By John McCaslin
Monday, December 10, 2007
On Friday morning, the public affairs shop at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) distributed to everybody on its e-mail list an article from The Washington Post from that same day that was critical of the office's most recent National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran. Several conservatives quoted in the story challenged the veracity of the NIE, including Norman Podhoretz, who has advocated air strikes on Iranian sites. The commentator said he does not think the new NIE is "very credible because it is a 180-degree turn in two years" since a previous estimate concluded that Iran was close to building a nuclear weapon.   Israel's Defence Minister Ehud Barak (L) shakes hands with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen during their meeting at the Defence Ministry in Tel Aviv December 10, 2007. The Bush administration's top military commander held high-level talks in Israel on Monday after the Jewish state said it disagreed with U.S. intelligence findings that Iran had shelved a nuclear weapons programme. REUTERS/Ariel Schalit/Pool (ISRAEL)
The Post story even suggested that career government officials who had battled with conservatives earlier in the administration have now migrated to the DNI office. Not surprisingly, a short time after the article was disseminated, another e-mail was sent out by the DNI's public affairs office: "A Washington Post article was mistakenly distributed this morning. We regret the error." Markey in 3-D We'd written recently about the irony surrounding several VIPs traveling aboard carbon-spewing private jets to "global warming" negotiations that are now under way in Bali, Indonesia. But not Rep. Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, who has devised a way to participate in the negotiations even while he remains in Washington. The congressman plans to harness the power of the Internet to deliver his address tomorrow to the U.N. Climate Change Conference via an online platform known as Second Life. He will use a 3-D animated version of himself (an "avatar") that will appear on a virtual Bali stage. Mr. Markey says it demonstrates "an extremely low-carbon way" to encourage stronger support for climate action. Hybrid sisters The Catholic Sisters of Mercy, based in Silver Spring, want us to know that they have had a long-standing desire to protect the environment and are now driving hybrid cars and reducing the amount of bottled water they drink. Sunday exercises If anybody knows about budget woes, it's President Bush. So that might have been a pledge card that the president removed from his coat pocket when he scribbled something and handed it to the Rev. Luis Leon on the steps of St. John's Episcopal Church in Washington yesterday after the 7:45 a.m. service. Minutes earlier, during his announcements, the church pastor encouraged his parishioners to turn in their pledge cards so that he could get started on a "sober" budget. The president spent the rest of what was a damp and rainy morning riding his bike at Fort Belvoir in Virginia and was described as "quite muddy" upon his return to the White House. Steeped in history No better historic city than Washington to host the American Historical Association's 122nd annual meeting, during which we can expect no fewer than 5,000 historians and 54 historical societies next month. Major history buff and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has even signed up to participate in one of several hundred sessions, his a round table on "The People's House." Public airing The fight surrounding "patriotic" holiday ads in support of U.S. troops is over, as the Freedom's Watch pieces began airing yesterday on NBC and its affiliate channels MSNBC and CNBC. "We are glad that NBC ultimately decided to do the right thing and air the ... ads supporting our troops. Thanking our troops is not a political statement — it is a patriotic one," Freedom's Watch President Bradley A. Blakeman said yesterday before the ad premiered during NBC's "Meet the Press." "We want to thank the hundreds of thousands who viewed the ads online, signed our petition, and let it be known that NBC's refusal would not go unchallenged. It is because of your voice that our ads thanking the troops will be seen by millions of Americans." NBC originally denied the ads because the conservative organization's Web address also appeared. CNN and Fox aired the ads without comment. |
John McCaslin is a contributing columnist on Townhall.com and author of Inside The Beltway: Offbeat Stories, Scoops, and Shenanigans from around the Nation's Capital .
Source: http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/JohnMcCaslin/2007/12/10/on_second_thought?page=full&comments=true
P.S. BOLDS AND HIGHLIGHTS ADDED FOR EMPHASIS: Blogman.
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