall for it. But no one should.

Technorati Tags: NIE, Iraq, war, WMD, media

Filed under: Democrats • Government • Media • Middle East • Politics

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